Chasing Venus (23 page)

Reid found Simpson in
the large lobby restaurant of a downtown hotel.
 
It was decorated like many of its ilk in
cheerful yellows and greens.
 
Simpson had his eyes trained on the
Los
Angeles Times
sports section and his fist attached to a diner-style coffee
mug.
 
He let go long enough to shake
Reid’s hand.
 
Saturday or not, he
wore a suit and tie.

“What’s up?” he asked
Reid.

Reid slid into the
booth, gave an affirmative nod to the server bearing a coffee pot.
 
“I’m getting a vibe about Bigelow.”

The agent’s brows
rose.
 
“You got a tip on the
hotline?”

“No.
 
None of the tips we got a few weeks back
panned out.
 
But I mistook somebody
for him the other day down in Orange County.
 
I got a feeling about it.”

“You want me to shake
the bushes?”

“I’d appreciate it if
you would.”

“Sure.”

Reid was sure he’d do
it.
 
Whatever low opinion Annie
harbored of Lionel Simpson, Reid knew him to be not only a savvy investigator
but a man of his word.
 
The
conversation lulled as the men ordered their breakfasts, both egg and bacon
heavy, and then Reid broached the second topic that had inspired this
meeting.
 
“You know we’re working
the writer murder story.”

“Yup.
 
Saw the segment last night.”

Reid had tried to limit
the piece’s sensationalism but couldn’t avoid that it was all about Annie and
the accusations against her.
 
“We’ve
run across a few things that point to another name,” he told Simpson.
 
“Frankie
Morsie
,
one of the big agents in the mystery community.”

Simpson sawed off some
fried egg and chewed it until it had to be soft enough to pass down an infant’s
throat.
 
All of which afforded
sufficient delay for about six thoughts to flit across his brain, several of which
Reid was sure he could decipher.
 
Gardner must have it bad for Annette
Rowell.
 
He’s clutching at
straws.
 
He’s no idiot, though.
  
Better hear him out.

Simpson washed down the
egg with another slurp of coffee.
 
“
Morsie’s
Annette Rowell’s agent, right?”

“Hers and a bunch of
others.
 
Here’s the deal—” and
Reid ran through the reasoning that in his view warranted an investigation into
Frankie
Morsie
.

Simpson listened, then
wiped his mouth and sagged against the booth’s floral-patterned fabric.
 
He fixed Reid with a contemplative
look.
 
Then, “You know what strikes
me about all that, Gardner?”

“What?”

“It’s none too
compelling.”
 
He held up a
let-me-finish hand as Reid opened his mouth to rebut.
 
“No.
 
Nothing you said justifies diverting
law-enforcement resources from finding Annette Rowell to investigating her
agent.
 
You didn’t make the
case.”
 
He leaned forward, propped
his elbows on the table and lowered his voice.
 
“Reid, we’ve known each other a long
time.
 
Man to man, you gotta give up
whatever rose-colored ideas you have about this woman.
 
You gotta do it.”

Reid knew this was no
time to defend Annie.
 
Not with her
rental car three-quarters of a mile away from his studio.
 
Or the woman herself in his bedroom.
 
He tapped a rhythm on the tabletop and
looked away from Simpson as if he were considering the older man’s advice.
 
“I hear what you’re saying, Lionel.
 
And I will admit that I have been
interested in her.
 
But that doesn’t
negate what I’ve just told you about
Morsie
.”

“I’ll tell you
what.
 
You get me hard evidence that
I should look closer at him and I’ll do it.
 
But I mean hard evidence.
 
Not its second cousin.”

It was pretty clear
that was as good as Reid was going to get.
 
He nodded and reached for the check.

Simpson grabbed it
first.
 
“No, this one’s mine.
 
You go,” he waved a hand, “have a good
weekend.
 
Forget about all this
shit.
 
We’ll talk next week.”

Reid was halfway out of
the booth when Simpson spoke again.
 
“By the way, your colleague Sheila called me this morning to relay a few
of the tips that came in last night about Annette Rowell.”

Reid stopped short and
realized a beat too late that he should wipe the shock off his face.
 
Which Simpson was watching closely.

“I was a little
surprised,” the agent added, “that I didn’t hear them from you.”

Reid tried to
recover.
 
“None of them struck me
as—”
 
He paused, struggled to
come up with a different word, but couldn’t.
 
“—all that compelling.”

Simpson nodded, his
gaze as penetrating than ever.
 
“Well, you know what they say.
 
It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.”

*

When Reid returned to
the house, Annie watched him dump several Gap shopping bags onto the bed, along
with a brown paper bag and a smallish mail-order box.
 
He upended the paper bag and out
cascaded an assortment of cosmetics.

“I pilfered these from
work,” he informed her, “from the makeup room.”
 
Then he proceeded to tear into the
mail-order box to reveal a smaller box within.
 
He scooped it up and ran his eyes down
the back.
 
“We don’t have time for
the 48-hour allergy test.”

She frowned.
 
“What?”

He raised his eyes to
hers.
 
“You ever dyed your hair
before?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re going
blond today.
 
And you’ll need those,
too.”
 
He pointed at the
cosmetics.
 
“I didn’t know what to
take so I took some of everything.
 
However you usually do your makeup, do it different this time.
 
I got colors that I thought would work
for a blonde.
 
