Chapter Seventeen

“Where are you?” Jake asked.

“At home.”

He hesitated. Said, “You want to meet for a drink, and you can tell me what you’ve found?”

I hesitated too. Glanced at the clock. Five after nine. But it’s not like I had anywhere to be -- nor was I apparently going to have any company that night. “Sure,” I said colorlessly. “Where?”

“Do you know where Brits Restaurant and Pub is?”

“East Colorado Boulevard?”

“I’ll see you there in about thirty minutes.”

I hung up and went to change my T-shirt and sweats for jeans and a long-sleeved shirt in a charcoal multistripe. I wasn’t about to shave for a drink with Jake, but I did drag a comb through my hair and brush my teeth.

I didn’t have as far to go and I got to the pub before Jake, and -- remembering that I hadn’t had dinner -- ordered a roast beef sandwich while I waited.

He arrived a few minutes after my food. The Veronica Mars theme song was playing as I watched him -- tall and sort of compelling in black jeans, black T-shirt, and black leather jacket -- threading his way through the tables to the beat of the music. I smiled sourly as the lyrics to “We Used to be Friends” registered.

A long time ago. Yeah. Only it didn’t feel as long ago as it probably should have.

He spotted me at the bar, pulled out a stool next to me, and sat down. “Something funny?” His eyes -- I’d forgotten how light they were: almost whiskey-colored -- met mine warily.

“Not really. I’m surprised you could make it on such short notice.”

“Why’s that?”

“Friday night.” I shrugged. “I figured you’d be home with the little woman doing whatever it is little women like to do on Friday nights.”

“Kate’s working tonight.” The bartender approached us, drying a glass with a Scottish tea towel featuring Queen Elizabeth’s somewhat damp face. “What are you drinking?”

I considered it. “A Henley Skullfarquar,” I requested.

The bartender and Jake exchanged a look; the bartender nodded as though conceding a point to me. “But you usually don’t get it by the glass, mate.”

“How does it usually come?”

“Usually make ’em up by the jug. They serve it during the Henley Royal Regatta. Not to worry. I’ll do it for you. You want soda water?”

“Do I? What’s in it?”

“Smirnoff Ice, Strongbow Cider, Pimm’s Cup, gin, grenadine, a slice of orange or lemon. You can add lemonade or soda water if you like.”

“Jesus,” Jake said. “Are you on antibiotics?”

“I won’t need them after this. No germ could survive that amount of alcohol.”

“At least it’s got vitamin C.” He asked the bartender what he had on tap and requested Bass ale.

I realized something that had been subconsciously bothering me. He had changed his aftershave. Not that I didn’t like this one. It was nice: a sharp, oriental, woody fragrance. But it made him smell…different. Alien. A stranger.

Of course, he was a stranger. That was the point.

Jake got his ale, took a long pull on it, and turned on his stool to face me. “So what makes you think Paul was the target last Sunday?”

I ignored the fact that our knees were brushing -- denim had never seemed like such a flimsy barrier -- that he was close enough for me to see that there was a little more silver at his temples than I’d realized. I told him about my lunch with Al January, and January’s belief -- which coincided with my own -- that the crime just didn’t seem to fit Ally’s profile. I said, “She just strikes me as the type to try to fake a burglary -- and do something like knock the windowpane glass out the wrong way. Or anonymously report the break-in from her own cell phone.”

“Maybe she didn’t come up with the idea,” Jake said. “Maybe the boyfriend did. He works as a personal trainer to a lot of people. He might have picked up heart meds from a client. It will take a little time, but we can check that out. It’s just a process of elimination.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But after I left January’s, I did some checking on Nina Hawthorne.”

“Hawthorne.” I watched him run it through the old memory banks. “The caterer?”

“Right.” I told him what January had told me about Nina’s youthful affair with Porter. “Except it turns out she had a lot of youthful affairs -- and one of them was with Paul Kane.” This was the difficult bit -- for a lot of reasons. I told him about the child who had played the role of Briseis to Kane and Hawthorne’s Achilles and Agamemnon.

He was silent as the bartender set my drink before me and departed.

“I know about Paul’s daughter,” Jake said quietly. “He was devastated.”

“That’s not the point though, is it?” I said. “The point is, does Nina blame him? And if she does, is she capable of committing murder in revenge for the death of her daughter?”

