All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (55 page)

“Morning, baby.”

He’d been ready to click on another one of his stupid blogs, looking for some tidbit to publish in the
Mass Observer
, serious political news among the personals and 900-number sex ads. Jeez, there were dozens still to go through on the blog site; the list of recently-updated blogs went on and on. Knowing him, he’d probably go through each one, and she’d just have to wait, and they couldn’t go anywhere till he was done—

“Hey, wait a minute.”

He was too busy snuggling back against her breasts to look. “What?”

“That guy.” Angie pulled away and leaned towards the screen.

Jake straightened up and looked. “Oh, wrong blog,” and he reached for the mouse to click out.

“No.” She put her hand over his on the mouse. “No. No, I’ve seen that guy. What is this?” She scanned the text, some kid whining because she’d had to babysit her brothers at a party. “He was at Monticello last weekend. Real tall guy, knew everything about the place, had this bitch with him – hey, that’s her.”

She re-read the text. A singer? That bitch was a
singer?
But Jake was busy, opening up a second browser window and surfing to another web site. She turned away towards the bed, with the same dull feeling of shame she’d had when the woman had asked her to pipe down the week before. She was normally a nice person. If she and her sister hadn’t spent the night bar-hopping, maybe she wouldn’t have been so belligerent—

“This her?”

She turned back and squinted at the screen. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s her.” She added spitefully, “Doesn’t look that good in real life.”

“Sweet Mother of God,” said Jake, who was not at all religious. “You saw Cat Courtney?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“Sweet Mary – don’t you know who she is?”

“No.” He was looking at her expectantly. “Hey, I don’t. What’s the big deal?”

“Euro singer. Mystery woman, that’s the big deal.” He switched back to the whiner’s blog. “Damn it! This kid didn’t put any names in, just initials. You saw this guy? You get his name?”

Angie collapsed back against the pillows. “Don’t remember.”

“Try,” Jake suggested.

She tried to think back to that humiliating moment when Cat Courtney – hard to believe that woman was a celebrity, Angie swore she’d seen those jeans at the Gap – had turned around and made it clear that they were behaving like juveniles. Bitch. “I dunno. Something about she wasn’t the Sally expert, she was the, oh, God, what did she say, the Robert expert. No. The Randall expert. No.” Her head hurt too much, she’d drunk too much, to be thinking this hard. “Started with an R. What are R names – Roger, Raymond, Rupert… oh, I don’t know! Talk to Allie. She was there.”

He got up immediately and walked into the other room. Too late, Angie remembered the rose tattoo. Jake was probably getting an eyeful. She moaned and turned her face into the pillow.

Then she remembered something. She yelled into the other room, “She said she was his mistress.”

~•~

In Seattle, a banker went to work, leaving her husband and children lazing around the house. Nothing worse, she figured, than having a federal holiday on a Thursday. The bank fell under the federal banking statutes that decreed that a federally chartered banking institution could not be closed for more than three days in a row, so the trust department employees had drawn lots to see who scored the four-day weekend and who had to work. And guess who had gotten the short straw?

She spent the morning going over paperwork and staring out the window over Puget Sound, watching the cruise ships and sailboats alike sharing the bay on a lovely summer day. The bank was quiet; most of their clients had gone away for the weekend, not having to function under archaic banking laws that didn’t take into account that no one,
no one
, worked the Friday after a major holiday. After a leisurely lunch, she wandered the waterfront and enjoyed the sunshine and cool breeze over the sound.

A lovely day. What could go wrong on a day like this?

Act Three: A Demon in My View

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

(”Alone”, Edgar Allan Poe)

Chapter 15: Blood Will Tell

SHE’D BEEN ROBBED.

~•~

In the middle of the night, after they had left Edwards Lake, someone had come in through the gates, taken the Jaguar, slid across the road to the other side, and smashed into a tree. The trooper said that, with the road flooded, the car had probably hydroplaned into the tree.

The road had dried in the rising sun, but puddles of water still stood on the soaked roadside.

A miracle no one had been killed, observed another trooper, but with the luck that often preserves fools, drunks, and car thieves, the driver’s side had sustained only scratches. The air bag had deployed, allowing the driver to walk away. “Probably a little bruised up this morning,” the trooper added cheerily. “Bet he’s got a helluva hangover.”

The passenger side was completely destroyed, the roof caved in and the doors smashed.

Laura shivered. The warm air of the morning, rapidly turning humid, and Richard’s presence beside her couldn’t still the involuntary chill brushing her skin. “But I don’t understand. It’s not possible.” Even to her own ears, she sounded defensive. Everyone seemed skeptical of her claim that she hadn’t driven her car since the evening before. “I had my keys – I don’t see how – I know I locked it—”

“Are you sure? Check your purse.” Richard turned back to the trooper. “We left shortly after eleven. She had the Jaguar parked in front of her house.”

“I had my keys. I know I did.” Laura searched fruitlessly through her shoulder bag. “I must have. I locked the front door when we left.”

From the corner of her eye, she caught the bare shake of his head. “No,” he said quietly, so that only she could hear. “I did. I used my key.”

