“Lisa?” The girl looked up with mascara-smudged eyes. She was deathly pale and she held her right arm as if it hurt. “Lisa, were you in the car with him?”
Lisa shook her head mutely. “I fell down,” she said like a child. “He got mad and went tearing out to the car. I was running after him and I fell.”
“Was he drinking?” Nicole asked, sitting down beside her.
“No. But he was so mad.” She looked away. “You had him arrested last night.”
“He tried to take Shelley and he hit me. But he would have been arrested even if I hadn’t pressed charges. He also assaulted a police officer.”
Lisa tensed. “He hit you and a cop?”
“He hit me and he tried to hit a cop. Why? What did he tell you?”
“That you had him arrested for coming near the house just to check on Shelley.”
“Good old Roger and his lies,” Nicole sighed. “Have you had word on his condition?”
“Not yet. I’m not next of kin, anyway. They wanted next of kin.”
“How did you know to reach me at my mother’s?”
“I didn’t. When you weren’t home, I called Vega’s. Carmen said you might be at your mother’s house and gave me the number.”
“Oh.” Nicole sat down beside her, feeling awkward. The two women in Roger’s life, one the wife, one the mistress, and both were worried. What did you say in a situation like this? Nicole couldn’t bring herself to try to comfort Lisa, so she fell back on questions. “Where did the wreck happen?”
“At the end of the street. Roger just pulled out of the apartment-house parking lot, went shooting down the street, and didn’t stop at the intersection. I saw the whole thing because I was chasing after him since he was so mad and all. Two cars hit him.”
Nicole looked at her in amazement. “He didn’t stop at the intersection? He’d be pulling onto a busy street. Are you sure he wasn’t drunk?”
“Absolutely. He just paced around all morning drinking coffee, raving about you and…well, how he was going to take Shelley away from you for good because you were a crazy woman and everyone knew it, what with you carrying on about Paul Dominic, who is dead, and those murders at your house…”
Nicole raised an eyebrow and Lisa’s face reddened. So Roger was accusing her of being crazy and saying that’s why he had a right to take Shelley away from her. Hadn’t Carmen claimed that was his game plan? To prove her unstable so he could have full custody of Shelley? And the whole thing had started with the prowler in the wolf mask.
“Lisa, I’m going to ask you something and I need to know the truth.” The girl looked at her warily. “I want to know about the wolf mask you bought at Vega’s. Did you really buy it for Roger?”
Lisa blinked blank green eyes. “Wolf mask?”
“Yes. The heavy Indian wolf mask. Bobby said you bought it for Roger.”
Lisa continued to look maddeningly blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice held the ring of truth.
“I believe Roger might have worn a wolf mask you bought to scare me.”
Lisa looked at her as if she were indeed the crazy woman Roger claimed. “Why would he?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
Lisa seemed to draw away from her slightly. “Look, Nicole, I’m not saying someone didn’t do that, but if they did, they weren’t wearing a mask I bought.” She frowned. “Bobby told you I bought a mask?”
“Yes. Well, actually, he told Carmen and she told me.”
“Oh. So you really heard this from Carmen.”
“Yes.”
Lisa shrugged. “That explains it.”
“What are you implying?”
“That I wouldn’t believe anything Carmen has to say.”
Nicole stiffened. “Carmen is my best friend. Besides, you don’t even know her.”
“Who says I don’t know her?”
“She does.”
Lisa huffed. “Carmen has known me since I was a little kid.”
Nicole stared at her for a moment before she said, “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe, but when I was a kid, Mrs. Vega baby-sat for a lot of people. I was in the Vega house every weekday. Carmen was always there, drooling around over Bobby.”
“Lisa, you couldn’t have been more than five when Bobby and Carmen were dating.”
“So what? I wasn’t deaf and blind. Besides, they lived with the Vegas after they got married. Mrs. Vega didn’t like her. She told my mother that Bobby didn’t want to marry her, even when she got pregnant. She said although it was the right thing to do and she encouraged him, she didn’t think he would have gone through with it if that band Bobby was in hadn’t fallen apart.”
