Incriminated (15 page)

By 7:30 a.m. Candace was strolling along the beach path as the joggers and dog walkers enjoyed the soft, milky light of Venice Beach in the morning. She watched them as she made her way to her Prius for another early start. As Candace pulled out her keys, she heard a car approach. A white Cadillac pulled into the parking spot next to hers.

“Hey, Marilu.” Candace smiled as Maya's aunt emerged.

“Hola
,
linda,”
Marilu replied affectionately. She looked almost exactly like Maya. Light, olive-colored complexion, five five, probably a size ten rather than a six or eight like Maya, but proportionately very similar. The aunt's hair, like Maya's, was a glossy, dark chestnut brown and worn straight, down past the shoulders. She was dressed in smart indigo jeans, unremarkable black heels, and a black blazer over a fitted white blouse. Her look was basic yet professional. Her eyes were hidden behind black Ray-Bans.

Suddenly, Candace felt like something was off. It wasn't
déjà vu but a very distinct feeling that she'd seen Marilu before, but in a completely different context.

“Maya's still in bed,” Candace volunteered.

Aunt Marilu's jaw hardened for a moment. She lifted her face briefly toward the house. “Really? But I'm taking her to the airport. Today is her big lunch in Napa with the investor.”

“Maya's got a meeting in Napa?” Candace had heard something about this from Grace, but no details. The truth was, she hadn't completely believed everything Maya had been saying about her app recently. Maya would get to chatting, breathlessly, using techy language Candace didn't understand and didn't care to have explained, or else she spent her time buried in a stack of geek books and tapping away on her laptop. “She was up super-late, working on her code, I guess.”

“Aha,” Marilu said. “I guess I better go wake her.”

“Okay, well, so long.” Candace got into her Prius for the leisurely drive to the studio. At least that was one advantage of early-morning starts—less traffic. Her thoughts turned to her last kiss with Yoandy, and Candace daydreamed about their promised first date the following day.

When Candace arrived at the Culver City lot, Ricardo Adams was buying coffee from a cart outside the studio. As she stepped out of her car, he headed in her direction. He stopped in front of Candace before she made it to the studio doors
.
Ricardo looked tense, possibly even angry. She waited for him to speak first.

Ricardo cleared his throat. “You and Yoandy. It's got to stop.”

Candace gasped. “What . . . business is it of yours?”

“It's a family affair. His girlfriend is my wife's sister. Or have you forgotten about Kay?”

“What? Yoandy says they're just friends.”

Ricardo's upper lip was drawn back in a cynical sneer. “You believe that?”

Candace gulped but stood her ground. “Yes.”

“Kay is
very
important to my wife,” Ricardo said, his voice lowered, the tone darker. “And you of all people should know better than to bite the hand that feeds you.”

“Bite the hand . . . ? What the hell are you talking about?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Who'd you think suggested you for the part of Annika?”

This was getting a little surreal. “It wasn't you? Or Yoandy?”

“It was Dana. She saw your pilot, that
Downtowners
thing. She's the one who put me in touch with you.”

Candace didn't know what to say. Grace had mentioned Lucy's suspicions, but they'd both agreed that it was an odd coincidence that she'd ended up working on a production with the British woman's husband. But to find out that Alexander had actually picked her? That was creepy. “Oh.”

“Oh? Is that all?”

“I'm, ah, um, grateful,” she replied. “O-obviously.”

If not for the connection to Lucy, Candace would have
been excited to know that a movie star of Dana Alexander's stature even knew she existed. But that the woman had been the one to suggest her for a big-break TV role? And kept quiet about it? That was a total surprise. Not at all the way Hollywood people usually behaved from what Candace knew. But then again, Dana Alexander wasn't the kind of person who'd be reluctant to call in a favor, now that she wanted one.

“Kay and Yoandy are together,” Ricardo said firmly. “You're not here to meddle; you're here to work. So work.”

