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I said, “So why would he need a million bucks in diamonds? It’s more evidence he didn’t turn rogue.” Or, as Lindsey had suggested earlier, that he had committed the crime to prove something, to stick it to the voters that had betrayed him. But I didn’t say that.
She smiled. “Are you proud of me? Wait until I tell you about Matt Pennington.”
I nodded and rubbed her feet. Maybe that would be enough, we could wind down and go to bed, and none of this would be real in the morning.
Part of that might even have happened if I hadn’t said another word.
Instead, I said, and I said it very carefully, lightly, trying to avoid a vowel of accusation in my voice, “Please tell me you weren’t hacking the Peraltas’ financial data, Lindsey.”
After a pause, her voice was smaller but had an edge. “I talked on the phone with Sharon. Want to tell me what’s wrong, Dave?”
And so I did.
All the way home, I had rehearsed a way to discuss our mess in a conversation that would be careful, nuanced, calm, and fluent. All that preparation deserted me the more I began to speak.
It took about fifteen minutes to get it out and by the end I was talking too fast and too loud.
Her perfect ankles and feet withdrew and she sat at the other end of the sofa, her arms wrapped around her legs.
“You don’t buy any of this, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“What else did he tell you I did in Washington?”
That was the leading question from the depths of hell.
I hadn’t told her that he had mentioned her affairs. I didn’t now, looking straight at her and lying convincingly, or so I thought. Her blue eyes darkened, never a good sign.
After a searing pause, Lindsey finally spoke, her voice as hard as, well, a diamond.
“He’s using you, Dave. He’s trying to scare you and he’s trying to use me to get what he wants.”
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nbsp; She walked off to the kitchen and began cleaning up, loudly banging pans.
Of course, he was using me. I was a fool on a hundred fronts but I knew this much. I walked to the kitchen and stood in the doorway.
“What should I have done?” I said. “I can look at the file. It can’t do any harm.”
She stared into the sink and scrubbed harder. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, Dave.”
That came out of nowhere and I started feeling the same anger that was motivating her manic kitchen cleaning.
She dried her hands with a striped dishcloth and turned. “You should have called me. We should have made this decision together.”
“There wasn’t time.”
“Why not?” Her tone was sharp. “Did he have an arrest warrant?”
I struggled to find a response. She was right, of course.
I said, “I couldn’t let him throw you to the wolves.”
She smiled with cutting false sweetness. “Aren’t you the white knight?”
Everybody has an interior jerk. Mine was about to lash back but I stopped it. For a long time the house enclosed us in a tense quiet.