“Maybe you misunderstood. You were so young.”
“It was hard to stay young at my house. My parents didn’t believe in protecting children. But I didn’t have to be told. Even when I was little I could tell Carmen acted funny around Bobby. She was obsessive. I think she got pregnant on purpose. I don’t know what she would have done if Bobby had still refused to marry her, pregnant or not.”
Nicole sat in silence, torn between further questions and hot denial. She and Carmen had been almost like sisters since they were six. Carmen was the only person she’d told when she was involved with Paul. She was the first person Nicole had called when she’d accepted Roger’s proposal, the matron of honor at her wedding, the person with whom she’d been in constant contact during her pregnancy with Shelley, the first who knew Roger was leaving her. Why would she lie about knowing Lisa Mervin or claiming that Bobby said Lisa had bought the wolf mask?
She’d decided to pick up a magazine and ignore Lisa when a doctor appeared. “Are you Nicole Chandler?” he asked Nicole.
“Yes. How is Roger?”
“Not good,” he said seriously. “He’s being taken to surgery now with a ruptured spleen. He also has a couple of broken ribs on the left side, and a broken left arm, along with multiple contusions and lacerations, the worst laceration being on his scalp. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Is he conscious?” Lisa asked.
The doctor glanced at her. “Not now, but he was for about five minutes.”
“Did he ask for me?”
“What is your name?”
“Lisa Mervin. I’m his fiancée.”
The older doctor gave her a brief look that all but said he doubted the formality of this relationship. “He never mentioned a Lisa or a fiancée.” His cool gray gaze fell on Nicole. “He just said over and over that his wife cut his brake line because she wanted to kill him.”
Twenty
1
Nicole sat in the surgery waiting room for an hour, not talking to Lisa, her mind racing. If Roger was not drunk, then the only explanation for his barreling into a busy intersection was that he’d lost his brakes. Brakes rarely failed on their own. Besides, this potentially fatal car crash had happened within twenty-four hours after Roger struck her. It seemed more likely her unknown protector had once again punished someone who tried to hurt her. Roger’s car was an easy target because it sat in the open at the apartment complex.
Finally she went to a pay phone and called her mother. She got the answering machine, which Phyllis rarely used. “Nicole,” the tinny message ran, “I have taken Shelley out for ice cream. We’ll be home around four.” After the beep, Nicole left her own message saying Roger was in surgery and she would call again as soon as she knew something.
Hanging up, she was glad her mother had taken Shelley out of the house. The child had been through a lot lately, and hearing of her father’s accident had probably upset her more than she’d let on in front of Nicole. Phyllis was trying to divert her in any way possible.
After another endless hour and two cups of bitter coffee, a female surgeon came out to tell them Roger had come through the surgery well and was in the recovery room.
“Will he live?” Lisa asked.
“Unless some unex
pected complication arises.”
“When can I see him?”
The doctor looked closely at Lisa. “Are you his wife?”
“No, I am.” Nicole spoke up. “But we’re going through a divorce. He’d rather see her.”
“Are you sure?” the doctor asked.
“Yes. I’ll be leaving now. Let her see him when he’s able.” Her eyes met Lisa’s. “Call me if…” If what? she thought. If you need a shoulder to cry on? “Please keep me posted on his condition.” Lisa gave her a truculent look that hinted she never intended to talk to Nicole again. “Lisa, Roger is Shelley’s father,” Nicole reminded her. “She has a right to know how he’s doing.”
“Oh, all right,” Lisa said grudgingly. “I’ll call sometime tomorrow.”
“Call tonight.”
Lisa nodded curtly and Nicole hurried out. How strange it felt to know that she, Roger’s wife of twelve years, the mother of his child, couldn’t even look in on him because he thought she’d tried to kill him.
And I didn’t, she thought grimly as she crossed the parking lot to her car. But someone did.
