Chasing Venus (30 page)

“Reid?”
 
A woman’s voice.

Yes
.
 
“Annie.”
 
Immense joy.
 
Immediately, worry.
 
“Where are you?”

“The corner of Sunset
and Wilcox.”

He heard city noises
behind her.
 
Car horns.
 
The rush of traffic.
 
A snippet of conversation from two
passersby.
 
“Don’t move.”
 
He made a sharp right, thanking his
lucky stars he’d left Glendale when he had.
 
Now he was only five minutes from her
location.
 
“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She didn’t sound
fine.
 
But whatever had gone down,
she was clear-headed enough not to use her cell phone, which would give the
cops an undeniable link between her and him.

“I know it was risky to
call you,” she went on.
 
“I wasn’t
going to but—”

“I’m glad you did.
 
Don’t move,” he repeated, and pressed
harder on the gas.

*

For Annie, salvation
came in the form of a black pickup truck with California plates and a man who
used to be a cop at the wheel.
 
The
rush of relief she felt was enough to make her knees weak.
 
She hoisted herself inside the cab and
made her hands stop trembling long enough to snap on the seat belt.

She exchanged only a
glance with Reid before he slid away from the curb.
 
What could she read in those blue
eyes?
 
She wasn’t sure.
 
But not betrayal, she told herself.
 
Not that.

“Thank you for coming
to get me.”
 
Such an
understatement.
 
Such a bland version
of what she really felt.

“Where have you been?”

She heard the
undercurrent in his words.
 
Anger?
 
Worry?
 
Frustration?
 
Probably a mix of all three.
 
“It’s a long story.”

And one she was
reluctant to tell in full.
 
Reid
would be furious that she’d broken into Frankie’s house.
 
And when he heard that Frankie came home
and caught her there ...
 

She took the coward’s
way out and put off telling him that part of the story.

Finally it was his turn
to speak.
 
“I’m sorry I didn’t get
to the overlook on time.
 
Things
with Sheila—”
 
He
hesitated.
 
“—took longer than
I expected.”

“That’s okay.”
 
And now it was.
 
She glanced out the passenger
window.
 
Hollywood flowed past, much
less terrifying when she was separated from it by steel, eight cylinders, and
Reid.
 
“I used a pay phone to call
you.
 
If you’re right to be worried
about Simpson, you may have to explain who that call came from.”

“I’ll come up with an
explanation.
 
I’m very glad you
called, Annie.
 
You were smart not
to use your cell.
 
You did the right
thing.”

“I was worried …”
 
She stopped.
 
I
was worried you’d had enough of me.
 
I was worried you were ready to turn me in
.
 
Honesty might be the best policy but it
seemed unwise to tell the man that not long after he dropped her off at the
overlook, she began to doubt him.
 
So she changed her confession to a different truth.
 
“I’m so glad to see you, Reid.
 
When you didn’t show up at the overlook,
I got really scared.”

He kept his eyes on the
road but his hand reached across the gear shift to grasp hers.
 
He held on and didn’t let go.
 
Annie thought it was the touch of a man
who’d been frightened, too.
 
She
knew it was the touch of a man who cared.

Eventually he released
her to shift gears.
 
Then he
spoke.
 
“I got the key to a cabin
that Sheila’s family owns.
 
It’s
near Lake Casitas.
 
We’re gonna
drive up there now.
 
It’s about 75
miles.”

“Is that near Santa
Barbara?”

“Not far.”

“Is that where I’m
going to stay?”

“Yup.”

She stopped herself
from voicing the next thought that came to mind.
 
Are
you going to stay at the cabin with me?
 
The reality was that it was nearly ten
thirty at night and they had a two-hour drive ahead of them.
 
Was he likely to drop her off and turn
around at one in the morning to drive back to LA?
 
No.
 
And not if she had anything to say about it.

The idea unnerved and
excited her at the same time, as if they hadn’t spent the last four nights
together.

Together, yes.
 
But with her in the bed and him on the
floor.
 
Tonight, inexplicably, was
different.

She allowed herself to
stare at Reid’s profile.
 
Her
breathing slowed and her hands ceased trembling.
 
At length they left the chaos of the
city behind.

*

Reid pried the whole
story of Annie’s evening whereabouts out of her somewhere along Route 150, a
two-lane highway that snaked through the Santa
Ynez
Mountains.
 
It was a hair-raising
drive in daytime, let alone in the dark of night.
 
When the confession began to drip out of
her, he had to stop driving or risk a wreck.
 
He pulled the truck onto a turnout and
shut off the engine.
 
It sputtered
into silence.

“That’s why I couldn’t
find you?” he said.
 
“Because you
broke into Frankie
Morsie’s
house?”

“You have to
understand, I had no idea why you didn’t show up at the overlook.
 
For all I knew, Sheila had ratted you
out to the cops.
 
Ratted
us
out.”
 
He watched her take a steadying
breath.
 
She turned away, stared out
the windshield.
 
“I thought I was on
my own again.
 
And then I realized
that I happened to be very close to Frankie’s house.”

“So you thought,
hey!
 
Good time to drop by.”

Her head spun toward
him.
 
“I am not an idiot so please
don’t talk to me as if I am.
 
