Truth or Dare (25 page)

Zoe tried to remain unobtrusive while Ethan talked quietly to a large man dressed in a gray tank top and sweatpants at the front desk.

A few minutes later money changed hands. When Ethan turned around he had the hard look of the hunter closing in on its prey.

He pushed open the door for her and followed her back out into the parking lot.

“Can't say that I like this business of being my own client,” he muttered, shoving his wallet into his back pocket.

“Gets expensive when you can't put the bribes down as
expenses on someone else's tab, does it? Well, don't look for sympathy from me. I haven't forgotten how much you charged me for those little
incidental
items on my bill last month.”

“You can't let it go, can you? I told you, good information costs money. You get what you pay for.”

“Yeah, right.” She climbed back into the SUV and slammed the door. “Well? Did we get some good information here?”

“Maybe.” Ethan cranked up the engine.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the guy at the front desk recognized the description I gave him. He said Branch has been coming in on a regular basis for about two weeks, although he didn't see him yesterday or today. He paid for each visit with cash. Told the manager that he didn't want to buy a quarterly or full-year membership because he didn't plan on staying long in the area.”

“So you think he's renting short-term somewhere in this neighborhood?”

“I'm counting on it.” Ethan unfolded the map of Phoenix and studied the circle he had drawn in red. “Now comes the hard part.”

“Don't tell me, let me guess. We're going to have to talk to the manager of every motel, hotel and apartment building inside that circle, aren't we?”

“Not quite. We got a break. The clerk said that Branch forgot some of his personal workout equipment one day last week. When he offered to rent Branch whatever he needed for the session, Branch refused, saying he'd rather use his own stuff. He went back to his place, picked up the equipment and returned to
the club in less than fifteen minutes. That was early morning, before rush hour.”

“So Branch's motel or apartment can't be too far away.”

“That's my theory at the moment,” Ethan said.

“Now what?”

“Now we get on our phones and start calling every motel and apartment complex with an address on one of these streets.”

“This is why I got to come with you today, right?” She pulled her phone out of her tote. “So that I can cut down the time it takes to make all these calls.”

“Brilliant deduction, my sweet.” He opened the phone book he had brought along. “You may have an aptitude for the profession.”

She got lucky forty-five minutes later. Within the hour she stood, together with Ethan, in the small office of the manager of the Tropical Paradise Apartments.

The aging complex was a three-sided, single-story structure built around a postage-stamp-sized pool. Rusted air conditioners projected out of the walls beneath the windows. The weedy concrete walk was badly cracked. A few straggly paloverde trees and a couple of barrel cactuses planted inside a brick border constituted the extent of the landscaping.

The Tropical Paradise looked as if it had started out as a budget motel and had gone downhill from that point.

“Yeah, Branch lives here.” The manager, who had identified himself only as Joe, absently poked through his thinning, artificially black hair to scratch his scalp. “Said he planned to stay a month. Haven't seen him since yesterday morning. You say he's been in some kind of accident?”

“He's in a hospital in Whispering Springs,” Ethan said, voice drenched in somber concern. “I have the number if you want to get in touch, but he won't be able to talk to you. He's still in a coma.”

“Coma, huh?”

“The accident happened on my property, and since I'm the only person he knew there in town, I felt obligated to pick up some of his things and take them to him.”

“But he didn't give you his key?”

“The key got lost in the process of transferring him to the hospital,” Ethan said very smoothly. He pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “Naturally, I'd like to cover his rent. Wouldn't want him to lose the apartment just because he's in a coma.”

The manager smiled for the first time.

Five minutes later, Ethan stopped in front of the door of number twenty-seven. He tugged two sets of medical gloves out of his pocket and handed one set to Zoe.

He pulled on his own gloves, fit the key the manager had given him into the lock and opened the door.

Stale air wafted out from the darkened interior.

Ethan moved across the threshold and disappeared.

A shiver went through Zoe, part unease, part anticipation. She hesitated just outside the door and peered into the shadowed room. All she could see was part of a bed and a wedge of worn, green carpet.

She probed cautiously but from her position on the step she could not pick up anything unusual in the way of psychic energy. Nevertheless, she had been rudely surprised on at least two occasions in recent days, she reminded herself. If her latest
theory was right and John Branch was the source of the spiderwebs, there were bound to be some drifting in the room where he had spent so much time lately.

“Well, hell,” Ethan said, very softly.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “Please tell me there aren't any dead bodies in there.”

“No dead bodies. But I think we can now say with great certainty that this really is all about me.”

She put one foot into the cramped, drab room, feeling her way. Nothing screamed at her from the walls. No cobwebs cloaked her senses. She picked up the accumulated psychic residue of the years, an old, dank, vaguely depressing vapor, but that was all.

Under any other circumstances, she would have been enormously relieved. But this time things were different. She suddenly realized just how badly she had hoped to find traces of the murky stuff in that room. Such a discovery would have answered so many disturbing questions.

She was about to tune out the old, low-level vibrations when she felt a tendril of something dark and powerful snaking through the atmosphere. Not a spiderweb. It was something else—a desperate, unwholesome desire flickered like a broken neon light in the room.

