The Jezebel Remedy (47 page)

“So it was her there with Klein, right? The genuine Lettie?”

“Right. Yes. Absolutely.”

“So, okay, now the fucking million-dollar question: Why were you at the lab dressed like her?”

“If Lettie didn't show, I wasn't going down just sitting on my hands and whimpering. I was planning to walk to the front security entrance at the lab and hand them our hair and our spit on a swab. Simple and elegant. Fake Lettie and her tattoos would've been all over the security cameras, and there'd be witnesses who saw her. In a certain sense, it's Garrison's video trick turned against him. We'd have our own movie for the court. I used New-Skin on my fingers, the liquid bandage stuff, so I could hand over our hair and saliva baggies without leaving my
own prints. Your old burglary client, Porter Owens, taught us that little trick.”

“Pretty damn slick, I have to admit,” Joe said. “Fits what we told Klein too. Lettie's scared, but she's there at the right place, doing her bit.”

“Last night and this morning, I actually phoned you from Danville and was in a hotel there, so I had an alibi miles from the lab if push came to shove. M.J. flew me to Manassas after the tattoos were finished. Lettie's five a.m. True Value schedule meant I had to be ready yesterday. I had to prepare. Maybe Lettie doesn't show. Or maybe she and Harold get snagged on the way to the test. I was going to have a plan B, come hell or high water.” She shrugged. “It wasn't ideal, wasn't Operation Overlord, but it would've given us a chance. It might also have bought us more time to locate the real Lettie. If we'd lost this case, we were ruined. We'd be broke, and my license was next on the bar's chopping block. If Lettie was a no-show, I just couldn't make myself sit on my helpless butt and let them take all our money and our livelihood and our reputations.”

“So, if we're totaling your wrongs, you straight-up lied to me, broke the law with Derek and were ready to defraud the court if Lettie had disappeared?” Even though Joe was still agitated, he seemed to be relenting. He sighed. He tugged at his tie. He peered at the floor.

“Joe, listen.” She changed seats, sat beside him, cautiously laid both hands on his thigh. “I need to…” She became emotional, stopped. She took her hands away from his leg. “To apologize. You're right—I've lied to you, and that alone weakened our marriage and makes me a bad wife. I can't take it back or change it.
Any
of it.” Her voice was raw, hoarse, plain, frank. “I wronged you. I hope and pray you'll forgive me and at least be happy that we're safe from Garrison
and
on the verge of some life-changing cash. Soon you'll have your license reinstated and be a big lawyer hero. We won.”

“It's not how dumb-ass your lie was, it's that everything we own is in the balance, and I can't trust you. It's crunch time, the biggest crisis of our lives, and I can't count on you to tell me the truth. That's the problem. I mean, I can accept your conniving with Derek and some of the other cut corners, but you didn't have to deceive
me
.”

“I'm sorry I lied and let you down, but I love you and our farm and our little law practice and all our routines—our life together. When those things were at risk, I wanted them so bad I couldn't stand it. Please believe that. The bottom line, Joe, is that I did the very best I could to save us—you and me and our marriage and what we have together. I didn't care if it might cost me or if I might wind up in trouble.”

“Evidently not.” Joe smirked. “So what's the Wound Velvet do?”

Lisa didn't look at him. Her eye makeup was a smeared mess. “Hair. It grows hair. A 3.5-billion-dollar-a-year industry, and the billions are for products that don't work or don't work well.”

“Perfect,” he said. “I shouldn't be surprised. Damn. All this commotion and wheeling and dealing and lawing and maneuvering and plotting and three people dead…to grow hair. Won't save a life or cure any disease.”

“I was flabbergasted when Derek told me.”

Joe raised his eyebrows. “I'll bet poor stat-king Toliver's sick to his stomach. He's probably realizing about now that all he'll ever have is some unidentified remains at Lettie's to spoil his numbers. She'll never give him so much as the time of day. Only her lawyer has the story, and it's privileged. Damn—the March hare wins the grand prize. Where is she? Where's Lettie?”

“She refused to fly back here with me and M.J., but she had us drop her at a house in Falls Church so she could meet this Goose guy and put together a fairly artful getaway. She says she'll be in touch this weekend through the chat room; obviously, she's already phoned you. I suspect she'll surface for good when the will's invalidated and we can arrange a deal and this all becomes public—no need for Garrison to bother with her if he has no shot at the VV 108. Then she can be here every day, making us miserable again.” Lisa darted her eyes down at the table. “What's in the envelope?”

