by Julie Kenner
Jacey shrugged. “Maybe. But…”
He nodded. “I know. When a guy like Stemple starts quoting Shakespeare—even badly—you have to figure there’s some truth in there.” He held out his hand to help her up. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs and look up the date of the explosion.”
She nodded and they headed that way. She paused at the base of the stairs. “If Al is alive, why wouldn’t he let his roommate know?”
He turned around to look her in the eye. “Even more important, if Al wants his roommate to think he’s dead, is this a guy you’re still interested in finding?”
David’s apartment looked even worse than it had the first time she’d come over, though she wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible. “Did a tornado cut through Pasadena and hit only your house?”
He looked at her over the monitor of his computer. “Huh?”
She waved her hand, encompassing the room. “It’s a disaster in here.”
A shadow crossed his face. “Really? I was cleaning it up.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what to say to that. “So I guess it just looks like a wreck because you’re in the middle of organizing everything.”
“Organizing,” he repeated, then frowned. “Yeah. Absolutely. The place’ll look much better once it’s organized.”
Maybe the more prudent course of action was to just let the subject drop. She stood up and paced the room, waiting for him to find the articles he’d mentioned. She’d seen the place before, but she hadn’t really looked at it. Now she had the opportunity to take a peek into David’s psyche and she intended to make the most of it.
Apparently his psyche was a slob, but she’d already figured that out. She maneuvered around the piles of laundry—two points to him for having actually folded some of it—and headed toward the wall behind his desk. “Do you mind?” she asked, tossing the question over her shoulder as she walked.
“Make yourself at home,” he said. “Sorry the computer’s so slow today. I have a dial-up, and it’s taking forever to pull up the page. Finn keeps telling me I need to install some sort of cable modem gizmo, but it’s not exactly high on my priority list.”
“No problem,” she said, his comment reminding her of the man she’d met a few minutes earlier. David’s friend was positively gorgeous—tall and lanky, like a baseball player, with close-cropped midnight black hair and equally dark eyes.
No doubt about it, Finn scored a big fat ten. But while Jacey could certainly appreciate his attributes, Finn didn’t hold anywhere near the same appeal as David, and she wondered why. Both men were easy on the eyes, and at least based on their first meeting, Finn seemed infinitely less quirky. But there was just something about David. Something that tickled her insides. Something indefinable, but undeniably appealing.
Something she really should ignore…
She shivered, her gaze drifting around the room as she forced herself to concentrate on more mundane things, like the mess in David’s apartment. Although, now that he’d mentioned it, there really did seem to be fewer boxes. But the floor was still littered with paperbacks, articles clipped from newspapers, clothes, and quite a few empty Mr. Pibb cans. A bicycle leaned up against the closet door, apparently more useful as a repository for David’s jackets than for transportation or exercise.
Every wall was covered—yellow sticky notes, newspaper clippings, sheets torn from steno pads. And, of course, the more traditional framed photos and posters. The posters in particular caught her attention. Old movie posters of noir classics—The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, A Kiss Before Dying. The stylized drawings fascinated her, and she wondered how the images would look juxtaposed against a more modern style. Or, against something from Picasso’s blue period, or even Dali. The possibilities intrigued her, and her fingers itched to pick up a pencil.
She almost reached for one of the pens on his desk, but forced herself not to. Instead, she turned her attention to the map of the world pinned up to the wall between the posters and the kitchen’s pass-through bar. Dozens of red, white, and blue pushpins dotted the continents.
“Got it,” he said, but Jacey was more interested in David’s map.
“What’s this?” she asked.
He looked back over his shoulder. “A map.”
“Thank you. I can see that. What’s it for?”
A shadow crossed his face and she was about to tell him to forget it when he answered. “Red for where I’ve been, blue for where I want to go, and white for where I’ve written about.”
“Really?” She stepped back, examining the map more closely. “I’m impressed.”
“That I like to travel?”
“No, I pegged that. You’ve got that sort of wanderlust quality about you.” A quality the abundance of blue pins confirmed. The man still had some trips in him.
“So what are you impressed with?” he asked. If he had a problem with her wanderlust comment, he wasn’t sharing.
“That you’re this organized,” she said. “I wouldn’t have expected it.”
“I’m not disorganized,” he said. “I just have a different system than a lot of people.”
She laughed. “Oh, is that it?”
“Damn straight.” He turned back toward the computer. “Do you want to see this or not?”
She nodded, then walked up behind him, leaning over his chair so she could see the monitor, too. Her nose was about two inches from his hair and she breathed deep of the scent of his shampoo. Nothing fruity or minty. Just soap. Clean and undeniably masculine.
She stifled a little shiver.
“March fifteen,” he said, then twisted around to face her. “Looks like you had a hot date with a dead man.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. Her mouth went dry. Al might not be a serial killer, but something was definitely up. The only question was what.
