“Uh, yes. I… well, my name is Olivia Richards and I’m a former… I used to be a writer for the Philadelphia News.”
“Yes?”
“About two years ago, I did a profile on…”
“I’m sorry, could you hold just a moment, please?”
The line clicked off and classical music poured through the earpiece. That certainly didn’t go as smoothly as she’d hoped, so these extra seconds on hold were a godsend. In fact, she still wasn’t sure how she was going to pull this off.
“I am so sorry, thank you for holding. Now, what can I do for you?”
Olivia noticed his voice sounded warmer than just a moment ago, downright cheery. Rehearsed. “Well, actually, I was calling about Miss O’Connor.”
There was a silence. “Yes?”
“Uh, I don’t mean this to sound odd, but I was just wondering if she still lived in Philadelphia. You see, I did a feature profile on her a couple years ago and I have since left the area and was curious as to where her career has taken her." Oliva heard the falseness in her own words and she winced.
“I see. Well, yes, she’s still in Philadelphia, although at the present time she’s out of town. Is there a message I could perhaps pass on for you?”
“Oh, no, actually. I…”
“And where are you employed now, Miss Richards, if I may ask? And why are you calling me here at the gallery?”
“Oh. Well, yes, I.. Oh! I’m sorry. I need to run. Thank you so much for your time.”
She slammed down the phone and her heart was beating a mile a minute. What an idiot she was!
She walked to the cafeteria for a little fresh air and a cup of coffee. There was something strange about that conversation, she decided. Something strange about Bradley Rowe.
Something wrong.
But of course there was! His perfect little girlfriend was out here doing the nasty with some low-life newspaper reporter! Anybody would be pissed off. That is, anyone who knew about it.
Was it possible Brad Rowe hadn’t known where his girlfriend was? Had she managed all this in secret? Was Brad Rowe hoping Olivia had information for him, and that was why he sounded so artificially sweet?
Olivia returned to her desk.
And hoo boy! Did she ever have information! She knew exactly where Jane O’Connor was—flat on her back on a kitchen table the last time she looked!
“Hi Liv. What’s up?”
Olivia started, spilling the hot coffee all down the front of her white blouse. “Shit!”
“Hey, are you all right? What’s the matter?” Lynn Ballentine reached over and picked up the overturned Styrofoam cup. “Hold on. I’ll go get some paper towels out of the ladies’ room.”
Oh perfect. Olivia closed her eyes and sighed. All she’d wanted to do was squeeze in two little personal calls during the day and everything had gone wrong. Maybe she shouldn’t be doing this. It was none of her business, really. But she knew herself too well, and she knew she was too far along now to stop. She had to find out what was going on.
Lynn was back with a handful of paper towels. Olivia dabbed at the front of her blouse. “Well, that’s a relief. Hardly shows at all.” She smiled sarcastically, then tossed the sodden towels in the trashcan near her feet.
Lynn crossed her arms and grinned down at her. “Are you still upset about Ruben?” she asked.
Olivia looked up, surprised. “No!” It came out a little too loudly. “No. Of course not. I’m just swamped with work.”
“Mmm. Well, we were wondering if you wanted to have lunch with us today. Me and Leslie and Danielle. We thought we’d go out somewhere.”
“Sure. That sounds nice.” Olivia managed a smile. As Lynn walked back to her desk, she realized she’d just reached a new membership level in their little club – women dumped by Ruben Jaramillo. What an unbelievable jerk he was.
She made the next call, and was immediately transferred to the office of the artistic director, who seemed a bit surprised by her question.
“Janey? Well, we’re not certain at the moment,” he said.
“Is she still with the company?”
“Well, yes, technically, but she left in the middle of rehearsals and we’ve not been able to contact her. Is there a problem…?”
“Oh, no. I was just curious, that’s all.”
“Have you seen her?” His voice suddenly seemed worried. “Has something happened to her?”
“Happened? What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, it’s just that… if you see her, just…” He stopped, his voice now a whisper. “We’re quite worried about her. Do you have information for us, Miss Richards? Is that why you called?”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. But why are you worried about her?”
