Chapter Twenty-Four
ABOUT A WEEK after his run-in with John Burnley, Ted is home with Jill in the evening in their beloved brownstone.
It’s Wednesday, and the house is clean and smells faintly of furniture polish.
Since he’s not working, Ted has taken to going out on Wednesdays so that he’s not home when the cleaning lady is there.
Today he was at meetings he’d set up with various people about things he might get involved in.
Nothing really grabbed him. He’ll keep looking.
There’s no rush to find himself something to do.
He’s quite enjoying himself. Reading. Learning more about art, so that he can keep up with his cultured, brainy wife. Learning about French real estate.
They’re in the front room, their favourite room in the house, sitting on the sofa together, sipping wine before dinner. Jill asks, ‘So how did your meetings go today?’
‘All right, I guess. Nothing I really want to dive into, to be honest.’ She cocks her head at him, and he asks, ‘What?’
‘Nothing. I just thought you were eager to find something to do.’
‘Not really. What’s the rush? I’ve got the rest of my life to figure out what I want to do. Maybe I’ll do something entirely different.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know.’
After a pause, she says, ‘Maybe you could arrange the memorial? People keep asking.’
He takes a deep breath, lets it out. ‘Yes, I know. I’ll tackle that, I promise. Tomorrow I’ll make some calls. Maybe I can just hire someone to organize the whole thing.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ she answers, thumbing idly through a magazine. ‘It would be good to get it over with.’
He wonders if she knows how much he’s dreading it. Ted hears his cell phone ping. He reaches for it on the coffee table and looks at the screen. It’s a text, from a number he doesn’t recognize. And it says: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
It sends a jolt through his body. He stares at his phone, telling himself that it’s just a prank.
‘What is it?’ Jill asks.
‘Just a prank,’ he says, frowning.
‘Let me see,’ she says, leaning in to look at his phone.
He watches her face turn pale.
‘Who is that?’ she asks, alarmed.
‘I don’t know. I don’t recognize the number.
’ He sees the fear on her face and knows that he must reassure her.
‘There’s no way anyone can know anything,’ he says calmly.
‘Seriously, how could anyone know anything? This is just somebody trying to get a rise out of us. Probably a journalist trying to rattle us, because we refuse to be interviewed, that’s all.
How can it be anything else?’ She stares at him, and he can see her chest rising and falling as she breathes rapidly, shallowly.
‘What should we do?’ she asks.
‘We’re not going to do anything,’ he says. ‘We’re going to ignore it.’
‘How did they get your number?’
That’s a good question. But of course, lots of people know his number. Which means … this text might have come not from some stranger, but from someone who knows him. Someone using a different number, one he doesn’t recognize. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s not that hard.’
‘I don’t like it,’ she says.
‘I don’t like it either,’ he agrees, ‘but I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.’ Even so, they are both tense, waiting for the ping of another message.
‘Isn’t there some way we can find out who sent it?’ she presses.
‘I don’t know,’ he admits. ‘I think we should ignore it.’ He leans back beside her against the sofa. ‘I think it’s important that we don’t answer, that we don’t engage.’ He scoffs, ‘Nobody knows what we did. How can they? We were the only ones there, Jill. Nobody saw us push him off the boat.’
‘I know,’ she says, but her voice lacks conviction.
‘There’s no evidence. There can never be any evidence. We got away with it. All that’s left is for us to enjoy the money.’ Then he has a sudden thought and goes perfectly still. ‘I think I know who it might be.’
‘Who?’
‘There’s this man I know. His name is John Burnley.’ He wonders now how much he should tell her. He doesn’t want to worry her. He pauses.
‘Who the hell is he, Ted?’ she demands.
‘Someone I worked with, a long time ago. When I was selling securities on Wall Street, in my early twenties.’ His wineglass is empty.
He gets up, walks over to the sideboard, and pours himself a generous scotch.
With his back to her, he says, ‘He showed up at my office, after Greg died, when the talk started about the inheritance.’ He turns to face her then.
Takes a measure of whiskey, feels it burn.
‘He wanted to offer me a business opportunity.’
‘A business opportunity,’ she repeats.
‘Remember when the attorneys warned us about people coming out of the woodwork when we came into the money?’ She nods. ‘Well, he’s one of those. He heard what happened and showed up at my office. I was civil, but I told him I wasn’t interested.’
‘And?’
He hesitates, then answers. ‘And I googled him after he left. Found out that he’d done time in prison for fraud. He was always a sharp one, played fast and loose with the rules. No ethics. He’s somebody to stay away from.’
‘So you think he might be doing this – threatening us? Because you turned him down?’
‘Maybe. He doesn’t like to be told no.’
Now she looks nervous. ‘We don’t want some criminal bothering us, Ted,’ she says. ‘Who knows what he might do?’
He decides not to tell her the rest. How John had recently approached him at the pond in Central Park.
His sly insinuations. His veiled threats.
His crocodile smile. But the more Ted thinks about it, the more certain he is that John sent that text.
Well, fuck him. He’s not going to play this game. John Burnley has nothing on him.
‘We have nothing to be afraid of,’ he says to Jill firmly.
‘He’s just a bullshitter. He’s not dangerous.
He’s not violent. I bet he’s just trying this on, wants to make us nervous.
’ He takes another drink. ‘He’ll probably ask for money to get him to leave us alone.
That’s what he wants.’ He comes over and sits down beside her again.
‘But it’s not going to work, because we have nothing to be afraid of.
He can’t know anything about what happened on that boat.
So we just sit tight and ignore him. He’ll go away.
’ He reaches for her and pulls her into a hug, kisses the soft hair on the top of her head.
‘What if he doesn’t?’ she whispers.
‘Then I’ll go to the police and tell them he’s harassing us.’
He’s not going to give in to idle threats. Ted has killed a man. He’s got more guts than he ever knew.