The Girl with a Clock for a Heart, page 7
“Then came the second part. One night I was staying over at Jane’s apartment, and she had to step out for a few things. I won’t pretend I wasn’t snooping, but I happened to be sitting at her desk, looking at her computer, and I started going through her desk drawer. There wasn’t much in it, but there were a few photographs, including a couple of snapshots from Barbados. I knew they were from Barbados because she was right in front of the Cockle Bay. I thought they must be pretty old photographs because (A) they were actual photographs, not something from a computer, and (B) in them Jane had long hair that was kind of a streaky blond. It totally changed her appearance. I flipped the picture over, and it had one of those time stamps on it, with the date, that tells you when the photograph was taken. The picture was from just one month before I’d come down to Barbados, just one month before I’d met Jane.
“And it suddenly all clicked. Jane knew that I had a lot of money and that I was booked to come to the Cockle Bay, and she must have researched me, or Googled me or whatever, and found out I’d had two wives. I’m sure she saw pictures of them, and she changed her hair so that she’d look like my first wife. I could prove none of this, of course, in a court of law, nor did I want to. But I felt like a fool. I didn’t say anything to Jane right away, but I did have her checked out. I hired . . . this person to look into her background, and he found absolutely nothing. And not nothing as in nothing bad, but nothing as in nothing at all. There was no Jane Byrne. There were people with that name, of course, but none of them were the woman I knew. There was no past history, nothing to make it seem like she had actually ever existed.”
He paused again, and George asked, “What did you do?”
“I didn’t go to her with everything I suspected because . . . because I don’t know . . . but I did tell her that spending time with Teresa . . . with Teresa dying . . . had changed my mind about my relationship with her and that I needed it to stop. But she knew that I knew, and I saw something go out of her eyes, like she didn’t need to pretend anymore. She told me she’d remove herself from my life, and I foolishly decided to not have her escorted from the office that very minute. I told her she could stick around till she figured out what to do next.
“Well, you know the rest. She stole a half million dollars from me and disappeared. I could almost have forgiven her and just let it go—it wasn’t that much money—but I kept remembering that black hair and those blue eyes and how much she reminded me of my wife when I first laid eyes on her.”
MacLean sucked a rattling breath in through his nose. “Long story short, the cunt played me from the very beginning.” A tiny spray of spit flew from his mouth when he swore.
“And that’s why you hired Jenks.”
MacLean looked up, his slitted eyes bright. “Yes, I asked DJ to look into it, but no, I did not send that little thug after her. I know that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t know what to think,” George said. “Let’s just agree that my returning the money concludes the deal. You’ll call off whoever you need to call off and let Jane go on with her life.”
MacLean made that rattling sucking sound again, as though he was trying to stop his nose from running. George suddenly wondered if this seemingly confident man was coming apart at the seams. The lean frame and steely eyes suddenly seemed like grief, not health. “I’ll tell DJ to stop looking for her, but I want to see Jane herself, just once, face-to-face. She took my money, and now she sends you to return some of it, and it’s just not good enough. I don’t want to hurt her, but I do want to see her. Will you tell her that?”
“I’ll tell her, but I don’t know if she’ll do it. I won’t make promises for her. She did tell me to tell you she’s sorry. I don’t know if that helps.”
“Just tell her I want to see her, and I want to hear that apology face-to-face. She can’t hide forever. I have resources to find out who she really is. She knows that. Now I need for you to leave. I’ve spent enough time away from my wife today.” MacLean stood.
George rose as well and looked across at MacLean. Standing, he seemed smaller, and diminished somehow. George had to stop himself from saying or doing the natural things one says or does with a new acquaintance. He didn’t reach across to offer his hand, or tell MacLean he felt bad about his wife. It was an omission that George would think about later, but only because of what would happen to MacLean shortly after he left.
“I can show myself out,” George said and walked to the door, letting himself back into the dazzling white of the foyer. Donald Jenks, or DJ, leaned against a wall, looking at his phone. He glanced briefly in George’s direction, and George nodded but kept walking, the sound of his shoes echoing as he walked toward the door and pushed his way into the afternoon. His head swam in the sudden harsh light of day, and little blue specks floated in front of his eyes. He felt as if he had just woken from a too-deep afternoon nap.
George stood for a moment before walking to his car, noticing that the landscaping van was no longer parked in front of the house. They must have finished their job, packed up, and left. With the landscapers gone, the world outside of MacLean’s house seemed eerily silent. There were no other properties visible through the thick stands of trees. The only sound was the incessant crickety whine of a sweltering August afternoon.
Chapter 8
George and Liana had agreed to meet at the Kowloon, a behemoth of a Chinese restaurant along a gaudy strip of restaurants in Saugus. George took 95 North to Route 1 and pulled into the parking lot a little after six. The asphalt felt soft under his feet, and he was hit by the smell of fryolators and MSG as he walked toward the two-story restaurant. Its front door was between two white Easter Island statues and below an even larger statue, carved in wood. The name of the restaurant shone bright red in the hazy evening, its enormous letters in a faux-Polynesian font.
