Trust Me (21 page)

That night, Max couldn’t sleep. He lay in bed, staring up at the darkened ceiling, listening to the faint rumble of traffic
on the city streets below. When he closed his eyes, he saw Carly as she had looked that night in her apartment, her eyes bright,
her cheeks flushed, and her mouth soft and swollen from his kiss.

She sure as hell didn’t look like the kind of person who would hit an old man in the back of the head. The money provided
a motive, but that was not the same thing as evidence, and he was convinced that Carly Martin would not hurt a fly. In fact,
he thought dryly, if she did accidentally hurt one, she would probably rush it into emergency surgery. He simply couldn’t
imagine Carly trying to kill Henry Tremayne. Or anyone, for that matter. She didn’t even eat meat, for God’s sake.

He exhaled, in a long, frustrated breath, kicking back the tangled bedcovers. The suite was air-conditioned, but he felt overheated
and as restless as a feverish child. Ever since the night of their kiss, he had been plagued by memories of the feel of her
body against his. He had hoped that the desire was transient and would fade away under the prevailing forces of time and reason.
But if anything, it was getting stronger. More than once over the past week, he caught himself mentally following that kiss
through to its natural conclusion. Carly was the kind of woman who would look beautiful in the morning, waking up next to
him after a long, hot night of…

“Sleeping,” he said sharply, out loud to the dark room. Dammit.”

His judgment was in no way compromised by his physical attraction to Carly Martin, he told himself. Another man’s might have
been, but he had been around long enough not to make such a stupid, minor-league mistake. Hadn’t he?

He lay there for another moment, thinking, and then sat up. He hadn’t closed the curtains, and the yellow lights of the city
cast a faint glow into the room. He got out of bed, walked to the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed.

It rang six times before a man’s voice, foggy with sleep, finally answered. “Hello?”

“Tom. It’s Max.”

“Max? Everything all right?”

“I need you to do something for me.”

The lawyer cleared his throat. “Hold on, let me just change phones.” Over the long-distance line, Max could hear the rustle
of bedcovers and the soft sound of a woman’s voice. Belatedly, he remembered that on the East Coast, it was almost three in
the morning.

A minute later, Tom Meyer was back on the line. “Okay. What’s going on?”

“I want you to do two background checks for me. One on a woman named Pauline… something. She’s Henry Tremayne’s housekeeper.
I don’t know her last name.”

“I’ll get it. Who else?”

“Charlotte Martin. I want you to go ahead with a complete check on her. I need as much as you can dig up— personal, financial,
everything. And I want it as soon as possible.”

“Sure. I can get you the standard stuff—anything digital and public access—in a couple of days. If you want more than that,
it’ll take a little longer. I’ll probably need until sometime next week.”

“Fine. It’s the nonstandard information that I want. I know that you have a knack for getting it—and I don’t want to know
how you do it.”

Tom chuckled. “I have friends in the right places,” he said. “I’ll find out what I can. I’m not guaranteeing any of it to
be admissible in court, though. Just so you know.”

“I know. This is for my own use. Thanks, Tom. I’m sorry I woke you. Tell your wife that I’ll delete your home number from
my files.”

“No problem. I’ll call you on Friday with an update.”

Max hung up. He walked over to the window and looked down over the glittering lights of the city. He had no specific reason
to believe that Henry’s accident had been anything but an accident, albeit a mysterious one. He pictured Carly again, looking
at him with those big blue eyes of hers.
Call it insurance,
he thought. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his instincts. He did. But he especially trusted them when they were backed up
with facts.

When Carly’s doorbell rang on Tuesday evening, her first thought was of Max. He had a business dinner that night at the UCSF
research hospital nearby, and he said that he would stop by her apartment on his way back to the hotel. He wanted to talk
to her about something, he said, but had given no indication of what that was. Carly spent the day trying to rein in her imagination;
which kept presenting her with catastrophic situations, such as Max telling her that The Kiss had been a mistake, and that
he hadn’t been honest about the nature of his relationship with Nina.

