THIRTEEN

Dalton Mooring’s home was fake antebellum, opulent but without the grace of time. The white brick and pillars were too new, the grounds too crammed with shrubs, the interior, with its porcelain and restored antiques, too clearly decorated. The effect was striking and a little desperate.

I waited in the foyer while the maid went for Mooring. The living room had the glossy heartlessness of new money and no children: silk flowers, deep blue rug, some wire sculpture, a bright abstract painting in a chrome frame. Above the mantel a smoked-glass mirror inverted the room. Here and elsewhere were small signs of drunkenness: a burn hole in the rug, scratches on a doorknob, rings marring the coffee table.

My head and throat ached and my right hand had swollen. I was feeling it for breaks when Mooring appeared, dressed for golf and looking annoyed. Without preliminaries he asked, “What do you want?”

“Ten minutes or so.”

He gave his watch an irritated glance. “I’m due in twenty.”

I hesitated, still shaken, doubtful now that I had come this far. But Mooring’s executive crispness seemed less real than calculated. “Your golf can wait,” I told him. “This can’t.”

He looked me over, taking his time. Then he nodded curtly and led me through the kitchen. His wife sat behind a butcher-block counter sipping a daiquiri. She had circles beneath her eyes and too much lipstick. Her gaze was wary and unsurprised, as if she knew me but had forgotten how.

“Hello,” she breathed, emitting a ragged nimbus of cigarette smoke.

I said hello. Mooring steered me quickly past her, through the family room and down four oak stairs into something unexpected: a greenhouse in the shape of an A-frame, refracting trapped sunlight that made me squint. The room was hot and steamy, its greenery—rubber trees, a ten-foot corn plant, some snake cactus that looked ready to strike—an oppressive jungle of exotica, completed by the babble of a rococo fountain.

Mooring said, “You could have come to my office,” in a low, flat drawl.

I couldn’t square him with the house. He stood by the corn plant about ten feet away, his back to the sun, hands placed on his hips in a pose of impatience. He was trim, though as with slim men in their forties he carried himself carefully around the middle and there was a subtle hardness in the face, a closeness of skin to bone. He had gray eyes set over broad cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and a cleft jaw beneath an angry slash of a mouth whose stamp of drive and temper warred with the vaguely feline look of a cynical diplomat. His overall presence, shrewd and carefully governed, clashed with his surroundings. I guessed there were reasons besides his wife that he didn’t want me here: the place embarrassed him. “You were out,” I answered. “So I came here.”

“Then tell me what’s so important.”

The fountain splashed in an unnerving rhythm. Quietly I said, “Your relationship to Lydia Cantwell.”

His mouth thinned. “If you’re referring to that scene with my wife, I’ll ask you to be gentleman enough to forget it. When she’s not”—he searched for the word—“responsible, she imagines things.”

I realized that Mooring was unsure of what she’d said. “Then why doesn’t she imagine something else?”

His voice lowered and became almost confiding. “Because she’s a jealous woman. Frankly, we started with almost nothing and she feels inadequate next to women like Lydia. It’s an old story, one I’m sure you’ve heard before.”

I paused, wondering when Mooring had begun to speak so well. He had none of the southerner’s studied lapses—the “ain’ts” and “might coulds”—and his diction was clearly acquired. I guessed that he’d outgrown his wife and her decorator long ago. The house had begun to seem like a prison, with the woman its Mrs. Rochester. “I don’t think your wife’s insane,” I said finally. “I have it from other people that you and Mrs. Cantwell were close. If I can put that together, so can the police.”

He folded his arms, frowning as if puzzled. But in his stillness I sensed a subcutaneous tension. The conversation had begun oddly enough without my feeling that there was a wordless second conversation stranger than the first: that something he expected me to know kept him from inviting me out. “I’m a little unclear,” he probed, “as to what your interest is in this.”

“Roland Cade and I represent Henry Cantwell.”

Mooring’s face closed against me. “What are you after?” he said coldly. “A boyfriend?”

For a moment it threw me off. But his challenge seemed hollow and too late. “If you think I should be.”

“I don’t think anything. My ‘relationship’ to Lydia, as you put it, was confined to work we did jointly for the symphony. Jason saw us drinking tea. Whatever else he saw exists only in the mind of a confused and unhappy young man.”

“Yeah, I was curious about how that happened—the symphony work, I mean.”

“Lydia asked me.” His voice turned almost bored. “She was our largest stockholder. I’ve known her almost since I began at Maddox.”

“When was that?”

“About nineteen fifty-two.” He looked straight at me. “Please understand, Shaw, I’m sick about what happened. But I’m in no position to help you or the police.”

His voice had thickened. I kept sensing a split in him, a choked undercurrent of real feeling channeled as artifice. “You can’t be sure,” I answered. “For example, when was the last time you saw her?”

His eyes flickered toward the kitchen. “What makes that of interest?”

“Several things. Time of death, for instance. The police will be looking for anyone who saw Lydia so much as breathe after three P.M. on Friday.”

His stare turned frank and hard. “I’d better ask you something first. Does Cade know you’re here?”

“Not specifically.”

He placed his hands on his waist. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have let you impose like this. How do you think your questions would affect my wife?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Maybe I should ask her.”

A second persona leapt abruptly from the first, angry and physical. He moved toward me. “Now hear me well, Shaw, because I’ll say this just once: if you make these insinuations anywhere else—anywhere at all—I’ll sue you for slander and take your law license in the bargain.”

My hand was throbbing. “Go ahead. Then you can tell me in open court where you were the night Lydia Cantwell was murdered.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Not now. But you keep forgetting the police. You do know they found semen traces on Lydia’s body?”

“So?”

“So when the lab men take semen smears, they comb the woman’s pubic hair. The man leaves his own hair, you see. After that they just keep clipping hairs off suspects until they get a match. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it except wait for them to clip some of yours.”

Mooring straightened as if struggling for control. Then he inhaled, glanced at his watch, and said, “Get out, Shaw. I’m late.”

His tone was again even. For a moment we stood facing each other. Then I turned and left.

On the way out I passed Joanne Mooring, hunched over the counter with a blender full of daiquiris. She didn’t look up. I walked to the car and drove home with one hand.