Chapter Three
Beatrice Tanner’s office was on the twenty-third floor of a glass tower in Century City.
She was maybe fifty-five, silver hair cut blunt at the jaw, reading glasses pushed up on her head. Nick had called her at seven in the morning, and she’d made room for me by ten, which told me something about either Nick or my situation, and probably both.
“Nick says you have a video,” she said. “Nick Quinn produces cartoons, so his idea of explosive and my idea of explosive tend to differ. Show me.”
Beatrice watched the whole thing without a word. She took notes on a yellow legal pad in handwriting I couldn’t read upside down. When Karl and Dara’s clothes started coming off, she said, “You can skip ahead,” and I did, and she watched the end, where Karl straightened my drawing on the table.
“All right,” she said. “It’s explosive.”
“So, we take it to the police?” I asked. Because what else were we supposed to do with it?
“Eventually. Not today.” She pulled her glasses down onto her nose and looked at me over them.
“Mrs. Barber, here’s what that video is.
It’s two people discussing an affair, a plan, and a crime, in a recording you made in your own home, in your own studio, with your own visible camera.
Here’s what that video is not. It’s not proof there’s poison in your body.
It’s not proof of what the poison is, where it came from, who bought it, or who put it where.
A good defense lawyer watches that video and says people vent ugly fantasies about their spouses all the time, that your labs are normal, and your own doctor will testify you’re a stressed, sick, fragile woman. You see the problem.”
“My doctor is her brother.”
“Which is either the conspiracy of the decade or a very ordinary fact about a woman whose best friend recommended her a physician. It cuts both ways until we make it cut one way.” She flipped to a new page.
“The video gives us the map. Now we collect the territory. Medical proof from an independent doctor. The contaminated products themselves, tested by a real lab, with a chain of custody that doesn’t run through your kitchen.
Their access, their motive, their intent, in writing where possible.
When we hand this to law enforcement, I want it to be bullet-proof.
If we hand it over early, we hand them time to prepare, and they’ve had two years of preparing. ”
“An independent doctor. How do I see one without Dara knowing? She books everything. She’d know before the receptionist did.”
“You don’t book it. I do.” Beatrice made a note. “I know a physician. Gillian Parks. She’s careful, she documents, and she’s testified before, which matters more than you’d think, because a doctor who folds on the stand is worse than no doctor. When it’s arranged, you’ll hear through Nick.”
“And in the meantime, I’m still sick. Whatever’s already in me is in me.”
“In the meantime, you stop taking in more, which you started last night, and you kept all that to yourself, which is the smartest thing you could have done.” She pointed her pen at me.
“That’s not flattery. Most people in your chair confront.
They stand in the kitchen and scream the truth because the truth feels like a weapon, and it is one, but only if you don’t hand it over before it’s loaded.
You didn’t confront. Hold on to whatever got you so far, because I’m going to need more of it. ”
“Two years,” I said. “She’s been dosing my tea and holding my hair back when I throw it up.” I shivered.
Beatrice looked at me for a moment, and her face moved from lawyer to human being.
“You’ll get to feel all of that,” she said. “I promise you’ll get to feel it. But not this week. This week, you’re going to be the best-behaved sick woman in Los Angeles. Can you go home and act normal?”
“I did it this morning. I ate breakfast across from both of them.” I heard my own voice go flat. “Karl kissed my head. Dara reminded me about my supplements. I said thank you.”
“Good. That’s the job. Say thank you, take the supplements to your room, and don’t swallow a single one.
Don’t change your patterns. Don’t get healthier too fast, don’t confront, don’t hint, and God help you, do not tell one soul who isn’t me or Nick Quinn.
” She wrote something and turned the pad toward me.
It was a phone number. “Memorize it. That’s my direct line.
Not in your contacts. Nothing about me in that phone at all, do you understand?
Assume Dara reads it, because I’d bet this office she does.
And keep the video somewhere you are absolutely sure they can’t access. And make copies.”
I memorized the number. It went in easy. The last twelve hours had made every survival detail go in easy.
“One more thing before you go.” Beatrice folded her hands.
“Money buys speed, Mrs. Barber, and you have money, but right now most of it lives in accounts your husband can see. I’ll send instructions through Nick for a retainer that won’t show.
Meanwhile, the most valuable thing you own is your behavior.
They believe you’re stupid. Kindly continue. ”
Going home was its own kind of work.
I came in through the kitchen, and Dara looked up from her tablet at the counter with my afternoon schedule already open, and I smiled at her. The smile took real work.
“There you are,” she said. “Where’d you disappear to? You missed lunch.”