The mysterious Nina had become a recurring theme in Carly’s thoughts over the past few days. In Henry’s red album, there had
been two pictures of Max holding the arm of a slender blond woman in impossibly high heels, and the scenes had burned themselves
into Carly’s memory. They were action shots, taken in succession as Max and the woman were walking into a restaurant. Henry’s
photographer had captured Nina in profile, golden hair falling over the shoulders of her black coat like a blaze of sunshine.
She was tall and very beautiful.

The doorbell rang again. “Okay, okay,” Carly muttered, wishing that she had a glass of wine to steady her nerves.

But it was Edie, not Max, standing on the small concrete porch outside her front door. Carly concealed her surprise. She had
forgotten to jot down a reminder that the girl would be coming over with her latest foundling, and it was pure luck that there
was half a pizza heating in the oven.

“Hey,” Edie said, in greeting. “I brought him. You want him inside, or out?”

She held one end of a braided nylon rope. The other end was attached to a tattered collar, which circled the neck of the most
astonishingly ugly dog that Carly had ever seen. It was not actually clear that the animal was a dog, but Carly had to assume
that it was, simply because she couldn’t imagine what else it could be. About the size of a football, it was covered with
matted tufts of gray-brown fur that obscured any sign of a face other than two pointed ears and a small black nose that looked
like a mashed prune. Four stumpy legs stuck out of its squat body, but Carly was unable to discern a tail of any kind.

“Uh,” Carly said, momentarily speechless. “Inside, I guess.”

“He’s okay. I named him Nero.”

“After the emperor?” It seemed like a stretch to Carly.

Edie shrugged. “He can use all the help he can get.” She leaned down and untied the rope from Nero’s collar. With a motion
that startled Carly, the dog shot forward into her apartment and crashed headlong into the side of the couch. He ricocheted
backward, then turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

“He doesn’t see too well,” Edie said.

“He’s housebroken?” Carly asked, hopefully.

“Yeah. He was at my friend’s place, and he was fine. He doesn’t like other dogs, though. Or cats. Or men. And sometimes he
bites.”

“Great,” Carly said dismally.

“Not people,” Edie clarified. “He only bites things. Table legs, mostly.”

“Where did you find him?”

“In the park. Somebody dumped him there.”

“Maybe he’s just lost. I’ll put up some signs and see if anyone calls.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Edie said. “He’s not exactly a show dog, you know?”

It was not hard for Carly to coax Edie into joining her for pizza. The girl followed her into the kitchen, where they found
Nero clamped on to the leg of Carly’s small table. He was not gnawing on it as much as he was attempting—and failing—to crush
it. His paws scrabbled on the floor as he increased his force, muttering and snuffling against the wood.

“Sorry about that,” Edie said. She reached into her black canvas bag and pulled out a short, battered stick. She knelt beside
Nero and seized him by the scruff of the neck. The dog froze, his jaws still locked on the table leg. “Neeero,” she said coaxingly.
“Puppuppup. Chew on this.”

Nero growled, deep in his throat, but surprised Carly by releasing the table leg. Gently, Edie tapped his snout with the stick.
There was a flash of crooked yellow teeth and pink gums as he seized it like a shark taking prey. He gave it a brief shake,
then scooted under the table and settled down into a lump, the stick gripped firmly in his jaws. He looked to Carly like a
small, badly stuffed cushion.

“It’s a security thing,” Edie explained. “He has an oral fixation.”

Carly smiled. “Don’t tell me that you’ve been reading Freud.”

The girl’s reaction was sudden and fierce. “Why, do you think I can’t read? I know who Freud is. I’m not stupid.”

“I don’t think that at all,” Carly said, surprised. “Do you like to read, Edie?”

“I go to the library sometimes. They don’t hassle me now that I look sixteen, but they used to call the truant officer when
I was there during the day.” She grinned. “I tried to tell them that I’m home-schooled, but they didn’t believe me. Wonder
why?”

