“And you say you don’t have the payee account details? Knowing who’s getting the money would help too.”
Hailey sighed. She took in Dennis’s unbrushed hair, his vegan Vans, and the Chipotle loyalty card tucked alongside his ergonomic keyboard.
“I have them,” she said, and wrote down hers and Mack’s full names and bank account number. Dennis’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.
“I don’t think I need to tell you what will happen if this gets around the office.” Hailey almost laughed at her own ridiculousness, but he only nodded. “And one more thing. There’s no way that whoever the sender is—whoever runs Sunshine Enterprises—will know you are looking into this, right?” She lowered her voice. “They can’t see whatever it is you do to search through these accounts, right?”
“There’s no way,” Dennis said. “That would basically be, like, impossible.” She saw that his eyes had come to rest on the –$47,000 at the bottom of the page. “Just a thought—What does it say on your bank account statements? It might give the bank this money comes from on there?”
“It doesn’t, I checked. It just says Sunshine Enterprises. No other information. It’s like the money is coming from nowhere.”
“That’s impossible too,” said Dennis. “I just need a little time.”
19.
When I was almost twenty, I suffered what they called a “catastrophic dental incident.” In layman’s terms, I fell headfirst down the concrete stairs that led from one level of our terrace to another. I landed on my chin, my top teeth crashed into the bottom ones, and theresult was like someone had taken a baseball bat to a china cabinet. Even now, decades later, I’m still constantly at the dentist. Root canals, veneers, bridges, crowns, implants—I’ve had them all. I’ve been through five dentists in as many years, dozens in my lifetime, but no matter who’s doing the drilling, it always hurts like hell, even with a boatload of Novocaine.
What really makes me crazy, though, worse than the pain, is the waiting: I wait to get called in to the chair, I wait while they get all their instruments of torture ready, I wait while they take X-rays and harden their tooth-making materials with little UV lamps, and I wait while the dentist talks to the hygienist about the weather and football and—let me tell you—it’s enough to drive someone completely nuts.
It does give me that chance to keep up with my reading, however. And today, another tasty tidbit: who would have thought, there in the pages ofCleveland Social, rivaling his wife for the media spotlight, would be Malcolm Evans, assistant professor of English at the Cleveland Institute of Technology? It seems Professor Evans, who lives in Bratenahl—gasp!—with his young family, has been playing naughty with the students—inappropriate gatherings, rumors of impropriety. Wine, marijuana, really juicy stuff. Now he’s gone and gotten himself suspended, pending an investigation.
Suspended without pay, is what it said, and I didn’t think they could do something like this in America. I thought “innocent until proven guilty” and all that.
Not that I’m complaining.
20.
Mack
Mack still had Mackenzie Ewing’s number in his phone. He had every one of his tutor group’s details, and he could have called any one of those kids, could have asked any of those students what the hell they’d said that had the English Department so sure that Mack was a drug-pushing pedophile... Or maybe it was what they hadn’t said. Why hadn’t Mackenzie stuck up for him? Why hadn’t she told the department that Mack had done nothing wrong?
This limbo was the worst part. If only thePlain Dealeror the six o’clock news or the Associated Press had picked up the sorry story. A major outlet would have brought shock and scandal in one big wave, and then Mack would know where he stood. Maybe someone would have investigated a little and uncovered just how ridiculous and unfounded this whole thing was. But now, with just an odd little mention of his impropriety inCleveland Social,three mortifying posts on a website called Rate My Professors, and one probing phone call from a local paper in University Heights, the shame was trickling in like Chinese water torture. That young teacher at Mabel’s pickup hadn’t smiled yesterday. Betsy Wakefield from next door had ceased her insufferable good mornings—did that mean anything? Chenise had sounded borderline belligerent when Mack suggested ravioli for the girls’ dinner last night, and was he being paranoid, or had he felt eyes on him at his second-favorite Starbucks? (He didn’t dare visit the one on campus, so he went all the way to Lakewood instead. What the hell else did he have to do?)
