Perfect Sax (19 page)

I was thinking a hundred crazy things. Jumbled among the thoughts were my fears of the past week, my sense that I had been a target all along. And then my anxieties mushroomed. Perhaps there was a greater power at work here. How had I so easily become attached to a man about whom I knew so
little? Was there anything rational about Ping-Ponging from the cop who lied to me to a crook who swore he’d always tell me the truth? Tonight’s bizarre events suddenly seemed to be my punishment for giving in to pleasure, for wanting to start fresh with a new man who might love me. Things have a purpose. Everything was connected. Damn it, I didn’t believe in random. I didn’t believe in accidents. I always needed to know
why.

I was sitting in a heap on one of the black leather chairs when Dex came back in the house. He was breathing hard.

“She’s gone. I lost her. I heard the sound of a car engine.”

I continued crying, not able to talk.

“Look, Madeline. I’m so sorry. I have no idea who she was. You have to believe that. I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.”

“That’s okay. It’s not your fault,” I finally managed to say between sobs. “I’ve seen her before. Earlier today. I think she’s been following me.”

Dex’s whole manner changed. “Who is she?” He looked at me seriously now. Perhaps he had thought it was some outraged neighbor lady coming to complain about our indecent show. But he suddenly realized something more sinister was happening to me.

“I don’t know.” I stopped crying and tried hard to think it through. “At first, because of her age, I thought maybe she could be one of the women who worked on the Woodburn gala. Maybe I should recognize her. But I just don’t.”

And while I was still coming down from this enormous shock, racking my sorry brain for answers, Dex suddenly smiled at me. “Man.”

“What?”

He shook his head, still smiling. That smile made all the difference. He had an interesting effect on me. He didn’t let
pathos boil over very long, which was a great relief. I looked at his grin and made the obvious guess. “You can’t believe how much trouble I can get myself into, right?”

“No. I can easily believe that.”

I might have been on the ragged side of drunk and lovelorn and completely freaked out, but I could still take a joke. I grinned.

“It’s just that until that lady came along,” Dex continued, holding his thumb about an inch away from his forefinger, “I was about this close to having the best sex in my entire sorry life.”

“Of that,” I answered, “you should have no damn doubt.”

D
exter insisted on following me back to Wesley’s house. I complained it was too much trouble; it was late; I was fine. He just stared at me. His car stayed right behind mine all the way home.

My eyes swept across the midnight streets, some residential and dark, some Friday-night raucous, scouring each lane, looking for the Honda Accord. Naturally, I didn’t see it.

“You okay?” Dex asked, talking to me by cell phone as we drove down a jamming Sunset Strip.

“Stop calling me,” I said, laughing. “I’m fine.” I disconnected and waved in my rearview mirror as we inched past the giant billboards.

But I had to think about how fine I really was. Who was that woman? Why had she followed me? And more disturbing, if she meant to harm me, she knew where to find me. I was sure of it. She must have been tailing me better than I realized. I had to assume she’d followed me from Wesley’s place in Hancock Park up to Dexter’s house earlier that evening, so I had no doubt she knew where I was staying.

On Hudson, Wesley’s street, I slowed down and examined every parked car. No Accord with a missing front plate. With Dexter following behind in his Z4, I drove right
past Wesley’s house and then proceeded slowly up and down the quiet streets in all directions, scouting the curbs for dark Hondas. This is a neighborhood that doesn’t encourage street parking for its residents. The few scattered cars parked in the area were more than likely partygoers’. I strained to keep vigilant and yet I spied no Hondas that matched my stalker anywhere within a one-mile radius of Wes’s place.

Dexter’s and my two-car convoy slowly cruised by the Canadian consulate general’s English-style mansion, then past the official, but uninhabited mayoral mansion, the Getty House, on South Irving. By then I was blocks away from Wesley’s house, but I wanted to be sure.

My cell phone, thrown on the passenger seat of the Trailblazer, chirped.

I fumbled for it and hit the on button. “Okay,” I said, looking in my rearview mirror. “I’m fine. I’m heading to Wesley’s right now.”

“Just checking.” Dex’s voice sounded calm over the phone.

I drove back to Third Street and over to Hudson. Then I pulled into the long driveway and Dex pulled his car in right behind me. Before I could unfasten my seat belt and gather my bag and phone, he had walked up to my door and opened it. We didn’t talk as we walked together back to the guest house behind the empty main house. The porch light was on outside the door of the cottage. Thanks, Wes.

I turned to say good night.

“You sure you don’t want me to come in for a little while?” Dex tilted his head, watching my face in the porch light. He seemed concerned with what he saw. “You know, check that everything’s all right.” He reached out and softly
stroked my arm in a friendly gesture, but I didn’t move closer to him and he let his hand drop.

“No. Thanks. I’ve got to be up early tomorrow morning.”

“Right.” He looked like he was about to say something more, but then thought better of it.

“I had better go in. Don’t want to disturb Wes.”