Joe gestured dismissively. “Bullshit from a bullshitter. It's supposed to be pictures of you and your sweetheart Brett Brooks in the Bahamas. Delivered to me, in person, by none other than Downs's old buddy, Dillon Atkins, who was wearing an earpiece and a huge, smug, shit-eating grin. Sent from Seth Garrison, the same guy who had video of you in a bank, and contracts for a $750,000 deal that never
happened, and fake documents with my name on them. The same asshole who had a forged will substituted into court records and spliced a tape of our conversation in Virginia Beach to make me sound like an extortionist.”

“Can I see?” Lisa asked.

“If you want to,” he said. “They're no more than a loser's last needle, his trying to fuck with us because we burned him at his own specialty.”

“Well, good. Okay. I'm glad I don't have that battle to fight. So you're not pissed at me because you think I cheated on you with another man?”

“No,” he said. “I'm pissed at you because you lied to me about your DNA scheme.”

“That was awfully easy. Not that I'm complaining.”

“Somewhere, sometime, for some reason, you have to choose and stick with it. Unless you dig in and draw a line, you can just chase your tail in circles and second- and third- and fourth-guess every damn thing. These days, you can't even believe what you see with your own eyes. I choose to believe in you and my twenty-year marriage, no matter what.”

“Even though I misled you?” she asked.

“Yes. Despite that. It was dumb as shit, and you never should've lied, but it seems you were trying to take care of us. To help us. That part I get.”

“Thank you for having faith in me when I probably don't deserve it.”

“Well, there's faith, and there's also the fact that you called me on M.J.'s phone when you were in Nassau, and I saw her Facebook postings, and all that happened when there was no need for it to happen, no reason, no suspicion, no incentive for you to create a fiction. Plus, if this were true, I expect we'd have heard about it in court.”

“Makes sense,” she said.

“And it becomes really easy to trust you when the photos are another Seth Garrison scam.” Joe reached for the envelope. She noticed he'd unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled his shirtsleeves partway up his forearms. “If you're Seth Garrison, and you keep manufacturing shit from your endless fraud factory, finally you get something wrong. You do too much. Try too hard.” He pulled a photo from the envelope and laid
it on the table. “I'm not certain about Brooks, but that's for sure you. Definitely you. Lisa Stone, wearing your UVA Law T-shirt. The beauty mark right below your neck. Your wedding ring. Your running shoes. The way you hold your head.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“See anything else?”

“I'm flustered, Joe. Not really.”

“The key,” he said.

“What's the key?” she asked.

“Look at your necklace. I gave it to you in
June
. The key.”

“Oh, damn. That's my anniversary present. My Tiffany necklace. The picture
is
fake. It is. The photo's from the park. Where I go to run. Somebody took my picture there and sort of switched several small things, but it has to be a fake.”

“Don't act so fucking surprised; I might change my mind.” He frowned at her. “Seth sent me a credit card receipt too. I assume it's equally as authentic.”

“That's me inserted into a shot with Brett Brooks. I'll be damned. They Photoshopped me or whatever. It's not real.”

“I don't know how the photo was produced—I'm not the digital expert—but that can't be you with Brooks in the Bahamas back in March wearing an anniversary gift you didn't get until June.”

“I doubt many husbands would've studied the pictures so closely.” She stared at the ceiling and briefly shut her eyes. Then she focused on Joe. “Probably only crazy, call-the-meeting-to-order Joe Stone. I'm so glad you spotted it. Oh, goodness. Bless you.” She raked her hair with both hands. She glanced at the broken nut shells on the table. “That's what it would have to be.”

He squinted at her. “I don't understand.”

“Blind-ass luck and a husband who's patient enough to consider the fine print would be about the only hope when you're literally staring at adultery. That's what it would take. Twenty years or twenty minutes, there's not much you can do on your own. Nothing, actually.
Your
sweet, reasonable soul is my only chance.”

“Well, your one atrocious lie was plenty. You've more than made your quota. By the way, how's Lloyd Burnette these days?”

“Oh, Joe, wait. I forgot. Your gift. I've already spent part of the Wound Velvet money…that we don't quite have yet. I wanted to mark putting this behind us, no matter how it went today. I wanted to do something for you after all we've been through. We can return it if you don't like it, if you're still mad at me or whatever, but please let me show you. It's a surprise. It should be at the farm. Would you at least let me show you? Please?”

Joe followed Lisa's Mercedes to their farm, and she stopped near the barn, blocking the driveway. He switched off the Jeep's engine, and she came to his door. He rolled down the window.

