The son of a bitch had duped them all.
Incredulous, and at the same time overwhelmed with anger, Cameron turned and walked back to his table. He tried to convince himself that he was jumping to the wrong conclusions. He had known John for years and trusted him completely.
Until now. Damn it, what had John done to them? White-collar crime was one thing; murder was quite another. The club had never gone this far before, and what made it all the more chilling was that they had convinced themselves that they were actually doing a good deed. Tell that to a jury of their peers and watch them laugh.
Dear God, had Catherine really been terminal? Had she been dying a slow, agonizing death? Or had John simply been lying to them to get them to do his dirty work?
No, not possible. John wouldn’t have lied about his wife. He’d loved her, damn it.
Cameron was sick to his stomach. He didn’t know what to think, but he did know it would be wrong to condemn his friend without knowing all the facts. Then it occurred to him that the affair, if that was what this was, could have begun after Catherine’s death. He latched onto the idea. Yes, of course. John had known the decorator before his wife’s death. The blond had been hired by Catherine to redecorate her bedroom. But so what if he had known her? After his wife died, John was grieving and lonely, and the young woman was available. Hell, she probably pounced on his vulnerability right after the funeral.
A nagging doubt remained. If this was innocent, then why hadn’t John told his friends about her? Why was he hiding it?
Maybe because his wife’s ashes hadn’t even had time to cool off yet. Yeah, that was it. John knew it wouldn’t look good to get involved with another woman so soon after Catherine’s death. People would certainly think it was odd and start talking and speculating, and the club sure as hell didn’t want that to happen. John was smart enough to know he should keep a low profile.
Cameron had almost convinced himself that what he had seen was pretty harmless, but he still felt compelled to make certain. He didn’t let John see him. He paid his bar tab and slipped out of the restaurant. He had the valet bring around the used Ford sedan he was forced to drive these days — his soon-to-be ex-wife had already confiscated his cherished Jaguar, damn the slut. He drove to the next block, ducked down in the seat, and turned to watch for the couple to come outside. While he waited, he called his attorney on his cell phone to cancel dinner.
The two of them came outside twenty minutes later. They stood at the curb, facing each other about five feet apart, acting stiff and formal, as though they were little more than strangers, John with his hands stuffed in his pants pockets, the blond clutching her purse and her Day-Timer. When her car arrived, she tucked her purse under her arm and shook John’s hand. The valet held the door of her cherry red Honda open, and she got inside and drove away without a backward glance.
To the casual observer, the scene was very businesslike.
A minute later John’s gray BMW convertible arrived. He took his time removing his suit jacket, folding it just so before carefully placing it on the passenger’s seat. The well-fitted suit was Valentino, the only designer John ever wore. A wave of bitterness washed over Cameron. Six months ago he, too, had had a closet full of Joseph Abboud and Calvin Klein and Valentino suits, but then his wife, in a drunken rage, had grabbed a butcher knife and shredded the clothes into rags. That little tantrum had destroyed over fifty thousand dollars’ worth of garments.
God, how he longed to get even. Some nights he lay in bed and fantasized about all sorts of ways to kill her. The most important element in the daydream was pain. He wanted the bitch to suffer as she was dying. His favorite scenario was smashing her face through a glass window and watching the whore slowly bleed to death. In his fantasy a shard of glass barely nicked her artery.
Oh, yes, he wanted her to suffer the way she was making him suffer, to get even with her for stealing his life from him. She’d frozen all of his assets until the divorce settlement was reached, but he already knew what the outcome would be. She was going to take it all.
She didn’t know about the Sowing Club or the assets they had hidden. No one did. Her attorney wouldn’t be able to find the money either, even if he had been looking. The millions of dollars were in an offshore account, and none of it could be traced back to him.
But for now, it didn’t matter that he had money hidden. He couldn’t touch any of it until he turned forty. That was the deal the four friends had made, and he knew the others wouldn’t let him borrow from the fund. It was too risky, and so, for the next five years, he was going to have to bite the bullet and live like a pauper.
John was the lucky devil. Now that Catherine was dead, he had what was left of her trust fund, which he didn’t have to share with anyone.