You’d better style
your hair differently, too.”
 
He
headed back out but continued talking.
 
“For the clothes, I didn’t know your sizes so I had to guess.
 
I also had to pretend I was shopping for
my niece’s birthday.”

Annie stared at the
items on the bed.
 
She wished she
could think of a different explanation but only one made sense.
 
As her heart rate ramped up, Reid’s
words replayed itself in her memory.
 
Don’t worry.
 
I’ll come up with somewhere else for you
to stay.
 
You’ll be safe.

She called down the
hallway.
 
“Reid?
 
Will you come back here?”
 
He reappeared quickly but his gaze
wasn’t as direct as usual.
 
“I’m
leaving?”

He said nothing for a
beat or two.
 
Then, “We’ve got to
get you out of here.”

It was what she’d known
would happen, and had come to dread.
 
“Was the rental car found?”

“It’s not the rental
car.
 
Simpson knows something’s up.”

“How does he know
that?”
 
She tried not to panic.

“Simpson picked
something up from me.
 
Nothing I said.
 
He just … gleaned something.”
 
Reid paused and his voice took on a
contrite note.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
It was careless of me.”

Annie listened to Reid
and put another check in his positive column.
 
“It’s me who should be apologizing.
 
I want to tell you again how much I
appreciate—”

He started waving a
don’t-mention-it hand.

“—everything
you’re doing for me.
 
You’re taking
so many risks, to yourself, to your reputation—”

The hand kept going.

“—I am so
grateful and really, really sorry for causing you all this grief.”

She ran out of
words.
 
A commotion erupted from the
house next door, teenagers roaring out the front door making noises about
getting to the Dodgers game on time.
 
A car’s engine came to life, rap music blared.
 
Tires screeched.
 
Then it was over.

To Annie it seemed that
even with all the ruckus, which proved there was a big wide world out there,
her universe began and ended in that blue-carpeted bedroom.
 
She knew that once she was jettisoned
from Reid’s home, she could be just as gone from his life.
 
She didn’t know when she’d see him
again.
 
Maybe never
, said a small voice inside her head, and all at once
that possibility loomed large and horrible, Reid gone, the man she’d come to
think so highly of, the man who’d ignored the danger to himself and helped her
in the worst moments of her life, the man who in the last few days had become
the center of her world.

She couldn’t stand it.

Without giving a
second’s thought to all her stern resolutions, she catapulted herself into
Reid’s body and raised her lips to his.

Not for a second did he
fight her.
 
Instead his mouth moved
against hers, as soft and wonderful as she’d imagined.
 
His arms, as they wrapped themselves
around her, were as strong and enveloping as the fiercest embrace of her
life.
 
She played her mouth against
his, testing, tasting, trying.
 
He
let her do that only so long, until he took control and parted her lips,
exploring her with his tongue, teasing her until her breath was gone and all
her vows of care and caution had flown out the window after the teenagers.

Eventually they stopped
kissing and stared at one another.
 
Against her hand Annie felt the sharp hammering of Reid’s heart.
 
“I’m afraid I can’t leave just yet,” she
whispered.
 
“That felt too good.”

He smiled, that slow
lazy smile that did quite a number on her.

“I really don’t want to
go,” she went on.
 
That was a trifle
more restrained that the whole truth, which was more like
I don’t want to leave you.
 
I feel safe with you.
 
Please
don’t make me go
.
 
“Maybe you
just imagined that Simpson sensed something.
 
Maybe, because you know I’m here, you
assumed that—”

“Annie—”
 
He shook his head.
 
Then he released her and stepped
away.
 
“I don’t want you to go,
either.”

She could hear a
but
coming, a
but
that was going to send her back into the cold cruel world where
she was a fugitive and alone and everyone thought she was a serial killer.

“But we’ve got to keep
you safe.
 
That means getting you
away from me.
 
That’s priority one.”

As every fiber in her
being rebelled, her ears noted that even more bad news was being imparted.

“And I have to say that
I don’t want you to get the wrong impression.
 
I’m tremendously attracted to you,
Annie, I’ve made that clear from the start.
 
But I don’t want you to think that I’m
available in any serious way.”

She knew he was
repeating the essence of what he’d told her the night before.
 
She didn’t want to believe it any more
now than she had then.

She tried to keep her
voice light.
 
“Don’t tell me you
have a problem with me being a suspected serial killer.
 
Because I thought you were the kind of
guy who’d be okay with that.”

Again he smiled.
 
Again her heart cartwheeled.
 
“The thing to focus on right now is
keeping you safe.
 
Everything else
can wait.
 
Now listen up.
 
Here’s the plan.”

Before answering her
apartment’s doorbell, Sheila paused in the bathroom to check her face.
 
Why were fluorescent lights ever
invented, she wondered, despairing at the purple shadows beneath her eyes that
the concealer never fully hid, hating even more the furrows on her brow that
seemed to lay deeper claim with every passing day.
 
Life was truly unfair if a woman had to
fight pimples when she was young and wrinkles when she got older.
 
And it was monumentally tragic that she
passed so swiftly from one battleground to the next.

The doorbell rang again
and this time Sheila jogged to the foyer, barefoot, in tight jeans and a swishy
red silk top with gold threads that she’d picked up the last time she visited
relatives in Delhi.
 
She knew red
was her color.
 
She knew because
Reid had told her so.