Free Thorazine Beach by Bradley Harris Page B

need to know whatever it is you know, if I’m going to do anything.”
    She sighed. “There’s been a good deal of money about the house, lately.”
    “What does your husband do?”
    “He’s in real estate development,” she said. “Federman Properties. He owns it now” I knew the company. A few strip mall units—you’d see their signs here and there. Some properties they owned, some they just brokered. Big enough business for a guy to make a hell of a good living. But not
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
.
    “And what—I presume there’s
something
you haven’t told me yet—is this thing he’s ‘implicated’ in.”
    “As I said, Jack, there’s been a good deal of money about the house.”
    “By which you mean…”
    “Cash,” she said behind a sip from her cup.
    “And by ‘cash’ you mean…?”
    Straight out, without a blink: “Briefcases full.”
    “Hmm,” I said. “Like, enough to get you to Barbados and back?”
    “Enough to get you to the moon and back.”
    “Does he know you know?”
    She shrugged. “Things haven’t been…” A bit of the old Barbara Jean came back, the Southern woman ever in search of a discreet way to put things. “There are inevitable strains in a marriage.” A deliberated pause. “You understand, Jack, I think, hmm?”
    Jab. “Yeah, I do.”
    “I’m sorry, Jack. Forgive me, but…whatever did happen between you and … Lynette?”
    I wasn’t willing to play. “Inevitable strains,” I said. “Now, the million-dollar question. What’s with the girls?”
    “Clayton started a second business,” she said.
    “Import-export?”
    Her face said she didn’t appreciate the sarcastic edge. “It was nannies at first,” she said. “Au pair girls, that sort of thing.”
    “At first…” I prodded.
    “Then I began to suspect…well, you’ve seen the pictures.”
    “Yes. And where did you see them?”
    “In one of the…briefcases.”
    “You mean, actual
briefcases
full of…?”
    “Yes,” she said, and looked right at me. “Clayton has a built-in gun cabinet—I don’t even know the combination. He likes target shooting, hunting, that sort of—”
    “Thing, yes. And—”
    “And one day he’d left…well, it was open, and—”
    “You looked.”
    “It was wide open, and there was one of the guns missing and, well, I thought it was so odd to find a briefcase in…so naturally I…I looked.”
    “You didn’t ask him?”
    “Well, as I said, there’s a certain…
stress
…in
any
marriage.”
    “And a little more now,” I said.
    More Kleenex. “I love my husband,” she said. “Notwithstanding…”
    “Of course,” I said. It sounded like token sympathy, even to me. “And you want…”
    “I want to know,” she said, plucking up some nerve and quickly losing it. “And I want this to be over.”
    Barbara Jean gathered the pics, returned them to the folder, the folder to her case. “You are,” she said, “trustworthy, are you not?”
    She wanted an answer. I didn’t give it.
    “Mr. Minyard,” she said—where did
that
come from? “I’ve come to expect a certain degree of loyalty…” I closed my eyes. The words sounded like Isaac Breitzen in lipstick.
    She looked at me. I looked back, not quite knowing what my face said.
    Her face relaxed—a bit deliberately, I thought—then took on a touch of Southern coquette. “I’m sorry, Jack, it’s all so…” She looked away. Lip. Eyes down. Kleenex yet again.
    I admit: I’m a sucker for certain things, certain images. Mike Hammer, Spenser—
they
can be tough, bar-bourbon, unfiltered. Me, as a detective—I’m totally decaf and whipped cream. I leaned in and touched her arm. “No. Barbara Jean…
I’m
sorry.”
    “Let’s go outside a minute,” she said. We did, sat at one of the tables under a green umbrella that cast no meaningful shade, and if anything added to the heat. I’d never seen Barbara Jean smoke. But she pulled out a package of Nat Sherman’s—black,