Genuine Lies (48 page)

“Like my father did,” he said shakily. “He must have.”

There the ground was too soft and unsteady for him to tread on. “That’s something you’ll have to talk to her about when you’re both ready.”

“I guess he didn’t want us.”

The man’s hand cupped the boy’s shoulder. “I do.”

Brandon looked away again, over Paul’s right shoulder. A bird zipped into the garden in a bright flash of blue. “I guess you’ve been fooling around, hanging around with me because of Mom.”

“That’s part of it.” Paul took a chance and turned Brandon’s face back to his. “Not all of it. Maybe I thought it’d go a little easier for me with Julia if you and I got along. If you
didn’t like me, I wouldn’t have a shot. The thing is, I like hanging around you. Even if you are short and ugly and beat me at basketball.”

He was a quiet child, and by nature an observant one. He heard the simplicity in Paul’s answer, understood it. And, looking into the man’s eyes, trusted it. His nerves settled, and he smiled. “I won’t always be short.”

“No.” Paul’s voice roughened even as he answered the smile. “But you’ll always be ugly.”

“And I’ll always beat you at basketball.”

“I’m going to prove you wrong there, a little later. Now, I think something’s upset your mom. I’d like to talk to her.”

“By yourself.”

“Yeah. Maybe you could go over to the main house and charm some cookies out of Travers. Again.”

Faint, embarrassed color stained Brandon’s cheek. “She wasn’t supposed to tell.”

“She wasn’t supposed to tell your mom,” Paul said. “People tell me everything. And the thing is, Travers used to sneak me cookies too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He rose then. “Give me about a half hour, okay?”

“Okay.” He started off, then turned at the edge of the garden. A young boy with dirt on his face and scabs on his knees and the disconcertingly wise eyes of childhood. “Paul? I’m glad she didn’t hang around with guys and stuff before now.”

As compliments went, Paul couldn’t remember better. “Me too. Now, beat it.”

He listened to Brandon’s quick, appreciative laughter, then turned toward the guest house.

Julia was in the kitchen, slowly, mechanically squeezing lemons. She’d slipped out of her suit jacket, stepped out of her shoes. The sapphire-colored shell she wore made her shoulders look very white, very soft, very fragile.

“I’m nearly finished,” she said.

Her voice was steady, but he heard the underlying nerves.
Saying nothing, he pulled her over to the sink to rinse her hands under cool water. “What’re you doing?”

He dried her hands himself with a dishtowel before he switched off the radio. “I’m going to finish it. Sit down, take a couple of deep breaths, and tell me what happened.”

“I don’t need to sit.” But she did lean against the counter. “Brandon? Where’s Brandon?”

“Knowing you, I thought you’d hesitate to let it loose in front of him. He’s over at the main house for a while.”

Apparently Paul Winthrop knew her much too well, much too quickly. “So Travers can sneak him cookies.”

Paul glanced up as he added sugar. “What, have you got a hidden camera?”

“No, just a mother’s primitive sensory skills. I can smell cookie breath at twenty paces.” She managed a weak smile and finally did sit.

He pulled a wooden spoon from the rack and stirred. When he was satisfied, he filled a glass with ice and poured the tart drink over the cubes so that they crackled. “Was it the interview with Kenneth that upset you?”

“No.” She took the first sip. “How did you know I was seeing Kenneth this afternoon?”

“CeeCee. When I came by to relieve her.”

“Oh.” She looked around blankly, just realizing CeeCee wasn’t there. “You sent her home.”

“I wanted to spend some time with Brandon. Okay?”

Struggling for calm, she sipped again. She hadn’t meant to question him so sharply. “I’m sorry. My mind keeps going off on tangents. Of course it’s okay. Brandon looked as if he was enjoying himself. I’m not much competition on the basketball court, and—”

“Julia, tell me what happened.”

With a jerky nod she set the glass aside, then linked her hands on her lap. “It wasn’t the interview. In fact, that went very well.” Had she put the tape in the safe? Unconsciously she unlinked her fingers to rub them against her eyes. Everything seemed so fuzzy, from the time she had clasped her
hands over her head. She started to get up, to go to him, but her legs wouldn’t allow it. Funny that her knees would go weak now, when everything was all right again. The kitchen smelled of lemons, her son was sneaking cookies, and the faintest of breezes was nudging a tinkle out of the wind chimes. Everything was all right again.

