Sins of the Father (9 page)

“I talked to Cindy.” The words blurted out before she thought better of them. She felt Alex go painfully still under her hands. “I thought maybe I’d be able to help. Maybe she’d see me as an easier ally, since I don’t have a dog in the fight, so to speak.”

She felt sure he’d be angry, irritated at the very least, but instead he just slowly returned to his delicate caresses of her skin. “And could you?”

Zoey shook her head, then leaned back to catch his gaze again. “She screamed that she was going to take the kids and run, and it was all our fault.” She thought carefully about how she wanted to phrase her question. “Do you know what might have happened, what could have made her so afraid?”

He shook his head, and then froze. “Oh fuck,” he said. “I need to talk to her.”

“Wait, Alex.” She put her hand on his arm as he sat up and moved towards the edge of the bed. “Hold on.”

“I dropped her name to Olivia,” he said. “She must have—fuck—she must have gone after Cindy. Intimidated her. I didn’t think—” He bit off another curse as he reached for pants. “This is my fault.”

“Stop,” Zoey said, and to her surprise, the man did pause, at least, and turned to face her. “If she’s really afraid, there’s nothing worse you can do than go tearing over there. You’ll frighten her even more.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “She’s not going to answer the phone, and she made it perfectly clear to me that she didn’t want to hear from either one of us again. If you really think your mother’s a danger, Alex—maybe it’s time to get the police involved.”

“No,” he said, too fast. “No, it won’t do any good. We don’t have any proof yet. They’ll dismiss me out of hand. Even the friends I have on the force won’t be enough. We need proof, Zoey.”

It was her turn to shake her head, and she tried not to let the fact that she was naked whittle away at any of her determination. “It’s not our job to bring proof, Alex. That’s the job of the police.”

For a moment, she saw him tremble. She had an idea of the enormous forces that were dragging on him from all sides, and she could imagine that he had no real idea of where to go or what to do next. But the anger in his eyes, the fury that wasn’t just about tonight, but about a thousand slights and smarts over the years, things about which she’d only found the barest edges—it made her nervous, just a little. “I don’t think you understand,” he said, in a voice so quiet and low and careful that it only increased her nervousness. “How much is riding on this. It’s not just about shares in the company, or whether I’m a multi-billionaire, or just a garden variety fucking rich guy. Zoey, people are dying.”

“Yes, they are,” she said. “And more may die if you don’t tell the police what is going on.” She paused, thinking back over her conversation with Cindy. “She said that you weren’t the only one who knows the police commissioner. Do you know the police commissioner?”

Alex shifted from one foot to the other for a moment, a funny look on a naked guy. She swallowed the smile. It wouldn’t help the conversation. At all. “Yes. We—have a mutual friend.”

Zoey found herself unable to resist. “A mutual lady friend?”

He rolled his eyes, but he sat back down on the bed next to her and stopped twitching quite as much. “No, not like that. A mutual friend from school. We got him into a lot of trouble a few times, but Leo and I always saved his ass, too. He owes me.”

She placed a delicate hand on his shoulder, and when he didn’t shrug it off, she stroked it lightly down his arm, then scooted a little closer, letting him feel the warmth of her body. “Either call him, or don’t,” she said. “But stop torturing yourself. On some level—she’s a big girl, Alex. She told me she was going to run. And if she does—then she does, you know? You can’t fix this for her, especially not when she’s refusing help.”

He nodded, and scrubbed his hands over his hair. It was a nervous gesture, she realized. “I should call Luke,” he said. “I know I should. But something keeps holding me back.”

“She’s your mother,” Zoey said, as gently as she could. “I can’t imagine needing to tell the police that you think your mother is killing people.”

He laughed just a little. “It is a little bit out there. I mean, Olivia is a bitch, and she’d go to a lot of lengths to protect Claire and I, and to make sure that everything—everything she gave up wasn’t for nothing. But kill people?” He shook his head. “I just don’t think she has it in her.”

“Then maybe you should come to bed,” she tried. She didn’t go as far as reaching out, her arms open and ready, but she thought about it. She just didn’t think it would play out the way she wanted it to.

“I’d really like to,” he said, and his eyes skirted down her body again, a smile playing over his lips. “But I called an emergency board meeting for tomorrow morning, thinking I’d have Cindy’s backing. Without it, I—” he shook his head, and she saw something she’d never seen in his posture before, never even dreamed of. She saw fear.

No, fear was too intense. But she’d never seen him show even the slightest hint of reticence. Not just in her past few days experience with him, but ever. Not in the press, not in interviews, not when challenged. Publicly, and now privately, she saw Alexander Blankenship as someone consumed by his own confidence, strong and powerful. It was disarming and alarming to see him nervous. It made him somewhat more human than he had been.

He recovered quickly, and gave her a boyish grin. “I have to try and pull one hell of a meeting out of my hat, or look like a fool,” he said. “I’ll probably be up for a bit. But you should get some sleep.”

“Do you want me to sleep here?” She didn’t know how to ask without being blunt.

“Very much,” he said, with the same sort of tone.

“Okay,” she said. “I should go by my apartment and get some clothes, then. Unless you plan on buying me a new outfit every day.”

“Would you accept them if I did?”

She had to laugh. “Not unless you started shopping at the thrift store.”