As Candace watched him walk away, she realized that her skin was tingling, as though she'd been slapped. Just the same, she made herself stroll confidently into the studio, a little way behind Ricardo. When she spotted Yoandy at the breakfast buffet, she turned away, hoping that he hadn't noticed her arrive. Ricardo had reprimanded her as though she'd been having an illicit affair with Yoandy. The only explanation she could imagine was that Kay must be lying about her relationship with Yoandy—talking it up. Even though this meant that Ricardo's accusation was way off base, she felt its sting.

She managed to avoid Yoandy until lunchtime—they had no scenes together that day and she needed some time to figure out how she felt about Ricardo's proclamation. But as she halfheartedly picked at her gluten-free Pad Thai, she saw him approaching her. Casting around for a possible escape route, Candace found none. When she realized that their encounter was inevitable, she straightened up, steeled
herself. After all, maybe he'd had the same warning.

Close up, though, she saw that his eyes were full of gentle concern. “Candace, what's happened? You look worried.”

Nervously, she glanced over his shoulder. Ricardo was in plain sight, over by the main set. He was looking right at them. “We can't,” she whispered. Miserably, she closed her eyes. “And I can't go on a date with you tomorrow.”

“Really? I thought you were excited.”

“I was,” Candace started. Yoandy looked crestfallen but Candace was fully aware of Ricardo's eyes burning into her. “But it was a bad idea. It just has to be this way.”

“Give me one reason why it's a bad idea.”

“Kay,” said Candace, so quietly that it was practically a hiss. “Ricardo keeps saying that Kay Alexander is your girlfriend.”

Now he looked seriously upset. “Candace, Kay is not my girlfriend. I'm telling you the truth! Kay . . . she's a little unusual. We had a few dates, and that's all. Now she's texting me and calling me . . . inviting me. And Ricardo is a friend of my family, you know that. So I'm not gonna say no, am I? Okay, maybe Kay still thinks we have something but I haven't replied, I haven't called her back, and we
never
agreed to date.”

“Did you call her
nena linda
, too?” Candace said, pursing her lips.

Yoandy pulled back, frowning. “Are you kidding?”

Candace held up a hand. “I'm done.”

“Please,” he murmured reasonably. “At least let's talk. Come to my dressing room after we finish? Please, Candace?” He reached for her left hand, but she snatched it away, left him looking forlorn. “If you don't come, then I'll know you don't want me. And I promise to leave you alone.”

She looked past Yoandy's dejected eyes and saw Ricardo smirking at her. She was giving a convincing performance.

“Look, I'm sorry,” she said, backing away. “I've got to go.”

Candace didn't know if she should believe Ricardo or Yoandy. But in that moment, she didn't care whether Kay Alexander was Yoandy's girlfriend or some kind of delusional dater. She only knew that Yoandy had been forbidden. And in that moment, nothing and no one had ever seemed quite so irresistible.

In the absence of any scenes playing opposite Yoandy, Candace found herself daydreaming about the two of them together. She'd run through every detail: where he'd be standing when she came into his dressing room, what he'd say (not much), where he'd make her stand, where he'd put his hands, the slight rasp of his stubble on her lower lip, how soft his mouth would feel against her own. Candace knew she would remember almost nothing of what they recorded that day.

At the end of the day, she made her way to Yoandy's dressing room, where she found him buttoning closed a crisp, white linen shirt.

She hesitated, standing in the doorway watching him. But instead of approaching her, touching her, kissing her, Yoandy kept his distance. He regarded her with a tight, pained expression.

“Candace. Why didn't you mention that you're underage?”

For a moment, Candace balked. It was the last thing she'd expected to hear him say. “That? I'll be eighteen in five months. You're not so much older,” she said, finally approaching him. “And anyway, mister, what makes you so sure you're getting any, ever?” She finished with a gentle pinch of his cheek.

To her surprise, when she looked up at his face she saw utter sorrow.

