You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) (8 page)

“The money in the briefcase, Stevie. Use it.”

“We don’t know where it came from—”

“Stop arguing, and start dialing.”

The patrol car slowed to a stop in front of Colin’s apartment. The officer got out and shined a flashlight right at me.

“You’re at Colin’s?”

“I’m at Colin’s. Hurry it up.”

I popped my phone in my pocket and settled down to wait.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

WAITING AROUND AT a crime scene is not only not glamorous, it’s distinctly awful. For one thing, there’s no comfortable seating.

The first uniformed cop out of the car bounded up the steps to Colin’s apartment while the second one, a red-haired guy named Ulriki, took my statement, which was as close to the truth as I would get: he was my estranged husband, we were getting together tonight to talk, I showed up, and he was dead. I did not volunteer the words “Penelope Gurevich,” “blackmail,” or “Vin Behar.” One thing at a time, and right now the necessary thing was shutting the hell up.

The presence of cops attracted the attention of neighbors. The street went from lifeless to full of people in about ten minutes.

I realized we were in LA when I overheard one woman asking the man next to her, “Where are the cameras?” and the man replied, “Nah, I think this is for real.”

The second pair of cops blocked off the scene with yellow police tape. Then one of them, the only woman of the four, asked me for my statement again. I asked her if we could talk under the stairs, away from the growing crowd of people. She thought I wanted to get away from the noise. In reality, I needed away from the cameras that were coming out and focusing on me.

 
After I talked to the second cop, I stood in the shadows under the stairs and waited for the next time I had to tell the same damn story again. Stevie hadn’t called me back, which meant she didn’t have good news for me yet.

When the Ford drove up and double-parked behind the second patrol car, I knew two things: the homicide detectives had arrived, and I would be leaving soon. Either with police escort, or without.

The driver got out—thin, wiry, shorter than my one hundred and seventy-five centimeters. Under the street lights, his skin color looked Hispanic and he had the flattish nose of a Central American Indio. He had an empty expression that must have taken years to develop.

The second detective got out and I wondered whether he was free for dinner, and then whether I would be free to join him. Or at least out on bail. Forget dinner; I wanted to talk about breakfast. Great gods above, people really were better looking in Los Angeles. He was maybe a decade younger than his partner, taller, and muscular. I admit to being deeply shallow and preferring men who are in damn good shape, which he was. He seemed congenitally unable to smile. I was willing to work very, very hard on that problem. He glanced around the scene and stopped when he came to me. I saw the barest twitch in the side of his lips. A good sign. A very good sign.

Was being sexually attracted to one of the homicide detectives investigating your husband’s death a normal reaction? I’d ask Stevie, but at a question like that she’d blush and hide in a corner for a while. Until such time as she’d researched the answer in a couple hundred books, half of them in German, and had a prepared a treatise on the topic.

Then one of the uniforms pointed me out. My current object of serious lust glanced at me, and then said something to his partner, shielding whatever he was saying from view. From my view. But not before I saw that twitch flatten right out and the shoulders stiffen enough to indicate the shields were going up. Clearly, I should make other breakfast plans. And I needed to watch what I said to him. The most likely suspect in someone’s death is immediate family. A marriage like ours, doubly so.

I hoped Stevie was having luck finding me a lawyer. Any lawyer. Who was willing to accept a down payment of cash from an unknown source.

Once in my life, I needed to find out if there was an easier way to do something. There had to be. For once, I needed to try that option first.

The detectives walked toward me. My pulse raced and my solar plexus seized up, which meant my nervous system was in working order. My father used to say the only people who weren’t tense around the police were other cops and criminals.

My father: a man never nervous around cops.

After all, he had half of Scotland Yard on his payroll.

My affect when I’m nervous is to get languid. Relaxed. Some have used the word “cool” and others “patronizing,” but in my own defense I was raised to be patronizing—people were either of our class or they were below it. Just because my station in the world has fallen precipitously doesn’t mean all that early training went to naught.

