All or Nothing (5 page)

“What proof do you have of that? What time did you get there? Who saw you   .   .   .   ?”

Again and again they had asked him. And again and again he had told them.

There is no proof that’s what you did, they had insisted, and he had felt himself wearing down, nerves grating, patience wearing thin.

They had let him go finally, of course. They had to. They had no direct evidence, nothing linking him definitively to the disappearance of Laurie Martin. They still had not found her body.

But then had come the bombshell. And now he had to tell Vickie about it.

The pretty suburban development where he lived still had a look of newness about it. Neat front gardens, basketball hoops over garage doors, Rollerblades in the driveway. He wished he had never left it.

He parked the rental car in the driveway and unlocked the front door.

Vickie was sitting on the denim–blue sectional in the family room. The TV was on and she was, as usual these days, watching the news. She jolted upright when she heard the front door open, clutching a hand anxiously to her pounding heart.

“Who is it?”

“It’s only me.” Steve stood in the entrance to the family room and her heart gave another little jolt. He looked terrible. Shadowed eyes, unshaven, hair wild and windblown as though he’d driven all the way from San Diego on the freeway with the windows wide open. He looked so different from the man she had known for eighteen years, she was shocked. No, though, that wasn’t true. She suddenly flashed back to the way he had looked when she’d first met him: wild, crazy, a live wire ready to ignite. . . .

“What’s happened? Why are you home?” He was supposed to be working. . . .

He put down his briefcase, wearily peeled off his jacket. “Where are the girls?”

“Over at Shauna Lyons’s house, playing with her kids. Out of the way,” she added grimly. “This is the first time the news hounds have left us alone. They’ll be sorry to have missed you. All they’ve got so far is me in the Surburban heading for the supermarket or taking the kids to school.”

“Vickie.” He stood, arms dangling helplessly at his side. A wreck of a man, a man living a nightmare. “The company suspended me pending the outcome of the investigation.”

Her sharp indrawn breath cut between them.

“They said it would be better for me if I took a leave of absence––until the whole thing blew over. . . . They took back the car, my office, everything. . . .”

Vickie’s knees buckled. She slumped onto the sofa, her head in her hands. Her whole life was collapsing. Suddenly people were avoiding her, people she had called friends. And those that were loyal were advising her to watch out, to take care of herself and her girls . . . to leave him. . . .

“I didn’t kill her, Vickie.” Steve’s voice was cold, lifeless, as though all emotion had been sucked out of him, leaving only a vacuum, a space where feelings used to be. He stepped close to her, lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. His dark–shadowed eyes burned into hers. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes   .   .   .” Vickie replied, but her voice faltered.

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t,” Steve said bitterly. “After all, no one else does, why should you?”

He let her go, walked across the room, stared out at the turquoise swimming pool glittering in the sunlight, at the roses he had planted when they first moved in, at the striped beach towels flung by his young daughters carelessly across the white plastic loungers. Signs of a normal life. “All I can tell you is that I did not kill Laurie Martin. I didn’t even see her that night. I hardly knew her. The times we met were all business. She was a nice woman, pleasant, a hard worker. She wanted to find us that perfect home. . . .”

Vickie stared at her husband. She wanted so badly to believe him. She
did
believe him. He was the man she had loved since college, the father of her children. She knew him better than anyone else in the world. But that same old question jangled at the back of her mind.

If Steve didn’t do it, then who did?

Steve acted like the family man that evening. Hair brushed neatly back and wearing shorts and a T–shirt, he barbecued burgers and hot dogs for his kids. They all sat at the table on the patio overlooking the pool, making conversation.

“You look tired, Dad,” his ten–year–old daughter, Taylor, commented, chewing halfheartedly on her cheeseburger––normally her favorite food.

He pushed the salad bowl toward her. “Gotta eat your greens too,” he said, scooping some on her plate. “What about you, Mellie?” His younger daughter, age six and as petite and small–boned as her mother, but with her father’s brown eyes, looked doubtfully at him over the top of the hot dog.

“No thank you,” she said politely. “But Taylor’s right, Daddy, you do look kind of funny.”

Vickie poured herself another glass of chardonnay. She did not look at her husband, nor at her girls.