The answer to that question was obvious. Edie was wearing one of her usual outfits, a thrift-store polyester dress over ripped
and grimy jeans, topped off with a battered fake-fur leopard-print coat. Her army-surplus boots were too big for her. Her
eyes were ringed with black makeup, and her bleached hair was so pale and fragile that the ends were shattered, like spun
sugar.

“How old are you?” Carly asked. The pizza was ready, and the spicy smell of food filled the kitchen. Edie watched her as she
pulled the tray out of the oven.

“Fifty,” Edie said. “I look good, don’t I?”

“Very,” Carly agreed, sliding a slice of pizza onto the girl’s plate. She hadn’t expected a straight answer. “How do you stay
so young?”

“Sleeping in the park keeps me connected with nature.” Edie looked mockingly at her. “You should try it.”

“Is that where you sleep? In the park?”

“I sleep anywhere I want to,” Edie said. “It’s great to be me.”

The shadow that Carly had seen on the girl’s jaw last week was indeed a bruise. The purple had faded into a dull greenish
yellow, still vivid under Edie’s translucent skin. Carly wondered what—or who—had caused it, but knew that it would be pointless
to ask.

Instead, she gave Edie another slice of pizza. The girl had devoured the first piece in three bites, and was gnawing on the
crust.

Between the two of them, they finished the rest of the pizza and leftover lasagna from the refrigerator. Edie’s unwillingness
to answer questions was not matched by a reluctance to ask them, and while they ate, she announced that she had been reading
a book about animal diseases, and proceeded to quiz Carly on the symptoms of everything from distemper to leukemia. The longer
they talked, the more obvious it became to Carly that Edie had basically memorized a first-year veterinary textbook.

“You know a lot about this,” she said as she got up to put their dishes in the sink.

“I told you I’m not stupid.”

“Have you thought about becoming a vet?” Carly asked.

“Sure,” Edie said. “I’ll pay for school with the money from my trust fund.”

“You don’t need a trust fund. There are scholarships and financial aid programs. That’s how I paid for school. You could do
it, too.”

“Is that all you have to do to be a vet? Memorize things? Anybody could do that.”

Carly ignored the gibe. “Some vet schools accept students out of high school for a six-year program. You would need to take
the GED test. Do you know about that?”

“Yeah,” Edie said, sounding sullen. “I could pass it if I wanted to. High school is for morons.”

“And you would need to get some experience working in a hospital or a clinic.”

“No problem. I’m such a wholesome American teen, it’ll be easy for me to walk in and get hired anywhere.” Edie stood up. “What
a load of bullshit.”

“I think that you could do it,” Carly persisted.

“What do you know?” The girl looked angry. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I’ve seen you almost every week for six months. I don’t know where you sleep or what you do all day, but I do know that you’re
one of the most naturally gifted animal handlers I’ve ever met. And you’re more than smart enough to make it through school—”

“You’re easy to impress.”

“It may be easy for you, but not just anybody can memorize a pathology textbook. I couldn’t. I still need to look up half
of the things that you just rattled off. If you wanted to surprise me, you did. You—”

The sound of the doorbell interrupted her. Edie was glaring at her. Carly took a short breath of frustration. It had to be
Max, and his timing couldn’t be worse. She didn’t want Edie to leave, not just then, when they finally seemed to be on the
verge of a breakthrough.

“There’s ice cream in the freezer,” she said, feeling as if she were trying to bribe a small child. It didn’t seem possible
that Edie would fall for it. But the girl made no move toward the door, which Carly took as a good sign. “There’s chocolate.
And strawberry, I think. Help yourself. I’ll be right back.”

M
ax had come directly from his meeting. His tie was loosened, but everything else was in perfect order, from his gray wool
suit to the shine on his shoes. He looked to Carly as if he had just stepped out of a magazine or a movie, and she felt breathless
at the sight of him. There was something absurd about having a man like that standing on her doorstep, next to the fish-shaped
wind chimes and the scrawny geranium, but there he was, nonetheless, and despite her general anxiety, she was delighted to
see him.