It amazed him what Annie still didn’t understand about the evil all around her. Still, after everything she’d gone through. He exited the 5 and accelerated the truck up the ramp that would dump him onto city streets. She was like him six years ago, when Donna was alive and he was an arrogant 29-year-old son of a gun who didn’t realize that evil could get you—you—in a heartbeat. He learned that lesson in the moment when one heart ceased beating and another broke in two. In that instant he understood that you don’t take unnecessary chances with your life. You don’t flip off the hothead who cut you off on the freeway. You don’t trade insults with the gangbanger who’s getting on your last nerve. And you sure as hell don’t chase a gun-toting thief when you’ve got your fiancée in your goddamn truck.
Reid got it from that moment on. He got it good. But Annie still didn’t, which was why she and her naïve spitfire spirit could possibly think it made sense to break into the home of a man who might be a serial killer.
He shook his head, thinking of Annie. He recalled her face from the night before, when she’d crouched at his feet and listened to him rant about Bigelow. Then new descriptions of her nosed their way forward. Sweet. Understanding. Warm. Trusting.
It certainly hadn’t started out that way but now the trust in those green eyes of hers looked as deep as the sea. He wasn’t sure he deserved it. Oh, he’d do his damnedest to keep her safe and try to nail the real killer; she could trust him in that regard. Yet the two of them were edging dangerously close to striking a whole different kind of bargain, the kind that a man and a woman made alone in the dark. The kind that required the ultimate trust. What Annie didn’t know was that he wasn’t free to make that deal. That deal was one unfulfilled promise away.
Reid found Simpson in the large lobby restaurant of a downtown hotel. It was decorated like many of its ilk in cheerful yellows and greens. Simpson had his eyes trained on the Los Angeles Times sports section and his fist attached to a diner-style coffee mug. He let go long enough to shake Reid’s hand. Saturday or not, he wore a suit and tie.
“What’s up?” he asked Reid.
Reid slid into the booth, gave an affirmative nod to the server bearing a coffee pot. “I’m getting a vibe about Bigelow.”
The agent’s brows rose. “You got a tip on the hotline?”
“No. None of the tips we got a few weeks back panned out. But I mistook somebody for him the other day down in Orange County. I got a feeling about it.”
“You want me to shake the bushes?”
“I’d appreciate it if you would.”
“Sure.”
Reid was sure he’d do it. Whatever low opinion Annie harbored of Lionel Simpson, Reid knew him to be not only a savvy investigator but a man of his word. The conversation lulled as the men ordered their breakfasts, both egg and bacon heavy, and then Reid broached the second topic that had inspired this meeting. “You know we’re working the writer murder story.”
“Yup. Saw the segment last night.”
Reid had tried to limit the piece’s sensationalism but couldn’t avoid that it was all about Annie and the accusations against her. “We’ve run across a few things that point to another name,” he told Simpson. “Frankie Morsie, one of the big agents in the mystery community.”
Simpson sawed off some fried egg and chewed it until it had to be soft enough to pass down an infant’s throat. All of which afforded sufficient delay for about six thoughts to flit across his brain, several of which Reid was sure he could decipher. Gardner must have it bad for Annette Rowell. He’s clutching at straws. He’s no idiot, though. Better hear him out.
Simpson washed down the egg with another slurp of coffee. “Morsie’s Annette Rowell’s agent, right?”
“Hers and a bunch of others. Here’s the deal—” and Reid ran through the reasoning that in his view warranted an investigation into Frankie Morsie.
Simpson listened, then wiped his mouth and sagged against the booth’s floral-patterned fabric. He fixed Reid with a contemplative look. Then, “You know what strikes me about all that, Gardner?”
“What?”
“It’s none too compelling.” He held up a let-me-finish hand as Reid opened his mouth to rebut. “No. Nothing you said justifies diverting law-enforcement resources from finding Annette Rowell to investigating her agent. You didn’t make the case.” He leaned forward, propped his elbows on the table and lowered his voice. “Reid, we’ve known each other a long time. Man to man, you gotta give up whatever rose-colored ideas you have about this woman. You gotta do it.”
