Chapter 13: Terms

I answered him Tuesday morning, in the elevator of the attorney's building.

Desmond had shaved and put on the blue shirt.

He stood against the back wall with his hands folded in front of him.

Neither of us had said a word since the lobby.

"You asked me a question last night," I said.

"I didn't think you'd answer it."

"You were leaving me for people who laughed at your jokes."

He closed his eyes.

"That's it?"

"That's all they ever gave you. I'm sorry it was enough."

The doors opened on the fourth floor before he could say anything.

The attorney's conference room had a long table and a window onto the river.

She sat at the head with a legal pad.

Beside her was a man in his forties in a gray suit, with a laptop open and a folder labeled PIERCE MARINE.

"This is the bank's loan officer," she said. "He drove in from Portland this morning, and he has forty minutes."

The loan officer nodded to me and did not nod to Desmond.

I put the tablet on the table, still wrapped in the dish towel.

I set my phone next to it, with the photograph of Rosalie's deleted message on the screen.

He read it twice and looked at the date on the tablet's log.

"Mr. Lockridge," he said. "Did you know the yard was behind on its payments?"

"No."

"Did you read the guarantee before you signed it?"

Desmond looked at his hands.

"I read the first page."

"And the spousal consent your wife signed in April?"

"I told her it was insurance."

The loan officer wrote that down.

He did not look up when he asked the next question.

"Is that what you told her, or what you believed?"

"It's what I told her," Desmond said. "I knew it wasn't."

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