2
Instead of driving back to her mother’s, Nicole went to the big white house in Olmos Park. The place looked as empty and neglected as usual, a monument of faded grandeur, now deserted. But it wasn’t deserted. People lived inside. Just how many people, she wasn’t sure. But she intended to find out.
She knew in her heart Paul Dominic was back, but she had no one else’s confirmation. If he were in San Antonio, though, he would come to see his mother even if he weren’t actually living in her house. He had adored her. And they had been so close, Alicia would know if he had killed anyone. She had to see Paul’s mother.
She parked in front of the house and strode up the front walk. She thought she saw draperies beside the door move slightly, but she tried to keep her eyes straight ahead. Leaves and dirt littered the wide front porch. At one time it was spotless and plants grew in the giant urns on either side of the double front doors. “I keep a key under the left urn,” Paul had told her once. “It’s silly—a holdover from my teenage years when Mother watched me like a hawk. You think you have overprotective parents! My mother outprotected both of yours. If I wanted to have any fun, I had to sneak out and make sure the key was someplace Rosa would never find it. She thought I didn’t know, but she searched my room regularly for signs of infractions she could report to my mother. She’s never liked me.”
Nicole used the lion’s head knocker. She could almost feel Rosa on the other side of the door, counting off the proper number of seconds before she finally opened it. Her flat black eyes swept disdainfully over Nicole before she finally asked, “Yes?”
“I’m sure you remember me,” Nicole said firmly. “I’m Nicole Sloan. Chandler now. I’d like to see Mrs. Dominic.”
The woman stared at her for a moment, almost as if she hadn’t understood what Nicole said. At last she answered, “Señora Dominic isn’t well enough to see visitors.”
“This is very important, Rosa.”
Gray threads wove through the heavy black hair, but the style hadn’t changed. It was parted in the middle and drawn back in a braid and she wore a long black dress. She looked stolid, humorless, and intractable. There was even a hint of cruel satisfaction in her expression. “I told you. Señora Dominic doesn’t see visitors. Especially you.”
Ignoring the insult, Nicole persisted. “Would you just ask her if she’ll see me?”
“No. She won’t want to see you.”
“Do you have the right to answer for her?”
“Good-bye, Señora Chandler. Don’t come again.”
Rosa slammed the door.
Nicole stared at the dirty wooden door in front of her, the door whose elaborate carving used to gleam with varnish, and shook her head. “Don’t count on scaring me off, you old harridan,” she muttered. “I will see Alicia Dominic before this week is out, even if I have to break into the house to do it.”
3
Nicole’s next stop was Vega’s on the River Walk. She walked into the shop and was greeted by Bobby, standing behind the counter. “Well, hello, Nicole!”
She looked at him coolly. He appeared puffy, tired, and perpetually petulant. And he was constantly criticizing Carmen’s appearance, she thought angrily. “Hello, Bobby.”
“How’s your loving husband? I heard he was in a car wreck.”
She walked to the counter. “He’s alive and recovering with Lisa Mervin by his side.”
“Ah, young, delectable Lisa.” Bobby came close to smirking, and Nicole was certain if there hadn’t been a couple of customers browsing in the store, she would have slapped him.
“Lisa told me today you’ve known her since she was a child,” she said.
“My family wasn’t well-off, like yours. My mother kept her and a few other children during the days to make ends meet.”
“I also know that you knew she was involved with Roger last year and that she’s the reason he dragged Shelley and me back to San Antonio. You could have told me before the move, Bobby, and saved me a lot of trouble.”
He shrugged. “I stay out of other people’s marriages.”
“How discreet of you.” Nicole’s anger grew with his smugness. “You weren’t always so discreet, were you?”
Bobby’s smirk faded. “Nicole, if you’re looking for Carmen, she’s home with our daughter where she should be, not chasing around after you, holding your hand through your unending troubles.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Bobby. You weren’t always discreet, especially back in the days of The Zanti Misfits, were you?”
