The Thunder Keeper(41)
Jana Lewis blinked. A new wariness came into the green eyes. For the first time Vicky caught the syrupy odor of some kind of liqueur. The woman was slightly drunk. Finally the door swung open into a spacious entryway with shadows falling over the white and black floor tiles and running up the wide staircase. The woman tottered through an archway on the right, each step deliberate and focused. There was the sound of a clock chiming somewhere.
Vicky hesitated, then stepped inside and followed the woman into a large drawing room with gray sofas and chairs against the paneled walls and a marble fireplace across from the entry. Oil paintings in carved wooden frames hung in perfect symmetry around the walls. The brass lamp on a side table threw a dim circle of light over an Oriental carpet.
Jana Lewis positioned herself in front of the fireplace, one hand braced against the mantel for support. The other held a crystal goblet half-full of golden-brown liquid that shimmered in the light.
“I get it now,” she said, comprehension moving behind her eyes. “You’re the divorce lawyer.” She spit out the words, and tiny flecks of moisture dotted the goblet. “Well, here I am, the wife you were going to dig up a lot of dirt on so that bastard could get my money.” She raised the goblet and took a long drink. “I’m almost sorry we’ll miss our little day in court. Ah, the justice to see Vince get what was coming to him, which was nothing. I would have taken him for everything he had. I would have ruined him. The company lawyers were on my side, you know. The damned best in the state.” A half smile of satisfaction came into the green eyes.
Vicky said, “I’m not here about your divorce. Your husband arranged the meeting to discuss another matter.”
The woman raised her eyes over the rim of the goblet. “Another matter? What could it possibly have to do with me?” She bent over a small table, lifted a rounded bottle, and shakily refilled the goblet, then dropped into a chair. “I’m sure you don’t want a drink. You being Indian.”
Vicky felt the sting, like a pellet spit into her face by a passing semi. What did the woman think? That every Indian was either a falling-down drunk or in recovery? She swallowed back the impulse to set her straight. “Your husband—”
“Don’t call him that.”
“I assumed you were married.”
“Legally. I haven’t thought of the bastard, when I thought of him at all, as my husband for a very long time. We hadn’t spoken in months.”
“This must be hard on you,” Vicky heard herself saying. She was beginning to regret having come here. If the woman hadn’t spoken to her husband in months, it was unlikely she knew what he’d been working on.
“Not really.” Jana Lewis’s voice lifted with a false bravado. “I’ve made a life without him. All I needed was the legal paper setting me free. Naturally I thought it would be a divorce decree, not a death certificate. But either way . . .” She raised the goblet in a mock toast and took another drink.
“Forgive me,” Vicky said. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“Then why did you? Why did you come here? What do you want of me?” Jana Lewis set the goblet on the table. The brown liquid sloshed over her hand.
Vicky walked over and perched on a chair. “I was hoping you could tell me what your husband”—she hesitated—“what Vince wanted to talk to me about the day he died. Did he ever mention a diamond deposit on the Wind River Reservation?”
A flicker—no more—came into the other woman’s eyes, and then it was gone. “Diamonds on an Indian reservation?” She let out a sharp laugh and leaned toward the table to refill the goblet. “Vince would go to the moon if he thought there were diamonds there,” she said, “but I can assure you he never went to a reservation.”
Even as the woman spoke, Vicky knew it wasn’t true. Something in the tone—the nonchalance, the note of dismissal—sounded forced and out of place. “You said you hadn’t spoken to Vince in three months,” she said, slipping into her courtroom tone, as if Jana Lewis were on the witness stand. “How do you know he wasn’t on the reservation recently?”
“Because I know his every move.” Jana Lewis waved the goblet. “Every restaurant and bar and whore’s house. My private investigator will tell you he didn’t go to any reservation.”
“Private investigator?” This was more than Vicky had hoped for—a PI following Vince Lewis, noting exactly whom he’d seen, whom he’d talked to. “You told Detective Clark?”