by Emma Accola
As always I bristled when someone doubted my truth. “You can claim that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and I know you will. But all your trouble and sneaking around won’t change the truth about what Harry Spice did to Tamra.”
“I’m not trying to change the truth. I’m trying to find it.”
“I’ve checked you out. I know you’re an Administration of Justice professor at Bailey College who occasionally moonlights for Caleb as an investigator. I hope you’re charging Harry Spice double your usual rates. No doubt he won’t spare any expense to beat the charges.”
Micah’s expression mutated from slight amusement to guarded respect. “As the accused, that’s Harry Spice’s right.”
“It’s his privilege because he can afford you and Caleb Ekstrand, defense attorney extraordinaire.”
Micah’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly at my tone. “Is that why you hate Harry Spice so much? Because he’s wealthy and successful enough to be able to afford Caleb’s fees?”
“I hate him because of what he did to Tamra.” I pushed my food aside and leaned toward Micah. “She used to be fearless, and now she can’t bear being in the apartment by herself. She tries to be brave, but she looks so sad whenever she doesn’t think I can see her. Everything scares her now, the phone ringing, a knock on the door, the closing of a kitchen cabinet. She’s even scared of the bathtub. She tries to take a shower with the curtain open. A woman who was comfortable in her own skin now wants to crawl out of it and give it away. That’s why I hate Harry Spice so much. Even his name feels foul on my tongue.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“That’s all you’ve got for Tamra? That’s the extent of your sympathy for her plight? Those two simple words? Don’t you have a beating heart somewhere under that fancy suit?”
Micah nodded. “I do. It’s for pumping blood. I have intellect for the rest of it.”
My temper rose hot within me. “This is all a game to you, isn’t it? You’re here to flatter me so that I will like you. You think that if you hang around me enough, that I will let something slip that you can use against me and Tamra. Forget it.”
Micah shook his head. “No, I think you’re smarter than that.”
I ignored his compliment and thought that nature had wasted too much male beauty on this unprincipled man. “The trial is coming up. Everything is set. You’re wasting your time.”
“Has the prosecutor been in touch with you?”
Of course she had. Micah would know that. He wouldn’t have asked the question unless it was a statement in disguise. My heart lurched. “About what?”
“About where you were the night of the assault.”
“She knows where I was that night. You do too.” I hesitated. Micah Ekstrand was too smart to say something like that without a reason. His tone was too casual. I sensed a trap. “Many witnesses saw me at a party.”
“Yes, and those witnesses have made statements about the drinking at the party.”
“Don’t you dare insinuate that I was drunk when I got home.”
Micah’s voice was low and smooth. “What I meant is that the hostess of the party collected everyone’s car keys.” Micah looked at my key ring where it lay on the table.
I fought the impulse to put it in my purse. “The hostess of that party always takes people’s keys. A drunk driver killed her younger sister some years back. She’s big on having a designated driver and won’t return keys to anyone she believes is intoxicated.”
“That’s very conscientious of her. And you were at that party for hours, weren’t you? By your own admission, you arrived sometime between seven and eight o’clock and didn’t leave until around midnight. All the keys that the hostess had collected were in a little basket that she had put in a kitchen cabinet by the sink. Your keys were in that basket.”
All my warning lights were flashing. “I’ve never denied it.”
“The basket was unattended,” Micah said, letting the words hang in the air.
I saw where this was heading. “You’re implying that one of the guests at the party got my house key from the basket and let himself in.”
“Yes, I am.” Micah became grim, his words low and quiet. “It all fits. It explains how Tamra was drugged when she was alone in a locked apartment. It explains how she couldn’t identify the intruder.”
My stomach clenched. “Your theory blames me for what happened.”
“No. I don’t blame you. You may have allowed your keys out of your control, but the blame for Tamra’s attack falls solidly with the rapist.”
The way his theory rested on one of my actions that night made me crazy. “Nobody touched my keys that night.”
“If not your keys, whose? At that hour the Housing Office is closed. People who are locked out go to the campus police who keep the master keys in a secure cabinet that can only be accessed by a key card. None of the police opened that cabinet that night. Nor do the campus police let random people into apartments. They ID everyone.”
Micah’s eyes were on me as if I could explain what had happened. I bristled. “Whoever got in didn’t use my keys. They were in the basket when I went to leave.”
“The rapist returned them to the basket while Tamra lay drugged. He used her keys to let himself back in the second time. The home you were at that night is only a fifteen-minute drive from your apartment. The timing works.”
A pit opened in my stomach as I thought about the party. “That basket was always attended. There were people in that kitchen throughout the party because that’s where the food was. Besides, how could anyone tell my keys from everyone else’s?”
Micah raised an eyebrow at me. “The key fob with your family’s winery logo on it might be a clue.”
“Nothing you’ve just said exonerates Harry Spice.” Any theory under which I had even the tiniest sliver of responsibility for what happened to Tamra staggered me with a gasping horror. “Your idea about someone using my keys is a long shot designed to confuse the jury and vastly expand your list of suspects. I’m not a careless person and I’m telling the truth about having seen Harry Spice that night.”
