John peered inside the store. If he went inside to get change from one of the checkers, he would encounter the same problem. He had to make certain no one would be able to connect him to the crime. He wanted desperately to do the right thing, admit what he had done, get medical help for the boy. He knew he couldn’t, however. It was a matter of survival. A person couldn’t sell real estate without a driver’s license. But that was the least of his concerns. Because of his DWI, they’d send him to jail this time. Since the boy had been injured and he’d fled the scene of the accident, he could easily be facing prison in lieu of a jail sentence. How could he suffer through the humiliation of a prison sentence? Lily would never let him live it down. Shana would be devastated. In addition, he wasn’t a young man. He would never come out alive if they sent him to prison. The inmates would have a field day with him. He had never been a strong man, and the type of people who ended up in prison could smell weakness like a wolf could pick up the scent of an injured deer. Using the edge of his shirt, he wiped his fingerprints off the glass window.
Finally he formulated a plan. He’d get the change, then drive to another pay phone to notify the authorities. Stepping on the electronic mat for the door opener, he tried to appear calm as he entered the store and approached a heavy-set blonde woman working the express counter. “I’m closed,” she said, pointing at another cashier a few rows over.
Standing behind a young couple, he felt a sharp pain in the center of his chest. Was he going to drop dead of a heart attack and never see his daughter again? The man and woman in front of him had a cart full of food; the husband was unloading items onto the counter. Thinking of Shana made him realize he couldn’t go home empty-handed. “Where’s the ice cream?”
The sleepy-eyed checker didn’t answer him.
“Didn’t you hear me?” he yelled, bumping into the woman. “Where’s the damn ice cream?”
“Aisle seven,” the male checker told him.
A few moments later, John was back in line with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s chocolate chip ice cream. He’d grabbed the first carton he’d seen in the freezer.
“You must be a real ice cream freak,” the husband said, glowering at him. He was a tall, muscular man, his hair cut short on the sides, then gelled to stand up on top. On his right forearm was a tattoo of an eagle. “You almost knocked my wife down. You could have said you were sorry. Can’t you see that she’s pregnant?”
“I’m sorry,” John said, staring into the woman’s eyes. Her face suddenly took on the features of the beautiful young man. He wished he could tell him that he was sorry, that if things had been different, he would have helped him and not run off like a coward. Tossing the five-dollar bill on the counter once the couple had left, he paid for the ice cream and hurried out of the store.
Intending to drive to another phone booth, he found himself back on Melrose Avenue. Only the outside lights were burning at Baskin-Robbins, so he assumed the clerk he had seen earlier had gone home. Where had his car been parked? When he had been there before, the parking lot had been empty. The clerk must be a teenager. That meant he could have ridden a bicycle to work, or one of his friends might have picked him up. Surely someone had discovered the injured boy by now and contacted the authorities.
Driving slowly, John steered to the south side of the parking lot, where the accident had occurred. When he didn’t see anything, he let out a long sigh of relief. The man must have had the wind knocked out of him, then got up and went on his way. Placing his foot on the brakes, he rested his head against the back of the seat. His prayers had been answered. He swore he would never drink again. Now all he had to do was clear his mind. He shut his eyes, willing his body to stop trembling.
Just then his cell phone rang.
“Where are you?” Shana demanded, her voice shrill and grating.
“I’m on my way home, honey.”
“I’m so tired I’m about to pass out. All I wanted was something sweet—”
John cut her off. “I didn’t go to Baskin and Robbins.”
“Why not?”
“It was too late by the time I left,” he lied. “I didn’t want to disappoint you, so I drove all the way over to Lucky’s. They didn’t have peanut butter and chocolate.”
“Great,” Shana said facetiously. “You got ice cream, though,
right?”
“I got—” John was looking in his rearview mirror to see if it was safe to make a U-turn when he spotted the outline of the boy’s body on the ground. When the rear section of the Mustang had struck him, the boy must have fallen behind a large shrub. He’d been in such a panic before that he’d failed to notice. “I’ll talk to you when I get home,” he said, tossing the phone on the passenger seat.
He circled the block, then slowed to a stop on the opposite side of the street. Pitiful cries filtered in through the open window. Not only had he verified that the incident had not been an alcohol-induced delusion, the victim had regained consciousness and appeared to be in terrible pain. Clutching his cell phone, he tried to force himself to call the police. He knew the boy’s tortured cries would haunt him the rest of his life.
John ran his tongue over his lips. His mouth was parched, his head throbbing. Another stab of pain entered his chest. His legs began to ache. He felt paralyzed, almost as if he had been hit by a car instead of the boy. Scenes from his life played out in his mind. He saw his high school graduation, the day he’d married Lily. He saw himself holding his baby daughter only moments after her birth. The pleasant images abruptly disappeared, replaced with a menacing cloud of darkness.
John’s shoulders shook. He wasn’t a callous individual. He knew right from wrong. All he asked was to be able to walk way from this one mistake. He would not only swear off booze, he’d work harder, sell more houses, never again interfere with Shana’s relationship with her mother. Outside of his arrest for drunk driving, he had never committed a criminal act, never purposely harmed another human being.
