His wise eyes find mine once more. “I told your father the truth, Marshall. If he keeps drinking, he’ll be dead in a month. Maybe even a week. His liver could quit any time. His heart, too. You need to prepare your mother for that.”
“She’s pretty tough, Jack.”
The doctor releases my hand but not my gaze. “Not as tough as you think. Southern women don’t show their pain to anybody. They aren’t raised that way. But they feel it. So, as unpleasant as Duncan has made the back end of her life, Blythe is still going to shatter when he goes. She’s suffering from severe sleep deprivation right now. Depression, too.” Kirby glances at his watch. “Will Duncan leave her pretty well fixed financially?”
I shake my head. “If he’d sold out six years ago, when values were high, he might have got eight or nine million. Today we’d be lucky to get ten percent over the real estate value. That’s how fast the business has changed.”
“Damn. That’s the world now, isn’t it? I’m glad you’ll be here to help Blythe pick up the pieces.”
I look back in silence, absorbing the message he clearly intends for me to get: Don’t plan on flying out of here the day after your father’s funeral . . .
“Thanks for your frankness, Jack.”
He gives me a quick salute, then marches back into our house. But he’s already thinking about the next house he’ll visit, the next family living under the shadow of death.
Chapter 25
To my amazement, Jet calls my burner phone at 6:20 p.m. and tells me she’s five minutes from my house. I go out to wait for her on the patio as I did yesterday, but not on the steamer chaise. If we have sex, we’re going to do it inside. There’ll be no more tempting fate, not with things as they now stand.
Once again, Jet appears from the trees across the mown field and walks steadily toward me, only today she keeps her clothes on. The sky has turned deeper blue as the sun moves toward the western horizon. Jet has changed out of her courtroom attire; she’s wearing jeans and a sleeveless top. As she nears the patio, I step into the grass and give her a long hug.
“How did you get away?” I ask.
When she pulls back, I see that she’s wearing more makeup than usual, and her eyes are bloodshot. “They’re practicing baseball, believe it or not. The traveling team. Max said it was the best thing for Kevin, and Paul agreed. They’re over at the Baptist church field. They’ll be at it till seven thirty, but I need to leave in thirty minutes. We can’t take even the slightest risk right now.”
“Agreed. Let’s get inside.”
After a brief kiss, I lead her into the house. Jet walks over to a cabinet and removes an opened bottle of pinot noir, then pours herself a glass and takes a long sip.
“What’s it been like over there?” I ask. “How’s Kevin doing?”
“He’s in shock. Everybody is. Even Max, which is hard to believe. Sally’s death has blown a hole in that house.”
“Paul?”
“Even worse than I feared. He’s a rudderless boat in a storm.”
This doesn’t surprise me. “Sally was the only real counterweight to Max in that family. I don’t know if Paul can deal with Max off the chain.”
Jet closes her eyes and sighs. “Deep down, Paul knows there’s nothing left in me. Not for him. Sally’s death may finally make him face that.”
“Or he might shove it down so deep he’ll never have to.”
“That’s what he’s been doing for years.”
Jet sits at the kitchen table and stares into her wine. I’ve rarely seen her morose, but given that she’s accepted the burden of defending Max, I’m surprised she’s not in deep depression. “What have you spent the day doing?” she asks, sounding preoccupied.
My visit with Dr. Kirby rises into my mind, but I’m not ready to broach that subject yet. I ought to summarize my receipt of the flash drive and my interaction with the coroner, but I don’t feel like going into that, either. In the end I mumble a boring evasion.
Jet slowly runs the tip of her right forefinger around the rim of her wineglass, as though trying to get it to resonate. I watch her for a while, wondering whether she’s come here out of habit or has something on her mind. After a couple of trancelike minutes, she lifts her finger from the glass and says, “Sit down. I need to tell you something.”
Her ominous tone makes me swallow hard, but I sit opposite her and wait.
She says, “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about not being able to trust Max.”
“And?”
“I have a backup plan to get custody of Kevin. Two plans, actually. One you know about, one you don’t.”
“Which one do I know about?”
My iPhone begins to ring. The screen tells me it’s Nadine. I click decline and put the phone back in my pocket.
“Who was that?” Jet asks.
“Ben Tate,” I answer, inexplicably lying for the first time since we began our affair. “I’ll call him later.”
“Thanks. Do you remember when I told you that I thought both Max and Paul had committed felonies related to their businesses? Tax fraud, for one thing, but also improper disposal of the toxic waste produced by the wood treatment plant? Both arsenic and hexavalent chromium.”
“Sure, I remember. But you didn’t have proof.”
“Now I do.”
The coldness in her voice is unnerving. “How did you get it?”
“I went through Max’s office this morning, while he was in jail. With Sally dead, there was nobody to question what I was doing. The evidence against Paul I found about three weeks ago.”
“Okay. So, to sum up: you’re suggesting that the best way to get custody of your son is to put your husband and father-in-law in prison?”
Anger flares in her eyes. “Obviously that’s not the ideal solution. But it might be the least dangerous one. Would you have scruples about me doing that?”
“Not because of Max. But Paul . . . yes. Plus, I’m not sure Kevin would ever forgive you for that.”
“That’s my hesitation, too.”
“What’s this second option? The one I don’t know about?”
She bites her lip and studies me, searching for something I’m not sure she’ll find. “It’s more complicated,” she says. “But it would only affect Max.”
“Let’s hear it. You’re running out of time.”
“It has to do with the Poker Club and Azure Dragon Paper. I don’t know all the details of the deal that brought the Chinese here, but I do know money and favors changed hands over site selection. I’m not sure who got what, but I know from things Max and Paul have said that it happened. I decided to exploit that to get leverage over Max, with the goal of discrediting him with the Poker Club.”
“How?”
“About eight months ago, my father sent me some money from Jordan. I didn’t tell anybody about it, not even Paul. I ran it through my law practice. Apparently, my father’s felt guilty all his life for leaving me. He’s sick now. Anyway, knowing I had that money, I decided to create a little alternate reality.”