She was aware that a female customer stood with a vase in hand, openly listening to them, but she didn’t care. The rage she’d felt toward Bobby ever since she learned he knew about Roger’s affair with Lisa long before Roger tore up their lives was bubbling to the surface and she couldn’t stop it.
Bobby’s face tensed. “I loved that band. It was my future. Ritchie Zand’s death was a tragedy.”
“Oh, yes, it’s always so sad when such a fine young man is cut down in his prime.”
“Don’t be such a smartass about someone you didn’t even know.”
Nicole leaned across the counter, her face inches from Bobby’s. “Oh, I knew him, Bobby. You want me to describe how well I knew him?”
Bobby’s cheeks were growing red. “Shut up. Do you know how many women would have given anything to sleep with him?”
“I didn’t sleep with him. He raped me. And if someone hadn’t come along, he would have helped Magaro kill me.”
“If he did what you said, it was because he was messed up on something Magaro gave him.”
“If he did what I said?” She glared at him. “You know he did it. He bragged about it.”
Bobby was almost shaking with anger. Both customers stared at them openly. “You came out of it all right. You didn’t need to have him murdered!”
The woman nearly dropped the vase. “I didn’t have anyone murdered,” Nicole hissed.
“Sure. The lily-white Nicole Sloan would never do such a thing.” Bobby’s puffy eyes narrowed. “But looking at what’s happened lately, I’m beginning to think maybe you didn’t have him murdered. Maybe you did it yourself.”
“And set up Paul to cover my crime?”
“Who knows what you’re capable of? Who knows what any woman is capable of? I know Carmen would do anything to get what she wants.”
Nicole slowly shook her head. “I never knew what she saw in you to begin with. Now I wonder how she can bear to be near you.”
“Oh, she can bear to be near me, all right. She just doesn’t get the chance very often.”
“Bobby, you are such a jerk!”
“And you are—” The woman had carefully placed the expensive vase back on the shelf and was cringing through the doorway. The man watched her, looking as if he too planned a hasty escape. “Get out of my store, Nicole,” Bobby said with quiet venom
. “You’re scaring away my customers.”
“So I see.” Nicole drew back, smiling, her even voice denying her pounding heart. “I’ll go if you answer one question for me.” He stared at her, his round cheeks now crimson. “Did Lisa Mervin buy one of those Indian masks from you? A wolf mask?”
Bobby laughed without humor. “If Lisa had that kind of money, she’d spend it on clothes for herself. She’d never waste it on art.”
“Not even if she were giving it as a gift to a man who could appreciate art?”
“Listen, Lisa’s idea of a gift for a man is Old Spice cologne. That’s as imaginative as she gets. Check old Roger’s medicine chest—you’re sure to find a bottle. Believe me, Roger’s interest in her isn’t her mind. She was a great lay when she was fifteen, and I’m sure she’s even better now.”
Nicole’s face slackened. “You and Lisa…”
Bobby smiled. “Don’t think you’ll get any thrill from telling Carmen. She already knows. Now get out of my store before I call the police.”
4
Nicole thought about going by Carmen’s, then dropped the idea. She’d already been thrown out of two places today. She didn’t have the energy to go for three. Besides, she knew her mother and Shelley would be home, with Shelley anxious to hear news of her father’s condition.
The front door opened before she’d even reached the porch. Shelley ran to greet her. “Mommy, is Daddy all right?”
“Yes, honey,” Nicole said, bending to hug her. “He’s going to be fine. You don’t have to worry about him.”
“Does he want to see me?”
“Not tonight. They had to do surgery. When I left, he wasn’t even conscious yet. Lisa is with him.”
Shelley made a face. “Oh, her.”
“Yes, her,” Nicole said, not attempting to add something nice, or at least temperate, about the young woman. She was still seething over Bobby’s revelation that he’d been cheating on Carmen with her five years ago. The thought that she might one day be Shelley’s stepmother made her almost physically ill.
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