His nose began running. Unable to find a tissue, he retrieved a napkin from the backseat and blew it. In three months his daughter would turn nineteen. For someone so young, she’d suffered more than her share of heartache. He stared at the clock on the dashboard. For over an hour he’d wrestled with his conscience. He tossed the napkin out the window. The battle was over. By not reporting the accident, he might be saving himself from a prison sentence, but he was also protecting his daughter. Seeing another car’s headlights approaching behind him, he stepped on the gas and headed home.
6
Richard Fowler parked his Lexus in the Ventura High School parking lot, opening the trunk and removing a fresh shirt encased in plastic from the cleaners. After he changed, he dug inside his gym bag and pulled out a bottle of Bay Lime aftershave, pouring some on his hands and then splashing it on his face. Back in his car, he checked his image in the rearview mirror, making certain Lily had left no incriminating smudges of lipstick.
Located high in the foothills, his home offered a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. At night the glittering lights of the city replaced the beauty of the shoreline. As he navigated the narrow, winding roads, he reminded himself of the one major drawback—mud slides. After living in California for over twenty years, however, a mud slide seemed insignificant next to the threat of another massive earthquake. He had long ago decided he’d rather ride his house to the bottom of the hill than find himself submerged beneath the swirling waters of a monster tidal wave.
Entering the kitchen through the garage, he opened the stainless steel refrigerator, gazing inside at the contents. Yogurt, tofu, bean sprouts. Couldn’t the woman at least buy real food? Grabbing an apple and a fancy bottle of herbal tea, he slammed the door shut in disgust. He couldn’t even have a beer anymore, maybe a sack of unsalted pretzels. He’d had to fight for the right to have an occasional soda. Nothing but flavored chemicals, she’d told him, chastising him like a child.
When Richard had added the second story a few years back, he’
d also remodeled the thirty-year-old kitchen. The counters were now a rust-colored granite, the cabinets constructed out of the finest cherry. Although he had admired the Tudor mansion where Lily rented her guest house, he preferred the clean, uncluttered look of contemporary design.
He was about to take a bite out of his apple when an attractive blonde came sashaying into the room. She was dressed in her exercise clothes, a pair of black tights and a halter top; therefore, he assumed she’d been working out in the basement gym. Her body was one of her finest attributes, and she seized every opportunity to display it. She had large breasts, a tiny waist, long legs, and her buttocks felt like rolled-up balls of steel. She might visit a plastic surgeon once a year for what he classified as a tuneup, but she could certainly turn heads. They’d been living together for three years, and even today he couldn’t say for certain how old she was. She told everyone she was thirty-five. Somehow she’d managed to get a driver’s license using what he suspected was a phony birth certificate. He’d never pressured her for the truth. What did he care if she wanted to shave a few years off her age? When a single woman got close to turning forty, insecurity became a major problem.
“Where have you been?” Joyce Lansing said, snatching the apple out of his hand. “I was about to call the police.”
Richard said, “I’m handling a serious case, Joyce. My client was accused of poisoning his daughter. I’m late, okay. Does that mean I don’t get to eat? Shit, woman, it’s only an apple. A man could starve with the stuff you buy at the grocery store. What happened to food? You know, steaks, chicken, apple pie, ice cream.”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said, glaring at him. “People don’t have meetings at this time of night.”
“Good Lord,” he said, “it’s not even ten o’clock.”
“You could have called,” Joyce said, impulsively hurling the apple at him.
With the time she spent lifting weights, she could pitch like a man. If Richard hadn’t ducked at just the right moment, she would have popped him one. “Are you having a PMS attack?” he asked, picking the apple up off the floor and rinsing it in the sink. “Or do you just want to make certain you have my undivided attention?”
“Not funny,” she said, smacking a wad of gum. “Now will you answer my question?”
“The battery went dead on my phone.” Standing over the sink until he finished eating, Richard decided that the worst invention in the universe had to be the cell phone. When the only means of tracking people had been a pager, a man could still manage to make himself scarce. Now a woman could call you in the men’s room while you were taking a leak. And boy, did they get ticked off when you didn’t answer. In addition, they demanded an hourly report on your whereabouts and activities. Joyce and her girlfriends called each other incessantly. Most of the phone calls he had overheard were inane. The latest rage was designer phones that allowed a person to snap on different-colored exteriors to match their clothing. When the silly phone rang, it sounded like a little girl’s music box. He’d seen women call each other from the next aisle over at the department store. If they weren’t calling each other on their cell phones, they were shopping or trading stocks over the Internet.
“Marty talked me into taking on a couple of cases in Santa Barbara,” Richard said, drying his hands with a paper towel. “That’s why I had to take off so early this morning. The arraignment took longer than I thought, then I got stuck in traffic. Is that enough to get me out of the doghouse? Maybe you’d prefer that I start at nine this morning and give you a blow-by-blow of my entire day.”
“Stop talking ridiculous,” Joyce said, taking a seat at the kitchen table.
