Second Chance (14 page)

She didn't wait for an answer. She went up the stairs
to tend her husband.

I walked down to the living room, found the lights
and the liquor, and made a couple of drinks. I took them over to the
red leather chairs by the fireplace, putting the martini down on an
oval end table. The fire had almost burned out. I stirred it with a
poker and got it going again, like the man of the house.

Ten minutes passed before Louise came into the room.
She had changed back to the outfit she'd been wearing that
afternoon—white blouse and jeans. She looked just as good as she
had in the evening gown. Maybe a little better because the denim
suited her ripe body.

"I think I've calmed him down," she said,
sitting across from me. She picked up the martini and took a sip,
staring at me over the rim of the glass. "He won't get much
sleep, though. I don't think he'll really sleep until this is over."

I said, "You do know that there's a strong
chance it won't work out."

"I've known that for years."

"I meant finding Ethan and Kirsty."

"I know what you meant," Louise said drily.
"By the way, Phil did remember that man, Talmadge. He was a
patient at Rollman's when Phil did his residency there in '75. Phil
couldn't remember anything specific about the case though."

"I looked into it this afternoon. Talmadge is
dangerous."

She looked alarmed. "You mean dangerous to
Phil?"

"To the children."

"Christ, I pray it doesn't come to that,"
she said. "I'm half hoping that they're just doing this to make
Phil and me sweat."

"Why would they do that to you?"

"Because they don't like me very much," she
said with an unhappy smile. "Neither one has ever really
forgiven me for trying to play Mom after Estelle died. I don't really
blame them, given the circumstances."

But her voice sounded resentful. She heard it herself
and made a contrite face. "You didn't bargain on a family like
this one, did you, Stoner? We must look like lunatics to you."

"You have problems," I said.

"It's worse than that, and you know it. We've
screwed it all up, Phil and I." Her beautiful face filled with
disgust, and she took a quick drink to cover her revulsion. This
thing has sent us back thirteen years. Back to a place where I didn't
want to go. Back to feelings I don't want to relive."

"
You want to talk about it?"

"You mean you want to hear more Pearson
craziness?"

"I want to hear about you."

She lowered the martini glass down and ran a finger
around the edge, making it sing.

"All right," she said after a time. "I
feel like talking. Just don't analyze, okay? I've had my fill of that
for one lifetime."

Louise set the glass down at her feet. "I wasn't
what you would call inexperienced when I met Philip. I'd been married
before—to the wrong man. Frank was a beauty but he didn't believe
in work. At least, he didn't believe that he should have to work. He
wasn't so fussy when it came to my time. After the divorce I started
looking for someone else. Someone with a different set of priorities.
Someone I could build a new life with. This kind of life."

She glanced approvingly around the handsome, genteel
room.

"Philip seemed like the one. He came from a
wealthy family. He had a promising career. He could be sweet and
smart and sensitive, even if he did sometimes act as if he owned the
keys to everyone else's psyche. And he was terribly unhappy with his
marriage and talking divorce. He'd already gone through several
affairs when we met. On the surface he looked like the perfect
catch."

She sat back in the chair with a sigh. "But Phil
wasn't the strong, competent, sensitive guru he pretended to be. That
part of his personality was designed to impress his clients for one
hour a week. The rest of him, the part I had to learn to live with,
was still stuck in childhood like everybody else."

Her face bunched up, as if she didn't like the
carping sound of her voice. "Oh, hell, that's not fair. It's not
Phil's fault that he's built the way he is. The past's not anyone's
fault. It's just there, like the moon and the stars. Phil's good,
rich family wasn't a very happy one, that's all. You've met Cora.
She's a prissy, spoiled woman, but she can be dealt with. At least, I
can deal with her. It was her husband, Phil's father, Arthur, who was
the real joker."

"He's dead?"

"For years. Art was a weak, wifty drunk. He
keeled over when Phil was just a teenager. But not before leaving his
mark on Phil."

"His mark?"

Louise looked over at the fire. "I'm not a
hundred percent positive of this. I mean nobody's ever said it
outright, but I'm reasonably sure that Phil was abused by his
father."

She shuddered down her spine. "Pretty awful,
huh?"

"It happens," I said. "Even in good
fami1ies."

"I'm sure it does. But when you marry someone
who's hiding that sort of thing in his past . . . it has an effect.
Living with a man like Phil—a man with an overwhelming need to
dominate in small matters and to be constantly reassured about the
important ones—can wear you down, especially if you're not well
equipped to handle your own needs. I guess I'm strong enough to take
it. At least, everyone has automatically made that assumption about
me. But his first wife, Estelle, wasn't."

"Did you know her?"

"I feel like I did through talking to Phil and
the kids, through living the same kind of life. Poor Estelle, she
tried to accommodate Phil—dropping out of school, abandoning her
career before it even got started, having children she probably
didn't want, nurturing Phil when he needed nurturing, eating his
all-knowing psychiatrist's crap when he didn't. After ten years of
that she finally broke apart."

She made it sound as if Pearson had caused the
woman's breakdown.

"Estel1e had emotional troubles all her life,
didn't she?"

"'That's what Dr. Shelley Sacks would have us
believe. But Phil was his friend, too, you know."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning maybe there was a little ex post facto
rationalization there, to spare Phil some guilt. I don't know. I know
it hasn't spared me any. You see Phil and I had just started our
affair when . . "

Her face reddened, and she looked away from me.

"When Estelle died." I said it for her.