“It’s about that missing woman, isn’t it?” Taylor went on. “Everybody’s talking about you, Dad. It’s on TV all the time.”

“I know, I know it is.” His hand shook as he helped himself to salad he did not want.

“At first I thought it was kinda cool––you know, my dad on TV. But now   .   .   .” Tears brimmed in Taylor’s eyes and she put down the burger, suddenly choked up.

“I’m sorry, Taylor. I’m really sorry about all this.” Steve’s hands clenched into tight fists as he faced his little girl across the table. My God, oh, my God, what have I done? he thought. . . . How could this have happened to me . . . to us   .   .   .   ?

“It’s okay, Daddy.” Mellie slid from her chair and hurried to his side. Putting her skinny arms around him, she hugged him as tightly as she could. “I don’t care what anybody says, we love you, Daddy.”

“And I love you too, baby.” He stroked her hair as Vickie’s eyes met his across the table.

“I can’t take this,” he said abruptly. “I have to get out of here, be by myself, think things out. . . .”

“But where will you go?” Vickie didn’t say it but he knew what she meant. That the police were keeping an eye on him, making sure he didn’t skip out of the country, run off to Mexico . . . maybe kill someone else   .   .   .

“I’ll go up to the cabin at Lake Arrowhead. It’s quiet up there in the mountains, I can get away from all this . . . this pressure. And you needn’t worry,” he added, knowing what she was thinking. “I’ll let Joe Zuckerman know where I am.”

“Arrowhead?” Taylor loved the lakeside cabin in the San Bernadino Mountains. “Can we come with you? Oh, please, Daddy, just for a few days   .   .   . it would be so fun   .   .   .”

She ran over to him, clinging to him too, on the opposite side from her sister. Steve put his arms around their bony young shoulders, hugging them and willing himself not to cry.

“Everything that means anything to me is right here in our home,” he said quietly to Vickie. “I want you to remember that.”

She stared at him, big–eyed, as he dropped a kiss on the little girls’ soft hair then pushed them gently away. “I’m sorry sweethearts,” he said, faking jollity, “but you can’t come to Arrowhead. Maybe later, next month perhaps . . . But this time Daddy’s goin’ fishin’ all by himself.”

He lifted his head, startled by Vickie’s sharp cry. She was staring over his shoulder. And then there was the telltale flash of a camera.

“Get out,” Vickie screamed. She was up and running, the bottle of Evian clutched in her hand. She hurled it at the two men crouching in the bushes. “Get out, you bastards . . . 
out . . . out of my house. . . .
”

The girls were screaming now too, terrified by the strange men and by their mother’s rage. . . . “Mommy, Mommy, what is it . . . what’s wrong . . . who are they   .   .   .   ?” They clung pathetically to their father and Steve stood there, holding on to them. He turned his face heavenward so they would not see the tortured grimace that changed him from a simple suburban guy barbecuing in his backyard on a pleasant summer evening to a hunted man. A man in torment.

Vickie was still standing over by the bushes where the tabloid photographers had hidden, glaring at the pretty flowering shrubs as though they had been contaminated with poison. He walked over to her, took her arm.

“It’s better if I go. Once the paparazzi know I’m not here, they’ll leave you alone. It’s better for you. And for the girls.”

She nodded, still not looking at him. “I’ll help you pack.”

“I won’t need much. . . .”

“Better take a jacket. It gets cool in the mountains at night.”

They kept their voices on a normal conversational level, both looking at their daughters. Taylor and Mellie held hands, sniffing back the tears, staring, still frightened, at their parents.

“What’s going on, Mom? What’s happening around here? Did Daddy kill that woman, is that what it is   .   .   .   ?” Taylor’s cool was gone now and she was just a frightened little girl.

“I didn’t kill anyone, baby.” Steve had his arms around her, whispering in her ear. “You’ll see, in a couple of weeks this will all have blown over. The cops will have found Laurie Martin and everything will be alright again.”

“You promise, Daddy?” Taylor’s bottom lip quivered, cutting to his very soul.

“I promise, honey. You’ll see, everything will be back to normal again.”

Later that night, after her husband had driven away in the rented Ford Taurus and her girls were in bed crying themselves to sleep, Vickie was on the phone with the family attorney, Joe Zuckerman.

