The Truth Hurts (11 page)

If the traffic weren’t already at a dead halt, I’d be slamming on my brakes at the shock of hearing those words coming out of nowhere.

“What?”

That’s no radio program and it’s no “coincidence,” either.

Wildly, with my heart beating overtime, I punch buttons, searching for Eject. The radio/tape/CD system in this car operates so that if there’s a cassette in the slot, that’s what comes on when you push On. If there’s a CD in it, that’s what you hear. Otherwise, you get the radio. So this has got to be a tape or a CD that somebody has placed in my car, and they’ve pushed it all the way in so that when I punched On, it would instantly begin to play.

Damn him, he has jumped out of the bushes again!

Sure enough, a tape slides out of the slot.

This time, though, even with my adrenaline racing, Iremember: fingerprints. Before I grab it, I get a tissue out of my purse and use that to protect the surface of the cassette.

I hold up the tape to try to read its label in the glaring sunshine.

In my haste, I fumble and nearly drop it.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

Just then, the traffic begins to move again, and I have to look away from the tape in order to keep up with the other cars. Finally, by maneuvering my steering wheel with one hand and the tape with the other, I’m able to read the label on it.

What I see there gives me such stomach-dropping chills that I might as well be riding a roller coaster instead of a highway:
Cape Fear,
by John D. MacDonald, the label says. It’s tape one, side one, of a recording of the mystery novel originally known as
The Executioners.

My heart jolts as it did when I read the E-mail that mentioned Franklin’s children, even harder than it did when Ernie asked me if I get any weird mail.

Against my will, I jump to the obvious and horrible conclusion.

“You’ve been in my car. You rotten son of a bitch, you’ve been in my car. When did you
do
it?
How
did you do this?”

My car was at Ernie’s shop for three days.

There was plenty of time.

11
Marie

For several miles, it’s all I can do just to breathe.

When my heart rate returns to relative normal, I am angry all over again.

“Move!”
I scream at the cars ahead of me. And then an infuriating thought occurs to me:
He’ll want me to write this all down for him. My reactions to finding the tape. How I feel driving into Key Largo. How I tell Franklin about this, how he responds to this news.

I start creating paragraphs in my head as I go, not because I want to, but as an attempt to regain some objectivity. I’ll never be able to think clearly if I can’t detach myself from the fear and loathing that I’m feeling now.

How will I write it, if I have to, if he forces me to?

“Here’s how, you repellent little voyeur,” I whisper.

By the time I pull into Key Largo, I have several whole scenes written in my head, most of it made up out of whole cloth, scenes that purposefully portray me as frightened, vulnerable, and obedient. I’ll pretend to give him what he wants. I’ll make him think exactly what he wants to think.

I feel especially, perversely proud of chapter 2, which reads like a true crime potboiler, if I do say so myself. . . .

When Marie finally reached the outskirts of Key Largo, it was only 4:20
P.M.
It’s a damn good thing it’s daytime, she thought, since she was feeling thoroughly spooked. If she’d had to arrive at night, she’d be even more scared than she already was.

The farther south she’d traveled since discovering the terrifying cassette in her tape deck, the more the Keys began to feel like an all-too appropriate destination for all of them—for her, for Franklin and his children. Here, atop this fragile string of fossilized coral that was strung like a necklace between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, Marie felt “endangered,” herself, just like the Keys, the only coral reefs in America. They were one of a kind. Just like her, like Franklin, Deborah, the children, like any human being. The Keys were in perpetual danger of destruction; its creatures were in danger of extinction. Just like her.

After the tape, it was a whole lot easier to believe the worst was possible.

It took Marie fifteen frustrating, frightening minutes to follow Franklin’s written directions and the map he’d drawn for her. It led her to a barely perceptible driveway that turned straight off Highway 1 onto a single-lane road that wound through a stand of thick, beautiful forest. There, in the woods, the sunshine disappeared and the day turned instantly cooler.

Marie almost wished she hadn’t turned in here, because it was too dark all of a sudden, too shadowy. She caught a whiff of something rotting—old leaves, perhaps, left to decay on the floor of the forest. It was totally silent back in here, save for the purr of her car’s engine. Highway 1 could have been miles away, instead of mere yards behind her.

She drove in deeper, feeling increasingly isolated and uneasy.

