Sullivan looked like he’d have been a lot happier standing, but sat anyway on the edge of the Victorian love seat. I took the other high-backed chair.
“I don’t have a lot of time to get into long explanations, not now anyway,” I said to her. “I’m sorry for that.”
If this was alarming her, it didn’t show, beyond the simple gesture of closing her book, after carefully marking her place with a slip of paper, and putting it on a side table.
“Very well. Should Gabe be here?” she asked.
“Well, that’s the first thing. You’re going to have to fire him.”
“Really. How so?”
“He’s been defrauding you and misrepresenting himself. For starters.”
“You know this?”
I looked over at Sullivan. He nodded convincingly.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid so.”
“Dammit.”
You couldn’t get any whiter than Appolonia, so she wasn’t turning white. But maybe a little pink was creeping up into her cheeks. Probably good for her.
“You have worse news than that?” she asked.
“I don’t know if worse’ is the word. Different.”
She put her fingertips up to her mouth.
“You know who killed Jonathan.”
“I have a theory.”
“Yes, of course. You’re the scientist.”
“But I need your help to prove it out.”
I realized that Belinda was in the room with us. Had likely been there all along, only now she was close enough to hear the conversation. I pointed to her with my thumb.
“Belinda should be out of the room, and out of the foyer. Another person should be arriving shortly. Officer Sullivan needs to answer the door.”
“Who on earth would that be?” asked Appolonia.
By now she’d realigned herself on her chair, leaning forward, her bare feet side by side on the Chinese rug. I saw her as a young girl, self-conscious and withdrawn, but aware of the world. Amusing herself with an internal monologue, satirizing and excoriating people she knew—teachers, aunts and uncles, nannies—people unaware of her gift for insight, her busy contemplative mind. They wouldn’t know because she’d never allow them to. For Appolonia, thought by definition must be private. Contained and secure within a sealed chamber. A safe haven where both the fruits of perception and passion could be allowed full expression.
Her parents’ death may have been the deciding event in condemning her to complete isolation, but only in hastening the inevitable. Serving up a ghastly, but welcome rationale. An objective, identifiable cause for the foregone effect.
Because Appolonia gloried in the ice castle of her mind. A luminous, precisely organized mind that should have been able to recognize that no one can separate themselves entirely, and forever, from the hot and messy, chaotic reality just outside those castle walls.
“Jonathan Eldridge. Your husband.”
Appolonia clamped a hand across her mouth and lurched back into her chair, drawing her feet up off the floor as if the rug had just burst into flames. Her eyes opened to the whites. I sat quietly, waiting for her to catch her breath. She slapped her hand down to her lap.
“You are very cruel. How dare you say such a thing.”
“You didn’t know,” I said, not as a question, but an answer.
“He was killed.”
“Lots of people were killed. And one was damaged in a way that she’ll never fully recover from, even after they put her face back as close as they can to what it used to look like.”
And somebody else would never be the same. Me, as it turns out. I’d have to live with the sight of the orange flames consuming the interior of that black Lexus with its desperate and agonized human cargo, and the jolt of horror when my somnambulant brain finally processed what was happening, the desperate hope clutching my heart as I threw Jackie across the big table, and the regret later that maybe I’d saved her life, but that was all I could save. Only her, and not the four innocent people who were only having a pleasant cocktail on an outdoor deck, and the waitress whose only thought was keeping our drinks filled and picking out which of us was most likely to leave a decent tip. And the manager of the place, counting the till, trying to calculate the size of the impending dinner crowd. All those people who were atomized and sprayed across the harbor shore because I only had time to save a single person.
And myself.
Appolonia nearly jumped out of her chair when the doorbell rang. Sullivan stood up quickly and pulled his Smith & Wesson out of the holster under his arm. He took Belinda by the elbow and propelled her out to the foyer and into the kitchen. I stood up, too, between the door and where Appolonia was sitting. I could hear her behind me, making little breathing sounds and whispering words I couldn’t make out. Sullivan opened the door with his right hand, stepping back and covering the entrance with the gun held in his left.
“Hands where I can see them,” said Sullivan. “Step forward slowly. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I never do anything stupid,” said Butch Ellington as he walked into the living room. “Insane, maybe, but never stupid.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
APPOLONIA SHOT ME a bewildered and angry look.
“It’s him,” I said, grabbing him by the neck and using my thumb to smear back his moustache, revealing the scarred lip. “Look familiar?”
He tried to pull back, but I dug in my grip and brought my mouth up to his ear.
“Tell her,” I said.
His antic eyes were darting around the room, as if searching for a way out, an escape hatch into another dimension.
“Tell her,” I said again and let go of his head. His eyes abruptly stopped their search and focused on me. His face lit into a smile and he made a small bow.
“Enough of that crap,” I said to him. “Say it.”
He made another little bow and turned toward Appolonia.
“It’s me, darling,” he said, in a softly modulated version of his voice. “You know that it is. Your Jonathan.”
Appolonia had her hand back up to her mouth and was trying to disappear into her chair. Belinda barreled into the room, pushed passed Sullivan and me and knelt at Appolonia’s feet. Sullivan moved around in front of me and gestured slightly with his revolver, forcing Butch to move back a step. Sullivan patted him down, then took his shoulder and pushed him gently into the love seat while taking out his cell phone and dialing a number.
“Keep your hands flat on the cushions where I can see them. You come with anybody? Anybody outside?” He raised the revolver up to Butch’s eye level to help him remember.
“Why don’t you ask
“Keep your insults to yourself,” said Sullivan.
I went over to the window and slipped the edge of my hand between the curtains, just enough to see out. There was an old Jeep Cherokee parked behind the Grand Prix. Charles and Edgar were leaning against the side of the truck, looking relaxed, but focused on the front door. I described the scene to Sullivan, who had the cell phone at his ear.
“Okey-dokey dude,” he said to Eldridge. “Not a twitch, not a wink, not a nod.” Then into the phone, “Hiya,
