Buried Evidence (30 page)

“But that isn’t fair,” Jameson said. “I’ve already done a lot of legwork on this thing. Why should O’Malley get an opportunity like this?”

Captain Nelson shot him a black stare. “Law enforcement isn’t a game, Jameson, where one person or the other has to compete for scores. No matter who serves as the lead investigator, whatever work you do will be noted.”

He wasn’t thrilled, but it was better than nothing. “So we’re going forward, right?”

“I don’t see why not,” Andrew Nelson said smugly, leaning back in his chair. “A murder is a murder, and this one is intriguing and complex enough to draw national attention.” He snapped his chair back to its upright position. “Ventura is not a large city, do you understand?”

“I’m there,” Jameson said, standing. “You’re saying it’s about time we put Ventura on the map.”

“Right,” Captain Nelson said, a glimmer in his eyes as he glanced over at his computer. “The global map. And you know what? I think this might be the perfect ticket.”

L
ily awakened Friday morning in Richard’s arms, feeling more relaxed and content than she could ever remember. Her head was nestled under his shoulder, her right leg tossed over his lower body, and the toes of her left foot were clamped onto the narrow ridge of his heel. She wondered how long he’d been awake. She watched him silently without moving, gazing lovingly at his profile—the regal slant of his nose, his lips, his strong chin. She suspected he was purposely not moving in order not to disturb her, but his eyes were open and focused on the ceiling.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” Richard said, smiling as he leaned over and kissed her on the lips, memories of their night of lovemaking fresh in his mind. “You might be slow to convince, but after that you’re unstoppable.”

Lily cupped her hand over her mouth, grinning as she glanced up at him. “Did I wear you out?”

“I’ll survive,” he told her, stretching his arms over his head now that she was awake. “What we need to do is make this a habit, not a one-night marathon.”

She playfully punched him in the side. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“Embarrassing you,” Richard said, pulling her on top of him. “I embarrassed myself last night. That’s not so easy to do, at least not at my age. Now if I was eighteen, it might be different.”

Lily pushed herself up on her arms. “Oh, really?”

“I hate to admit it,” he continued, his dark eyes probing hers, “but I haven’t been quite as chaste as you. The male biological makeup, you know. It’s in our genes.”

“Sounds too clinical,” Lily told him, stroking his hair off his forehead.

“It’s a fact.” Richard lifted her off him. “I took a biochemistry class in college, thinking I could solve the mysteries of the universe. I only learned one thing. The purpose of life is to procreate. Men are genetically designed to have sex. Otherwise, the human race would have ceased to exist.”

“Why are you talking about other women?” Lily asked. “Are you trying to make me jealous?”

“Nope,” he said. “Just attempting to be honest.”

“I’m not the jealous type,” she told him, then gave her statement a second thought. “I take that back, okay? What you did in the past doesn’t matter, unless you have a disease.” When he didn’t answer, she assumed his sexual activity had not been irresponsible and that he had undergone routine tests as she did. Even with her rare sexual encounters, she was a stickler for safe sex. “What you do in the future might be a problem, depending on where we go with our relationship.”

“I can handle that,” Richard answered, stroking her breast. “But only under one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to promise not to throw things at me.” Lily was puzzled. “Why would you say that?”

“Don’t ask.”

She kissed his mouth, his chin, his stomach, then began moving down his body before he gently pushed her away.

“I never thought I’d live to say this,” he said, propping several pillows behind his head, “at least not to you, anyway. But the only way I could perform right now is if you can arrange an immediate transplant.”

The lower halves of their bodies were still covered by the sheet. Lily yanked the sheet off. When she saw his penis, she had to force herself to keep from laughing. The skin was red and inflamed. It reminded her of a hot dog roasted over an open flame. She pointed at her chest. “Did I do that?”

“Unless there was someone else in the bed with us,” Richard said, touching his genitals and then grimacing.

“How could someone with your coloring have such sensitive skin?”

“Ah,” he said, pulling on a strand of her hair, “it’s my sensitive skin, right? It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that we thrashed around in bed until after four this morning. If I’m not mistaken, the last thing I remember is you calling me your ‘little pony.’ I don’t mind you referring to me as a pony,” he continued, “but I don’t care much for the word
little.”

