Lying With Strangers

by Jonnie Jacobs

  He cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask if Roy ever mentioned the name Jamal Harris.”

  “Not that I recall. Why?”

  “Did he say anything about a suspect in a West Oakland drug case?”

  “No. Roy rarely talked about individual cases.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about his behavior in the last few weeks?”

  Other than that he lied to me? Diana thought. “Not really,” she said aloud. “What’s this about? Please tell me, is this about his murder?”

  “No, it’s about some irregularities that have come to light.”

  “What kind of irregularities?”

  Alec sighed. He’d clearly been hoping Diana would know more than she did. “This Harris kid claims Roy made a plea deal with him, promised him probation instead of time. There’s nothing on file to that effect, but Roy did talk to Harris directly—we have the kid’s cell phone records. That’s a breach of ethics. Harris’s public defender knows nothing about a plea, but he says Harris told him not to worry, that he had an in with the prosecutor.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Roy,” Diana said, rising to her husband’s defense in spite of everything.

  “No,” Alec agreed, “it doesn’t. But a key piece of evidence in the case is missing, and Roy was one of a handful of people who had access to it.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Diana said hotly.

  “I didn’t say it did.”

  “But you implied as much. You’re suggesting Roy was bought off. Why would he do that?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Alec said tersely. “I’m simply trying to get some answers. I was hoping you might be able to help.”

  Suppose Harris had learned Roy was using a stolen identity. Would Roy have compromised a case to keep that information from becoming public? Not the man Diana thought she’d known. But the man she was discovering him to be? Perhaps.

  “Where is this Harris kid from?” Diana asked.

  “San Francisco born and raised. A product of the projects.”

  No connection to Georgia, then. How likely was it that a San Francisco street kid would know the truth about who Roy was? Not likely at all. “If you want my opinion,” Diana said, “the kid is blowing smoke.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we thought at first. It’s just that he also called Roy’s office and left a message the day Roy was killed. Something to the effect of ‘You’d better not be messing with me.’ ”

  Diana felt a knot in her stomach. She recalled Roy’s secretary telling her about the call. And hadn’t Diana, herself, found a similar message on Roy’s cell phone?

  “I’m sorry to have had to expose you to this, Diana. But we need to get to the bottom of it. And if there’s anything to it, you’d hear about it eventually.”

  “Yes, of course.” Diana’s voice was tight. How many ways were there she could she feel betrayed by the man she loved?

  *****

  Chloe folded the clothes she’d taken from the dryer. Jeremy’s mostly—jeans and tees and socks. Lots and lots of socks, almost none of them matching pairs. She set them in neat piles on Jeremy’s bed. Later this afternoon when he was home from school, she’d get him to show her which drawers held what.

  Jeremy’s room was bright and colorful, and all boy. Sturdy wooden bunk beds set at right angles with built in storage underneath and topped with cheery blue and red plaid comforters. The walls were off-white, with a wide blue stripe of sports images running horizontally around the room. The ceiling was a darker blue, festooned with iridescent stars. In the corner, an upholstered chair of soft denim was home to a baseball cap and a motley collection of stuffed animals.

  She ran a hand across the swell of her belly, which was getting bigger by the day. Danielle or Daniel? It wasn’t so clear-cut anymore.

  “Well, little one,” she whispered, “whether you’re a boy or a girl, I’m afraid life won’t be this good for us. Not anywhere close.”

  She wasn’t sure where they’d even find a place to live. Diana would hardly let her stay here after the baby came. She would have to tell Diana about the baby soon. She should have told her up front, but Chloe had been so grateful, she hadn’t even thought about it. Now, though, it was one more way in which she was being dishonest with Diana, and it made her feel bad.

  She’d gone with Diana to take Jeremy to school that morning, feeling oddly dismayed by the throngs of eager boys and girls, all with fresh faces and clean, crisp clothes. Well-dressed, well-fed kids with backpacks and lunch bags and shoes that looked practically brand new.

