Blood Truth

by Matt Coyle

  “It has to come from you.”

  “I think he’s having an affair.” Her lips pinched together and her nose twitched. “Did you have to make me say it out loud?”

  “Yes, I did. I’m sorry.” My cheeks blossomed heat. “Why do you think he’s having an affair?”

  “Things could have been different, Rick.” Liquid collected in the bottom of her eyes. “You pushed me away. You never let me in.”

  Kim was right. She never understood that I wasn’t good enough for her, and I never saw her as an equal to the idolized memory I had of my late wife, Colleen. No one ever could be. Not even Colleen. But none of that mattered now.

  “I’m asking these questions because it’s my job. It’s how I get to the truth. Sometimes people think their spouses are having affairs when there’s an innocent explanation.” Not often, and sometimes it’s because of some other deceit.

  “I found a second cell phone.”

  “Some people have one phone for personal use and one for work.”

  “Not realtors. We’re on call twenty-four seven. And I found a text message to someone named Sophia.”

  “What did the text say?” Kim’s answer could make this an open and shut case.

  “He asked this Sophia if everything was on schedule. She didn’t reply.”

  “That could be about anything.” Maybe not so open and shut after all. “Did you ask him about it?”

  “No. I can’t.” She shook her head. “I’ve already caught him in a lie once. I couldn’t stand to see him lie to my face again.”

  “What was the lie?”

  “We were supposed to have lunch together at George’s at the Cove a few days ago, but Jeffrey canceled at the last second because he had to show a property in Del Mar to one of our top clients.” The unspent tears had dried up, but the angry flush came back into her cheeks. “I kept the reservation and went to lunch by myself. As soon as I sat down, I noticed the client Jeffrey was supposedly meeting sitting at a table twenty feet from me. I went over and asked him if he was meeting Jeffrey later. He said no. When I asked Jeffrey how the meeting went later that night, he said it went okay.”

  “You’re sure it was the same client?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t confront Jeffrey about it?”

  “No. I stood there and let him lie to me. I’ve never felt so small.”

  “So, you’d rather I get you proof before you confront him? Wouldn’t it be easier to tell him about the phone and the lunch and hash things out? It will hurt, but trust me, it hurts less than getting a third party involved taking pictures in the dark.”

  “I can’t. But I need to know right now.”

  “Okay. I’ll look into it. Why the rush?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I’D BEEN FOLLOWING Jeffrey Parker in his white Lexus LS for two days. I hadn’t caught him in the arms of another woman, but I had seen some of the grandest real estate in La Jolla. Made me wish I had an extra five or six mil lying around. None of the properties Parker showed had For Sale signs out front. He had a wealth of pocket listings. Luxurious homes where he got first dibs.

  Parker and a client emerged from a house overlooking the beach on Sea Lane. Not quite Malibu a hundred fifty miles up the coast, but you still had the ocean for a backyard and even got a front yard as a bonus. I sat in my car and watched Parker from up the block. Gray slacks, white shirt, no tie, navy blazer. Tall, three or four inches over me. Fit. Square jaw. I understood why Kim chose him instead of waiting for me to figure things out. I just didn’t understand why she took so long to make the choice.

  The client, a thirtyish playboy, drove off in a Maserati. Parker locked up, then got into his car. He headed toward La Jolla Boulevard.

  I grabbed my cell phone off the car’s console and tapped a number. “He’s coming your way.”

  “Roger. I’ll duck and cover and follow after you.”

  “Check.”

  Moira MacFarlane had been a PI longer than I had, and was damn good at it. She ran solo, like me, and we sometimes teamed up when one of us had a multiple-day surveillance gig. Two cars gave the subject different looks when he checked his rearview mirror. We both drove newish Honda Accords, the most popular car in Southern California. Ubiquitous on the streets of San Diego County. Even in high-end La Jolla. Moira’s was white, the most popular color. I drove black, number two on the list. It blended better with the night.

