The package arrived, messengered over from Donna Bellows. Grateful for the distraction, Hardy opened it, little more than an envelope, depressingly thin.
There was the letter from Larry Witt to Donna Bellows. There was a covering letter to go with the offering circular. Finally, there was the circular itself.
Dear Donna:
I wonder if you could take a look at the enclosed. As you will see, the YBMG is offering all doctors (we are called 'providers' in the brochure) an option to buy into the new for-profit plan. The shares are a nickel each, and the tone of both the covering letter and the brochure is very negative – there's slim to no chance that this is a worthwhile investment.
So why did they bother sending the thing out?
My concern is that the Board has only given us three weeks to exercise the option, and that they sent this circular now, over Christmas, when so many providers are either on vacation or swamped with personal business at home.
I realize that most shares any individual can buy is 368, so potentially the greatest personal exposure to any provider in the group is only $18.40, but Hardy abruptly stopped reading.
Larry Witt, control freak extraordinaire, was asking his two-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer to look into a maximum exposure issue of less than twenty dollars?
He must have read it wrong, got the decimal misplaced. He looked at the last line again. '… the greatest personal exposure to any provider in the group is only $18.40…'
Shaking his head, thinking what an absolute pain in the ass Larry Witt must have been, Hardy stood, stretched, and gave up for the day. He went downstairs to watch the World Series in the conference room. Maybe his side would win.
Frannie had her feet up on the couch, a book face down on her chest. Her eyes were on her husband and she was trying not to nod off.
'No, listen, this is really interesting.'
His wife shook her head. 'Anytime you've got to say that, it isn't.'
Hardy put his paper down. 'You used to be more fun.'
She raised her eyebrows. 'Let me get this straight – you're sitting in our living room on a balmy October night, you didn't taste the fantastic dinner I made, you didn't even want wine with it, and for the last ten minutes you are reading to me along from some stock proposal that isn't worth anything anyway, and I'm the one who used to be more fun?'
He nodded. 'A lot more. I remember. I know it can't be me.'
Frannie swung her feet to the ground, patting her lap. 'Okay, come here.'
Hardy crossed the room. 'What am I going to do, Fran? She still won't let me use the only thing that might save her.'
'I don't think you're right, about it being the only thing that can save her. It's not just the beatings… Jennifer's life with her husband was terrible, but she didn't kill him, Dismas. She never lied to me, not even about Ned. She never denied to me, about him. She just didn't say she did it. But she absolutely denied killing Larry. She had no reason to lie to me, she avoided it in the case of Ned.
Hardy could think of at least one reason why Jennifer might want to lie to Frannie. Frannie was his wife, he was Jennifer's lawyer. It would be better if he believed she didn't kill Larry and Matt.
Frannie went on. 'This is not just an instinct, you know. Or woman's intuition, although I wouldn't put that down if I were you. You're forgetting what you proved. Never mind if she could have done it or not, Jennifer in fact did not run through the Medical Center. It did take her probably fifteen minutes to get to her bank, to five. And that means she didn't kill anybody. She had left her house. She ran to the bank the way she told you she did. Talking about that morning, telling me about it, she volunteered the way she'd come – down Clarendon, through the Victorians, the old Haight, she talked about that, how the neighborhood calmed her down. You don't make that stuff up.' Sometimes you do, Hardy thought. But it wasn't a bad point. 'So what you – Dismas Hardy the person – forget the lawyer, what you've got to do if you really want to save her is to stop doubting her, stop even considering that she might be guilty.'
'Frannie, they found her guilty. That part's over.'
Her fingers felt good against his scalp now. 'I say she did not kill Larry and her boy.'
'I can't prove she didn't. She did kill Ned-'
'That was different.'
'Not so different,' he said. 'Ned's dead. Larry's dead-'
Frannie stood up and walked over to the fireplace. She spent a minute rearranging the small herd of brass elephants that liked to graze there. 'I still say you're thinking too much like a lawyer. You're thinking what arguments you can make.'
'That's kind of my job, Fran.'
She faced him. 'I'm not attacking you, Dismas. I'm telling you she did not do it. That's reality, not law, not what the jury found.'
'It’s one reality, Fran. Yours.'
'Damn it! Listen to me. You want to argue and fight about words, you go ahead. But there's a major thing you're forgetting.'
'Oh? What's that?'
'Sure, go ahead, get mad. That's a real help.'
Hardy was mad. He had gotten up, found himself standing by the couch with his fists clenched. He closed his eyes and took a breath. 'Okay, I'm sorry. What am I forgetting?'
'If Jennifer didn't do it, somebody else killed them, and did it for a reason.'
Hardy was shaking his head. 'I've been all through the possibilities there – by myself, with Terrell and Glitsky and Freeman and the whole known universe.'
'Then you missed something.'
'Except if Jennifer did do it. How about that?'
Frannie didn't budge. 'She didn't. I think you know it and I know I know it. Powell got it wrong both ways.'
'I don't know that.'
Frannie was heading back through the dining room. 'I feel like a glass of wine. Several. You can join me or not, I don't care.'
'The hit man?'
The mood had mellowed some. It was ten-thirty and they'd finished most of a bottle of Chardonnay. Hardy had run all the people with motives by Frannie, and finally they had arrived at Frannie's suggestion that one of these people, although armed with an alibi for his or her personal time, had hired someone to kill the family.
Hardy shook his head. 'Don't you suspect a professional hit man would bring his own weapon? You ever hear of a hit man shooting somebody with their own gun?'
Frannie had her legs over his on the couch. She sipped her wine. 'I don't know. It's not exactly my area of expertise.'
'Plus, how did he get in or out?'
'Maybe he just walked. Is there a back door? A window? All I'm saying is it had to be someone. Someone besides Jennifer.'
'The problem is, Fran, even if I agree, this takes us back to police work. And they didn't find anybody else. No hit man, no nobody.'
