“Unfortunately, that’s true,” said Peter. “Ellen, do their parents still live here in town?”
She shook her head no. “There was no father that I can remember and their mother’s dead. Died ten years ago in a house fire.”
Lee raised her hand, seemingly without realizing she was doing it. Just like her grandmother, thought Bella, smiling behind her hand.
“What’re you thinking, Lee?” asked Peter.
“I remember both of the brothers from school. I’d forgotten about them, honestly, like I have so much of my childhood until Momo just brought them up. Gale was in my grade and not the brightest kid, for sure, and was constantly picked on. I remember thinking to myself, just fly under the radar like I did, despite my red hair.”
Tommy interrupted. “Your hair is beautiful. Poor Gale’s is the color of carrots.”
She smiled at Tommy before continuing. “I didn’t know Gale that well but he always seemed shifty to me. But the older one, Rawley, who was the smart one—there were rumors about him, you know, stuff I overheard from the lunch room and all, since I didn’t really have any friends.”
“Like what kind of things?” asked Tommy. His voice was soft, almost coaxing: He was in the habit of getting his shy wife to speak, thought Bella.
“That he was somewhat of a sexual deviant.”
“What do you mean exactly?” asked Tommy.
Lee’s alabaster skin was flushed. “Like he forced himself on several girls. I mean, I don’t really know exactly.” She looked down at the notebook in her lap. “And now I don’t even know why I’m bringing this up. It has no relevance to his brother or the case. It just popped into my mind, that’s all. I didn’t know he was a big time attorney.” She looked over at Mike. “Do you remember them? Were they friends with your son?”
“No, and I can’t say I remember the brothers much except when the older one got into Yale.” He glanced at Ellen. “I believe it was Yale, not Harvard. Made the front page of our newspaper that spring. They weren’t friends with Zac that I know of but I was busy those days running the sawmill so didn’t keep up on things like I do now.”
“Well, anyway, it’s not relevant,” said Lee. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“No, it’s good, Lee,” said Peter. “Any information that helps us understand that there might have been some strange stuff going on in their house could explain a crooked cop. I’ll look into him, ask around a little and see if I can get a better read on him.” He glanced down at his notebook. “I think that’s it, folks. Next step is for me and Bella to take a little trip south tomorrow and meet Miss Zinn in person.”
***
Later, Bella chewed on one of the cold pancakes and stared out the kitchen window. The clouds had lifted and sun glittered on the wet grass in the backyard. Alder was right, she thought. People went to jail for crimes they didn’t commit all the time. She’d seen it on Oprah. Something moved near the rose garden. It was the doe. The creature pranced closer, with the grace of a ballerina, and stopped at the edge of the deck. Perfectly still, she seemed to be listening for something, her ears twitching, before bounding into the thicket of trees on the edge of the yard.
Bella turned from the window. There was Ben, standing at the stove, watching her.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi.” Suddenly she didn’t know what to do with her hands. The actors she worked with often told her stories of their early training and they all agreed the hardest thing to figure out was what to do with your hands. She stuffed hers into her pants pockets, looking at the floor, unable to think of anything to say. The hurt was in her throat. Even if she could speak, she shouldn’t. She couldn’t trust herself. The ridiculous tears might come again.
“Bella, I’m sorry.”
What had he said? She raised her head, meeting his eyes. His green eyes. So beautiful. They appeared soft, not laughing like they sometimes were, but without the accusatory and jealous glare they’d had last night.
“You heard me.” He paused. “I’m an idiot.”
She smiled, but her lips trembled. “Yeah. Kinda.”
He approached her, almost cautiously, she thought, as if not to spook her, like the deer in the yard. “I’m a jealous fool.”
She sighed and shook her head slightly. “You have no reason to be.”
“Take a walk with me?”
“It’s freezing out there.” She glanced out the window. A large rain cloud had moved over the sun.
“Come over to my place, then?” He indicated the front room with a shake of his head. “Drake and Annie are in there and I want to talk alone.”
The way he was looking at her it seemed he had more on his mind than talking. She held out her hand. “Fine, but you have a lot of apologizing to do.”
He ignored her hand and instead pulled her into his chest and spoke into her hair, holding her tight. “I know I do. I’m an idiot.”
“You really are.”
***
They walked up the stairs to his bedroom without speaking. Once inside the room, he sank onto the bed and brought her onto his lap. She buried her face in his neck. How good he smelled. She felt his heart beating against her breasts. He kissed her, gently. “I’m a complete crazy person, I realize this,” he whispered against her mouth. “But when it comes to you I’m not rational.”
“I know the feeling,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, thinking of how desperate and helpless she’d felt the night before. “You have the ability to hurt me like no one ever has, which makes no sense considering how long we’ve been together.”
“Bella, can you give me another chance?”
“Yes, but you can’t do this jealous thing about Graham. He’s nothing to me. He never should’ve been. Last night when I was with him all I could think was why and how.” She paused, kissing his neck and the sides of his face and then his mouth. “And getting back to my family. And you. Mostly you. I can’t deal with you doing that to me again. You just have to trust me. I know it might not seem like it but I am a girl who just wants a nice man to love me, to hold me when I’m sad, to be by my side through all the shit life flings at us.”
