“Wonderful. That’s wonderful. There’s a great steakhouse on Olive Way, just two blocks from here. Why don’t we meet there at six? And we can also talk strategy about how to get you into this place. You would love working here, Tom, you really would.”
Tom might, but Ethan definitely wouldn’t.
Pleasantly stuffed after an expensive dinner of porterhouse and sourdough bread (no wine for the recovering alcoholic Morris), Ethan sat alone in front of the TV at home, mindlessly watching a rerun of Friends. Abby was at work, the midnight shift at Safeway. It was a crummy job, but it paid more than being a teaching assistant.
He rolled the platinum cuff link between his fingers, looking at it in the soft glow of the TV light. The initials MG were engraved into the square face in italics. Had this been a present from Sheila? Ethan had pretended to stumble on the sidewalk after dinner, and he’d slipped it off Morris after reflexively grabbing the man’s arm. No special reason for taking it, other than the pleasing thought of Morris looking for it later and realizing he’d lost it.
The dinner with Sheila’s fiancé had been enlightening, though Ethan’s blond wig had itched the entire time. He’d had to excuse himself several times to go to the restroom to scratch his head. Damn cheap wig.
It was clear Morris had liked “Tom.” They’d spent the first half of dinner discussing the elusive Randall, and Ethan had pretended to know exactly why the younger Gardener still held a grudge against his old man after all this time. As a psych major, it wasn’t rocket science to guess what most of Randall’s issues might be. Neglect, guilt, blame, feelings of helplessness watching his father on a downward spiral, anger at the family being torn apart. Blah blah blah, all very textbook and mundane. No doubt Morris had discussed it all with Sheila already.
As the evening progressed, Ethan had been able to steer the conversation toward Morris’s impending marriage, and therein lay the real reason Ethan had agreed to dinner. He wanted to know who Sheila was through Morris’s eyes. Thanks to the camaraderie that the charming and sensitive Tom had been able to build with Sheila’s fiancé, the older man hadn’t hesitated to drop a bomb.
Morris had been dating Sheila for an entire year and they had never once had sex.
It had taken all of Ethan’s willpower to contain himself, though he continued to listen with polite interest. Sheila had never slept with the man she was engaged to marry, but she’d been fucking Ethan regularly for the past three months. That meant something, right? It made him superior somehow, right?
A porterhouse had never tasted so good.
“Are you sure you should be telling me all this, Morris?” Ethan had said to the older man, then chewing his steak and feeling like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “It’s been my experience that women don’t like it when you talk about your sex life. Or in this case, lack thereof.”
Morris chuckled. “You’re probably right, Tom, but it’s no secret. She was pretty up-front with me when we first met. She wanted to wait till marriage. I actually really liked that about her. It made me want to get to know her.”
“So she’s old-fashioned.”
Morris speared a sautéed mushroom. “That’s the thing. She’s not. She’s a very modern woman in most ways. But we had an instant connection. We met in a Starbucks, you know. She’s the one who convinced me to go to AA.”
Ethan put down his fork. “Really.” His stomach churned. He hadn’t known they’d met in a Starbucks. What else had Sheila kept from him?
“Yeah.” Morris squeezed more lemon into his sparkling water and looked ruefully at Ethan’s beer. “It took me a year to get up the guts to ask her out on a real date. Look at me. I’m a buffoon. Everything about me’s oversized. Sheila’s beautiful. Everybody who’s met her thinks so. What would she want with me?”
Ethan almost agreed with him but remembered he wasn’t supposed to know Sheila. “I thought they discouraged dating in AA,” he said instead.
“They do. That’s why I waited a year. And it was clearly worth it, because I’m sober and getting married.” Morris grinned.
Ethan thought about that now. Married? Not if he could help it.
The episode of Friends he was watching ended and a rerun of Seinfeld came on. He switched off the TV and sat in the quiet room.
Fuck if he was going to sit back and let them live happily ever after.
Morris’s cuff link was warm in his palm and Ethan held it up to the light once again, wondering.
