“You have circles under your eyes,” Cal said.
“I had a little trouble sleeping,” she said. “Just lay it on me. What do you know?”
“There was an accident, just as you suspected and feared. A cyclist was critically injured, but he did make a full recovery. It’s still a felony hit-and-run but they know it was a man driving. Sierra, I can only think of one way they could know that. There must be a witness. The witness could be the victim. I hired the detective I worked with at my old firm—she knows how to surf the public record documents, arrests and accidents, that sort of thing. She also knows how to finesse information by pretending to be an insurance agent, a banker, a lawyer—she’s very good. And very sneaky. The police know it was your car, a man at the wheel, that your car was abandoned. And that you disappeared. There’s even been some conjecture of foul play in your disappearance or the greater possibility that you and the driver ran off to avoid arrest. They want to talk to you. You’re a person of interest in the case. Not a suspect, but a person of interest.”
“Who could become a suspect,” she said.
“If they have evidence to support that. They’ve been looking for the identity of a man. I suppose they’re looking for this Derek Cox. My investigator couldn’t find him. She needs more information like where he worked, lived, where he grew up, where his family is, anything at all to heat up his trail, provide a map of sorts. I hate to put you through this but can you tell me everything again? We need to have as many details as possible.”
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “He said so many things. He said he’d made money in real estate but I knew tons of people who were licensed Realtors and even busting their butts, it was hard to make money. He said he ran a messenger service for a couple of years and that’s how he made all his connections. He also said he had owned a small valet parking service and made a bundle that way but before all that, he said he had been in the military and gone to Afghanistan. You know what I think? I think he was lying about everything. I think he was dealing. He always had something, usually pot. Sometimes he had ecstasy and oxy. He said he was from Maine, he said he was from California. I never went to his apartment. He said he lived three blocks from me but who knows if that’s true. I didn’t even date him. I hung out with him and other people, mostly—a bar crowd—and he came by work to take me to lunch. I’ll give you the names of some of my so-called friends, but they weren’t close friends. It’s not like we knew each other’s families; they weren’t friends from school or anything. I just hung out with him at the bar a couple of times, talked to him on the phone, then we had one official date. I let him come home with me once. Just once. And that’s when things got weird.”
“Weird how?”
“I didn’t get it until much later. He couldn’t get it up. He had trouble. I told him it was all right and to just forget it but he was so angry. He wanted to keep trying. It was when I pushed at him and told him I was done, boing! Then he couldn’t complete. He can’t get it up in a normal situation. He liked that I wasn’t into it. Then he didn’t want to leave. He was rough. I couldn’t get rid of him until morning, and then he showed up at the office where I worked with flowers. Flowers like we’d had a lovely, romantic evening, which we hadn’t. He called and called. He said he was sorry and that’s never happened to him before, which now I know is bullshit. I told him to settle down, we weren’t engaged, just casual friends, and he got worse. Calling, showing up where I was, parking out in front of my house, hanging out in parking lots waiting for me. I finally got mad and told him I didn’t want to see him or talk to him again but he didn’t back off. Everytime I turned around, there he was. When I talked to the police and asked them if they could do anything they were perfectly nice, they told me to be careful, to stop answering my phone if it was him and to call the police if he became threatening. I blocked his number, I dropped Facebook, I deleted his emails and he couldn’t get a text through. Then came that night.”
“How long did this go on?” Cal asked, making notes.
“Only a couple of weeks, that’s all. I talked to him at a bar, I gave him my number, I talked to him on the phone about three times. I saw him for lunch, at the bar after work a few times and there were lots of people around—people I saw after work all the time.”
“People you worked with?”
“A couple of them came from the company I worked for. I hadn’t had the job that long, didn’t know too many people. I found the people who liked to go out right away. I had a talent for it.” She laughed hollowly. “I was doing clerical work for Union Insurance.”
“I need some names, Sierra.”
“Sure. I can give you the names of some friends. My old roommate and her boyfriend. My old boss—but she was a battle-ax and I never shared anything about my life with her. She hated me. I wasn’t crazy about her. I was... I wasn’t the best employee.”
“In those two weeks did you ever learn anything more about the guy? Can you think of anything?”
She shook her head. “Just the stuff I told you—he had a lot of stories. A lot of jokes. He buddied up to people. He gave them dope, like pot or ecstasy. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to hang out with him. After all, he was so much fun and he liked me. It was awful. I didn’t want to explain why I knew he was bad news.”
“Think about it and make me a list—any connections that could give us information about the guy because he’s gone. And I’d like your permission to tell Maggie about this. She’s very good at confidences, so don’t worry about that.”
“Why do you have to tell her?” she asked, feeling her eyes brighten with tears she knew she wouldn’t be able to shed.
“Because, Sierra, we have to go back. You have to talk to the police. They’re looking for you. They want to question you. I’m sure they want to know how the accident happened. Maybe they hope you can get them to the guy.”
“Why? The guy he hit recovered. Can’t we just stay away?”
