“Daniel.” It came out with a sob.
“Yeah?”
I gulped. “Can’t we really talk?” I put my hand on his arm and looked at him. There wasn’t any point in trying to hide my tears.
“Copper—” He paused. “I’ve tried. I think I’m done.”
“But you waited for me here. I thought—”
“I’ve been waiting for you the entire time I’ve been in Las Vegas.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yeah? For how long? Until something more important happens?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m sorry we’re like this. I really am.”
“Copper, do you really like this fake canal and phony twilight sky and Disneyland gondolier?”
“That’s a trick question.”
“Maybe,” Daniel said, “but the trouble is, everything’s ‘trick’ with us these days. It’s like we have an illusion of a relationship, but when you take away the smoke and mirrors … ” His voice trailed off.
“Look—may I buy you lunch?” I said. “Real food?”
And it was real food, even if it was served by a fake Italian waiter on an ersatz St. Mark’s Square under an artificial dusk.
Not that we ate much. We mostly just sat there watching a guy, completely dressed in white, fool passing tourists into thinking he was a statue. Ordinarily I kind of liked that sort of thing, but then it just reminded me that Daniel was right. Our relationship looked convincing enough to the outside world—and to me, too, most of the time. But to be honest, sometimes I did wonder if it was just an illusion I kept up for appearances. I’d had role models for that, after all. My own parents had preserved a façade for decades. That thought made me sad—panicky even. Was I capable of a solid relationship, or was I doomed to settle for a charade? Then, as I watched the guy in white, his arm trembled. You can’t stand still forever, I thought. And it’s way too exhausting to try.
We barely touched our pasta, and our conversation flowed about as well as cold lava. By the time we let the waiter have his table back, we had agreed on only one thing: We would drive to the Golden Nugget, where I would gather my things and check out while Daniel claimed his luggage from the concierge.
“Where to?” I asked when we were back inside the Max. “The airport?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said.
“Well, you’re going to have to make up your mind,” I said. “If you want to stay, we can go to my place. But I should warn you. My phone will ring. Victoria’s family and my brother might still need me. I have to go to work tomorrow. I’ve probably committed a crime—maybe more than one. My cat’s a kleptomaniac, my mother’s having an affair, and my father’s gay.”
Daniel looked at me. Our eyes met, and in an instant so short there’s no word for it, every emotion I’ve ever felt rushed through me. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. But what I did was laugh. So did Daniel. And then we both cried.
“I love you, Copper.” Daniel said, and I wish he had stopped there, because I would have said, “I love you, too,” and maybe somehow ...
“I really do.”
How is it that a phrase that sounds like assurance always signals trouble? I waited for the inevitable.
“But … ”
Yeah, that! I waited for the “but.”
“But what?”
“Come on, Copper. You know it’s not working out.”
“We could work it out if we tried. If we wanted to.”
“Things are just different. Nothing has been what I expected.”
“You mean I haven’t been what you expected.”
Daniel looked at me. “Yeah.” He shook his head. “But Vegas, too. Like you said.”
Well, you haven’t been what I expected, either, Daniel, I wanted to say. I guess I had you mixed up with some guy who could accept me for who I am. But Daniel’s disappointment was like an elephant between us, and I couldn’t summon the energy to try to push it away.
“The airport, then?” I asked.
Daniel nodded, and we pretty much didn’t talk again until after he had bought a standby ticket to Phoenix. From there, he could get a flight to Austin, and with luck, he’d be at his parents’ house before the next day.
“Bye,” I said when we reached the security checkpoint. What else was there to say?
“Bye for now,” Daniel said.
I looked at him. A snowman on the Strip had a better chance of survival than our relationship.
“Bye, Daniel,” I said.
“Bye for now, Copper.”
We hugged, and he hefted his backpack onto his shoulder. Before he disappeared beyond the security gates, he was already talking to a woman with long braids who was carrying a guitar.
As I walked back through the airport, I kept expecting to cry. I still loved Daniel, and I couldn’t believe he didn’t love me, too. We’d been so good together, and we’d had such sweet plans. But as I made my way to the parking garage, the grief I was anticipating never came, and by the time I was back behind my steering wheel, I realized it wasn’t going to. All I felt as I pulled back onto the freeway was a huge wave of relief.
Chapter 24
David Nussbaum called to tell me that The Light would be running a story the next day about Victoria McKimber. They’d been following the case, but nothing had run for a few days because nothing reportable had happened. Only now, something had. Just as Heather suspected, the police had decided that Richard McKimber was a “person of interest.”
“They’ve got a terrible picture of the guy, Copper,” David said. “It won’t do much to vindicate him in the public eye.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine a bad photo of Richard McKimber. All you’d have to do to capture a Pulitzer-worthy snarl would be to knock on his door and say you were from the paper.
It also wasn’t difficult to jump to the conclusion that he’d killed his wife. I’d tried the theory on myself, and even without an insurance policy to motivate him, it was easy to imagine that being married to a self-proclaimed hooker would be enough to make a guy snap.