Bone tired, Richard rubbed his eyes. He didn’t mind arguing a case in court. At least in most instances, he could look forward to being compensated. Domestic squabbles were a waste of energy. Defending himself when he’d done nothing wrong was irritating enough. Tonight, however, he had something to feel guilty about. Joyce probably sensed it. He could douse himself with the most pungent cologne in the world and it wouldn’t help. He might not have slept with Lily, but he had certainly thought about it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you whip up a special macrobiotic dish or something? Is that why you’re so bent out of shape?”
“You could have called me from a regular phone.”
“We discussed the case over drinks.” Richard had been afraid the dead battery trick wouldn’t pass muster. He momentarily turned his back on her, not wanting her to see the smile on his face. The majority of his tricks were dated. Old dog, he thought. “I tried to call you from the pay phone in the bar, but it was out of service.”
Joyce let out a long sigh. “I understand about your work, Rich,” she told him. “All I ever ask is that you call. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable demand, do you?”
“Not at all,” he said, hanging his head. The fastest way to turn things around was to act contrite. Women loved it when a man groveled. As soon as they were certain you felt like hell, they were ready to jump in bed and console you.
“The least you could do is make up a decent excuse,” she said, a smile lifting one corner of her mouth. “Don’t tell me there isn’t at least one phone that works somewhere between Santa Barbara and Ventura.”
“I was preoccupied,” he said. “You know how I am when I have something on my mind. I’m juggling eight cases right now.” He paused, clutching the bottle of tea in his hand. “I thought I could plea-bargain this drug case and get it out of the way. How did I know the idiot had two priors?” She was flirting with him, leaning forward so he could see her breasts, purposely posing to make certain they looked even larger than they were. He was about to reach the finish line.
“Don’t you check all that out?”
“Why would someone be stupid enough to lie to his own attorney?” Richard asked, walking over and kissing the top of her head. He gazed at her breasts. Even if they weren’t real, they looked and felt real. In today’s world, everything was an illusion anyway. Perhaps this was part of Lily’s appeal. She didn’t have Joyce’s body, but it wasn’t always a person’s physical appearance. When you genuinely cared for someone, as he did for Lily, you connected on a much higher level.
Joyce gazed up into his eyes, trapping his hand and placing it over her breast. He had crawled in the door like a snake, and already he had his hands in the cookie jar. Now he realized why married men had affairs. Not only was it physically exciting, the planning alone was challenging. The beauty of his situation was the fact that Joyce was not his wife. She might act like his wife, but without a formal commitment, there was only so much guilt she could lay on him. By taking on the Middleton case, he had provided himself with a way to spend time with Lily. Now he considered taking it a step further, possibly convincing Joyce that he should stay in a hotel during the course of the trial rather than exhaust himself by making such a long drive.
What in the hell was he thinking?
Men went off their rockers when it came time to end a relationship. The worst experience of his life had been discovering that Claire was having an affair. The fact that she’d fallen in love with a woman had been a jolt to his masculinity, but the wound itself had turned out to be nothing more than a mosquito bite. What difference did it make who she’d been having an affair with? She’d violated the sanctity of their marriage vows. He might toy with the notion of becoming a contemporary Don Juan, leaping in and out of beds from Ventura to Santa Barbara, but underneath he was a die-hard traditionalist. When you loved someone, you married them, remained faithful to them, devoted your life to them. If you didn’t love them… well… this was the muddle he found himself in with Joyce. The sex was great. Everything else was mediocre.
Richard walked over to the small built-in desk in the corner of the kitchen, thumbing through a stack of mail. The envelope containing his American Express bill was over an inch thick, and the telephone bills were astronomical. Joyce might not be aware of it, but even before he had seen Lily today, he had been
racking his brain trying to figure out a way to disentangle himself from their relationship. They’d been together for three years. This time he had let things rock along past the breaking point. He was a three-year man, particularly when the woman started throwing things at him. The next time he pissed Joyce off, she might pitch one of her multicolored weights at him and crack his skull open.
Joyce owned her own business, a small marketing and research firm. The past year or two had been difficult due to the massive amount of competition she’d encountered from similar companies on the Internet, some firms as far away as Alaska. Formerly, she had relied on her interpersonal skills, drawing most of her clients from the local community. Many of these accounts had fallen by the wayside, since the great majority of what she did could be handled remotely.
His friends thought he was a fool for setting up housekeeping, then insisting on paying the majority of his girlfriend’s expenses. Most of his buddies had been married for years, though, and their wives ordered them around like drill sergeants. He certainly wasn’t going to take their advice. In addition, his married friends had no concept of how much time, energy, and money were involved in the process of dating. His law practice was thriving. So what if he spent a few thousand extra each month? All he was doing was buying himself a companion. Overall, it wasn’t such a bad situation, especially if a man had a tendency to get lonely. Slightly shallow perhaps, but since his relationship with Lily had ended, falling in love had not been at the top of his list of priorities.
“I wouldn’t complain if I didn’t care,” Joyce said. “Linda and Bill were sweet enough to take me out for Chinese. I left some vegetable chow mein in the refrigerator for you. If you skipped dinner, eating an apple isn’t enough.”
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