“Here’s the deal, Sierra. They know it was your car, they know you’ve disappeared, they know there was a felony hit-and-run. If you know they’re looking for you in a felony investigation and you don’t come forward, they can hit you with obstruction. Or you can wait till they find you, and it can sneak up on you. At the most inconvenient moment, you can find yourself taken into custody for questioning and I want to be with you. I don’t want that to happen while I’m busy having a baby. Let me tell Maggie why I have to go back with you and let’s get this done.”
“And what if we get there and they lock me up?” she asked.
“Cooperating now is the safest thing to do. Once you tell the police where you are and how you can be reached, they probably won’t restrict you. I don’t think they will anyway. You’re not their primary suspect.”
“Who could be a witness?” she asked, frowning in confusion.
Cal shook his head. “Another motorist? Maybe even the victim?”
“Cal. He drove a red Nissan GT—a sports car. It was almost new. Candy-apple red.”
“That might help, but it’s a popular car. They’re going to ask you why you ran if you weren’t driving the car.”
“Can they make me press charges against him? Seeing him again terrifies me.”
Cal just locked eyes with her, looking at her steadily. “You might have to be braver than you’ve ever been. If I thought there was an easier way, I’d tell you.”
She laughed without humor. “Eventually you always have to pay the bill.”
“It was not your fault,” Cal said.
“Oh, I know that,” she said. “But running away made me feel like a victim. And by saying nothing, I hid him. And because I was too afraid of him to act, he might be getting away with everything. Now I have to ask myself—how many people has he hurt in this past year?”
“What are we going to do about that?”
Cal asked her.
“I’m going to tell the truth. And pray.”
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
—Anatole France
Chapter 14
A YEAR AGO TOM had wondered if he would ever have a full life. He had four great kids and was certainly blessed with work. While a lot of people couldn’t find a job it seemed like he had jobs coming out of his ears. He had even accepted that he had a very unusual relationship with his wife. His ex-wife. They lived apart and he raised the children, but she was a regular presence for a few days at a time. Kind of like being married to an airline pilot.
And then he had to face the hard truth—Becky was not just a divorcée who had occasional boyfriends. She was a prostitute. She called herself an escort, but the bottom line was always the same—she padded her pocketbook by sleeping with men. He conceded she was a pretty upscale hooker who made excellent money. He was even grateful she didn’t seem to fit the profile he’d seen on most cop shows—she hadn’t been driven into prostitution by a pimp or dependence on drugs. No, nothing as horrifying as that. She was just a beautiful woman who had found a way to supplement her income with sex. Which she enjoyed.
“Not with strangers,” she’d argued. “They were all gentlemen I was seeing, men I knew. If I hadn’t taken money, I’d be just an average woman—dating, having sex sometimes as adults do.”
“I’m not buying it,” Tom had said. “And the house rules change, right now. The kids aren’t going to your place anymore and you’re not spending the night here.”
“You can’t do that,” she said. “They’re my kids, too.”
“We do this my way or I’ll tell them.”
“No, don’t! They’re too young to understand!”
“Becky, I’m too young to understand!” he shot back.
“Fine. I’ve stopped that job anyway.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “You’ve been lying to me for years, why would I believe you now? So here’s the deal—you can visit the kids here, with my supervision, as long as you make plans ahead of time. No overnights.”
“What am I supposed to tell them?” she asked.
“Tell them you’re very busy with your second job. And if you run into trouble with that second job again, don’t call me. Call your lawyer.”
He knew that was the right thing to do but that action took some getting used to. Up to that moment, he’d had someone in his life, at least now and then. First he had to deal with the shock and hurt it caused him. Then there was the loneliness. Then the dread of telling his kids—they’d be devastated, he was sure. He knew he’d have to tell them someday.
But they barely noticed their mom was hardly around anymore. They were busy kids; they were a busy family! Every hour was accounted for. They had a lot of responsibility with school and their extracurricular activities.
He’d dealt with the disappointment. He’d always had a passion for Becky, but knowing the wide range her affections had traveled, his urges where she was concerned were gone. He’d finally adjusted to the shock. He could thank Cal for some of that. Cal, who had represented Becky in court, had a unique perspective: “Given my line of work, I’ve been professionally acquainted with a number of working women, you should pardon the expression. I’ve always thought the laws unbalanced in the emphasis, discriminating against women. They should be going after the pimps, traffickers and johns before the working girls. I don’t care who an adult has sex with but I do care about human trafficking, kidnapping, child abuse, extortion, human bondage, slavery, et cetera. A good old-fashioned hooker, exercising some discrimination, her own boundaries, minding health and safety...” He had shrugged.
“You’d care if you were her husband,” Tom had said.
Cal had clamped a hand on his shoulder and said, for at least the tenth time “Good thing you haven’t been married to her for about eight years, then.”
So then Tom had to face the embarrassing truth—that he’d been willing to forgive and forget anything because he wanted his wife home, his wife who had not been his wife in years.
But now there was Lola. He’d known her almost his whole life. She was a couple of years older than Tom, had been ahead of him in school. Tom had grown up on a local ranch; his dad kept cows and grew alfalfa. Her dad worked in the hardware and farm equipment store. They’d both married too young, had nothing much in common as couples, divorced and became single parents, too busy for much socializing.