George walked past the wishing fountain in the lobby, past the old Chinese lady who was trying to hustle him into one of the lesser rooms in the front, and on through into the main dining hall, a space the size of a football field and festooned in Tiki kitsch. It was early on a Sunday evening, but the place was already packed, the buzz of rum-fueled conversation competing with the pumped-in music. George went straight to the bar and sat on one of the low stools that gave him a good view of the main entrance. Liana had told him she’d be at the restaurant between five thirty and six thirty, and they’d agreed to meet at the bar. He’d picked the Kowloon because it was easy to spot along the sprawl of Route 1 and because it was always busy. He also liked their sweet-and-sour shrimp.
He ordered a Zombie from the bartender and waited for Liana. The bar was filling up. Two couples occupied one corner and shared two Scorpion bowls between them. Both of the men had large guts and wore Red Sox caps, and both of the women were leathery and rail-thin with big hair that would have looked cutting-edge in 1985.
His drink came, and the young female bartender, who stood slightly below him in the sunken bar area, said, “You want food too?”
George told her he was waiting for someone and sipped his drink. It wasn’t particularly good, but it had a lot of rum in it. He finished half of the concoction with his second sip. He watched the baseball highlights playing out on the suspended television—the Red Sox had blown a three-run lead, then lost in extra innings—but mainly he kept an eye toward the front and wondered if Liana would show at all, and what he would say to her when she did.
He intended to tell her about the two Donnie Jenkses, and how the small man with the gray grin was not in the employ of Gerald MacLean, or at least not according to MacLean. It had occurred to George during his drive from Newton to Saugus that either Liana or MacLean could be pulling the wool over his eyes and that he had no real reason to trust either of them. Did Liana need him for some other reason than just returning the money? He caught himself chewing on the inside of his cheek and made himself stop. He had done what he said he would do. The money had been delivered, and now he had to deliver MacLean’s message to Liana, if she even showed up.
What George wasn’t sure about was whether he should tell her the full story as MacLean had related it. He didn’t necessarily need, or want, to hear her repudiate MacLean’s version of events. Liana was capable of bad things. He knew this not because of any kind of intuition, but because of facts. He knew what she had done twenty years earlier, and would always wonder just how premeditated her actions had been. But if MacLean was telling the truth—and there was little reason to think he wasn’t—what Liana had done to MacLean was entirely premeditated. She’d gone after a man with money and a sick wife. And he’d fallen for her. It was clear from MacLean’s story that part of his downfall came from pure sexual obsession. George empathized. Ever since seeing Liana again two days earlier, he’d been swarmed with memories of their brief relationship. She had been his first sexual partner, and she had also been his best. They had learned everything together. It was as though they had been explorers who came upon undiscovered ruins in a jungle, their eyes the first to see a hidden city. Over the years he’d been back, with other explorers, with tourists, but it had never been the same. Nothing could match the feeling of discovery and compatibility that he had felt with Liana.
George finished his Zombie and ordered a Fog Cutter. He watched the bartender make it. Except for a different glass and some different fruit, it looked pretty much like the Zombie. He checked his watch, and as he did Liana came into the room, spotted him at the bar, and headed his way. She wore a green sleeveless dress, and she swung a small purse at her side as though it were a riding crop.
“How’d it go?” she asked, settling onto her stool and catching the bartender’s eye.
“Order your drink first, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She ordered a vodka on the rocks. Her cheeks were flushed, as though she’d been racing to meet him. Her forehead shone.
“You want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Good news of course.”
“The good news is that I met Donnie Jenks again, and he’s not going to hurt you. He looks like he wouldn’t hurt a fly. The bad news is that he’s not the same guy who threatened me in New Essex.”
“What do you mean?” Liana plucked the lemon wedge from the glass’s rim, discarded it on the cocktail napkin, and took a swallow of her drink.
“When I arrived at the house, MacLean had me patted down by a very fat man with a small mustache. His name was Donnie Jenks. Whoever threatened you in Connecticut and followed you here is someone else.”
George studied Liana for her reaction. She swirled her drink, watching the ice cubes spin. There was a genuine look of confusion in her expression. “You think that Donnie Jenks, the little Donnie Jenks, is not working for MacLean?”
“I don’t know what to think. Could he be someone working independently? He found out about the money, pretended he was this Jenks in order to try and wrangle it out of you. You obviously foiled his plan by delivering the money directly back to MacLean.”
“It’s possible, but I think it’s much more likely that he actually is working for MacLean. It sounds just like something he’d do.”
“What do you mean?” George asked.
“I mean that he’d never be open about hiring someone like the thug who threatened both of us. So he hired a legitimate private eye to look like he was working within the law, and then secretly hired a genuine money collector. That’s the way he operates. He wants to look like a good guy.”