  She knew too, that the supplies for Jeremy’s science poster, which had turned out better than either of them expected, hadn’t been cheap. How was she going to give her child all that? She hadn’t really thought beyond the dewy softness of a baby in her arms. For the first time, she caught a glimpse what life might be like for her little one, and she felt a stab of something akin to guilt.

  That same tremor of uncertainty pricked at her skin now, but she shook it off and went back to folding clothes. The family dog, Digger, picked up a sock Chloe had dropped and started running around the bedroom with it.

  “No,” Chloe said, “drop it.”

  Digger ran faster, first one direction and then the other. Chloe stood firm. “Drop it, Digger. Bad dog.”

  Digger ignored her. But when Chloe didn’t join in the chase, he gave up running and instead stood at her feet and shook the sock with his teeth. Chloe had to laugh.

  But in the pit of her stomach, there was a hollowness that frightened her. Why had she assumed that having a baby would turn her life into the storybook fantasy she dreamed of? Even if Trace were alive, it wouldn’t have happened.

  Thinking of Trace only made the hollow feeling inside her worse. She was living in Diana’s home because Trace had killed a man. Had killed a man Diana and Jeremy loved. She shouldn’t be here. She needed to leave.

  Instead, she walked to her room and took Roy Walker’s gym bag from under her bed where she’d stashed it after sneaking it into the house in a large bag from the Craft Connection. With all the supplies for Jeremy’s poster, her suitcase, and the commotion of moving in, the extra bag had gone unnoticed. Now she needed to get rid of it, and quickly.

  Chapter 30

  Chloe adjusted the Volvo’s side mirrors, then slowly and carefully backed out of the garage, which was near the rear of the lot. There was a long driveway to be maneuvered in reverse. She hadn’t been completely honest with Diana about a whole bunch of things, so she supposed that in the big picture, it didn’t matter that Diana assumed Chloe was an experienced driver. Chloe had her license but that was about as far as it went.

  Trace had babied his Camaro and hardly ever let her drive it. And before Trace, well, she’d lived at the group home, so where would she get a car?

  To make matters worse, Diana’s Volvo was a lot nicer than any car Chloe had ever driven before. Nicer, newer, and more expensive.

  She was beyond nervous about driving it, but she figured she’d be okay as long as she was careful and stayed off the freeways.

  She had to pick up Jeremy from school, but first she needed to get rid of Roy Walker’s gym bag. She’d gone through the contents once again. A couple of photos, a set of five keys, two sticks of gum, a baseball cap, a T-shirt and a pair of khakis, and a stick of deodorant. She’d removed the photos and the keys—she didn’t know what they were for but not having a key when you needed it could spell trouble. She intended to toss the rest of the stuff, as she’d done earlier with the gun, and she decided it would be safer not to put it all into one trash can. Which meant she had to make several stops, with several attempts at parking.

  The trash can outside Safeway was fairly easy. She parked at the edge of the lot where there were plenty of parking spaces so it didn’t matter if she pulled in a little over the white line. At her second stop, the post office, parking was a real problem because the lot was small and the parking spaces tight. But she pulled in
to the yellow drop-off zone, got out of the car, and dashed to the trash can. She cruised around a bit looking for a third spot. She saw several trash cans on the main drag of a congested business district, but that meant parallel parking. No way! The traffic was heavy and pedestrians darted across the street. She was terrified she’d hit one of them. Finally, she found a Dumpster at a construction site near Jeremy’s school.

  By the time she’d finished, her skin was damp and flushed. But she thought she’d managed to carry the disposal off without calling attention to herself.

  She arrived at Jeremy’s school five minutes ahead of schedule and walked to the front gate where a cluster of mothers and au pairs waited to for the younger students. One day, Chloe thought with wonderment, she’d be waiting to pick up her own little girl, or boy. She’d been so focused on the baby inside her, she hadn’t thought much about the years that lay ahead. And it made her realize, with frightening clarity, that the road she headed down was a very long one indeed.