When the detectives got to me, the badges came out with introductions. The tall one with the nice body and the not-so-nice scowl was Detective Samuel Gruen. The twitch in his lips developed into a hard stare. All right then—he would be playing the bad cop. His partner was Detective John Vilar. Vilar had a softer, less confrontational stance, and a sadder air. I wondered how long each man had been doing this job.

Vilar’s eyes were soft and brown. “Mrs. Abbott.” His voice as polite and sad as his demeanor suggested. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about your husband.”

Very nice. The power plays were starting. Excellent. I put on one of my tight half-smiles and looked at Vilar. “It’s Thorne. Drusilla Thorne. I don’t use Abbott.” I gave his partner a swift glance. Gruen didn’t change expression; he shifted his weight, and I could tell he’d wrapped up this case in his mind.

Vilar nodded sympathetically and made a note in his book. Along the lines of how I was obviously the murderer, perhaps. He wrote another line in gorgeous handwriting I couldn’t make heads or tails out of. As I’ve said, reading isn’t my strong suit. He looked up. “Ms. Thorne.” What a soothing, musical voice he had. “Can you tell us what happened?”

Gruen stepped backward and started walking around the area under the stairs, which was a not very subtle way of circling me. I felt intimidated, which I was sure I was supposed to. Now that he was not a Possible Prom Date, I was not in danger of being overly helpful. Not that I ever am, to be honest.

My father’s number-one rule echoed in my mind:
Never volunteer information
. Despite the fact that it came from my father, it was still good advice that has come in handy a number of times. “I don’t know what happened.” I spoke quietly, which made Detective Vilar lean in closer to me and Gruen stop pacing. “I think my husband’s been murdered.”

Gruen looked me up and down in a way that made me think maybe breakfast was back on. He stopped when he got back to my eyes. “That’s a nice outfit. You have something planned for today?”

I shook my head. “I like to dress well, Detective.”

He nodded, his gaze still on me. He had beautiful hazel eyes. “Do you often carry latex gloves in the pocket of your nice outfits?”

I believe the only reaction to have to that was:
Fuck
.

The gloves were showing.

“Don’t answer that.”

The voice startled both me and the good detective, and we turned to see who’d joined our little tête-à-tête.

The man standing there wore the most expensive suit I’d seen in quite a while. He wasn’t handsome—plain, with thinning blonde hair on top—but what he lacked in conventional attractiveness, he more than made up for with the most direct stare I’d seen in a while. He carried a dark leather briefcase and he looked as comfortable telling us what to do as, well, only a successful lawyer could be.

A lawyer.

My
lawyer.

Stevie’s supernatural powers could make a religious convert out of me.

“Nathaniel Ross. Good to see you again, Detective Gruen.”

Gruen gave him a malevolent look that made me damn glad he didn’t have me in an interrogation room.

Ross took me by the elbow. “I need to talk to my client.”

He started to pull me toward the street, where the lights and the cameras were, but I shook my head and pulled him toward the darker alley on the side of the house. I didn’t want to be seen.

What can I say? Acting guilty is a habit with me, formed at a tender young age. When I was, after all, guilty at least eighty-five percent of the time.

“You’re quite well-known, aren’t you?” I asked, smiling enough to seem flirtatious.

He shrugged, as if to say
Of course I am.
“My being your lawyer is going to make the cops look that much harder at you.”

I nodded. “So you’re expensive.” As if the shoes hadn’t told me that. “What on earth sort of payment did my sister offer you?”

Ross raised an eyebrow at me. “Sister?”

“My sister didn’t call you?”

“I don’t think he’s your sister, no.”

“He?” Fire of Hades, had Stevie managed to overcome her fear of leaving the house and of meeting strangers in order to ask Gary to help us? And he had said yes? “Does he have a name?”

“I’ll just say I was surprised he doesn’t have a stronger Spanish accent.”

And the answer became clear: “he” was Roberto. Roberto Montesinos, that is. A very wealthy man. Also, my stepfather, and most probably the man who had told my mother not to save me that night eleven years ago when I was covered with blood.
Now
he saw fit to get me a lawyer.

Roberto could not have known where I was for the last eleven years. So the question became: How had Roberto known I was in trouble so fast? And if he knew where I was, did my father?

