sparked, the tip of the cigarette glowed, and Rich released a long exhalation into the dusky air.
“Kelly Malone is calling me every day so I can tell her that we’ve got nothing. Had to tell her about the Meachams.”
I murmured sympathetically.
“She says she can’t sleep, thinking how her parents died. She’s crying all the time.”
Rich coughed on the smoke and waved his hand to tell me that he couldn’t talk anymore. I understood how helpless he felt. The Malones’ deaths were shaping up to be a part of a vicious serial killing spree. And we were clueless.
I said, “He’s going to screw up, Richie, they almost always do. And we’re not in this alone. Claire, Hanni -”
“You like Hanni?”
“Sure. Don’t you?”
Conklin shrugged. “Why does he know so much and so little at the same time?”
“He’s doing what we’re doing. Wading through the sludge. Trying to make sense of the senseless.”
“Good word for it. Sludging. We’re
I was laughing with Rich as he joked himself out of his blue mood when I saw a black sedan crawling slowly up the street in search of a parking spot. It was Joe.
“Oh, look. Stay and meet Joe,” I said. “He’s heard a lot about you.”
“Nah, not tonight, Linds,” said Rich, standing up, grinding out the butt of his cigarette on the pavement. “Maybe some other time. See you in the morning.”
Joe’s car stopped.
Richie’s car pulled out of the spot.
Then Joe’s car pulled in.
Chapter 48
“YOU EVER USE THIS THING?” Joe was asking me about the stove.
“Sure I do.”
“Uh-huh? So what’s this?”
He pulled a user’s manual and some Styrofoam packing out of the oven.
“I use the stove
He shook his head, laughed at me, asked if I could open the wine and start the salad. I said I thought I could handle that. I uncorked the chardonnay, tore a head of romaine into a pretty blown-glass bowl Joe had given me, and sliced up a tomato. I reached around Joe for the olive oil and spices, patted his cute behind. Then I settled onto a stool near the counter, kicked off my shoes.
I sipped my wine and with a Phil Collins CD playing in the background, listened to Joe talk about three accounts he’d landed for his new disaster-preparedness consultancy and his upcoming meeting with the governor. Joe was happy. And I was glad that he was using his modern, larger, fancier apartment as his office – and making himself at home right here.
And my apartment was a darned cute place, I have to say. My four cluttered but cozy rooms are on the third floor of a nice old Victorian town house, and there’s a deck off the living room where the sun sets on my sliver view of the bay. It was becoming
I topped up Joe’s wineglass, watched him stuff a couple of tilapias with crabmeat and slide the pan into the oven. He washed his hands and turned his handsome self to me.
“The fish will be ready in about forty-five minutes. Want to go outside and catch the last rays?”
“Not really,” I said.
I put down my glass, hooked my leg around Joe’s waist, and pulled him to me, grinning as I saw my better idea flash into Joe’s blue eyes. He drew me closer, slid me off the stool, and gathered me up, cupping my butt and grunting theatrically as he carried me down the hallway, saying, “You’re a load, Blondie.”
I laughed, bit his earlobe, said, “You didn’t think 130 was a load when you were younger.”
“Like I said. Light as a feather.”
He dropped me softly onto the bed, crawled in next to me, took my face in his big hands, and gave me a kiss that made me groan. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and Joe did the almost impossible, pulled off his shirt and kissed me at the same time, tugged off my pants, and also somehow managed to kick the door shut to keep Martha out of our private moments.
“You’re amazing,” I said, laughing.
“You haven’t seen anything, yet, baby doll,” my lover growled.
Soon we were both naked, our skin hot and slick, limbs completely wrapped around each other. But as we grappled together, making the delicious climb to ecstasy, an image of another man came winging into my mind.
I fought it hard, because I didn’t want him there.
Part Three. HOME COOKING
Chapter 49
JASON TWILLY SAT in the front row of the gallery in Courtroom 2C, right behind the elfin Junie Moon, taking notes as Connor Hume Campion answered Yuki Castellano’s softball questions. Twilly thought Campion had aged tremendously since his son disappeared. He looked haggard, stooped, as though Michael’s death was literally killing him.
As he looked at the governor and Yuki together, Twilly felt a shift in his thinking, and a new structure for his book appeared in his mind. Yuki was Michael Campion’s defender, and she was the underdog; feisty and shrewd and at the same time endearing. Like now. Yuki was using the former governor’s celebrity and heartbreak to both move the jury and block the defense.
Twilly would start the book with Yuki’s opening statement, flash back through time using poignant moments in the boy’s life as told by the governor, flash forward through the trial and the witnesses. Focus on Davis ’s maternal defense. Linger on the vulnerable Junie Moon. Then end the book with Yuki’s closing argument. The verdict, the vindication, hurrah!
Twilly turned his attention back to the governor.
“Mike was born with a conductive defect in his heart,” Campion told the court. “It was being managed medically, but of course he could die at any time.”
Yuki asked quietly, “And what did Michael know about his life expectancy?”
“Mikey wanted to live. He used to say, ‘I want to live, Dad. I have plans.’ He knew he had to be careful. He knew that the longer he lived, the more chance -”
Campion stopped speaking as his throat tightened and his eyes watered.
“Mr. Campion, did Michael talk to you about his plans?”
“Oh, yes,” Campion said, smiling now. “He was training for an upcoming world chess tournament, on the computer, you know. And he’d started writing a book about living with a potentially fatal illness… It would’ve made a difference to people… He wanted to get married someday…”