“Ricardo and me,” Yoandy began, “we talked.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” she said caustically. “What did that tattletale have to say?”

“He warned me. He was very reasonable, actually. Said that I had to let Kay down nice and gentle—even if she's the one who's misunderstood our relationship. He reminded me that you're still in high school, that technically you're still a minor, that it could start a scandal, because I'm more than three years older.”

“With you, he's reasonable,” she observed. “With me, he makes threats.”

“
Amor
, listen.” He tried to touch her arm, but held off when she flinched. “The show's about to go on summer hiatus—we'll get a natural break from each other. Kay will have
time to understand the situation. Maybe it's better,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Until after your eighteenth birthday.”

“Yeah,” she said, defiant. “By then, I might like someone else.”

Yoandy gave a nod and crossed his arms, gazing at her with amused speculation. “It's possible. I'm pretty ugly.”

“Yeah, y'are,” she said with a hint of a smile. “But I'm not all that particular.”

“
Nena
, don't be cruel,” he said teasingly, pouting. “It's my father's fault I'm ugly.”

Candace couldn't resist chuckling at this. “But you inherited his musical talent, so there's that.”

Yoandy laughed, too. Then, as if he'd only just remembered, he stuck a hand into his jeans pocket and withdrew something that he kept hidden inside a tight fist. He took Candace's left hand and carefully unfurled her fingers, tenderly placing in the center of her palm a coiled necklace made from tiny yellow and ocher beads. “It's for you. From El Cobre, in Cuba; the colors of Our Lady of Charity.”

When she accepted it without hesitation, he visibly relaxed. Barely brushing the skin of her cheek with his lips, Yoandy kissed her. “It means we're for each other. I don't give this necklace to just any girl, Candace.”

Candace was a little overwhelmed at this. She closed her hand around the beads as she took a moment to recover, trying to appear nonplussed.

“I like you like this,” he whispered, bringing his mouth to the curve of her shoulder.

Suppressing a gasp of pleasure, Candace managed to say, “Oh sure, you like it when I'm speechless?”

She felt the flutter of his lips against her skin as he chuckled. Despite herself, she felt arms snaking around his neck, bringing him closer.

“Not speechless,” he protested.
“Impressed.”

“You're so full of it,” she murmured, bringing her lips against his, shutting him up.

Candace's heart was still racing when she left the corridor leading from Yoandy's dressing room. Across the soundstage she sensed Ricardo's eyes on her, baleful and suspicious, but she ignored him and headed straight for the parking lot. What Candace needed right now was some time alone on the beach, or maybe ice cream with her sister.

As Candace strode to her Prius, a majestic white Cadillac had just slowed to a standstill outside the studio. She recognized it immediately. Not only the car, but the driver. With one elbow poked casually out the window, it was quite clearly Maya's aunt. And in the front passenger seat, dressed in an elegant, short-sleeved white dress with a single vertical red and black stripe, was Dana Alexander.

Maya's aunt worked for Dana Alexander.

Why had Maya never mentioned this?

It was a baking-hot day, the temperature still rising at eleven thirty, the sun a harsh diamond in a sky devoid of even a wisp of cloud. Beyond the pale expanse of sand, the sea was a mirror. On the balcony of the beach house, Paolo, Lucy, and John-Michael were eating a late, lazy breakfast. Candace and Maya had both left before Paolo had woken; Candace for the studio and Maya for her meeting in Napa.

“
You're
getting a tattoo, Mr. King?” Lucy hadn't bothered to hide her skepticism. “Who's doing it, Luisito's buddy?”

Paolo nodded while munching his toast.

“He does good work,” Lucy acknowledged. “Although if they find out he's tattooing under-eighteens they'll have to fire him, so keep it zipped afterward, okay?”

“What about shopping for the Fourth of July?” John-Michael interrupted, looking up from his bowl of Cinnamon Grahams.

