“She just wants to be kept in the loop on Buck’s murder. How do you know somebody broke into your mother’s house? You went over there?”
“About forty minutes ago.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. I took the gun and some pepper spray.”
“Christ, Nadine. You know better. What did you see?”
“The house wasn’t torn to pieces or anything. But somebody had been there, I could feel it. They’d been through the drawers, looked under the mattresses, gone through the books.”
“I don’t get this. What are they looking for?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, they think you have something. They obviously know you’re living at your mother’s house. So either they know you, or they’ve followed you home before.”
A little fear shows in her eyes. “May I have a glass of that wine?”
“Sure.” I pour her one, recalling Jet taking her glass with her when she went to the back. “I think you’d better stay here again tonight.”
“Oh, I called my friend. He’s got a bed ready for me.”
“You’re safer here, behind my gate and with no neighbors nearby. If we see somebody prowling here, we know they mean us ill. That’s not true in town. You might be reluctant to shoot to defend yourself there.”
She accepts the glass and takes a small sip. “Do you really think it’s going to come to that? Shooting somebody?”
“Two people we know have died this week. Do you have some special immunity to bricks or bullets?”
She answers in a tone of surrender. “No.”
An audible clunk comes from the back bedroom. Nadine’s head pops up. In her anxious state, she’s hypersensitive to every stimulus.
“What was that?” she asks.
Jet just left the house. That clunk was the exterior door in the master bedroom, which sticks about half the time you try to open it. “The bedroom AC makes a loud noise when it kicks on back there. I haven’t done much to improve the place.”
She watches me for a couple of seconds, then looks away. “I’m surprised you live so far from town. You know, from the newspaper.”
“I like the isolation. It’s turned out to be a good thing, given public reaction to my dad’s editorials.”
“I guess it would be.” She takes another sip of wine. “Can I have something stronger?”
“Sure, what do you want?”
“Vodka?”
I go to the freezer and grab a bottle of Crater Lake, pour three fingers into a glass. Nadine walks over and drinks off most of it in one gulp. “Yes,” she says with obvious relief. “Thank you. Look, there’s another reason I came out here.”
“What’s going on?”
“Has Jet told you anything about Max’s alibi? About the woman he supposedly slept with? The friend of Sally’s? The paramour, as they say?”
“No. I asked, but she wouldn’t tell me who it was.”
“I’m glad to hear that. But the name’s gotten out somehow.”
“Who is it?”
“Max claims it was my mother.”
A sense of unreality descends over me. “Your mother?” I don’t believe that. Margaret Sullivan? And Max?
Nadine nods hopelessly.
“Where did you hear that?”
“It’s all over town. It’s probably on fucking Facebook by now. Three or four women have been mentioned as the possible alibi, and Max probably screwed them all. But my mother’s name was on top of the list. And twenty minutes ago, a friend of mine heard a deputy’s wife confirm it. Max named my mother in his initial interview.”
I can’t imagine the furor this must be triggering in the social circles of Old Bienville. “I just . . . I don’t know. Max might have told them that, but do you believe it’s possible?”
Nadine points at the vodka bottle, and I pour her another glass.
“Possible?” she echoes, swallowing another shot. “Sure, it’s possible. It’s sex, right? You know how these things happen. A lot of husbands want to nail their wife’s best friend. A lot of divorces start just that way.”
“I can’t see it. Your mother and Max.”
“Diametric opposites, I know. But you know what they say . . .”
“This whole mess is getting crazier by the hour. Did your mother ever give you any hint that something like that had happened?”
A look of uncertainty comes into Nadine’s face. “Not directly, no.”
“But?”
“There was a short period when Sally stopped coming to Mom’s book club. Three or four weeks in a row, she always had an excuse. The first two weeks, no one paid any attention. Then the other women noticed.”
“Did Sally eventually come back to the meetings?”
“She did. I checked my old club schedule. Yes, I’m OCD like that. Sally came back the fifth week.”
“Do you know whether the two of them talked privately before she came back?”
“No. But I wouldn’t necessarily have known. They could have spoken on the phone, or Sally could have come by when I was out shopping or even out of town for a day. Now and then our old maid would come over and stay with Mom and give me a night in New Orleans.”
“I see.”
Nadine starts pacing around the kitchen and table. “I’ve been thinking about the last couple of weeks before Mom died. She went through a period of deep depression. She cried a lot. Mom and Sally had been close since they were little girls. When I asked about her crying, she talked about forgiveness. How hard it was, and how rare. She said very few human beings ever forgive anything. They just shove the hurts down deep and pretend they never happened. And they stop trusting.”
“Do you think she was talking about herself and Sally?”
“I didn’t at the time. She also said something about men bringing out the weakness in women. At the time I assumed that had to do with my father. But now . . . I suppose she could have been talking about Max.”
“But from what you’ve told me, whether Sally forgave your mother or not, it sounds like she knew the affair had happened.”
“I guess so.”
“If she did, that means Max’s suicide story is bullshit. Sally didn’t just find out that your mother had slept with Max. She would have known for, how long? Two years?”
“At least.” Nadine nods thoughtfully. “I suppose Sally could have brooded over it all that time. But still . . . that’s not Max’s alibi, right? He’s lying about an affair being the suicide trigger. At least about my mom.”
“Oh, he’s lying. I’d lay a million dollars on that.”
“But why would he risk that? If Sally already knew about the affair? Why not find a better lie?”
“Maybe Max didn’t know Sally knew.”
“You think Sally wouldn’t have given him hell for sleeping with my mother if she’d known about it?”
“She might not have wanted to give Max the satisfaction. Maybe by ignoring it she spared herself getting down in the mud with him.”
“Maybe.”
“Think of it this way. Sally was sixty-six. And your mother, what?”