Reid knew this was no time to defend Annie. Not with her rental car three-quarters of a mile away from his studio. Or the woman herself in his bedroom. He tapped a rhythm on the tabletop and looked away from Simpson as if he were considering the older man’s advice. “I hear what you’re saying, Lionel. And I will admit that I have been interested in her. But that doesn’t negate what I’ve just told you about Morsie.”
“I’ll tell you what. You get me hard evidence that I should look closer at him and I’ll do it. But I mean hard evidence. Not its second cousin.”
It was pretty clear that was as good as Reid was going to get. He nodded and reached for the check.
Simpson grabbed it first. “No, this one’s mine. You go,” he waved a hand, “have a good weekend. Forget about all this shit. We’ll talk next week.”
Reid was halfway out of the booth when Simpson spoke again. “By the way, your colleague Sheila called me this morning to relay a few of the tips that came in last night about Annette Rowell.”
Reid stopped short and realized a beat too late that he should wipe the shock off his face. Which Simpson was watching closely.
“I was a little surprised,” the agent added, “that I didn’t hear them from you.”
Reid tried to recover. “None of them struck me as—” He paused, struggled to come up with a different word, but couldn’t. “—all that compelling.”
Simpson nodded, his gaze as penetrating than ever. “Well, you know what they say. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.”
*
When Reid returned to the house, Annie watched him dump several Gap shopping bags onto the bed, along with a brown paper bag and a smallish mail-order box. He upended the paper bag and out cascaded an assortment of cosmetics.
“I pilfered these from work,” he informed her, “from the makeup room.” Then he proceeded to tear into the mail-order box to reveal a smaller box within. He scooped it up and ran his eyes down the back. “We don’t have time for the 48-hour allergy test.”
She frowned. “What?”
He raised his eyes to hers. “You ever dyed your hair before?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re going blond today. And you’ll need those, too.” He pointed at the cosmetics. “I didn’t know what to take so I took some of everything. However you usually do your makeup, do it different this time. I got colors that I thought would work for a blonde. You’d better style your hair differently, too.” He headed back out but continued talking. “For the clothes, I didn’t know your sizes so I had to guess. I also had to pretend I was shopping for my niece’s birthday.”
Annie stared at the items on the bed. She wished she could think of a different explanation but only one made sense. As her heart rate ramped up, Reid’s words replayed itself in her memory. Don’t worry. I’ll come up with somewhere else for you to stay. You’ll be safe.
She called down the hallway. “Reid? Will you come back here?” He reappeared quickly but his gaze wasn’t as direct as usual. “I’m leaving?”
He said nothing for a beat or two. Then, “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
It was what she’d known would happen, and had come to dread. “Was the rental car found?”
“It’s not the rental car. Simpson knows something’s up.”
“How does he know that?” She tried not to panic.
“Simpson picked something up from me. Nothing I said. He just … gleaned some
thing.” Reid paused and his voice took on a contrite note. “I’m sorry. It was careless of me.”
Annie listened to Reid and put another check in his positive column. “It’s me who should be apologizing. I want to tell you again how much I appreciate—”
He started waving a don’t-mention-it hand.
“—everything you’re doing for me. You’re taking so many risks, to yourself, to your reputation—”
The hand kept going.
“—I am so grateful and really, really sorry for causing you all this grief.”
She ran out of words. A commotion erupted from the house next door, teenagers roaring out the front door making noises about getting to the Dodgers game on time. A car’s engine came to life, rap music blared. Tires screeched. Then it was over.
