Deep Pockets by Linda Barnes

herself. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
    “I don’t see how it’s relevant.” His face gave nothing away. Maybe he’d worn sunglasses so I couldn’t read his eyes.
    “You tell me the facts. I decide if they’re relevant.”
    “The only thing that’s relevant is the blackmail.”
    “What about the blackmailer’s motivation? Would you call that relevant?”
    “No one could hold me responsible for Denali’s death.”
    “The thought never crossed your mind?”
    He swallowed. “I don’t have to defend myself to you.”
    I nodded. He didn’t have to defend himself to me and I didn’t have to work for him. Money had gone into my checking account, but it wasn’t a one-way street.
    He crossed his legs and arms defensively and stared off at a distant group of soccer players, kicking a ball near a KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign. The JFK fountain is a granite square. The water flows constantly, an endless sheet of glass, running over carved excerpts from the assassinated president’s speeches.
    Many wealthy conservative donors wanted Harvard to have nothing to do with memorializing the dead president. They refused the honor of having the Kennedy Library sited at Harvard. When there was talk of refusing to name the government school in his honor, the liberal city of Cambridge took action, changing the name of the street on which the school was located to John F. Kennedy Way, so that it would be associated with his name whether or not Harvard sought the distinction.
    “I was stunned when I heard,” Chaney murmured. “Stunned.”
    An elderly man walked a yellow Labrador down the curved path. Chaney waited until he was out of earshot.
    “Listen to me. What we had was not the stuff of drama. What we had was a… a sexual thing.”
    “You know what she said and what she did, but not what she felt or what she thought.”
    “Her heart was not engaged. She broke it off with me.”
    “You said—”
    “That was vanity.”
    “It was a lie.”
    He was silent for a while, but I didn’t prompt him. I studied the granite memorial fountain and waited. It didn’t look anything like a wishing well, too square and modern, but I caught the glint of pennies at the bottom. Tourists toss them instinctively; a fountain means pennies, wishes, keeping the kids quiet a moment longer.
    “I never felt like I knew her,” Chaney said. “It was one of the things that fascinated me. Basically, people are easy to read. Kids are; students are. There isn’t as much infinite variety as you think when you’re young, or maybe this place attracts certain types. I’ve seen so much ambition, so much ego, so much self-regard. Denali was interested in me, and not many of them are. I found it flattering. I don’t kid myself; I’m no Einstein. I’m already old-fashioned. Most of the stuff I believe in, the kids deride. They don’t want to know about educational theory; they want to know about drugs, quick fixes.”
    He was trying to figure out why she’d dropped him, not why she’d killed herself. I waited, hoping he’d speculate about that.
    “She said once that early death ran in her family. That was the only time I remember her using the word
death
. I never imagined she was considered ending her own life.”
    “What do you mean, ‘early death ran in her family’?”
    “She — I don’t see how this is—”
    “Let me decide what’s relevant.”
    “Her mother died when she was a child. Leukemia, I think, a sudden, virulent death. Her father died before she was born. She had no family, and the tribe was reluctant to raise her.”
    “The tribe?”
    “Her mother was an American Indian, from one of those small Northwest tribes. Her father was Swiss, but she didn’t learn that until much later. She had no brothers or sisters. She never went hungry, but there wasn’t much kindness in her life. She didn’t even know her father’s name.”
    “It’s not Brinkman?”
    “His first name. The tribe never spoke it. He must have