Someone Is Watching (24 page)

“From what?”

Another pause. Another half-truth. “Legal assistant.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Damned if I know.” I’m grateful when she laughs.

“Probably why you got laid off,” she says.

My turn to laugh. I like Elena, I decide. She deserves better than Paul Giller.

“Seriously,” she says. “Just what does a legal assistant actually do? And please don’t say ‘assists lawyers.’ ”

“Glorified secretary,” I offer instead.

This seems to satisfy her. “Must be hard. All those egos.”

I picture the lawyers of Holden, Cunningham, and Kravitz, as if assembled for a group photograph. Sean Holden pushes himself front and center, relegating everyone else to background, supporting roles. Even in my imagination, even knowing what I know now, the sight of him induces a palpable pull, and I feel my body sway toward him.

Without warning, a pregnant woman emerges from behind his back. At her side are two young girls, their faces blurred although their eyes are clear. They stare at me, accusingly. “Leave our father alone,” they warn silently. I will them to disappear.

“So what happened?” Elena is asking. “Was your firm downsizing?”

“Actually, I got sick,” I say, retrieving my footing and remembering why I’m here. “Pneumonia.” I lift my eyes to hers, hoping she’ll take the bait, tell me about Paul Giller’s recent hospital stay.

“No kidding. And they fired you for that?”

“I missed a lot of work.”

“I don’t think they’re allowed to fire you for getting sick. I
realize you know a lot of lawyers, but I have a cousin who’s an attorney and he’s really good. Maybe you should speak to him.”

I flinch, pull my hand away.

“Sorry,” she says. “Did I nick you?”

“No. It’s okay.”

“His name is Peter Sullivan. My cousin, that is. He’s with Ron Baker and Associates. You know them?”

Luckily, I’ve never heard of Ron Baker and Associates. Miami has hundreds of law firms, maybe even thousands.

“So, what firm were you with?”

I hesitate, coughing into the side of my arm in order to buy time. “Bennett, Robinson,” I offer, combining the first names of two well-known firms.

“Don’t know them. I think you should call my cousin,” she says, more emphatically than she did the first time, guiding my left hand to the soapy water and starting work on my right. “Sounds like you have a good case for wrongful dismissal. Avery …”

I look around to see who else has entered the room.

“Avery?” she says again, which is when I realize she is talking to me.

“Oh, sorry.”

“Forget your name?”

“You were saying?”

“That pneumonia is one nasty piece of work,” she says. “My mother had it a few years back. And then this guy I know was in the hospital with it a little while ago.”

This guy I know?

A little while ago?

“He was really sick with it. They had him on IVs, the whole works.”

“That’s awful. Did he lose
his
job?”

“Nah. He’s an actor. He doesn’t work half the time anyway. He’s with this temp agency. They get him part-time work. Odd jobs. Nothing to do with acting. Hey, maybe that’s what you should do, sign up for something like that.”

“Maybe.” So we
are
talking about Paul Giller.

She begins chopping at my nails with an oversized clipper. “Your nails are really strong.”

I’m not sure if her remark is an observation or a compliment. I want to ask her more about
this guy she knows
but have to move slowly. “So, have you been working here long?” I venture, deciding to go off in another direction, then circle back.

“A couple of years.”

I take another cursory glance around. “Seems like a pretty nice place.”

“I like it.”

“You live around here?”

“Pretty close.”

“There’s so much construction,” I remark.

“Yeah,” she agrees, offering nothing further.

“Are you married?” What the hell, I think.

“No. You?”

“No.”

She finishes clipping my nails, begins filing them with the emery board. “Square or round?”

“What?”

“Your nails. Do you prefer them square-cut or round? Like diamonds,” she adds with a laugh.

“I don’t know.”

“I think round’s better, personally. They’re a little easier to take care of that way, and you obviously don’t spend a lot of time on your nails.”

I feel her rebuke like a slap on the wrist, and again, pull my hand away.

“Sorry. Did that hurt?”

“No. I just … Let’s go with round.”

“Round it is.” She resumes her filing.

“So, no special someone?” I prod, half-expecting her to tell me to mind my own business.

