Even When You Lie, page 8
“You’re right,” he says from the bedroom doorway, even though I haven’t said a word since I left the room. “Let’s call it a night and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
The small voice in my head tells me not to be a petty bitch, to make this easy for him, but I still ask, “What about the Yates witness list?”
“You checked it, didn’t you?” he says. “I trust you.”
Somehow this stings more than anything else he could have said, and I tiptoe to him in the thickening twilight. His arms steal around me and all the lies we cannot tell each other—that this is only an overdose, that I won’t be risking anything, that everything will be fine—no longer matter.
“Cade,” I whisper. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” he says and kisses me. “Tomorrow.”
“It won’t change anything,” I say. “I can’t just let this go.”
“It doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he says.
I almost point out to him that nothing has made sense since that early morning I ferreted out his cell phone number and he responded by tracking me down at my apartment. That if things are supposed to make sense, I would never have come home with him that night in April, or if I did, we would have ended this after a one-night stand and gone our separate ways. That he is too ambitious, that I’m a liability to his career, that I want better for him—for us—than what the firm promises.
But I don’t.
Maybe life isn’t supposed to make sense. Perhaps later I will wonder what could have been changed if I did argue the point, if I did insist on him turning that envelope over to me, but for now I nestle into his arms and the reassurances that he loves me enough to care.
We fall into bed, into each other, into sleep, and there are no more words because we no longer need them.
In the morning, he leaves me for an early appointment. During my yoga, between downward-facing dog and warrior poses, the rhythm of my breath stills the thoughts racing through my mind, the impulse to tear through the apartment until I find what he hides.
Something about Cesar Morales and the dead woman still troubles Cade.
I’ll work with what Miller has given me and let Cade have his space until he’s ready.
* * *
It’s Thursday afternoon before I have any more time for that file, though. I pull it out of the locked bottom drawer of my desk, open it up, and frown.
The pages are rearranged.
I go back through my memories, of Miller, of the file in Stu’s hands, of Cade reading over my shoulder, of the file’s condition this morning when I placed it here—
But nothing.
I click one of my purple gel pens, lean back in my chair, and find the page I need.
Heather Hudson, age 25
Relationship to victim: girlfriend
The dead woman has a name.
Had, I correct myself, and almost wince at the memory of her death, at my powerlessness to save her.
I note the address for Heather Hudson and stare at my computer screen, trying to ignore the prickling on my neck that tells me Stu watches me.
Again.
I raise my gaze to where he sits, supposedly working on a deposition for Cade.
We make eye contact.
He smirks. “You know, the girls who carry purple pens in law school are the ones who are usually the most fun after a couple of drinks.”
For a brief second, I almost lose myself in the memory from college that surfaces and rushes over me, tumbling me in its wake.
The overly sweet taste of cheap liquor in a red solo cup.
The smell of drugstore cologne, the kind a senior wears to a frat party he’s not supposed to be attending …
I still my hands in my lap and make my voice cool. “That so?”
“Could buy you a couple of drinks,” Stu says. “If you want to conduct an experiment, just let me know.”
I watch him for a long moment, this son of Bridger Holcombe, with his slicked hair and polished shoes, his wolfish leer and oversized college ring.
They’re all the same, really.
Just the names and features change.
“This isn’t law school,” I say. “The purple pens are an old habit from the military. I like nice pens. So did the men in my squadron. But if the ink was purple, it kept them from walking off with my things.”
Something in my tone catches Evangeline’s attention because she flashes me a quick warning look. I make a face at her, and she shakes her head at me, as if reminding me what’s at stake here, with Stu in our office.
As if I need the reminder.
I resume reading, glaring at the pages.
It’s a relief when late afternoon comes and Stu heads toward the door, waving over his shoulder at us. “See you Tuesday, girls. Check your calendars for those drinks.”
I wait half a minute before I mutter, “Entitled little shit.”
“Told you,” Evangeline says, and mimics me. “It’s just a few weeks.”
“Thank God we have a four-day weekend for the Fourth of July.” I push away from my desk, gathering the file on the Morales investigation. “I need to poke around on something. I’ll be back as soon as I can be, but if I get tied up—”
“Go.” She waves a hand. “Richie Rich is gone for the day. I’ll be just fine by myself.”
“Well.” I smile and grab my bag, tuck the file in, and pull out my car keys. “You would have been fine without me anyway.”
“It is helpful to have you around,” she says, pursing her mouth to hide her grin. “Happy hunting.”
A security guard from downstairs sits in the law firm’s main lobby as I exit through the glass double doors. The receptionist smiles at me like nothing’s amiss and I make a mental note to ask Cade about it later.
I steer the car out of the parking garage, pausing at the stop sign. At the building’s main entrance, Stu stands with his father and Kirby, wearing his trademark smirk. Bridger’s face reddens. Kirby shakes his head, his hands shoved inside his pockets.
Another thing to ask Cade about … maybe.
Or perhaps Bridger and Kirby just heard about Stu’s weekend plans.
I ease onto the accelerator and leave the three men behind.
