“What about the others?”
“No criminal records on any of ’em. Marcus Bernard has had some lawsuits filed against his construction company, but they’re civil and either he won or they got dismissed. I gotta tell ya, Ms. Rose, this ‘evidence’ you’ve given me—I think you’re making a mountain out of an anthill. There’s not a thing we can do from here. Nothing you’ve given me indicates that these deaths are anything more than what the various MEs’ reports have stated, not homicides. Hey, look, I understand where you’re coming from and you can pat yourself on the back. You’ve done your civic duty. It was the right thing to do. Now you can relax and let it go.”
Claudia rose from the chair and slung her purse over her shoulder. His patronizing attitude irritated her, but he was right. She’d done what she had to do and at least the results would make Grusha happy. “Thanks
so
much for your time, Detective.”
“You are
so
welcome. You can go home to California and rest assured, we’ll be taking care of things here. And Ms. Rose . . .”
She had started toward the door. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “Yes, Detective Perez?”
“You
will
leave the investigating to us, won’t you?”
Claudia had no answer for that. She wasn’t about to make a promise she had no intention of keeping. She gave the detective a faintly damning smile. “I just hope nobody else in this dating club happens to cash in their chips a little early.”IT
Detective Perez nodded. “Well, you be sure to let us know if they do it in Manhattan North. We’ll get right on it.”
Chapter 21
When she walked out of the station house, Claudia discovered that iron gray clouds had gathered over the city and a bone-chilling damp had settled in. Since the day had started out pleasant, she hadn’t brought her coat. The light jacket she wore wasn’t much use against the stiff breeze that swept stray bits of trash along the street ahead of her.
Damn!
The hotel was less than a half-mile walk away, not worth trying for a cab. Staying close to the buildings she passed, she hurried along Eighth Avenue to Forty-eighth Street, asking herself whether there was anything more she could have done to convince Detective Perez. She was comforted by the unlikely thought that despite his lukewarm attitude, maybe once he’d talked to Jovanic, the detective’s interest would be piqued enough to do some further looking.
By the time Claudia reached her hotel she was shivering and convinced that she would never be warm again. Rushing through the front doors, she could have wept in gratitude for the blast of warm air that met her inside the brightly lit foyer. She made a beeline for the elevator, thinking that the owners must have spent all the design money on the entry-way, since they certainly hadn’t spent it on guest rooms. But right now, she would be thankful to get into that dreary little room and soak up the warmth of a hot shower.
She moved quickly through the lobby, hurrying past mirrored columns and fancy armchairs. She had almost made it to the concierge desk when she heard someone behind her call her name.
In a blink, all thoughts of getting upstairs and out of her damp clothing deserted her. She swung around, trying to make sense of it. She couldn’t have heard what she thought she’d heard.
Jovanic?
But there he was, filling the hotel lobby with his presence, overnight bag in hand. Freshly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair, gray eyes filled with concern. The lips she wanted to kiss were compressed in a tight line; an endearing dusting of five o’clock shadow stubbled his chin.
“Why didn’t you return my calls?” he demanded.
“I did. Last night. You didn’t answer. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been calling you for two days. What’s the story, Claudia?”
“What are you doing here?” she said again, the thrill of seeing him mixed with a confusing array of feelings. But what rose above the battle was something she couldn’t deny: She was incredibly happy that he was there.
As if he couldn’t wait until they were alone, Jovanic grabbed her in his arms, burying his face in her hair. “We can’t talk here,” he said, as hotel guests pushed past them.
“Let’s go up to my room.”
Between the two of them and the three other passengers squashed into the postage stamp-sized elevator, the ride was cramped and silent. Claudia’s mind was racing with questions about his unexpected arrival, but she held on to the solidity of his presence as if he might evaporate as abruptly as he had materialized. As they stepped out at the tenth floor and the doors closed behind them, she released the breath she had been holding.
