by Lynda Curnyn
“Well, my patrol is the beach. But when I check in, it’s in Great River. That’s where the Marine Bureau is based.”
“Ah,” I replied, not sure where this left me.
“So you like living in the city?”
I was startled at that, trying to remember if 1 had told him where I lived.
As if he read my mind, he said,“I was the first officer that night. I took your address and phone number, remember?”
Right. I had, after all, been questioned. Funny that he remembered where I lived. “Yeah, I like it.” Then, as if hoping my Long Island roots might make him feel a little more kinship with me, I said, “I grew up on Long Island though.”
“Oh yeah? Whereabouts?”
“Babylon. Well, for high school anyway. Before that I was in Huntington.”
“Well, a Suffolk County girl.” He smiled. “I’m from Bayshore. Born and bred.”
Bingo. I smiled again, suddenly wishing I had on something a bit more flirtatious than this oversized shirt. Maybe I might get somewhere with this guy.
A moment later, I realized I was getting somewhere with this guy, though I wasn’t sure it was where I wanted to go.
“So, Zoe, I was hoping to run into you. I’m coming into the city next week to help a friend do some work around his new apartment. I was wondering if maybe you wanted to hang out or something.”
Or something. What the hell was “or something?” I started to panic, realizing that “or something” was a date and I hadn’t gone on a date since Myles.“I, uh—”
“Maybe we can catch a little dinner. Talk.”
Then I realized “or something” might very well be something. At the very least, I would have a chance to pick his brain a bit more about Maggie’s death. “Sure, that would be fun.”
“Great,” he said, smiling at me. But that smile dropped off his face instantly, and his body went rigid as he sat up higher on his quad, his head turning slightly as he looked at some point beyond my head.
“I gotta go. I got an open container violation at three o’clock.”
I turned, spotting a group of guys off in the distance, two of them holding beer bottles in their hands, which apparently was a no-no in Kismet.
I turned to Jeff, who had already kicked into gear, and with a nod of his head, he took off.
Leaving me with nothing.
I looked down at Janis, who smiled happily up at me, next to the little pile she’d just made.
Nothing but shit, that is.
And a date, I thought, studying Jeff’s broad shoulders as he hunched over the motorbike. Not a date, I thought, shaking off the warmth that seemed to fill me at the sight. An interview, I reminded myself, trying not to stare at his ass as he stepped off the bike.
Of sorts.
“Next up on Oprah, women who risk their lives for others. Tune in to see if you have what it takes!”
I changed the channel, since 1 was pretty sure dating police officers didn’t qualify. What had I been thinking when I accepted that date with Jeff?
Well, I knew what I had been thinking. But as I’d walked back along the beach with Janis, all I could think about was Myles. I probably wouldn’t even have to go on this date if Myles hadn’t abandoned me.
“You would never leave me, would you, Janis?” I said, ruffling the dog’s ear as she sat beside the couch where 1 was reclining. She looked up at me, cracking a doggy smile. Of course, I couldn’t be sure how genuine that love was, considering that Janis had bolted on me at the beach. She seemed pretty loyal right now, but that might be because of the mountain of dog treats I fed her when we got back to the house.
Now, as I scratched Maggie’s dog behind the ear while staring at the paintings of beach scenes Maggie had so lovingly hung on the living room wall of her house, I realized I had to go on that date, even if the idea of sitting across a cozy little table from someone other than Myles was starting to depress me. I wondered just how far I would have to go for Maggie’s sake.
“Anybody home?”
I sat up suddenly, startling Janis, who began to bark.
“It’s just Myles,” I said to Janis when I spotted him peering through the screen door.
Just Myles? I thought, standing up quickly and shutting off the TV, as if to make sure I hadn’t somehow beamed him in here. “Come in,” I said, once I realized the man standing at the door wasn’t some phantom I’d conjured up but Myles in the flesh.
“Hi,” I said, stopping at the kitchen island, all at once feeling wary. Janis began to whine, probably sensing my sudden discomfort.
Or not, I realized as Janis trotted over to Myles, tail wagging.
Traitor, I thought, watching as Janis nuzzled affectionately at his hand.
“You must be Janis Joplin,” Myles said, giving her a good scratch behind the ears that had her tail moving so furiously her whole back end was getting into the action.
I understood all too well why Janis had succumbed so easily to his charms. He did look good. A little too good. In fact, he was dressed rather nicely for the beach, in a pair of cotton Dockers and a baby blue polo shirt.
“Nice place,” he said, looking up at the wall of windows that opened on to the ocean view. “Very nice.”
I decided not to bring up the fact that he could have had a share in this nice place and got to the more pressing question. “What are you doing here?”
That golden brown gaze finally focused on me. “I made a phone call yesterday. To my friend Paul, over at the Suffolk County P.D.”
My insides felt warm. “Myles, thank you, I—”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.” He looked around. “Are we alone?”
“Yeah, everyone is down at the beach—Tom, Nick, Sage— didn’t you see them?”
“I walked along the streets to get here.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly realizing he was wearing shoes. A pair of brown leather boat shoes that looked kind of new. “So where is your house, anyway?”