Micah became grave, his cheeseburger forgotten. “I’m not interested in whether you’re telling the truth. I’m interested in what I can prove.”
“Do you want to know what I’m interested in? I want Tamra to have justice so I can see an end to her tears. I want to see her returned to fearlessness, to see her heart made whole again.”
“Putting Harry Spice behind bars won’t do all of that.” Micah fiddled with one of his French fries. “I’m sorry.”
“He bit her again and again,” I said hoarsely. “No matter what happened with those keys, you can’t explain away the bite marks. Harry Spice marked himself guilty with his teeth.”
“It’s up to the jury to decide whether to believe that forensic dentist.”
Both of us were done eating. Our limp French fries lay in a cold jumble in their paper boats. My stomach filled with fear that Micah was right. If the jury didn’t find the dentist credible, the prosecutor would have a difficult time trying to get a conviction on my testimony alone. If Micah had come here to shake my confidence, he had done a fine job of it. Oddly, he didn’t look pleased with himself. He seemed somber and thoughtful. His eyes were on my face. The look was pointed, almost intrusive.
“Why didn’t you go to law school since you’re so interested in justice?” I asked suddenly, wanting to distract him.
The question seemed to surprise him. “That was my brother’s dream. I much prefer sticking with the evidence. I’ll let someone else interpret it.”
I got to my feet and was annoyed that my knees felt rubbery. “You wanted to have a word with me, and now you’ve done that. Thank you for dinner and good night.”
“Let me walk you home,” Micah said, standing up with me. “Or I can drive you. Whichever you prefer.”
His chivalry irritated me. “There’s no need. We’re not friends. We’re not even ac
quaintances. We are complete strangers. No, it’s more than that. We’re opponents and it’s probably inappropriate for us to speak. Aren’t you witness tampering or something?”
For a moment his pale eyes twinkled. “Not unless you find having dinner with me threatening. The truth is, we’re after the same thing.”
“I doubt that.”
“We both want to work out this mystery.”
“What mystery?” I stepped close to him and put my finger on his chest. “Harry Spice attacked Tamra that night. I saw him in the hallway of our apartment building. The forensic dentist matched his teeth up to the marks on her body. And why would you ask me anything? You think I’m lying.”
“Something happened to Tamra that night. Someone hurt her. That fact isn’t under dispute. My interest is in finding the right man.”
I squared my shoulders, annoyed with Micah for pretending to be on my side. “I don’t trust you any farther than I could throw you. You come here with your gorgeous cheekbones and big eyes and sexy voice to get me to this table so I would talk to you. Now you’re trying to get me alone in your car as if it’s prom night. Have you chosen the make-out music to set the mood? Do you plan to take the long way around campus to my building so that in the dim light of the dashboard you can give me compliments to soften my resolve?”
Micah’s face didn’t flicker. I stepped even closer. He was so much taller. My body almost touched his as I reached out for his left hand. Without breaking eye contract, I took his hand in mine, gently turning it over so that our palms touched. He didn’t stop me when I curled my fingers around his. I noticed how long his fingers were, how soft, the hands of a musician or an artist. Or a gorgeous liar.
“Micah Ekstrand,” I went on. “You have the face of an angel and a body built for sin. I think you have a wife.” I moved away from him so that the light between us shone on his left hand. “There is just the faintest bit of tan line where your ring usually is—your fifth mistake and a pretty big screwup for a man who’s trying to make a seduction. You can put your ring back on now. But before you do, answer me one question: How hard was it for you to take it off?”
Closing the tiny distance between us, Micah tightened his fingers around my hand. “And you, Gracie Meadows, left your cell phone face up on the table. You received no less than five text messages from five different men—yet none from your boyfriend, Leonardo—while we were sitting at the table. I’ve read them all. You really should go into settings and stop your phone from showing your text messages before you put in your passcode.” His lips were so close to mine that his breath tickled. “Your beauty is a promise to every man who looks at you. He wonders about the possibilities.”
“Those texts were from colleagues,” I said, hating the whisper that had snuck into my voice.
“Strange how on a Friday night none was from the man you’ve dated for the past five years. Why doesn’t your finger have a ring?” He picked up my hand and held it to his mouth. The feeling was electric. “It’s lonely for a ring. Now, lovely lady, answer my question: How hard is it for you not to have one?”
My knees wobbled. Pain stabbed through my heart. Micah gave voice to the question that was on the edge of my consciousness, the one I didn’t let my mind entertain. Why hadn’t Leonardo asked me to marry him? Everyone said I was a catch, educated, healthy, and smart. Micah’s remark stripped naked something that I hadn’t wanted anyone to know. I had been avoiding thinking about the madness of wanting that ring and wondering if my boyfriend thought I was worth it. I had been the cool girlfriend who never mentioned marriage. Sometime in the last year, the lonely waiting had formed a little crack in my heart, and every day that had passed since without my boyfriend proposing, each beat was a quake that increased the fissure. Whenever a couple we knew became engaged, I had hugged them. My eyes were filled with tears that everyone thought were of happiness. In fact they watered from the bitterness of envy. Micah’s words rang in my ears, a clanging of bells. I couldn’t un-hear them. They were a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence that was my relationship with my Leonardo. Micah had made the thought conscious. Now everything would be different. I doubted whether I even wanted to marry at all.
