by Sandra Brown
“That’ll work for only so long,” Drex said. “If he doesn’t show up at your desk himself, he’ll dispatch someone. If you’re asked—when you’re asked—you haven’t seen me, didn’t know my vacation plans.”
“The regular drill,” Gif said. “Play dumb.”
“Which he won’t believe,” Mike remarked.
“Play it for as long as you can get away with it,” Drex said. “Stick to your day duties, but it’s red-alert time, boys.”
“What’s worrisome—” Gif began.
“Is the timing of the asshole wanting to talk to me today.”
“That’s what rattled Mike and me,” Gif said. “How long has it been since you two had any contact?”
“Not long enough.”
Drex came out of his chair and went over to the window. He pulled the edge of the shade away from the framework, creating a crack just wide enough to focus the new binoculars on the house across the way.
Gif said, “I don’t think Rudkowski’s call is a bizarre coincidence.”
“But what roused him?” Mike asked.
“Must’ve been that deputy in Florida,” Drex said. “Rudkowski’s name was in the case file. Gray sounded green, eager to help. If he was doing some kind of follow-up and couldn’t reach me, he’d likely contact Rudkowski.”
Mike sighed. “If you’re right, you need to destroy the phone you used when you called him.”
“Already have. It’s on the bottom of the Atlantic. After talking to him, I threw it out the porthole in the head.” Thinking of the yacht reminded him. “Any progress on that picture, Mike?”
“A team of photo experts in Bombay are working on it for me. I’ve got TV dinners in my freezer that are older than them, and I don’t understand a damn thing they do, but they’re good. I passed along what you said about wanting to see the pores on his face.”
They fell into a thoughtful silence, then Gif said, “We know your impressions of the couple next door. What do you think their impressions are of you?”
“While they were cleaning up the kitchen, he commented on my attire.”
“Your attire?”
“That’s the word he used. He said I dressed like a frat boy on his way to a keg bust.”
They chuckled. Gif asked, “What did she say?”
“That they were almost out of dishwashing soap.”
“Nothing more about you?”
“That was it. They finished up, turned out the downstairs lights. I think they’ve called it a night.” He didn’t want to think about them in bed together doing anything except sleeping. Or even that.
The optimistic Gif said, “Well, you’ve made some progress.”
Mike, ever Eeyore, said, “You’ve only got ten more days to determine whether or not it’s him.”
“It’s him.”
“You want—”
“It’s him, Gif. He smiles, he’s pleasant, but open a vein and ice water would pour out of it. He’s abnormally vigilant. Like last night. It was like he was waiting and watching to see if I would venture onto his property. Who notices when a UPS truck is on the block and where it stops?”
“I do,” said Gif.
Mike snorted with disdain.
Drex continued. “He doesn’t give me access to anything he’s touched.”
“Like what?”
Only now did he share with them the business about the beer bottle. “It was a neighborly gesture, but why would he take back the beer when I hadn’t drunk but half of it? He didn’t want me to have that bottle with his prints on it.”
“But our unsub is a ghost. Nobody has his prints. Nobody even knows who he is. These women up and disappeared, but there’s never been a crime scene.”
“Until Marian Harris’s body was found,” Drex said. “Less than one hundred days ago. That’s bound to have fueled his innate paranoia and put him on edge.”
“But forensics didn’t yield anything.”
“We know that, Gif, but he doesn’t.”
Mike made a grunting sound acknowledging Drex’s point. “That niggling doubt would make him wary of anyone moving in next door.”
“Exactly.”
Gif wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know. That’s all conjecture. We’ve gotta get something solid.”
“I’m aware of that,” Drex said. “Mike, in any of the disappearance cases, was there any evidence with handwriting on it? Not the victim’s. Not a named someone’s. Handwriting that investigators never attached to a specific person. Could be anything. A note, shopping list, receipt. Anything.”
“I’ll have to check it out.”