“Plus, Paolo, I distinctly remember you promised to clean up the yard,” Lucy reminded him. “It's a mess, ever since that goddamn party. Ariana could've done something about that,” she observed tartly. “But then, I guess she wouldn't have been able to spy on us inside the house.”

“Ariana was
spying
on us?” Paolo said, startled. The spike in his pulse astonished him. Just the idea that anyone might be interested in his secrets was kind of horrifying. “
That's
why you kicked her out yesterday? When were you gonna mention that?”

Paolo had completely assumed that she had finally seen sense and asked a long-overdue houseguest to move on. He'd have done it a week ago, at least. The house was cramped for six tenants, let alone seven.

“Oh, I doubt
you
even made it onto Ariana's radar,” Lucy said. Her eyes narrowed briefly. “Although, dude . . . kind of a guilty look you got on your face right now.”

Paolo scowled. “I value my privacy, like anyone else. Why would anyone want to spy on us, of all people?”

He watched John-Michael and Lucy exchange a wary look. “How long d'you have?” Lucy groaned. “Look, basically, the girl was in the house to keep an eye on me. She knew stuff about me, from rehab. I saw something when I was a kid—well,
may
have seen something.”

“Seen what? Sounds serious,” Paolo said. The relief at finding out that this couldn't involve him was instant, and led to immediate curiosity about what it did involve.

“I may have seen who really killed Tyson Drew,” Lucy admitted.

As the words settled into him, Paolo glared at them both. It was obvious that John-Michael knew exactly what Lucy was talking about. “You saw who really killed Tyson Drew? Man, you have to tell the police.”

“And it wasn't Grace's father,” Lucy added with a guilty tilt of her head.

“Grace's
father
. . . ?” Paolo said, struggling with the implications of yet another bombshell. “Since when was he even involved?”

“You should maybe ask her,” Lucy said.

Grace appeared at the top of the staircase, startling Paolo. He hadn't heard her climbing the stairs. In a fragile voice she said, “Ask me what?”

Paolo could only stare, feeling a little stupid to be caught gossiping about something so serious.

“You should go with him to get the tattoo, Grace,” Lucy said with a careful glance at Paolo. A signal. “Our boy Mr. Disney Channel here is getting his lily-white skin inked—that's not something you see every day. I'd come too but I'm doing
that thing
I promised you I would do.”

“Yeah, Grace, go with,” John-Michael chimed in, a little too quickly. “Paolo, leave me your keys and I'll do the shopping.”

Paolo took his car keys from his pocket and tossed them over to John-Michael. “Don't forget the fireworks,” he
mumbled. “It's not the Fourth without something going up in smoke.”

Lucy and John-Michael either wanted Grace out of the house—which didn't make any kind of sense. Or else, John-Michael, like Lucy, was in on the “secret” that Grace had a thing for Paolo, and both were trying to make something happen.

Paolo watched as Grace came to an apparently reluctant decision. “Okay,” she said. “If you're sure you don't want my help with
the thing
, Lucy.”

“I'm fine,” Lucy came back. “Like I said, I'll get to it.”

As Paolo and Grace made their way along the boardwalk, Grace seemed distracted. He snuck a glance at her face a few times as they walked and it looked like she was in another world. Not what he'd have expected, if she really did like him.

“What's the thing that Lucy has to do today?” Paolo asked to break the tension.

“Oh, something she promised to do,” Grace replied.

Paolo added, “Does it have anything to do with your father?”

He waited for her to reply, but nothing.

Great. For a girl who is supposed to be into me, Grace seems pretty reluctant to share.

“You know,” she mused. “I don't get why you're getting a tattoo. You want to be a lawyer, or a tennis pro? A pro with tattoos, I can see, but a lawyer?”

“I
am
a tennis pro,” Paolo said. “The question is, do I always want to make my living being a tennis pro? Or do I want to be a lawyer?”

She stopped walking and faced him. “Well, do you?”

He shrugged. “Be a lawyer? Yeah, I guess so.”

