and shattering Hal. And why? In order to spare Lidia, who Hermione always somehow felt he loved more than her.
“I just left her to the screaming, and tried to sleep. As far as I could tell, they were up all night.
“The next morning, Zeus seemed to have settled her down enough that she’d agreed to take a walk with him back to the graveyard. So off they went, and no more than an hour later, I hear all this shouting and hear sirens up the mountain. The servants in the villa were in a tizzy and dragged me out with them. And there was Hermione telling the police about these strange men who had followed Zeus and her. She said she was walking alone, fifty paces in front of him, when she heard Zeus scream. Next she sees is these men tearing off and Zeus way down below, broken on the rocks like a child’s toy.”
“Did you believe that? That strangers had tossed him down the mountain?”
“
“Hermione never cracked. Once we came back, I saw next to nothing of her, except on family occasions. She became another one of these Greek widows, keeping company with almost no one but her son and grandchildren, and dressed in black. Designer stuff, of course. But black.” Teri cackled.
“And Cass stayed in prison.”
“Yes. That was sad. Of course, I returned from Greece determined to honor my brother’s wishes and go to the prosecutor in Greenwood County. I hired a lawyer, a fellow named Mason. Ever heard of him?”
“George?” He was a judge now, but still one of Evon’s closer friends. “You couldn’t have done better.”
“Well, he listened to all this and said, ‘Is your sister-in-law going to back you?’ ‘Fuck no,’ I said. I knew better than that. Admit she had a motive to push her husband off the mountain? Blacken his name and devastate her son? And reward Lidia, who she despised? I’m no lawyer, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Your friend George just shook his head. ‘A prosecutor is going to look at this and laugh. You come forward only after your brother dies, when you can conveniently lay the whole thing at his feet with no consequence to him. His wife, who was in the room, denies he ever said anything like that. And who do you hope to free as a result? Only the son of your best friend. We can do it, Teri, but I’ll tell you right now there isn’t a soul in that courthouse who is going to believe you. Frankly, I think I might deserve a bonus if you don’t end up charged with perjury.’ If it was just about me, I might have carried on anyway. But to tear Hal apart with no point? Cass wasn’t getting out. Your friend Mason convinced me of that.”
“And you never told Lidia.”
“How could I? She’d have demanded that I go to the prosecutor. What else would a mother do? A lot of people thought Hermione was dull, but she was a survivor. She knew I was cornered.”
The old lady emptied her tumbler. She was done.
“A secret,” she said to Evon again, as punctuation.
Evon went to set her glass down on the tea cart, but Teri reached for it when she realized where Evon was headed. She made a remark about wasting good whiskey and took a long draught.
“Forgive me for not showing you out,” she said. “I’ll probably just fall asleep here.”
Evon offered to help her to bed but the old lady was content with her bad habits.
“How is your life, dear?” she asked, as Evon picked up her purse. “What happened to Loopy Loo?”
She described yesterday’s events to Teri. “She probably got out of jail last night. I never checked to find out.”
“And how do you feel?”
“Like I got trapped in a washing machine on spin cycle.”
Teri liked the description and had a long laugh.
“It’ll probably take you a while to recover, but don’t give up hope.”
“That’s what Tim tells me. Anyway, I can’t escape my own nature. It’s what I want, deep inside.”
“Course it is. You ought to try to be happy for your own sake, but if that doesn’t convince you, then try because there were so many of us who never even got the chance.”
That thought, a new one, pierced Evon straight through the heart.
“Come give your old Aunt Teri a hug.”
She did. The old woman still smelled like she was wearing an entire cosmetics counter. Teri looked up, unseeing, and touched Evon’s cheek. She told Evon again she was a good girl.
Evon stopped at Tim’s house on Monday morning on her way to work. He was up and welcomed her, ushering her back to the sun-room. She was worried about what to tell him, but by now he’d figured it all out on his own.
“You don’t need to beat around the bush. It was Zeus, wasn’t it? Kept me on his side all these years, didn’t he? I’ve been a fool before. But never for money.”
“Tim-”
“It’s OK,” he said. “I should have looked that gift horse in the mouth a long time ago. I knew Zeus’s colors. But he got the drop on me with the grieving-father stuff. A fella like Zeus, they always know the soft spots. Damn him to hell anyway.”
“I knew you were going to take it hard.”
“Of course I am. Let an innocent man go off to prison? Now how’s that for a capstone on my career? Oh, jeepers,” he said, and looked bereft as he stared at the floor. “I certainly have worked my last for ZP.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Yeah, I do. Time anyway. I’ll go out to Seattle and see how much I like it. Lot of hills and young people. I’m still not sure it’s the right place for a gimpy old man. I guess I’ll find one of those graduated dying places, where you get a little help to start and eventually leave in a box.”
“I think they call them assisted living.”
“Whatever.”
She told him she had to get in to the office, but promised to return to have lunch. Once he saw her to the door, Tim sat in the sun-room and put Kai and J.J. on and listened to them play. All the time Tim tooted on the trombone as a kid, he believed he was going to be that good, and there was no more chance of that than of his becoming a 747. And he thought he was a good cop and a decent man, but he was willing to buy all of Zeus’s palaver because it bought him a little more comfort in life. None of the investigators, so far as Tim recalled, had even thought to cast a look in Zeus’s direction, because of the blood. But Tim was the guy experienced enough to have seen through it.
The truth was often so damn painful. People couldn’t stand to live with it. And him thinking he was in the truth business. No one really was. You took as much as you could and called it quits.
But there was music and sunshine. And maybe when he got himself around other people every day, he might even find some cute old gal. Evon had said the same thing a lot of folks did. In those places a guy who could still drive was more popular than a billionaire. Maria would forgive him. What Sofia had told him had helped. Sitting here on his plaid couch, he again felt his love for Maria, which would last as long as he did.
He put his hands over his face to give the rising shame and indignation about Zeus another second to drain. It would come and go for days. But he slapped his thighs.
Life, thought Tim, almost age eighty-two, goes on.
When Evon got to the ZP Building, Hal was locked in the giant conference room with a battalion of bankers and lawyers, a few of whom would emerge now and then and scurry to a side office for conferences or phone calls to superiors. The meeting had been expected to last two hours and was now in hour four. On the business side of ZP’s offices, there was a portentous silence. A lot of people seemed to be holding their breath.
Finally, after lunch, Hal’s assistant, Sharize, told Evon he was free. The bankers and lawyers were filing out, men and women in blue suits who looked like teams of pallbearers in training, one face grimmer than the next.
She entered the vast conference room, which was normally partitioned into three, but Hal was on the phone with Mina and he held up a hand. Evon sat in a chair in the hall until he was finished, a good fifteen minutes.
When Sharize brought Evon in, Hal’s suit coat was on the back of his chair. He’d removed his tie, and his white shirt was darkened by large spots of sweat. He sat in front of the vast bank of windows over the spangled river, peering abjectly at the wall. Another portrait of Zeus was over there, in the center of the sycamore
