The Oath by John Lescroart Page B

and this time Mrs. Tong’s check around the table revealed a universal and hopeful expectation that prompted a more open response. “His name came up sometimes,” she began, “with Carla and her friends. I couldn’t help but hear, serving them, you know? Actually, not so much his name as his wife’s.” Suddenly another thought struck her, though. “Should I be saying any of this? Do I need to have a lawyer with me?”
    Glitsky put his finger in that dike immediately. “I don’t think so, ma’am. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re not in any trouble.” Having said that, he came right back at her, hoping a new question would trump the lawyer issue. “Why did Dr. Kensing’s wife come up at this coffee group?”
    “She talked about divorcing him.”
    The antecedents hung in the air in an unidentifiable jumble. “Dr. Kensing’s wife?” Glitsky asked. “Was divorcing him?”
    “No.” Mrs. Tong shook her head impatiently. “Carla. Mrs. Kensing was…I think everybody knows this…Mr. Markham had an affair with her.”
    Fisk brought his baby face forward. It was alight with excitement and possibility. “With Dr. Kensing’s wife?” he asked avidly.
    No, Glitsky wanted to say with his deepest sarcasm, with the golden retriever. But he bit it back. One more time, though, and he really was going to have to tell them to leave. He kept his own voice uninflected. “Are you saying that Dr. Kensing’s wife—”
    “Ann.”
    “Okay, Ann. She and Mr. Markham were having an affair? You mean it wasn’t over?”
    “It was supposed to be. When it all blew up—”
    “When was that?”
    “About five or six months ago, just before Thanksgiving. That’s when Carla found out. She kicked him out for a couple of weeks then. I didn’t think he was ever coming back. But he did. She asked him back. If it were me, I don’t think I’d have forgiven…well, but that’s me.”
    “But Mr. Markham did come back?”
    Mrs. Tong nodded. “Swearing it was over, of course.”
    “But it wasn’t?”
    “I don’t know.” Now, a shrug. “Carla wasn’t sure, I don’t think. But she thought…She told the coffee group she was getting a private investigator, and if he was seeing her again, she was leaving him.” A silence settled for a long moment, after which Mrs. Tong turned to Glitsky and picked up the thread. “So when I heard Dr. Kensing had been here last night, you’re right, I was surprised.”
    Feigning a nonchalance he didn’t feel, Glitsky leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. The information about Ann Kensing and Tim Markham made him reconsider two contradictory possibilities: first, that Mrs. Markham might have been depressed for a long while before last night, which would strengthen the argument for murder/ suicide; but second, here was an apparent possible motive for a murder.
    He would consider each more carefully when he got some time, but for now he had one more line of questioning for the maid. “As far as you know, Mrs. Tong, did Dr. Kensing know about the relationship between Mr. Markham and his wife?”
    “I think so, yes. When Carla heard that they were getting divorced—”
    “Kensing and Ann? They’re divorced now, too? Over this?”
    “I don’t know if it’s final yet, but I understood that they’d separated. At least when Carla heard they’d started the proceedings, she tried to make sure Mr. Markham wouldn’t get named in any of the papers. So Dr. Kensing, he must have known, don’t you think?”

9
     
    D ismas Hardy was standing on the sidewalk on Irving Street talking with another lawyer named Wes Farrell. The two men had only met once or twice before, but the most recent time had been at Glitsky’s wedding last September, where they’d independently and then together explored the limits of human tolerance for champagne. It was, it turned out for both of them, pretty high.
    Last night, Frannie had eventually shown up at the Shamrock, and she and Hardy had gone on