Murder Follows Money (17 page)

He chose to go up 280, hoping to duck some of the traffic. I sat passively in the front seat, not moving, not talking, as if maintaining a low profile would get me out of trouble. It had worked in the past. I didn’t think it would this time.

In the backseat, Bruno chatted amiably with Hannah about the renovation he and his wife Lucy were doing. Everyone was renovating. Everyone wanted bigger houses. The face of Palo Alto was changing. More than ever, it was becoming an enclave of the rich.

I felt sad about that. I had planned to live the rest of my life in my little cottage, fixing only what was necessary to keep it standing. But if I had to sell to escape the bad vibes coming from the house in front of me, at least I’d get top dollar.

I would be able to afford a place in Denver, close to my folks. The notion was not a happy one. My family was not especially rich in warmth, and my parents made a lot of judgments about me that I found painful to live with. But it seemed preferable to enduring the feelings Drake was dishing out.

At this point in my brooding, I detected an unfortunate pattern. After serving time for trying to kill my abusive husband, I’d begun running away, spurred on by his attempts to find and punish me. By the time I’d confronted him, it had almost been too late to salvage my self-respect. Now I was planning how to run away from another man, one fundamentally decent and caring.

I wanted to put my head down on my knees and weep. And I wanted to scream at Drake. It had been his insistence that had made me open up, caused me to unwrap my vulnerabilities.

By the time we reached South San Francisco, my thoughts had shifted from my present misery to trying to imagine a future without Drake. If he cut himself off from me, which might well happen if his job was on the line over our association, what would I do? I had become dependent on him, and that didn’t sit well with me. I used his telephone instead of getting one of my own. When my ancient computer faltered, he figured out the reason. I had been in a time warp after three years of living in my bus, with no access to media except the magazines that bought my articles. He had brought me up to date on current events, introduced me to movies, made me reevaluate my loner stance.

I opened my knapsack and got my notebook out. Ignoring the notes we’d made about Naomi’s death, I turned to a fresh page. It looked like I wouldn’t need to worry about how Naomi met her end. The police would do that in their usual clear-cutting fashion, hacking down the forest to get to the one guilty tree.

“What are you doing?” Drake’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. It was the first time he’d spoken to me on the whole trip.

“I’m figuring out how much more I need to earn each month to afford a telephone.”

His mouth tightened. He took a right where Highway 1 turned into Nineteenth Avenue, and we drove along Junipero Serra in silence for a few minutes. The traffic was thick, but Drake moved though it with automatic ease.

“If you’d done that when I first asked you to,” he said finally, spitting out the words as if they caused him pain, “none of this would have happened.”

“That’s a crock and you know it, mate.” The casual endearment slipped out without my realizing it. We had called each other that, in fake Australian accents, at some of our tenderest moments. I rushed to fill the small, pregnant silence between us. “Of course, your career wouldn’t have been endangered by my illicit use of your phone, but everything else would still have happened.”

“If you’d had a real job—”

“This was a real job. The kind in an office, like you are always after me to get. Keyboarding, answering the phones, filing. It lasted for all of five hours. I’m realist enough to know that something in me is not acceptable in an office setting, even if you still think all I need is a pair of pantyhose and a meek demeanor.”

The chitchat in the backseat ceased. Drake didn’t reply, and I felt ashamed of my outburst—but not very. What I said was the truth, no matter how unpalatable it was to him. I had temped in many offices, and I had never been asked back after my initial assignment was over. Not because I was inefficient. I worked steadily and didn’t steal office supplies or make personal telephone calls. But somehow I didn’t fit in with the other cubicle dwellers.

I could understand why Drake wanted me to have a real job. I would have health insurance, retirement, the safety net that was so important. And I had come to want those things too. If I got sick, if I had a serious accident, I would be in trouble.

At least I had come to terms with my inability to do the corporate culture thing. And I knew that if trouble was looking for a person, it would find them, whether they worked at home or in an office.