  I pictured Moira ducking below the dashboard and chuckled. She didn’t have to duck down too far. She barely stood five feet tall but had an attitude that would fill up an NBA number-one draft pick. We’d met after a lawyer, unbeknownst to me, promised her a job then gave it to me instead. She tracked me down and showed me that attitude up close. We settled things over a couple beers, but every time we met since, she’d still greet me with a giant chip on her tiny shoulder.

  I didn’t have that many friends. I couldn’t unfriend one of them just because she acted like she hated me.

  Parker turned right onto La Jolla Boulevard, not left, which would take him back to his office in the village.

  I followed him with Moira in tow. He headed south toward Bird Rock, the tail end of La Jolla. Plenty of expensive homes down there with ocean views to show clients. Except he rolled right through, down to Mission Boulevard into Pacific Beach. PB was a few hundred grand lower in zip code than La Jolla, but it still had enough million-dollar homes to interest Parker Real Estate. A rookie agent though, not the boss.

  Parker made a right on Missouri Street and drove past apartment complexes and condos. He headed toward the end of the street, which dead-ended at the ocean after a block. My gut turned over. Unless Parker had made a wrong turn or intended to park and stare at the ocean, he had two potential destinations. Both hotels. He turned left into the underground parking lot of The Pacific Terrace Hotel.

  “Shit.”

  “What?” Moira’s voice jarred me. I’d forgotten I had her on speakerphone during the drive. Lost in my dread of what a hotel meant. One that was hidden from La Jolla but close enough for easy access. I tried to lie to myself that maybe Parker was just meeting a client from out of town. The lie didn’t take.

  Jeffrey Parker was meeting a woman.

  “Nothing. Bust it into that garage. We have to find out who he’s meeting.”

  I drove to the dead end and parked illegally in front of the low steel barrier that protected the sidewalk from the road. Moira swooped into the underground parking lot. I tugged my ball cap low, hopped out of the car, and ran around to the front entrance of the hotel. I’d never met Jeffrey Parker, but he knew who I was. Years ago, when he and Kim were just dating, they’d had conversations about me. He wasn’t a fan. My face had been in the news enough over the past couple years for Parker to find out what I looked like.

  I hustled through the upscale, fern-dotted lobby toward the door to the stairwell and went through it. I plugged my earbuds into my phone as I ran up the stairs. The Pacific Terrace only had three stories, but most of the rooms had decks that faced the ocean. Not the normal hookup dive I was used to when I worked the adultery detail.

  I guess when you were the King of La Jolla Real Estate, the view outside the sin room was almost as important as the one inside.

  “The elevator went up to the third floor.” Moira’s voice buzzed in my ears as I hit the second-floor landing. My instincts had been correct. Only the top floor for Jeffrey Parker.

  “Were you on the elevator with him?” I huffed out the words as I pumped up the last flight of stairs.

  “No.”

  “Go back to your car and wait.” I didn’t have time for further elaboration.

  “Yes, sir. Asshole.” She hung up.

  I opened the door to the third floor of rooms three inches and peeked out. The hallway was empty, but I heard the click of a door being closed. I walked about midway down the hall and estimated that the sound had come from room 310. I looked up and do
wn the hall to make sure no one could see me, then put my ear to the door. No murmured conversation, just the whooshing equalization of my own eardrum.

  I took the elevator down, exited the hotel, and jogged back to my car. No parking ticket. Yet. A spot had opened up a few cars away while I was in the hotel. I jumped in my car and nabbed it before someone else could. Parking spaces in Pacific Beach were as scarce as in La Jolla.

  I punched Moira’s number.

  “Would you mind meeting me out on the street?” I tried to sound pleasant.

  “You’re an asshole. I’ll be right there.”

  “Could you bring your sun hat with you?”

  “Roger.”

