“Oh, no,” Weeks said.
“Oh, yes. I may not have known for sure—but I’m not a betting man.”
“Okay.” Weeks thought frantically. “Okay. I’ll tell you who did it, Frank.”
“You did it, Jimmy.”
“No. That’s not right. Saint did it. Howard Saint.”
“No. You did it. And you know what? I do know why you called me that day. Because you were sick, and you needed my help. That’s what friends are for, right? Well, guess what, Jimmy?” He held up the bullets. “I’m here to help.”
“What are those for?”
“You were in the army. You figure it out.”
Weeks picked Castle’s drink up and drained it.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“I’m not going to do anything. You are.” Castle threw him a bullet.
Weeks caught it, and almost pissed in his pants.
“Frank?”
Castle drew his own gun then, and pointed it right at Weeks’s forehead. From the look on his face, Jimmy had little doubt he would use it.
Castle cocked the trigger, and then he had none.
“Let’s say good-bye like the friends we were. Not like animals.”
Weeks stood frozen a moment. There had to be some way out of this, part of him was thinking, but part of him knew that this was what he deserved, all he deserved, that it was in fact the only half-honorable way out for him.
That part of him chambered the round.
Then the other part of him spoke.
“I can’t.”
“You can,” Castle said. “You will.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
His own voice sounded funny to him. As if it was coming from a long way away, like maybe halfway around the world. Iraq, maybe. Khafji.
He’d been a good man there. Another time, another place—maybe he could be a good man again.
He put the gun under his chin, and looked up at Castle.
“I’ll say hello to them for you, Frank. Will and Maria.”
Castle shook his head. “Where you’re going, Jimmy? I don’t think so. Sorry.”
Weeks nodded. Maybe he was right. They said if you asked forgiveness though—right up until the last minute, the last second—you could be saved.
He shut his eyes and asked.
And when he was done praying, he squeezed the trigger.
FORTY-TWO
Who did this bitch think she was?
“You’ll put me on with the manager. This instant. Or I will have your job.”
“Mrs. Saint, I’m telling you, I can’t reach the manager at this moment. Mr. Sanders is on vacation. He will be back on Monday.”
“Did I ask you his schedule?” Livia Saint turned into the mansion’s driveway and eased the Jaguar to a stop. “I pay quite a handsome sum of money to belong to your club, and for that kind of money, I expect service.”
“Which I’m trying to give you, ma’am. If you’ll start at the beginning—”
“I do not,” Livia continued, ignoring the young woman’s offer, “expect my jewelry—my Harry Winston jewelry, given to me by my husband, a gift of great sentimental value—to be stolen while I use your club, and I most certainly do not expect to get attitude from an underling such as yourself simply because I wish to discuss the problem with senior management. Do I make myself clear?”
Silence.
“Yes, Mrs. Saint,” the woman said finally. “I will find Mr. Sanders and have him call you.”
“Tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am. Tonight.”
Livia hung up, frowning. Little twit. She’d have Sanders fire her—the man was wrapped around her little finger— except, she realized, she’d just forgotten the woman’s name. Ah, well. Not important. But the earring was. She would have Sanders get to the bottom of that problem immediately.
She walked into the house and set her purse down in the foyer.
“Maria?”
No answer. Where was that girl? She wanted a drink— after the shock of finding the earring gone, and that last bit of nastiness, she needed to settle her nerves.
“Maria?”
Fine. She could get her own drink. She could get another maid as well. Help these days . . .
She took off her coat, turned around, and found one of Howard’s men—she didn’t know this one’s name; frankly, she had a hard time telling any of them apart, except for Quentin, of course—staring at her.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Pretty well.” He smiled.
She snorted. Brute. Howard knew she didn’t like having these men around, particularly in this part of the house. They never wiped their shoes; they touched everything with their greasy hands; they smelled . . . she wanted this one out of her sight, now. She’d have Howard fire him, in fact. Him and that little prick Duka.
“Where is my husband?”
The man took a long look at her, and then—she watched it happening, and shook her head in disbelief—he took out a cigarette and lit it.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s called smoking.”
“You know there’s no smoking in the house.”
“Yeah. That’s the rule. Because you don’t like it.”
“That’s right. I don’t like it.”
He took another puff.
Unbelievable. “What’s your name?”
“I go by Lincoln.”
“Well, Lincoln, my husband, who pays your salary, is the one who made that rule, and you’ll answer to him for this.”
“Fine by me.”
Then he stepped forward and exhaled right in her face.
Livia was, all of a sudden, very, very nervous.
“What is this about?” she asked.
“I’ve decided to make a few changes around here.”
The voice came from the second-floor landing above her. She looked up and saw Howard dangling the Llanes vase she’d won last week at the country club auction over the railing.
Now she was more than nervous. She was scared.
“Darling? What—”
Howard dropped the vase. It smashed against the marble floor and shattered into a million pieces.
Livia stared at it in disbelief.
“That’s . . .” She looked up at her husband. “Howard. That was ten thousand dollars. Of your money. Why —?”
Her mink flew over the rail. Next came the ermine stole, and then the leopard-skin coat. Then her clothes, and her shoes, and her jewelry, and all the pictures of her and Howard, of her and the twins, of the family together. Lincoln picked them up, one by one, and threw them out the door.