She started when Paul scraped back his chair and went to the refrigerator. He yanked out a beer, twisted the top, and drank deep.

“I’m not thinking straight,” she said. “Maybe if I start at the beginning.”

“Fine.” He sat across the table from her, ordering himself to be patient. “Why don’t you do that?”

“We were flying back from Sausalito,” she began slowly. “I was thinking that I’d finished nearly all of the hard research, and that in a few weeks we’d be going home. Then I was thinking about you, and what it would be like to be there while you were here.”

“Goddammit, Julia.”

But she didn’t even hear him. “I must have dozed off. I took dramamine before the flight, and Kenneth served wine with lunch. Made me sleepy. I woke up when the plane … I might not have told you I’m afraid of flying. Well, it’s not flying so much as being cooped up in there with no way out. And this time, when the plane started to buck, I told myself not to be a wimp about the whole thing. But the pilot said—” She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth. “He said we had a problem. We were going down so fast.”

“Oh, sweet God.” He was up, too terrified to realize how rough he was when he hauled her to her feet. His hands were moving over her, checking for injuries, making sure she was whole. “Are you hurt? Julia, are you hurt?”

“No, no. I think I bit my tongue,” she said vaguely. She thought she remembered the taste of blood and fear in her mouth. “Jack said we were going to make it. The fuel—there was something wrong with the fuel line or the gauge. I realized it when it got so quiet. The engines shut down. All I could think of was Brandon. He’d been robbed of a father, and I
couldn’t bear to think of him being alone. I could hear Jack swearing, and the radio crackling with voices.”

She was shaking now, hard and fast. He did the only thing he knew and picked her up off her feet to cradle her against him.

“I was so scared. I didn’t want to die inside that damn plane.” Her voice was muffled with her face pressed against his throat. “Jack yelled back for me to hang on. Then we hit. It felt like I was hitting the tarmac instead of the plane. Then we bounced—not like a ball. A rock—like a rock if rocks could bounce. I heard metal screaming, and the wind rushing in. There were sirens. We were fishtailing, like a car out of control on ice, and there were sirens. Then we stopped, we just stopped. I must have already unstrapped because I was getting up when Jack came back. He kissed me. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not a damn bit.”

“Good, because I kissed him back.”

Still rocking her, Paul buried his face in her hair. “If I get the chance, I’ll kiss him myself.”

That made her laugh a little. “Then I got out, and I came back. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.” She sighed once, then twice before she realized he was holding her. “You don’t have to carry me.”

“Don’t ask me to put you down for a while.”

“No.” She laid her head on his shoulder. Safe, secure, treasured. “In my whole life,” she murmured. “No one’s ever made me feel like you.” When the dam burst, she turned her face to the curve of his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Cry as long as you want.”

He wasn’t very steady himself as he carried her into the living room so he could sit on the sofa and hold her to him. Her sobs were already quieting. He should have known that Julia wouldn’t draw out any bout of weakness.

And he could have lost her. That thought swam over and over in his mind, forming its own whirlpool of fear and rage. She could have been taken from him that quickly, that horribly.

“I’m all right.” She straightened as far as he would permit
to wipe the tears away with the backs of her hands. “It hit me, really hit me, when I saw you and Brandon.”

“I’m not all right yet.” The words were jerky. He closed his mouth over hers, not as gently as he might have wished. His fingers speared through her hair, closed into a fist. “How useless everything would be without you. I need you, Julia.”

“I know.” Her system settled, but she was content to stay cradled in his arms. “I need you too, and it’s not nearly so hard as I thought it would be.” She brushed her fingers over his cheek. How wonderful it was, how liberating, to know she could touch like that whenever the whim struck. And how liberating it was to trust. “There’s more, Paul. You’re not going to like it.”

“As long as you’re not going to tell me you’ve decided to elope with Jack.” But she didn’t smile. “What?”

“I found this under my seat on the plane.” She got to her feet, yet even when she was no longer touching, she felt connected to him. She knew before she took the paper out of her skirt pocket and offered it, what he would be feeling.

