No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale (39 page)

The second level of the parking garage was nearly deserted. I parked in a space close to the elevators and sat for a moment in the car, breathing in the pleasant scent of expensive leather upholstery. My story was simple enough—I just had to keep my nerve and not let the police fluster me, no matter what sorts of questions might be thrown in my direction.

Easier said than done
, I thought, visualizing hard-faced police barking questions at me as I tried desperately to keep them from guessing the truth. My hands shook a little as I gathered up my purse and umbrella, but I forced myself out of the car, barely remembering to lock it as I headed toward the elevators. From behind me I could hear the little chirp it made as the security system armed itself. Thank God the car had more brains than I did.

Rain still fell steadily as I exited the elevators and headed through the open main square of the plaza, back toward Colorado Boulevard and over to the corner of Walnut and Garfield where the police station was located. The shopping center was sparsely populated; the rain had driven most everyone indoors. The civic center had a few more people walking about, but Southern Californians were not brave about rain, and everyone I saw was hurrying to be somewhere else.

My feet were beginning to get wet inside the impractical pumps, and I hurried along as best I could, even though I was anything but eager to reach my destination. Still, I arrived there soon enough, sooner than I would have liked. Ignoring the rain that beat down on my umbrella and the increasing dampness in my shoes, I stood outside the door for a long moment, watching as others hurried in and out. A few people cast curious glances in my direction, no doubt wondering what I was doing, standing out there in the rain.

I wondered as well, for a moment. Then I saw Erik’s face in my mind—his whole face, scars and all, his cloudy green eyes warm with love. I thought of his voice, and how his mouth felt on mine. I thought of all the million and one things that made him uniquely Erik, and I remembered how much I loved him. It was for him, and us, that I did this.

Then I pushed open the door and went inside.

Officer Campbell paused significantly outside Ortiz’s doorway. He knew something was up, because her dark eyes were gleaming and she could barely repress a grin.

“What is it, Campbell?” he asked. The morning had been uneventful enough; he and Kosky had been called in to investigate a burglary, but otherwise he had spent most of his time catching up on paperwork and studiously ignoring the Daly case.
 

“Someone to see you, detective.”

He waited, not bothering to answer. Obviously Letisha wanted to take her time with this one.

She raised an eyebrow, apparently irked that he hadn’t risen to her bait. “A Miss Christine Daly, detective,” she said finally, and stepped aside to let a young woman enter the office.

After a few seconds in which he was certain the occasional arrhythmia he experienced was going to develop into a full-blown heart attack, Ortiz regained himself enough to say, “Please come in, Miss Daly.” He looked over at Letisha, who still loitered near the doorway, obviously enjoying herself hugely. “Thank you, Officer Campbell. Can you shut the door on your way out?”

Letisha gave an irritated roll of the eyes but acquiesced in silence, closing the door after Christine had fully entered the office and taken the chair Ortiz indicated.

He continued to stare at her for a moment, as shocked by the change in her appearance as by her presence in his office itself. Gone were the shabby, worn-too-many-times clothes and the slightly frizzy hair. She wore an expensive cashmere twin set and narrow skirt, and her curly hair fell in gleaming spirals over her shoulders. Hanging from her ears and circling her neck was a matched set of sapphire and diamonds that his experience investigating high-end robberies put at no less than fifty thousand dollars, and another huge stone glittered from the ring finger of her right hand. She was absolutely stunning, and far more elegant than he could have ever imagined.

“Officer Ortiz?” she asked, extending the hand with the sapphire.

He tore his eyes away from the ring and accepted her hand. “Miss Daly—I must say that I’m a little surprised to see you.”
Especially looking the way you do
, he thought. If someone had told him she’d spent the last two weeks vacationing at some European spa, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

The color rose in her cheeks, obvious against her fair skin. “I’m very sorry for any trouble I’ve caused, detective. That’s why I thought I had better come in to talk with someone.”

“Well, you’ve had a lot of people very worried about you,” he replied, although his tone was milder than he would have thought possible.
 