“It should be in the stall,” she said. “They were supposed to deliver it this morning. Trooper Harold helped me pick it out. Please just think about it before you say no. Maybe sleep on it. I understand you're angry, but I so want you to have this. If you're pissed about the money, I'll pay every dime myself, whether or not we ever see any Wound Velvet cash.”

“In the barn?”

“Yeah. I'll wait here.”

“Okay,” he said. He was looking through the windshield, not at her.

“Are you still cross with me?” she asked.

He didn't answer. He left and shouldered the barn's painted oak door open and disappeared into the entrance, and she didn't hear anything and she couldn't see him, and then nothing happened, and plenty of time had passed, so she moved closer, walked to the fence and cocked her ear. She leaned over the top board, trying to spot him. Sadie trotted toward her from the bottom of the pasture, expecting grain or an apple slice. “Joe? Are you all right?”

A few minutes later, he walked to the gate, unlatched it and swung it open. He returned to the barn, and she heard the engine fire, louder than she thought it would be, and the noise spooked the horse, caused the mare to pivot and tear off across the pasture, snorting as she went, all four hooves in the air when she bucked. The cats fled, too, heading
for the azalea bushes beside the porch. Joe was wearing his suit and polished black cowboy boots, and he drove the motorcycle through the breezeway and out of the gate. He never acknowledged her, and she watched him drive off, heard him accelerate. Before she lost sight of him, the throttle hesitated, and the bike wobbled. He put down a boot to keep from wrecking. She shut the gate so Sadie wouldn't get loose.

It seemed like he was gone for a long while, but when she heard the engine again, the sound approaching and gaining strength, she checked her watch, and it had been only ten minutes or so. She met him on the gravel driveway. He kept the engine idling, and locked his legs to balance the motorcycle.

“It's a Harley Heritage Softail,” she explained. “Blue pearl and black. Classic lines and not too much too soon, as Harold put it. It really is beautiful.”

Joe had on a helmet, a real biker's helmet, with colors that matched the motorcycle. He flipped the visor up.

“Do you like it? Harold said it was similar to yours, how you use the clutch and everything, so you should be able to learn it pretty quick. You already have a license—might as well take advantage of it.”

“It's impressive. So are the ZZ Top tickets. Third row. I'm sure they cost a pretty penny.”

“Well?” she asked.

“Driving over here from the office, I did some thinking,” Joe said, talking more to himself than to her. “Fucking Lettie left me high and dry. Intentional or not, she damn near ruined me. After all I've done for her. So why exactly should I do her any favors?”

“You're preaching to the choir,” Lisa told him.

“How much did this thing cost?”

“Around seventeen.”

“Then, yeah, I'm keeping it. Thank you. We'll put it on Lettie's tab. It'll soon be a drop in the bucket for her. I'll consider it my executor's fee, over and above our forty percent of the Wound Velvet profits. And I've certainly earned it—twenty years of free advice and free work's worth far more than a motorcycle. All her bullshit aggravation. But we'll pay for the concert tickets ourselves.”

Lisa allowed herself to hint at a smile.

“Get on,” he said.

“I look a mess. I've been crying. And I don't have a helmet.”

Joe patted the seat behind him, popping it twice. “Run down and get my old helmet. You can be the Great Gazoo for a change.”

“Are you sure you can drive it with both of us riding?”

“I guess we'll find out. I've got ten minutes of practice under my belt, so what's the problem?”

She went to the basement and came back with the helmet and strapped it on. It was too big, didn't fit, slid down to her eyebrows and banged against her ears. It smelled of sweat and gasoline.

“Get on,” he said again.

“Where're we going?”

“Toward the parkway. Beyond that, I have no fucking clue. We deserve a vacation. Might be a day, might be a month. Millionaires can do that.”

She almost protested that she didn't have any clothes, and the house wasn't locked, and who would feed the horse and the cats, but she immediately thought better of it, and she straddled the seat and held him around the waist, ready for her first motorcycle ride.

He looped them through the yard and steered them toward the main road, and they left the farm, a couple dips and weaves on the gravel drive, and they almost spilled over completely when they hit the washboard bumps near the broom-straw field, nearly wrecked, but they soon got the hang of it, and Joe accelerated through the gears, took them smoothly up to speed on the blacktop, and she rested her chin on his shoulder and laughed, the wind whipping her face, a small tattoo on her upper arm, this one genuine, a secret she'd hidden in Lloyd Burnette's temporary dragon, permanent and inked into her forever, a bright red heart with a black outline and a single word in its center:
JOE
.