To Annie it seemed that even with all the ruckus, which proved there was a big wide world out there, her universe began and ended in that blue-carpeted bedroom. She knew that once she was jettisoned from Reid’s home, she could be just as gone from his life. She didn’t know when she’d see him again. Maybe never, said a small voice inside her head, and all at once that possibility loomed large and horrible, Reid gone, the man she’d come to think so highly of, the man who’d ignored the danger to himself and helped her in the worst moments of her life, the man who in the last few days had become the center of her world.
She couldn’t stand it.
Without giving a second’s thought to all her stern resolutions, she catapulted herself into Reid’s body and raised her lips to his.
Not for a second did he fight her. Instead his mouth moved against hers, as soft and wonderful as she’d imagined. His arms, as they wrapped themselves around her, were as strong and enveloping as the fiercest embrace of her life. She played her mouth against his, testing, tasting, trying. He let her do that only so long, until he took control and parted her lips, exploring her with his tongue, teasing her until her breath was gone and all her vows of care and caution had flown out the window after the teenagers.
Eventually they stopped kissing and stared at one another. Against her hand Annie felt the sharp hammering of Reid’s heart. “I’m afraid I can’t leave just yet,” she whispered. “That felt too good.”
He smiled, that slow lazy smile that did quite a number on her.
“I really don’t want to go,” she went on. That was a trifle more restrained that the whole truth, which was more like I don’t want to leave you. I feel safe with you. Please don’t make me go. “Maybe you just imagined that Simpson sensed something. Maybe, because you know I’m here, you assumed that—”
“Annie—” He shook his head. Then he released her and stepped away. “I don’t want you to go, either.”
She could hear a but coming, a but that was going to send her back into the cold cruel world where she was a fugitive and alone and everyone thought she was a serial killer.
“But we’ve got to keep you safe. That means getting you away from me. That’s priority one.”
As every fiber in her being rebelled, her ears noted that even more bad news was being imparted.
“And I have to say that I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I’m tremendously attracted to you, Annie, I’ve made that clear from the start. But I don’t want you to think that I’m available in any serious way.”
She knew he was repeating the essence of what he’d told her the night before. She didn’t want to believe it any more now than she had then.
She tried to keep her voice light. “Don’t tell me you have a problem with me being a suspected serial killer. Because I thought you were the kind of guy who’d be okay with that.”
Again he smiled. Again her heart cartwheeled. “The thing to focus on right now is keeping you safe. Everything else can wait. Now listen up. Here’s the plan.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Before answering her apartment’s doorbell, Sheila paused in the bathroom to check her face. Why were fluorescent lights ever invented, she wondered, despairing at the purple shadows beneath her eyes that the concealer never fully hid, hating even more the furrows on her brow that seemed to lay deeper claim with every passing day. Life was truly unfair if a woman had to fight pimples when she was young and wrinkles when she got older. And it was monumentally tragic that she passed so swiftly from one battleground to the next.
The doorbell rang again and this time Sheila jogged to the foyer, barefoot, in tight jeans and a swishy red silk top with gold threads that she’d picked up the last time she visited relatives in Delhi. She knew red was her color. She knew because Reid had told her so.
She pulled open the door and tried not to appear breathless, for exertion or any other reason. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Reid stepped inside, dipping his head slightly as he always did as if the lintel were too low for him to enter at his full height. He did dwarf the space, that was true, so much so that whenever he left, an enormous black hole replaced him, a chasm Sheila could never quite fill.
He handed her a delicate paper bag from her favorite bakery. “Macaroons,” he explained. “I know you like them.”
“Thank you.” She bustled into the kitchen to set them on a plate. In happier times she’d handfed him a few. She doubted it would come to that this afternoon, though deep inside a tiny hope stirred. He’d brought her sweets and he was visiting on a weekend, with no big work project in the offing. “Tea?” she called over her shoulder.
“Please. Darjeeling,” he added, which did annoy her slightly, for by now he should know she’d memorized all his favorites.