Elena stops filing, relaxing her grip on my fingers. She gets the
kind of wistful look in her eyes I probably get when I think of Sean. “Sort of. There’s this one guy. But it’s more an on-and-off kind of thing.”

I feel my heartbeat quicken. “The guy who had pneumonia?”

“How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess. You said he was in the hospital.”

“Yeah.”

“Was he there long?”

“Couple of days.” She shakes her head at the memory. “But he was flat on his back for weeks after that. Literally couldn’t get out of bed. I moved in. Took care of him. Nursed him back to health. You know what men are like when they get sick. It was pathetic.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I think it was August. Maybe late July. One month kind of blends into the next around here. You know how it is.”

I know exactly how it is. I also know it means Paul Giller was out of the hospital when I was attacked and doesn’t eliminate him as a suspect. I watch as she begins work on my cuticles.

“These really are an awful mess,” she says.

“I guess you can blame my ex for that.”

“How’s that?”

“Caught him cheating on me.”

“What happened?”

“I had to go out of town for a few days. Came back earlier than I expected. Earlier than
he
expected,” I clarify, watching Elena’s face. “Found him in bed with my best friend.”

“Shit. Why is it always the best friend? What’d you do?”

“Kicked him out.”

“And your friend?”

“What friend?”

She nods. The nod says,
I’ve been there,
although she says nothing more. If she suspects Paul Giller of cheating on her, she’s not about to confide in me. I’ve likely learned everything of significance from Elena that I’m going to.

I try a few more questions, asking if she likes to travel, and she says, “No, not especially.” I tell her I’m thinking of using my enforced
free time to take a trip and ask if she can recommend anywhere. She says San Francisco is always nice. I ask if she’s been there recently and she says no. I’m wondering about the trip she just returned from, but I can’t think of a way to ask about it without tipping her to the fact that I’ve been spying on her boyfriend’s apartment and that I saw her unpacking her suitcase. Besides, what difference does it make where she’s been? The only thing that matters is that Paul Giller was not in the hospital at the time I was attacked, that I can’t eliminate him as a suspect.

“Can you relax your hand a little?” Elena asks as she starts applying color to my nails. “Actually, a lot,” she qualifies. “You’re stiff as a board.”

“Sorry.” I do my best to comply. “Better?”

“It’ll have to do.”

We sit in silence for the remainder of my manicure. When we are done, I glance down at my hands. It looks as if someone has chopped off the tips of my fingers and all that remains are ten bloody stumps.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“Very nice.”

“They need to dry.” She puts a small heating device on the table and directs my hands inside it. “I hope you don’t have to rush off anywhere.”

I suddenly remember that Claire is waiting for me at Carlito’s Auto Repair. What’s the matter with me? How could I have forgotten this? I look down at my wrist, but I’m not wearing a watch. “What time is it?” I ask, much louder than I intended, so that Elena recoils, clearly alarmed.

“Almost ten o’clock.”

“Shit!” I pull my hands from the small heater, jumping to my feet with such speed that the chair in which I’ve been sitting topples over on its side.

“Careful with your nails,” Elena warns.

“I have to go.” I grab my purse.

“You can pay at the front desk,” she calls after me.

I have no idea how much I owe, nor the time to ask, so I reach
into my purse and pull two twenty-dollar bills out of my wallet, throwing them toward the reception counter as I race out the door. “Why do I always get the crazy ones?” I hear Elena saying to the woman with the gold-hoop earrings as the door slams shut behind me.

—

“Where the hell have you been?” Claire demands as I burst through the front doors of Carlito’s On Third.

“I’m sorry. I got a little side-tracked.”

“Oh, my God,” she says, the color draining from her face as she stares down at my hands. “What have you done?”

My eyes follow hers to my fingers, where I see what is left of my manicure, polish streaking across the backs of both my hands like rivulets of dried blood. “I’m fine. It’s just nail polish.”

“Polish?” Claire grabs my fingers and checks for herself.

“It’s a long story.”

“It better be a good one.”

“Miss Carpenter?” a man asks, approaching.

