The Pact (17 page)

“In a way,” Peter confessed, “I wasn’t surprised when you told me this morning that Richard was dead. It was as if I somehow always knew he’d come to a bad end. I just wish that there had been a way to make things turn out differently.”

“There’s nothing you could have done,” I said. Reassuring words seemed called for.

He shrugged again. “I know that, on a rational level. Still, I feel like I had some sort of responsibility to him. That I messed up somehow.” I knew exactly how he felt. I’d long since realized how fortunate I was to have such a close-knit group of friends. The loyalty we’d pledged to each other was more than idle words or a rush of ephemeral emotion. If anything were to happen to any one of them, I knew I would be asking myself the same questions.

I looked at Peter. His brown eyes were pointed toward shore, but his gaze was unfocused, as if he were deep in thought.

I reached over and put my hand on his arm. “There’s nothing you could have done,” I said again, this time more forcefully.

He turned to me. “I hope you’re right.”

“I know I’m right.” Our eyes locked for a long moment. I realized that I was holding my breath. His head drew a tiny bit closer and I was painfully conscious of the touch of his skin under my hand.

“Thank you,” he said.

I shook off the moment, suddenly scared, and drew back, my heart beating rapidly. “You won’t be thanking me when I beat you to shore.” I quickly jumped to my feet and dove back into the water, not turning to see if he was behind me.

“Chicken,” I said to myself as I raced through the water. “Goose, wimp, wuss. Chicken.”

P
eter and I tied each other in the race to shore, but as we dried off our conversation felt stilted and awkward, as if we’d come close to a precipice and backed away. He put on his T-shirt and I knotted my sarong tightly around my waist, and we proceeded together up the path to the house. The entire way, I cursed myself for having succumbed to skittishness and let such an exquisite moment pass. Maybe to have let things go any further would have been to take advantage of Peter’s tenuous emotional state, but he had seemed willing to be taken advantage of. I sighed. If he hadn’t realized what a freak I was before, that fact had to be blatantly obvious now.

We didn’t run into anyone as we passed through the kitchen door and headed up the back stairs. We parted ways on the second floor. We both wanted to shower, and Peter said he had some more calls to make for work. His diligence made me remember, somewhat reluctantly, my own responsibilities. I made a mental note to check Mr. Furlong’s fax machine for the papers from Stan after I’d showered and changed.

I was halfway to Emma’s room and Peter had already mounted the first few stairs to the third floor when he stopped and turned. “Rachel,” he called.

“Hmmm?” I answered, retracing my steps.

“Thank you. For what you said out there. You made me feel a lot better.” The slight smile on his face was almost shy.

“Of course,” I answered, embarrassed. I headed back down the hallway before he could see me beginning to blush all over again.

Emma’s door was slightly ajar, and as I approached I heard a male voice within.

“Look, Emma, you know what you have to do.” It was Matthew, I realized.

“I can’t. You know I can’t. How can you even ask me to? You, of all people, should understand.”

“Well, maybe I should do it.”

“No! Promise me you won’t. Matthew, you can’t.”

I heard him sigh. “I promise. But just for now, Emma.”

I reversed a few paces, coughed loudly, and burst through the door with as innocent a smile as I could muster plastered on my face. “Hello,” I said brightly.

Emma was sitting on her bed wearing a thick Irish fisherman’s sweater, much like the one she’d given me. Her knees were pulled up to her chest as she leaned against the headboard. Matthew was perched on the windowsill.

“Hi, Rach,” said Emma.

“How was your swim?” asked Matthew.

“Chilly,” I answered.

“In a good way?” asked Emma.

“No, in a cold way. But it was a nice break.”

“Speaking of breaks,” said Matthew, pushing himself off the sill, “I should get back downstairs and see if the police are done with Jane yet and if they’re ready for you, Emma. It’d be good to get your interview over with so that they can leave already. I’ll be back in a minute.” He slipped through the door, and I shut it after him. Emma remained on her bed, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes downcast.

I started to sit down next to her, then remembered that my swimsuit was still wet. I took the place that Matthew had vacated on the windowsill instead. I wanted to confront her with what I’d heard—with all the questions I had—but she hadn’t been willing to tell me anything earlier. Still, one way or another, I was determined to get to the bottom of everything. I couldn’t help unless I had more information, and I couldn’t get any information if Emma kept hoarding her secrets.