“I’m sorry if I’m being mean,” I said, low voiced. In the backseat, Bruno had resumed his light chat with Hannah Couch; he was a model of thoughtfulness. “I know it’s a setback to your career to be associated with a person like me. I’ve known it all along. We can call it quits right now. No questions asked.”

He didn’t reply for a moment. Then he pulled the car over two lanes of traffic and turned into a convenience store parking lot.

“Paolo?” Bruno sounded startled.

“Liz needs to use the bathroom,” Drake said brusquely. He came around and opened the car door on my side. “Come on.”

“I don’t—”

“I said, come on.” He looked formidable, not at all like the comfortable, frizzy-haired companion I was used to. I got out of the car slowly. In the back of my mind are always alarm bells associated with overbearing masculine behavior. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t hit me, but with men you can’t always tell.

“We have to buy something,” I said. I had a lot of experience with public bathrooms, after my years of living in my bus. “Otherwise they won’t let you use the bathroom.”

He led me into the store, past the bored clerk, who chatted with a bored customer. We stood in the hall that led to the rest rooms.

“There’s no privacy to talk about this now,” he said, still tight lipped. “But you are not getting out of our relationship so easily. You are not running from me. We will have this out when the investigation is finished, but I have no intention of letting you blame this on me being concerned about my career. What I’m concerned about, damn it, is you.” His hands closed over my shoulders and he shook me, though with more restraint than I expected, considering the way he looked at me. “You driving around with a woman who has a gun on you. You being Miss Hero and helping that idiot Claudia take the gun away. You jumping in to try and clear this crazy Hannah Couch from the murder charge she no doubt richly deserves. You putting your life at risk.”

I thought he would shake me again, but instead he pulled me close and held me for the space of several heartbeats.

“You put your life at risk every day.” My voice was muffled by his chest. I pulled away, and let some of my own anger loose. “You nag me about my job, but you have the most dangerous one possible. Who the hell do you think you are, Paul Drake? What gives you the right to tell me what I can and can’t do? When do I do that to you?”

His hands dropped. “You don’t,” he said, rubbing his face. “I’ve wondered why. Guess you don’t care as much as I do.”

He turned, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back around to face me. “That’s bunk too. I don’t show my love by trying to run your life. I may hate the risk your job involves, but it doesn’t change my feelings for you. For all the good they do me.”

He stared down at me, his face blank, his glasses reflecting the light. “You don’t show your love,” he said slowly. “I certainly realize that. Trying to pry emotion out of you is like interrogating the mute. But you—you feel—love? For me?”

I reached up and took his glasses off so I could see his eyes. They blazed with such brightness I couldn’t bear to look. It was like facing the sun.

“I do,” I said.

He kissed me. I kissed him back. It was the best embrace of my life. All the troubles fell away in a magical combination of tenderness and heat.

The counter person coughed ostentatiously, and Drake tore his lips away. I gazed at him, bemused, and realized I still had his glasses dangling from my limp fingers. I put them back on, adjusting them as best I could.

He pushed them up his nose and stared at me with laser intentness. “Marry me.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d proposed, but I had managed to treat the previous occasions as banter, and he hadn’t pursued them. This time it was different.

"No."

He pulled me close again. “Damn it, why not? I need to have that tie, Liz. I need you to be in my life on a permanent basis.”

“This isn’t the time to talk about it.” I could see down the aisle of chips to the front window. “Bruno is alone with Hannah. What if she tries to run away?”

“He’ll have to stop her.” Drake put his cheek on top of my head. It made me ache for what I was afraid we could never have.

“Like you said, mate. When this is over, we’ll have that talk. We’ll put our cards on the table. I’ll see your point of view, you’ll see mine. Until then—”

He held me a little away. “It would help you with the San Francisco police if I said you were my fiancée.”

“That’s the worst reason to get engaged I ever heard.” I pushed him away altogether. “I sure hope your romantic proposal in aisle six wasn’t motivated by this.”

He started to smile, for the first time that day. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

I started back toward the door. “Look, let’s get this over. The sooner everything is wrapped up, the sooner I can take your generous offer apart for you.”

