Degree of Guilt (15 page)

Terri hesitated. It was seven-thirty and the sitter had said that Elena was asleep. Paget sounded anxious, and something about Rappaport had made her feel more alone.

‘Give me directions,’ she said.

A half hour later, Terri found a three-story white Edwardian with bay windows, a slanted roof, and a spotlit palm tree that seemed to have migrated from Los Angeles. She stopped to examine the tree, struck by its incongruity.

‘I keep hoping it’ll die,’ Paget’s voice said. ‘But the thing’s obnoxiously healthy.’

As Terri looked up, he rose from a lawn chair on the front porch and came down the stairs, dressed in jeans and a white Irish fisherman’s sweater.

‘I like it,’ she told him.

‘You and Carlo.’ He gave the tree a look of mild bemusement. ‘That foolish palm is why I bought this place.’

‘Because of a tree?’ She turned to look again. ‘This must be the world’s most expensive palm.’

‘Tell that to Carlo.’ Paget stood next to her, contemplating the tree. ‘After he came to live with me, we went out one day to look at houses. Nothing interested him until we saw this place, and then I could hardly get him to leave. He told me we had to live here because the tree looked like home.’

Terri glanced at him, surprised. ‘Where had he been living?’

‘Boston, of course. The date palm capital of Massachusetts.’

Terri smiled. ‘Kids’ minds are really funny. Elena once asked me why Richie and I hadn’t taken her on the honeymoon.’

Paget cocked his head. ‘That’s one question that Carlo’s never asked.’

Terri was quiet. ‘So,’ she finally ventured, ‘whose idea was the spotlight?’

‘Mine. Or so Carlo informed me.’ Paget turned to her. ‘Ever notice how literal little kids can be?’

This was not, Terri thought, a conversation she had ever imagined. ‘Sure. I try to be pretty careful about what I say to Elena.’

Paget nodded. ‘We drove away from here, Carlo still chattering about the palm tree. The whole thing was so bizarre I could hardly keep from laughing – I was about to spend a million dollars to buy a tree I couldn’t stand. So I turned to Carlo and said with utter seriousness, “Don’t worry, son, not only will your doting father buy this house, but I’ll get the lighting on the tree just right.” It was one of those remarks you make to a kid which is really for the amusement of another adult – or, in my case, because I was laughing at the idea of myself as a father.’ Gazing up at the spotlight, Paget shook his head. ‘It was also a mistake. Carlo remembered every word.’

Terri smiled at him. Silent, Paget kept his eyes on the tree; she had the sense that he needed to talk about his son but seldom did, so that now he felt embarrassed.

‘We’d better go in,’ he said. ‘I’m keeping you.’

‘It’s all right, Richie’s out, and I wanted to tell you about Rappaport.’

Opening a beveled double door with a brass knob and door kick, Paget led her inside.

The interior made Terri’s preconceptions seem foolish. She had vaguely imagined the movie-set trappings of inherited wealth – the oak paneling, brown leather, and oil paintings of dead ancestors more appropriate to some private men’s club. The actual decor was light: white walls and blond hardwood floors, with track lighting and bright splashes of color everywhere – a deep-red Persian rug, vases and silk flowers in various hues, an eclectic assortment of vivid prints and oils, which somehow enhanced each other rather than clashed. Passing the library, Terri saw a long marble fireplace and then a shelf full of games, which, like geologic periods, seemed to trace Carlo’s passage from seven to fifteen. Terri felt a moment’s envy, for Elena’s sake more than for her own: Christopher Paget’s house felt as if the same people had lived here for a while, adding pieces of themselves over time, secure in the knowledge that this was their home.

‘That’s a lovely fireplace,’ Terri said.

Paget nodded. ‘Carlo always liked me to build a fire for him, read stories in front of it. When he was younger, the library was his favorite room.’

‘Your whole home is beautiful, really. Did you do all this yourself?’

Paget nodded. ‘That’s what explains all the primary colors,’ he said. ‘Carlo and I have a complete lack of subtlety no decorator could match.’

Smiling, Terri felt the seemingly light remark bring Paget into focus: he was clinging to a life that might now change irreparably, and for the wrong reasons. It lent an unsettling note of worry to this lightness about Carlo.

‘Where is he?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never met him.’