“It’s just odd, that’s all. No one knows where she is. Her fiancée’ claims she needed to get away, but we’re concerned because, well, she would have told us. Her locker has been cleaned out. It’s been nine days.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“Oh! No! I don’t think it’s anything like that, you know, maybe an argument or something.” He stopped. “Why did you ask that? Should we go to the police? Who did you say you were working for?”
Lenny Oberon was perhaps the most eccentric person Ruben knew, and considering the range of humanity Ruben encountered on a daily basis in the Albuquerque metro area, that was really saying something. But Lenny was harmless, and extremely talented, so he was given a little more leeway than the average weird guy. It always amused Ruben to see even the most obnoxious cops treat Lenny with reverence, even awe.
As the composite artist for the Albuquerque Police, Lenny had worked miracles—Ruben had seen him do it. He once observed Lenny coax from a rape victim everything she could remember of her assailant. In an hour, he’d created a drawing so true, so full of personality, that when the guy came in for his mug shot it looked like a Xerox copy of the Lenny Oberon original.
Ruben and Zia were in Lenny’s Cedar Crest cabin that afternoon. Once he heard about Brad, Ruben headed straight to the mountains east of Albuquerque to Lenny’s place.
The artist sat perched on a stool with the sketchpad in his lap and a charcoal pencil in his hand, still discussing the finer points of ballet.
“Dance is the body itself as art, wouldn’t you agree?” Lenny looped his arm with panache, the fringe along the inside of his shirt sleeve swinging in the air. “The body is the medium. The limbs are the instruments. And, if I don’t say so myself, that was pure poetry!”
Zia blew her nose again and caught Ruben’s eye above the Kleenex. She started to laugh despite the tears.
“Okay, darling, now…” Lenny rotated the sketch pad a bit so she could see the changes he’d made.
As he talked, Zia couldn’t help but think the man looked like a giant troll, his white hair sticking straight up in uneven tufts from his receding hairline. Lenny pushed his oversized eyeglasses up to the bridge of his nose.
“So, we’ve got the basic shape of the face, right? The chin looks better? And the hair is longer on top, brushed back and shorter at the sides, correct?
Zia nodded.
“Good. Now we’re going to talk about him, the person, all right darling? Just relax and close your eyes. Marvelous. Now, when you see him, what do you see? Humor? Determination? Twisted perversion?” Lenny laughed at himself. “If you had to find one word or phrase—anything at all—that summed him up, what would it be?”
Lenny adjusted his eyeglasses again, finding a perch above the round cheeks, and waited.
Zia sat very still, her eyes closed. She took a deep breath. “Brad is two-faced,” she said.
“Oh, God damn! I have trouble enough with one face!” Lenny thought this was hilarious. He wrote the word down in the corner of the pad. “Two-faced it is, then.”
Ruben watched with awe as Lenny and Zia created a complex personality with only the stroke and scratch of charcoal on paper. Zia described all she could see—th
e line of his mouth, no straighter, just like that—and the hardly noticeable wrinkles that fanned out around his eyes. She recalled a ruddy complexion, the line of his brow.
The man who appeared on the sketchpad was handsome and smug. He looked like a man who had acquired everything he wanted by any means necessary.
He’d had Zia once, Ruben thought to himself with satisfaction, but not anymore.
“There’s something missing,” she said suddenly, shaking her head a bit. “This is him, definitely. But not exactly. Can I have just a minute?”
She got up and walked to the opposite side of the cabin, and stood before a wall of glass that overlooked the pine and Juniper forest.
Lenny smacked Ruben’s hand. “Ruby, where’d you find her?” he whispered. “She’s stunning!”
“We just met recently. And you never saw her, okay? It’s really important. She’s in big trouble.”
Lenny laughed. “If she’s with you, that goes without saying.”
Zia came back. But instead of returning to her chair, she stood next to Ruben and slid her casted arm around his shoulders. She began to speak.