If they autopsied this out of Sheila’s stomach, would they arrest Morris for the murder?
CHAPTER : 5
Calvin Klein shirt, Gucci tie, and Armani suit, tailored to perfection. But going by Morris’s crestfallen expression in the full-length mirror at Romano’s Formal Wear, it still wasn’t perfect enough.
“I look like a jumbo-sized jelly bean.”
“Shush.” Sheila smoothed the lapels of Morris’s jacket and smiled up at him. Her neck muscles were strong. He was thirteen inches taller and she’d had lots of practice looking up at him over the past two years. “It looks great.”
Morris stared at his reflection, the space between his thick eyebrows creasing. He clearly didn’t agree.
Sheila sighed. “You look so handsome. I wish you could see yourself as I see you.”
The small Italian tailor who was fitting Morris’s jacket watched them intently, thin lips pursed. “You don’t like it?” Pietro’s eyes were microscopic behind his thick glasses. “Tell me what you don’t like and I fix.”
“We like it.” Sheila gave her fiancé a look, but Morris said nothing. She smiled warmly at the anxious tailor. “Would you mind giving us a minute?”
Pietro disappeared into the next room.
Sheila faced the mirror beside Morris, linking her arm through his. “Come on, babe. What’s the problem? It fits you perfectly.”
“I look nine months pregnant.”
“You’ve lost forty pounds! Why can’t you be proud of that?” Sheila couldn’t keep the dismay out of her voice. “You’ve been working so hard.”
“Yeah, well, I need to lose forty more.” Morris unbuttoned the suit jacket, exposing the crisp white tuxedo shirt underneath. “Be honest. Would I look thinner with a vest or a cummerbund?”
He was joking, but it wasn’t funny. Sheila touched his hand and his fingers closed reflexively around her palm. Big, capable man though he was, he still struggled with his body image. He might be a bulldog walking into a boardroom filled with millionaire investors, but inside, he was a giant marshmallow.
She loved him for this paradox. It made him real. Human.
Cupping her chin, he tilted her face upward and kissed her.
“Hey, ever done it in a change room?” he stage-whispered.
A zingy reply was on the tip of her tongue, but a discreet cough interrupted her thoughts. They pulled apart to see Pietro standing in the corner of the change area looking completely uncomfortable. Morris’s face flushed a deep red, and Sheila put a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to bother you beautiful couple, but my shift end in five minute. You want I fix something or is everything okay?” The tailor fidgeted, tape measure in hand, ready to act quickly at the slightest indication of dissatisfaction.
Sheila glanced at Morris. He was still flushed. “The tuxedo is wonderful, Pietro. Perfect the way it is.”
The little man beamed. “Excellent. That make me very happy. You need handkerchief? Cuff links? You want I fit you for cummerbund?”
Morris frowned slightly, touching the French cuffs of the shirt he was wearing. “I don’t think so, my friend. I’m kind of partial to the James Bond look, no cummerbund, no vest. But I’ll come back if I change my mind.”
Pietro’s smile grew wider. “Okay. I give final price to cashier. Thank you for your business, and, please, you tell everyone who needs good suit that your friend Pietro is the best.”
Sheila thanked him. Morris was still fingering the empty ho
les at the end of his sleeves where his cuff links should go.
“You didn’t bring any with you?” Sheila pointed to the naked French cuffs. “You must have a dozen.”
“Yeah, but there’s only one pair I would’ve worn for the wedding.” Morris’s face was glum. “I lost one of the cuff links Randall gave me. I looked everywhere—I don’t know what the hell happened. I know I had them on last week. I would’ve worn them for the Okinawa conference call this morning, but I could only find one.”
Morris always wore his monogrammed platinum cuff links when he was working on a particularly difficult business transaction. They’d been a Christmas gift from all three of his sons, back when he was still drinking and married to their mother. The cuff links were special. Shortly after that Christmas, Lenore had filed for divorce and his oldest son, Randall, had stopped speaking to him.
That had been over five years ago.