‘Studying, I hope.’ Paget glanced up the staircase. ‘If you don’t mind, perhaps we can chat in the kitchen. I was just cleaning up.’

Paget looked slightly uncomfortable, as if concerned that his manners had lapsed. Terri realized that he preferred that his son not walk into the middle of the kind of conversation this was likely to be; thinking about Mark Ransom and his mother, she was sure, had already been hard enough.

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘I like any kitchen that I don’t have to cook in.’

The kitchen was what she now expected: high-tech, track-lit, spacious, light. On the other side of a bleached wooden counter were two white leather-covered barstools, where, she guessed, Paget and his son ate breakfast. Terri declined a glass of wine and sat with her hands folded in front of her. Paget leaned casually against the counter, as if to help her relax.

‘Just tell me about Rappaport as it happened,’ he said. ‘From beginning to end.’

For forty minutes, Terri did that.

At odd intervals Paget would interject a question, as often about how Rappaport looked or acted as about what she said. Terri sensed him piecing together this woman from whatever Terri gave him, adjusting the picture here and there, with the dispassion of an archaeologist reimaging a long-dead creature from a few scraps of bone. His face showed nothing save a slight narrowing of the eyes; Terri could not tell whether this reflected a reaction to what Rappaport had told her or to Terri herself.

When she had finished, Paget walked to the refrigerator without a word, poured a glass of white wine, and held it out to her. ‘If you don’t want this,’ he said, ‘I’ll drink it.’

Terri realized that she wanted it. When she had sipped awhile, Paget said, ‘A few more questions.’

‘Sure.’

He leaned back on the counter, regarding her. ‘Did she say Ransom had other women?’

‘I assumed that.’ It sounded foolish, Terri felt, and was. ‘She didn’t say so.’

Paget nodded. ‘When she said Ransom had lost interest, did she mean that literally, or was she talking about some failure of performance?’

Terri hesitated. The question had not occurred to her. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Did she know anything about Ransom’s sex life outside her own experience – from Ransom himself, or anyone else?’

‘I didn’t ask her that.’ Terri stared at her wine. ‘I should have.’

Paget smiled faintly, shaking his head. ‘Perhaps at a deposition. Not when you’re watching a self-possessed woman unravel because she’s telling you things you want to know but wish had never happened to her, until you’re no longer sure you even want her to keep talking.’

Terri felt surprised, and then something like relief. ‘I felt ashamed,’ she said. ‘Like I was taking something from her.’

‘I think not, in the end: it’s what Ransom did to her that’s awful, not the facing up to it. What strikes me is how much she seems to have taken out of you.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Do you always fool yourself when something’s bad?’

Terri hesitated. ‘This shouldn’t be.’

Paget shook his head. ‘What she told you is quite extraordinary, and it connected you to what she felt. That’s how you know you’re not a sociopath, or dead.’

Terri kept gazing at the glass. ‘It was unbelievable,’ she finally said.

‘I really don’t know how you got her to say all that.’ Paget poured himself some wine. ‘But by doing it, you’ve given Mary far more credibility than she could ever have on her own.’

‘Do you think they’ll drop this now?’

‘Quite possibly. One problem with Mary’s story is that Ransom’s connection to her is so arbitrary – it’s like deciding to rape Barbara Walters because you saw her on
20/20.
I can understand Brooks and Sharpe thinking that there must be something more.’ He paused, as if trying to imagine himself as Sharpe. ‘What the D.A. has to accept,’ he finished, ‘is that, like Melissa Rappaport, but for reasons only Mark Ransom could ever have explained, Mary Carelli became the object of his Laura Chase fetish.’

Terri finished her wine. ‘There
is
one difference. Which got Mary where she is.’

‘Which is?’

‘She wouldn’t play the game.’

Paget considered her. ‘Mary Carelli,’ he said, ‘has never played anyone’s game but her own.’

His voice had a faint sardonic edge. Terri was still trying to decipher that when she discovered with surprise how very much Mary Carelli resembled their son.

‘Am I interrupting?’ Carlo asked them.

How long, Paget wondered, had Carlo been standing there, and what had he heard?

Carlo looked from his father, to the wineglasses, to Terri. With perfect composure, Terri slid off the barstool, extended her hand to Carlo and said, ‘I’m Terri Peralta, your father’s associate. So all you’re interrupting is your father attempting to make sense of things, and me attempting to listen with my usual respect. Unfortunately, I’m doing better than he is.’