“So, how are you feeling?” I asked, easing into conversation.

“Spacey,” she said. “I don’t know what was in the pill my mother gave me, but I still feel as if I’m in a cocoon of some sort.” I watched as she toyed with her engagement ring, a ruby surrounded by diamonds in an antique platinum setting. “I hear I missed quite a scene at lunch today,” she continued. “My mother sounds to have been in rare form. Grandmother Schuyler would be scandalized. I don’t think she’d approve much of a hostess suggesting that her guests are murderers.”

I guessed that Matthew had recounted the lunchtime conversation for Emma. “Your mother was—well, I think she’s had an upsetting day,” I said, as delicately as I could. It’s one thing for someone to mock her own mother, however affectionately. It’s an entirely different thing for somebody else to concur, much less to point out that she’d consumed an entire bottle of wine unaided, no matter how much pressure the poor woman was under.

Emma gave a soft laugh. “Very tactful, my dear.”

“Thank you. Grandma Benjamin didn’t speak much English, but what she did say was always extremely polite. I try to do her memory proud.”

“I bet they would have liked each other.”

“Who? Our grandmothers?” I tried to picture it. Arianna Schuyler had been an icon of style in her time, with blood so blue it was practically royal. Grandma Benjamin, on the other hand, had been a Russian Jewish émigré. But she had been formidable in her own way. “You’re probably right,” I said, after I’d thought it over. “Although, I have a hard time imagining them gossiping over lunch at La Côte Basque.”

“And what fabulous gossip today’s events would be.” She chuckled. “Poor Richard. He’ll end up getting more press by dying than he could have ever hoped for alive.” Her voice didn’t indicate even the slightest bit of grief or anguish.

“You must be…” I hesitated, searching for the right words. She interrupted before I could find them.

“Relieved?”

“Emma! That’s not what I was going to say.”

“It’s all right, Rachel. I am. Relieved. I mean, I’m sorry it all had to turn out this way, but I can’t say I’m sorry that I’m not ever going to be Mrs. Richard Mallory.”

This was the opening I’d been looking for and I seized it. “If you felt that way, Em, then what was this all about? Why were you marrying him? Please, Emma. If you tell me, then maybe I can help in some way.”

She sighed. “Look, I told you before. I can’t tell you. Even if I could, it’s too complicated even to begin to explain. And, given the circumstances, it’s probably not wise. People would think that I did the evil deed myself.” I realized with a vague shock that I was glad to hear her say that. On some level, I had been scared to find out that she had, in fact, been guilty in some way of Richard’s death. Her words, while cynical, seemed to point to her innocence. I fought the urge to ask her directly about the late-night rendezvous Peter had mentioned.

“Will you at least tell me what you think happened?” I asked instead. She replied with equal bluntness.

“I think somebody put something in his drink that knocked him out, and then, when he was unconscious, pushed him into the pool. I mean, even if you weren’t very strong you could probably push him or roll him over the side into the water.”

It chilled me anew to think that she’d already thought this through. Especially when, as far as I knew, she’d been the last person to see Richard alive.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued, as if she were reading my mind. “I didn’t do it. I was ready to go through with the whole wedding, no matter how horrifying it would have been.” She gave a small shudder.

“But even more horrifying,” she went on, “is that here I am, surrounded by the people I love most, and somebody had the guts to do what I never could have. And whoever it was did it for me.”

“Em, you must realize you’re not responsible for this. For Richard being dead.”

She shrugged. “Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that, on one level or another, I am. If I’d been smart enough to stay away from him in the first place and to see through all the initial romance and excitement of it, he would have never gotten close to us and none of this ever would have happened. I wouldn’t have had to put anybody through all of this.”

I thought about the romance and excitement. Emma had always had a weakness for men who were aggressively social and ambitious, men who were interested in her for all the wrong reasons. On some level, I guessed that she was trying to live up to what she felt her parents expected—that her own life be as high-profile and glamorous as their own. But, even if the initial attraction had been there early on and could be easily understood, I was still confused about why she’d continued the relationship once she’d gotten a clear sense of what Richard was all about.