He took my arm. “Stop trying to take the lead here. You’re still in protective custody. And when you consider my offer, remember that it comes with lots of extras, like health and dental insurance. Costco membership.”

“Death benefits?” I shook my head. “I don’t aspire to be a policeman’s wife, or a policeman’s widow, come to that.”

“I don’t aspire to be a corpse,” he retorted. The clerk watched us go out the door. We hadn’t bought the obligatory soda or chips. But she didn’t say anything. She was probably just happy to have the crazy people leave.

Chapter 16

The jackals of the press were in command of the hotel’s entrance and lobby. We went up to the suite in the freight elevator, like a rewind of our trip down earlier—was it really the same day? So much had happened since Hannah had commandeered me with a gun under her raincoat. I glanced at her as we rode in the clanking elevator car. She looked stern, remote, unflappable. Even when she lost her head, she kept her wits about her.

The kitchen door was locked. Drake rang the service bell, and after a moment a uniformed cop answered it.

“Drake. Palo Alto police.”

“Right.” The uniform stepped aside. Her nameplate said DIAZ. “Watch where you walk. We’ve had the crime-scene people in here for the last few hours, and they’ve left a mess."

The doors to Kim’s and Don’s bedrooms were closed. When we entered the little kitchen, we saw what the cop meant about the mess. Every cupboard stood open. The bins of staples that Hannah had brought with her were opened as well, and their contents strewn throughout the room.

Something crunched underfoot. I looked down to see broken bits of rainbow-colored glass.

Hannah’s expression had grown more forbidding. When she saw the broken glass, she stopped.

“My carnival-glass bowl! How did that get broken?” Officer Diaz shrugged. She looked sympathetic. “These things happen. The crime-scene technicians vacuum up everything, then the evidence people search. It would be tidier if it was the other way around, but that wouldn’t work.”

Hannah bent to pick up one of the pieces, and Officer Diaz put a hand on her arm. “Please don’t touch anything. When we’re through, you can do that. If you’re still around.”

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be around?”

Officer Diaz didn’t answer. She opened the door into the suite’s main room, and we filed in.

The area around the couches and coffee table was cordoned off with yellow tape. Here again, the contents of closets and drawers had been pulled out and rummaged through.

“The inspectors are over there.” Officer Diaz pointed to the library alcove at one side of the room. Two people, a man and a woman, were bent over something on the large, polished wood desk.

I was watching them, so I didn’t see Kim until she jumped up from the chair she’d pulled around to face the floor-to-ceiling balcony windows.

“Liz! Hannah! You’re back!” She ran to me, and I hugged her. She was trembling.

“I was afraid,” she whispered to me. “Afraid something awful had happened to you.”

“Well, I had to take Hannah shopping at the secondhand store. That was pretty awful.”

She laughed, a little hysterically, and stepped back.

“Hannah, I’m glad you’re safe.” Her voice quavered. “It’s been terrible here."

“Kim, my dear.” Hannah sounded sincere. “I left you holding the bag. I’m so sorry.”

Kim looked surprised at this display of compassion. “We didn’t know what to do. It was—difficult.”

“I’m sure it must have been.” Hannah looked around the room. “Where’s Don?”

“He’s in his room. They said we could stay in our rooms if we liked, after they searched them.” Kim shivered. “I didn’t want to be alone. I’ve just been . . . staring out the window.” Her voice fell. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.” Hannah actually hugged Kim. “Naomi was your aunt, after all. You must miss her.”

Kim darted a look at the two inspectors, who had come forward during this exchange. “I haven’t had time yet to know how I feel,” she said honestly. “All I can think about is that awful moment when she fell—” She put a hand to her mouth and looked at us, her eyes huge.

“It wasn’t particularly nice,” Hannah agreed with massive understatement.

“I’m Inspector Scarlatti, and this is Inspector Daly,” said the woman, offering her hand. “May I say what a pleasure it is to meet you, Ms. Couch? I’m a fan of yours."

Hannah shook the offered hand, smiling graciously. “Thank you.

The inspector’s smile cooled a lot when she turned to me. She didn’t offer her hand. “Ms. Sullivan.”