Tell No Lies by Gregg Hurwitz Page A

he was, she always managed to find the chink in the armor. Which is why they were in touch only occasionally, a phone call one month, a brunch the next. While the time between served to layer more sand over the land mines, he still had to watch where he stepped.
    He moved to switch subjects. “Are you still seeing that composer?” A Portuguese man twenty years her junior with a full head of hair and an impressive collection of formal wear.
    “No. He wanted to have a baby. With me.”
    “You sure something wasn’t lost in translation?”
    “Well, not with me. His sperm would be carried by someone else, and then we’d … I don’t know, raise it. Can you imagine? At my age? I kept picturing a pale, thin-necked boy standing in the corner of the room coughing. No. I sent Leandro packing back to Braga.”
    A muffled ringing arose, and she fished around the blanket in her lap and came up with a cordless phone. Scowling, she consigned the caller to voice mail. “We’re getting heavy into leveraged-currency bets these days,” she told Daniel. “Going long on the yuan, since the Chinese are going to own our country in twenty years. Vimal calls every hour like a nervous schoolgirl. He doesn’t have the stones for it like you did.”
    “A compliment?”
    “Backhanded. I am capable of those. Especially when I haven’t seen you in seven and a half weeks. Not that I’m keeping count. Of course, who knows if you’d have what it takes to make the tough financial calls now. All that counseling may have softened you up.”
    She raised her thin eyebrows to make clear it was a challenge.
    The painter entered and tugged off his baseball hat, a display of servility the likes of which Evelyn inspired. “I’m finished with the job, Mrs. Brasher.”
    “A day late. I’ll get you your four hundred dollars.”
    “The job was for five hundred.”
    “You took longer.”
    “Shouldn’t that mean I get paid more ?” He covered with a weak smile.
    “As is, you overcharged given my zip code, but I let that slide. We agreed upon a completion date. It wasn’t met. My dinner guests last night entered through a half-painted door.”
    “It required multiple coats for proper—”
    “James.” Evelyn barely raised her voice, and yet there James appeared in the far doorway. “Please bring me five hundred dollars.”
    The painter smiled gratefully, and James produced a zippered leather pouch from which he counted five crisp bills into Evelyn’s hand. Throwing off the blanket, she rose, crumpling the top bill. She threw it over the fireplace screen into the fire, then crossed and handed the dumbfounded painter the remaining four.
    The man nodded once slowly in comprehension, then withdrew.
    Evelyn moved her gaze pointedly to Daniel to let him know that the challenge still stood.
    “You’re really gonna short him like that?” Daniel said. “Just to make a point to me?”
    “I’m glad,” she said, “we agree that the point has been made.”
    “Lovely visit, Mom.” He started for the door. “See you in another seven and a half weeks.”
    Outside, he caught the painter climbing into a beat-to-shit pickup. Pulling five twenties from his wallet, he offered them through the open driver’s-side window. The man looked from them to Daniel and said, “It’s not your front door.”
    “She’s my mom.”
    “Which means?”
    “No one should have to endure her but me.”
    The man turned over the engine, set his paint-crusted hands on the wheel. “I got my own mom to endure, pal.”
    His tires crackled over the quartz rocks, leaving Daniel holding his money.

 
    Chapter 15
    By the time Daniel neared home, the sleeplessness of the prior night had caught up to him, turning the dusk beyond the windshield even blurrier. He groaned when he saw the car double-parked in front of the house next door. And there Ted was, popping into view behind the raised hatchback, shuffling reusable shopping bags and three children and gesturing for Daniel