  The bell rang out shrilly and students began wandering through the gate. Not the rush to escape that Chloe remembered from her days in high school, but an orderly, if exuberant, stream, mostly in twos and threes. Jeremy saw her and gave a small wave but he stayed close to his teacher until they reached Chloe.

  “Hey kiddo,” Chloe said. “How’d the presentation go?”

  “Great.” Jeremy grinned, bouncing with excitement. “Everyone said my poster was the best in the whole class. Didn’t they, Ms. Johnson?”

  The teacher, whom Chloe had met that morning, nodded. She was young, maybe only a couple of years out of school, and wore an engagement ring with a tiny diamond. Chloe felt a stab of envy for Ms. Johnson, with her cute reddish-brown bob and a classroom of kids who adored her. Even the smallness of her diamond appealed to Chloe. It spoke about true love rather than showiness. Trace had never even mentioned a ring.

  “Jeremy tells me you helped him with his poster,” Ms. Johnson said.

  “Sort of,” Chloe hedged. Was that a bad thing? Maybe the kids were supposed to do the project all by themselves. “It was all his idea,” she added. “I just helped with the cutting and stuff like that.”

  Ms. Johnson laughed. “That’s fine. We don’t expect second graders to handle this on their own. But Jeremy’s poster was one of the best I’ve seen. Very creative. And accurate, too.”

  Chloe felt like bouncing with excitement herself. She hardly ever got compliments.

  “I don’t know what your arrangement is with his family, but if you’d like to volunteer in the classroom, we’d love to have you. Many of the moms do it, and some of the au pairs, too.”

  “I’d like that. I’ll ask Mrs. Walker if it would be okay.” Chloe’s fantasy of herself as a teacher blossomed in full color.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Jeremy said to Chloe when he climbed into the car a few minutes later. “I’m going to be an astronaut. Ms. Johnson said I might have an ap . . . ap . . .”

  “Aptitude?”

  Jeremy nodded. “She said I might have an aptitude for it. That means I’d be good at it.”

  Chloe laughed. “Sounds wonderful. What did you want to be before?”

  “A baseball player. Or maybe a drummer.”

  “Well those are good choices, too.”

  “I’ve got a while to decide,” Jeremy said solemnly. “Can we get ice cream?”

  “Does your mom let you have ice cream after school?” Diana hadn’t said much about what was allowed and what wasn’t.

  “She won’t mind. Especially because my poster was so good.”

  “Well then, sure,” Chloe said. “Let’s celebrate. Where shall we go?”

  “Fenton’s.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I know how to get there. Just go where I tell you.”

  Jeremy did a fine job of getting her from the school to a four-way intersection in a bustling commercial district.

  “Turn here,” he said as they approached the light.

  “Which direction?”

  “Down.”

  Down wasn’t much help. Chloe was in the left turn lane with cars on her right, so she turned left. “This way?” she asked.

  “Yeah. It’s here, down a bit.”

  Cars and pedestrians again. And trucks double-parked at the curb. And stop signs that weren’t visible unless you were looking for them. Chloe was a nervous wreck. She was on the verge of telling Jeremy they couldn’t stop for ice cream after all, when he called out, “There it is.”

  She slammed on the brake but they were already past the parking lot entrance. She made an abrupt U-turn without signaling.

  Right in front of a police car.

  The officer flashed his lights at her and followed her into the lot.

  Oh my God! Diana would be really angry. She’d probably fire Chloe on the spot.

  Then Chloe thought of something else. Had the police had discovered her involvement in the robbery where Roy was killed? What if they ran her driver’s license and arrested her right there?

  Thank God she’d gotten rid of the gym bag. She had gotten rid of it, hadn’t she? In her moment of panic, she wasn’t sure. Her throat closed up and she had trouble breathing.

  When the officer approached, she forced a gulp of air into her lungs and rolled down the window. Her hand was shaking when she handed him her license, which still listed her address as the group home. He’d probably write her a ticket for not updating her license, on top of everything else.

  He peered into the car’s interior. “This your car?”