“Drove to the framer in Santa Monica. I wanted to look at and order a few things.” That part was even true. I’d stopped there for a quarter of an hour on the way back but didn’t really buy anything. “Then I sat by the water for a while. I needed air.”
“You should’ve told me. I would’ve cleared the afternoon properly.” She was already typing. “You look pale, Mills.”
“I’m always pale. It’s the freckle base coat.”
“Eat something. I’ll make your tea.”
“I’d love that,” I said.
She made the tea. She made it right in front of me, kettle, strainer, the amber jar of loose blend she kept refilled for me, her rings clicking against the glass, telling me about a scheduling conflict with the merchandise approval call, and I watched her hands and thought…
which part of it was it? The leaves, the honey, something else?
“You want it up in the studio or are you actually going to rest for once?”
“Bath, I think. My legs are killing me.”
“Take it with you, then. And drink it while it’s hot, it settles your stomach better.
” She pressed the warm mug into my hands, both of hers wrapped around both of mine, and looked at me with thirty years of friendship on her face.
“Hey. You’d tell me if something was really wrong, right? Beyond the tired.”
“You’d know before I did,” I said. “You always do.”
“That’s true. I’d have it in the calendar.” She squeezed my hands and let go.
I carried the mug upstairs, told her I’d drink it in the bath, and poured it into a thermos I’d bought that morning, then hid the thermos in my closet inside a high boot. Evidence. Sealed, dated with a strip of paper tape.
At dinner, Karl performed concern. There was no other word for what it was, now that I’d seen the wires.
“You drove yourself to Santa Monica,” he said. “Alone.”
“To a framer, Karl. Not across a desert.”
“Last month, you nearly fainted in the studio. I’d feel better if Dara drove you, that’s all. Or a car service. We can afford a car service, in case you haven’t checked the accounts lately.” He smiled at his own joke and refilled Dara’s wine, then his own. “How was the water?”
“Cold-looking. I sat in the car.”
“See, that’s what worries me. You drive an hour to sit in a parked car.
” He shook his head at his plate. “I told the licensing group today that we might slow the approval calendar this quarter. Before you object, I framed it as brand discipline, not health. Nobody knows anything. But I’d rather move three deadlines than watch you hollow yourself out over pencil tins. ”
“You told them that without asking me,” I whispered.
“I protected you without bothering you,” Karl said. “That’s the job description, sweetheart. It has been for fifteen years.”
He put his hand over mine on the table, and I looked at his hand and made myself remember it was the same hand that had straightened my drawing after he’d had sex with my best friend and assistant on my working desk. I turned my palm up and squeezed his fingers.
“You take such good care of me,” I said.
“Someone has to,” Karl said. “You’d work yourself into the ground and call it a franchise.”
Dara laughed from across the table.
Bill texted me while we ate: Missed you at follow-up scheduling. Let’s get you in this week. Want to keep an eye on those levels.
I showed the text to Karl like a good, tired wife, and Karl said Bill was right, and from somewhere far back in my own head, I watched all three of them.
I lasted until nine. Then the house got hard to sit in, every one of its beautiful pale rooms full of things they’d said, touched, and planned. I told Karl I wanted a bath. He made a joke about me bathing all day, and I gave him a smile and said hot water soothed my joints. Which wasn’t even a lie.
I locked the bathroom door, I ran the water loud, and sat on the cold tile floor in my clothes. I dialed the number I’d memorized.
Beatrice picked up on the third ring. “Tanner.”
“It’s Millie Barber.” I kept my voice low under the sound of the water.
“I can’t do this. I thought I could. I sat at dinner and passed the salt to people who are murdering me, and I smiled, and I’m good at it, Beatrice, that’s the part I can’t live with.
I’ve apparently been in training for this my whole marriage.
I want to leave. Tonight. I’ll drive to a hotel, and you’ll have everything by morning.
The tea’s already in a thermos. I just, I can’t sleep in that bed next to him again. ”
“Where are you calling from?”
“The bathroom. Water’s running.”
“Good. Now listen to me.” Her voice didn’t speed up at all.
“You can leave. You’re going to leave. But you’re not going to run, because running tells them something’s wrong, and the next thing that happens is a welfare check, a psychiatric hold, and a medical letter from a doctor about paranoid ideation, and then every piece of evidence you gather becomes the ravings they’ll say it is.
If you bolt in the night, you hand them the story they’ve spent two years writing. ”
The water drummed into the tub. On the other side of the door, faintly, I could hear the television. Karl watching the news in our bedroom like an innocent man.
“Then what do I do?”
“You leave in daylight, with their blessing, in a way that serves them,” Beatrice said. “Give them a reason to let you go.”