He was on the loveseat when she returned, sitting the way men do, leaning forward with their knees far apart and their forearms resting on their thighs. He accepted the cup and saucer she offered but didn’t meet her eyes or say a word. She knew instantly that he was gearing up to something, and her hope snuck out from its cave and raised its head toward the sun. She folded her legs beneath her on a big overstuffed chair and remained silent, sipping her own tea.
Finally he spoke. “I’ve been thinking about something and I want to ask you about it.”
“Sure.”
“It’s a hypothetical question.”
She gestured as if to say No problem. Indeed that was how she felt, especially if the hypothetical were something like: If I were to ask you to try again with me, might you consider it? But quite a different series of words soon flowed from his mouth.
“What would you do if you found out that someone on our staff was harboring a fugitive?”
She frowned. “What would I do? But why in the world would anybody do such a thing?”
“Let’s not get into that just yet. Let’s talk about what you would do in such a situation. I mean, can you imagine any scenario where such a thing might be understandable?”
“No.” She set down her cup and saucer with a clatter. “Somebody on the show harboring a fugitive? What would give them the right?”
“Well, imagine there was proof that the fugitive was innocent.”
“Proof the authorities didn’t have?”
Reid nodded as if pleased by her progress. “Yes, exactly.”
“Well then maybe that proof should be given to the authorities so the fugitive wouldn’t be wanted anymore.”
His expression of approval faded.
She went on. “I can’t see why it would ever make sense. What if something like that got out, that one of us was sheltering a wanted criminal? Our credibility would be shot. It would go against everything Crimewatch stands for. It would jeopardize everything we’ve built.”
“But isn’t Crimewatch all about helping victims? And isn’t somebody who’s unfairly accused a victim?” Reid rose from the couch and began to pace her living room as if it were a court of law.
Sheila had heard this opening statement before, though, and didn’t really care to hear it again. Particularly when she had hoped for a declaration of an entirely different sort. She let out a frustrated breath. “Why are you bringing this up now anyway?
I don’t get it.”
He shrugged, though he didn’t seem nonchalant. “I just wanted to know what you’d think.”
“Why now all of a sudden?”
He was silent. Then, “But do you agree with me? That, bottom line, the most important purpose of Crimewatch is to help victims?”
She threw out her hands. “This is ridiculous, all this hypothetical talk. Reid, we do help victims but we also capture criminals. And it’s not ours to decide that somebody isn’t a criminal when the police say that they are.”
She stopped, and heard her own words float in her apartment’s patchouli-scented air. It’s not ours to decide that somebody isn’t a criminal when the police say that they are. She stared at Reid, who met her gaze. Who didn’t blink, who didn’t deny, who did nothing but stare back.
Her hand flew to her throat as puzzle pieces slid into place in her mind, finally creating a picture that made sense. “You didn’t. You aren’t.”
He moved closer. “I need your help, Sheila.”
She unfolded herself from the chair, her heart pounding an erratic rhythm. “How long has this been going on?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “All that matters is that we step up and help someone who is being victimized. It’s what we do,” he reiterated.
She turned away. She got it now, why he’d been acting so oddly. Going AWOL. Delaying shoots. And no doubt this also accounted for how distracted he’d been, how he kept getting a faraway look in his eyes when he was unaware that she was watching.
Of course, he was oblivious to her much more than she liked. And maybe lately it was because of a dangerous fascination he’d developed for a woman who was an accused killer. While he passed over Sheila Banerjee, Sheila who loved him, Sheila who would never hurt a fly.
She shook her head, anger mixing with disappointment spiced with fear. “You’re throwing away everything we’ve worked so hard for. For years, Reid. Do you remember how tough it was in the beginning, when we hadn’t help catch anybody yet and most people thought we never would? And two years ago, when Crimewatch came so close to getting cancelled?” She balled her hands into fists to try to keep them from trembling. “But we always survived. This, though, this could kill us. If this gets out, your reputation would be mud. Viewers would lose every bit of faith they ever had in you.”
Chasing Venus Page 14