“Then why get a tattoo? Is it for Lucy?” Grace shielded her eyes as she watched him, then shook her head. This time there was no doubt about it—disappointment.

She couldn't meet his gaze. “I know you like Lucy,” she began.

She still wouldn't answer his question! He was beginning to feel bad for asking about her dad. Clearly, the subject was too painful to address.

Her voice was small and very slightly broken and he wanted to put both arms around her, in that moment, and tell her that no, he didn't like Lucy so much, not now anyway. But what did he have to offer Grace? It was too early to know how he felt about her. Paolo had a strong sense that with this girl, he couldn't afford to make such a misstep.

“I do like Lucy,” Paolo said as he led Grace to the edge of the boardwalk, where they found a place to sit. There was no point in lying. Grace deserved the truth. Might as well engage on the only subject she seemed to want to talk about. “But Lucy, she doesn't like me, anyway, not like that. Nothing happened between us. It's the truth.”

Finally, Grace looked up at him. It could have been his imagination but Paolo thought he saw a glisten of moisture in her eyes. “You're over her?”

“Totally,” he said softly.

“Then why're you getting the tattoo?”

Surprised, Paolo said, “You really think that's about Lucy?”

“She likes body art, piercing, all that punk stuff. I've heard her say you'd look good that way.”

“It's not for Lucy,” he told her firmly. He really didn't care how Lucy felt about his tattoo. The thought struck him with a forceful energy, like a ray of sunshine breaking through mist. It wasn't for any girl.

Paolo hadn't analyzed the whole tattoo thing as deeply as Grace. Just that he'd seen the designs at the parlors on the boardwalk and over the past few weeks he'd started to get this feeling, like his skin was calling out to be marked, to be different.

“Then why?” Grace said. He could feel her eyes taking him in, roving across every exposed inch of his upper body. Like the gentlest of breezes, it sent a faint shiver through him.

Grace had a point; why was he about to get his flesh bruised and stabbed, hundreds of times, maybe even a thousand?

“I want . . .” he replied, slowly constructing his answer, “to be different. Not from everyone else—from myself.”

She considered this for a moment. “You won't be different. It's not what's on the outside that matters, Paolo. I thought you would understand that.”

But I'm not the same
, he wanted to say.
That's the lie of all
this smooth, unmarked skin. It makes me look the same as I was, no different. And I'm not. Inside, I'm different. Meredith did that to me. I did that to me.

“I'm . . . I'm not the same person I was six months ago,” Paolo ventured cautiously. He wanted to be honest with Grace, he really did, but there were things that he couldn't ever share. Not with any woman in his life. Not with anyone. He shouldn't even have told John-Michael.

Unconsciously, Paolo rubbed his still-untouched left bicep with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Sometimes it felt like his guilt had to be written on his face, like everyone knew how he'd left Meredith on that road. Well, now it would be written on his body—for anyone who could understand his code.

“Paolo,” Grace said with difficulty. This time, there were definitely tears. “None of us are the same person as six months ago.”

Tentatively, he dared to ask what he was dying to know. “Gracie. Is there something going on with your dad?”

“He's . . . my father is . . .” Grace was obviously having a hard time spitting this out. She couldn't meet his eyes.

Paolo took her hand in his lightly. He felt his heart shudder as he waited for her next words. “Gracie, please. Tell me.”

“Paolo,” she said, looking up with difficulty, “my father . . . is on death row. And they've set a date for his execution. In less than two weeks, they're gonna execute him.”

Paolo was still for several seconds as it all came crashing together. Their drive up to San Quentin. Grace's letters to Dead Man Walking. How upset she'd seemed after she and John-Michael had returned from the second trip to the prison. “Grace,” he said breathlessly, opening his arms. “I'm so sorry.”

He gathered her close then and just held her against his chest, soothingly caressing the soft skin of her shoulders with his thumbs. Grace was quiet, not crying exactly. She released only a muffled sob that quickly abated. But through her shirt, he could feel the thudding of her heart.