She nodded, her face still turned. "She didn't
know, of course. She was too far gone by then to care, anyway. About
me, or any of the others that had preceded me. The nurses and
secretaries. But I knew. I was actually with Phil when he heard that
her body had been found."

She shuddered again. "For a year or so after
that we really did need each after. Then it was all guilt. We married
to assuage the guilt. We've stayed together to hide it."

Louise turned back to me. "And now you know
another one of our little secrets. I've tried to be a good wife, a
good stepmother. I got what I wanted, didn't I? All this." She
waved her hand around the room, then dropped it in her lap. "I
have affairs. He has his work. You know the funny thing is he's
extremely good at his job—he has an instinct about other people's
weaknesses. It gives him the chance to be strong, to dominate."
She made a muscle and laughed ironically. "It isn't like that
upstairs."

She hadn't mentioned the children. So I did. "His
concern for Ethan and Kirsty seems genuine."

She nodded. "It is. Ethan wasn't his fault. He
lost him to Estelle when she died. It was her revenge on him, I
think. But Kirsty . . . God, how he's tried to make amends to her."

"Amends for what?"

She shook her head. "Enough family history."

Leaning forward she kissed me softly on the mouth. I
started to draw her to me, but she pulled away. She put a finger to
my lips and ran it slowly down to my chin.

"I like you," she whispered. "After
this is over we'll have to do something about that. Until then . ."
She came close again. "Keep this in mind."

She kissed me again passionately. Then she got up and
walked out of the room, leaving me and the fire slowly burning down.

16
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It was a long drive back to the apartment on Ohio
Avenue. I tried not to think about Louise. But it was hopeless. For
better or worse she was part of it for me now—part of the strange
legacy of the Pearson case. The case I wasn't going to make personal.

It was past twelve when I got to Ohio Avenue. As I
was getting out of the car I remembered the envelope Sid had left for
me, Estelle Pearson's last remains. I picked it up off y the backseat
and took it inside, tossing it on the couch in the living room.

The light on my answering machine was lit, but I
didn't play the messages back. I was too tired for business. I was
too tired to think about anything. I sat on the couch, with poor
Estelle sitting there beside me, and dreamed about the other Mrs.
Pearson—the one who'd never quite been able to take her place.

Sometime during the night I must have wandered into
the bedroom, because that's where I found myself when the telephone
woke me. It was still dark outside, and it had turned very cold.
Shivering, I fumbled for the receiver on the nightstand.

"Stoner?" a half-familiar voice said. "It's
Al Foster."

"
Yeah, Al," I said groggily.

"We've got something for you."

I struggled to sit up. I was still wearing my
clothes—or trapped in them. My shirttail was wrapped in the bedding
and I had to wrench it loose to straighten up. I glanced at the
clock, which was showing 6:15.

"You listening, Harry?" Al said.

"I'm here, for chrissake. What?"

"We found the car—the grey Volare. The
Miamitown police came across it about fifteen minutes ago. It was
parked on an embankment of the Miami River."

It took me a second to remember that Estelle
Pearson's body had been found in the Miami River. It took me another
second to realize that Al hadn't mentioned Kirsty and Ethan, that
he'd only mentioned the car.

"What about the Pearson children?" I asked.

Al fetched a sigh that sent a chill down my back.

"There's some indication they may have run into
trouble."

"What indication?"

"Harry, I'm just relaying what I was told when
this was called in a few minutes ago. If you want details you're
going to have to go out there yourself and talk to the examining
officers."

He gave me an address on Miamitown Road and the name
of a cop—Sergeant Larry Parker. Before hanging up I asked whether
the Pearsons had been notified.

"I don't know what the Miamitown cops have
done," Al said. "But you're the only person we've
contacted."

"Keep it that way," I told him. "At
least until after I've had a chance to talk to Parker."

"It's your case,"
he said.

* * *

It took me about thirty minutes to drive to Miamitown
on the westem side of Hamilton County near the Indiana line. It
really wasn't much of a town—just a flat stretch of road dotted
with Quonset bars, brick storefronts, and one squat diamond-shaped
municipal building with a flagpole and a plugged howitzer arranged in
front of it like a place setting. There was enough light growing in
the sky to backlight the pines on top of the tall forested ridge east
of town. I knew that the Great Miami ran beneath the ridge, in a
steep, overgrown embankment that was still sunk in darkness. The
flashing squad car lights led me to the right spot, a cluster of them
blinking like tiny blue Christmas ornaments netted in the pines. I
had to turn onto a gravel access road to get to where the cops were
parked, past a tin-roofed bait
shop, down a
short bumpy slope to a dirt clearing above the river.

The Volare was at the back of the clearing—its
front wheel resting on some rocks beyond the dirt, where the hill
began its slide to the embankment. The car canted down slightly as if
someone had parked it there in a rush. Two Miamitown police cruisers
were parked on either side of it, and a third cop cruiser was parked
behind. I pulled in next to the third cruiser and got out.

Even in the darkness I could see pale foot trails
leading away from the clearing, down the hillside to the river. The
packed dirt glistened in the half light like a length of bone. A
couple of officers with flashlights were making their ways along the
trails. The dirt must have been slippery, because the flashlight
beams bounced and whirled crazily in the dark—lighting tree trunks,
bits of scrap iron, the red staring eyes of a possum. I could hear
the river beneath the clearing, coursing over rocks and fallen limbs,
running fast and deep with winter snow.

A third cop, a tall stocky man wearing a billed cap
and gold patches on his down coat, was standing at the lip of the
hill, directing the other two down the trails. He'd stopped to watch
me when I got out of the car. After a time he walked over to where I
was standing.