“I don’t think I know Steve anymore,” she wailed, knowing that she could confide in this old friend of her father’s without fear of him divulging her secrets. “I look at him differently, see him with different eyes. . . . You know, like when he has his arms around my kids I find myself thinking, did he stab that woman? Did he strangle her? What’s he done with the body   .   .   .   ? And then I tell myself I’m crazy, I’ve loved him all these years, been married for twelve . . . he’s always been a decent man, a good husband, a good father . . . how can I possibly question him   .   .   .   ?”

“It’s understandable, Vickie.” Zuckerman’s voice was calm, soothing. He waited while she choked back a loud sob. “Listen, girlie, I’ve known you since you were born. I’ve known Steve almost as long as you’ve known him and I never had any occasion to doubt his integrity.”

“Nor did I. Until now.”

He sighed, understanding. “The media are putting on the pressure, honey, that’s all it is.”

“But was he having an affair with Laurie Martin?” Vickie’s heart seemed stuck somewhere in her throat as she asked the question she had not dared to voice earlier. “I mean, why else would he have drinks with her? Take her out to dinner? Isn’t that the usual prelude to an affair?”

Zuckerman had to admit that it was. Then he remembered Marla Cwitowitz. “Listen, Vickie, a woman called me today. An attorney who works as a private detective. She called because she was concerned about you.”

“About me? But I don’t know her.”

“No, you don’t. But Ms. Cwitowitz told me she had seen Steve in the company of Laurie Martin a couple of times. Quite by chance, she said. The first time was at the Ritz in Laguna Niguel. They were having a drink at the bar and she told me it was obvious that this was their first meeting and that Laurie Martin was showing him pictures of houses. The second time was a week later, at another hotel in La Jolla. They were on the terrace drinking champagne. . . .” He held the phone away from his ear at Vickie’s strangled cry. . . . “No, wait, Vickie. She wanted to tell me––to tell
you,
in fact––that in her view it was purely a business relationship. “No touching, no holding hands, no eyes linked across the table   .   .   .’ is exactly what she said.”

“And the champagne?” Vickie’s tone was bitter.

“Everybody drinks champagne these days, girlie, not just at weddings. Anyhow, she wanted me to tell you this specifically. She said she hoped it might help you.”

“But who is Marla Cwitzowitz?”

“She teaches law at Pepperdine. Claims to be partners with this guy Al Giraud. I checked him out. He’s a legitimate private detective, he’s done some good work. Well–known in his field.”

Vickie’s mind was racing. “Do you have Giraud’s number, Joe? I’d like to call him.”

Marla negotiated the curving Queens Road in the big Mercedes. It was dark. In her left hand was a paper cup––a “Vente Costa Rican,” no milk, two sugars––which, translated from Starbucks language meant a big strong cup of coffee. A cell phone was clutched between her right ear and shoulder and two fingers of her right hand were actually on the wheel––unless, of course, she took a moment out to adjust her lip gloss in the driver’s mirror.

She was laughing at her girlfriend’s description of her relationship with Al Giraud as “sex and no shopping.” She liked it that way.

She hung a left and the big car purred up Al’s street and, as if on automatic pilot, into his tiled courtyard. She said good–bye to her friend, switched off the ignition and was out of the car in a flash, purse tucked under her arm, coffee cup still clutched in her left hand.

Unlike Al, she had no love affair with her automobile. She had never been a poor kid dreaming in the movies of owning a powerful silver beast that would carry her into a different, better, more glamorous world. Marla had been born right here in Beverly Hills. She didn’t know from more glamorous worlds. Hollywood was the place everyone ran away to––not from.

Not so with Marla’s parents, though. Max and Irina Cwitowitz had found paradise in Beverly Hills, far from the Balkan war zones that had been the basis of life as they knew it. And far from the ragged remnants of family life with too many people dead in battles, or lost and never found in bombed buildings, or scattered over generations by constant wars. When Russia had taken over the Balkans in the division of countries after World War Two, they had both still been children. Homeless, penniless––and fatherless. Their mothers had become friends, shared a pitiful dwelling together in the basement of a bombed–out church. Both women had, when their children were old enough, urged them to escape to another, better life in a free country.