She felt compelled to make conversation, chattering as they walked along the corridor to her room. “It’s not the best hotel room I’ve ever had, very plain-Jane. Don’t expect anything much.” Now that they were nearing her room, the atmosphere between them was uncomfortable, stilted, as if they were strangers who had only just met. Not as if they had been partners in a relationship for more than a year.
“At least you got a good retainer,” Jovanic said, as she fiddled with the card key. His sudden proximity had raised all her fears to the surface, demanding that she face them. Her hand was trembling a little and he gently took the card from her and stuck it into the slot. The lock clicked, the green light came on, and Claudia pushed open the door.
He followed her into the room, which seemed even more cramped and less appealing than it had previously. Jovanic closed and locked the door behind him, set his overnight bag on the floor. Claudia put her briefcase and purse beside the armchair in the corner. Before she had a chance to say anything, he took her by the arms and turned her toward him. His expression was exasperated and tender as he cupped her face in his hands. “Why do I love you?” he murmured. “You drive me crazy.”IT
Without warning, she found her eyes brimming and she couldn’t speak. The urge to let go and allow the tears to flow, to allow herself to be vulnerable, was intense, but the habit of many years made her fight it. She had convinced herself long ago that to cry was weakness, even though something was whispering to her that her instincts were off.
“It’s okay,” Jovanic said, the cold leather of his bomber jacket pressing against her cheek as he held her close. “I’m not going to leave you. I love you.”
Why did hearing him say the words hurt her ears, as if he had yelled them at the top of his lungs? He had said them before, but something was different. She let him tilt her face up and a shudder of happiness went through her when they kissed. He was a tough cop; he had seen more horrible things in his years on the force than any one person should have to. But at this moment in time, he was the man who was giving her his heart and, god help her, she trusted him with hers.
He was treating her as if she were breakable. She didn’t want it that way. She let him know with her own urgency. They fumbled with each other’s buttons and zippers, shed their clothing in record time, and stripped back the ugly bedspread.
Hours later, after they had slept for a while and then made love again, Claudia curled against him, holding onto his arm around her, feeling safer than she had felt—maybe ever. Something had changed between them. She knew with certainty that whatever it was they had, had risen to a new level. And without his saying a word, she understood that she did not have to worry about Alex, or anyone else.
“I want to tell you something,” Claudia said in a voice that was almost a whisper. She hesitated, gathering her courage to share something that she had been avoiding thinking about for a very long time. “I want you to know why sometimes I get so cold.”
Jovanic gave a chuckle and held her against him. “Baby, cold is something you could never be. Afraid of being close, maybe, but cold, never.”
She thought about that, musing on his perception of her and how accurate it was. “Yes, afraid of getting close, for sure. But there’s a pretty good reason for it, and I—” Now that the time had come, it was more difficult than she had expected. The shameful secret that she hated had been with her for so long it had become part of her, like a vestigial organ. She had told no one, not even Kelly or Zebediah.
Jovanic didn’t press her, just let her ready herself in her own time, but she could sense him steeling himself, too, for what he was about to hear.
“When I was nine,” Claudia began, “something happened. My mother was working that summer and my brother was in nursery school. My parents said I was old enough to stay home alone. It was supposed to be different back then in the sixties. And my dad’s best friend, Jack . . .” She paused. Could she do this? Realizing that she was breathing too rapidly, she forced herself to slow down. “He lived next door and he offered to watch out for me.” It was getting easier, as if once she had started, the flow of words could not be stemmed.
“He wasn’t married, didn’t have any kids of his own. He was kind of like an uncle to me, and I adored him. He had this baby blue ’57 T-Bird convertible that impressed all the neighborhood kids, but I was the only one who got to ride in it. He used to drive me around with him when he went on errands. He’d buy me ice cream, take me to the zoo. I thought he was the greatest. Then one afternoon I went over to his house to watch TV. I remember it so well. No one was home at my house and it was so quiet. I was bored, didn’t feel like doing anything.
