"This time of night?"
"I want some ice cream."
"There's a freezer full."
"But none of the flavor I'm craving."
The faithful housekeeper always knew when she
was lying, but she never challenged her. That was just
one of the reasons that Davee adored her. "I'll be
careful. Back in a while."
"And if anybody asks me later ... ?"
"I was in bed fast asleep by nine."
Knowing that all her secrets were safe with Sarah,
she went into the garage and climbed into her BMW.
The residential streets were dark and sleepy. There
was little traffic on the freeway and commercial
boulevards as well. Although it went against her natural inclination as well as the automobile's, she kept
the BMW within the speed limit. Two DUIs had been
dismissed by a judge who owed Lute a favor. A third
would be pushing her luck.
The McDonald's was lit up like a Las Vegas
casino. Even at this late hour there were a dozen cars
in the parking lot, belonging to the teenagers who
were clustered around the tables inside.
Davee pulled into a shadowed parking space on
the far side of the lot, lowered the driver's-side window,
then turned off the engine. In front of her was a
row of scruffy bushes serving as a hedge between the
McDonald's parking lot and that of another fast food
restaurant that had failed. The building was boarded
up. Behind her was the empty drive-through lane. On
either side of her, nothing but darkness.
He wasn't there yet and that miffed her. Responding
to his urgency, she had dropped everything--including
a perfectly good highball--and had come
running. She flipped down the sun visor, slid the
cover off the lighted mirror, and checked her reflection.
He opened the passenger door and got in. "You
look good, Davee. You always do."
Rory Smilow closed the car door quickly to extinguish
the dome light. Reaching above the steering
wheel, he slid the closure back across the vanity mirror,
eliminating that light, too.
His compliment spread through Davee like a sip of
warm, very expensive liqueur, although she tried not
to show the intoxicating effect it had on her. Instead,
she spoke crossly. "What's up with the cloak and dagger
stuff, Rory? Running low on clues these days?"
"Just the opposite. I have too many. None of them
add up."
Her comment had been intended as a joke, but of
course he had taken her seriously. Disappointingly,
he was getting right down to business, just as he had
the night he came to inform her that her husband was
dead. He had behaved exactly as protocol demanded.
Professionally. Courteously. Detached.
Never in a thousand years would Steffi Mundell
ever have guessed that they had been lovers who had
once knocked out the glass door of his shower while
making love. That a picnic in a public park had ended
with him sitting against a tree while she rode him.
That one weekend they had subsisted on peanut butter
and sex from after classes on Friday afternoon
until classes began on Monday morning.
His behavior the day Lute died had betrayed none
of the romantic craziness in which they had once engaged.
It had broken Davee's heart that he could
maintain such goddamn detachment when with every
glance she had wanted to gobble him up. His control
was admirable. Or pitiable. So little passion must
make for a very lonely and sterile life.
Trying to harden her heart against him, she said,
"Mark it up to a lapse in good judgment, but here I
am. Now, what do you want?"
"To ask you some questions about Lute's murder."
"I thought you had the case sewed up. I saw on the
news--"
"Right, right. Hammond's taking it to the grand
jury next week."
"So what's the problem?"
"Before today, when you saw the news story, had
you ever heard of Dr. Alex Ladd?"
"No, but Lute had a lot of girlfriends. Many of
them I knew, but not all, I'm sure."
"I don't think she was a girlfriend."
"Really?"
Turning toward him, she pulled her foot up into
the car seat, settling her heel against her bottom and
resting her chin on her knee. It was a provocative, unladylike
pose that drew his gaze downward, where it
remained for several seconds before returning to her
face.
"If you're coming to me for answers, Rory, you
must truly be desperate."
"You are my last resort."
"Then too bad for you, because I've told you
everything I know."
"I seriously doubt that, Davee."
"I'm not lying to you about this Ladd woman. I
never—"
"It's not that," he said, shaking his head impatiently.
"It's something ... something else."
"Do you think you're after the wrong person?"
He didn't respond, but his features tensed.
"Ah, that's it, isn't it? And for you, uncertainty is
a fate worse than death, isn't it? You of the cold heart
and iron resolve." She smiled. "Well, I hate to disappoint
you, darlin', but this little tete-a-tete has been a
waste of time for both of us. I don't know who killed
Lute. I promise."
"Did you speak to him that day?"
"When he left the house that morning, he told me
he was going to play golf. The next time I even
thought about him was when you and that Mundell
bitch showed up to inform me that he was dead. His
last words to me were apparently a lie, which more or
less summarizes our marriage. He was a terrible husband,
a so-so lover, and a despicable human being.
Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass who did the deed."
"We caught your housekeeper in a lie."
"To protect me."
"If you're innocent, why did you need protecting?"
"Good point. But if I had said that I spent that Saturday
afternoon riding horseback nekkid down Broad
Street, Sarah would have agreed. You know that."
"You weren't confined to your bedroom all day
with a headache?"
She laughed and ran her fingers through her hair,
combing out some of the tangled curls. "In a manner
of speaking. I was in bed all day with my masseur,
who turned out to be not only a headache, but a boring
pain in the butt. Sarah didn't want to sully my
good reputation by telling you the truth."