“It was—terrible of me to disappear the way I did. I realized that after I saw a story about me on the news the other day.” Her manicured fingers moved restlessly on the purse she clutched in her lap—Prada, he noticed.

“So are you telling me that you left your home of your own volition? That there was no foul play involved?”

“Absolutely not, detective.” Her blue eyes were wide; he noticed that they picked up some of the color of the sweater she wore. “I had been having a difficult time deciding what to do about Erik, but when he invited me to his home over the long weekend—”

“Erik?” Ortiz interrupted. “Erik Deitrich?”

“Yes,” she replied, looking surprised. “Do you know him?”

“I know of him,” he replied, his voice grim. Deitrich. Of course. He’d known all along that the man had to be involved in this somehow. Well, that would explain the expensive clothing and jewels, if nothing else. “How do you know him?”

“I met him at work.” The smoky blue gaze slid away from his, and her full mouth pursed slightly. “We were attracted to each other right away, but it was a little awkward for me since I was already seeing Randall. But he kept calling, and we saw each other once or twice. And then when he asked for me to come over—”

“To the house on Charles Street?”

Again that widened gaze. “You know where he lives?”

Ortiz allowed himself a humorless smile. “Oh, he’s been a person of interest in your case for some time. So you went to him, even though you had been seeing Randall, even though you had just spent Thanksgiving with his family?”

“It was wrong of me, I know, but I didn’t know what to say to Randall—he did have a tendency to make a scene over things. I thought maybe it would just be better if I disappeared for a while.”

Having been on the receiving end of Randall’s persistent calls, Ortiz found himself sympathizing with her just a little. Certainly handling Randall could be difficult for someone who had trouble dealing with confrontations. But that didn’t begin to excuse the hell she had put Randall and Meg through these past few weeks. “Possibly you didn’t want to talk to Randall. But why didn’t you at least call Meg to tell her where you were?”

“I was afraid she might tell Randall.”

Again, that made sense, but Ortiz was beginning to think that her answers seemed a little too pat, a little too rehearsed. Oh, there was no mistaking the earnest tone of her voice, the pleading look in her big blue eyes, but he’d seen enough convincing acts from people who were guilty as sin to know that looks counted for very little. When he spoke, he deliberately hardened his tone. “So you’re saying that you just up and disappeared for two weeks so you could cheat on your boyfriend with some reclusive millionaire?”

She winced at his question, even as her full lips thinned a little. “If you want to put it that way, yes.”

“Well, we can leave it at that for now.” He shifted a few papers on his desk, unearthing the Daly file. Opening it, he flipped past a few pages, just to look official—he had the facts memorized by now. “Do you know a gentleman named Jerome Manning?”

“No. Why?”

“Never heard of him?” Ortiz produced a photo and showed it to her. “Have you ever seen this man?”

She took the photo and stared down at it for a moment. “I might have seen him at school once or twice.”

“Any idea why he might have been there?”

“No. I didn’t even know what his name was until you said it right now.”

Again he got the feeling she was lying, but he decided not to call her on it. Not yet. That there was some connection between Deitrich and Manning he was positive, but he had no proof—they’d been far too careful for that.

“So you’d be surprised to know that he was arrested in connection with the theft of your car?”

“My car?” she repeated, looking a little blank. “Did something happen to my car?”

“Yes—actually, it was stolen by a little thug named Tony Vasquez, then sold and crushed.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, and she did look shocked at that. “I thought it would be okay to leave it on the street—I had a street parking permit, and I figured it was so old and beat-up no one would want it anyway.”

“Well, someone did. Maybe they just saw it as an easy mark since it had been sitting there for so long.”

She knotted her fingers in her lap, then looked back up at him. “I don’t understand—if this Tony person stole the car, why would you arrest Jerome for it?”

“Jerome.” Not “Mr. Manning.” A little familiar for someone she professed to have never heard of before now. Interesting, but again it was just his gut telling him she knew very well who Jerome was. “We had information indicating he had actually paid the people involved to steal the car. Unfortunately, we had to release him due to lack of evidence.”

