And so far she didn’t seem to be any threat to him.
She was a number of years older than he was, but she didn’t mention it. Neither would he. She’d been working at the cancer center for a decade. She had bad luck with men, she said, a euphemism for her attraction to married men. A grown son lived up north—Oregon or Washington. The son might be around his own age. Surely not quite but an odd thought anyway.
It almost felt like a date. His first in . . . months. It was foreign—opening doors, making a reservation for dinner rather than meeting at a hotel bar and downing a whiskey before heading to a prebooked room.
He’d forgotten that he enjoyed this part. He was not a monster. It was not just about the sex. But tonight would be neither romance nor sex. He couldn’t risk it until he was sure. Tonight was about Trent, as was everything else these days. But it was a worthy cause, making sure his brother was safe.
A guilt-free date.
Even sex wasn’t guilt-free these days.
He pressed his palm against the phone in his pants pocket. A phantom vibration. It seemed to happen more when he worried about Trent. Trent’s ringtone was three long buzzes, so he’d know if his brother tried to reach him. He’d be pissed, but he’d know. For now all was quiet on the home front.
Denise leaned forward to talk across the table, the lace of her bra visible down the front of her blouse. He liked that she wasn’t one of those anorexic types. There were so many of them these days, bony things with big breasts. Didn’t they know that a man wanted some curve, something to hang on to during sex? Women got skinny and dressed up for other women.
Denise had curves. And he could tell she was enjoying the atmosphere.
She’d left work at noon today and taken the BART train in from her house, which was thirty miles away. It would have taken hours to get out there and pick her up. Plus he’d needed the extra time to get Trent settled with his three glasses of sherry and his pint of Chunky Monkey and his Hulu watch list. Denise swore she hadn’t minded. And it was clear that she’d spent the afternoon—or some of it—on her hair and makeup.
Normally he would have Ubered around the city, but tonight required extra precautions. He did not drive his own car. He did not valet park. They would not go to a hotel. He’d rented a black convertible Mercedes. There was no missing her delight as she recognized him at the curb in front of the BART station. The more appealing he made himself as a date, the better his chances of finding out what she was up to. Women like Denise didn’t want to be alone.
He had booked them at the latest hot restaurant, some French-Asian fusion place where the waitstaff looked like an army of models in skintight black pants and shirts. Their waiter’s name was Jacques. The nonexistent lighting and the reservation under a fake name was all part of his plan to stay invisible. The crowd was so focused on the hottest faces that his and Denise’s would hardly be noticed. Not cool enough. Not flashy enough. Too conservatively dressed. Too plain, too old.
Perfect.
He encouraged her to order a cocktail. She chose a cosmopolitan, of course. For himself, he ordered a soda and bitters, whispering it in the server’s ear. It looked alcoholic but wasn’t. Jacques’s mouth puckered in response. Nonalcoholic drinks were never a waiter’s favorite. Everyone knew alcohol was what drove the big tips. Add alcohol and people drank more, ate more, ordered dessert. He wanted to tell Jacques not to be so obvious. God, it was like having Trent wait on them.
“We’ll have the Grand Cru from Sauternes with dinner if you’d like to get it on ice now,” he added, pointing to the $300 bottle.
The waiter perked up. Of course he did.
“We’d like it quite cold,” he instructed Jacques. Ordering a good bottle meant he could be specific, particular. Chilled white went down faster than lukewarm. Truly cold white went down like water. He’d learned that from his mother.
He motioned for the server to wait and peered across the table at his date. “Do you like white wine, Denise? I’ve picked out a French bottle.”
“It really is a lovely bottle,” Jacques piped in.
“I love white wine,” she said.
“Perfect,” Jacques said. “I’ll get that on ice for you and be back with your cocktails.”
A nightcap, too, he thought.
Denise smiled across the table.
The cocktails arrived. Tiny little things, of course. Twenty bucks probably. He raised his glass to hers. “To you.”
He had expected her to blush, but instead she tilted her chin upward. “To us,” she said, touching her glass to his.
She brought the glass to her lips gently and swallowed the pinkish liquid as though it were something holy. A tiny drop leaked from the corner of her mouth and wound its way down her chin.
He couldn’t help himself. He reached over and used his fingertip to catch it before it fell to the table. Put the finger in his mouth.
The hollow in her neck pulsed. The chemistry between them crackled.
How badly he wanted to sleep with her. How careless that would be.
Her tongue darted to the corner of her mouth.
Sitting became uncomfortable, his pants too tight.
She swallowed the rest of her drink.
He looked for Jacques and stared until the waiter sensed his gaze. He raised a single finger and pointed to Denise. Bring her another.
Jacques gave a curt nod.
He would not be careless.
“I was surprised you asked me out,” she said, leaning across the table so that her breasts sat atop her dinner plate.
“Why?”
“I didn’t think you’d ever noticed me.”
“I thought you were with someone else.” He knew exactly who she had been with.
Her mouth closed like the knotted tie on a balloon.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t. That’s over.” She sat up. “It’s been over for a while.” She seemed different than she was at the office. Stronger. Empowered. And it suited her. Was it ending things with the married doctor? That would be odd, considering he was pretty certain she’d been dumped. But maybe it was good for her to be rid of him. He was a dullard anyway. Almost all of them were.
