“She’s dead, Sandy,” Jo informed him.
“Dead? How did it happen?”
“It looks like an accident. It appears that she hit her head on the ice.”
“Looks? Appears?” Parrant studied both their faces. “Sounds as if you think otherwise. And do you think that I’m somehow connected?” He nodded toward the Winchester in Cork’s right hand. “I guess that explains the hardware there.”
“Where were you between noon and three o’clock this afternoon?” Jo asked.
“Here. I was here all day, in fact, working at the computer in my office drafting my maiden address to the Senate.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I can show you the speech on my computer.”
“I don’t think that would prove anything, Sandy,” she pointed out. “You could have drafted that speech any time.”
Parrant lifted his wineglass again and thought a moment. “Talk to Ruth Becker, my housekeeper. She’d know if I was gone at all today.”
“Is she here?” Jo asked.
“Ruth goes home at five. You know that, Jo. You’ve spent enough evenings here.”
She felt rather than saw the look Cork threw at her. “Do you mind if we call her?”
“Be my guest. The kitchen phone is probably the most convenient. If you need it, there’s a phone book in the first drawer to the right of the refrigerator.”
“Go ahead, Cork,” Jo said.
“I’d rather stay here with him,” Cork replied.
“I’d rather you called.”
Reluctantly, he gave in and headed up the stairs to the deck level that led onto the main floor of the house. He vanished through the sliding doors.
“Jo, you don’t really think I had anything to do with that young woman’s death, do you?” Sandy asked. “Why would I?”
“Cork believes she had evidence that would have ruined you. He believes you killed her to get it.”
“Do you believe that?”
The northern lights had grown more intense. Jo found it odd that she wasn’t more overwhelmed by the spectacle. At the moment, she was using it simply as a means to divert her gaze from Sandy.
“Jo, do you believe I’d do that?” Sandy pressed her.
Without looking at him she replied, “You’re ambitious, and I’ve seen a ruthlessness in you sometimes when you want something very badly.”
“I’m ambitious, I admit. And as for that ruthlessness, all I can say is that no one ever accomplished great things without being ruthless at times. But I’m not a murderer.” He reached out and took her gloved hand. “Jo, I’ve held you in my arms, made love to you. Haven’t you seen that part of me as well? A man’s many things. To isolate one part of him and judge him on that alone is to do him an injustice, don’t you think?”
The doors slid open on the upper deck and Cork stepped from the house. Jo drew back her hand.
“Well?” Sandy asked coldly as Cork descended the stairs.
“She says that you were here all day, locked in your office. She says that she never saw you leave.”
“There you have it,” Sandy concluded.
“She also says,” Cork went on, “that she never saw you at all after you went into your office. You didn’t respond when she knocked to tell you she was leaving.”
“That’s not unusual. If you’d asked her, she would have told you that.”
“It’s true, Cork,” Jo interjected. “He often locks himself away for hours and no one can reach him.”
“It’s when I do my best work,” Sandy said.
“Ruth said she left lunch for you on a tray outside your door about one o’clock. She said you didn’t touch it. She picked up the tray at three.”
“When I’m concentrating, as I was on this speech, I tune everything out. Jo?” He turned to her for verification.
“True again, Cork.”
“Any more questions?” Sandy asked with a note of impatience.
Cork closed his eyes a moment, thinking. Jo saw how his shoulders had fallen, how the anger was draining out of him. But when he eyed Sandy again, there was still determination in his look.
“Yesterday morning,” he said, “I was attacked at Harlan Lytton’s place. Someone saw you head out that way on County Sixteen shortly before it happened.”
“Someone?”
“A reliable source.”
Parrant glanced at Jo.
“He couldn’t have, Cork,” Jo informed him quietly.
“Why not?”
“He was with me. We were here together.”
“Here?” Cork looked from one to the other. “All morning?”
“Yes.”
“And not working,” he guessed.
“Not exactly,” Parrant said.
Cork’s eyes seemed hollow and desperate, and Jo was glad he’d emptied the rifle of cartidges.
Parrant leaned forward in the tub, speaking reasonably. “Look, Cork, I know this woman’s death must hurt you. I can understand, given the relationship between Jo and me, that I would be an easy target for your anger. But I’m the wrong target, I swear.”
“He’s right, Cork,” Jo said softly.
Cork looked down at the useless rifle in his hand. When he lifted his face, Jo saw how tired he was.
“I’m beat,” he whispered. “I’m absolutely beat.”
He turned away and started down the stairs.
“Cork, I’ll come-” Jo began.
“No,” he said without turning. “I’d rather be alone.”
He waded through the snow and disappeared around the corner of the house.
“I feel so sorry for him,” Jo said. “He’s lost so much in the last couple of years. He’s a good man, Sandy. He really is.”
“You’re not still thinking of trying to work on your marriage.” Irritation rang in his words like the sour note of a cracked bell.
“I don’t love Cork,” Jo assured him. “But I’ll always care. I feel so sad for him, that’s all. Right at this moment, I just feel like crying.”
“Join me in here,” Sandy suggested, sweeping his hand over the surface of the water. “I guarantee you can’t cry in a hot tub. It’s one of those unusual laws of physics.”
“I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Then let me give you your Christmas present.”
“It’s not Christmas yet.”
“I’ve never been good at waiting, especially when I want to cheer up a sad lady. Just let me get dressed.”
He rose, naked and steaming, from the tub.
45
By the time Sandy was dressed, the northern lights had intensified, grown so bright that the flat of the lake beyond the boathouse was awash in color, exploding with red and green and brief flashes of yellow. In all her years,