The whole world had it in for him. Irene Weigand had really and truly handed over the baton, as she put it, and cut him and his mother loose. Marilyn from Sandy Hollow had already sent Mack the bill for the month of November. If they paid it, and Hailey really did get no bonus this year, then they—a college professor and a highly regarded attorney—would be broke by Christmas. The hardwood floor specialists had more or less confirmed Hailey’s estimate for the damage caused by Gulliver’s tantrum, and the English Department had told Mack that they would contact him “in good time” when they were ready to proceed. Which would be great—he looked forward to the chance to clear his name, if he didn’t die first of a heart attack brought on by stress.
Mack had given up running when he went to college, but now felt like as good a time as any to get back into it. In high school he’d made the cross-country team, before golf had completely taken over, and with any luck being fit was like riding a bike. He dug out an old pair of Adidas sneakers, the kind that were good for looking like an 1980s skater kid but not for actual jogging. He would make do. He put on some shorts and his not-very-clean Duke T-shirt. He sized up Gulliver and decided there was no way the little shit could keep up, so he left the dog in the kitchen, where he would pee again in protest, but what did it matter now?
The cold autumn air coming off the lake gave Mack the last bit of incentive he needed to plow through his inertia. He focused on the scuff-scuff of his shoes on the pavement as his heart began to thump in his chest. He scuff-scuffed down the smooth road surface of Magpie Court gate to the main drag, which was uneven and badly patched in some places, and predictably had nothing on it but a few parked cars that belonged to groundskeepers and cleaners. He stopped briefly to drop the incriminating issue ofCleveland Socialinto a public trash can. (He had only barely scanned the article about himself, and he could only pray that Hailey would never see it.) Then his feet scuff-squished into the wet grass as he cut across the grounds of the Bratenahl Place towers. He lost his depth perception for a minute as he turned his head to look up at Two Bratenahl Place. It was weird to think that people were living stacked up like this in the middle of his suburban nightmare.
He’d always been fond of the apartment blocks in Lakewood, buzzing with life as people came and went. They’d reassured him that he still lived in a big city, provided him with some of the flavor of the years he and Hailey had spent in New York while he did his PhD and she worked ninety hours a week for a firm nicknamed “the Death Star.” But in Bratenahl, tall buildings and people in close proximity felt wrong. Part of the Bratenahl pitch was the privacy, and you paid a premium for all that distance from other humans, especially the not-rich ones. Did anyone evenlivein those Bratenahl towers? Some mysterious urban energy was missing here, some comradery... not that Mack really knew. Neither he nor Hailey had ever even set foot—
As he made it to the lakefront path a sudden sting hit his left ankle, and then he kicked something with his shoe. A white blur went airborne off to his left side, and Mack heard a yelp as he stumbled and hit the ground.
“Colman!” a raspy voice called. “Colman, get back here!”
Mack saw driving loafers in the grass and baggy corduroy pants, then above them a face with a meticulously groomed mustache. It bent close to reach for a leash attached to a frouffy white dog of the kind Mack detested.
“He got away from me,” the man said. “Damn dog. Did you break anything?”
Mack got to his feet, shook out his legs. “No, I’m fine.”
“Don’t see many joggers out at this time of day. That’s why we walk; Colman hates joggers. You live in Magpie Court?” Mack saw that the dog had a brown patch on its side where it had connected with the sole of his foot, and also that there was blood trickling from his left ankle, turning his sock red. The wound started to hurt as soon as he looked at it.
“I think he bit me,” Mack said.
The man gave a cursory glance at Mack’s ankle. “It’s not a bad one. Just a scratch. I think you caught his tooth when you fell.” He did not apologize. “I’ve seen you around—Two Magpie, right? On the corner. I’ve come across your wife a few times.”
“Uh, okay.” Mack couldn’t keep the irritation from his face; it was taking all of his self-control not to yell at this guy.
