Capital and Ohio Dominican. On the one hand, the man who stood up as soon as I’d reached the bar was indeed wearing a bow tie, tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses, and a tweedy-looking jacket with the requisite elbow patches. On the other hand, his hair was longer than I would have guessed, nearly shoulder length, and the close attention he was paying his smart phone as I walked up—and indeed paid throughout our conversation—belied any notions of a fusty academic out of step with the modern age. Frankly, he looked right at home with the smart set crowding the bar at the Top, an old-style steak house on East Main Street.
“Mr. Hayes,” he said, extending a hand.
“Call me Andy,” I said.
The bartender approached and I ordered an Elevator Brewing Company Buckeye Red draft. Huntington signaled for a second bourbon on ice. Cocktail hour was in full swing, and the bar was getting loud. I signaled toward a table and he nodded. We walked past the piano player and tucked into a corner booth.
“A shame there’s so few of these places left,” he said. “It’s like a tableau of the elegant past.”
“I try not to dwell in the past,” I said.
“An optimist?”
“Something like that. What can I do for you?”
“Regrettably,” Huntington said, looking past me, “I believe my wife is having an affair. I’d like you to look into it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Inklings,” he said. “She doesn’t work, well, not for money, and there are stretches of the day where I can never seem to reach her. Especially between noon and two. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Like clockwork.” He sipped his drink. I followed suit.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, responding to something in my expression. “She occupies herself fully. She sits on the boards of the art museum and the conservatory, and she hosts a number of faculty gatherings at our house each semester. As you can imagine, those can rival Yalta in their social complexity.”
I nodded, unable to imagine this.
“Hester and Roger also require a fair amount of work on her part.”
“Your children?”
“Our poodles.”
“Toy?”
“Standard,” he said, sounding slightly offended.
“You’re a Hawthorne scholar?”
“You know my work,” he said.
“I know my Scarlet Letter characters.”
“Very good,” Huntington said.
“Not as good as a husband and wife in your circumstances having poodles with those names. But you were saying.”
“Yes,” he said, a tad frostily. “In any case, she does have time on her hands. As I said, between noon and two three days a week, it’s a blank canvas. Her answers are vague, evasive, if I press her on where she was.”
“What’s her name?”
“Honey.”
“That’s her Christian name?”
“Her given name is Susan. But no one knows her by that.”
“Have you asked her?”
“Asked her?”
“If she’s having an affair.”
“Not in so many words. But I suspect she knows I suspect something.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Discover the truth,” he said. “See where she goes, what she’s doing. What his name is, if my suspicions are right.”
“And then?”
“Bring the information to me, of course.”
“What will you do with it?”
“I suppose I haven’t completely decided yet. Frankly, I’m hoping you’ll prove me wrong.”
I explained my fee structure. If he found fault with the amounts, his expression didn’t show it.
“One other thing,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I don’t take sides in these cases. I just provide information. What you do with it is your business. As long as it doesn’t involve violent behavior toward your spouse. Am I making myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” he said.
I walked out of the Top $500 richer than when I’d walked in, but still not sure how I felt about the job. There was something about Huntington that bugged me. Despite his good looks, station in life, and apparent access to lots of cash, I could see why his wife might not be entirely happy at home.
11
I was short on groceries—yesterday’s activities had interrupted my usual supply run—so I stopped by the Giant Eagle off Whittier, the one that used to be the Big Bear, before returning to my house. By then Hopalong was whining for his walk. I took him around the park once, then headed home, hungry.
The first thing I noticed as I neared home was the police cruiser parked in front of the house, followed by the police officer standing on my porch writing something in a notebook. Beside him was my twenty-something neighbor in a jogging suit.
“Everything OK?” I said.
The officer looked at me for a moment longer than necessary, then glanced at something in his notebook.
“You live here?”
“Yes.”
“You got broken into.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Went through the back door. This girl here heard something, called it in. You mind taking a look inside, see if anything was taken.”
I looked at my neighbor. I said, “You all right?”
She nodded. “I was just coming back from running. I wouldn’t normally go around the back, but I’d picked up some trash by the park and came around to the alley to throw it in the garbage. I noticed when I walked past your house that the back door was partly open. I didn’t think anything of it at first. But after I dumped the stuff, I was walking back and these two guys came out of the door, moving kind of fast. They looked at me and just took off.” She pointed vaguely up the street. “I got a little closer and saw the door had been forced open. That’s when I called the police.”
“Thanks,” I said.
The officer gestured toward my front door. “You mind?”
Inside,
