Magic Hour by Susan Isaacs (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📕

“Now, I want to hear what actually happened, right from the beginning. Every detail, from the minute you first spoke to Sy or laid eyes on him again. Unless you’d been in touch with him all the years since the divorce.”

“No.”

“Okay, but first, I want to clear up something.”

“You mean about—”

“No.”

But she couldn’t let it be. “Gideon called. He told me you have no recollection that you and I…that you and I had met.”

“Look, I don’t have time for that now.” I was detached.

Professional. “What I want to clear up is your last lie.”

“You make it sound like it’s the last of a hundred thousand.”

“It is, give or take a few.”

MAGIC HOUR / 269

“If I’m such a liar, why would I tell the truth now, when the police are closing in on me?”

“Because you’re desperate.”

“Well,” she said, in that trembling voice, “I guess I am.”

She dropped her head and stared down at her hands, folded on her lap. She had beautiful, long-fingered hands, with nice, no-polish oval nails, hands you would see in commercials for hand lotion.

“Okay, why did you make up the story about the eight hundred eighty bucks we found in your boot?”

“That was the truth.”

“Bonnie, understand one thing. You shit me, you’re out of here.”

“Please, call him again.” I shook my head. “Try to understand,” she pleaded. “Vincent Kelleher is a very nervous, not-too-successful businessman who sells pot holders that look like armadillos, and size fifty-four sweatsuits in pink, aqua or lilac with appliqués. All of a sudden, this nebbish gets a long-distance phone call from a detective asking him about money he slipped me off the books. An illegal payment. He was always nervous about doing it, and when you called, he must have been convinced Eliot Ness and the tax squad would swoop down and arrest him.”

“You’re good, Bonnie. Really good.”

“No. If I were that good, you would have believed the lies I did tell. I wouldn’t be in this mess now. Please, call Vincent Kelleher.”

But just then my pager squeaked: “Brady call Carbone ASAP.” I told her not to move, and I hurried across the house, into my bedroom, and closed the door.

Carbone asked where I was, and I told him I’d gone home after sixty hours of being on, because I was wiped, and sick of the shit he and Shea had handed me, but did he want me in for another Breathalyzer test, to make sure I wasn’t sitting around

270 / SUSAN ISAACS

with a bottle of Canadian Club and a straw? He said, Look, maybe we were too hasty, and Robby, not being a drinking man, might have misread some of the signs and…And what?

I demanded. There’s no sign of Bonnie Spencer, he said. Is Robby hysterical? I asked. Yes, and so is Shea, and if you think the commissioner isn’t shitting a brick, then you’re not thinking. Hey, Ray, everybody should calm down. It’s six-thirty. The cool of the evening is upon us. Maybe she’s down at the beach. Maybe she’s having dinner with a friend. Tell everybody to relax. Have a drink—on me. Look, you want me to check around? He said, Maybe that would be a good idea. Okay, I said, I’ll surveil her place until you can get someone else over there, then I’ll check around, make a few calls. Just do me a favor. Page Robby. Get him the hell away from her house, because if I see him, I swear to God I’ll kill him. Carbone said all right. He was about to hang up when I inquired: They finish my pee and blood workup yet? You’re okay, Steve. Thanks. Be reasonable, he said. We’ve got an anxiety-provoking situation here. A lot of pressure. Sometimes people make errors in judgment. I asked him if Shea realized he had made an error in judgment, or would I have to piss into a Dixie cup every day? Carbone, being patient, said, Shea knows the results of the tests, and he’s not a stupid man. But let’s face it: the two of you don’t have a natural affinity. He let you back on the squad because he needed you, not because he liked you or trusted you, which I guess isn’t news. Not by a long shot, I said. Carbone said, So do yourself a favor, Detective Brady. Earn a gold star. Bring in Bonnie Spencer.

The engine on Robby’s car was running as I drove up to Bonnie’s, and when I pulled over beside him, he flung the arrest warrant into my car and peeled out—

MAGIC HOUR / 271

as fast as an Olds Cutlass can peel—before he had to look me in the eye or hear what I had to say. He knew what it was, though: I was going to get him. And I knew what his response would be: Not if I get you first.

A few minutes later, two Southampton Town P.D. squad cars pulled up. They were supposed to hang around until someone from Suffolk County Homicide came to relieve them, so I handed them the warrant to pass along and told them I was just going to check out the house one more time.

I slipped on a pair of rubber gloves carefully, ostentatiously, as if getting ready to perform neurosurgery, and went in.

Five minutes later I came out with some of Bonnie’s underwear and a T-shirt folded flat in one pocket, along with her toothbrush, and a Ziploc with Purina Dog Chow in the other. I swung two evidence bags with a pair of sneakers and a hairbrush as I walked down the front path, then gave a mock salute to the Southampton cops before I drove off.

Some blithe spirit. My hands were clammy, my stomach churning. Not for any rational reason, like I knew I was destroying my entire professional and personal life, to say nothing of risking two years in the can for hindering prosecution by rendering criminal