“Do. I asked Jasper for a list of recommended restaurants. He told me he’d jot some down. He—Hold on. What the hell’s this?”
“What?” Gif had needlessly lowered his voice to a whisper.
“While we’ve been talking, I’ve been trying out my new binoculars. Jasper just walked into their kitchen.”
“A midnight snack,” Mike said.
“In the dark?” Drex said. “He hasn’t turned on any lights. He’s using his phone’s flashlight.”
“That’s weird.”
“Maybe not,” Drex said.
“Why? What’s he doing?”
Drex blew out his breath. “He went straight to the spot where he caught me crouching down.”
“Oh, shit,” Gif groaned.
Mike muttered something more profane.
Drex watched Jasper go down on one knee and bend toward the floor until his head almost touched it. He shone the light along the baseboard and underneath the cabinet. “He’s looking for it. Feeling around.”
“He didn’t buy your lost skewer excuse.”
“We are royally screwed,” Mike said.
Drex lowered the binoculars and grinned into the darkness. “We would be if that’s where I had planted the bug.”
Chapter 9
Talia?”
She raised her head from reading off her tablet and looked across the breakfast table at Jasper. “Sorry. I was catching up on the news.”
He was staring thoughtfully into his coffee cup. “When I got back from the store last night, you and Drex were so engrossed in your conversation, neither of you realized I was there until I spoke. What were you talking about?”
“His boyhood in Alaska.”
Jasper looked at her and sputtered a laugh. “Alaska?”
“Of all places.”
“Anchorage?”
She shook her head. “Remote, off-the-map spots. Another cup of coffee?”
“No thank you.”
She left the table to make herself a refill using the fancy machine she’d given Jasper for Christmas. It had taken her weeks to learn how to operate it, and she was still intimidated by the technology. While she waited for it to go through the brewing process, she filled Jasper in on what Drex had told her about his upbringing.
He said, “Sounds very rugged and romantic.”
“Or bleak.”
“It strikes me as a woeful tale spun by an aspiring novelist who’s creating a rakish persona for himself, fashioning himself after Jack London or Ernest Hemingway.”
She returned to the table and curled a leg beneath her as she sat down. “You think he made it up?”
“Talia, it reeks of hogwash.”
She laughed, sipped her coffee, picked up the one remaining bite of cupcake on her plate, and held it out for Jasper. “Last chance, or it’s all mine.”
“I wouldn’t dream of depriving you.”
She popped the bite into her mouth. “Ummm. Chocolate cupcake. The breakfast of champions.” She washed down the cake with another sip of coffee. As she returned her cup to the saucer, she said, “If Drex is lying to impress, why hasn’t he regaled us with stories of derring-do in the wilds of Alaska? He does the opposite. When it comes to talking about himself, he artfully changes topics.”
Jasper said, “One wonders why.”
“Apparently you wonder why.”
“You d
on’t? You’ve been taken in by the dimple?”
She frowned with exasperation. “Please. Give me some credit. I see through his practiced charm, and I’ve told him so.” She moistened the tip of her finger and used it to collect the remaining crumbs on her plate, then licked them off, the action giving her time to formulate an opinion.
As she moved aside the empty plate, she said, “I think the basics of the childhood he described are probably true, but he might have embellished them for dramatic effect.”
“That’s what bothers me. Why would he want to create an effect?”
“For his own amusement?” she said, raising a shoulder. “Or, as you said, to make his biography more colorful and adventuresome, a marketable background a publisher would jump at.”
“I hope that’s all his evasiveness amounts to.”
She crossed her arms on the edge of the table and leaned forward. “So what if he stretches the truth a bit? Why does that concern you so much?”
“I’m amazed that it doesn’t concern you.” He gestured toward the garage apartment. “Without notice, a stranger moves in next door. He’s unknown even to the Arnotts, yet he’s living practically in the shadow of our home. The day we met, he told me he’d come to the area to soak up color and soul for his novel. Doesn’t that imply that he would be out and about, observing and experiencing the culture? Instead, he rarely leaves the apartment.”
