Dark Tort

She looked at Tom with sudden interest. “Would the cops have gone through all the locked cabinets?”

Tom’s eyes were hooded. “I’m sure they’re over there going through everything, trust me.”

I took a big forkful of salad, curious myself to know what they might have found inside there, since I, too, knew of the locked cabinet. But like the receptionist and paralegals, the caterer wasn’t allowed to fiddle with the heart-of-maple cabinets, either. Still, Tom was right: searching for Dusty’s killer, the cops would have demanded entry to every locked drawer and cabinet in the place. There was no question that our sheriff’s department was good at crime-scene mechanics, largely, I think, because they feared having Tom bawl them out if they screwed up.

The Burgundy was delicious. I’m not one of those folks who can say a wine has complex chocolate and citrus notes along with undertones of blackberry, but I can say, “Omigod, this stuff is fantastic!” Tom beamed.

The wine also seemed to have a calming effect on Wink. Arch and Gus, oblivious to our pleasured imbibing, were going over to Gus’s grandparents’ condo to spend the night, and they continued to chat and burble and interrupt each other about the video games they were going to play and the movies they were going to watch. Every now and then they asked Wink, but not us, if she had seen this or that movie. Most of the time she had, and the boys invariably found this cool. Meanwhile, the redness began to dissipate from Wink’s eyes, and I thought I detected the tension melting from her face.

At length, Wink drained her wineglass. Smiling, she said, “Hey, Gus! I read in the St. Luke’s bulletin that you were going to be baptized.”

“Yup,” said Gus, his standard affirmative.

“By Sutherland?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“Well, you know,” Wink continued with a sly smile, “he always quizzes the confirmands ahead of time. Takes them into a Sunday-school room and asks them about the sacraments and how God structured things so we could be saved. You know your stuff?”

Gus was looking at her with alarm. “How’m I supposed to know how God structured things?” he cried, his eyes wide. “I don’t even know how the government structures things! This really sucks.”

“Aw, don’t worry, Gus,” Arch said authoritatively. “It’s not that bad. It’s sort of like Dungeons and Dragons. You have to learn how any particular world works before you can move around in it. You ever play D&D?”

Gus’s forehead wrinkled. “I learned some witchcraft in the commune.”

“Let’s not go there,” I said quickly.

“But…you’re still coming to my christening, aren’t you, Arch?” Gus asked, suddenly worried. “Maybe you could give me some answers, you know, like on what he’s going to ask before I have to take this quiz.”

“I’ve sort of fallen away from the church,” Arch admitted.

“Man,” Gus retorted. “I thought this was important to you; that’s why I’m doing it!”

“Right, right, I know,” Arch said. “It is important to me, I promise. I’m coming to your thing, even if I haven’t been going to church for a while.” He gave Gus a reassuring smile. “It’ll be okay.”

The way you’ve been driving lately, I thought, you might want to start praying. But I kept mum. Meanwhile, Tom picked up the Burgundy and poured Wink and yours truly a second glass. No question about it: I was going to sleep tonight.

“You didn’t drive over here, did you?” Tom asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Wink insisted.

The boys sang out, “Uh-oh,” then scampered off to watch television until Gus’s grandparents arrived.

“We could drive you home,” I offered. “Or you could stay here,” I added as an afterthought. If we didn’t know the people at H&J the way Wink did, maybe she would feel better not being alone tonight. “We could make up the couch in the living room, or you could stay in Arch’s room, since he’s going over to—”

“We’ll think of something,” Tom interrupted, shooting me a warning glance: Best not to distract someone whom you want to get going telling you her story. If your informant—or helpful person, as Tom sometimes called them—starts worrying about who’s outside, or where they’re going to have lunch, or if their car is parked legally, then the flow of data is going to come to a sudden halt.

Of course, I didn’t know whether we should be interrogating Wink or not. But I let go of it. If she needed to spill her guts about her relationship with Dusty, or goings-on among what Sally Routt called the “vermin” at H&J, then fine. Still…

My train of thought was derailed by the phone ringing. Eight o’clock on a Friday night? Must be a client.

“I checked with my husband,” Nora Ellis said without identifying herself, “and he wants to proceed with the party.”

“Fine, fine,” I replied, trying to make a smooth transition. “You’re talking about Mr. Ellis wanting to go ahead with his birthday celebration. I understand.”

“He said it would be what Dusty wanted us to do.”

“He thinks it’s what Dusty would want you to do?”

“Goldy,” she said, her voice suddenly kind. “Forgive me. I’m just nervous about this going well. I want Donald to love it. Okay? I’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten. And I’ve gotten you some help, as I promised. I hired Louise Upton to oversee things in the kitchen.”

“That is so unnecessary,” I said. I made my tone gentle, too, to keep from screaming. But she had already hung up. To Tom and Wink, I said, “Nora Ellis is going to proceed, as she called it, with her party for her husband. Apparently, Donald Ellis thinks it’s what Dusty would have wanted them to do. And Nora hired Louise Upton to oversee things in the kitchen.”

Wink snorted. “Poor you. And Dusty wasn’t even invited to their party. None of the staff is ever included in their reindeer games. Plus, Miss Uptight will just make your life miserable.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said in a low voice. I couldn’t imagine Louise Upton shedding her armor to be helpful in the kitchen. Would she carry her own sword? For heaven’s sake, I told myself, shut up and stop being such a bitch. Somebody had loved Louise once, a husband, now an ex-husband, who was milking her for alimony. If that was what made her difficult, then I could suddenly understand her a lot better.

“I know you had to talk to the cops, too,” Wink said, her eyes on me, her tone half questioning.

“Yeah, I did. How’d it go for you?”

Wink rubbed her forehead with both hands. “Not too bad. Some of the same stuff you were asking me in the living room. Who didn’t get along with Dusty? What was she working on? Man, it got boring. Then they’d ask me the same question in a sort of different way, like I’d trip myself up in a lie, or something.”

Tom’s grin was good-natured. “Well, how do you think we’ll catch folks who aren’t telling the truth?”

Wink straightened in her chair. “Dusty was working on a few things. She’d been working since January for Charlie Baker, trying to help him get his affairs in order. She was spending her office time on a big oil-and-gas-lease mess, part of a ridiculously complicated estate that won’t be settled before I’m forty.”

“Don’t knock turning forty,” I said lightheartedly. “It may seem far off now, but someday…”

Wink managed to smile. “Anyway, the lease thing was with Donald Ellis, who isn’t a partner. Can you imagine trying to find anything, much less oil-and-gas leases, in Donald Ellis’s office? But he’s a hard worker, I’ll give him that. Anyway, then in March, Charlie Baker died, and Richard, who is a partner, was handling the estate. So all of a sudden Dusty wasn’t helping Donald anymore at all, she was working full-time for King Richard, trying to get everything in Charlie’s big estate in order.”

“So did the cops make anything out of all that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Georgina, the one paralegal we have left.”

“You had more paralegals before?”

“Yeah,” Wink said. “Two others. But they were hired away by another firm last year. They haven’t been replaced yet. Marilou, the legal secretary, has been interviewing replacements for the secretary Richard fired. The guys have been bringing in extra paralegals, too, when they’re really snowed under. They get a lot done.”

“Do you mean the paralegals?” I asked, confused.

“Of course I do! You should see how hard those extras worked, when they were with H&J. Plus, Dusty