Now he was looking at Lola in a whole new way. The reason being, he was a one-woman man, period. When he thought of Becky as his wife, even his part-time wife, his eyes just wouldn’t stray. Once he let go of that notion he realized how much he liked Lola. Rather, he realized all the things he liked about her. Her curly dark hair, her rosy cheeks, her pleasantly round figure, her large dark eyes. She had red lips and a ready laugh. She was funny. He’d always known all these things about Lola but he hadn’t appreciated them before. People loved her. She’d been a fixture in the diner and Home Depot for so many years, everyone knew her and everyone liked talking to her when they stopped at the diner for coffee or an ice cream sundae, or maybe Home Depot for paint or home repair supplies.
As far as Tom knew, there hadn’t been a man in her life in years. He started off with a potted plant, then a second, then a phone call. He’d had to think for hours and hours what pretense he would use for calling her. “There’s a home show in Colorado Springs and I was thinking of going. Always good to keep up on that stuff, what’s new, what’s still popular, what’s innovative. You have any interest in that?”
Now there’d been four plants, many phone calls, he’d taken her out to see Cal’s house in progress, he’d shown her his house and they had a new hobby—looking at model homes and open houses. They could spend hours talking about construction, remodeling, new decorator items, paint. They invested almost an hour of porch time talking about sinks! That’s when he held her hand. For the first time. And he laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Lola asked him.
“I got butterflies,” he admitted, adding a slight flush to the statement. “You know the last time I felt that? I was about fourteen.”
“I think we should talk,” Lola said.
“We’ve been talking nonstop,” he said. “Almost every day.”
“I think we should talk about this—you’re courting me. I thought we were single parents who liked being independent?”
“Am I making you feel less independent by holding your hand?” he asked, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Just where do you think this is going?” she wanted to know.
“I have no idea, but I’m enjoying it right now. How about you?”
“I’m surprised, that’s all. We’ve known each other for years and now, suddenly, we’re kind of dating. Even if our dates seem to be on the phone or looking at new hardware. I grew up around hardware.”
“That’s what’s so funny,” he said. “I’ve known you for so long, I know your dad works in hardware and you work at Home Depot and yet I never considered we’d have this shared interest. That’s very cool. What are you worried about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Getting too involved, I guess.”
“Well, take it easy. We’ll only get as involved as you want.”
“Right,” she said. “This is new territory for me.”
“Me, too,” he said, giving a nod. “I’ve hardly ever dated in my whole life.”
“There was your wife, who is incredibly beautiful. I think she might be the most beautiful woman in the world.”
Tom laughed. “You mean my ex-wife? Yes, Becky is very pretty. We’ve been divorced for eight years now.”
“But you remained very...c
lose.”
“I’d say we get along pretty well, under the circumstances. But it’s time for me to get on with my life. Becky has definitely gotten on with hers. Listen, if I’m making you feel uncomfortable or pressured or—”
“I’m not the kind of woman men pay attention to, that’s all.”
“I resemble that remark,” he said, laughing. “I’m not exactly being chased down by women, but that’s been okay by me. Four kids, a bunch of jobs... Until a couple of years ago when Jackson graduated from high school and Nikki started driving, I don’t know when I would’ve found the time. Things are getting a little less complicated. Finally.”
“Tom, you’re a very handsome man...”
“Thank you, Lola. And you’re a very beautiful woman.”
She laughed at him. “Me? Please!”
He frowned. “I never suspected you for a lack of confidence. You always seem so sure of yourself.”
“I am. But not in the looks department.”
“Why the hell not?” he asked. “You’re gorgeous!”
“Stop it!”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said somewhat sadly. “Becky never thought she was pretty enough and there’s no question about it, she’s—Well, this isn’t about her. Here’s what makes you beautiful,” he said. “Your hair is so silky...thick and curly and it kind of makes a guy want to dig his hands in it. Your lips, they’re kind of heart shaped and I don’t think you ever wear makeup—you don’t need to. You have that beautiful, smooth skin, kind of like the sateen paint I like. Velvet skin, red lips, big, dark eyes, and you always smell a little bit like Ivory soap. I’ve always liked that smell so much, it’s so clean smelling. And you’re soft. I hope this isn’t offensive—you’re sexy and buxom in the most subtle, alluring way. I can’t help but imagine what you’d feel like in my arms. That wasn’t a pass, I just mean I can imagine you’d fill my arms and I bet that’s the most amazing, beautiful feeling.
“And then if it’s not enough that you look beautiful, you act beautiful. All the time. You’re sweet and funny and so supportive—I bet it’s just the way you are because it never seems phony or like you have to try. You’re kind. You treat people with such consideration. But you’re strong—there’s something about strength in a woman that’s enviable. Admirable. And you know what else I love—you seem fearless. I guess when a woman’s been on her own with kids, she’d better be fearless or the earth would just swallow her up! Yes, Lola, you’re sexy and beautiful and I love looking at you. Holding you is probably even better.”