“He’s really not a bad guy,” I said. “He spends most of his time trying to take care of his son. The only person he might murder is the president of his homeowners’ association, but so far, he’s only sprayed him with a hose.” I paused. “Actually, American Beauty has more to gain from Victoria’s death. Do you know if the cops are looking into that?
“All I’ve heard is that they have shifted their attention from Bobby Marks to the husband,” David said, “but if I hear anything else, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and Ed Bramlett’s funeral is Thursday morning at Davis Mortuary. His gay daughter is organizing it, and a couple of other family members have shown up from Utah.”
“His gay daughter?”
“Yup. They hadn’t spoken since she came out of the closet a couple of years ago, but I guess he didn’t quite disown her. I heard through the grapevine that she’s already taken up residence in his house.”
“So I guess he must have had a wife somewhere along the line?”
“Yeah. Charlotte Inman of Hurricane, Utah. They divorced in 1984. I’ve got the obit in front of me. Want to hear the rest?
“No, thanks.” God. Old Ed had a lesbian daughter, and I have a gay father. It’s almost like we had something in common.
“Anything new on the Julia Saxon front?” David said.
I hesitated. I trusted David, but he was still “the press.” He proved it with his instant suspicion.
“I smell a story,” he said.
“I’m not ready to talk,” I said. “I’ve—I’ve had a very tough day.”
“Are you alone?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you know what I me
an.”
I sighed. David really is a born newshound. “Yeah. I’m on my own.”
“Well, if you need anything, you know how to reach me,” David said. “I’ve got another date with Clint tonight, but he’s very understanding. Never complains a bit when I mute him.”
“Clint again? You going steady or something?”
“Yeah, we’re getting serious. Tonight I’m watching The Bridges of Madison County.”
“You’re joking.”
“I am. But if I weren’t—?”
“I’ve got to have dinner with Michael and Sierra,” I said.
“The gauntlet,” David said.
“Well, not exactly,” I said. “But I do need to talk to them.”
“No, The Gauntlet,” David said. “That’s the Clint flick I really do have for tonight.”
After we hung up, I dug through my backpack and found the pictures from Victoria’s old camera. I flipped through them, considering their value as evidence. The two men in the dark restaurant were easily identifiable. Heather had already recognized one of them, and I had a name that probably went with the other. But would the pictures be helpful enough to the police to risk being outed as a thief? Did they prove anything more than that two guys who worked together were in a dark restaurant at some point on December 15th? The only thing that suggested Victoria had taken the pictures was her tape recorder sitting on the table. The date stamp was suggestive, though. I checked to make sure that December 15th was the day before Victoria’s body was found.
I looked through the rest of the pictures again. They all had date stamps on them, including the ones of Jason.
I looked more closely at the vampire boy in his mirrored sunglasses. Heather was right. It was easy to see that Jason had taken the pictures himself. His hand and the camera were reflected perfectly in his lenses.
I was about to go back to the other photos when I noticed something else. Behind Jason’s head, on the back window of the car, I could see a round decal. It looked familiar, even though it was reversed. Damn! I’d seen that decal that morning! It was the American Beauty logo. There were beads hanging from the rearview mirror. I’d seen those this morning, too. When Jason took that picture, he was in his mother’s car, in the driver’s seat. On December 15th.
I pulled the negatives out of the film envelope. He had not only taken the pictures on December 15th, but he’d taken them sometime after Victoria had snapped the American Beauty dudes. Jason’s self-portraits were the last two shots on the roll and, judging from the light, they were taken around dusk. I noticed one other thing as I looked at the pictures again. In one of them, a shoulder and part of an arm in a black sleeve were barely visible on the far right-hand edge. Somebody had been in the passenger seat.
Well, so what? I asked myself. It wasn’t weird for a kid to be in his mother’s car, even if it happened to be the day before her body was discovered.
Except it was weird. Victoria wasn’t at home that day. She was at the Beavertail quarreling with Bobby Marks after meeting the men from American Beauty. The pictures were telling a story, but it wasn’t one that I could make sense of.
:: :: ::
Daniel called. He had made it to Austin.
“Just wanted to let you know I’m okay,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Bye for now.”
I had tried to talk him out of the “bye for now” earlier, but damned if it didn’t sound nice now. Except—hadn’t we broken up? The guy walked out on me—couldn’t even hang around for New Year’s. Right?
Oh, Daniel. What the hell happened to us? Couldn’t we make room in our relationship for ourselves and our lives? If we didn’t, maybe Victoria was right all along. Maybe we were just a hooker and a john, getting together for no-fuss sex.
Damn it. We never did talk. Not really. I wondered if we ever would.
:: :: ::
Dinner at the vicarage was a very casual affair. Sierra had picked up a pizza on her way home. She asked if Daniel would be joining us.
“He’s playing poker at the Golden Nugget,” I said. I just wasn’t up for telling the truth. Fortunately, my little lie was enough to ward off further questions.