Lily’s lovely face was flushed with the glow of a woman well loved, her red hair drenched in a streak of vibrant sunlight. Her problems suddenly seemed unimportant. “I think I know where the little pony remark came from,” she told him. “Shana had a book with that title when she was in kindergarten. I used to read it to her every night. The book even came with a little pony necklace.” When she finally stopped laughing, she sat up and pulled the sheet up over her body. “Are you complaining?”

“Of course not,” Richard said, climbing out of bed to head to the bathroom. “I’ll buy some cream at the drugstore. By tonight I should be ready for an encore.”

A few moments later, Richard poked his head out of the bathroom to tell her it was already after seven. Lily was sitting with her legs crossed, a serene, otherworldly look in her eyes, almost as if she were meditating.

“I hate to disturb you,” he said. “But we better get moving. You don’t want Shana to get to your place before we do. Then you won’t be able to keep her from finding out we spent the night together.”

“Oh,” Lily said, giving him a blank stare, “it doesn’t matter if she finds out. I’ll probably tell her eventually.”

“Boy,” Richard said, “did you do a hundred and eighty-degree turnaround here or am I crazy?”

“I’m a woman,” Lily told him. “Women change their minds, remember?” Even though she’d given him a lighthearted answer, she felt different. What they had shared was not only pleasurable, but in some way uniquely profound.

The feeling reminded her of a picture on the bedroom wall of her rented cottage, a reproduction of a painting entitled
Embrace
, by an Austrian artist named Egon Schiele. She had become intrigued with not only the sensuous nature of the painting, but
because she’d spent hours staring at it during the nights when she couldn’t sleep. Coincidentally, the artist had painted it in 1917, the same year her mother had been born. It depicted a man and a woman reclining on what appeared to be a blue sheet, the fabric rippling beneath them like waves in the ocean. Thumbing through art books at the Tecolote Book Shop in Montecito one day, Lily had found the painting in a book compiled by an art historian and nun named Sister Wendy Beckett. The author had explained that those who viewed the
Embrace
were allowed to witness the mystical enigma of what she referred to as a
true embrace
, meaning the couple in the painting were uniting and each was becoming the other.

“Aren’t you going to get dressed?”

Lily walked into the bathroom, hugging Richard from behind while he smeared shaving cream on his face. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes moist with tears. “I believe last night did change me. I don’t know how exactly. I only hope it lasts forever.”

Richard said jokingly, “Don’t lay it on too thick, Lily. I haven’t forgotten what you and Shana said about guys who pay them too many compliments.”

I
‘LL MEET
you at the restaurant,” Richard said, leaning over and kissing Lily before she got out of the car in front of her guest house. Just as he drove off, she realized she was locked out. The key to her cottage had been on the same ring as her car keys. Now she’d have to wait outside until Shana returned, and her daughter would know she had spent the night with Richard. Lily might have said she didn’t mind her knowing they were lovers, but she wasn’t prepared to tell her right at that moment.

Lily had hidden a spare key somewhere on the property. Since she had never needed it, she’d forgotten where it was hidden. She suddenly panicked, certain Curazon had found the key, then used it to enter the cottage and steal the portrait of Shana. Her fears were magnified by the fact that the key to Shana and John’s duplex had also disappeared from her key ring.

Where had she put it? She couldn’t ask the owners to let her
in, as they were on vacation in Europe. Finally she raced around to the side yard, whipped off the brown tarp covering the barbecue grill, and pulled a small magnetized box about the size of a matchbook off the top of the inside lid to the cooker. Someone had given the box to her as a Christmas gift one year.

Once she was inside the house, her eyes went to the end table where the missing picture and envelope had been. Now that she had found the key, she tried to regain her earlier sense of well-being.

Why would Curazon replace the key, she asked herself, if he had found it and used it to gain entrance to the house? She couldn’t fathom him going to the trouble of making a duplicate, then returning to replace the original in the little box hidden inside the barbecue.

From what she had learned about him following his arrest, Curazon was a seriously disturbed individual. He had been severely abused by his mother as a young boy. Most people didn’t realize that rape was a crime of violence, that sex was only the weapon, similar to a gun or a knife. Men raped to punish, inflict pain, gain power over their victim. In Curazon’s case, he had raped to alleviate his own emotional pain. He was a sexual predator who acted on impulse, one of the reasons she didn’t believe he had removed her key, then replaced it with a duplicate.