“On Pine Walk. Daydream Believer,” he said, giving me the house name. “Ever seen it?” I shook my head. “It’s nice. But not as nice as this.” He gazed around. “Is that Tom?” he asked, pointing to a photograph of Tom holding a large fish on the end of a hook.
“Yep, that’s him,” I said, studying Myles’s face for a reaction.
“He seems like an okay guy.”
“Yeah, so did Ted Bundy,” I replied. “Come in. Sit down. Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’m good. Look, Zoe, I can’t stay long…”
I absorbed this information, wondering where he might be going in that nice little outfit he had on. And with whom. But I held my tongue, leading him into the living room.
Janis followed, lying down at the foot of the love seat Myles plopped down on. I sat on the sofa opposite him, watching as his gaze moved to the windows once more. “How much did you say he paid for this place?” Myles asked.
“I don’t know for sure. But it’s probably worth at least a million by now,” I replied, wondering at his interest. Myles had never seemed to care about material things. But then, I’d never seen him in an Izod shirt either, I thought, noticing, for the first time, the little alligator on his blue polo. “So tell me what you found out.”
He turned his gaze from the ocean view. “Why aren’t you down at the beach?”
I shrugged. “Too hot,” I said. “C’mon, Myles, tell me what you learned.”
“Well, before you get too excited, Zoe, I didn’t find out much. Yeah, it was Erickson who conducted the investigation, but from what Paul told me, there was very little suggestion of foul play. No hard evidence anyway. No signs of a struggle.”
I frowned, staring at his hands as he fiddled with a coaster that had been left on the coffee table. “That’s what Jeff said, too.”
He stopped fiddling. “Who’s Jeff?”
I looked up at him and saw something stir in his eyes.Jealousy. Myles was jealous! At least I hoped he was jealous. Maybe t
hat was a good enough reason to go on this date. Still, I refrained from throwing it up in his face. Especially since he looked positively miffed. There was enough satisfaction in that, after all. “I’m sorry—Officer Barnes. He’s with the Marine Bureau. He came to the house that night. We’ve been talking, you know. Since the incident.”
Myles leaned back on the couch. “So why didn’t you just ask him to order up your report?”
“He’s with the Marine Bureau, not Homicide.”
“But if he was first officer on the scene, then he would have access.”
I shrugged. “Nah,Jeff’s too much of a goody-goody.” Then I remembered the proud thrust of his chin and the way he’d practically spoken in police codes for the first five minutes of our conversation. Maybe I was wasting my time by going on this date. “He’d never bypass the proper channels.”
“Is that right?” Myles said, glaring at me now.
Oops. “Look, maybe he would have. But he’s not as familiar with these types of cases as you are,” I said, hoping to ameliorate the dig by some ego-soothing. “What does he do, really, except give out beer tickets and noise-disturbance warnings? Now you were in the D.A’s. office—”
“ Were being the operative word,” he said.
“Myles—”
“Never mind,” he said, waving a hand in the air dismissively, that glint of anger—or confusion, I couldn’t tell—in his eyes once more.“The only other thing of interest was the toxicology results.”
I looked at him.
“It was pretty standard stuff,” he began.“Her blood alcohol level was high—nothing crazy, though. But Paul told me they took a few extra days to make the determination because they also discovered she had some Valium in her system.”
“Valium? Isn’t that dangerous—to take Valium and drink?”
He shrugged. “People do it all the time.”
“But you’re not supposed to, right?”
His golden gaze met mine. “People do things they’re not supposed to all the time.”
I knew by the sorrow rimming his eyes that he was thinking of his father, how he had gone into that abandoned house without calling for support like he should have. How he had been shot when a wild-eyed kid with a gun startled him from behind. I wanted to touch Myles’s hand, do something—anything—to douse the sadness I saw in him.
I didn’t, of course. I couldn’t. And that made me even sadder.
“Look, Zoe, the Valium in her system could mean nothing— they followed up and found out she had a prescription.”
“But?”
“Well, there was some concern about it, apparently, seeing as she had a lot of it in her system.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Well, it could mean a lot of things. But in the final analysis, they ruled ‘accidental.’”
I frowned. “Why would they do that?”
He ran a hand through his hair, as if he was just as uncomfortable with the conclusion as I was. “The thing is, it’s hard to tell a lot with the toxicology results. Yeah, she had a lot in her system, but whether it was enough to put her out—well that’s debatable.”
“You mean she might have been unconscious before she even hit the water?”
“Anything’s possible, Zoe.” His gaze met mine.“I also did a little Internet search on Tom. It seems he was a big contributor to the Police Benevolence Society.”
My eyes widened.“You don’t think the police looked the other way because—”
“I’m not saying that, Zoe. I’m just telling you what I found out.”
I studied his gaze, saw that he was questioning the ethics of this case, just as I had all along. “Come with me,” I said, jumping up and heading for the master bedroom.
Once we were both inside Tom’s private bathroom, I shut the door. Then opened the medicine cabinet, my eye roaming over the contents. Tylenol. Midol. Aftershave lotion. I reached out, grabbing the two prescription bottles I came across. Both for Valium. One Tom’s. One Maggie’s.