At one time there would have been no question. Wild child Nina would have dispatched Paul without a moment’s qualm -- although she might not have remembered it a few hours later. The old Nina clearly had the imagination and recklessness for this kind of crime. But Nina had been a solid citizen for nearly a decade.

I sipped my drink -- choked on what appeared to be pure alcohol -- and managed to set the glass on the bar before I started coughing. It hurt like hell, my ribs still very painful.

“Are you okay?” Jake rose, moving behind me, but was apparently reluctant to thump me on the back -- and that was fine by me. The last thing I wanted was his hands on me. I waved him away, and he ordered, “Put your hands up.”

Which -- don’t ask me why -- struck me as funny. For a spluttering, spiraling moment, I thought my last vision would be of Jake’s scowling alarm. But he rested a steadying hand on my back, and that warm weight between my shoulder blades drained all the laughter out of me. He smoothed his hand up and down my spine, and I got control, drew in a long, wavering breath.

“I’m okay,” I said, shrugging him off.

“What the hell is in that?” He picked up my glass, sipped from it. His eyebrows rose. “You’re not drinking that,” he said.

“Drink okay?” asked the barman, coming up.

“He’ll have a Harp,” Jake told him, and the man sighed at this disrespect to his creation and stepped away.

I sat back and examined Jake derisively. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘arrogant asshole’?” I inquired -- the effect slightly spoiled by my hoarseness.

“Once or twice.” He sat down again and grinned crookedly. “Come on, you didn’t want to drink that. Who are you kidding?”

“Not you apparently.” It was like I could still feel his hand lightly smoothing up and down my back -- cell memory or something.

He didn’t seem to have an answer.

The bartender slid a pint of Harp in front of me. I took a sip. Big improvement, I had to admit -- not that I would.

Jake said -- as though we had not been so rudely interrupted -- “I don’t think Paul would have used the Hawthorne woman to cater his company if there was still bad blood between them. I’ll check on that, obviously, but even so, I can’t see how she would have introduced the poison to the vic. She wasn’t there -- unless she was there in disguise, which seems unlikely.”

“That’s the problem I keep running into,” I admitted. “How did the poison get into Porter’s glass? Especially if these Henley Skullfarquars are made by the gallon.” I gave him a questioning look.

He said matter-of-factly, “I wouldn’t know. I don’t attend parties at Paul’s.”

“But you’re friends.”

“We’re friends.”

“Old friends.”

He gave me a funny look. He said, “Let’s just say we travel in different social circles.”

No exchange of Christmas cards with naked Santa whipping naughty elves?

I said, “There were a lot of us grouped around the bar. Me, Porter, Valarie Rose, Al January. I don’t remember if Ally was standing next to us or not, but there were a lot of drinks lined up -- half empties, that kind of thing. I mean, barring someone reaching over and dumping poison out of his pinky ring’s secret compartment, I don’t think anyone would have paid much attention.”

Jake snorted. “I assume you didn’t notice any pinky rings in play?”

“No.”

He drank his pint in thoughtful silence, then said, “It’s not a bad theory. A little too Sherlock Holmesy maybe, but we’ll talk to the Hawthorne woman.” His eyes slanted to mine. “That was clever, making that connection.”

“I learned from the master,” I mocked. I actually hadn’t intended the double meaning, but it worked well.

He reddened. Turned a stony profile to me.

“The thing is,” he said curtly, after a moment or two, “the Beaton-Jones chick still has a better motive, and she was on the scene.”

“I’m the last guy to underestimate the power of the almighty dollar, but I think blaming someone for the death of your child --”

“But that’s my point,” he interrupted. “After I talked to the PI, Markopoulos, I went to see Ally’s boyfriend.” His eyes met mine again. “According to Duncan Roe, he got Ally pregnant. Jones forced her to have an abortion.”

Out of the blue I remembered that little shiver Ally had given when I’d asked her about children. I’d taken it as distaste for the idea. But maybe it was something entirely different.

Yeah, that did sort of change everything.

Not only did Ally share an eerily similar motive to the one I’d ascribed to Nina, but her pain was a lot fresher -- nor was the forced abortion her only motive. And Ally had been at the party, even if I couldn’t remember her near the bar. Someone else might be able to place her there.