Wanting to change her clothes from the night before, Lily rushed to the bedroom and selected a pair of black slacks and a purple knit top. When she heard what sounded like the front door opening, she clutched the knit blouse in her hands, her pulse pounding.

“Mom,” Shana called out. “Are you here?”

“I’m getting dressed,” she answered, pulling the top over her head and walking out to the living room. “How was your visit?”

Lily’s night of bliss with Richard seemed weeks behind her, and the lack of sleep showed on her face. Under her eyes were dark circles, and her naturally curly hair was more unruly than normal.

“Okay, I guess,” Shana said, sitting on the sofa, then picking
up a package of gum off the table. “You look exhausted, Mom. How long did you stay over there with Richard?”

“We have to hurry.” Lily glanced at her watch, wanting to tell her the truth but knowing it wasn’t the right time to engage in such an intimate discussion. “We’re supposed to meet Richard at the restaurant in less than ten minutes,” she added. “I’m also going to have to stop by the office, but you can come with me. All I intend to do is show my face, then download some case files from my computer. Later this afternoon we’ll drive over to the university and check things out.”

“I don’t want to transfer to Santa Barbara,” Shana protested, smacking on her chewing gum. “Ronnie even wants to switch to another school, maybe UCLA. Most of the people she introduced me to last night were airheads.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, really?” she said. “The ones who aren’t potheads are into that silly retro stuff with the big band music and old-fashioned dancing. They bored me to death talking about their stupid costumes.”

Lily hadn’t expected her to return home in such a bad mood. Her daughter’s sour attitude was causing her earlier cheerfulness to take a nosedive. “Aren’t the young people in L.A. into the same scene?”

“Who cares?” Shana said, standing. “The only scene I’m into is trying to finish college so I can go to law school. I’ve only gone out on two dates this past year, Mom. The kids last night are wasting their parents’ money.”

Lily walked over and hugged her. “That’s why I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.” When she pulled back, she said, “Let’s have a nice breakfast, listen to what Richard has to say, then we’ll attempt to solve some of your problems this afternoon.”

As they were about to leave, Lily came up with another idea. “Maybe I can find a way to rent you an apartment. We’ll pick up an L.A. newspaper this afternoon. We could get lucky and find a college girl around your age who’s looking for a roommate.”

“We could do that over the Internet,” she told her, jangling
the key ring. “What about Dad, though? Isn’t that why you told me not to stay in L.A.?”

“I was only concerned if you stayed in the duplex,” Lily told her. “And besides, if you have a roommate, he won’t be able to pressure you into letting him live with you.”

Shana removed her lipstick from her backpack, putting it on without a mirror, then blotting her lips on a tissue. “Dad isn’t going to put pressure on me over
anything,”
she said, her voice firm with conviction. “Right now I don’t care if he jumps off a bridge. I can’t even stand thinking about him, I hate him so much.”

“Don’t say that,” Lily answered, scowling. “It’s one thing to be angry because of what he did, but you shouldn’t hate anyone.”

“Not even when they kill someone?” Shana shouted, kicking the rear tire of the Audi.

“No,” Lily told her. “Hate will eat you up inside. I lost six years of my life because of it.”

Shana refused to let it go. “The guy Dad ran over was my age, Mom. He even went to UCLA. Maybe I can get another place like you said, but people are going to find out. If the police don’t come after me, people will still know my father killed someone.”

“It’s a big school,” her mother said, placing her hand on one side of her neck. “You’re the one who brought that point up to the detectives. I think you’re worrying about the wrong things right now.”

“Right, sure,” Shana said, her eyes blazing with intensity as she paced around in a circle in the driveway. “Why don’t you just put me in a nut house? That would solve all my problems. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about Dad. I wouldn’t have to find another place to live, change schools, stay up all night certain Curazon or some other creep is going to rape me.” She walked over and spat the words in her mother’s face. “You said I shouldn’t be bitter, that I shouldn’t hate. Tell me how to do that, Mom! Go on, tell me!”