Vicky lies on me, twisting her finger in and out of my chest hair, thinking about something, though I don’t know what. She keeps her thoughts to herself, and I’m too cautious to push too hard lest I push her away.
I guess I don’t need to know if I’m anything more to Vicky than a financial whiz who also happens to be easy on the eyes and terrific in bed. Gavin is right. All that matters is that money. I need to keep my eye on the prize, a prize that is less than a month away now.
But the closer November 3 gets, the more I worry, like a pitcher throwing a no-hitter who’s just rolling along doing his thing, but now it’s the ninth inning, and the prize is in sight, and you feel yourself tightening up.
“What was it with you and Simon’s father?” I ask, because the whole thing with Theodore Dobias is something I should understand better. If Simon Dobias can be pushed as far as murder, I should probably know that before I help Vicky steal all his money, yes?
“Well, he obviously thought I wanted Simon for his money. Maybe it was personal to me, or maybe that’s just how he felt, generally, about women.”
“Maybe he didn’t trust Simon.”
“Oh, that’s definitely part of it. Simon...” She puts her chin on my chest and looks at me. “You look at Simon, he’s a nice-looking man, he can be charming and funny, but he never really had many good relationships with women before he met me. As far as I know, he only had one real girlfriend, back when he was like eighteen, this woman named Lauren whobroke his heart. That was right around the time his mother died, and his world kind of crashed after that.”
“Oh, when did his mother die?” I ask, playing dumb.
“Well, it’s a whole story,” says Vicky. “Simon’s mother—Glory was her name—Glory was a law professor like Simon ended up. Anyway, she had a stroke that put her in a wheelchair and took away a lot of her mental capabilities and basically ended her career. Simon’s dad, Teddy—Teddy was making good money then and he started living this sort of swinger-bachelor lifestyle. He cheated on his wife. Simon caught him.”
“Hecaughthim?”
“Yeah. Walked in on him. Teddy was having sex with this woman in his office, and Simon walked right in and saw it.”
“Harsh.”
“Yeah, harsh. And doubly harsh because Simonidolizedhis mother. He couldn’t bear to tell her what Teddy was doing. So he kept it quiet. And pretty soon, Teddy ended up blowing all his money and didn’t have the finances to take care of Glory, to pay for in-home care. Long story short, he wanted to put Glory in a nursing home, Simon freaked out, and right around then, Glory swallowed a bottleful of pain meds.” She looks at me. “Glad you asked?”
“So after blowing all his money on women, Teddy didn’t want Simon doing the same thing? And that’s why he put that language in the trust?”
“I guess so.”
“So what happened to Teddy?”
She looks at me for a long time.
I didn’t phrase that question well. Whathappenedto Teddy? I should have been more generic, likeWhat happened after Glory died? Did Simon ever make peace with his father?Something that doesn’t hint that I know that someone stuck a knife in Teddy.
Do better, Nicky. Stay on your game.
But then I realize that Vicky isn’t wondering why I would ask that question, or if I already knew something. She’s deciding how much to tell me. She’s deciding how much to let me into her life.
“Teddy, believe it or not, was murdered,” Vicky says. “He was living in St. Louis by then, and someone stabbed him and pushed him into his pool.”
“Whoa,” I say. “Who stabbed him?”
Her eyes trail off. “They never found out. They looked at Simon as a suspect, but Simon was up in Chicago taking final exams at U of C. It would have been very hard for him to have pulled that off.”
Very hard but not impossible. In fact, that would kinda be the beauty of it.
“What are you thinking?” she asks me.
I snap out of my trance. “Nothing.”
“You’re wondering whether Simon killed Teddy.”
“No, I mean—”
“You’re wondering whether I did.”
“God, no,” I say. “Of course not.”