Michael had been home most of the afternoon, on the phone trying to convince all his board members and donors that he really knew what he was doing.
“I’ve been worried all day that Julia was going to figure out a way to weasel out of our agreement,” Michael said, “but at about four thirty, she sent a new set of escrow instructions by courier, just as we agreed this morning. Sierra’s got to look them over, but as far as I can tell, the Willow Lake deal’s together again, and it’ll close by Friday.”
“I delivered Richard McKimber’s check, too,” I said. “Now he can afford to send his son off to Cottonwood Ranch.”
“Really?” Michael said. “That’s where he’s going?”
“You’ve heard of it?”
“I’ve been there. It’s got a good reputation for helping troubled kids.”
“Well, this kid’s definitely troubled,” I said. “It was bad enough that he’s bipolar. It didn’t help that he found out his mother was a prostitute a couple of days before she died.”
“So now you can bow out of the whole sordid mess?” Sierra asked.
“We still don’t know who killed Victoria,” I said.
“Might be best to leave it to the cops, baby sis—Copper,” Michael said.
“Maybe,” I said.
But I wasn’t about to let somebody get away with murder.
:: :: ::
Wednesday, December 28
The story in the morning Light made me sad. David was right about the unflattering photo of Richard McKimber. He looked like a raving lunatic. And he wasn’t wearing a hat, which made him look older and nuttier than he actually was. The story also included quotes from neighbors who seemed all too eager to say things like, “We’ve always been suspicious of him,” and “Richard McKimber has a hair-trigger temper. I won’t let my kids go anywhere near him.”
The story also included this disturbing tidbit:
McKimber left his home Tuesday afternoon with his son Jason, 15. According to a neighbor, the two were carrying luggage. “It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the last we see of him,” said the neighbor, Al Ternullo, 74. “And I say good riddance.”
The piece closed with a boilerplate request for anybody with information helpful to the police to call “Secret Witness,” a program that promises that the identity of tipsters “shall remain protected and anonymous.”
The pictures from Victoria’s camera tugged at my conscience. If they provided clues about Victoria’s last hours, did I have the right to withhold them from the police? I toyed with the idea of turning the pictures over to Secret Witness, but it seemed like a cop-out. Besides, they would have lost half their value if I weren’t around to explain the timeline and say where I’d gotten them.
Damn. I couldn’t say I wanted to, but I needed to make another trip down to Chantilly Court. Old Mr. Ternullo was going to be very disappointed, but I was willing to bet that his neighbor would be back tonight after dropping his son off at Cottonwood Ranch.
I had lunch in the lunchroom with David Nussbaum. It felt great to eat a sandwich without worrying whether an old lecher was going to ask if we’d made a mattress squeak.
“Want to go to Ed’s funeral with me tomorrow?” David asked.
“I can’t say I want to, exactly, but sure,” I said. “I have the day off, so I guess I’ll meet you there. It’s at ten, right?”
“Yes,” David said. “We could have lunch afterward.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got an errand.”
David looked at me questioningly.
“In fact,” I said, “I’ve got stuff I should be doing right now.”
/> It was risky to keep hanging around David. I knew myself well enough to know I might reveal too much about my involvement with the McKimber family.
“How about dinner tonight?” David said.
“What? No date with Clint?”
David leaned forward and lowered his voice. Even without Ed Bramlett around, the lunchroom had a lot of attentive ears.
“I was hoping for a date with you.”
There it was, out in the open—kind of like a flower bulb that finally sends a leaf above ground. We’d been flirting with the idea, of course, but until David popped the bare question, we could pretend we weren’t really doing it.
“I can’t tonight,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And before he could come up with another offer I might not be able to refuse, I fled to my cube.
He didn’t follow. He didn’t call. With luck, I told myself, I’d escape at five without bumping into him.
The irony was that I would have liked nothing more than to bump into David. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have minded bumping into him for a good long time.
:: :: ::
I saw them as soon as I turned the corner onto my street. Not one but two cop cars in the vicarage’s driveway. My heart stopped beating, I stopped breathing, and I had an almost irresistible urge to pull a U-turn and start driving to Connecticut. All I could think was that Julia Saxon had decided to nail me for extortion. That or somebody had figured out I was withholding evidence in the Victoria McKimber investigation. Either way, the law was there to arrest me. I looked at my hands. They were shaking even though I had the steering wheel in a death grip.
I slowed to a halt and took a few deep breaths. Gradually, my world came back into more realistic focus. Maybe the cops were there because they had figured out who had broken into my apartment. That was a much more pleasant thought, especially if they had connected the break-in to Julia. I liked the image of her in handcuffs, preferably on the front page of The Light.
A couple of neighbors were standing on the front lawn of the house across the street. They were all looking at a silver Lexus, and it was easy to see why. The front end was up on the sidewalk and crunched into a pine tree. As I pulled closer, one of the cop cars in the driveway began backing out. As it turned and passed me, I caught sight of a face through the back window. Jaz Cutler! And wasn’t this the same silver Lexus that chased me down Dean Martin Drive?
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