“You have such a potty mouth.” He kissed her, exploring her mouth with his tongue until she ached for more.
“You’re going to pay for making me cry.” She kicked off her shoes and panties and straddled him, pushing her small hands into his muscular chest until he fell back on the bed. “I’m going to make you suffer a little.”
“Don’t hurt me,” he said, his voice hoarse.
She flicked her tongue along his neck until she found his mouth again. Then, still straddling him, she unbuttoned his shirt. He tried to help but she batted his hands away. “No, we’ll do it slow so you have to wait for it.”
He let his head fall back onto the bed, grinning. “Fine, but payback’s a bitch.”
“I’m counting on it.”
The last button was undone. She pulled him up slightly so he could shrug out of his shirt. Then she knelt on the floor, tugging his jeans and boxer shorts off. She stood, looking at him, taking in every inch of him, before running her hands up his thighs. They twitched under her touch. She straddled him again, guiding him inside her. He sat up, suddenly, pulling her closer to him, looking her in the eye, before kissing her. “Nice and easy,” he whispered.
But her goal to make him suffer was gone. She felt herself losing control, as she always did with this crazy man. She whispered his name and wrapped her legs tighter around him. He had his hands on her hips, was almost all the way inside her, just a small movement in and out. And then she felt it coming and it took over as she moaned. The shudders came one after the other. Without moving from inside her, he moved so she was on her back and he thrust deep into her several times before he gasped and exploded inside her.
Afterward he held her against his chest, stroking her hair. “I know it’s no excuse,” he said. “But when you’ve been left at the proverbial altar it’s hard to trust again.
I question every woman’s motives I’ve dated since then. I find I’m suspicious about everything and I’m just always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The betrayal, Bella, was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I trusted her with everything I had. I would never have thought in a million years she would betray me.” He stopped, tightening his grip around her waist. “Anyway, never mind. We’ve talked about this enough.”
She pulled away and turned on her side so she could see his face. “Why is it so hard for you to talk to me about this?”
He smiled; his face crinkled in the way so dear to her now. “I’m a guy. We don’t like to talk about this kind of thing.”
“But then you do stupid things that make us cry.”
His face went soft. He stroked the side of her face and ran his finger along her lip. “I’m sorry for that.”
“You’re going to have to talk to me, Ben, or this isn’t going to work. It can’t just be all hot sex with us.”
“It can’t?”
“No.” Let yourself be vulnerable, she thought. Like Annie. “Not if you’re really serious about me.”
He played with one of her curls. His eyes were the color of the fir trees swaying outside the window. “I am. You know that.”
“I was thinking about my mom yesterday.” She let the old sadness come inside her, feeling it, like Valerie had encouraged her to do, looking into his sympathetic eyes. “When she died, I changed. I loved her so much and I was a lost little girl for years afterward. I’ve made decisions from that hurt place for too long. No matter how we try, we can’t escape the pain. It gets into everything. Like something sticky that creeps into every crack and crevice.”
“It’s been two years since Sheri called off the wedding. It hurt every day for all that time until I met you. My brother told me the only way to get over someone is to fall for someone new.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“I do. With one caveat. The baggage that comes with betrayal doesn’t leave. It’s the same as what you say about your mother’s death. It messes with you. It’s made me so distrustful and I was never like that. I would’ve sworn on a stack of bibles I didn’t have a jealous bone in my body, but, well, we know that isn’t the case, now don’t we?” He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I hate that I hurt you yesterday. I’m sorry.”
She kissed him. “I know you are. I forgive you. How did you find out about Sheri?”
“It was a week before the wedding and I came home in the middle of the day because I forgot something I needed for a meeting that afternoon.”
Bella shut her eyes, knowing what was coming next.
“And yeah, there they were. In bed together. In our bed we’d shared for three years.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“You know what’s weird about it? They were just in bed talking, albeit without their clothes on, but there was an intimacy between them that hurt worse than if I’d seen them in the actual act. The way they were looking at one another—she’d– she’d never looked at me that way.”
The shadow of the pain in his eyes made its way into her body as if osmosis of emotion was physically possible. “I want to look at you that way.”
“You are. Right now. You are.” He pulled her under him, kissing her. And then talking was over once again.
***
They woke to pounding on the door of the guesthouse. Bella sat straight up, filling with sudden and swift unease and dread. Ben rolled to his back and put his arm over his eyes. “Bella, I have a bad feeling about this.”
Heart pounding, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and went to the window. More clouds had come in while they were inside and it was raining hard. Below, in the driveway parked next to Ben’s red Porsche, was a cop car. Her knees felt weak. She turned, reaching for the back of one of the easy chairs.
“It’s the cops, isn’t it?” he asked.
She couldn’t speak and merely nodded.
He got out of bed, reaching for his clothes strewn about the floor, hastily discarded just an hour ago when the possibility of what was happening now was only a worry. “Sweetie, get dressed,” he said to her. He was oddly calm, she thought. Resigned to his fate.