“I’m so glad to hear that,” he said. “So what made you accept my invitation?”
“I’ve been watching you,” she said, tilting her head sideways.
He felt himself stiffen.
Jacques set down her second cocktail, and she lifted it without pause and took a drink.
“Watching me how?”
“Just seeing how you are, who you talk to. I’ve been wanting to get to know you.”
He scanned her eyes for some sign that she was referring to the pharmacy, to the Adriamycin. He found people were rarely as clever as they thought they were.
“Sad about Dr. Posner,” he said after taking a sip of his bitters.
She blinked. “He was a jerk.”
He took another sip of his drink. “Did you hear how it happened?”
She drank and leaned forward again. “They used Adriamycin, made him drink it.”
Nothing in her expression suggested she was referring to him. Did she really have no idea? Was she in the pharmacy for something else? But why would she be there at midnight? “Adria—what?” he asked innocently.
Her brow furrowed as she took the bait. “I didn’t know what it was either. I had to ask.”
He nodded eagerly. She did not strike him as clever enough to figure out what he had done and try to manipulate him somehow.
“It’s the treatment they use for breast cancer. It’s bright red.” She was serious, earnest. She had no idea that he’d been in that pharmacy. If she was playing him, she would have been coy, wide-eyed and gratuitously sexual. He’d seen women in that mode plenty of times. And if she was playing a game, she would be terrified, confronting a killer.
She was neither.
Still, it seemed impossible that she’d just gone into
the pharmacy of her own volition, for no reason. Maybe she had someone she wanted dead. The idea made him want to smile, but he didn’t.
“Who do you think killed him?” he asked.
“Some woman he crossed, I’m sure. He was a playboy. He dated half our office, you know.”
He narrowed his gaze.
She pressed her palm to her bosom and raised her glass. “But not me. I never dated him.”
“So you’re not the killer.”
She gave him a slightly drunken smile and laughed.
Jacques arrived with their bottle of wine, and he felt himself relax. Denise was surprisingly charming. Playful and sincere, an open book.
There was more than one way to be cautious. If she cared about him, she would protect him. Then he could have her. Not for a few hours but for a whole night. Trent might be up by nine, or he might sleep until eleven. That gave him plenty of time. God, what he could do with that time.
Dinner was a swift affair. They shared food across the table, fed each other. Another bottle of wine arrived with a flick of a hand. Jacques was attentive now. The wine was frigid.
Denise was not.
He sensed their chemistry and was already making alternate plans. The reservation book full, walk-ins hovered around the bar, waiting for people to leave. He didn’t want to spend any longer than necessary in a place with this many people.
He suggested a nightcap.
She suggested her house.
He motioned for the check, paid the bill in cash, and left while Jacques was far from the table. No chitchat. No pleasantries. He felt the wine as he held the door open and took her arm as she teetered in her heels. But what now? He wouldn’t be driving her home. Not after all that wine. Getting pulled over with her in the car was not an option.
He left the car parked in the lot and began calculating a new plan.
She was drunk. Drunken women were normally a turnoff, but Denise was different. The alcohol didn’t make her clingy or change her sultry voice into a high screech. Instead she became soft and sensual.
He knew her home address and had checked out the area and studied the traffic lights. She was on a quiet street. The neighborhood was a little run-down, built twenty-five years earlier in a surge of urban sprawl.
He would have liked to spend the night with her, go home with her and cab back later, but the voice in his mind said it was too risky. He’d erased the pharmacy recording, but how long before the police located her another way? They would surely follow up on another missing bottle of Red Devil.
The edges of the world were blurry. The plan grew fuzzy beside the desire. How long since he’d given in to desire?
Too long.
Back and forth he went.
Uber was too intimate. The trains had too many cameras and a long wait. He could not wait. The need that had grown consistently through dinner was now a persistent ache.
He hailed a cab and, before helping her into the backseat, gave the cabbie her address and passed him a hundred bucks. “Make sure she gets home okay.” Then he reached through the window and took a picture of the guy’s cabbie license.
He helped her into the backseat. “Good night, sweet Denise.”
“Wait. Where are you going?”
He kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you soon—I promise.”
With that, he belted her in and shut the cab door.
He took a second cab to his house and crossed the street to the parking garage, where his boring gray sedan awaited. The trip had cost him twenty minutes. He warned himself not to drive too quickly. Not to get caught. He took the Embarcadero to the Bay Bridge and headed west. He should have planned to have his own car downtown. He could have put Denise in a cab and been two minutes behind her. Now he was twenty minutes behind. That was too much time to make up, and he couldn’t risk a speeding ticket.
He maintained his speed at seven miles per hour over the limit until another car raced past him—a Porsche doing eighty-five along Highway 24. He sped up, keeping a safe three-car distance between himself and the other driver and making up some extra time.
The cabbie was at the curb when he passed Denise’s address. He kept his head down, drove two blocks away, and parked in the lot for an adjacent apartment building. His car blended in with a hundred other inexpensive commuter cars.