“So I went next door. The front door was open and he called out to me to come in. He was in the bedroom. He was lying in bed.” She tried to keep her voice nonchalant—old habit—don’t show your vulnerability. “He pulled me on top of him and started French kissing me.” The memory of how his tongue had tasted as it probed her mouth still had the power to repel her.
He had kissed her that way, sucking on her lips until they were rimmed with blue. An hour later, when he’d let her go at last, she’d run home and put her face close to the bathroom mirror, rubbing and rubbing at her mouth, hoping to get her lips back to their normal color before her mother came home from work. The rest of her would never be normal again.
At the time, it had seemed to happen all at once; yet as an adult looking back at the memory, Claudia recognized now that Jack had been grooming her over a long period of time for what had happened.
“I could feel his erection under the covers, but I didn’t know what it meant,” she said in a murmur. “I just knew something was horribly wrong. I tried to get off him, but he wouldn’t let me go.”
“Did he—” Jovanic struggled, but he couldn’t seem to say it.
“Yes, he raped me, and—” She took a ragged breath. At last those words had come out of her, and she realized with a sense of amazement that the sky hadn’t fallen in. “I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened. He said he would kill my cat Tommy if I told, and I believed him.”
Jovanic buried his face in her hair, kissed the top of her head. The way he held her close made her feel safe.
“My god, Claudia, I’m so, so sorry, baby. I guessed it had to be something like that, but you never said . . .”
“You did? And you’re okay with it? I mean, with, well, you know, ‘damaged goods’ and all that.” She wanted to look at him, but the sense of shame had been burned for too long into her brain, even after she was old enough to know, logically, that the blame had not been her burden to bear.
His arms tightened around her. “
Okay
with it? I’d like to shoot the motherfucker ’s balls off.”
“He died a couple of years later,” Claudia said. “Pancreatic cancer, I think. For a long time I felt guilty that I was happy about it. That was hard. My parents were devastated by his death. He was one of their closest friends.”
“So they didn’t know what he did to you?”
“I’ve never told them. That wasn’t the only time it happened. He’d come to the front door when my parents weren’t home and I would run and hide in the closet. I’d scrunch up in there and make myself as small as I could until he stopped knocking. But there were times when they left me in his care, not knowing . . .” Claudia swallowed convulsively. “And that’s why I have so much trouble trusting.”
She rolled over to face Jovanic. His eyes were squeezed shut and she could see tears between the lashes. She brushed them away with gentle fingers and laid her head against his chest, feeling strangely light. As if unburdening herself had moved a fifty-pound weight off her heart and allowed her to breathe freely for the first time in months.
They ordered room service and sat cross-legged in bed, eating burgers and fries, drinking Sam Adams. She didn’t have to ask about Alex; he volunteered the story, and explained everything.
“That photo Annabelle took. It happened exactly the way I told you.”
“I know. I’m sorry I let myself believe otherwise. We had gotten so close, it scared me. I think I was unconsciously looking for an excuse to put some distance between us.”
“Well, since we’re making confessions—”
Claudia gave him an apprehensive glance, not wanting to spoil the evening. “You don’t have to—”
“Just hear me out,” he said. “You weren’t totally wrong about Alex. No, wait a second—” He put his fingertips over her mouth as she started to protest. “She’s been coming on to me pretty heavily for a couple of months. I haven’t encouraged it, I swear to you, but it hasn’t made any difference. She’s done everything she can to get me in the sack.”
“I knew it.” Claudia’s anger with Alex collided with a feeling of triumph that her antenna had been twanging in the right direction. “If you were trying to discourage her, taking her to your apartment while you were in the shower wasn’t exactly a smart thing to do.”
He gave a sheepish shrug. “I know. I figured that out afterward, when you wouldn’t talk to me. Hey, I’m a guy—we’re stupid.”
“Lower than pond scum,” Claudia agreed with mock severity. “Lower than—”
“Okay, enough already. Just believe me when I tell you that Alex means nothing to me. She’s my partner, that’s it.”