I don’t need a lawyer, she’d replied.
And he’d said: You’re young, you’re beautiful, and as of now you’re alone and very rich. My dear, you need a lawyer more than anything.
“Ransom,” she said now, approaching him across the grass. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t reply until she was standing next to him. “This is a beautiful view,” he said. “Your father always loved it.”
Beth waited. Ransom had a newspaper, now damp, folded under one arm. She tucked a windblown lock of hair behind her ear as the anger she’d felt for the reporter drained away. When Ransom had something to say, there was no power on earth that would make him say it faster.
Finally, Ransom spoke again. “I first met your father when he called me up to make an impaired driving charge go away. Did you know that? Not the most illustrious meeting.” His brows drew together as he looked at the ocean. He wasn’t a handsome man, exactly, but he was hard to look away from. “I didn’t think I’d like him, but I did. I got him off the drunk driving charge, because I’m good and that’s the way the world works. I’ve been sorry for his loss every day since he died. Literally every day. I’m as puzzled by that as you are.”
Beth swallowed and looked at the trees. Her father had been complicated—unhappy, sometimes angry. In his own way, as trapped as her mother was. For a long time, during the years of alcohol-fueled fights and lonely Christmases, she had hated him. Part of her still did.
But she had loved him, too. She had wished, with the stupid wistfulness of a daughter, that she could have been the one to make him happy. But she wasn’t. She could never be. Fixing her father hadn’t been possible.
She turned back to see Ransom looking at her. He’d been her father’s lawyer, and then her mother’s, and now hers. He was as familiar to her as a tool she used every day. She knew he had a wife who left him frequently—he always got her back—and three kids. He liked steak and loathed cigarettes, claiming the smell made him sick. She hadn’t seen him in two years, but she knew all of those things were still true.
“You need a lawyer,” he said.
“No, I don’t.”
He took the newspaper from under his arm and handed it to her.
Reluctantly, Beth took it and opened it. It was this morning’s Claire Lake Daily, spattered with rain and hot off the press, and the headline read do police have a suspect in the “lady killer” murders? Beneath it was a photo of Beth leaving the police station after the interview yesterday. She’d been surprised by the man standing outside with a camera, and he’d caught her looking pale and hard, hostility in her eyes. Even Beth looked at that photo and could easily see a murderer. A trick of the light, the random angle of her face, the surprise and anger mixed in her features, and she looked guilty as hell.
She’d probably looked guilty as hell on camera just now, too. It all added more fuel to the fire.
Beth stared at the words in the headline again. They threatened to blur and jumble in front of her face. Things were moving now, going faster, as if sliding downhill. None of it was under her control.
“Do you have anything to say to me, Beth?” Ransom asked, cutting through her haze of anger and panic.
“They think I did it,” Beth said, because she couldn’t tell Ransom the truth. He already knew some of it; he’d been the family lawyer for too long not to know the buried secrets. But there were other secrets that were too dangerous for even Ransom to know. “The police, I mean. They think I killed those men.”
“And yet they didn’t arrest you,” Ransom pointed out calmly. “That means they’re still fishing. They’ll pressure you as much as they can while they build their case. They’re hoping you give in, get scared, start weeping or cracking. They’re looking for vulnerable spots. Something tells me they’re looking in vain.”