Incriminated (9 page)

“Man, I'd sure like to dive into that pool.”

Paolo eyed the broad stripe of blue that stretched through the Outer Peristyle garden, toward the Doric pillars at the far end of the fake Roman villa. Maybe if he could immerse himself in that glassy, turquoise water, he'd be able to shift the anxiety that seemed to have settled on him since that horrible night in Malibu Canyon.

He fumbled with the leaflet they'd been handed at the start of Van Buren High School's tour. It was the first activity of a summer school program he'd promised his parents he'd join. They didn't want their son to spend 100 percent of his time training for the tennis tournaments in July, and while Paolo still had ambitions aside from being a tennis pro, he had to go along with what they wanted. Or else his parents might stop funding his emancipated lifestyle—the last thing he wanted them to do.

John-Michael had gamely agreed to join him in a college-prep course enticingly titled “Art History—Beauty Meets
Brutality.” He wasn't obligated by any kind of parental edict—John-Michael's funds came directly from an inherited trust fund that was set up to pay for his education and living costs until he was twenty-five. In fact, JM had chosen the course.

The two boys split away from the rest of the class, who went inside the gallery for a lecture on Byzantine art.

“Even for a guy with boatloads of cash, it's pretty weird to re-create a burned-out Roman villa,” John-Michael said. He glanced at Paolo, who seemed just as out of it as when he'd left that morning for his daily training session at the tennis club. “So are you on some new diet?”

“Just don't feel like eating.” Paolo reeled a little, taken aback by the sudden switch in conversation. “Why the interest in my diet?”

“Because now that I look at you,” John-Michael said, suddenly earnest, “you've lost some weight. Your cheekbones are more prominent. Also, your clavicle.”

“My
clavicle
?”

John-Michael touched a wary finger to Paolo's skin, just below his throat. “You're hardly eating these days.”

“I am a little preoccupied,” Paolo confessed.

“It's
starve-yourself
bad? What'd you do? Kill someone?”

Paolo glowered at him but said nothing.

“The suspense is killing me.” John-Michael leaned against one of the pillars of the peristyle and faced his friend squarely. “You ever gonna tell me what went down that night in Malibu Canyon?”

Paolo couldn't look him in the eye. “You said you preferred not to know.”

John-Michael gave a nod. “I changed my mind. I've never seen you like this. Walking around like you're on eggshells, skipping out on some of your tennis training. Something has gotten into you.”

Carefully, Paolo replied. “If you don't know, you'll never have to lie.”

“Jeez, dude, who would I have to lie to?”

Paolo said nothing.

John-Michael continued, “Paolo, listen, I was happy to help out. There's nothing illegal about putting gas in your car and driving it home. If anyone asks, it was you. I don't have to say anything about it ever. That's always my preferred strategy when it comes to the cops anyway, but really, I deserve to know.”

Paolo gave a quick nod, glanced around. This wasn't a conversation he could risk having overheard. His skin prickled from the sensation that he was being observed. With every day that passed, one quiet reminder sounded more insistently in his mind:

Somebody knows. It's all going to come out.

“The thing is, Paolo, let's say it comes to it. Who'd I be keeping quiet from? The cops? Or someone else?”

Paolo turned away without bothering to respond.

But John-Michael circled him until he could look him in the eye. “Did you piss off someone important? Some rich guy with his own private army?”

Paolo was confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You seem scared, Paolo. Which makes me think this is really serious. I thought you were just trying to get out of a situation at the country club, maybe with someone who you shouldn't be seen with.”

“That's fine—keep believing that.” Paolo allowed a little hostility into his voice. Is this the only reason John-Michael had suggested coming out into the garden—so he could interrogate him?

“You can trust me. I'm involved now. If I'm going to be committed I need to know what the deal is, so I can stick to the story and cover my own ass.”

Paolo glared, disbelieving. “You really want this?”

Slowly, John-Michael nodded. “Yeah. Lay it on me. I can handle it.”

Paolo took a couple of quick breaths and exhaled rapidly, as though warming up for a race. After a moment, he began to recap what happened that night in the hills—the older woman, the hit-and-run, the borrowed cell phone, everything.

And John-Michael held his breath for a long moment, finally gasping, “Seriously? Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I was. Meredith was wasted. I got out of there, man. There was no way they were gonna find the guy who killed her. But there'd be questions about me. Why I was with her, all that.”

John-Michael made a clicking noise with his cheeks. “This isn't Saudi Arabia, dude. Adultery isn't a crime. I
mean it's frowned upon, but . . .”

“It was more complicated than that.”

“In what way?”

Paolo sighed. “I prefer not to say.”