About that, she didn’t know what to think. The last few days had gone the way of the unbelievable. First she’d almost located her ex-boyfriend. Then she’d found out he was dead. Then she’d had to face the realization that she was mostly upset because of the way he died. The fact that the man was wholly and completely out of her life hadn’t really fazed her at all.
And now she was faced with the possibility that Al wasn’t dead, but for some reason he was willing to let his old roomie believe the worst.
Bizarre. Very, very bizarre.
And gross, too. She’d actually slept with a not-really-dead guy. She’d had sex with someone who may have faked his own death.
She nibbled on her thumbnail as she moved to the couch, settling in with her feet up under her and a pillow tight against her chest.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she lied, feeling a little nauseated. She squeezed the pillow. “This is all so odd.”
“You’re sure you got the date of the conference right?”
That wasn’t even worth answering and she simply raised an eyebrow.
“Right. We’ll check that possibility off the list.” He twirled a pencil between his fingers. “So why would Al want his roommate to think he was dead? For that matter, why would he let the whole world think he’s dead?”
“Didn’t they run tests on the body?”
David shook his head. “There wasn’t much of a body left. They’ll probably run it eventually, but the LAPD’s pretty backed up where DNA’s concerned. And with these kinds of facts, they wouldn’t bother to put a rush on it unless someone raised a question. DNA’s still damned expensive and it’s not like anyone suspected foul play.”
“What kind of facts?” she asked, still trying to get her mind around everything he was saying.
“According to the article, only Al and Melvin Clements had a key to the office.”
“Who?”
“Clements was Al’s boss. Al was a lawyer, all right. He worked for one of the biggest sleaze-bag defense attorneys in California.”
“Oh.” She tossed the pillow aside and grabbed a pad of pap
er and a pencil off the floor. Maybe Tasha was right; she was an addict. But if that was the case, who could blame her for needing a fix right now?
“The office was a converted house and an old woman still lived in the house next door. Al spoke to her when he went in and told her he was going to be working that night.” David looked away from the monitor long enough to meet her eye. “You with me?”
She nodded. “But why couldn’t the body be Clements? He had a key, too, right?”
“Probably so, but he was dead. Died of a heart attack two days before in the middle of a rape trial.”
“Wow.”
“Exactly,” David said. “And that night, the neighbor never saw Al leave, never saw anyone else arrive, and identified Al’s car in the driveway after the explosion. They’d had problems with the heater in the past, too.” He clicked on the mouse a few times. “Oh yeah, and they found a monogrammed key chain in the rubble. Melted together, but identifiable—Al’s.”
“But no body,” Jacey said.
David shook his head. “Human remains, but not identifiable. Not even teeth. First the explosion, then the fire. It was pretty bad.”
“So maybe it was someone else’s body,” Jacey said.
“But why would Al want to fake his death? And even if he did, why would he turn around and introduce himself to you two days later?” He stood up and moved toward her, perching on the armrest. “‘Hi, I’m Albert Alcott, please don’t read the L.A. Times, or you might discover I’m dead?’ Doesn’t make sense.”
She moved the pencil over the paper, her doodle looking remarkably like a house on fire. “Maybe it makes more sense than you think,” she said.
He stayed silent and she finally turned her head to the side, just enough to see him staring at her—and he didn’t look happy.
“What do you know, Jacey?” he asked, his voice tight.
“Nothing!” Good Lord, did he think she was involved? “Nothing at all. It’s just…” She trailed off with a little shrug. “It’s just that I didn’t tell you the entire truth that first day.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “So tell me now.”
“Well, it was just like I told you—”
“Except—”
“Except I gave Al a fake name in the bar.” She held up a hand, shushing him before he could say anything. “I didn’t know we’d hit it off.” She bit back a grimace, the magnitude of the ick factor hitting her. “And I’d never been picked up before. I thought it was the smart thing to do.”
“Okay…” He twirled his hand, urging her to get to the good stuff.
She took a deep breath. “And I didn’t feel bad about the fake name, because I figured out that he’d given me a fake name, too.” She explained about the fellow who approached them in the bar, sure that Charles Lafontaine was Albert Alcott. “I assumed he used a fake name for the same reason I did. It never occurred to me he’d faked his death.”
“Well, why would it?”
“I did think he was a serial killer,” she added, deciding that so long as she was coming clean, she might as well be squeaky clean. “But I was wrong.”
David rubbed his temples, then got up, opened his desk drawer, and popped the top on a bottle of Tylenol. He shook some out, swallowed them dry, then looked her in the eye. “Tell me.”
She did, then looked up at him when she finished. “When I saw the news about how they caught the real San Diego Slayer, I realized my mistake. And then I hired you…”
“Lucky me,” he said dryly.
A bolt of anger shot through her. Unreasonable, maybe, but it had been a hell of a day. She grabbed her purse off the floor, swung the strap over her arm, and stood up. “Sorry to have wasted your time. I better go. Thank Millie for the cookies for me, okay?”
He caught her by the elbow. “Sit down.”