“Well, look at this—his and her tranquilizers,” I said, studying the labels and realizing that Tom’s prescription had about twice the number of milligrams as Maggie’s did. I showed Myles.
“She could have taken his by accident,” he said, but I could see the uncertainty in his eyes.
“Or Tom could have given her his. Hoping it would look like an accident.”
“There’s no way to prove that, Zoe.”
“Which is what Tom was probably counting on.”
I felt a sudden tension in Myles. “We probably should get out of here. In case he comes back.”
I nodded, opening the door and heading back into the living room, stopping short of the sofa and turning to Myles. “So what do we do now?”
He sighed. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do, Zoe. It’s all circumstantial. It doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“I know, I know. But something doesn’t feel right about this whole thing.”
He smiled at me, though I noticed his eyes looked a little sad. “Always the renegade, Zoe. I mean, short of getting Tom to confess, what can you do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, realizing that despite the fact that Myles seemed to be tilting toward my side now, it might not do me any good. “Maybe I can get him drunk.”
“Zoe,” Myles said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
I looked at him, taking heart at the concern in his eyes. “I won’t.” Well, maybe just a little stupid. I smiled at him. “Thanks for helping me out, Myles.”
“Anytime,” he said. “Really. I shouldn’t have been so hasty the other day, it’s just that I—”
“It’s okay.”
“Promise me you aren’t going to try and confront him.”
“Myles—”
“Promise,” he said.
“Myles, I can’t promise you that.”
He shook his head. “Well, you could at least promise me that you’ll call me first. To talk it out. You know you can be a bit of a hothead.”
My insides warmed. “I will.”
Suddenly a cell phone began to ring, the sound muffled. I whipped my head around, spotting my cell on the coffee table inside just as I realized that it wasn’t my ring I was hearing. It was Myles’s.
“You gonna get that?” I said.
“Nah,” he said, dropping his eyes. The phone rang again, and he began to rattle the keys in his pocket. “Listen, Zoe, I have to go. I have dinner plans.”
So that was what the spiffy little outfit was about.“Oh. Where? The Inn or The Out?” I said, trying to make light of it.
“Actually, I’m going to try out Le Dock tonight. In Fair Harbor?”
I knew Le Dock. Or I knew of Le Dock. Sage had told me about it. She’d gone there on a date once. Apparently it was very romantic. “Sounds very cozy,” I said, hearing his cell phone beep as the call rolled into voice mail. “You better call her back or she might worry she doesn’t have a date for tonight.”
“Zoe, it’s not like that,” he began, then stopped, realizing he’d gone right where he didn’t want to go.
“No?”
He started to shake his head, but something stopped him. Something in his eyes. I knew that look. Myles was incapable of lying. That’s what I’d loved about him. But now I wished like anything he could be untruthful. I didn’t want to know he had a new girlfriend.
“It’s not anything serious anyway.”
Because I was a glutton for punishment, I asked, “It’s her, right? The girl in your beach house? Haley.”
He didn’t answer, which was as good as a yes in my mind. Then he sighed. “Look, Zoe, I’m trying to be a friend to you, but I just don’t know how.”
Neither did I, I thought, realizing that maybe I shouldn’t be relying on this man I had relied on for almost two years.
And wondering if I had a choice.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-two
Maggie
Wliat to do in the ev
ent of an emotional emergency.
Maybe it was the haze of prescription happiness I was living in, or maybe it was just some old discontent within me that had never died, but I started to become paranoid about Tom.
Perhaps it was all those late nights at the office, but I began to wonder if my husband was sleeping with someone else.
He certainly had opportunities. He had his pick of the sales reps who worked for and worshipped him. The buyers—mostly female—from his nationwide customer base. The models he used in his advertising. I wasn’t so worried about the models. Tom wasn’t the model type. I knew Tom’s type. Vulnerable, sweet-faced and a little bit lost. Kind of like I used to be, before he gave me up as a hopeless cause. You see, that was the thing about Tom. He only liked problems he could solve. And my problems, he had discovered, were beyond his reach.
I started looking for evidence—hotel receipts, lipstick stains. I started to suspect every little mouse of a girl who marched through his life. That’s why when I came into the Luxe offices on one of my “surprise” visits and found him having a cozy little lunch in his office with his admin, I was certain I had found the one.
Danielle Winston was twenty-seven, living with her parents and pathologically addicted to the idea that she would never amount to anything. In other words, a train wreck waiting to happen.
But not if Tom could stop it. He must have thought I was blind to his desires, considering the fact that he would come home at night and tell me the latest trials in poor Dani’s life. She didn’t trust men (her stepfather had abused her when she was a child). She was up to her eyeballs in debt. She just needed a little boost to get by, and Tom, dear Tom, was giving up his lunch hours and staying late some nights just to give it to her. But I suspected pep talks weren’t the only thing he was giving her.
I couldn’t find any proof, and what I needed desperately was proof. So I started to follow her, and believe me, this was no easy pursuit. Danielle Winston lived a seedy little life for a girl from Queens. In fact, one day I followed her all the way to a tenement building in the Bronx, only to discover that Danielle’s greatest passion wasn’t Tom but crack cocaine.