CHAPTER
9
I DRIVE PAST THE gray frame duplex twice before I park at the curb. For South Dallas, it isn’t bad; the burglar bars over the porch and windows aren’t rusting, and if the grass is higher than it ought to be at least it’s green.
Still, it’s South Dallas.
I tuck a couple of twenty-dollar bills inside my watchband and make sure my pistol nestles securely in its holster before I step out of the car.
An older white woman sweeps the shared front porch. Smoke curls from a lit cigarette clenched in the corner of her mouth, her frayed house dress dingy at the hem above her bare feet.
She doesn’t raise her head to look at me as I walk up the rock driveway, but only says, “Funeral was yesterday. No one’s there now.”
“Guess it’d be strange if there was someone there, wouldn’t it?” I ask. “I mean, if the funeral was yesterday.”
She stops sweeping and glances in my direction. “You related?”
“Friend of her boyfriend’s family,” I say, the lie becoming easier each time I repeat it. “They asked me to look into some things.”
She laughs breathlessly, a wheezing haw-haw, and inhales a long drag. “If they have the money to pay for someone to look into things, maybe they can pay this month’s rent, huh? How’m I supposed to make any income off this place if she’s dead and no one’s around to clean out their shit?”
Her eyes gleam a little, and I recognize the opportunity.
It’s not exactly legal, but it’s hardly the worst thing I’ve done, and if there’s any trouble about it, Cade can fix it.
“Let me in so I can see what all’s left, and I’ll let the family know how many boxes to bring,” I say.
“Maybe you could give me something,” she says. “To make it worth my while.”
I raise an eyebrow. “It’s the end of the month. The rent ought to be paid through this weekend.”
“I’m a poor old widow with bills to pay,” she says. “And you don’t look like you’re doing too bad.”
I slide the twenties free from my watchband and offer them to her through the burglar bars.
She purses her mouth and unfolds them, holds them overhead to the light, and sighs, as if she expected more. “Come on, then.”
The porch gate creaks open, and I step through.
She jams a key into the lock on the front door and twists. “Don’t suppose you know anyone that needs a place to rent, eh, Miss Fancy? I’ll give a few dollars off if they can keep the grass mowed.”
“I’ll ask around,” I say.
I follow her into a living room with cheap wood-paneled walls painted white and yellowing with age. A half-burnt stick of incense sits in its burner below a wooden sign that says, WELCOME TO OUR HOME.
The old woman sniffs and fingers the plush throw over the back of the couch. “She always liked nice things. Bitched about the carpet and linoleum like I had money for new shit.”
I examine a photo of Cesar and Heather on the wall. In it, they stand on the midway of Fair Park at the State Fair, a stuffed bear held between them, and the Texas Star visible in the background, its Ferris wheel gondolas bright against a cloudless sky. Her hair is blue and they’re both wearing cheesy smiles.
“You should’ve heard her scream when the police came about Cesar,” the landlady says. “Heard her through the wall, squalling and crying. Throwing things around in the bedroom.”
I try not to think of what my reaction might be if cops met me somewhere with news about Cade’s death.
The old woman points a finger gnarled with age and work. “Bedroom’s there. I’ll go with you, just to make sure you don’t take nothing.”
I don’t remind her that she wants their things out in order to list the property for rent. Instead, I shrug. “Did you see her much?”
“Once he got in the picture, no,” the landlady says, “although he’d cut the grass for me. Then they got new jobs. That kept ’em busy, but the rent wasn’t late anymore, and I liked that. Guess that was about the turn of the year.”
She follows me through the sparse kitchen, the linoleum so thin it reveals subfloor underneath.
In the bedroom, clothes and shoes are strewn across the floor, the bed unmade, a picture hanging askew, the closet door yawning wide.
The old woman coughs beside me, spewing an odor of stale nicotine that swallows up any space between us. “You looking for anything in particular?”
“Who says I’m looking for anything at all?” I ask.
“You’re here, ain’t you?” She kicks at a pile of clothes with her foot, shoving it to a corner. “What a mess.”
She’s too close for me to rifle through the drawers or look under the bed without asking me what I’m searching for, so I make my voice cool and ask, “Did you go to the funerals?”
“Wasn’t invited to Cesar’s,” she says. “And so I didn’t bother none with Heather’s.”
“Did you need an invitation?” I ask.
She scoffs. “It’s nice to be asked.”
I chew the inside of my cheek and scan the room one last time, maybe just to convince myself I’m not wasting my Thursday afternoon.
A scrap of paper with a phone number scrawled in black ink sits half tucked under the lamp on the small table by the bed. I wait until the woman turns her head before palming it, folding it in half, and tucking it in my watchband.
There’s nothing else useful here—no files, no papers, not even so much as a bank statement.
Just clothes and sheets and photos of two people who loved each other, who are both now dead, and who appear to have no one left to come clean out their belongings.
“If the families don’t come get their things, I’ll have to throw it all out,” she says. “That’s a lot of work for someone my age, you know.”
“I’ll text them right now,” I say, instead of pointing out to her that if she’d gone to the funeral, she wouldn’t need me as intermediary.