But then, back farther among the tall, arching trees, she found a remarkable condominium complex—a series of interlocking redwood buildings set so elegantly among the foliage that no unit was completely visible from the road. It was private and quiet back in here, which might have delighted her some other time, but not now! On this weekend, she’d have preferred a hotel room in a crowded tourist trap where there might be witnesses to anything that happened and to any stranger who lurked by their room.

Even when she spotted Franklin’s black Acura, it wasn’t enough to reassure her.

She had to know they were all right, and she had to know it
now.

Marie parked hurriedly in the empty slot beside the Acura.

Without even stopping to grab her luggage, she rushed out of her car, desperate to see them, to find them, to touch them, to make sure they were all right. Breathlessly, nearly sobbing in her urgency, she raced up the steps leading to the unit.

Its front door was wide open, as if somebody had just gone in, or out.

Oh, my God, she thought, please, please—

“Franklin? Arthur? Diana?”

“Marie!” Franklin smiles a welcome at me. At the same time, he gives his daughter a thwak on the top of her head, but so gently that it barely moves her beaded braids. “See? I told you she’d get here on time.”

“Ow, Dad, that hurt!”

“I barely touched you.”

“It still hurt! Don’t hit my braids, okay?”

Over six-year-old Diana’s head, out of her line of vision, her father makes a face at me. “Okay. I’m sorry. I won’t.”

There they are, looking surprised at my sudden entrance, but also looking alive, healthy, perfectly normal, right down to the resentment on Diana’s pretty little face.

“Traffic bad?” Franklin asks me.

I can only nod, yes.

“M’re! M’re!”

“Hi, Arthur!” I manage to get out only the two words before Franklin’s three-year-old son leaps into my arms, knocking out what little breath I have left in my chest. I am still no more than a couple of feet into the living room, and now I stagger back under his weight, and he and I both laugh. Arthur grabs both sides of my face with his chubby hands and plants a sloppy kiss on my mouth. I hang on to him for dear life, hugging his hot, sweaty, smelly little body until he squirms to get down. Down on the floor, Arthur grins up at me, and shouts, “Hi, M’re!” into my face, as if I were still miles away.

Looking into his sweet face, I realize I would do anything to protect him.

“We were just leaving you a note so you could find us, Marie.”

I look up at Franklin then. With a relaxed smile on his handsome face, and dressed in red shorts, a yellow T-shirt, and huaraches, he hardly resembles a tough prosecutor. He just looks like a daddy and boyfriend.

“I found you,” I say, inadequately, knowing it must sound stupid.

We met each other over the expanse of his desk when I interviewed him for a book I was writing about a murder case he prosecuted. Franklin DeWeese was only two weeks divorced at that time, and at first I fought the attraction for that reason alone. I didn’t want to be anybody’s rebound romance. We were also both concerned about possible conflicts of interest until I finished writing about his case. But the attraction between us was too seductive to resist. At the beginning, I thought it was all for fun; but here we are, and my heart is swelling at the mere sight of his son’s beaming face.

Franklin cocks his head at me, as if to ask, Something wrong?

“Hi, kids,” I say. “Did you get my message, Franklin?”

“Are you kidding?” He looks wryly down at his daughter. “I have been firmly instructed to leave the phone unplugged and my work at home.” But then, as he looks back up at me, his expression changes, because he has apparently sensed something in my tone of voice, in my face. “Why?”

I smile, because I don’t know what else to do, and because I can’t blurt it all out in front of his children. “I heard from our friend again.”

His expression hardens instantly. “Is everything all right?”

“What friend?” Diana wants to know.

“Somebody you don’t know, honey,” I tell her. And to her father, I just say, “Yes, I think so.”

“What did he say this time?”

I glance meaningfully at the kids. “I’ll tell you later.”

Arthur holds up an insistent hand for me to grasp, and I take it. I’m not at all sure which of the two of us needs it more.

