He was about to move to the chair opposite the futon when she appeared from behind one of the tapestries. She looked taller than he remembered, her face thin and pale beneath a tumble of black hair. Ghostly looking. Her eyes pulled him in and under with their pale blueness.
“Quinn.” She spoke his name with cautious uncertainty.
He tried to ignore the soft throatiness of her voice as it tickled his senses and put him on red alert. Now was not the time to let testosterone kick in. He had to concentrate. Had she told Arianna the truth or was it a grand lie? And why was she so pale? Sleeplessness or part of an act, exacerbated with or without makeup? He couldn’t tell. Even the choice of black threw him. Was it her preferred color or an effort to portray an image? If so, what image?
“Quinn Burnes.” He crossed his arms over his chest and slouched against the futon. Maybe he was acting like a jerk but he detested liars and his gut told him this woman was lying.
She inclined her head and slipped into the wicker rocker opposite him, folding her hands in her lap. Demure. Certainly not the portrait of a murderer, and maybe that’s exactly what she wanted him to think. “Arianna says you might be able to help me.”
“I said I’d listen. No guarantees.”
“Thank you.”
So timid. Was she playing him? “Tell me what happened.” He paused. “Everything.”
Her knuckles turned white against the blackness of her pants as she clasped and unclasped her hands. “It happened about three weeks ago.” She fixed her gaze on a spot near his left shoe. “I was in the process of a divorce. It was very difficult. My husband didn’t want it, but . . . I had no choice really, the divorce I mean.” Her voice drifted to the past. “I tried but . . . well, it didn’t work. Four years, almost five. He followed me everywhere, threatened me. Finally, I had to call the police. They ordered him to stay away, but he knew they wouldn’t enforce it. He was always there, just beyond the limit. He told me I belonged to him and he’d kill me before he gave me up. That’s when I got the gun.” Her voice dipped so low Quinn had to lean forward to hear. “One night, I woke up and someone was in my bedroom. I don’t remember much, just a figure coming toward me.” A tear slipped down her cheek, caught under her chin. “The gun was under my pillow. I pulled it out and fired. I didn’t know it was him, I swear I didn’t know.”
“Did he have a gun?”
Her eyes filled with more tears when she looked at him through a pale blue bottomless ocean of pain and shook her head no.
“You left him there with a hole blown in his gut.”
“I had no choice.”
“Everybody’s got a choice.”
“You don’t understand.” She swiped her hands across her face. “He would have killed me.”
“So you killed him instead?”
The blue eyes turned bluer, rimmed with tears. Her hands fell to her sides, white, fragile, palms up. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
Women were so much better on the stand than men. They evoked such sympathy, especially if there were tears involved. He’d used this to his advantage with his own clients, even coached them on the timed tearful recall and the proper inflection that could sway a jury. Right now he was the jury, all twelve rolled into one, sitting opposite a beautiful, distraught woman who was not only crying but inflecting
and
beseeching. She could give
him
lessons. Only one question remained; did she shoot her husband by accident or with intent? He didn’t know. Yet. “You want me to find out if your husband’s still alive.”
She sniffed and gave a grateful nod.
“So, you can divorce him? Clear your conscience? Go back to San Diego without a police warrant on your head?”
“Because I have to know.” A shred of anger sparked her words.
“And you’ve told me everything?”
“Yes.”
“Except the part about how he beat you up, right? You neglected that, because then you’d have probable cause.”
This time when she spoke there was real anger in her words. “It
was
an accident. I can’t kill spiders let alone people.”
“You’d be surprised what you can do when you have to.”
She looked away, then back, her hands clasped in her lap again. “I thought you were going to help me,” she said in a pinched voice.
“I was,” Quinn said, rubbing his jaw. “I still might. Just answer one question first. Think carefully, your life could depend on it.” He waited long enough to see the worry lines crease her forehead, before he asked, “What’s your real name?”
She hesitated, the briefest of moments and then let the name fall from her lips. It was such a light whisper, less than a whisper really, that she must have taken his non-response for not having heard and repeated it, once again, in a voice that clanged against his brain one hundred decibels greater than the first.
“Eve.”
Chapter 4
“I’m never going to take it off,” Annie whispered into Quinn’s chest when he gave her the bracelet. “Oh, Quinn, I’m sorry.”
The last glimpses of afternoon sun dipped past his office window. “I didn’t get this for you to make you cry.” He stroked her dark hair, remembering how he used to braid it when she was young. He remembered the tears, too. There’d been too many of them. “Don’t, Annie.”
She pulled away and searched his face. “You didn’t have to get me anything. You’re my brother. I love you and it’s not right for me to judge you.” She swiped at her cheeks and sniffed. “If you want to make money for people who are basically ripping off the system, I guess that’s your business. It’s just that, you are
brilliant
, Quinn, so truly brilliant and you’re settling—”
“Don’t.”
She raised her hands. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“Sold any more paintings?” He had to get her on a safer subject and talk of painting always did it.
“As a matter of fact, I have.” Her smile lifted his heart. She was strong and beautiful and yet, underneath the worldly sophistication there were still days when he spotted shreds of the fragile child crying for her brother to make sense of a world turned upside down.
“. . . it’s the ocean one. Remember? I painted it last year in North Carolina.”
“I do,” he said, forcing himself from the past.
“It’s one of my favorites, though, truthfully, it would have been magnificent in oil.” She sighed. “But, I’ve tried and I just don’t have the gift for it, not like you and,” she paused, “well not like you.”
She’d meant to say,
not like you and Mom
. Annie knew he didn’t like to talk about their mother but she’d allowed Evie Burnes to filter through her daily routine, on canvas and in the necklace she refused to take off. Whether his sister spoke her name or not, the woman was always there, breathing just below the surface. Once or twice, he’d thought about telling Annie the truth behind their mother’s disappearance but what good would that do?
