'Why did you think that?'
Marta paused, then let it rip. 'Because I think you're attracted to me.'
The hotel room seemed suddenly very still to Christopher. The silence sounded loud. He didn't know what to say. He could keep his feelings inside, but he'd let so many feelings go in his life, seizing none of them. This feeling, it seemed, should not pass. This feeling had the strength of a runaway horse. It was time to take it in hand. Grab hold and hang on. Cowboy it. 'Do you have feelings for me, Marta?' Christopher asked, and his heart felt like it was stuck on his Adam's apple. 'Tell me, yes or no. Because I do have feelings for you.'
This was not a conversation Marta wanted to have right now. Every instinct told her to lead him on, lie to him, even take him to bed if it got her what she wanted. Marta couldn't imagine telling the truth with the stakes this high. Then she looked at Christopher's rugged, open face and couldn't imagine not. He was a decent, kind man, and she was asking him to do something that could get him thrown in prison. He deserved a straight answer. 'No. None at all,' she answered. 'I don't even know you.'
'I see,' Christopher said quickly.
Marta swallowed hard, sensing his hurt. Funny how she hurt a little, too. For him. But she had to go forward. 'Will you help me anyway?'
25
The white Grand Cherokee stopped in the middle of the street and parked with the engine running. Its white enamel paint camouflaged it in the blowing snow, blurring its boxy outline in the storm. Exhaust snaked in a ghostly cloud from its tailpipe and trailed off in a gust of wind. Its windshield wipers flapped slowly in the snow.
At the end of the block, Judy was kneeling down, pushing the flat end of the cross-country ski to make it go back and forth. The snow came up to the very edge of the little boy's coat. 'Now it's your turn,' she said to him. 'Slide it back to me.'
Without a word, the boy bent over and sent the ski back to Judy. Then she slid it back to him, and he repeated the game with a growing smile. 'Did you know my friend Heb?' Judy asked, sailing the ski to him.
The boy nodded and kept his eyes glued to the maroon ski. Mary felt her heartbeat quicken, but she stayed behind Judy and kept her mouth shut. The ski reached the boy, and he caught it in his hand-me-down black glove.
'Heb got hurt, didn't he?' Judy asked.
'He got shot.' The boy's eyes moved with the ski. Back and forth. 'He dead.'
'Did you see him get shot?'
'No. I didn't see, I heard. Bang, bang, bang, BANG!' the boy shouted, summoning all the strength in his small body. He shoved the ski hard.
Judy stopped the ski like a shortstop and glanced up at the boy, then at his rowhouse. It faced the bridge, catty-corner to the spot where Darning was killed. She eyeballed the distance from the house to the bridge. About fifty yards. The child could have seen something. 'You sure you didn't see him get shot, now?'
'I was sleepin'. The BANG woke me UP. I heard it out the window.'
Judy gathered from the shout that he felt strongly about it. 'Was Heb your friend, too?'
'Yes.' The boy nodded. 'He give me street money.'
'He gave you money?'
'He was rich.'
Mary blinked. 'What?'
Judy asked, 'He was?' She sent the ski across the snow.
'Dennell!' shouted one of the older kids, who was standing in the middle of the street. They had stopped playing and were going inside, abandoning the cardboard sled and snow angels. 'Dennell!'
Suddenly, the boy turned around and ran off, kicking up a tiny wake of snow in his path.
'Wait!' Judy called after him, but he didn't turn back. The lawyers watched the boy run to the older kid and climb the stoop into his house. Their front door slammed closed, echoing in the street, which fell abruptly silent. The wind had picked up and was tossing the flurries this way and that. Down the street sat the Grand Cherokee, parked with its engine rumbling. Lost in the snowy backdrop, its windshield wipers moved back and forth.
Judy straightened up and brushed caked snow from her knees. 'Did you hear that? How can a homeless man be rich? Panhandling?'
'Not in this neighborhood, and this was the only place he lived. He slept under the bridge.'
'Welfare would barely support him, much less leave him money to pass out to a kid. Maybe Darning saved the money from his job with the bank.'
'Saved it, from the sixties?' Mary asked. 'A bank teller's salary? Why do you always look for the best in people? What kind of lawyer are you?'
Judy smiled and shook snow from the ski bindings and poles. 'Okay, maybe he stole it from the bank when he worked there. Embezzlement, skimming the accounts. Taking bribes to shift the money around.'
'Now you're talkin'. But what would that have to do with Elliot Steere?'
'Maybe Darning stole it from Steere's account a long time ago, and when Steere found out he killed him.' Judy bent over and laid the skis on the snow in pairs, but Mary didn't seem to be taking the hint. Down the street, the white Grand Cherokee waited, undetected. Silent.
'Why wouldn't Steere report it to the cops?' Mary asked.
'Maybe he wanted to handle things on his own. Maybe he went to talk to Darning about it and things got out of hand.'