Her sarcasm wasn't lost on him. Turning his head
away from her, he stared through the windshield toward
the row of straggling shrubbery. His jaw was
knotted with tension. Davee didn't know if that was
a good sign or bad.
"Am I a suspect again, Rory?"
"No. You wouldn't have killed Lute."
"Why don't you think so?"
His eyes came back to hers. "Because you enjoyed
tormenting me by being married to him."
So he knew why she had married Lute. He had noticed,
and, furthermore, he had cared. For all his
seeming indifference, there was blood in his veins
after all, and at least a portion of it had been heated
by jealousy.
Her heart fluttered with excitement, but she kept
her features schooled and her inflection at a minimum.
"And what's more ... ?"
"And what's more, you wouldn't have put yourself
out. Knowing that you could have gotten away with
murder, why bother?"
"In other words," she said, "I'm too rich to be convicted."
"Exactly."
"And a divorce is only marginally less trouble than
a murder trial."
"In your instance, a divorce is probably more trouble."
Enjoying herself, she said, "Besides, as I told
Hammond, the prison uniforms--"
"When did you talk to Hammond?" he asked, cutting
her off.
"I talk to him often. We're old friends."
"I'm well aware of that. Did you know he was
with Lute the day he was killed? At about the time he
was killed?"
No longer relaxed, Davee was instantly on guard
and wondering how far Rory would go to pay her
back for the torment she had caused him. Would he
charge her with obstruction of justice for withholding
evidence? She had turned over to Hammond the
handwritten notation from Lute, indicating his appointments
on Saturday. The information could be totally
insignificant. Or it could be key to the solution
of Rory's murder mystery.
Whichever, it was the investigator's job, not the
widow's, to determine what bearing it had on the
case. Even if Hammond's meeting with Lute didn't
factor into the murder itself, it could compromise him
as the prosecuting attorney. The second appointment
had never taken place, if indeed that second notation
had indicated a later appointment. There'd been no
name with it, and by the time specified, Lute was already
dead.
Davee was trapped between being caught for
wrongdoing and fierce loyalty to an old friend. "Did
Hammond tell you that?"
"He was seen in the hotel."
She laughed, but not very convincingly. "That's it?
That's the basis of your assumption that he was with
Lute, that he was seen in the same building? Maybe
you need to take a vacation, Rory. You've lost your
edge."
"Insults, Davee?"
"The conclusion you've reached is an insult to my
intelligence as well as yours. Two men were in the
same large public place at approximately the same
time. What makes you think there's a connection?"
"Because for all the times we've talked about the
hotel last Saturday afternoon, never once has Hammond
mentioned that he was there."
"Why should he? Why make a big deal out of a coincidence?"
"If it was a coincidence, there would be no reason
for him not to mention it."
"Maybe he was having a Saturday afternoon rendezvous.
Maybe he likes the dining room's crab
cakes. Maybe he took a shortcut through the lobby
just to get out of the heat. There could be a hundred
reasons why he was there."
He leaned across the console, coming closer to her
than he had been in years. "If Hammond met with
Lute, I need to know it."
"I don't know if they met or not," she snapped.
That much was true. All she had done was give Hammond
Lute's note. She hadn't asked, and he hadn't
said, whether or not the appointment had been kept.
"What would be the nature of such a meeting?"
"How should I know?"
"Had Lute caught you and Hammond together?"
"What?" she exclaimed on a short laugh. "Heavenly
days, Rory, your imagination is truly running
amok tonight. Where did you get that idea?" He gave
her a hard look, the meaning of which couldn't be
misinterpreted. It pierced the tiny, fragile bubble of
happiness spawned by seeing him again.
"Oh," she said, her smile turning sad. "Well,
you're right, of course. I'm certainly not above committing
adultery. But do you honestly think that Hammond
Cross would sleep with another man's wife?"
After a brief, tense silence, he asked, "What other
reason could they have for meeting?"
"We don't know that they did."
"Has Hammond mentioned seeing anyone else in
the hotel?"
"If he was there, I'm sure he saw the sweating
hordes of people who are in and out of there every
day."
"Anyone in particular?"
"No, Rory!" she said with exasperation. "I've told
you, he didn't say anything."
"Something is wrong with him."
"With Hammond? Like what?"
"I don't know, but it bothers me. He's not his fire-breathing
self these days."
"He's in love."
His chin went back like it had sustained a quick,
unexpected jab. "In love? With Steffi?"
"God forbid," she replied, shuddering slightly. "I
was almost afraid to ask about the depth of that relationship,
but when I did, he said it was over, which I
believe. His lady love is not the charmless Ms.
Mundell."
"Then who?"
"He wouldn't say. He didn't look too happy about
it, either. Said it wasn't just complicated, but impossible. And no, the lady isn't married. I asked him that,
too."
Rory bowed his head slightly. He seemed to grow
fixated on her bare toes while he ruminated on what
she had told him. She had a coveted few moments to
look at him--the smooth forehead, stern brow, rigid
jaw, the uncompromising mouth which she knew
could be compromised. She had felt it on her lips, on
her body, hungry and tender.
"It's a powerful motivator," she said softly.
He raised his head. "What?"
"Love." For ponderous, timeless moments they
stared deeply into each other's eyes. "It makes you do
things you wouldn't consider doing otherwise. Like
marrying a man you hate."