“So Wesley’s home,” Dex said, sounding reassured. “Good.”

With an evening that had wound up resembling some new X-rated extreme sport more than a good, old-fashioned date, there seemed no correct way to end it. “Sorry about tonight,” I said. Lame but true.

“Say, don’t be. It was an incredible meal. You are amazingly beautiful. I am swooning for you.” I laughed as he gently brushed my long, curly hair back with both hands, resting them on my shoulders. “Things could be worse, you know?”

“Sure.”

Dex gave me a short, tentative kiss. I kept my eyes open this time.

“You are completely freaked,” he assessed sadly.

“Yeah. I know. Let’s talk later.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’m working during the day, but maybe later in the afternoon.”

“Where are you working?”

“At a kid’s party in Pasadena. Say, you want to hear Wynton Marsalis play live?”

I gave Dexter the address and we said good night.

Wesley was still up, reading the latest Harry Potter. He put the heavy book down the moment I entered the living room. That’s when I noticed Honnett was sitting in one of the club chairs, ankle resting on knee, foot tapping.

“I called Honnett,” Wes said. It was an unnecessary explanation. I had phoned Wes to tell him about the stalker woman turning up at Dexter’s house. Now I was sure she’d been following me earlier in the day. It had taken Wes maybe four seconds after I hung up to get Honnett over to the guest house. It was sickening. I was relieved.

“Maddie, sorry to intrude here,” he said, looking uncomfortable. How much could he have heard through the front door when I was kissing Dexter good-bye? “Wes was worried about you.”

“I’m worried, too,” I said.

“Yeah? Well, add me to the list. I wanted to go pick you up, drive you back here, but Wes wouldn’t give me the address of your…friend. I guess you got back okay.” Honnett was doing an impressive job of holding on to some serious rage, keeping his expressions in check, but his voice showed the strain. I couldn’t tell what was at play here, the idea that I was in danger or the fact that I was dating someone new, and he wasn’t allowed to come rescue me.

“But she’s fine now,” Wesley said, doing his best to settle us all down.

“Look, you need to call Baronowski and bring him up to speed on what’s going on here. Give him a description. It was a woman, right?”

I nodded.

He thought it over—a woman—and appeared to be as stumped as I was. “Did she have a weapon?”

I shook my head no.

“You sure? Because the only crime we have here is maybe trespassing. And if there was no weapon in sight and she left immediately after you spotted her, it’s kind of hard to make anything of it. That is assuming we can find her. Do you think your friend wants to press charges?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t really do anything to us. She just sort of watched us for a while, through the window.”

“What were you doing?” he asked, following the trail of the story.

“We…” I simply could not think of an appropriate response.

Wesley coughed, and then asked brightly, “Would anyone care for a cup of coffee?” And without waiting for a response, he took himself off to the tiny guest-house kitchen and gave us some room to fight in privacy. I love Wes.

Honnett smiled a little and shook his head. There were clearly secrets separating us now. Things I wouldn’t go into. Things about me and another man. Maybe he got the irony of our situation. I don’t know. But he looked ill, that was for sure. I considered it. Maybe even as ill as I had felt when I discovered he wasn’t all mine.

“You trying to hurt me, Maddie?” he asked softly, still smiling at me.

I thought about it. I can’t talk about my unconscious or subconscious or id or whatever, but I didn’t
think
I had gotten myself involved with Dexter on purpose to hurt Honnett. On the other hand, I could see the power of his reaction. And it did feel awfully good, I’m ashamed to admit, to see he still cared about me this way. I could see why a woman would do something like that, to provoke a man who dumped her, to make him jealous, just to get a little of her own back. I looked up at him. Any momentary pained expression I might have observed was now replaced by the trusty Honnett mask of calm.

I recovered and picked up my point. “But I’m sure this person has been following me. I’ve had the creepiest feeling all week that I’m a target. First Sara, then Grasso, and now me.”

“Look, Maddie,” he said gently, “you’ve been under a lot of strain. Your house is ripped apart. You’re living over here. You told me you’re not sleeping much. Your nerves must be shot.”

“I’m not mistaken, Chuck. I’m not.”

“Well, I’m just saying it’s easy to get jumpy. It was dark out. A woman startled you and she may have looked like someone else you barely got a glimpse of.”

“I’m not seeing things,” I said, my teeth clenched.

“Okay, but I’m going to talk to you like a cop now, okay? I have to say this. What do you know about this guy you were just seeing? You’ve known him how long? How do you know this woman wasn’t an old friend of his, maybe even an ex?”

I stared at Honnett hard. “You mean,” I said quietly, “maybe he has another girl he’s not telling me about?”

Even Honnett got the real point I was trying to make.

“I just hope,” he said, looking at his hands, “this guy of yours is good enough for you. I hope he’s a right guy. At least I could live with that. I could be happy for you. I don’t want to think about you getting mixed up with some creep. And don’t yell at me. I know it’s none of my damn business who you go out with now. I’m just saying.”