John-Michael seemed to consider. “You see any other witnesses?”

“You think I'd have risked walking away if I had?”

“You figure the cops will think she was alone?”

Paolo nodded and said despondently, “That's the general idea.” He started to walk along the terra-cotta tiles around the central reflecting pool. After a second, John-Michael followed.

In a low voice Paolo said, “The problem is, the security camera at the country club might have spotted me getting into her beamer.”

“Ah. It's making sense now. Hence getting me to supply your alibi.”

“Meredith didn't turn on the GPS,” Paolo said, “in case her husband checked the car to find out where she'd been. She was pretty careful about who saw us talking. But the parking lot is a potential blind spot.”

“Anything you can do about it? I mean, you work there, don't you?”

“I thought of that,” Paolo said, nodding. “I tried to get into the security room when I was training yesterday. But there was never a moment when it wasn't occupied.”

“If you've got a chance to steal that tape, or erase the hard drive or whatever system they use, you've got to do
that, Paolo,” John-Michael said. “If the cops are wondering if anyone was with her, they'll probably ask at the country club.”

“I didn't sign into the club that day. I didn't have a lesson. Neither did she, so there's no reason the cops would think she'd done anything but drive down from Montecito and head for her cabin in Malibu Creek.”

“Alone? Who does that?”

Paolo shrugged. “Why would the cops care? They'd probably just figure she was meeting someone at the cabin.”

“And that ‘someone' will never come forward,” John-Michael concluded. “Meanwhile, if anyone does look at the footage from the parking lot at the club, they'll see someone who looks like you coming back in the taxi, putting gas in the tank, and then driving away.”

Mechanically, Paolo said, “Exactly. If anyone asks, I just say I ran out of gas.”

John-Michael couldn't stop a note of admiration from entering his voice. “You brilliant bastard. You figured out that whole alibi, made it happen using a stolen cell phone, just after you'd seen your girlfriend killed by a hit-and-run driver, all on the slim possibility that someone's gonna check the security footage at a tennis club that no one even knows she was at?”

“She was
not
my girlfriend, man,” Paolo said resentfully. “Of
course
I thought about the security footage! The first thing I thought about was who might have seen me with her. That's basic self-preservation! I did the only thing I
could think of fast. Something that gives me a legitimate reason to be getting in that BMW and getting out of it before Meredith heads for the hills.”

“Man, that's stone-cold.”

This time, Paolo remained silent. Was it obvious to John-Michael that he was glad this woman was dead? Maybe not with the way it had happened, but he was relieved she was out of his life. Relieved enough to feel guilty, to wonder when the day was coming that a detective would knock on the front door, walk in to find Paolo in the kitchen, whipping up a strawberry-flavored protein shake and believing his problems were behind him. Thus far Paolo had failed to find any follow-up to the initial, one-line report of Meredith's death on the internet. But maybe it was too soon?

“Try not to worry, Paolo. You've got to take each day as it happens. I know how you must feel. But think of this: every day they don't come looking for you is a bonus. The more time goes by, the less likely it is that they'll connect you to the accident.” John-Michael knelt down, tugged at a bay laurel leaf on a neatly trimmed shrub near the water's edge. He pulled it off the branch, twisted it, and crushed the leaf, raising it to his nose to inhale the fragrance. “Mmm. Makes me want to cook some chicken Parmesan.”

Paolo struggled to summon an expression of hope or relief, anything to give John-Michael the impression that his words had taken effect. But he couldn't.

The afternoon hadn't taken Paolo's mind off anything.
Confession was supposed to lighten a burden, wasn't it? Yet all Paolo felt now was a faint, queasy sensation.

Would today's admission someday come back to haunt him?

Maya arrived home before Paolo and John-Michael returned from the Getty. When she saw that Grace was alone in the room they both shared with John-Michael, she closed the door. Grace stopped reading Junot Díaz's
Drown
to look up at Maya, who paced a little and let her jacket and books fall where she dropped them.

“You're gonna pick those up, right?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Maya made a halfhearted attempt to scoop up a discarded book. Then she turned to Grace. On her face was a deepening blush. “Can I get some advice?”

Grace closed her paperback on a bookmark. “Oh, you want my advice now? Does that mean you're done giving advice to me?”

Maya flushed. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Gracie, that wasn't anything personal. I'm sorry about your father, really I am. But it's not something you should keep a secret from your own sister. I don't even understand how you've
managed to keep it quiet this long.”

Grace sat up, sweeping Maya with a calculating look. “It's not my secret, though, Maya, is it? There are other people involved. My mom, for one. Candace's dad.”

