Josh ignored the slur.
“It’s convenient you were having a party when this phone call was made,” Brady said
The cop just wasn’t going to let this one go, Josh decided.
“I didn’t know I needed an airtight alibi.”
“I think we have enough for now,” Williams said,
rising to his feet. “We may request you make a sample recording of your voice for analysis and for Mrs.
Macey to identify. We’ll let you know in due course.”
Brady followed suit and stood next to his partner.
“We’ll see ourselves out, Mr. Michaels.”
“Hey, hold on.” Josh came around his desk to stop the policemen from leaving. “I want to tell you about the man I saw on the bridge who ran me off the road. I saw him again.”
“Mr. Michaels, I would worry about yourself right now. You could be facing serious charges. I think sighting the man who cut you off on the road, while disturbing, is the least of your worries. And as I remember
it, you didn’t get a very good look at him,” Brady said.
He motioned to his partner to leave. Williams already had the door open. The officers left Josh’s office and he watched them walk out the door. The door slammed
shut with a sound reminiscent of a cell door.
The professional arrived at Bell’s ranch house at six in the evening. The sun was descending on another perfect California spring day. He parked on a neighboring street to avoid any connection between him and the rental car.
That morning, he had been drinking coffee in Arden Fair’s food court, reading the newspaper and observing a very bizarre physic reading between two black women when she called. She was pissed at the ultimatum
Michaels had issued her. Her anger more than boiled over. It threatened to scald the professional as he listened on his cellular phone. She’d called minutes after Michaels left her and decided she wanted to vent
her rage at someone. The professional was glad he wasn’t with Bell. He didn’t fancy being that close to the epicenter of her eruption and said he couldn’t make it over for at least an hour. In that time she should have cooled off.
He decided that Michaels’s blowup with Bell could only be to his advantage. Bell made the perfect puppet now. She wouldn’t need much coercing to get her to do what he wanted. It was time to make Josh and Bell’s relationship more volatile and bring it to a head. Mix the appropriate two elements to produce the explosive effect.
It was basic chemistry.
He knocked at the door and Bell greeted him. She
looked ready to kill. The more he got to know Bell, the more he knew not to get on the wrong side of her. He did plan to cross her, but by the time she realized it, it would be too late for her to do anything about it.
“Can I get you a beer?” she asked.
“Yeah, a beer would be good.”
The professional took a seat in the sparsely furnished living room while Bell went to the kitchen. He
recalled their initial date at the downtown restaurant after which Bell had brought him here. They’d discussed Josh, the affair and the subsequent money she’d
blackmailed out of him. She expanded on her reasons for returning to Sacramento. She wanted to be in her hometown instead of living in exile in San Diego.
Although bored by her personal outpourings, he absorbed every piece of information on a professional
level. He’d offered ideas to get back at her adulterous lover, and she’d reveled in those ideas. It was after that she’d bedded him. It wasn’t lovemaking, but lustful sex. The professional’s revenge-filled suggestions had been an aphrodisiac. After an hour of adventurous sex, which the professional hadn’t had in a long time, he suggested that she drop hints to the media about her ex-lover’s crimes.
Bell returned from the kitchen, handed him an
opened bottle of beer and sat down on the couch next to him. He positioned himself so he could face her when he spoke.
“Have you had time to calm down since you called
me?” the professional asked.
“Does it look like it?” Bell demanded.
The professional smiled. “No, it doesn’t, but that’s fine. The question is how are you going to use that anger to your advantage?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can be angry all week, but what good does it do you?”
He watched the gears turn in her skull. She was trying to think. That was fine. She could believe that she needed to, but he was doing the thinking for her.
The tension went out of her body. “It doesn’t do me any good.”
“That’s right. So what are you going to do instead?”
“I’ll do whatever I want,” she said emphatically.
He smiled a snake’s smile. “That’s right. So what did Josh say?”
“He told me he wants me out of his life for good and he’s willing to pay once more, then that’s it. He doesn’t care what I do after that.”
“So he is willing to take his chances with the truth.”
The professional mused on that point. “That takes a strong man who believes he can survive the bullets you have to fire at him.”
“He’s not strong,” Bell barked. “He’s weak.”
“So what do you want to do? Do you want more
money?”
“I have enough of his money.”
“Do you want him to go to prison?”
“I want him to appreciate me. To know the damage
he’s done to me.” She jabbed a finger into her chest. “I want him to know I loved him and he trashed what we had.”
Bell poured out a list of Michaels’s wrongdoings and ranted about how he should be made to regret them. It was music to the professional’s ears. Between him and Michaels, they’d created a monster hell-bent on destruction.
“So revenge it is?”
She mulled that over, then smiled. “I suppose so.
What do you suggest—another call to Channel Three with more revelations?”
“Something like that. Something to grab his attention,”
the professional said. “A test of his convictions, if you will.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Bell took the professional’s hand and placed it between her thighs. He felt the heat of her sex on his fingertips through the material of her shorts.
“James, let’s discuss it further in the bedroom,” she said.
The professional didn’t object.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Jeez, I feel perfectly angelic. I’ve never been this high up before,” Bob complained.
Josh found Bob’s third crack about their bad seats annoying.
Bob nodded in the direction of the vendor trawling the aisles. “I wonder if the beer man has cotton balls for nose bleeds.”
“I couldn’t help it. You knew the Lakers game was going to be popular, and I’ve apologized for forgetting to book tickets earlier.” Josh had bought the tickets on game day after Brady and Williams had interrogated him. After explaining himself to Kate he’d slipped out to the box office, but seating choices were limited.
ARCO Arena was busy, bubbling with excitement
