Look Again - Lisa Scottoline [30]
She picked it out and opened it, idly. It was a standard date book, a week on two opposing pages, and each page bore Karen’s neat script, noting her appointments and meetings by client name. Ellen felt a pang, looking at the record of a woman’s life, her time on earth divided into billable increments. What the diary couldn’t show was that, in those increments, this woman had changed lives.
She flipped back in time through the Filofax, slowing when she reached the week of July 13, the day on which Karen had committed suicide. That week began on Monday, July 10, and the Filofax showed a neat lineup of appointments. The eleventh showed Karen had a client meeting in the morning and a Women’s Way luncheon.
Ellen scanned the rest of the week, including the day Karen died. The lawyer had had appointments scheduled all day long, which made sense. Karen couldn’t have known that the night before, her husband would find out about her affair. Ellen was about to close the book when she noticed that one of the appointments, on Wednesday, didn’t have a name, but only an initial:
A, written next to the time: 7:15 P.M.
Ellen was intrigued. A nighttime meeting? Maybe A was Karen’s lover? She skipped back to the week before that, but there was no A, and then the week before that. There, in the middle of the week, on Wednesday, June 28.
A, also at 7:15.
She flipped pages to the week before, and then the week before that, which brought her to Wednesday, June 14.
A, this time at 9:30 P.M.
She mulled it over. That was the day before Will’s adoption was final, on June 15. She flipped back to earlier weeks, checking each one, but there were no other meetings with A. She sat back, thinking, and her gaze shifted to the letter on the table, from Amy Martin. The date on the letter was June 15.
Ellen thought a minute. There had been a meeting with A, and then the next day, a letter from Amy Martin. She put two and two together. “A” wasn’t Karen’s boyfriend. “A” could stand for Amy.
She sank into a chair at the table, her good mood evaporating. She looked again at the letter. It even said “in our meeting.” So Karen had had a meeting with Amy. But Ellen didn’t remember seeing Amy’s name in the Filofax, anywhere. She paged through it again, around June, and double-checked. There was no notation of a meeting with Amy Martin or Charles Cartmell, though all the other client meetings had been noted.
Ellen set down the Filofax and reached for her wine. She took a sip, but it tasted warm and bitter. She knew what she had to do, first thing tomorrow morning. Finish this thing once and for all. Put an end to her dwelling. She was driving herself nuts.
“Why can’t I leave well enough alone?” she asked, aloud.
But Oreo Figaro merely blinked in response.
Chapter Twenty-four
The next morning as Ellen put on her coat, she was already wondering how soon she could call Amy Martin. Will’s fever had broken, and he was running around the living room with a new Penn State football that Connie had just brought for him. Ellen withheld the lecture on not introducing new toys before school. Working mothers had no time for spontaneity unless it was scheduled.
“He knows just what to do!” Connie said, delighted. “My Mark was like that, too.”
“Look at me!” Will circled the coffee table with the blue football tucked under his arm. “Look, Mommy!”
“Watch where you’re going, buddy,” Ellen called back, and Oreo Figaro jumped out of the way as Will hurtled past him, turned left into the dining room, and ran into the kitchen. He ran through the kitchen, up and over the stairway, and ended up back in the living room, a circular floor plan designed for little boys and NASCAR drivers.
Connie said, “You know, he looks like a natural athlete.”
“You think?” Ellen picked up her purse and briefcase, listening to the pounding of Will’s feet through the kitchen. Whoever coined the expression pitter-patter-of-little-feet had a kitten, not a child.
“I should get Mark over here to throw the ball with him sometime.”
Will