My sister falls silent, and for the first time I take note of my surroundings. We are standing in what appears to be a giant glass bubble. The walls on all sides are curved and transparent, so that it feels as if we are not inside at all, but standing right in the middle of the busy outside corner. The floor is limestone and has the look and feel of a sidewalk, albeit one with strategically placed, colorfully woven area rugs. A variety of fake trees provide accents of luscious green. The buttery yellow leather furniture in the reception area is ultramodern, all sloping lines and gentle curves. A gorgeous, dark-skinned young woman sits at a Lucite reception desk, the computer in front of her seeming to float in mid-air. She is wearing a deep purple T-shirt with a plunging neckline, the not-so-subtle projection of her implants on display, as if she is saying, “I paid for them. I’m going to show them off.” I wonder at such confidence. I worry about it. About how it might be misinterpreted.

I was completely covered up the night I was attacked, I remind myself. There was nothing at all provocative about what I was wearing. I should be ashamed of such thoughts. I know better. I know that rape is not about sex, that it is about power, fury, and hate.

“Miss Carpenter?”

I find myself staring at a nice-looking man in his late thirties, with straight brown hair falling into hazel eyes that crowd the bridge of his aquiline nose. Although it is only mid-morning, his cheeks already look as if he could use a shave. Despite his easy smile, this premature five o’clock shadow casts a somewhat sinister aura. He is wearing jeans and a blue-and-white checked shirt, a nameplate—
Hi, I’m Johnny K
.—pinned to its breast pocket. Could Johnny K. be the man who raped me? I take a step back, inadvertently stomping all over Claire’s toes.

“Nice to see you finally got here. Your sister was getting worried.”

“Sorry.”

He laughs, as if I’ve just said something terribly clever. “Come on. Let me show you what we did to your car.”

Claire and I follow him out the back of the glass dome into a large concrete garage filled with luxury cars in various stages of repair. I note a chocolate-brown Mercedes hoisted high in the air, two men working on its undercarriage; I see a pale blue Jaguar being painstakingly repainted; I see a brand new, bright red Ferrari with a big dent in its side.

“Are you all right?” Claire asks. “You’re kind of pale. Do you want to sit down?”

I shake my head, counting at least six mechanics at work. With one exception, all are dark-haired, between twenty and forty, and of average height and weight. The lone exception is a man probably closer to fifty and balding, although he, too, is of average height and weight. Any one of these men could be the man who raped me.

“What are you thinking?” Claire asks, eyes narrowing.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” She gently squeezes my arm.

“As you can see,” Johnny Kroft explains, “we ironed out the dents and filled in the scratches, gave it a coat of fresh paint and a good washing, and voilà, as good as new. Great car. You ever want to sell it, you call me first.”

“I’ll never sell this car,” I tell him.

“No? Well, can’t say I blame you. Anyway, here’s your invoice.” He hands me the itemized list of charges. “You can pay the receptionist. I’ll have your car brought around front.”

Claire and I thank him and return to the main part of the building.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist says, “but we don’t accept personal checks. We take Visa, MasterCard, American Express …”

“I don’t have … they were stolen,” I say, as Claire pulls out her wallet and hands the young woman her credit card. “What are you doing?”

“It’s all right. I just came into some money.”

“No! That money was for you.”

She shrugs. “Easy come, easy go.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” I insist, knowing I have no other choice.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she says. “First, let’s get you home.”

We don’t go home.

Instead we find ourselves driving down Brickell Bay Drive, the ocean roaring along beside us, in the direction of South Beach. I suggested going for a ride as we pulled out of Carlito’s lot, and Claire quickly agreed. It would be good to get away from my apartment for a while, I reasoned, good to experience a change of scenery, good to put a smile back on my sister’s face.

“Is there a more beautiful strip of land anywhere in the world?” Claire asks, shifting gears with obvious enjoyment as I lean back in the passenger seat and inhale the sheer majesty: the cloudless skies, the towering palms, the sandy strip of beach, the thrilling expanse of deep blue sea.

It is the first time I have allowed anyone else to drive my car. Not even Heath has been permitted to get behind the wheel. I love my brother dearly, but even he admits he’s easily distracted and more than occasionally reckless. Where is he? I wonder again. It’s not like him to disappear for this long without so much as a phone call. Why haven’t I heard from him? Why hasn’t he returned any of the half-dozen messages I’ve left on his voice mail?