Rage, that impotent, useless fear that went with it. And an anger that was different from rage, less combustible and more consuming. She gauged them all in his eyes.

“I’d say this is a little more direct,” she began. “All the others were warnings. This … I guess we’ll call it a statement.”

“Is that what you’d call it?” He saw more than the words. She’d crushed the paper in a palm that had been damp with a fear and had smeared the type. “I’d call it murder.”

She moistened her lips. “I’m not dead.”

“Fine then.” When he rose, his anger spilled over and lapped at her. “Attempted murder. Whoever wrote this sabotaged the plane. They meant for you to die.”

“Maybe.” She held up a hand before he could explode. “It seems more likely they wanted me to be scared. If they’d wanted me to die in a crash, why the note?”

Fury burned in his eyes. “I’m not going to stand here and try to reason out the criminal mind.”

“But isn’t that what you do? When you write about murder, aren’t you always dipping into the criminal mind?”

The sound he made was somewhere between a laugh and a snarl. “This isn’t fiction.”

“But the same rules apply. Your plots are logical because there’s always a pattern to the murderer’s psyche. Whether it’s passion or greed or revenge. Whatever. There’s always motive, opportunity, and reasoning, however twisted. We have to use logic to figure this out.”

“Fuck logic, Jules.” His fingers closed over the hand she’d laid lightly on his chest. “I want you on the next flight to Connecticut.”

She was silent for a moment, reminding herself he was being difficult only because he was frightened for her. “I thought about that. At least I tried to think about it. I could go back—”

“You damn well will go back.”

She only shook her head. “What difference would it make? It’s already started, Paul. I can’t erase what Eve’s told me— More, I can’t erase my obligation to her.”

“Your obligation ended.” He lifted the paper. “With this.”

She didn’t look at it. Maybe it was a form of cowardice, but she wasn’t going to test herself yet. “Even if that were true—and it isn’t—going back east wouldn’t stop it. I already know too much about too many people. Secrets, lies, embarrassments. Maybe this would stop if I kept quiet. I’m not willing to spend the rest of my life, the rest of Brandon’s, on that kind of a maybe.”

He hated the fact that part of him, the logical part, saw the sense of what she was saying. The emotional part simply wanted her safe. “You can announce, publicly, that you’re abandoning the project.”

“I’m not going to do that. Not only because it goes against my conscience, but because I don’t think it would matter. I could take out an ad in
Variety
, In
Publishers Weekly
, in the
LA.
and
The New York Times.
I could go back and pick up another project. After a few weeks, a few months, I might
start to relax. Then there’d be an accident, and my son would end up an orphan.” Her hand dropped away from his to curl at her side. “No, I’m going to see this through, and I’m going to see it through here, where I feel I have some leverage.”

He wanted to argue, to demand, to drag her and Brandon both onto a plane and take them as far away as possible. But her reasoning made too much sense. “We go to the police with the notes, and with what we suspect.”

She nodded. The relief that he was with her was almost as weakening as the fear. “But I think we’d have more plausibility after Eve gets the report on the plane. If they find proof of sabotage, it would go a long way to our being believed.”

“I don’t want you out of my sight.”

Grateful, she held out both hands. “Me either.”

“Then you’ll go along with my staying here tonight?”

“Not only will I go along with it, but I’ll personally turn down the bed in the guest room.”

“The guest room.”

She offered an apologetic smile. “Brandon.”

“Brandon,” Paul repeated, and drew her back in his arms again. Suddenly, she felt so small, so slight. So his. “Here’s the deal. Until he gets used to it, I’ll
pretend
to sleep in the guest room.”

She thought it over, running her hands over his bare back. “I’m usually willing to compromise.” Confused, she pulled away. “Where’s your shirt?”

“You must have been nearly comatose not to’ve noticed my exceptional naked chest. The kid and I were playing ball, remember? It gets hot.”

“Oh, right. Basketball. The hoop. There wasn’t a hoop there before.”

“She’s coming back,” Paul murmured, and kissed her. “I put it up a couple hours ago.”

It was becoming easier and easier for her heart to melt. “You did it for Brandon.”

“Sort of.” He shrugged it off as he toyed with her hair. “I figured I’d dazzle him with my superior skills. Then he snuck up and beat me. The kid’s tough.”