“He has this way of figuring everything out just a little faster than anyone else,” Zia said quietly. “He knows what has to happen to get what he wants and he steers everything toward his goal, and others don’t even notice he’s doing it. It’s always right behind his smile.”
“He’s calculating,” Lenny said with a satisfied grin.
“That’s it!” Zia said. “Can you make him calculating?”
“No problemo, darling.”
Zia leaned into Ruben and he gave her a comforting squeeze around her legs. She stroked the back of his neck with her fingers.
“There you go.” Lenny flipped the sketchbook around and Zia gasped.
“Is that him?” Ruben asked.
“Oh, hell yes. It’s him. I can’t even look at it.”
Lenny laughed and tore the drawing from his sketchbook. "Honey, in my line of work, that’s the ultimate compliment.”
For the ride down the Sandia Mountains and into town, Zia made Ruben shove the drawing behind the seat and cover it with old newspapers. Once they were in the valley again, Ruben reached for her hand. “Are you ready, Zia?. Are you ready to find out?”
She studied him in profile. “Am I ready to have it all fall apart? Isn’t that how you described it?”
“Yep.”
“I’m ready, Ruby. What time does everyone usually leave the newsroom?”
“We’re an afternoon paper, so everyone’s out by six, seven at the latest. We can go in any time after that. Nobody comes in until three A.M.”
“Can we eat first? I’m starving.”
Ruben laughed. “Can I interest you in a carne adovada enchilada for the road?”
She smiled, and it amazed her that Ruben could make her smile, despite everything. “One more for the road, then.”
They sat on the floor in Ruben’s living room and ate their Sadie’s takeout and watched the sunset. Neither said much for a long time.
“What happens after tonight, Zia?” Ruben leaned against the front of the couch, his arms stretched out along the seat cushions.
She considered how handsome he looked in that casual pose, and decided she would choose to remember him like that, relaxed, endearing, Ruby.
“I can’t answer that.”
“Should I call you by your real name once we know what it is? Because I’ve been thinking…” he laughed a little. “I really hated that you asked to be called Zia, but now it fits, and anything else is going to be so weird. ‘How are you, Bianca?’ ‘Did you sleep well, Abigail?’”
She laughed, too. “I don’t think you’ll be forced to use either of those names.”
“Can I ask you something? Will you promise not to laugh at me?”
“I promise.” She sat cross-legged in front of him, her hands in her lap, her back as straight as always.
Ruben took a deep breath, thinking that Old Gallegos would surely love this. “I was wondering if, well, no matter what your first name is, would you consider taking my last name someday?”
She stopped breathing for a moment, not sure she’d heard him correctly. The ridges appeared between her eyes. “What?”
“You heard me. Would you marry me someday? It doesn't have to be now, but sometime? At some point, would you be my wife?”
“Good God, Ruby! I can’t answer that! I have no idea what I’m about to walk into! I don’t know who I am! How could you even ask me that question?”
He shrugged. “We don’t have much time left. And I just realized that right now, tonight, is probably the only time in my life I’ll ever want to ask someone to marry me. I figured I’d better go for it.” He grinned at her. “So? Will you marry me someday, Zia? I’ll wait as long as I have to.”
She dropped her face in her hands. “Shit.”
“Just tell me this…” He released his arms from the couch and leaned forward. “If there was nothing else out there, nothing in the whole world but you and me in this room, what would you say?” He reached and to touch her knee. “No running, no fear, no big mysteries. Just you and me. What would you say?”
“I’d say yes,” she whispered, raising her head. “But Ruby, that’s not ever going to happen.”
“Fine.” He nodded. “That’s all I needed to hear.”
He stood up, reached out for her and pulled her to a stand. “It’s almost eight. Let’s get this over with, Bianca.”
Ruben flicked on the florescent lights of the newsroom. He took her hand and they walked together toward the far corner of the office, where his and Cooper’s desks backed against the wall.
“You can sit down if you want,” Ruben said, pointing to Cooper’s chair. “That’s today’s paper if you want to read it. I need just a little bit of time before you can help me, okay?”