Following my own train of thought, I said, “Did Jones’s autopsy turn up anything to indicate he was terminally ill?”

Jake looked surprised. “How’d you come up with that?”

“I overheard Jones’s first wife at the funeral. She said something in passing that made me think he might not be a well man. I mean, before he was murdered, obviously.”

“Obviously. Well, she was right. Jones had been recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”

“Wow.” I met his eyes. “Poor bastard.”

“Yeah. Not the way I’d want to go, for sure.”

“Did his wife know?”

“Apparently.”

“Then…why would she kill him?”

He said patiently, “Because he was planning to divorce her.”

“But was he? Have you talked to his lawyer? We only have the PI’s word for that.”

And Paul’s -- and now I understood Paul’s comment about Porter not standing for being cuckolded. It turned out he had been right about that, so maybe he was right about the other things. Why was I so resistant to that idea?

I said, “Maybe Jones changed his mind about a divorce. Why would he have insisted on an abortion -- why would she have gone along with it -- if they were splitting up?”

Jake was silent, considering this.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“It’s worth checking,” he said grudgingly.

“The other thing is that apparently Porter yanked financing for a project near and dear to the hearts of Al January and Valarie Rose. I don’t have anything more to go on that that, but they were both standing at the bar. So was Paul Kane, come to think of it.” I added maliciously, “In fact, Kane had the best access to Porter’s drink of anyone. Any reason he might want Porter out of the way?”

Jake gave me a level look. “Funny,” he said. But then, proving he was still the hard-hearted bastard I’d known and -- well, sort of known -- he added, “Just the opposite. Most of the funding for these indie projects came from Porter -- or were underwritten by Porter, anyway. And they’d been friends -- good friends according to everyone I’ve talked to -- a long time.”

I was smiling into my drink, and Jake said, “I wouldn’t compromise an investigation because of my feelings for the people involved. You should remember that.”

He wouldn’t knowingly compromise an investigation, that I believed. But didn’t he see that his feelings might blind him to certain possibilities? In the interests of impartial justice, shouldn’t he really excuse himself from any involvement in this case? But he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t -- because his personal connection to Paul Kane was something he couldn’t admit to. Wouldn’t want made public.

Oh yeah, I remembered only too well how that went.

Studying me, Jake said, “You don’t like Paul, do you?”

I hadn’t thought about it before. “Not particularly.”

He nodded like that didn’t surprise him.

I drained my glass, looked at my watch. “I should get going.”

“Yeah, me too.”

We paid for our drinks and walked out together. As we strolled around the building to the parking in the back, I said, “I still think Nina’s movements on Sunday would be worth looking into.”

“We’ll check into it,” Jake said. “I’m not ruling anyone out yet, and she’s a squirrelly broad, no question.”

The car alarm chirped in welcome as he stopped beside the conspicuously innocuous vehicle -- with the police lights in the back window.

I said, “Night,” and pulled my keys out.

He said abruptly, “You know that Kate lost the baby?”

I said awkwardly -- realizing I hadn’t mentioned it before, “Yeah, I’m sorry.” And I was. I didn’t wish Kate or that kid any harm. In fact, I had almost called Jake when Chan told me about it, but I’d thought better of it. It might have looked like I believed the only obstacle to our own relationship was that baby; the truth was, it had merely been the final roadblock.

He said unemotionally, “Since we have a choice this time around, she’s not sure if she’s ready to start a family. She’s at a place in her career where taking time off could set her back years. She’s in line for promotion.”

I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to feel sorry for him -- I didn’t want to feel anything at all. But I couldn’t decently walk away, so I asked reluctantly, “How do you feel about that?”

I could just make out his lopsided smile in the parking lot lights. “I want a family. But she’s worked hard for this. It’s her call.”

I’d thought the whole point of the marriage was so that Jake could have family and a “normal” life. Maybe it was a real marriage, despite the fun and games with Paul Kane. Maybe Jake did love Kate. It was to his credit that he seemed to place as much importance on her career as his own -- or at least understand that she would.

But I had no idea what to say to him. Good luck with that? He was talking to the wrong person. But he was looking at me like he expected something -- needed something.

I said gently, “Drive safely, Jake,” and walked away.