“I won’t get any results the police haven’t.”
“Five hundred dollars plus, whether you learn anything or not,” Marta coerced.
Five hundred dollars plus. My brain started calculating, taking a trip of its own, as I wondered how many “sessions” I could squeeze out of the deal. It’s hard to turn down pure, cold cash. My mentor Dwayne Durbin would be proud of my way of thinking.
“Cotton’s having a party next Saturday night.” Marta sweetened the pot. “I can get you an invitation.”
“How?”
“Well…Murphy’s been invited. He’s coming into town this week.”
I swore beneath my breath, loud enough for Marta to hear. Murphy? “What a setup. I’m not interested, Marta. Not one little bit.”
“He knows you might be there. He wants to see you.”
“Not a chance.” Marta knows what she’s doing at all times. She’s an operator, someone who sees what she wants and goes after it, no matter how many souls she grinds into the pavement along the way. I almost admired her.
“Murphy still talks to Tess,” Marta went on. “He mentioned you the other day. That’s what got Tess thinking.”
“Murphy and I don’t talk.”
“Jane, Tess is going to be in my office at three today. She’d really like to meet you.”
“You’re railroading me. I can hear the train whistle.”
“I thought you might want to see him.”
“Bullshit. You thought of a new way to squeeze money out of a client. How much is Tess paying you for this setup?”
“Plenty,” was her equable answer. “Tess is a grateful client.”
I almost laughed. I could imagine how well Marta had put the squeeze on Cotton as Tess’s representative in their divorce. Her unabashed greed appealed to me, maybe because deep inside I’m a kindred spirit. Okay, maybe it’s just that I’m not that deep inside.
She seemed to sense my lessening fury. “Is that a yes?”
I had an instant memory of a hot midnight on Murphy’s boat, illegally docked in the shelter of Phantom’s Cove, the deepest part of Lake Chinook, two hundred feet beneath the houses perched on the bluff above, hidden by the canopies of oaks and firs which kept the cove under shadow most of the time. I remembered fevered bodies wrapped tightly together, sweat and silent laughter that remained caught in the back of my throat. And pleasure.
An ache filled me inside. I’d fallen in love once in college, but Murphy was the next, and last, man who’d ever filled my senses so completely. I half believed now that it would never happen to me again. Maybe it would, but right now it felt impossible.
The thought that he might actually be at this party was enough to send me into the kind of female panic I loathed seeing in others. I couldn’t go. Even if I met with Cotton, I couldn’t go to this party if Murphy was going to be there.
I said as much to Marta. At least 1 think I did. But she responded with a quick overview of how much income this could provide me. I turned her down over and over again, I swear. Yes, dollar signs danced in front of my eyes, but the thought of clapping eyes on Tim Murphy again was something my system couldn’t take. I told myself I would rather live in destitution for a thousand lifetimes than go another round with Murphy.
“We’ll see you at three, then,” Marta said happily and hung up.
I was left staring into space, my jaw hanging open. Slowly, I brought my lips together again and clicked off my cell phone. There was no memory in my mind of my agreement to meet with Tess, but somehow I’d managed to say yes.
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Copyright © 2005 by Susan Lisa Jackson
Previously published in an unrevised edition under the title Intimacies.
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Final Scream Page 53