No one asked why he had a key. Not that anyone was even paying attention; one trooper was taking down the information from her driver’s license, while two others were examining what remained of the Jaguar. The girls stood just out of hearing range, Julie tentatively hovering near Meg, whose noisy lamenting made it difficult to concentrate on the trooper’s questions.

Her keys had to be here. She couldn’t have lost them. She had a vague memory of unlocking the car to look for an umbrella. But then what? Had she dropped them? Had she put them in her pocket – oh, not the shallow pocket on her skirt – had they fallen when the wind had knocked her off her feet?

Oh, no. Oh, please, no—

In the storm, she would never have heard them fall. And in the tense exchange with Richard, her keys had been the last thing on her mind.

Meg was sobbing. “Mom’s car – Dad gave it to her – who did this – I hate this place—”

Laura said wearily, “Meg, please. I can’t think.”

Richard turned his head and said, “Julie, take Meg back to my car and stay there.”

But nothing was going to stop her daughter. “But, Mom, it was your special present – I helped Dad pick it out – he’d be so upset—”

Richard made an exasperated sound and gave a jerk of the head to Julie, who obediently led Meg back to the Lexus. Then he turned back to the trooper, repeating that she couldn’t have been the one to drink and drive and smash because she had been with him all night. Stating for a public record – if anyone cared – that they had been together.

She stared at her ruined car.

Cam would have been more than upset; he would have been livid. The one time she’d had a fender bender, she’d thought she’d never hear the end of it. Just one more nail in her coffin, as far as Mark was concerned:
How could someone steal your car and you didn’t even know until the next day? Where were you?

The trooper handed her license back. “I need your insurance information.”

“Oh.” Laura tried to concentrate. “It’s – I’m on the corporate policy.” One more strand of the SBFA cocoon she had forgotten. She had no hope of keeping this from Mark’s ears. “There are papers in the car in the driver’s side pocket. Can I – can we take a look and see if they’re in there?”

She felt a sick weight in her stomach as the trooper led them across the road to the scene. Hard to fathom that
this
was her car, this twisted mass of metal now fit only for a junkyard. No more a sleek silver beast, with its precision handling and smooth power, no more the chariot that had borne her across the country on her journey home. She reached out instinctively for Richard and felt the quiet pressure of his hand covering hers.

How could this be happening? Just a few minutes before, they’d been at breakfast, talking, laughing, ignoring the sulks emanating from their daughters. He’d remarked,
sotto voce
, “Those two don’t like each other, do they?” and she had whispered back to give it time…. She’d even thought that, after she saw the doctor and Richard left for his office, she’d take the girls out to the post-holiday sales, let them bury their obvious mutual dislike in new clothes. Nothing like shopping to forge bonds between two females who couldn’t stand each other.

They weren’t going anywhere. She had no car.

“I know I’m being silly.” She sounded strangled, even to herself. “It’s only a car. Only a machine. It’s just—”

It had been Cam’s gift to her. With its demise, only memories remained of her thirtieth birthday.

Richard said quietly, “It’s a shock to be robbed. But thank God it’s only your car, Laura. It could have been much worse. If you’d been there—”

His voice dropped off and left the thought unspoken. She might have been there alone at Edwards Lake, in a house without power. Worse, she and Meg might have been there in the dark, at the mercy of someone with keys to her house. If someone had taken advantage of the open gate, knowing that a lone woman lived there—

But, of course, if she hadn’t tried to leave to go to him, the gate wouldn’t have been open. Her keys would have been safe in her purse.

Her keys. Her London and New York keys were on that keychain. She tried frantically to remember what other keys she’d had.

“Hey, look at this,” said one of the other patrolmen.

Laura stopped, and her heart dropped. Oh, no, the driver hadn’t walked away, after all, they’d found a body…. Richard let her hand go and walked to the driver’s side to take a look. She couldn’t hear what the patrolman was saying, for the buzzing of her ears.

She waited in agony for what seemed like centuries, while Richard crouched down with the troopers, all of them interested in something behind the driver’s seat. She wasn’t at all prepared when he straightened up and called, “Laura, come here. You need to see this.”

It
was
a body. In the sudden dread that swept her, she couldn’t bear to look. Edwards Lake had not been totally empty after she and Richard had left for the night. “Is it—” She barely recognized her voice, close to panic. “Oh, please – it’s not Max, is it?”

She’d never forgive herself if Max had been hurt. Her faithful little companion, and she’d left him there alone—

“Max? Who’s Max?” asked the trooper, who had looked askance at her earlier.

Richard said to the man, “Her cat,” and then to her, “No, it’s not. Don’t worry. I’m not sure what we’re looking at here.”

Then it must not be a body, feline, human, or other. Terrible to admit, even to herself, that she’d rather a dead car thief than an injured Max. She pulled herself together and walked around the trunk of the car, where the damage appeared less severe than the passenger side – there might be some hope of opening the trunk and retrieving some of her CDs. Richard met her on the driver’s side, the other men behind him.