'Brinkman, look. Grice is dead. MacGregor's dead. Any organization Grice built you'll be able to take apart pretty easily now, and it probably doesn't amount to much anyhow.
'But I don't think you're going to get much else out of this. You might get Sanderson for the murder of his wife, but you'll have to drain the quarry pit to find her, and I don't think you'll have enough to go to court on, even if you do that.
'So pretty much it's over. You'll give press interviews and get re-elected. The DA and NYSEG and the Feds, and whoever else wants to, will start investigations into Appleseed Holdings. Sanderson's pet politicians will suddenly lose his phone number. He'll be nobody in this county anymore, but he won't go to jail.
'And Ron MacGregor will get buried, but as a hero, Brinkman. That's what his family thinks. That's what everybody thinks. What the hell good is it going to do anybody, if the truth comes out?'
Brinkman's small eyes fixed on me for a long time. 'You're just so goddamn smart, aren't you, city boy? You can just tell what's good for everybody, and how everything oughta work.'
'No,' I said, standing. 'If I were smart, I could make things come out the way they should, instead of being left behind to clean up the mess.'
I turned away from him, followed Eve Colgate out the gray glass doors.
In the car I told Eve the story from the beginning. I told her more than I'd told Brinkman, because the paintings were hers; but the part I'd kept from him I kept from her also.
I found myself telling her about MacGregor, though, which was something else I had decided not to talk about. But I needed to talk about it.
'I didn't catch on.' I said. 'At first he just told me to keep out of his way. He was a cop; that's standard. And he started asking me why I thought Brinkman, with such a grudge on, hadn't been able to get at Grice. I wondered why he was asking me. But he was fishing, looking to see if I'd figured out Grice had protection. And I had, but I wasn't smart enough to see where it was coming from.
'Then suddenly he was ordering me off the case, out of the county, pissed off, as though I'd done something. I guess that was when he found out Grice really was involved and trying to set Jimmy up. He was afraid I'd get too close. He wanted to protect me. And I didn't get it.'
'He was a friend of yours,' she said. 'You trusted him, and he couldn't afford to trust you. What would you have done, if you'd known?'
'I don't know. Honest to God, I don't know.'
We rode in silence for a time, back over the route we'd taken last night with Tony. The night seemed very quiet, very dark.
'That little girl,' Eve said at last. 'Do you think she really did that?'
'Shot Gould? Yes. If Grice had done it hed've been proud. He wouldn't have manufactured a story, at least not for me. Yes, I think that was true.'
There was more silence, more narrow, curving road, the smell of damp earth and woodsmoke in the air.
'Eve?'
'Yes?'
'I want to know something. You told me it was none of my business once, but I'm asking again. What's behind your arrangement with your gallery?'
She didn't answer for some time. Finally she said, 'You have to have all the pieces, don't you? That's what drives you.”
'That's part of it,' I said. 'Part of it.'
She shifted, turned onto 30. Her driving was smooth and sure, even in my unfamiliar car.
'I told you,' she said, 'how my husband died. In a car accident. I was driving; we had both been drinking. I didn't tell you why.' A pause; then, 'Henri had just told me he'd made another woman pregnant.'
She didn't look at me. I said, 'Someone up here?'
'Yes. He'd been seeing her for over a year. I didn't understand it then, and I don't now. I thought we had ... I thought. . . my God, how I loved him!' Her voice quavered. 'And so I killed him. I don't think I meant to. I don't think so. But I don't think I'll ever know.
'Henri's daughter was born not long after I got out of the hospital. Her mother, Henri's . . . Henri's mistress . . . she wasn't a tramp. She ran a plant nursery. She was older than I, as Henri was. Smart, kind, and strong.
'She never knew who I was. I used to go to the nursery regularly. My cherry trees are from it. I watched the child grow.'
The night had grown foggy as 30 climbed into the hills. I shivered slightly in the clammy air.
'I tried, through Ulrich, to give her money for the child. She knew it was from Henri's widow; she turned it down. But when the child was ready for school, she found she had a dilemma.
'We had gotten to be friends, of a sort. I don't know if you'll understand that . . .' For the first time, she glanced at me.
I said, 'Yes. Yes, I do.' In the darkness I couldn't see her eyes.
She nodded, went on. 'She wanted the child to be educated well. She told me she had promised the child's father that. She told me—she said she had loved him very much.' Eve drew a breath. 'But the public schools here were not good. The only nearby private school was Adirondack Preparatory, which at that time was just a finishing school. There was no other place to send her daughter close to home, and she couldn't bear to send her away.
'And at last I had found something I could do. I made arrangements with Ulrich. On my behalf, he met with the trustees at Adirondack Preparatory. In the beginning I endowed chairs. I sponsored scholarships. I donated a new building, for the visual and performing arts.
