Lie Down with the Devil Read Online Free Page B

what the method of delivery meant: an enemy close enough to touch.
    What kind of person was Jessica Franklin? It’s hard to make any kind of judgment about a person in crisis. Jessica at work—she was in the billing department at St. Elizabeth’s hospital—might have been clever and competent, but the Jessica in my office was an emotional mess, and that was the only snapshot Ihad to go on. I wasn’t sure which she needed more, a psychiatrist or a PI, but there she was, sitting in my client chair, and I don’t do therapy.
    “You want me to find out who sent it?”
    I hoped she didn’t think I’d be able to lift fingerprints off the document, wave a magic wand, and reveal the name of the miscreant in five seconds flat. Fingerprints were out. The thing had been handled and the paper wasn’t the sort I could deal with at home. If I’d still been working Homicide, I could have sent it to the state crime lab and waited a year for results.
    “I—I don’t care who sent it. I just want to know it isn’t true.”
    “Have you asked?”
    “Asked Ken?” She spoke as though it was absolutely out of the question, an impossibility, as though the man in the moon or the prime minister of Canada would have been a more logical choice to ask instead of Kenneth L. Harrison, the groom listed on the invitation.
    Probably, I thought, she should just call off the wedding, no matter how much money had been spent, no matter the shame and humiliation. If she couldn’t ask her intended a simple question, how would they be able to stay married when the questions came thick and fast later on?
    When I nodded, she hung her head. “I can’t.”
    “But you think he’s unfaithful?”
    “Unfaithful. That sounds so clean. You mean, why do I think he’s fucking around? Why do I think he’s been using me for a cheap place to rent and a good place to eat?”
    I didn’t respond; she didn’t want a response.
    She said, “Could you follow him, watch him, see what he does?”
    “You can’t follow a guy around all the time, not if you want the marriage to work.”
    “No, no, I mean just on Friday, this Friday night, tomorrow night.”
    “You won’t be here?”
    “I travel sometimes—business seminars—and tomorrow night I’ll be in New York.”
    “Don’t go.”
    “I can’t get out of it; I left it too late.”
    “Take Ken with you.”
    “Oh, I couldn’t.”
    “You think the letter writer’s telling the truth?”
    “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve thought about it. God, that’s all I’ve thought about. It’s not like I call Ken and he’s not there or I’ve seen lipstick on his shirts. He’s the only man— He’s the only man I’ve ever loved, and if— I don’t know. I thought that was what a private investigator would do, and I wanted a woman, somebody who’d— It’s just an overnight trip, you know, and I can’t ask anybody I know. I can’t ask my dad; he’d just go out and kill Ken, or he’d kill me, if he found out we were living together. I don’t know which. I couldn’t stand either one. You know, the whole lecture about what men are and how women have to bear up and get over it, or else a full-out cry against marrying Ken, who never was good enough for me anyway. I don’t want my family or friends ever to know about this, not ever.”
    I raised an eyebrow. A member of her family or one of her friends had set the whole thing up.
    She said, “This is what I’ve told myself; this is what I’ve decided. If he stays home tomorrow night, I’ll go with it. I’ll marry him. If he doesn’t, if he doesn’t sleep at home, I’ll call it off.”
    She blew her nose, glanced briefly around theroom, and stuffed the used tissues in her handbag. “You live here?”
    I nodded. My office does double duty. It’s also the living room of the big Cambridge Victorian my aunt Bea left me in her will.
    “Are you married?”
    “No.”
    Her face was alive with interest, but I wasn’t eager to answer any more