She huffs like she doesn’t believe me and lets the gate bang shut after me. The broom resumes swishing across the cement porch, but I don’t look back at her.
I drive a couple of blocks south to the large bus transit station neighboring Fair Park and fish out change from my car’s console. Two buses rumble past before I walk to the pay phone in sight of the Texas Star and unfold the piece of paper.
My fingers trace the numbers, the penmanship neat and clear, but not providing a clue as to whether Cesar or Heather wrote it.
Not that it matters.
They’re both dead.
I drop a coin in the slot and dial.
It rings four times, and then the recorded message begins, the voice so familiar I can almost picture his sneer, “You have reached the voice mail of Bridger Holcombe—”
I slam the phone onto its cradle with trembling hands and flee to my car. Dread knots into my stomach, but I make myself pretend to ignore it all the way back to Uptown.
* * *
Cade and I sit across the table from each other, sharing a gourmet pizza he brings home from our favorite pizzeria and a bottle of wine. Because we don’t have work for the next four days, I don’t protest when Cade tops off our glasses each time they drop below half full.
I swallow a bite of pizza and try to work up the nerve to tell him about this afternoon’s discovery, that Heather Hudson had Bridger Holcombe’s personal cell phone number in her bedroom.
But somehow, all I can manage is, “How was court?”
“Full acquittal,” he says, but he won’t look me in the eye. Sometimes in Cade’s line of work, a win can be just as bad—if not worse—than a loss.
He doesn’t ask about my day, but slouches in his chair and stares out the balcony doors with his wine in his hand like he watches something I can’t see.
“I did some digging on the Morales file,” I say.
“Yeah?” He chews on his lower lip and rubs the back of his neck. “Anything that can’t wait until tomorrow? I’m not trying to be an asshole, babe, it’s just …”
We have all weekend, after all.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s no big deal that I found that scrap of paper.
“Sure,” I make myself say. “It was a long week.”
He picks at a piece of hamburger that fell off his pizza. “You ever think about those decisions you make that don’t seem like such a big deal at the time, but maybe they were? And you wonder if you had done things differently, maybe—”
“You wouldn’t be right here, right now?” I sip my wine and watch him over the rim of my glass.
Maybe even Heather Hudson could still be alive if only I had told her to wait, that I would call Cade, that surely no meeting was more important than someone’s life …
Cade clasps my hand in his free one, banishing all thoughts of her. “Obviously, there are some things I wouldn’t change.”
I squeeze his fingers, the warmth there reassuring. “But that’s it, don’t you see? If you change one thing, you set in motion a whole chain reaction.”
“My practical, hardheaded Reagan,” he says and kisses the back of my hand. “You don’t think that in an alternate universe, we’re not sitting together at a table, drinking wine, but maybe I’m an accountant and you’re a librarian or something?”
“An accountant and a librarian?” I smile and play with the stem of my wineglass, admiring the way the liquid sloshes up the side and leaves behind a faint trail to mark its path. “Is that what you think of us? Maybe your alternate universe persona is a cop. A detective, even, and I’m a reporter.”
He grins and finishes the rest of his wine in a swallow. “I’m not drunk enough for this conversation,” he says and carries his plate to the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To shower after being stuck in the same room with that chickenshit bastard all day,” he says. “I’ll be back in a few.”
Water runs in the bathroom.
I stand, clear the table, and straighten the kitchen.
The fresh scent of his soap and shampoo wafts through the apartment, and I grab the wine bottle and our glasses. I leave them on his nightstand and cross to the bathroom door.
“Room in there for two?” I ask.
He opens the shower door and leans out to kiss me. “Always. Even if you’re a librarian. Or a reporter. Or something.”
“Or something.” I shed my clothes and step into the shower and his soapy embrace.
The world shrinks to the boundaries of the shower, its glass walls fogged and the air saturated. There is only us. There can be only us, and whoever else that other Cade and Reagan are, they aren’t here, and so they don’t matter.
Nothing else matters, not until the water runs cool. We race to his bed and the warmth of each other and his sheets, and my hair dries into long, frizzy ringlets while we finish off the wine.
CHAPTER
10
MY ALARM CHIMES softly and Cade growls into my hair. “We’re off today,” he grumbles.
“All the more reason to get a good workout in before we slack off all weekend,” I say.
He tightens his grip on me and kisses the back of my neck. “I’ll give you a good workout.”
“Later.” I nudge him and squirm free. “You can run with me if you want.”
“It’s hot out there,” he says. “I run inside. I’m not from here, and, anyway, with age comes privileges.”
I exchange my nightgown for a sports bra and leggings. “You’re five years older, not fifty.”
“You just wait until you turn thirty next year,” he says. “You’ll be careful?”
I pull on my tank top, tuck my knife and phone into my leggings, and lean down to kiss him. “So very careful.”
“Mm,” he says into my pillow. “Enjoy your run. I have a surprise for you when you get back.”
I reach under the covers and tickle his feet. He kicks my hand away and draws his feet up where I can’t get to them, and I laugh and head out the door.
