Death at the Wheel Read Online Free PDF Page B

you?" She didn't wait for a response. "It's the most amazing feeling... having someone who wants to have children with you." She clasped her hands over her midriff. "It gets you right here. I don't know how to describe it. I felt like I was bathed in a kind of holy light... oh, I know that sounds hokey...." Her voice dropped so low I had to lean forward to hear her. "...but it was magical to think that someone loved me, valued me, that much.
    "By the time I realized that it wasn't really love, that it was ownership, Camilla had been born, and there wasn't anything I could do. She needed a father."
    "You didn't consider leaving him?"
    She tried a gay little laugh but it fell flat. "It would have destroyed my parents. There's never been a divorce in my family. And they thought so highly of Cal. They always worried—you know how parents will—about me marrying a suitable man. One who would keep me in the style I was used to. I kept telling them that I could take care of myself, that I had my education. That's what women of our generation do, isn't it? And then I went and let myself become dependent on Cal, just like I swore I never would."
    The tears were there again and she blinked them away as she grabbed more nuts. Now that the drink was releasing her, she was hungry. Too bad we hadn't saved her dinner.
    "You want to order a sandwich or something? I think you should."
    She shook her head. "These are fine," she said firmly. Her tone deterred argument. "Calvin Bass was a handsome, brilliant, charming, ambitious, obsessive, intolerant, arrogant, scathingly critical man who imposed his standards on everyone around him." Her voice was so flat she might have been reading from a script, but I didn't think these were things she'd said many times before, though she might have thought them. The lack of emotion was necessary if she was to get the words out. "Cal was an avid tennis player, golfer, and car nut. He was a banker, a vice president at the Grantham Cooperative Bank. And he was in Connecticut taking that racing course because I arranged it for him as a present."
    "But you didn't kill him?"
    "You are joking, aren't you?"
    "You said everyone wanted to kill him."
    "Not me." She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, leaving a black blot of mascara on her cheek. "I wanted him to change." Her voice dropped again. "I wanted him to love me... to be happy with me. With me and Camilla and Emma. My brother Duncan once threatened to kill Cal if he didn't start treating me better, but Dunk wouldn't hurt a flea. He's just very protective of me."
    "Was your husband abusive?"
    Her delicate arched eyebrows rose over her big eyes and she stared at me nervously. "Physically?" She hesitated, weighing her answer, then answered in a rush. "Not very often. Nothing that was front-page news. I mean, he wasn't abusive, he was just impatient when things didn't go right... his way... the occasional shove, twisted arm, wrist gripped too tightly, hair pulling... rough sex. Calvin was as demanding about sex as he was in every other way. It was his right, on his schedule, to meet his needs."
    I'd known another banker who was just like that. A wham-bam-thank-you,-ma'am guy who'd never even entertained the notion of foreplay. The first man I'd slept with after David died, he almost put me off men for life. I wondered idly if it was part of the job description. If it's not in Playboy or the Federal Regs, forget it.
    Julie drained her glass and signaled the waiter for another drink. "No," she said, "mostly he was emotionally abusive. I was inadequate, incompetent, an unfit mother. That I'd deceived him. Married him under false pretenses." She took another tissue out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes. "When Emma was born, he didn't speak to me for a month because she wasn't a boy."
    Her round red eyes and pink chapped nose made her look a little like a rabbit. She pulled out a mirror, stared at her face, and put it away again. "God, I'm a fright," she said.