“Oh,” Maya said. She hadn't thought about that. “God, I'm an idiot, aren't I? I bet it wasn't even your idea to keep it a secret.”

Grace shrugged a little. Maya's admission seemed to have relaxed her. “No. But I'm part of it now. I don't like it, either.”

“You will tell her, though, won't you?”

“Candace is so busy with the TV show now, I don't see much of her. I will tell her, Maya. I'll have to, soon.”

“Why?”

Grace blinked a couple of times, as though she was holding back tears. She smiled a wan smile and swallowed hard. “The universe has a way of getting its own way.”

“That's BS,” Maya said. “Don't believe in the ‘universe.' You make your own fate.”

“You believe that?”

“Of course,” Maya said. She sat on the floor between their beds. “I'm trying to take control back over my own life. You remember Jack Cato, my tutor?”

“British guy, I passed him in the hallway,” Grace said. “You went to a business breakfast or something.”

Despite the residual annoyance at Jack's announcement about his ex, Maya was slowly returning to her original feelings of disbelief and euphoria at the result of her
presentation. She found herself smiling. “Yep.”

“How'd that go?”

“Extremely, amazingly well,” Maya said, her smile widening.

“Seriously?”

Blithely, Maya replied, “Yeah, I basically ruled. Two investors want to back me. Oh, and I kissed Jack.”

Grace said, “Pardon me?”

“I totally kissed my tutor. But take it easy, turns out he's not into the idea of a high school girlfriend.”

Before Grace could ask what happened, the door behind Maya opened. She turned, ready to snap at the interruption, but held her tongue when she saw it was Ariana.

“Oh, hey, guys. Say, d'y'all know when Lucy might be home?”

Ariana was everywhere, all the time, and Maya and Grace exchanged looks of irritation. Things were getting tense inside the house.

At least, that's how it seemed to Maya.

She wanted to say something to Lucy about it. But Lucy maintained a quiet, taciturn edge that made it difficult to broach any subject that Lucy herself hadn't raised. Throw in the fact that Maya had spent part of the last six months spying on her housemates, reporting back their every move—especially Lucy's—and the guilt made it impossible. That's if she and Lucy even crossed paths. Ever since school finished, all Lucy seemed to do was stay in bed until around two in the afternoon and then leave for some kind
of appointment—Maya assumed it was something musical.

Her other option was to encourage her housemates' frustration with Ariana's extended stay. Like when Candace had asked bluntly, “So Ari, you get a job yet?”

It was like water off a duck's back, though. Ariana would just reply with a snake-eyed smile and give a throaty chuckle. “Honey, this town isn't ready for ol' Ariana, not yet.”

The excitement of meeting those investors fueled another long night of coding. Around two in the morning she fell asleep, but woke too early—7:10. Her mind wouldn't stop spinning, mentally solving coding glitches in Promisr, until she knew that only food, caffeine, and her laptop would do the job.

On the stairs outside the front door, she heard voices from the kitchen. The window had to be open. A tinny voice, distorted by the speakerphone of someone's cell, was saying, “Bloody well make friends with them! How hard is it, honestly? You're only a couple of years older than them.”

The accent was undeniably British. It sounded familiar but Maya couldn't place it.

“I'm doing my best,” Ariana managed to reply.

“Find that bottle of nail polish,” the woman said firmly. “Or make damn sure she didn't keep it. Do that, and then get out of there.”

Ariana gasped. There was silence. Maya guessed that whoever Ariana had been talking to had hung up.

On the spiral staircase, Maya stalled. She didn't dare
take another step, either toward the kitchen or back to the second floor.

That voice. It had sounded almost exactly like . . . no.

It couldn't be.

Dana Alexander?

Maya gripped the handrail tightly and held her breath until she couldn't anymore.

She strained to hear any further sounds from Ariana in the kitchen. She heard the tap run, water slapping against the metal sink. Then she heard a chair being shifted, movement back toward the living room.

The muscles of Maya's legs tensed. If Ariana headed upstairs to the bathroom, she'd definitely catch her on the stairs. Ariana would know that someone had heard the conversation, or at least part of it.

She heard the front door opening and made her decision. Maya bolted back into her room, slipped under the quilt, and buried her face in the pillow, pretending to be asleep. She held still as Ariana's footfall sounded on the landing outside and paused outside the door. Was she listening? Would she dare to open the door and confront the three sleeping roommates?

Maya's heart pounded, ricocheting inside her rib cage.

Ariana was in the house to spy on Lucy. Which meant that Dana Alexander wanted more than Maya was able to provide—someone to directly interrogate and maybe even provoke Lucy.

Or that Dana no longer trusted Maya.