The frustration of not knowing was making me crazy. It was all too cryptic for me. I dealt with numbers and facts, earnings releases and stock prices. The nuances of human emotion—well, if I had that figured out, surely I would have a more fulfilling love life at the very least. Emma’s stated desire not to tell me what had been behind the entire fiasco only rendered me insatiably curious. I’d held my tongue for so long, and now I’d had the barest glimpse of the surface of the truth. Surely I had a right to know, after everything that had transpired, what it was that Richard had held over her to force her into a union of which she so clearly wanted no part.

I gazed out the window, trying to figure out how I could get Emma to open up. It was after four, and although it would stay light out until well past eight, the sun was beginning its slow descent, casting a golden sheen on the lake and gilding the tops of the pine trees that fringed the shoreline. It would have been a beautiful wedding, at least aesthetically, if it had been actually taking place. I imagined us all here in Emma’s room, helping to zip up each other’s dresses and going through the requisite oohing and aahing over Emma’s gown from Vera Wang.

Emma seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “You know, the funny thing is, I would have preferred a really small wedding. Just family and close friends and a string quartet playing Mozart and Vivaldi. Up here, of course, just minus a few hundred guests. No three-ring circus with tents and bands and caterers galore. Just us.” Emma looked past me, through the window and out toward the lake as if she were picturing the scene she’d described.

“I sort of always thought that’s the way it would be, too,” I answered. I didn’t say that I’d also always thought that it would be Matthew waiting for her at the end of the aisle.

“And instead, here I am, a widow, before I’ve even been married.” She giggled. “Do you think I have to return all the gifts?”

“I don’t know. Surely there’s a chapter in Emily Post that tells you how to handle such a situation?”

“Yikes. I don’t think even Emily ever contemplated a chain of events quite like this.”

“Interesting. There’s probably a real market opportunity here.”

“Etiquette for unthinkable events?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Maybe we should put together a book proposal. I have some connections in the publishing industry. I could make a few calls and hook us up with a deal.”

“We’d be on the bestseller list in no time.”

“Not to mention the talk show circuit. Too bad Oprah cancelled her book club. Maybe she’ll resurrect it, just for us.”

“I think she usually stuck to fiction, but who knows? Maybe she’d take a look.”

“Hmmm. I wonder what I should wear?”

“For our appearance on
Oprah
?”

“Yes.”

“I’m thinking casual but chic.”

“That’s probably a good call. There’ll probably be a lot of ancillary revenue opportunities, too. Product endorsements, American Express ads, the works. Remind me to send in my resignation to Winslow, Brown on Monday.”

Emma laughed. “What about dismantling the establishment from within? How are you going to do that if you’re no longer an employee?”

“Good point. Do you think we could maybe work on the book in our spare time?”

“Like you have any. I’m surprised they let you out for an entire weekend.”

“Drat,” I said, thinking again about Stan’s fax.

“What?”

“There’s something I need to take care of for work. It seems to keep slipping my mind.”

“Maybe your mind’s trying to tell you something. After all, there’s no such thing as an accident.”

I started to laugh at her words but stopped before I’d started. If only the police didn’t feel the same way. Emma must have been thinking the same thing, because she was suddenly silent. Her fingers went back to their nervous fiddling with her ring, and she pressed her lips together in a tight line. I knew her well enough to recognize that she was trying not to cry.

“Okay, Emma. What the hell is going on?” I asked, throwing tact and subtlety to the wind for yet another try. “I heard you two just now. What do you have to do? What was Matthew talking about?”

“Oh, Rachel, it was nothing,” she protested. “Really.” But she kept her gaze resolutely fixed on her hands.

“Come on, Em. You’re a rotten liar. I know that’s not true. There’s something important you’re not telling me about you and Richard. You know, I heard you last night, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“You and your father. Arguing on the porch at the club. He was practically begging you not to go through with the wedding.”

“You heard that?” She finally raised her eyes to meet mine.

“Yes. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“I know you didn’t. You wouldn’t do that.”

“Come on, Em. Tell me, already. There must be something I can do to help.”

“I can’t tell you, Rachel. I told you that before, and I mean it. You just have to trust me on this.” She managed to sound both sad and exasperated at the same time.