  “No, but I have permission to drive it.”

  “That your son in the backseat?”

  Chloe shook her head. “I work for his family. Kind of like an au pair. It’s his mother’s car.”

  “And we’re going out for ice cream,” Jeremy announced. “To celebrate because my poster of the solar system was the best in the whole class.”

  “Is that so?” the cop asked.

  “And Ms. Johnson said I have an altitude for space.”

  “Aptitude,” Chloe corrected.

  “I see.” The officer looked puzzled.

  “Chloe helped me. The poster was my idea, but she helped with some of the hard stuff like cutting straight.”

  “Well,” the cop said, giving Chloe the once over, “I guess it wouldn’t be right to spoil a celebration.” He frowned. “You know why I pulled you over?”

  Because I’m an accessory to murder? “Because I didn’t signal?”

  “Because you made an illegal U-turn in a business district.”

  “Oh.”

  His steely gray eyes met hers. “I’ll give you a warning this time. Don’t do it again.”

  “No sir, I won’t. I promise.”

  The cop handed Chloe her license. His expression softened. “Enjoy your ice cream.”

  Chloe rolled the window back up. She was still shaking like leaf in the wind.

  “Gosh, what’s your mom going to say?” she moaned.

  “We don’t have to tell her.”

  Chloe turned around to look Jeremy in the eye. “Yes, we do. Honesty is important.” She hoped God didn’t strike her dead for hypocrisy.

  *****

  Fenton’s turned out to be what Chloe imagined an old-fashioned ice cream parlor would look like, and a popular one by the looks of the crowd. She would never have guessed so many people ate ice cream in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

  “My dad used to bring me here after soccer games,” Jeremy said, taking a bite of chocolate fudge swirl.

  “You must miss him terribly.” Chloe found herself once again straddling the line between truth and dishonesty. The weight of her role in Roy Walker’s death was growing heavier by the day.

  Jeremy looked sad. “I wish I could have shown him my poster.”

  “He’d have been really proud of you,” Chloe said.

  “Yeah. He was the best dad ever. Emily thought so, too. She’s my sister, although she has a different fathe
r. She’s older than me.”

  “I met her,” Chloe said before she remembered the circumstances of that meeting—the afternoon she’d broken into their house. “Only once,” she added, but Jeremy wasn’t interested.

  “They found the guy who killed him,” he continued solemnly. “But my mom doesn’t think it’s that simple.”

  “That simple?”

  “That’s what she said to Allison. They think maybe there was someone else, too.”

  A shiver ran down Chloe’s spine. “Someone who was with this man when your dad was shot?”

  “I don’t know. Someone named Brian.”

  Not a girl, Chloe thought with relief. But who was Brian? One of Weasel-face’s friends? She was glad she hadn’t ordered ice cream for herself. Her stomach felt the way it did the time she rode the roller coaster at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

  She handed Jeremy a napkin. “Better wipe around your mouth,” she teased. “You look like a chocolate clown.”

  *****

  The phone rang as they walked through the door and into the house. Jeremy dropped his backpack and raced to pick it up.

  “Just a minute,” he said and handed the receiver to Chloe. “It’s some man.”

  “Hello,” Chloe said.

  “Mrs. Walker?”

  Chloe responded with the protocol she’d learned at the Craft Connection. “She’s not available at the moment. May I take a message?”

  “Uh, I really wanted to speak to her directly.” The man paused. “Who am I talking to?”

  “I might ask you the same thing.”

  “I’m a friend of her husband’s from the old days. In Georgia. We, uh, went to high school together. Are you her daughter?”

  “I’m the . . .” Au pair? Nanny? Babysitter? None sounded quite right. “I’m hired help,” she said finally, though that sounded no better.

  “So you knew Roy? I was wondering how long he’d been in California.”

  Chloe didn’t want to appear rude to an old friend, but she knew better than to give out personal information. Even if she’d known the answer. “I really think you should ask Mrs. Walker. Can I take your name and number?”