I glanced up at the window of Colin’s apartment.

No. I was not going to go there. I smiled and nodded. “Ah. Of course.”

Ross held up a business card. Nice linen stock and raised printing. On both the front and the back were phone numbers in blue ink. He tapped the number on the back of the card. “You need to call him in the morning,” my lawyer said. “And then tomorrow you and I need to have a talk.”

“I’d prefer to talk to you first.”

“That’s what I said. But strangely, that point was non-negotiable.”

It wouldn’t be, not with Roberto. “And you’re not going to argue anything you’re not paid to.”

The lawyer’s eyes narrowed. “Something like that. Call after you’ve talked to him.”

I assumed the number on the front was his cell. I looked at him with a sideways glance. “I look forward to it, Counselor.” Though if I were being truthful, I wasn’t. At all. Of course, as a rule I’m not truthful, either.

#

Nathaniel Ross got the police to release me. Powers of persuasion beyond mortal ken perhaps. When they released me, it was 4:30 Tuesday morning. I took Sunset Boulevard for the long drive back to the guesthouse in Pacific Palisades. Sunset was empty, or nearly so. I didn’t think about that during my drive back. Nor did I think about how someone I knew, someone I’d been married to, had been brutally murdered tonight. I didn’t even think about how the detective who inspired such unclean thoughts had pegged me as the murderer.

No, I mulled over how to tell Stevie that Roberto was back in our lives in a big way. If the thought of dealing with him made me want to jump in my car and head for the Mexican border, it might blow one of Stevie’s circuits. She’d freak out or pass out. Or become a complete and utter mess, unable to take care of herself in the simplest ways.

Deep down, I suspected she had those little meltdowns to give me something to focus on when things got very, very rough. Which was very thoughtful of her, but I didn’t want her doing it when, for the first time in years, I wanted to have the damn meltdown instead.

The house was dark and Stevie was sitting in the living room, facing the kitchen. The phone was still clutched in her hand, resting on her knee. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out she’d been frozen in that exact position since I called. I flicked on the overhead lights and tried to smile. It was a complete and total failure as a facial expression.

“You’re back.” Her voice was full of fear, as though she were expecting me to hit her for not being able to do the impossible. Whereas I had gotten over that urge a decade ago. “I never found—”

“Everything’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”

“What happened?” she said.

“Colin’s dead.”

She gasped.

I told her Colin had been murdered, with none of the gruesome details. Not to spare her, surprisingly, but because I didn’t want to relive it again. Even so, I couldn’t wipe the mental image of his open eyes over a large and spreading red pool on the carpet any time soon.

I mentioned Behar’s appearance outside the apartment, what the cops asked me about, and, lastly, gently, the attorney who showed up.

“Courtesy of Roberto Montesinos.”

Stevie sucked in her breath and stared at me. I nodded.

I gave her the business card Nathaniel had given me. She glanced at both sides. “I have the feeling we’re going to need these phone numbers. Program them into my phone.”

She nodded as she put the card down on the coffee table. She’d memorized them with a glance. My poor little sister, who remembered every single thing she’d ever read. It was a wonder her brain didn’t explode.

Focus, Dru
. “I need to call Roberto in the morning.”

“If he comes to Los Angeles, you’ll need to meet him in person.”

If
he comes to Los Angeles. My sister, ever the optimist. Like there was a chance he
wasn’t
coming. “Yes, I will.”

The guesthouse was quiet after that. Not much to say. After eleven years and twice as many identities and untold amounts of covering our tracks, it was over. Our journey was over. We had reached the Pacific Ocean, and there was nowhere else to go. It was time to see Roberto.

“What time do you want me to wake you?” Stevie asked.

The sky was already lightening for sunrise. My hands were shaking from an overdose of adrenaline. On a bright new day when I needed to be fresh and alert, I wasn’t going to sleep. “I’m much too wound up. I’ll go for a run.”

She looked at me. Then she shrugged and nodded.

Running was the best way of starting my day off with a bang. While I changed into running clothes, Stevie went into the kitchen, hunched over her laptop. I opened the back door. “Be back in half an hour.”