“He’s absorbed in the writing.”
“Is he? Perhaps. But I get the feeling that he’s not as devil-may-care as he wants us to believe.”
She looked down and studied the wood grain in the tabletop. “In all honesty, I get that impression, too.”
“Then we’d be wise not to believe everything he tells us and to be guarded about what we tell him. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes.” Then, lifting her gaze back to his, she said, “On the other hand, we could be overanalyzing and becoming paranoid when there’s no cause to be. Maybe Drex was merely testing his storytelling ability last night. He wanted to see if he could weave an engaging history for himself and make me believe it.”
“Possibly. After all, when you boil it down, fiction writers are glorified liars, aren’t they?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
He didn’t ask how she would put it. Seeming to have closed the discussion to his satisfaction, he got up and carried his dirty dishes to the sink. It rather irked her to be dismissed, but she let the subject drop. She didn’t want to engage in an argument where she would be placed in the position of defending Drex, whom she didn’t know and who was possibly the blatant liar Jasper suspected him of being.
However, as Drex had described to her that period of his life, he had appeared to be telling the truth. There had been no teasing glint in his eyes or devilish smile to suggest either a white lie or a whopper.
My mother never set foot in Alaska. When he’d said that, his eyes, his whole demeanor, had conveyed stark, heartbreaking reality. “He grew up without his mother.”
“Pardon?”
Caught musing out loud, she repeated, “He grew up without his mother.”
“She died?”
“I don’t know. That’s when you barged in. I’m left with a cliffhanger.”
“Regrettable. The unknown facets of Drex Easton are the ones I wish I knew.”
He folded the dishtowel he’d used and draped it over the edge of the sink, then lifted his gym bag off the floor and slid the strap onto his shoulder. “All right with you if I hang around the club after my workout? I may stay and have lunch there.”
“I could meet you.”
“I thought you planned to work on the African trip for your client.”
“Those plans are flexible.”
“Better to leave them in place. I’m not sure when I’ll want to eat.” Her expression must have revealed her letdown. In a crisp voice, he asked, “Is that a problem, Talia?”
It was a problem that she must be made to print out an itinerary to leave with him whenever she went out of town, but that he got piqued if she asked about his plans for an afternoon.
She replied with comparable curtness. “No problem.”
He moved to stand behind her chair, placed his hands on her shoulders, leaned down, and whispered in her ear. “Instead of lunch, how about I take my favorite girl out for dinner tonight?”
She was being placated, and it angered her. She was inclined to shrug his massaging hands off her shoulders. But, for the sake of marital harmony, she smiled back at him. “Your favorite girl would enjoy that.”
He kissed her behind the ear. “I had better stay on my toes. Because I think our new neighbor spun that sad tale about his boyhood in order to woo you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s not at all ridiculous. I believe you’re too smart to fall for his adolescent seduction, but I also believe he’s ballsy enough to try.”
As he was about to pull away, she reached up and placed her hand on his arm. “If you’re seriously worried about Drex’s integrity and intentions, we don’t have to continue being sociable.”
“I’ve already obligated us to at least one more dinner. A double date with him and Elaine.”
“Elaine?” she exclaimed. She came around in her chair and faced him. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“He extended the invitation last night.”
“And you accepted? Jasper, Elaine—”
“It’s okay. He more or less asked my permission to make a move on her. He thought she and I might be carrying on illicitly.” Jasper winked at her. “Funny, isn’t it?”
Drex thought, Not that fuckin’ funny.
He pushed back his chair and went over to the window in time to see Jasper’s car backing out of their drive. Through the surveillance receiver, he could hear Talia moving around the kitchen. Cabinet doors being shut. Water running. The sun’s glare on the windowpanes prevented him from seeing her. He wondered what she’d worn down to breakfast.