Carlo’s air of uncertainty eased a bit; through intuition or sheer luck, Paget saw, Terri knew that the surest way to disarm Carlo was to poke fun at his father.

‘That explains the wine,’ Carlo answered. As he turned to Paget, his expression was more equable. ‘You guys were talking about my mother.’

Paget nodded. ‘Terri’s trying to help me prove that Mark Ransom was what your mother says he was.’

Carlo looked at Terri again. ‘Do you think you can?’

Paget watched Terri appraise Carlo’s face, react to the confusion she saw there. ‘Speaking strictly for myself,’ Terri said, ‘I think Mark Ransom did stuff like this long before he made the mistake of picking on your mother. If I’m right, then there are other women out there who didn’t have the wherewithal to protect themselves the way your mom did. We’ve been trying to figure out how to find them, and what made your mother more able to take care of herself.’

Terri, Paget realized, had neatly covered their conversation, putting a benign spin on the ambiguous comment Carlo might have overheard. The boy began fidgeting, as if not wishing to talk more but afraid of missing what else might be said.

‘I assume,’ Paget ventured, ‘that your original purpose was not to meet Ms Peralta, but to raid the refrigerator. Ice cream, or milk?’

‘Both, actually.’

Terri glanced at her watch. ‘I should be going.’

The comment sounded perfunctory, Paget thought; Terri had the relaxed posture of someone with nowhere to go. ‘Why don’t you have some ice cream,’ he suggested.

Carlo nodded. ‘I can spare a little.’

‘What? And create another chubbette?’

Paget looked at Terri’s small frame, slim wrists. ‘In which life?’

‘This life. I’m absolutely convinced that somewhere in Latin America, there’s another Hispanic woman named Teresa Peralta who’s wearing all the doughnuts I ate in High School.’ Terri turned to Carlo. ‘Because of me, she weighs at least three hundred pounds, and no one asked her to the winter prom.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Carlo. ‘Our winter prom was awful. No one danced.’

‘So have some ice cream,’ Paget said.

Terri gave a theatrical sigh. ‘When I’m this tired,’ she said, ‘I’ve got no social conscience.’

Carlo sat next to Terri, while Paget dished out two bowls of ice cream. ‘What about you?’ Terri asked Paget.

‘Never touch the stuff. Especially now.’

‘Why not now?’

‘So I can recognize myself when they run old clips of the Lasko hearings. . . .’

‘The truth,’ Carlo interjected, ‘is that my father runs five miles every morning and weighs himself six times a day. He wants to make the cover of
Seventeen
.’

‘
American Bride
, Carlo. And every parent needs a hobby to help compensate for disrespectful children. I’ve selected vanity, and I’ll thank you to respect that.’

Terri laughed. ‘Do you two always carry on like this?’

‘Only when Carlo gets gratuitous reinforcement.’ Paget looked from his son to Terri. ‘Unfortunately for me, he seems to have found his natural audience.’

Terri grinned at Carlo. ‘I guess he’s right,’ she said, and then turned to Paget. ‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but during the Lasko hearings I was an eighth-grade cheerleader.’

Paget looked at her in mock horror. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘do you even remember Paul McCartney’s group before Wings?’

Carlo pointed to Paget. ‘Do you remember
him
?’ Carlo asked.

‘Vaguely,’ Terri said. ‘But your mother has aged quite well.’

Carlo burst out laughing. ‘Your move, Dad.’

‘I was just thinking, Carlo. Before I yank the barstool out from under her, you might want to ask Terri all the questions I’m too old to answer – stuff about dating, acne, things like that. You might even ask her why a superficially presentable fifteen-year-old, despite living in these modern times of which I am so dimly aware, can’t get a couple of mere parents to let their daughter go out with him. Although, on reflection, Terri may only be able to help you with the daughter.’

‘What is this?’ Terri asked Carlo.

Carlo put down his spoon. ‘I’ve got this girlfriend, Jennifer, only she’s more like my girlfriend at school. Her parents won’t let her go out on weekends.’ He frowned. ‘It can’t be
me
– they don’t even know me.’

‘Then maybe that’s the problem.’

Carlo turned to her. ‘What do you mean?’