I once described Franklin DeWeese in a book I wrote in which he was a feature player: Forty years old at the time, five foot eleven inches tall, approximately 170 well-toned pounds. As state attorney for Howard County, he is the chief prosecutor for the twenty-first judicial district. He is a Democrat who beguiles conservative Republicans by being fiercely pro–death penalty, a perverse position for a black man, in my opinion, but never mind. We argue about it, rarely conceding any points to each other. He runs a main office and five satellite offices with a staff of assistant prosecutors, paralegals, secretaries, and other administrative personnel, numbering between 400 to 450 persons at any given time. He is in charge of prosecuting or defending all suits or civil or criminal motions on behalf of Florida in the county where we both live. That means, all felonies, misdemeanors, criminal traffic and juvenile cases as well as some civil cases. From arrest through arraignment, discovery, depositions, motion recovery, pretrial hearings, and the appellate process, my very own Franklin—Diana and Arthur’s daddy—supervises it all, including special requests for the empanelment of grand juries.

What a guy? I sure think so.

Plus, he was the oldest and beloved son, a football star in high school, attended good colleges, was editor of his law review, married and divorced, had two children.

His résumé, in my book, reads like the perfect prosecutor.

Franklin’s not perfect, not even close, but he’ll do for now.

Being a state attorney will never make this man wealthy, not as my work does for me. Franklin has to get reelected every four years just to keep his job. And while it may lead him to higher office someday, or become a stepping-stone to private practice, I believe he stays with it because he still likes to feel like somebody’s hero. The electorate’s. A victim’s. A suffering family’s. His assistants’, who idolize him. As for me, the brutal truth is, I don’t even particularly like prosecutors as a breed, finding most of them too dogmatic and punitive for my taste. Show me a law student with black-and-white opinions and I’ll show you a future DA. And yet here is one of them, looking tall and handsome, stalwart and honorable, just like a hero.

“What’s the matter, Marie?”

“Not a thing,” I lie, and hide my face by smiling down at Arthur.

From several careful yards away, Diana asks sullenly, “Can we eat now, Dad?”

At that moment I look from one to the other of them—daughter, son, father—all of them as deliciously, naturally brown as caramelized sugar on top of a crème brûlée—and I silently vow not to wreak havoc in their lives. In that, if in very little else, their mother and I are surely in perfect accord.

Since I don’t know what else to do at the moment, I squeeze Arthur’s hand, grin at the unsmiling face of his sister, and say, “Yeah, Dad, what are you waiting for? I’m starved, let’s eat!”

Arthur, who adores my car, begs to ride to dinner in it.

“You can’t,” Diana tells him. “Mom says convertibles are dangerous.”

“Please!”

“Sure,” his father says. “Diana, you can ride with me.”

“I get to go with
Dad,”
she says, turning defeat into triumph.

Since the Mercedes only holds two people, we do drive both cars. Franklin and Diana lead the way in their black Acura, while Arthur and I happily follow behind, singing “Polly Wolly Doodle” at the top of our lungs. I taught him that, along with “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” which we never ever sing any later than noon.

The road back to the highway doesn’t seem so shadowy now.

12
Marie

After dinner at a family-style seafood restaurant we go back to the condo to watch a video of
The Lion King,
while munching popcorn that I concoct from supplies they’ve brought with them. Dinner didn’t satisfy our appetites. Any of them. Behind the couch, the grown-ups intertwine their fingers every secret chance they get; Franklin rubs his middle finger into my palm suggestively, over and over, until I think I’m going to have to jump his bones right there in front of the kids.

I sublimate by eating too much popcorn.

There isn’t a moment when the kids aren’t underfoot, not a second when the adults can talk. I can’t even ask Franklin to take a walk with me. The children are far too young to leave unattended, especially in a strange condo, particularly one that’s only a short walk away from deep water. Every time we have two minutes alone for a whispered conversation, one of the kids bounds in to interrupt us. Diana, especially, clings to her father, demanding his attention whenever he turns toward me.

Finally, Arthur’s head is nodding and his sister is quietly curled up on her father’s lap, humming along with the songs. Out of sheer desperation, I run upstairs and grab the E-mails and my “assignment” out of my luggage.

If I can’t tell him about it, maybe he can read it.

Back on the couch, I pass to Franklin the E-mails from last night and today.

“Read these, please.”

Diana stirs. “What’s that, Daddy?”

“Legal stuff,” I tell her.

“Daddy! You said you wouldn’t work this weekend!”

“I won’t.” He smiles down at his daughter, gently twists a beaded braid around his fingers. “But I’ve seen this movie a million times. Just let me read this, okay? And then I’ll put it down.”

“Okay,” she says, but grumpily.