“I wish I knew who was buying my paintings,” Annie said. “I’ve asked Ian but he always tells me it’s this or that conglomeration which makes absolutely no sense because he won’t give specifics. I mean, where are these paintings? A conglomeration as he calls it could be anywhere, even outside the country, though I doubt that’s the case, but still. Wouldn’t you be curious?”
Quinn rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “Why does it matter who buys it as long as the check clears?”
“Are you serious? Can you imagine what it would be like to walk into an office or a home, or think of this, a restaurant, and see something you’ve created hanging there for the world to see?”
“Do I not have your paintings all over my office?” He pointed to one on each wall. “And at Sylvia’s desk? I even convinced the landlord to hang one in the women’s restroom.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She flopped into a chair beside him. “You’re my brother. You’re supposed to love my work.”
“Oh, I get it. I don’t count.”
“No, of course you count, it’s just . . .”
She shrugged and he reached for her hand. “I do know. Seeing your painting at the
Stuffed Flounder
would validate you, while seeing it here makes it seem more like a brotherly obligation than an artistic coup.”
She offered a timid smile. “Right.”
“Someone’s buying them, Annie.”
“I know. Do you think you could bully Ian into giving you details? He’s such a grump to me.”
“That’s because he was half in love with you before Michael showed up.”
“Stop. You think everyone’s in love with me.”
“I do, and it’s my job as your big brother to protect you.”
“Funny, I was thinking it was
my
job to protect you.”
“Me?”
“You,” she said, suddenly serious. “There are a lot of money hungry women out there looking for a catch like you.”
“Trust me, there’s no need to worry.” A vision of black hair and red lips flashed through his mind but he pushed it aside.
“That’s what Michael thought and now look at him.”
“Well, if somebody like you came along, I might change my mind.”
“I know.”
She pounced on this as though she’d been setting the bait all along and was ready to reel him in. “But you have to have the opportunity and you can’t, not with women like Victoria and Mandy hanging on your arm.”
“What’s wrong with Victoria and Mandy?” Actually, what
was
wrong with them? So, they weren’t the kind you pictured in a family portrait holding a baby? He wasn’t interested in that.
“Come on, Quinn. Don’t you ever want to engage in a semi-meaningful relationship?”
“That’s why I have you.”
She ignored him. “Who’s not related?”
“Actually, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
She said this with such abject misery that for a split second he wanted to promise her he’d think about what she’d said, maybe even try calling one of the names she’d given him the last several months. Anything to make his sister happy. But in the end, he couldn’t, so he shrugged and said, “No, I guess I don’t.”
***
Quinn paged through the report Butch Cooker had sent him last night. A good investigator could turn up dirt in twenty-four hours and Danielle aka Eve had quite a bit of dirt stuck to her name. For one, she’d conveniently neglected to mention she was married to one of the wealthiest residents in San Diego, who just so happened to be a lawyer. A prosecutor no less. Great. If that weren’t enough to make Quinn suspicious of Danielle’s story, the estranged husband’s name dated back to the early 1900’s and his father, Alexander Maldonando Sr., was a United States Senator.
But the lies behind Danielle’s story hit Quinn on page two of the report. He’d read this section so many times he could recite it. Alexander Maldonando Jr. was indeed dead, but he’d been shot in the head, not the gut. The woman had lied. A tiny part of him wished she’d been telling the truth. Just this once, maybe he’d wanted to believe a woman other than Annie and Arianna could be trusted.
There was one nagging situation that made no sense no matter how many times he turned it around in his brain. Where was the press in all of this? Why wasn’t Alexander Maldonando Jr.’s face splattered on the front page of every newspaper in the country? Or flashing across the television screen? He’d been a high profile prosecutor, his father a senator, his lineage, almost aristocratic.
Why wasn’t anybody talking about it?
Butch Cooker got his information from Maldonando Jr.’s second cousin, Ernesto, who told him the crying hadn’t stopped in the Maldonando household since Alexander’s oldest brother, Thomas, discovered the blood drenched body sprawled on the bedroom floor. Butch’s report also said there was a lid on the story until they located their prime suspect, a convicted cocaine dealer Maldonando prosecuted ten years ago who’d been paroled six days before the shooting. Quinn only half believed the story. The other half of silence was the privilege of having a father for a United States Senator. Why wasn’t anybody looking for Danielle? According to Ernesto, this wasn’t the first time she’d taken off. She’d disappeared last fall after a miscarriage and ended up in a psych unit for three weeks. That’s when she tried to kill herself.
What did anybody really know about her that made any sense? Maybe she was psychotic. Or maybe she was a pathological liar. Arianna could be in danger. Quinn remembered the fearfulness in Danielle’s blue eyes, the guarded words, the nervous gestures. She could be a liar
and
a murderer. He’d confront her, but not until he knew Arianna was safe, and then he’d contact the Maldonando’s and tell them to come and get their daughter-in-law. Quinn glanced at his watch. He could leave as soon as he took care of his 10:30 meeting, the infamous Carl Carlson and his toilet seat injury at Wendy’s.
Sylvia rang him at 10:35. “Quinn, the Carlson’s are here to see you.”
“Thanks, Sylvia. Send them in.”
Carl and Roberta Carlson waddled into his office, testimonies to one too many super sizes. Carl’s waddle had a definite limp to it, and he held his left arm straight out, advertising the injury to his hand which he’d wrapped in so many layers of gauze it looked like a small pillow. Quinn’s gaze flickered from the hand to the Carlson’s, who were now standing next to him with an air of expectancy and self-righteousness.