She bristled. “I have to go to work tomorrow.”
He drew in a noisy breath. “I’m sorry, okay?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “All right.” She really didn’t want to leave. “Apology accepted.”
David looked her in the eye. “So it looks like we were right—Al wanted to fake his own death.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Insurance money, escape a bad marriage, escape a buttload of debt, escape—”
“I’m picking up on a theme here,” Jacey said.
“The guy needed to hide from something. Or someone. And if the someone’s persistent, they’re only going to stop looking if you’re dead.”
“But who? And why?”
“That, sweetheart, is the question of the hour. And I don’t have an answer for you.”
“Guess I didn’t bring you as easy a case as you thought,” she said, remembering what he’d told her that first day.
“Guess not,” he agreed. He moved closer, her pulse increasing with his proximity. “And I am glad you came to me. Really.” He grazed her cheek with the side of his hand, the echo of his touch lingering on her skin. “Stay for a while?”
Every fiber in her body screamed yes. Her mouth said, “Why?” She held her breath, waiting for his answer. Hoping it was the answer she wanted to hear.
“Rain check, remember? I owe you ice cream.” He tilted her chin up. “And if I know anything about women, today’s a definite ice-cream day.”
She couldn’t help her smile. “You may be clueless about a lot of things, but you’re right about that.”
“So you’ll stay?”
“I really do have work tomorrow, and I still need to drop my car off. But, yeah. For a little while.”
He grinned. “Are you staying because you want to? Or because you remembered that you need me to drive you home after you drop off your car?”
“Both,” she said.
The corners of his eyes crinkled as he grinned. “Fair enough.”
“So where’s my ice cream?”
“Coming up.”
She followed him into the kitchen, surprised to see that it didn’t suffer from the same clutter that plagued the rest of the house.
“Well, I guess I lied,” he said, staring into the freezer. “Fresh out of ice cream.” He closed the door and looked at her, his expression truly apologetic. “Another rain check?”
“You better believe it,” she said. “Only now I think I deserve a sundae.”
“I can probably manage that.” He nodded toward the kitchen counter. “Want some chocolate torte in the meantime?”
“Sure,” she said. Jacey might be a lot of things, but she wasn’t a fool. And she never, ever, turned down a good-looking man bearing chocolate.
“So tell me about Millie,” Jacey said, then licked her fork. She was on the sofa, finishing her piece of torte. For all David cared, she could finish off the whole thing, especially if that kept her in his apartment that much longer.
“David?” she prompted. “Millie?”
“Right.” He shrugged. “What can I say? She’s a character, but I love her.”
“I can tell,” she said. “You’re…” She trailed off, shrugging.
“What?” He glanced toward her from the kitchen where he was making coffee. “What am I?”
“Softer, I guess.”
He made a whizzing motion over his head.
“I just mean that you soften up when you’re around Millie. It’s obvious you care for her. It’s sweet.”
He couldn’t argue with that; hell, he didn’t want to. Except maybe for the “it’s sweet” part, but he supposed that went with the territory. Not that he wanted to run around Los Angeles with a reputation for being a marshmallow man.
“She’s my father’s aunt and she doted on him before she doted on me,” he said. “My mom and dad moved to London, so now I’m the sole beneficiary of her doting.”
“London?”
“Yeah, they’re total Anglophiles. They even met over there when they were both backpacking through Great Britain. The way my dad tells it they were both getting the cheap seats for some show in the West End
and ended up sitting together behind a post. Since they couldn’t see the show, they talked to each other instead.”
“Your mom tells it differently?” she asked.
“Nope.” He poured water into the machine, flicked the button, and headed back into the living room. “Same story, she just starts it about five minutes earlier when it’s raining and my dad accidentally pushed her and she fell into a pothole filled with water. So he felt obligated to buy her the ticket.”
She laughed and, considering the day he knew she’d had, he was happy to hear it. “So I guess neither one of them complains about how wet and rainy London is, huh?”
“Not once,” he said.
“So what are they doing in London?”
“My dad used to work for the State Department before I was born and they lived over there for a while. Actually, they lived everywhere. But when I came along, they settled in Los Angeles, but they missed London. So now that I’m theoretically an adult, they called on some old friends and found a flat and headed over.”
“They finally decided to live the life they’d wanted,” she said. A twinge of something indefinable laced her voice.
“Pretty much. They don’t have the money to travel in four-star style, but with the trains and all the bed and breakfasts in Europe, they’re having a blast. It’s what they’ve always wanted to do.”
She nodded slowly, as if considering what to say next. She took another bite of torte, then licked her lips. “Why didn’t they go sooner?”
“Responsibility, I guess. Me. Work. Dad couldn’t get the government to guarantee he could stay in London and he didn’t want to schlep me all over the world, so he took a job teaching.”
The coffeemaker beeped and he got up to pour them each a cup. “Black?”
“Cream, if you’ve got it.”
He poured some half-and-half into her mug, then brought her the coffee.