“Sure.” Zia sat down in Cooper’s swivel chair and spun around, taking in the modern newsroom. It didn’t seem like any newspaper she’d seen on TV or the movies, with its light gray carpeting and pale pink walls, skylights, and lithographs. Potted plants dotted a row of wide-spaced pillars, behind which were glass-enclosed offices.
“Pretty fancy, huh?” Ruben asked, already tapping the keys on his computer. “You should have seen our old offices downtown. A dump.”
She smiled at him.
“Jesus!” Ruben ran a hand through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut.
“What is it, Ruby?”
He turned to her and laughed. “It’s amazing. I’m gone a few days and I have one hundred and forty-seven voice mail messages and twice as many emails. What’s everybody so riled up about?”
“Is that a lot?” she asked.
He kept laughing. “No more than usual, and I guess that’s what’s funny.” He studied her face, so out of place there at Cooper’s desk. “I think I kind of forgot what my job was like.”
“You’re a popular guy, like I said.” Zia grinned at him. “Do you want some time to sort through your messages before we start? I don’t mind waiting.”
He shook his head. “No. That’s okay. I’ll get to it eventually.”
“Ruby, really, I don’t mind. You completely dropped your life for me this last week. It’s not going to kill me if you go through your messages first. Please.”
Ruben winked at her. “Thanks.”
Zia got up, walked to him, and planted a light kiss on his lips. “I’ll just wander around.” She turned to leave and he grabbed her hand.
“Zia.”
She turned slowly. She knew he would be looking at her with that mix of love and anguish she’d seen in him from the very beginning. How could a man she’d known just a matter of days mean so much to her? How could she mean so much to him?
“I love you, Zia.”
She tilted her head and smiled at Ruben. “I know. Now do what you have to do and tell me when you need me.”
“I’ll need you forever.”
She d
ropped his hand and backed away from his desk, out into the newsroom. She refused to cry. “Tell me when you’re ready for my help,” she repeated.
After a moment, Ruben dialed into his voice mail. His hands were shaking.
She wandered around the room, trying to figure out why the desks were grouped together the way they were and what kind of people worked here during the day.
One woman’s cubicle wall was covered in pictures of the Hemsworth brothers—at least she assumed it was a woman’s work area. Another reporter lined up a collection of Pez candy dispensers at the edge of the desk. Another pinned up a variety of postcards featuring Elvis impersonators.
She knew who the Hemsworth brothers were. Another odd tidbit of memory.
She looked back at Ruben, who was frantically scribbling down things in a notebook while talking to himself. His decorating theme seemed to be tattered notebooks and odd scraps of paper, and it made her smile.
Zia clasped her hands behind her back and roamed down the hallway, past the glass offices, to the front of the newsroom. All along the wall were plaques and awards. She went up to get a closer look and gasped—about half of them were engraved with Ruby’s name, by itself or with Jim Cooper.
She read over them: 1st Place, Investigative Reporting, New Mexico Press Club; 1st Place, Breaking News Reporting, New Mexico Society of Professional Journalists; Gold Medal, News Writing, Associated Press Editors and Publishers Society, Western Division.”
She suddenly felt proud, proud to know him, proud that he loved her. She heard him then, his voice carrying across the empty newsroom, and he wasn’t talking to himself anymore.
“Wait, wait, slow down, honey,” he way saying. Zia craned her neck to see him, and he quickly turned away to face the wall, as if seeking privacy. “I know. Yes,” his voice was softer. “Look, I’m sorry about that! I had to take a few days off. No, I’m fine. Look, I appreciate your… yes? Oh, really?” Zia walked toward him again. He’d quickly turned to the computer and his fingers were flying across the keys.
He now wore a telephone headset with a microphone suspended before of his lips. He looked more like a helicopter pilot than a reporter.
“Shit. For how long? Yes. How soon?” His hands flew over the keyboard. “You are a goddess, an absolute goddess. You know I do. You’re the best. Bye.”
Collision Course: A Romantic Thriller Page 14