“And that’s just you talking like a ‘cop’?” I smiled at him. For a bastard with a wife still attached, he did care about me. He did.

“Anyway, the point I’m making is, you are tired. And we have to face it. There isn’t any hard evidence anyone is after you.”

I tilted my chin down and gave him the eye. “Yeah, right. You know I don’t believe in coincidences, Honnett.” I waved my hand in front of my face, dismissing the topic. “This is not making me feel better. What I want to know is what the
hell is going on? Why would someone want to follow me? How does this connect to the murders?”

Wes returned and put a tray on the coffee table. There were fresh-baked round chocolate wafers, which had been half dipped into white chocolate, along with a carafe of coffee and a pot of tea.

“Thanks, Wes,” Honnett said, and then he looked back at me. “Okay. Tell us what you think is happening.”

What I wanted was Honnett’s cop head, not his exboyfriend head, and he was finally getting there. I moved to the sofa across from him and crossed my legs.

“I keep thinking that this must have something to do with Albert Grasso’s papers.”

“But how?” Honnett asked.

“We looked through them,” Wes said, doubtful like Honnett. “There was nothing there.”

“But let’s say someone thought there was something to worry about in those papers,” I persisted. “Grasso knew I had seen them. Maybe others did, too. Maybe they want me dead.”

“So, you figure they came to your house on Whitley to kill you last Saturday night?” Honnett seemed detached now and ready to lay it all out. And it’s funny. It had annoyed me when he kept insisting I was wrong, but now it spooked me just as bad to realize he might think I was right. “And the shooter made a mistake.”

“Right. Let’s say that was Grasso. And he mixed up Sara Jackson for me. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, I know. Sara and I don’t…
didn’t
really look that much alike.”

“But wait, Mad…” Wes picked up a teacup, reconsidering this scenario. “Albert Grasso didn’t know you very well. Maybe in the dark. She’s alone in your house late at night. She has long red hair. Maybe he got confused.”

“We’re both about the same size…” I looked at Honnett to see if he was buying any of it.

“Okay. Keep on telling your story. For now, let’s say Grasso killed her.”

“Right. Then the people he was scared about, the ones his files may have incriminated in some way, they came by his place and killed
him.
”

“Okay,” Honnett said, sounding neutral.

I spun out the rest. “Those people who killed Grasso had more cleaning up to do. They see the news and realize Grasso killed the wrong girl. I’m still a threat. So they are sending some hit woman out after me.”

“Maddie. Honey. You think anyone outside of the movies uses hit women?” Honnett had gone about as far as he could go.

“I don’t know! Okay, not a professional killer.” We all laughed. “But this woman…She was
attractive,
regularlooking. Hey, what about this? Maybe she was a friend of Caroline Rochette’s. She looked about Caroline’s age.”

“And what would that be?” Wes asked. “Somewhere north of forty and south of death?” He looked pleased to see me smile, and continued: “I suppose there could be some wacked-out posse of killer real estate ladies after your property…”

“It doesn’t fit,” Honnett observed, looking at me. I followed his eyes down. My blouse was held together by paper clips. Dex didn’t have a sewing kit. Figures.

“Why not?” I asked, ignoring his gaze. “Leaving aside the killer-realtor theory, what’s wrong with the first part of my story?”

Honnett sighed, and poured himself a cup of coffee. “You’re talking like ‘the Mob,’ right? This is not their style, Madeline. But putting that aside…” He stirred in a spoon of sugar and looked back at me, getting serious. “First, if Albert
Grasso and/or whoever else was part of some scheme was willing to kill to make sure no one read those files, they’d have to kill a hell of a lot more people than you. They would have to kill his gal pal, Caroline Rochette, not to mention Wes and Holly.” He waited for my reaction.

“True.”

“And now it gets even more complicated. The police detectives in the case have copies of the papers, which was a very smart move on your part. So assuming those papers of Albert Grasso’s really do contain something very hot, we all missed it. The people who care about it gotta realize by now we’re too frigging dense to find it.”

I listened to his logic as it tumbled my theories like the proverbial dominoes.

“So, if there
was
something explosive among Grasso’s box of junk and none of us geniuses have discovered it, they’d be fools not to leave it all the hell alone now, wouldn’t they? At this point, coming after a little caterer makes no sense.”

He was right. Why would they?

Honnett spoke kindly, but he didn’t let up until he got me to see it his way. “Honey, killing you is the opposite of what they would want right now. It would only direct suspicion to those papers, which right now no one is really focused on, don’t you see? If I were them, assuming there
is
a ‘them,’ I’d lie low now or get out of town. You know, fly to Belize. I wouldn’t keep kicking up dust, Maddie.”

“Right,” I said slowly.

“And then let’s face another fact. There’s a good chance there was nothing important among those papers in the first place.” Honnett was not averse to rubbing in a little salt.