“Well, you can leave ‘em with me. I’ll see to it she puts her name where she ought to and mails them to you.”
“Yeah. Well, I wish I could do that, Kitteridge, but the law…” Gray leaned forward and flashed a man-to-man smile. “As long as we’re being honest, I have to tell you that I talked with some people around town.”
Kitteridge’s eyes turned cold. “People ought to learn to keep their mouths shut.”
“They seem to think your wife left quite a while ago.”
“If she did, it ain’t nobody’s business but mine.”
“You’re wrong. It’s my business. I mean, this inheritance…” Gray sighed. “Well, that’s a pity.”
“I’m here,” Kitteridge said sharply. “And I’m her husband. Whatever’s comin’ to her should come to me. That’s only right.”
“I agree,” Gray said pleasantly, “but the law…”
The law, Harman thought. The goddamn law. What he ought to do was drag this son of a bitch attorney out of his seat, do it fast, before he knew what was happening, and beat the crap out of him—but that wouldn’t get him what he wanted. The question was, what would? The thing to do was calm down and think. What would soften up a hotshot lawyer? A little hearts and flowers, maybe. Yeah. A sad story, complete with violins. That might just do it.
“Okay,” Harman said. He wrapped his hands around his cup and looked down into its murky depths. “I’m gonna tell you the truth, Baron. I don’t talk about it much ‘cause it near to kills me to do it, but my wife run out and left me four years back.”
“Ah. That’s rough.”
“It is, for a fact.” Harman lifted wounded eyes, locked them on Gray’s. “She was everythin’ for me, you know? I loved her like I never loved another woman. But she weren’t no good. She catted around, paid no mind to her wifely obligations or to our son.”
That did it. He saw the lawyer’s eyes go dark.
“She had a child?” he said.
Harman pulled a sad face. “Oh, yeah. A little boy. Sweetest thing you can imagine, but she didn’t give no more thought to the kid than she did to me.”
“You mean, she didn’t take the boy with her when she left you?”
Harman didn’t even blink. “No.” Violins, sad stories and a leap to abandoned babies the lawyer had taken all by himself. Fine. Whatever would work. “You can see why I don’t talk about it much.”
Oh, and it was working. Baron was nodding in agreement, clearly thinking bad thoughts about a woman who had slept around and dumped her kid. Well, the sleeping around part was surely the truth, and there wasn’t a way in hell Baron would ever find out she’d taken the boy with her.
Harman took out his wallet. “See this?” He took out a dog-eared photo of a woman with a baby in her arms and pushed it across the table. “That’s what she left behind. That innocent babe. Boy’s seven now an’ there’s times he still wakes up in the middle of the night, cryin’ for his mama.”
It was the perfect touch. The lawyer was staring at the picture as if it was the Madonna and child.
“Yeah.” The attorney cleared his throat. “So, where is she? Where’d she go?”
“If I knew, don’t you think I’d have brought her back?” Harman’s mouth twisted. “Teach her a lesson for walkin’ out on me?” He saw the way Baron’s head came up. Dammit. He’d overplayed his hand. “I mean, I’d tell her how much she hurt me. How I still love her. How I miss her. How I ‘spect her to keep the promises she made when we was married, is what I’m saying.”
“The bottom line is that you don’t know where she is, do you, Kitteridge? That’s what I’m saying.”
Harman smiled slyly. “I don’t, no. But I bet a hotshot lawyer like you got ways to find her.”
“Maybe, but I’ll need your help.”
“Anythin’ I can do, you just ask.”
“You said she catted around. How about the names of some of the men she slept with?”
“Don’t actually got names. She was sneaky.”
“Well, how about places she’d been and liked, that she might have gone back to?”
“She never went nowhere. Not that I wouldn’t have taken her, if she’d been a good woman, but—”