“I’m sure it’s somewhere at your house.” Sheila squeezed his arm. “It probably rolled under the bed or behind the bureau or something. I’ll help you look tonight.”
She shooed him back into the changing room to undress. When he pulled the curtain closed, she dug into her purse and fished out her BlackBerry.
No new e-mails. Damn. Nothing from Randall.
She’d been trying to get hold of Morris’s estranged son for weeks. But he hadn’t lived in the United States for years and wasn’t an easy man to track down. Randall Gardener’s work with Amnesty International had taken him to seven different countries in the past decade, and while Amnesty kept solid records of where their people were at all times, they were stingy about giving out that information. Sheila had been forced to get creative, sneaking into Morris’s address book to contact his other two sons—Stephen, a high school football coach in Orlando, and Phillip, a grad student in San Francisco—to see if maybe they could help. Neither brother had heard from Randall in months.
Frustrated, Sheila stuck her phone back in her purse. While she was fine spending her Sunday helping Morris search for his missing cuff link, the best wedding present she could give him was Randall. The wedding was four weeks away and she was running out of time—and ideas. The thought of speaking to Lenore, Randall’s mother and Morris’s ex-wife, wasn’t too appealing.
She left Morris in the changing area and headed toward the cashier’s counter at the front of the store. Angling her way past the racks of men’s suits and tuxedos, she took her place in line behind a young couple complaining loudly to the frazzled clerk.
Trying to tune them out, Sheila mentally strategized her next move. Dammit, she had no choice but to call Lenore in Texas. She shuddered; that was bound to be an awkward conversation. Morris and his ex hadn’t parted amicably, and Sheila wasn’t even sure if the woman was aware her ex-husband was getting remarried.
Her thoughts were disrupted by a movement at the store window. Through the fancily dressed mannequin displays, Sheila caught a glimpse of a face, blurry through the rain-streaked glass. The little hairs at the back of her neck suddenly pricked.
Someone was watching her.
She strode to the double glass doors where there was a clear view of the street. The man was already walking away. The rain made it difficult to see clearly, but something about him was familiar. Her breath caught in her throat.
She watched through the watery glass as the man sauntered down the wet sidewalk toward his green and chrome motorcycle, hands stuck casually in the pockets of his worn jeans. Zipping up his leather jacket, he threw a leg over the bike and slid a shiny black helmet over his short, mussed hair.
That walk. Those jeans. The scuffed leather jacket bought used from a secondhand shop on Howell Street. Somewhere on the sleeve of that jacket was a streak of red permanent marker where she’d accidentally bumped his arm while grading papers.
She’d know him anywhere.
Her BlackBerry pinged at that moment, but she kept her eyes focused on Ethan as he sped away. When he was completely out of sight, she pulled out her phone and saw she had one new text message.
He must have sent it while he was at the window. There were no words, only an attachment. She clicked on it, waiting the three seconds it took for it to download, her heart beating so hard she could feel her pulse throbbing in her temple.
The photo was small and grainy, but it was irrefutable. Her back was to the camera, as was her naked ass, but there was no doubt it was Sheila on all fours, looking back with a smile as Ethan took her from behind.
A still shot from their sex video. The one she’d been so sure he didn’t have.
Her life, as she knew it, was over.
CHAPTER : 6
St. Mary’s Helping Hands looked and smelled like a shithole because it was a shithole. Overcooked vegetables, salty gravy, and the body odor of eighty or so homeless human beings combined to form a vomit-inducing aroma not unlike that of a garbage dump.
Then there were the sounds. The constant thrum of voices, metal forks clanging against metal plates, the scraping of cheap chairs on scarred pine floors, the occasional outbursts of laughter or shouting.
It was an assault on the senses.
Volunteering here had been Abby’s idea. In theory it was brilliant. What better place to study the psychological consequences of poverty than at Seattle’s premier soup kitchen?
St. Mary’s was a cesspool of living, breathing human beings representing almost every behavioral, mental, and societal issue Ethan had read about in books. These were the forgotten folks, the dregs of society, the people you didn’t notice and made a point not to see while you stood in line wearing your $300 boots waiting to order your $5 latte. These were the people you believed you’d never become, despite the fact that at some point in the past, they’d all had normal lives.
