I held an ice pack to my jaw with one hand, a Guinness in the other. Donahue sat across from me at a small table in his dark restaurant, a candle flickering between us. After twenty minutes of shouting at each other, I had managed to convince him of my innocence.
“Did I say I’m sorry, Jack?” Donahue said in his Irish brogue.
“Yes. You did.”
Donahue sighed.
“It’s okay, Mike. I understand. And no harm done.”
A waiter brought my dinner, a plate of chops and chips, and put it down in front of me. I refused another drink, looking at my plate with two minds.
One, I hadn’t eaten in a long time.
Two, I wanted to throw up.
The dinner was Donahue’s peace offering, so I put down the ice and picked up my cutlery.
“She was sad,” Donahue said. “We talked about this boyfriend of hers, in Dublin, and I think she loved him in a way, but he didn’t make her heart race. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Not in love with him.”
Donahue nodded. “Do you want me to cut your meat for you, boy-o?”
I smiled painfully, speared potatoes with my fork, and said, “She didn’t tell me that. She said she was happy.”
“Putting on a brave face, more like it,” said Donahue. “Or maybe looking to see if you’d changed your mind. If you still loved her.
“But anyway,” he continued, “I’d stopped worrying she was going to hurt herself. I never thought that someone would do this terrible thing to her.”
“Everyone loved her, Mike.”
“So why? ” Donahue asked me. He thumped the table with his fists. China jumped. Beer sloshed. “Why am I sending her back to Dublin in a box?”
I laid down my knife and fork, pushed my plate away.
“It had nothing to do with Colleen,” I said. “Someone killed her to hurt me. Someone who hates me.”
“Who was it, Jack?”
“I don’t know. Yet. I’m working on it. Whoever he was, he was a pro. He could have found a way to kill me without putting Colleen in the middle. But that wasn’t what he wanted.
“He set me up so that I would get taken down one step at a time. First, this…loss. Then humiliation. Then I’d be locked up for life. Or get the needle. That was the plan.”
“May the cat eat him. And may the divil eat the cat.”
“Copy that.”
We sat silently as the dishes were cleared.
When we were alone again, I looked into Mike’s sad eyes. “I’m sorry, Mike. I’m the one who owes you an apology. If Colleen hadn’t been involved with me, she’d still be alive.”
CHAPTER 35
I pulled up to the Beverly Hills Sun, Jinx Poole’s flagship hotel, at just after ten. I stepped out of my two- hundred-thousand-dollar car looking as if I’d been dragged behind it for a couple of miles. I gave my car keys to the valet and checked in at the desk.
The clerk said, “Mr. Morgan, I believe the woman on the red sofa is waiting for you.”
It was Justine.
Thank God.
I was so glad to see her, my eyes got wet. Thinking about stretching out on clean sheets, Justine lying beside me, of feeling her skin against mine, flooded me with relief.
But why was she here? I called her name. She looked up, and I crossed the plush and glittering lobby to her, saying, “How long have you been waiting? Are you okay?”
I couldn’t read her expression.
“What’s going on, Justine?”
“It’s just-we have to talk. Gloves off. Nothing but the truth.”
“Let’s go to my room,” I said. I turned my head, pointed to my bruised jaw, and said, “I’ve got to lie down.”
“You stink of beer. You were in a bar fight?”
“You don’t miss a thing.”
“Sit down. Please. This won’t take long.”
It didn’t sound good, whatever was coming. I eased myself onto the sofa next to Justine.
“I’m just about brain dead. Maybe we should talk tomorrow.”
“Very little of your brain is required.”
I looked at her and she hooked me in with her eyes. I loved Justine. I loved her.
“When you saw Colleen last week, before you left for Europe-what happened?”
“We had lunch at Smitty’s. I have a receipt somewhere. I haven’t had time to go over my credit card bill.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Christ. You shouldn’t do this. Do I ever grill you? Can’t you just trust me?”
“Did you say ‘trust me’? I’ll take that to mean it wasn’t just lunch. Oh, Jack.”
She shook her head.
I threw up my hands. “If you don’t believe me about this,” I said, “then what’s the point? How can we work things out if you don’t trust me?”
Justine got up, hooked the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, and without looking back, left the hotel through the revolving doors. I watched her through the glass. She gave her ticket to the valet and faced the street as he went for her car.
Justine could read me like an FBI polygraph. Lying to her was futile. I could chase after her, but what more could I say?
The valet brought her car, and Justine slid in behind the wheel, strapped in, and took off fast down South Santa Monica.
This time I was sure I’d lost her. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was pretty much what I deserved.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 36
The next morning, I walked from my office across the hall to the “war room,” thinking about Colleen. I wondered what she’d been doing in her last hours, trying to see through her eyes how she’d been trapped by a man with murderous intentions. I imagined her horror when that gun-probably my gun-had been aimed at her chest, her killer taunting her before he squeezed the trigger.
I had a horrifying thought.
What if she’d believed her killer was me?