Cameron was filled with envy as he watched his friend put on his Saints’ ball cap. He knew John only wore the thing to hide his bald spot. He was going to be completely bald by the time he was fifty, like all the men in his family, no matter what precautions he took. But what did that matter? He’d still look real good to women. Women would put up with any flaw if there was money involved.
Cameron dismissed this latest bout of self-pity with a shake of his head. Feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to change anything. Besides, he could hold on for a few more years. Concentrate on the future, he told himself. Soon he would be able to retire as a multimillionaire and move to the south of France, and there wouldn’t be a damned thing his ex could do about it.
John slid onto the soft leather seat. Then he loosened his tie, adjusted the rearview mirror, and drove away.
Should he follow him? Cameron threaded his fingers through his hair in frustration. He knew he wasn’t being fair to John and that it was wrong for him to become so easily spooked by what was surely innocent. John had loved his wife, and if a cure had been possible, Cameron knew that his friend would have spent every dollar he had to save Catherine.
Yet, the nagging uncertainty wouldn’t go away, and so he did follow him. He figured that if he could just sit down with him and talk, they would be able to clear up this . . . misunderstanding. John would tell him this suspicion was simply a reaction to the horrible guilt he was feeling over what they had done in the name of mercy.
Cameron thought about turning the car around and going home, but he didn’t do it. He had to be sure. Had to know. He took a shortcut through the Garden District and arrived at John’s house before he did. The beautiful Victorian home was on a coveted corner lot. There were two enormous, ancient oak trees and a magnolia casting black shadows on the front yard. Cameron pulled onto the side street adjacent to the electronically gated driveway. He turned the lights off, then the motor, and sat there, well-concealed under a leafy branch that blocked out the streetlight. The house was dark. When John arrived, Cameron reached for the door handle, then froze.
“Shit,” he whispered.
She was there, waiting. As the iron gate was opening, he spotted her standing on the sidewalk by the side of the house. The garage door lifted then, and Cameron saw her red Honda parked inside.
As soon as John parked his car and walked out of the garage, she ran to him, her large round br**sts bouncing like silicone balls underneath the tight fabric of her dress. The bereaved widower couldn’t wait to get her inside the house. They tore at each other like street dogs in heat. Her black dress was unzipped and down around her waist in a matter of seconds, and his hand was latched onto one of her br**sts as they stumbled to the door. His grunts of pleasure blended with her shrill laughter.
“That son of a bitch,” Cameron muttered. “That stupid son of a bitch.”
He had seen enough. He drove home to his rented one-bedroom apartment in the untrendy section of the warehouse district and paced for hours, stewing and fuming and worrying. A bottle of scotch fueled his anger.
Around two in the morning, a couple of drunks got into a fistfight outside of his window. Cameron watched the spectacle with disgusted curiosity. One of them had a knife, and Cameron hoped he’d stab the other one just to shut him up. Someone must have called the police. They arrived, sirens blaring, minutes later.
There were two officers in the patrol car. They quickly disarmed the drunk with the knife and then slammed both men up against a stone wall. Blood, iridescent under the garish streetlight, poured from a gash in the side of one drunk’s head as he crashed unconscious to the pavement.
The policeman who’d used the unnecessary force shouted a crude blasphemy as he rolled the unconscious man over onto his stomach and then knelt on his back and secured the handcuffs. Then he dragged him to the car. The other drunk meekly waited his turn, and within another minute or two, both were locked in the back of the car on their way to the city jail.
Cameron gulped a long swallow of scotch and wiped the perspiration from his brow with the back of his hand. The scene under his window had freaked him, especially the handcuffs. He couldn’t handle being cuffed. He couldn’t go to prison, wouldn’t. He’d kill himself first . . . if he had the courage. He had always been a little claustrophobic, but the condition had worsened over the years. He couldn’t be inside a windowless room these days without feeling tightness in his chest. He’d stopped using elevators, preferring to walk up seven flights of stairs rather than spend thirty or forty seconds inside a metal elevator box, squeezed in like a dead sardine with the other office dwellers.
Dear God, why hadn’t he thought about his claustrophobia before he agreed to this lunacy?