He was still for a moment. “I do, you know. For things that aren’t for work, obviously. But when I just want clothes that are comfortable, and I’m not going to be judged for how they fit. Or if I know that they’re going to get destroyed. I’m not utterly irresponsible.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, even though it didn’t seem like entirely the right thing to say.

“I’ll have someone drive you,” he said. “It’s too late for the subway.”

He said it so offhand; it was a fascinating moment, given what he’d just been saying about thrift stores. She got it, right then. He chose to shop at the thrift stores, because it made sense and was a frugal choice. But he’d never had to shop at a thrift store. She would have bet—dollars to donuts, Mama had said—that he’d never looked down at his last $20 on Monday afternoon and tried to figure out how he was going to eat until Friday. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand how the “other half”—or, the other 99%—lived, it was just that he’d never had to live like that.

“Okay,” she said. It felt a little bit like she was letting down everything she’d been raised to believe in, but at the same time, he was right. It was too late to be on the subway. “Thanks.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Her little apartment seemed sad after even just 24 hours in Alex
’s plush penthouse. All the little flaws that she’d learned to live with, like the crack in the ceiling, or the way the floor rippled at the front door, so that she had to kick it to open it, and kick it to close it again, all those flaws stood out now, like nails on a chalkboard.

When she’d told Alex she just wanted to go get a few things from her apartment, she realized now, she’d half expected him to ask how long she expected to stay, or something else to not-so-quietly indicate that he’d had enough of her. He had to get ready for his big meeting in the morning, after all, and there was only so long he was going to want her to hang around.

She stared at her closet, trying to figure out what she should pack. Two pair of jeans would get her through a few days, as long as he didn’t kill any more zippers, but was that assuming too much? Should she just get clean panties and socks and head back? A spare toothbrush? Where was the overnight line?

If she’d been a typical southern girl, if she’d joined a sorority in college, she would know these things. After a few minutes of staring blankly at her clothes and trying to figure out what to do, she sighed and pulled out her phone.

The battery was barely at 15%, she noticed, as she tapped out a quick text to Alex.  All the music earlier must have run it down a little more quickly than usual.
I don’t know how much I should bring. Please help.

She stared at the phone, waiting for some sort of answer from him. If she was lucky, he’d be working with his phone nearby. If not—well. She’d just have to guess. As agonizing as that might be.

Her phone lit up with a phone call, but not from the contact she was hoping for. She stared at the number and name for a moment before she swiped to answer. “I thought you were going to call the police commissioner if I ever tried to contact you again.”

It was a mean thing to say, but she had found herself more and more frustrated with Cindy Walden as the day went on. She was the one who’d shown up with this mess and dropped it in their laps instead of taking it to the police. It was fair for them to ask for her help in cleaning it up. Besides, if she wanted Philip’s shares, didn’t that mean she should also want some of the responsibility?

It wasn’t something she was likely to say to either Cindy or Alex, but she just couldn’t understand how someone could plan out something as malicious and wretched as this, and expect to get away with it. From what she’d been able to find, both Arturo’s death and Thalia’s were showing signs of suicide, though of course they were still waiting for a coroner’s report to officially rule out foul play. But that was a big part of why she’d tried to press Alex into calling his friend Luke with his suspicions. If the cops were looking into the cases, with all of the available information, and still called the deaths suicides, then that would be the end of it. There was nothing else to be said. She hoped Alex would be able to see it that way, too. After all, she knew better than he that the media was never given all the information about a crime scene. It was an easy way to confirm a rule in or out whether or not a suspect had been at a scene, if they knew details about it that hadn’t been in the papers, or online.

Cindy had collected herself, apparently, after Zoey’s nasty-nice greeting. She spoke rapidly, her voice pitched low and quiet. “Ms. Gardener? I need to see you immediately. Please.”

The fine hairs on the back of Zoey’s neck stood at attention. “Ms. Walden? What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” the woman said. “Well. Nothing yet. I need—I need to give you information. About the twins.”

“Okay,” Zoey said. “Absolutely. Let me get a pen and paper.”

“No,” Cindy snapped, her voice wire-tight. “Absolutely not. No writing things down.”

Zoey resisted the urge to rub her temples. “I apologize, but I want to make sure that if you tell me something, I remember it accurately.”

“You need to come to my apartment,” Cindy said, reeling off an address. “I need to speak to you. Privately. Not Alex, not his sister, not a driver, no one else. I will tell no one but you.”

On the stupid subway jackoff story, she’d had a source that had been like this, acting like he was Deep Throat passing over the Nixon tapes, just to give her enough information to track down the dude whose kink involve masturbating on occupied subway cars. “I want to help you, Cindy,” Zoey said, hoping that using the woman’s first name again would create a little more connection between them. “I want to help keep the kids safe. But to do that, you need to trust me.”

“I do,” she said, and Zoey knew without a doubt that the woman had been crying. “I don’t trust the phones. Okay? Can you come here?”

“Sure,” Zoey said. If nothing else, the woman was distraught. Checking in on her seemed like a good idea. “I’m on my way. I’m across town right now, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She was pretty sure that the driver who’d picked her up—it wasn’t the constantly present David, but someone else in the same dark suit, tanned skin, and crisp haircut—wouldn’t say boo about driving her wherever she needed to go.