I
realized that I had an opportunity to save myself.
 
So I took it.”

“Damn convenient.
 
Because I got the distinct impression
this morning that you wanted to break into Frankie’s house.
 
So maybe it shouldn’t surprise me that
the first chance you got, you found a way to justify doing it.”

She was silent and
turned away again.
 
Then, “There’s
some truth to that.”

Her admission took the
steam out of him.
 
Not that he had
much to start with.
 
He was so
flat-out exhausted, and so damn relieved that she was safe and once again
beside him, that he couldn’t summon all that much anger.

Outside the truck, the
forested mountains hulked.
 
They
were verdant in the spring, fresh from the nurturing downpours of southern
California’s rainy season.
 
By fall,
the undergrowth would be dry and brown and pose an immense fire danger.
 
Wildfires routinely burned these
hills.
 
They were a completely
predictable threat.

He shook his head.
 
“You do realize that what you did was
incredibly risky.”

“Yes, I do.
 
And I know you didn’t want me to do
it.
 
But it worked out just fine.”

“Annie—”

She interrupted
him.
 
“I learned something that
makes me pretty sure Frankie’s not the killer.
 
He was in New York Monday night.
 
There’ll be a way to confirm it.
 
And if it’s true, he couldn’t have
murdered Michael.
 
He can’t be the
killer.”

Reid got a bad
feeling.
 
“And how do you know he
was in New York?”

A car appeared, going
in the opposite direction.
 
Annie
didn’t speak until it passed.
 
A
delaying tactic, he knew.
 
Then, in
a small voice, “Frankie told me.”

Reid shut his
eyes.
 
“So he came home while you
were there.
 
He caught you in his
house.”

She was silent.

“You do realize he
could have killed you.”

Again she said nothing.

“You’re damn lucky he
didn’t call the cops.
 
Or maybe he
did.
 
They could be on our tail
right now.”

“They were already on
my tail.”

“But they didn’t know
exactly where you were.
 
They didn’t
know you were in LA.”

“And I’m not in LA any
more, am I?”

This was getting them
nowhere.
 
He shook his head.

After a moment she
spoke.
 
“I know you think I did the
wrong thing.”

“You got that right.”

“Well …”
 
She threw up her hands.
 
“Maybe I did.
 
But it’s over now.
 
There’s nothing we can do about it.”

She made it sound so
simple.
 
When it was anything but.

“You know,” he said, “I
spent all night cursing myself for putting you in danger.
 
My idea of danger was that you were out
there alone while every cop in this state is trying to haul you in for serial
murder.
 
But that’s nothing compared
to what you actually did.
 
You went
to the most dangerous place you could possibly have gone.”

“I knew there were
risks.
 
But I felt that my situation
was so desperate that I had to take them.”
 
She spoke over his attempt to interrupt her.
 
“I had to try to find out if Frankie was
behind all this.
 
And now I know he
isn’t.
 
So I did accomplish
something.”

“Annie.”
 
He felt as drained as he ever had in his
life.
 
“All I’m saying is that I
cannot protect you if you insist on doing what I tell you not to do.”

If he hoped she’d
reassure him that she’d never do anything like that again, he was
disappointed.
 
He turned the key in
the ignition and accelerated off the turnout, the truck’s wheels spitting rocks
and dust.

Reid inserted Sheila’s
key into the lock of the front door of her family’s cabin.
 
He turned it and the tumblers released
with a soft click.
 
The door swung
open into the lightless main room.
 
With Annie behind him, he crossed the portal and switched on a table
lamp.
 
He’d been at the cabin only
once and his memory of the visit was sketchy.
 
Deep discomfort was a good part of it.
 
Sheila, her relatives, questioning
glances, awkwardness.
 
It wasn’t
easy to be a male guest in a woman’s home if you didn’t have the intentions she
and her entire family were hoping for.

Annie pushed past him
and stopped.
 
“It’s nice.”

It was an unassuming
two-bedroom, one-bath cabin with plank floors and faux log-cabin walls.
 
The decor left no doubt of the owners’
East Indian ethnicity.
 
Everywhere
were brightly colored
dhurrie
rugs and exotic wall
coverings.
 
Rosewood furniture with
mother-of-pearl inlay.
 
Statues and
paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses, with their wide kohl-lined eyes, contorted
poses, and in many cases more than the usual number of limbs.

It was stuffy and a
layer of dust covered the surfaces.
 
Reid moved to a casement window and cranked it open.
 
In rushed cool mountain air and the
rustling sounds of nocturnal creatures on their midnight wanderings.

He turned toward
Annie.
 
“Do you want a tour?”
 
But she’d already embarked on one.
 
He followed her down a short hall into
the larger of the bedrooms, big enough to accommodate a bureau and a small
stuffed chair along with a full-size bed covered by a red silk throw,
elaborately embroidered but slightly frayed.
 
He’d learned years before that Indians
were casual with their silk, the way rich women were casual with their furs.

Annie brushed past him,
peered into the second bedroom.
 
Twin beds there, boasting similar throws, though green this time.
 
No other furniture.
 
A tree branch buffeted by a sudden gust
of wind scratched against the lone window, its skinny limbs grazing the glass
like skeletal fingers.