When the cab pulled away, he hurried up the stairs, looking over his shoulder at the other units. A TV in an adjacent unit. Small windows with wood blinds. Her porch was dark, the light switched off. She was not expecting him. She might already be in bed.
He could break in. But then things would not go as he hoped.
He knocked on the door. Silence. His erection pulsed in his pants. He’d been hard since dinner. Hard when he switched cars, when he drove three cars behind the Porsche. He had planned this poorly. If only he’d known she wasn’t a threat . . . if he’d known this night could have been a regular date . . .
Damn.
He shifted the erection so it was trapped under his waistband, felt the uncomfortable pull of it. He had never let sex control him, and he would not begin now. He could leave Denise and go to one of the regular places. Pay a couple hundred bucks to have one of those girls suck him off. Go home and sleep off the booze. Be safe. Keep Trent safe.
He knocked again. The sound of feet grew louder from the other side of the door.
“Hello?”
He grinned into the peephole.
The bolt unlatched, and his erection stretched taller.
“I couldn’t sleep without kissing you good night,” he said when she cracked the door.
The sultry smile. The door fell open. “I’m so glad you came over.”
He stepped across the threshold, as happy as he’d been in months.
19
Schwartzman dreaded the weekends. Work gave the weekdays structure and purpose, while weekends became long stretches of inactivity she had to fill before she could go back to work. This weekend was no different. After the conversation with Harper on Thursday, Spencer was back in her head. In her dreams. Even in the face of a stranger whose eye she had caught from the corner of the grocery store.
And she could not stop thinking about the conversation with Hal. Had she told him too much? Too little? What would he do with the knowledge that she had planted evidence? Would he blame her? Would he understand?
What would he do now?
She thought back to the call with Harper. Her daughter had been given that sea turtle necklace, identical to the one Schwartzman had as a child. By Spencer. Of course it was him. Which meant it had to be the necklace she had found in Spencer’s house.
What was Spencer planning? Something. He was not idle in prison. She would not soon forget that Spencer had found an accomplice on an online site for women who had a predilection for men behind bars. By pretending to be a man serving time at Folsom Prison for murder, he had manipulated a brokenhearted woman into killing for him. Even without access to the Internet, he would be scheming.
At the same time, she refused to live in this purgatory. While Spencer was in prison, she had to sculpt some semblance of a life for herself—something other than moving between the secured apartment building and the morgue, with stops every so often for doctors’ appointments, chemo treatments, and quick runs to fill the cupboards with food. It was time she moved on.
The phone rang Sunday afternoon, startling her. Ken.
“I wanted to come by. You around?”
She looked down at the sweats she’d been wearing all weekend. The distraction would do her good. “When?”
“Half hour?”
“Give me forty-five minutes.”
“Deal.”
She stripped out of her clothes and took her robe into the bathroom. The robe slipped from her fingers as she reached to hang it from the end of the towel bar above the tub. As she picked it up, she caught sight of her naked form in the mirror.
Resisting the urge to look away, she stood in front of the mirror and ex
amined the incisions that marked her chest. This was the body she would share with Ken. If she shared it. Lines ran parallel across each breast, as if someone had used a knife to slash through their flesh. Her nipples were gone. The flesh that gave her breasts, gone.
“Reconstruction is always available down the road,” Todd Posner had told her. “But it’s easier to do it now. If you wait, we have to put in expanders first and then implants.”
“I’ll wait,” she’d told him.
“You’re certain?” he’d pressed.
“I’m certain,” she’d assured him. More than once.
At the time it had seemed like genuine concern, an accurate assessment of the benefits of rolling reconstruction into the initial mastectomy. That she wouldn’t go through the reconstruction right away came as a surprise even to her.
The world was dominated by sex. Women’s bodies were everywhere—movies, commercials, mannequins in glass storefronts—and they were supposed to look a specific way. A woman who didn’t want breasts, who didn’t need or want to be feminine in that traditional Playboy way, was weird. Perhaps even a freak. She had done the research herself. Most women did reconstruction—80 percent, the statistics said. The ones who went without were often concerned about other health risks or weren’t prepared to undergo additional procedures. Some couldn’t afford the costs, which insurance rarely paid in full. These were not Schwartzman’s reasons. She felt strong and healthy. She could afford the procedures.
But it felt natural, excising that part of her—an external symbol of what she’d suffered. She had lost Ava, lost a decade of her life to a man whose sickness had become her own. And femininity in a traditional sense had only worked against her. Perhaps if she’d lost her breasts earlier, she might have been spared the past decade. Ava might be alive. Or perhaps the excision of her breasts was the final stage in excising Spencer from her life.
And still she was unnerved by the men whose gaze rested on her chest and took in the absence. Somehow those stares felt more invasive than they had when she’d had breasts. After a few days of feeling on constant display, she’d ordered a prosthetic bra with the smallest padding available, the equivalent of an A cup. Men didn’t notice the small breasts the way they had the total absence of them. It was a relief to blend in again, but she was disappointed in herself for giving in to conformity.
Excise (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 2) Page 15