“He wanted something badly,” she whispered. “He needed it like a drug.”

“Me, dead, apparently.”

She spun around and saw that Ethan was standing at the one table in the space, leafing through a stack of photocopies.

“What are those?” she asked.

“Take a look.”

She walked across the room and stopped in front of the table. The photocopies were reproductions of newspaper articles. Some were dated three years earlier. Others were more recent. All came from Los Angeles–area newspapers. She glanced at the nearest one and immediately went cold inside.

S
IMON
W
ENDOVER
D
EAD IN
B
OATING
A
CCIDENT

 

The body of Simon Wendover, former CEO of a privately held investment firm, was found floating in the water off Santa Barbara early this morning. Authorities believe that he fell overboard from his yacht at some time during the past three days.

Officials at the marina where Wendover kept his vessel said that he had a long-standing practice of taking the yacht out by himself, especially on moonlit nights.

Wendover made headlines a month ago when he was acquitted of all charges stemming from a plot to murder Drew Truax, the head of Trace & Stone Industries.

The trial was closely watched by the entire Southern California business community because it involved a series of revelations concerning Wendover's recent financial transactions. The resulting scandal negatively impacted the portfolios of several prominent investors and shook stockholder confidence. . . .

She picked up another photocopy, scanned the story quickly and stopped at the last paragraph.

. . . authorities noted that an autopsy had revealed the presence of drugs. . . .

She looked up and saw Ethan watching her intently.

“Wendover dabbled in the drug trade,” he said without inflection. “He not only sold, he used.”

She nodded. “I see. Well, everyone knows that is an extremely high-risk business.”

She glanced at another story.

. . . authorities stated that the death may have been drug-related. There was no indication of foul play. . . .

Ethan flipped through some of the clippings. “They talked to me but I had an ironclad alibi.”

“Of course you did.” Ethan was not stupid, she was certain of that.

“The cops were not particularly eager to build a case. They knew as well as I did that Wendover had skated on the murder charges.”

She put the article down on the table and picked up another stack of papers. They were all reprints of newspaper photographs of Ethan. Several showed him walking into a courthouse, sometimes accompanied by Bonnie. In others he was pictured exiting the driver's side of a silver BMW. A couple showed him leaving a handsome, modernistic office building. The sign on the wall behind him spelled out
TRUAX SECURITY
in sophisticated metallic letters.

“The newspapers had photographers hanging around the
courthouse throughout the trial,” Ethan said. “A couple of them staked out my office and Bonnie's house.”

She shook her head. “It must have been a nightmare for all of you.”

“It was.” He let that go and turned slowly on his heel, studying the room. “But after Wendover died, I figured that at least it was over. Looks like I was wrong.”

“If someone is trying to get revenge and if you and Harry are right when you say it's probably not one of the investors who got hurt, then it has to be personal, Ethan.”

“I know.”

“What about a member of Wendover's family? Someone who blames you for the death of his relative? Or a friend?”

“That's just it, there was no one who was close to him.” Ethan crouched down to survey the floor beneath the sagging bedstead. “If you looked up the definition of the word ‘loner' in a dictionary, you'd see a picture of Simon Wendover. Trust me, I checked him out all the way back to the day he was born. His mother was a drug addict who died when he was three. He was raised in a series of foster homes. No friends, no pets, no children.”

“Wives? Lovers?”

“Wendover always had a good-looking woman on his arm when it suited him, but none of them lasted more than a few months. He never married.”

Ethan stood up and crossed the room to open the small desk. He went through the drawers rapidly. Nothing.

He opened the closet door. Zoe saw a handful of shirts and trousers arranged with military precision inside. A khaki duffel bag sat on the floor.

“Looks like Branch is the neat and orderly type,” she said.

“Military training, I think.”

“How do you know?”

“Something about the way he moved.”

Ethan went swiftly through the pockets of the garments in the closet. When he came up empty, he crouched down and unzipped the duffel bag.

Zoe took a few steps toward him and saw that there was nothing inside.

“Huh.” Ethan looked thoughtful. “Funny he'd leave clothes behind in the closet but nothing in the duffel.”

He got to his feet and went into the small bathroom, where he stood for a moment examining the space.

“Huh.”

She knew that particular
huh.
Something didn't look right to him. She went to stand in the doorway of the bathroom. A handful of masculine toiletries were arranged on the counter but they all had a generic quality. The razor, shaving cream and toothpaste could have been purchased in any drugstore in the country.

“Guess he didn't want to leave a trail,” she said.

“The place is clean, all right.” He glanced into the empty trash container. “Maybe a little too clean.”

“Explain.”

“There isn't so much as a piece of paper in the trash, not even an empty bottle of one of those protein shakes he's apparently addicted to. Everything in here and in the closet looks like it was arranged by a robot. Nothing is out of place. The desk is empty.”

“But?” she prompted when he stopped talking.

He walked past her into the other room. “But those photocopies of the Wendover case were left scattered carelessly on the table. You'd think an obsessive-compulsive as precise in his ways as Branch would have stowed them more securely.”