I observe Franklin as he begins to read, watch his face as a crease appears between his eyes, see the corners of his mouth drop down. He stares over at me, looking alarmed. I point at it to keep him reading. “When did you get these?” he asks me, sharply enough this time to make his daughter demand, “Dad! Stop reading that!”

“Diana,” he says, “watch the movie.”

“Last night,” I tell him, quietly, and then I hand over to him the second E-mail and my finished “assignment.” “And this morning. And here’s what I wrote in response to it.”

Without taking her gaze from the TV screen, Diana wants to know, “Is that a legal case for Marie, Dad?”

“Sort of, Pumpkin.”

“Do you have to do it?” When he doesn’t answer her, she presses, “Do you, Dad?”

“Do I what, Pumpkin?”

“Do you have to do this legal case for Marie?”

“It’s not like that, Diana.”

“What is it like?”

“It’s like—” Franklin looks at me over her head, and the expression in his eyes speaks silent volumes of shared shock and anger. Behind the couch, his hand squeezes mine so hard I wince. I feel an enormous relief to have finally told him, to be able to share the responsibility with him, even though I would give anything if he weren’t involved in such a horrible, threatening way. But what Franklin says to his daughter in the mildest of tones is, “It’s like, as soon as I finish reading this, it will be time for us to feed popcorn to the fishes.”

“But, Dad, it’s night! They’re sleeping.”

“Nobody sleeps through popcorn, not even fishes.”

Even Arthur hears that and, struggling to come awake, asks, “Are we really going to feed the fishes? I want to feed the fishes!”

Franklin pops a fat kernel into his son’s mouth and then one into his daughter’s mouth, and that takes care of any more questions for a while, except for one Diana asks her father when he takes her hand to lead her outside.

“Does Marie have to come?”

Soon, we’re all four seated side by side on a wooden dock, our bare feet dangling down. The darkness, the caressing air, the gentle murmur of water lapping against the pilings—and the stern warnings from their father not to make any noise and wake the other condo residents—have all worked magic on the children. Even Arthur is really quiet now, squealing only a little bit whenever fish break the surface of the water to nibble the popcorn we toss in.

I look over their heads into their father’s eyes.

His preoccupied expression tells me that his prosecutor’s brain is already working on our problem, but there’s also a kind of peacefulness in his face, as there is on the children’s and which I feel on mine, too. Right now, there’s no arguing, no resentment, no apparent danger; there’s only the four of us, peaceful and quiet.

Without a word, Franklin points up at the sky.

I look, and see a full moon just emerging from behind clouds; it’s spectacularly orange and huge, and my breath catches at the sight of it.

“What?” Diana wants to know, hearing me.

Franklin taps his daughter’s shoulder and, still without saying anything, points up for her to see, too.

“Wow! Is that the moon, Daddy?”

Her father strokes her back. “Sure is.”

“Where? Where?” her brother demands.

“Up in the sky, you Dumbo!”

“You’re the Dumbo, Dumbo, Dumbo!” Arthur chants, making a funny face and an even funnier voice that makes us all, even his sister, laugh. But when Arthur finally sees the moon, his jaw drops and his eyes widen. “That’s not the moon, that’s the sun!”

“No, it’s really the moon,” I assure him.

“Awesome,” Diana breathes.

I feel Arthur’s little body stiffen beside me. “What’s that?”

“What’s what, Arthur?” his dad asks, still looking up.

“I hear a whale, Daddy!”

We all become very still again, trying to hear what he means.

“I don’t hear anything,” I admit.

“I do!” Diana exclaims. “Listen, Daddy, it’s over there!”

Franklin and I turn our heads to the north-northwest, toward the Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. And then we hear it, too, the engine of a boat, coming closer. In the incredibly still night, it sounds unnaturally loud now. I feel my heart begin to pound uncomfortably fast. Franklin swings his feet back up on the dock and, without even using his hands, shoots to his feet so that he can stare into the distance.

“What’s the matter, Daddy? Is it a whale, like Arthur said?”

“No, honey, it’s a boat.”

Between us, the children relax. It’s just a boat. A boat is no big deal to them. They’re children of south Florida, as accustomed to seeing boats as other children are to seeing cars and trucks.

The sound seems to be coming straight at us.

