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By now I know that they have two grown children. The daughter is at some culinary institute in Paris and has made it clear to her father that she would travel to the moon to keep herself away from his trial. The son, Eric, is looking for the perfect wave in the Federated States of Micronesia, last I heard.
I also know that Claire hates surprises as much as I do. So the certainty that I will piss her off by dropping in on her this way has already made the twenty-minute drive over here well worth it, and sustains me on an exceptionally long beach walk, the first half into a strong wind coming off the ocean from the west.
At the start of it I pass the house that once belonged to Billy Joel, until he decided that the Atlantic was getting closer to it every year.
Only the good die young.
Walking on the beach this way, at night, usually fills me with a sense of calm. Even peace, as rare as that is for me. Just not tonight, not while I’m carrying a gun in the side pocket of my leather bomber jacket, after what happened to me in the Springs. If somebody has followed me to the beach tonight and starts shooting, this time I’m shooting back.
But I don’t spot another soul out here, coming or going.
I just pray a little bit, not a strong suit since Catholic grade school. I know I’m sick. Got the pictures to prove it. But I don’t feel sick, which is the unholy bitch of it all. In a lot of ways—most ways, maybe—I feel as if I’m in the best shape of my life, and that includes professionally.
A lot of good it does me.
There was a message from Sam Wylie on my cell as I was getting into the car, one she must have left while I was in the shower. When I called her back, she said that we needed to get together and discuss treatment options.
“For what?” I said into the phone.
“Jane, does everything have to be hard with you?”
I asked her if that was a rhetorical question and lied and told her I’d call her tomorrow.
Seriously? Treatment options for what? To buy myself a couple of extra months? When Iamfeeling sick and the treatments will just make me feel sicker?
I shake my head now and lean more into the wind.
The things you think about it when it’s you alone on a beach in the night.
I grin.
Low tide now.
Not even loud at all, underneath the wind.
I nearly walk all the way to Ocean Road Beach before I turn around, ready to go talk to Claire Jacobson, knowing what I want to ask her to her face. Wanting to ask her why she thinks Gus Hennessy, who swears under oath that Rob Jacobson is his friend, would go this far out of his lane to run him over with a story on which he could have given me a heads-up months ago.
Yeah,I think.
Whatdidtake him so freaking long?
Nowhe wants to kill his so-called friend.
He tried to tell Ahearn on redirect, as Ahearn tried to clean up the hot mess I’d made for him, that he’d kept silent about the scene on the beach between Jacobson and Mitch Gates for as long as he had out of loyalty to his friend. But that he just couldn’t have lived with himself if he’d kept silent any longer.
He owed it to the victims, he said.
And he did sound to me about as sincere as any salesman ever did.
But selling what?
That’s what I want to know.
And selling out a friend this way…why?
I am passing some hedges on the east side of Gibson Lane and about to turn up their long driveway when I see a classic little cream-colored Fiat convertible pull into it.
Top down, so I can clearly see who’s behind the wheel.