She nodded and found her panties and bra, shaking so hard she could barely fasten the clasp. Once they were both dressed, he reached for her. “Listen to me. It’s going to be all right. Drake has an attorney lined up for me. Peter will figure out who did this for real and we’ll be back here in no time, together again. Knowing you love me gives me strength to go through anything.” The pounding on the door started again.
Fighting tears, her voice shaking, she pressed against him. “Drake will post bail, whatever the cost. I’ll be waiting until then.”
“When this is over I’ll take you someplace tropical and buy you drinks on the beach. Hold onto that. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Nothing they do to me can touch this place inside me that loves you. Nothing will break me, knowing you’re here waiting.”
“I am. For however long it takes.”
He kissed her trembling mouth as the pounding continued. Finally, they parted. “You stay here,” he said. “I don’t want you to see this.”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I want to look that son of a bitch Carrot Cop in the eye so he knows I know he’s a liar.”
“I love you, Bella Webber.” With that, they walked down the stairs hand in hand.
***
Wearing heavy rain gear, Carrot Cop and his partner were waiting right outside the door. Just like on television, Carrot Cop read Ben his rights and handcuffed him as the rain fell steadily from a dark sky. Annie and Alder were huddled together under the front porch awning.
Bella had on only her light sweater; in their angst, she’d forgotten her jacket and so had Ben. She shivered, crossing her arms. Her hair was wet now, like she’d come from the shower. Ben’s head was down. Water dripped from his nose. He tried to wipe at his face but his hands were cuffed behind his back so the movement was more like a careless shrug of his shoulder. Annie waved for Bella to come to the porch but she shook her head. If Ben was getting wet, so would she.
Roughly, the cops pushed Ben towards the car. “I’m sorry Alder had to see this,” Ben called to Annie.
Annie said nothing, just put her hand over her heart.
“Stay badass, Ben,” shouted Alder. “My dad will take care of this.”
Bella began to cry then. My dad. And he was right. Drake would take care of this. He always had and he always would. Take care of things—that’s what I do, he used to joke. But that was before his wife and daughter were murdered and all the cockiness was snatched from him. But he was Alder’s dad now. Surely that was something good in this messed up world.
Peter and Drake rushed into the yard. “Carl Schmidt’s on his way down,” Drake said. The attorney. Drake would take care of this, she said silently to Ben. Whatever it cost, he would take care of it.
As the car drove away, Ben put his forehead against the window. Bella blew him a kiss. And then the car disappeared around the corner. She put her hands to her wet face. How was this happening?
Alder and Annie were beside her now, leading her toward the house.
“Bastards,” said Alder.
“Bastards,” said Annie. “Fucking bastards.”
“Mom!”
But Annie didn’t apologize. Her face was flaming red. “Ellen’s right. These cops have to be crooked. What evidence do they have to arrest him?”
“Drake, I’m scared,” said Bella, stumbling in the stone walkway. Rivulets of muddy water trickled between the stones.
Drake, his eyes steely, put his arm around Bella. “Don’t worry. This shark I hired for him is the best defense attorney in Seattle. And Ben’s innocent, which is more than Schmidt can say about most of his clients.”
They were all dripping wet and Annie steered them into the mudroom. Everyone disposed of shoes and jackets before ma
king their way into the front room. Bella’s clothes were soaked through; her hair was dripping and she was shaking, perhaps with cold, perhaps fear.
“Hot shower?” suggested Annie gently.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Come to our room.”
She nodded but turned to Peter. “Let’s get to Los Angeles and talk to this Miss Zinn. There’s no time to waste.”
“I’ll get you tickets for the first flight out in the morning,” said Drake.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PETER AND BELLA LEFT early Monday morning for the airport. Their flight arrived just before noon. Bella turned on her cell phone as they were waiting to disembark. There was a message from Mike.
“Bella, hey, just wanted to let you and Peter know I called my son to ask him about the Hough brothers. Zac remembered them and said Lee’s recollection was right. Apparently this Rawley thought himself quite the ladies man and was aggressive with girls. Zac said several of the girls in their grade told him that Rawley had basically forced himself on them. They didn’t call it rape but it sure sounds like that now. Regarding Gale, Zac said what Lee said—he was picked on and bullied at school. Apparently his own brother would have nothing to do with him and didn’t protect him either. I have no idea if any of this is relevant but wanted to pass it on anyway. Hope you guys are doing okay down there today. Call us when you return.”
They walked through the airport, Bella filling Peter in on the voicemail Mike had left her. “Do you think any of it is relevant?” she asked.
“In this work, you just never know. The more information we have the better.”
After they rented a car, they drove to the film set on one of the studio lots. Bella knew the guard at the gate. After exchanging pleasantries, he allowed them through without even asking her what film she was associated with.
“Wow, Bella, you’re kind of a big shot in this town.”
“Hardly.”
“I’m going to call Brent and tell him I’ve replaced him with a younger and better-looking partner.”
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