High Profile

“So what we do have is that Mrs. Weeks knows her husband is planning to divorce her. She is intimate with the man who will continue the franchise after her husband’s death.”

“You’re sure Stephanie’s not just being catty?” Molly said.

“Isn’t catty a sexist concept?” Jesse said.

“It is,” Molly said. “You’re sure she’s not?”

“I talked with Hendricks. They were doing something,”

Jesse said.

“But if he divorces her,” Suit says, “then she loses control of the franchise.”

“Which might mean she loses Hendricks,” Molly said.

“Or Hendricks doesn’t get the job when Weeks dies.”

Jesse nodded.

“Or both,” he said.

“Carey and the unborn child get it all?” Molly said.

“I would assume,” Jesse said.

“So there’s some pretty good motive here,” Suit said. Jesse nodded. No one said anything for a moment. Then Molly said, “But?”

“But can you see them doing it?”

“I don’t even know them,” Molly said.

2 0 4

H I G H P R O F I L E

She ate another small piece of cruller. Jesse smiled. Jenn used to eat something in small pieces so it wouldn’t be fattening.

“Bergdorf’s sophisticate, adult Ivy Leaguer,” Jesse said.

“Princeton probably. They could shoot a couple of people maybe. But transport them to a house with a walk-in refrigerator and store them there, then haul them out and hang one up and toss the other in a Dumpster?”

“Don’t seem like people who would be that aware of the effects of ambient temperature on a corpse,” Molly said.

“That’s right,” Jesse said.

“But Lutz would,” Suit said.

“That’s right,” Jesse said.

“But he’s got no motive,” Suit said.

“He has no motive that we know about,” Jesse said.

“They could have hired him to do it,” Molly said.

“And he’d own them for the rest of their lives,” Jesse said.

“Even Bergdorf sophisticates and Princeton grads can be stupid,” Molly said.

Jesse nodded.

“So,” Suit said. “Now we have an actual theory of the crime.”

“Lorrie, with or without the complicity of Hendricks, did it, maybe with help from Lutz.”

“Lot of with or withouts and maybes in there,” Molly said.

“How true,” Jesse said.

“And do we have any hard evidence to support our theory?”

Molly said.

2 0 5

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“You mean like clues?” Jesse said.

Molly nodded.

“No,” Jesse said.

“So what do we do now.”

“We go back into everybody’s history,” Jesse said.

“Everybody?” Suit said.

“Everybody on the chalkboard,” Jesse said.

“And of course we may find out that Lutz is telling the truth.”

“However ineptly,” Jesse said.

“And that Lorrie and Alan are simply adulterers. People cheat on their spouses without killing them, you know.”

Jesse smiled at her. “From experience, Moll?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, when you’re ready . . .” Jesse said.

“You’re on the list, Jesse.”

“How about me,” Suit said. “Am I on the list.”

“Not till you’re old enough,” Molly said.

“For crissake, Moll, I’m almost a detective.”

“So we have a theory, let’s see if we can find something that proves it or disproves it,” Jesse said.

“Wow,” Molly said. “Like the scientific method.”

“Sort of,” Jesse said.

“What’s the scientific method?” Suit said.

“And you wonder why you’re not on the list,” Molly said. She finished her cruller.

“I don’t know why I bother to eat these,” she said. “I might as well apply them directly to my hips.”

2 0 6

46

Sunny sat at the bar with Jesse in the Gray Gull. She put the pictures of Jenn and Timothy Patrick Lloyd on the bar.

“You recognize Jenn,” Sunny said. “The guy she’s with is the stalker.”

Jesse drank some scotch.

“Who she denies knowing,” he said.

“And who denies knowing her,” Sunny said.

Sunny looked at Jesse’s face as he stared down at the pictures. His face showed nothing. The couple in the pictures was embracing.

R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“They are not strangers,” Jesse said.

“No.”

“You have a plan?” Jesse said.

“My plan was to see what you thought I should do.”

Jesse nodded. She wondered how it must feel for him, looking at the pictures of Jenn with another man. It wasn’t like a surprise, but it had to be painful, Sunny thought. She sipped her martini and looked at him over the rim. He was still looking at the pictures. His face was empty.

“I guess we need to confront her with these pictures,”

Jesse said.

“I can do that,” Sunny said.

“No,” Jesse said. “I need to do it.”

“Why?”

“It’ll be easier for her,” he said.

“For you to catch her in deceit instead of me?”

Jesse nodded.

“She’ll be less mortified,” he said.

Sunny didn’t say anything.

“Imagine if it were Richie,” Jesse said. “Wouldn’t you want to do it?”

“Proving that I’m crazy,” Sunny said, “doesn’t prove that you’re not.”

“I know.”

“She . . .” Sunny started and stopped.

“I know,” Jesse said.

They both drank.

2 0 8

H I G H P R O F I L E

“Is there anything she could do that would make you give her up?” Sunny said.

“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “For a while there, when we were in L.A. together . . .”

“I remember,” Sunny said. “And now?”

Jesse stared into his drink.

“I love you, Sunny,” he said. “Hell, I probably love Molly Crane.”

“Whom you’ve never touched,” Sunny said.

“Of course not.”

“But Jenn is Jenn,” Sunny said.