In the northern sky, a thunderstorm is moving into the Miami area north and east of us. The storm’s too far away for us to hear thunder, but we can see lightning illuminating clouds in a spectacular light show that sets the children to oohing and aahing. Their father remains standing, continuing to keep a lookout over the water, listening to the approaching motor.

As the boat nears us, I stand up, too.

“Let’s go in, Franklin.”

Both children object with loud no’s.

“Shh!” Their father puts out a hand toward them to quiet them, and then to me, as if to say, Not yet. Wait.

“Franklin, I really think we need to go in.”

And still he stands there, staring into the distance, listening.

“Come on, kids.” I hold down my hands to them, wanting to grab them and run to safety with them. Wild images race through my mind: bombs thrown, explosions, shots fired, bodies falling, children crying, blood flowing. Arthur obediently places one of his small hands into mine, but Diana looks up at her father and sees that he isn’t going anywhere. She mulishly refuses my hand. “Come on, Diana!”

She folds her little arms across her chest, hiding her hands.

“Franklin, please!”

And then, just a moment before I detect it, Franklin hears the boat engine turn away from our direction. I see the change, in a relaxation of his shoulders. Only then do I actually hear the shift of sound.

“They’ve turned north,” he observes.

We form a tableau for a moment, all four of us quite still, even the children, waiting to be sure that what he said is true.

“Yes,” I agree, but I continue to help Arthur get to his bare feet anyway.

“Why are your hands all shaky, M’re?”

“The better to tickle you with.” I make good on the fib. When he squeals as loud as a piglet at play, his sister hisses at Arthur and me, “Shh! Dad said to be quiet!”

Meanwhile, the sound of the boat engine vanishes into the distance. It wasn’t anything to do with us. I feel as relieved as if a hurricane had veered off course and passed us by. But now I also have to admit something to myself: after this, I won’t be able to pretend, not even to myself, that I’m not frightened.

“Why is Marie afraid of boats, Daddy?”

“She’s not, Pumpkin.” Franklin reaches down a hand to Diana, and she lets him pull her up to her feet. “It’s just time for all of us to go to bed, that’s all.” With his free hand, he briefly spans the back of my neck, touching me reassuringly.

Franklin carries his tired boy and Diana hangs on to his waistband, sleepily trailing behind. Having refused my offer of a hand to hold, she now clings closer and closer to her daddy’s legs, until he reaches around and scoots her forward so that he can guide her back home without tripping on her, or making her stumble.

I trail behind, carrying the empty popcorn bowl, eating the old maids, and feeling plenty sorry for myself.

As we walk back “home,” I admire the picture they form together. I feel terrible for bringing a snake into their precious lives. And I’m determined not to be a jerk about Diana’s rejection of me. The child is naturally and admirably loyal to her mother, and she’s scared of losing her daddy to a woman she hardly knows and doesn’t even like. God knows I don’t blame her—I lost my daddy, too—but it still hurts a little, every time she does it.

Whenever Franklin brings the children and me together, he gives Diana a little private talking-to beforehand, coaching her to give me a chance, asking her—telling her—to be polite, at least. It hasn’t worked yet, although I shudder to think how much more rude the child might be if he didn’t do that much. I have asked Franklin not to apologize for his daughter’s behavior and not to punish her for disliking me. “Patience,” I throw back at him, when he’s embarrassed or worried about his daughter’s bad manners. “Time.”

“Why do you think Arthur has accepted me so quickly?” I asked Franklin one time. He grinned a little shamefacedly and admitted, “Arthur’s a guy. He likes pretty women and cool cars.”

I had to laugh at that. “Like father, like son?”

“And,” Franklin had added, “Arthur’s got an easygoing nature. Diana’s more high-strung. She gets mad and then she wants to get even, just like her mother.”

Like her mother, my eye.

The child’s a born prosecutor.

Like father, like daughter, too.

 • • •

When Franklin hoists the kids to his shoulders to carry them upstairs to bed, he mouths at me, “I’ll be back.”

After half an hour goes by, I realize that I’m not hearing any more noise from upstairs. I climb up to investigate and find them all asleep together in a pile on the master bed. The book that Franklin was reading to them—
Goodnight Moon
—lays open in his relaxed right hand.

I tiptoe out of the room, feeling oddly reassured.

If he can fall asleep like that, maybe the situation’s not so scary after all.