Someone whose name Ethan couldn’t remember now had once described it as Before and After. Before was when they were normal, when they had jobs and homes and loved ones, before the financial devastation, drug abuse, or mental illness had overpowered them and taken everything away. This was the After. And there was nothing after the After, just this, every day, until the end.
It made for a great thesis.
He slopped another portion of green beans onto someone’s plate, managing to avoid eye contact even though the person murmured a polite thank-you. On another night he might have engaged this person in small talk, and if that had been interesting, the small talk might have led to a deeper conversation. But not tonight. Tonight Ethan was in a foul mood, because Dr. Sheila Tao had dumped him. For Morris. An oversize gorilla who’d somehow managed to make him feel tiny and inconsequential.
He wanted to kill them both.
Her lovely face appeared again in his mind, all dark eyes and red velvet lips. Delicate Asian bone structure. The curve of her slender white neck and the sweet spot above her collarbone he liked to kiss. He’d chased her for the better part of a year . . . only to have it end as if it never even started. Did she really think he would let it go that easily?
It was never supposed to be anything more than a convenient affair. Screwing the professor had yielded some nice perks. Flexible deadlines, a reduced workload, more one-on-one help with his thesis. Plus she could hoover him senseless.
It had never once occurred to him that it would end this way, on her terms. That she’d try to get rid of him, as if she were taking out the trash. She’d caught him off guard, and it was his fault for being surprised. He was normally never surprised.
He normally couldn’t feel surprise.
He might have been able to accept the sexual relationship ending, but trying to pawn him off onto another professor? Unacceptable. She was flexing her muscles, and that was not okay. And then that gaudy display with Morris and the bracelet, sitting on his lap, batting her eyelashes like a lovesick teenager? Making wedding plans as if everything were all right with the world?
That was very not okay.
Ethan thought of the picture he’d e-mailed her—the one with her ass in t
he air—and finally allowed himself to feel a twinge of satisfaction. It was Photoshopped, but she didn’t need to know that. Hopefully it had done its job.
Okay, he needed to think of something else. Anything else. Forcing Sheila out of his thoughts, he surveyed the large room.
Dozens of dirty heads were bent over plates of hot food, open mouths consuming whatever slop St. Mary’s was serving tonight. The room was filled with skin diseases, lice, and respiratory infections he was sure you could catch just by breathing. His skin itched thinking about it and he pulled a small bottle of hand sanitizer out of his pocket. The ventilation system worked well and air fresheners were scattered everywhere, but the smell of filth was never completely masked.
A few feet away, Abby was at her station handing out cups of apple juice and milk. Ethan watched her mouth form words he couldn’t make out over the constant din of chatter and eating. Even wearing an apron stained from the grease of a thousand meals past, Abby looked beautiful, her un-made-up complexion making her look even younger than her twenty-three years.
Abby Maddox was Ethan’s live-in girlfriend. He adored Abby.
But he craved Sheila. Nothing in life was ever simple.
A guffaw of laughter drew Ethan’s attention to the corner of the room, and he saw that Marlon was here tonight, looking no better or worse than normal. The old black man sat in his usual spot by the window, under the sign that read BELIEVE IN MARY BECAUSE SHE BELIEVES IN YOU. He was muttering to himself as he scanned the newspaper. Ethan hadn’t seen Marlon in a month, but knew the schizophrenic man wouldn’t be able to explain where he’d been. Even if he could articulate it, he wouldn’t, because Marlon believed himself to be a spy for a supersecret government agency disguised as a homeless man, right down to the feces- and urine-stained clothes. His job was to find old newspapers and circle code words. During one brief hour of clarity a few months back, Ethan learned that Marlon had once been a high school custodian in Portland with a wife and daughter. But as far as the volunteers could ascertain, Marlon had been off his meds for at least a year. And nobody was looking for him anymore.
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