“Shut up.” I grabbed my backpack and stormed out of the student center.
Perversely, months later, when I was in court testifying against Harry Spice, my eyes scanned the room for Micah’s face. The rational part of my mind was furious at how this man had moved me, opening some little trap door in my mind that wavered whatever certainty I still had left about my relationship with Leonardo. At Harry Spice’s trial, I know I looked too long into Caleb’s eyes, because his face was so much like Micah’s. Caleb, sensitive and intelligent, noticed how my gaze lingered on him almost intimately, in a way far from decent. It had to have puzzled him, though he couldn’t say anything in open court. Sometimes I saw Micah’s face in my dreams, the man who had left a trace of sensation that my skin remembered. And he’d only caressed my hand.
CHAPTER TWO
Present Day
Through the window of my third-story office at Bailey College, I watched a tabby cat walking across the roof of a neighboring building. In the courtyard below students were milling about, laughing and talking in small groups or sitting singly, either reading textbooks or peering into phones. On the other side of my door, I could hear a couple of English professors complaining about how a skunk had sprayed near their classrooms and the smell had been wafting in while they tried to teach. My computer chimed softly, announcing an email from Micah Ekstrand. He was a dean now, having been promoted since the Harry Spice trial. Even though the email had been sent to everyone on the email exchange, it still felt personal to me. That was foolish, and I knew it, but the pleasant tingling wouldn’t go away. In the five weeks I’d been filling in for Professor Gary Kozlowski while he was on sabbatical, I’d seen Micah twice, once in the student center as he waited in line at Starbucks, and once walking with another dean across the campus. In spite of everything we’d been through, he barely acknowledged me with a nod.
While the tabby cat meandered across the roof, a knock sounded on my office door. I opened it to find Tiffany McGraw, an English professor who had been assigned to help me navigate my way around the college’s procedures and policies. She leaned in my doorway, her smile warm. Fashion forward, petite, and slender, Tiffany’s small form packed a lot of energy. She could face down the most menacing football player for not doing his homework, and a moment later, offer kind comfort to an anxious freshman. The first time we went out for drinks, she called herself a local, born and raised in San Francisco.
As always, Tiffany glanced around my borrowed office in wonder, as if she couldn’t figure out how anyone could work in a space that had a giraffe-print loveseat piled high with zebra pillows, a leopard-spotted carpet, and a dusty stuffed peacock on the top of the bookcase. While she spoke, Tiffany seemed transfixed by the rhino head sculpture. “I thought I’d check in with you. By now you’re getting emails from students who are worried about their grades and begging for extra credit.”
“That started happening when the first grades went out. In my reply I direct the students to the section of the syllabus that says there is no extra credit in my classes.”
“What syllabus? Most went missing by the end of the first week.”
“Which is why I keep a copy on my website that’s impossible for them to lose.”
Tiffany laughed. “Don’t you love technology? How have your classes been?”
I held up a copy of Rebecca. “I think maybe one student read the assigned pages. The rest watched the movie or found the summaries online.”
Tiffany raised an eyebrow at me. “As if you didn’t do that when you were a student. Tell me the truth. Did you really read Chaucer in Middle English, or did you read the translations?”
“Okay, I may have read the translation, but in my defense, medieval literature isn’t to my taste.”
“And you think the students lik
e du Maurier?”
“The story is full of lies and deception.”
“Just like the internet.” Tiffany jerked her thumb at the hallway. “I hear Starbucks calling.”
The two of us had developed the habit of going to the campus Starbucks a couple times a week. The Starbucks bordered a large gathering area that had tables, sofas, and chairs scattered about for the use of the thousands of students who came onto campus every day. I ordered a hot chocolate, and Tiffany, who swore she could drink a pot of caffeinated coffee and go straight to sleep, ordered a cappuccino. We sat down next to the towering glass walls. Careless of her short skirt and four-inch heels, Tiffany put up her feet just as Micah passed by, as graceful and arrogant as a cat. My gaze lingered too long.
Tiffany noticed. “Forget it. There’s no getting close to that.”
“Who says I want to get close to that?” I asked, pretending to sip my steaming hot chocolate.
“Your eyes did when they were glued to him and you haven’t drawn a breath since he came into sight.” Tiffany gave me a sly nod. “Not that I blame you. When it comes to men, you might as well swing for the fences. Just don’t get your hopes up. Micah parades around campus all gorgeous and aloof while wearing a wedding ring, but it’s all for show.”
“Is it?” I asked, pretending innocence.
“Hah. As if you didn’t know. A tiny little search of public records by some interested parties on this campus has confirmed that he’s been divorced nearly a year. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“I’ve met him before.” I watched Micah disappear into the next building. “He visited my family’s winery in Napa. For the record, he was married then. We didn’t date or anything.”
“Thousands of people visit your family’s winery and you remember him? He must have made quite an impression.”
I forced a laugh that I hoped sounded carefree and light. “He was there on business. He used to do investigations for his brother, Caleb. He had some questions for me about a case. Did you know his brother was a lawyer?”