He knew the answer and was drunk enough to admit it. Greed. Fucking greed. John was the motivator, the planner, the man with the vision . . . and the money connections. With the fervor of a southern evangelist, he’d promised he could make them all rich. Hell, he already had. But he had also played them for the greedy fools he knew they were. When he started talking about killing himself, he knew they’d all panic. They couldn’t lose John, and they would do anything to keep him happy.
And that was exactly what the bastard had counted on.
Bleary-eyed from drink, Cameron finished the bottle of scotch and went to bed. The following morning, Sunday, he battled a hangover until noon. Then, when he was clearheaded, he came up with a plan. He needed absolute proof for Preston and Dallas to see, and once they realized how John had manipulated them, Cameron would demand that they split the profits in the Sowing Club now and go their separate ways. He wasn’t about to wait five more years to collect his share. After what John had done, all Cameron could think about was running away before they got caught.
Cameron had a few connections of his own, and there were a couple of calls he needed to make. He had five working days before the confrontation he planned on Friday. Five days to nail the son of a bitch.
He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing. Friday rolled around, and he arrived at Dooley’s late, around six-thirty in the evening. He made his way to their table and took the seat across from John. The waiter had spotted him and brought him his usual drink before Cameron had taken off his suit jacket and loosened his tie.
“You look like hell,” Preston said in his customary blunt way. Of the four, he was the health nut and made it clear at every opportunity that he didn’t approve of Cameron’s lifestyle. Built like an Olympic weightlifter, Preston was obsessive about working out five nights a week at a posh health club. In his opinion, any man who didn’t have steely upper arms and a stomach you could bounce a quarter off of was a weakling, and men with beer guts were to be pitied.
“I’ve put in some long hours at work this week. I’m tired, that’s all.”
“You’ve got to start taking care of yourself before it’s too late,” Preston said. “Come with me to the club and start lifting weights and running the track. And lay off the booze, for Christ’s sake. It’s killing your liver.”
“Since when did you become my mother?”
Dallas, a die-hard peacemaker, couldn’t stand discord, no matter how minor. “Preston’s just concerned about you. We both know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately with the divorce and all. We just don’t want you to get sick. Preston and I depend on you and John.”
“Preston’s right,” John said. He swirled his swizzle stick in the amber liquid as he added, “You do look bad.”
“I’m fine,” he muttered. “Now enough about me.”
“Yeah, sure,” Preston said, offended by the censure in Cameron’s voice.
Cameron gulped down his drink and then motioned for the waiter to bring him another. “Anything new happen this week?” he asked.
“It’s been dull for me.” Preston shrugged. “But I guess in our business that’s good. Right, Dallas?”
“Right. It’s been pretty dull for me too.”
“What about you, John? Anything new going on with you?” Cameron asked mildly.
John shrugged. “I’m hanging in there, taking it a day at a time.”
He sounded pathetic. Cameron thought John’s performance was a bit overdone, but Preston and Dallas bought it and were sympathetic.
“It will get easier,” Preston promised. Since he had absolutely no experience with losing anyone he cared about, he couldn’t possibly know if John’s life would get easier or not, but he felt he should give his friend some sort of encouragement. “With time,” he added lamely.
“That’s right. You just need some time,” Dallas said.
“How long has it been since Catherine died?” Cameron asked. John raised an eyebrow. “You know how long it’s been.” He stood, removed his suit jacket and carefully folded it, then draped it over the back of the chair. “I’m going to go get some Beer Nuts.”
“Yeah, bring some pretzels too,” Preston said. He waited until John had walked away before turning on Cameron. “Did you have to bring Catherine’s name up now?”
John told the waitress what he wanted and was walking back to the table when he heard Dallas say, “John was just starting to relax. Give the guy a break.”
“You don’t need to coddle me,” John said as he dragged his chair out and sat down. “I haven’t kept count of the hours and minutes my wife has been gone,” he said. “Some nights it seems like only yesterday.”
“It’s been almost a month.” Cameron studied his friend as he made the comment. He picked up his glass and saluted John. “I think you ought to start dating. I really do.”
“Are you crazy?” Dallas whispered. “It’s way too soon.”
Preston vehemently nodded. “People will talk if he starts dating this soon, and talk leads to speculation. We don’t want that. Don’t you agree, Dallas?”