“It still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why would this guy use the same name?”
“I don’t know.” She sipped her drink. “God, I’m tired of this. Did he agree at least to leave me alone?”
“That’s the other bad news. MacLean says he’s going to keep having Donald Jenks investigate you, that he’s going to discover who you really are—his words—unless you agree to meet him face-to-face.”
“Okay. Why?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t really go into it, but as you said, you got under his skin. He doesn’t want to let you off the hook.”
“But he took the money back?”
“He did.”
Liana sighed. “What else did MacLean say? Tell me everything.”
George told her the story from the beginning. He described the house and the young woman who let him in the front door, and more about DJ the private detective and how MacLean had him wait in a wood-paneled room that looked like something out of a Sherlock Holmes story. Then George retold MacLean’s story about his wives, even telling Liana the part about another employee spotting her looking through his file cabinets.
“Philip Chung,” she said. “No surprise there. Thing was, I actually was looking for the combination to the safe, but only because I wanted to put some files in there. Gerry would have given me that combination if I’d asked.”
“He said the same thing.”
George told her the rest of it, pretty much as it happened, except that he left out the part about the dyed hair and how MacLean had begun to believe he had been set up from the beginning. He knew Liana would deny it, and he didn’t want to hear the denial. He was worried he wouldn’t believe it.
“What did you think of him?” she asked.
“He seemed okay. Clearly not a man to mess with, but he didn’t seem like someone who would purposefully do harm to someone else. I think you should trust him, go see him and apologize. Then hopefully he’ll just let you continue to live your life.”
“What life is that?”
“Could you go back to Barbados?”
“I could, probably, but I’m not sure I want to.”
“There must be other places you could return to, other places where you established a life since . . . since I last saw you.”
She had been looking down at the dregs of her drink but lifted her eyes to meet his, and he saw a little flash of anger in them that quickly changed into something else. Sadness maybe, or regret.
“I’m so tired of restarting my life every three years. I’m not looking for pity, because I know that everything that has happened to me I caused, but I don’t even feel related anymore to the girl I was when we first met. I was trapped, and I did some awful things to get out of that trap, and now I have to be punished for the rest of my life.” She laughed a little, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “Okay, obviously I am looking for pity. Waah, waah. Poor me. You’re seeing me at my absolutely most maudlin, I promise. I’m just so fucking sick of being on the run. These days I constantly wonder what my life would have been like if I’d just turned myself in and gone to prison. Maybe I’d be out now, and my name would be mine.”
“You could turn yourself in now,” George said.
“I’ve thought about it. It’s just that I can’t stomach the thought of returning to Florida, and that is where the trial would be. I’ve never been back there, you know.”
“I wouldn’t think you had.”
They were quiet for a moment. George wanted to ask questions, wanted to find out exactly how much of what had happened in Florida was intentional and how much was a terrible accident. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He watched as Liana tipped her glass back and slid an ice cube into her mouth.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked. “I mean, tonight, right now. Do you want to order some food?”
“I’m strangely hungry,” she said. “Can we just sit here for a while and drink and order ridiculous appetizers and talk about something other than Gerry MacLean?”
“Sure.”
“Maybe you could tell me about your life.”
“It’s pretty dull stuff.”
“You could tell me about that pretty woman you were with at the bar last night. She looked interesting.”
“Irene.”
“She your girlfriend?”
“On and off. It’s complicated.” George eyed the bartender over and ordered another round plus one of the combo platters of grease-laden appetizers. While he ordered, Liana pushed her empty glass toward the back of the bar, straightened her back, and pushed her hair behind both ears. She turned and smiled.
They stayed for several hours, switching to Tsingtao beer and ordering only dishes that arrived lit on fire. George told her about the years since college, the work he did at the magazine, the starts and stops of his romantic life. He also told her about the final three years he’d spent at Mather. She remembered everyone. He told her what he knew about Emily and what had happened to all the guys on his floor from freshman year. He was surprised by how much he was able to remember about the minutiae of college life, and he was doubly surprised by how interested in it all Liana seemed to be. He supposed, for her, it was like hearing the story of the life she could have had if things had turned out differently.
When they finally left the windowless restaurant, it was dark and a steady summer rain was battering the outside world. Thunder stirred in the distance. “Where’s your car?” George asked.
“About a mile away. That direction.”
They ran across the parking lot, now half-empty, and Liana found her Volkswagen. George stood by while she unlocked her door, but before she opened it, she spun and threw herself into his arms and their mouths met. George emptied his mind of all earlier doubts and just concentrated on the feel of her, the wetness of their kisses, the rain soaking his head and his back, while his front, pressed against Liana, stayed warm and dry. He placed a hand on her cheek, and she pulled herself even closer, kissed his neck, and said, “Can we go back to your place?”
“Okay,” he said, because there was nothing else he could have said.
“I’m not starting anything.”
“I know,” George said.