“Jesus.” He was becoming a peeping Tom. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets in an attempt to blind himself against envisioning her in some kind of soft sleepwear, disheveled and barefoot, hair in tangles, eyes drowsy.
Before dawn, he’d been awakened by an erotic dream featuring her. Images of her were unformed and ephemeral. He could feel more than he could see, but the sensations were intense. He woke up painfully aroused, the sheets saturated with sweat despite the gale powered by the new fan blowing across him.
He was out of sorts and troubled despite last night’s success.
When he’d told Mike and Gif that Jasper’s search for the transmitter was futile, that he was looking in the wrong place, they’d congratulated him on his ingeniousness.
“He thought he had me,” he’d said, “but he’s the one who got hoodwinked.” When Jasper had come up empty-handed, Drex had felt like shouting at him across the lawn, Gotcha, sucker!
“He gave himself away,” Drex told them. “Who goes looking for hidden surveillance after having a neighbor over for burgers? Nobody, that’s who. I’m telling you, he’s our man.”
Mike and Gif had pressed him to tell them how he’d achieved hiding the bug, and where. He’d refused. “For me alone to know. It’s my crime. If caught, only I will take the fall.”
At that point, Gif, in his reasonable way, had resumed his argument that Drex should notify Rudkowski. “What you’re doing is high-risk, Drex. You might give yourself away and not even be aware of it until it’s too late. If not Rudkowski, alert somebody to what you’re doing. Think of the additional resources that—”
“No, Gif. I tried that once, and it backfired. Big time. Remember?”
“Vividly,” Mike grumbled.
“Okay, then. Before I involve Rudkowski this time, I’m gonna have the suspect hogtied and squealing confessions.”
Gif sighed in defeat. “In the meantime—”
“I’ll watch my back.”
&n
bsp; “Better yet, don’t turn it to him.”
After ending the call, Drex had gone to bed, but hadn’t slept that long or well before the dream woke him. Giving up on going back to sleep, he’d gotten up, made coffee, and, restless and edgy, turned on the receiver and waited to hear something from the house next door.
Jasper had come downstairs first and cooked himself breakfast. Drex could hear a TV news show in the background, pans clanking, coffee beans grinding. Finally, Talia joined him. She’d told Jasper good morning in a voice slightly hoarse from sleep. Drex had imagined them exchanging a hug, a pat on the rump, a light kiss. That was as far as he’d let his imagination run.
Then for close to an hour, he’d listened to their breakfast dialogue. For the most part, it was inconsequential. She reminded Jasper that he needed to consult an arborist about one of their trees. His tailor had called; the clothes he’d had altered were ready to be picked up. He made polite inquiries about the family who were off to Africa, but he didn’t sound that interested in Talia’s answers.
There were also stretches of companionable silence.
Drex hadn’t sat up and taken notice until Jasper had asked her, from out of nowhere, what she and he had talked about last night while alone. His heart had skipped a beat, not because the question made him anxious, but because he wanted to hear how Talia would respond.
He told himself it didn’t matter. Lately, he was lying to himself a lot.
It came as no surprise that Jasper was leery of him. But Jasper hadn’t emphasized to Talia just how mistrustful, had he? He hadn’t told her that he had gone downstairs in the dark to search for a listening device that he suspected Drex of planting.
Had he omitted mention of that because he hadn’t wanted to appear comically foolish? Or because he couldn’t explain to her why such a notion would even enter his mind?
Drex was already aware of Jasper’s suspicion, but it was helpful to learn the extent of it.
Talia also harbored doubts about his honesty, but she’d given him the benefit of the doubt, seeming more inclined to think he was exaggerating rather than outright lying. She’d also sounded sympathetic when she spoke of his mother.
After that, the tone of their conversation changed, subtly but noticeably. Having it piped into his ears through the headset seemed to have amplified the silent subtext as well as their spoken words. He wished he could have watched their expressions during that exchange, to gauge whether the testiness he’d sensed between them was real or imagined.