“Oh,” she said awkwardly, obviously not sure how to respond.

“But what you’re telling me is that you’ve spent the last two weeks safely with Mr. Deitrich, that you never heard of Jerome Manning, and up until now you had no idea your car had even been stolen?”

“Um, yes,” she replied. Then, in a rush, “Oh, I know how terrible this all sounds. I’m not an idiot, you know. But Erik just sort of—well—”

“Swept you off your feet?” he interjected dryly.

“Yes.” She leaned forward, all earnestness with her lovely features and prim-but-somehow-sexy twin set. “I—I don’t have a lot of experience, Detective Ortiz. This all came up very suddenly. But my only regret is the pain I might have caused to others.”

That much was true, he knew suddenly. For the first time during this interview, he heard the ring of sincerity in her voice. Oh, she was a good actress, no doubt about that—no big surprise, considering she wanted to be an opera star. But here she was speaking no more than the simple truth. Whatever might have happened—and he had a feeling he might never really know for sure—he realized that she loved this man, or at least thought she did.

What Deitrich had seen in her, he wasn’t sure, aside from the fact that she was beautiful and talented. But Southern California was full of beautiful and talented girls—they flocked from all over the country to be here, after all. Somehow Deitrich had singled her out, made her the object of his interest. He supposed a girl like Christine, alone in the world as she was, would be an easy mark.
 

Anger flared at the unknown Erik Deitrich then, that a man with that kind of wealth and power would exert such influence over a woman as to make her forsake the few friends she had—and good friends, too, the sort who hadn’t abandoned Christine but had fought to help her, to take care of her even when they had no idea whether she was even alive or dead. He felt a sudden rush of sympathy for Randall and Meg; the truth would not be easy for them once it was known.
 

In fact, Christine’s sudden appearance had thrown Ortiz off a bit—he’d forgotten that he told Randall to come by the station when he was done at school for the day, just so he could listen to the tape of Christine’s message and possibly hear something in her voice that Ortiz, as someone who didn’t know her, wouldn’t have been able to decipher. He thought of what might happen if Christine still happened to be here when Randall arrived, and shook his head grimly. There were some things so personal that he had no wish to be a part of them.

Suddenly weary, he said, “So your formal statement is that you were with Erik Deitrich of your own volition, and that no force or coercion was involved?”

She lifted her chin. “I told you that already. But yes, if you need a formal statement—I went with Erik of my own accord, and I accept the responsibility for whatever consequences might be involved due to my disappearance.”

“The ‘consequences,’ as you put it, are mostly with your friends and possibly your employer, Miss Daly. And school, of course—you do realize that you missed finals, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I’m hoping I can work that out. If not, I plan to repeat the semester.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll see.” Again that defiant lift of the chin. “Erik would very much like to hear me sing professionally.”

Bully for Erik
, Ortiz thought, but he only said, “Well, that’s very noble of him, I suppose. So the two of you have discussed a future together, then?”

“Yes.” Her answer seemed a little hesitant, though, and her gaze flickered for a second to the bare ring finger on her left hand.

Not that formal yet, though?
Ortiz thought. Still, even without a formal commitment it seemed that Christine had landed in clover. Here she had been struggling to get through school, living paycheck to paycheck, and now she sat across from him wearing jewels that almost certainly equaled his yearly salary. Deitrich could probably buy her a complete liberal arts college if USC proved to be difficult, so Ortiz had no doubt she would finish school one way or another. He said only, “Well, I suppose that’s very good for you, Miss Daly. I hope that at some point you’ll feel comfortable telling your friends exactly what happened.”

His tone had been bland, but her eyes narrowed a bit at that last statement. No, she wasn’t stupid, despite the big innocent eyes and the naïve act. But she was fighting for whatever vision of the future she had for herself and Deitrich, and the truth was that Ortiz could do very little if she denied ever being coerced.
 

“Well, Miss Daly,” he said. “I must say that I’m relieved to see that you’re all right. It’s unfortunate that people were upset along the way, but at least we can close this case now.”