  I opened the trunk of the Accord and unzipped a large duffel bag, then pulled out my tools of deception. A pair of white shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, a Pittsburgh Steelers ball cap, and my Nikon DSLR camera. A lot of PIs used video cameras these days. I preferred the stark, frozen images of life. I got back into the car and changed, then emerged as a tourist awestruck by the beauty of San Diego. The beauty I let slip into the background all too often in my everyday life.

  Moira emerged from the parking garage wearing rolled-up Levis, showing off her shapely calves, flip-flops, a tank top, and a floppy sun hat that shaded her silver-dollar brown eyes.

  “You’re too tan,” I said.

  “You’re not.” She looked at my Irish legs. “Besides, women go to tanning booths all over the country. Even here.”

  “You’re right.”

  I led her over the knee-high barrier at the dead end onto the sidewalk. We took a wooden staircase down to the flat sandy beach below the hotel. The beach was empty save for a few couples walking down by the shore. I glanced over my shoulder up at the third floor of the hotel and saw the balcony of the suite in the dead center. Empty.

  Moira and I walked diagonally across the beach cutting in front of the hotel. We headed down to the water, and I took peeks back at the balcony. Still empty.

  “Okay. Do your thing.” I lifted the camera hanging from the strap around my neck and pointed it at Moira.

  She made goofy poses in front of the water, and I pretended to take pictures of her. She moved away from the ocean so she was now between me and the hotel. I aimed the camera above her at room 310’s balcony and zoomed the lens. Jeffrey Parker came into view sitting in a lounge chair. Alone. Was he renting the room as a getaway crash pad? Maybe the crown did weigh heavily on the king.

  A flash of movement behind him. Someone handed him a glass of wine. I shifted the camera and caught a woman. Thirties. Beautiful.

  Wearing a silk robe.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MY STOMACH SANK, but I clicked the shutter release and took Parker and the woman’s photo. Find the truth, no matter what. That was my charge, my mission. Truth was the crucible by which all lives were judged. Without it, life and death had no meaning. Today, no matter what meant breaking the heart of a woman whose heart I’d already broken before on my own.

  The woman on the balcony sat down in a lounge chair with her own glass of wine next to Parker. Short brown hair. Tan. She slipped one tan leg over the other. I couldn’t see whether she wore a bikini underneath her robe or nothing at all. Even from a distance, I could feel her sensuality. A hunger that vibrated off her body. A carnal beckoning.

  Parker was still in the clothes he’d worn when he arrived. They hadn’t gotten down to business, yet. I snapped off a few more shots.

  “Is he with someone?” Moira shifted her pose to hands on hips and I continued to take pictures of the couple on the balcony above her head.

  “A woman.”

  “Bingo.”

  Moira knew who my client was, but she didn’t know my relationship with Kim. This was just another case that we were about to successfully wrap up.

  “Yeah.” I didn’t match her enthusiasm.

  “What’s wrong?” She put her hand on top of her sun hat and thrust out a hip. “We cracked the case. That’s what we get paid to do.”

  “The client’s a friend.”

  “Oh.” She dropped her hand to her side and fell out of character for an instant. Then she spun and looked back at me over her shoulder. Composure regained.

  Moira and I had a business relationship. Though I considered her a friend, our conversations almost always avoided the personal. Did that really make us friends? I wondered what she considered me. Now wasn’t the time to blur the line.

  Moira kept posing and I kept taking pictures. Up on the balcony, Parker’s lips moved. The woman laughed and placed her hand on his thigh. Parker smiled and patted the woman’s hand. They both wore sunglasses concealing their eyes. Verbal foreplay? I couldn’t tell. The woman stood up and led him into the hotel room. I snapped another shot.

  The camera couldn’t reach into the darkened hotel room, so I couldn’t see if verbal foreplay had escalated into the physical. I didn’t have to see. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to have to lay the photos in front of Kim and watch her break apart as I had so many other women during the four years of my PI career. It was hard enough to do to strangers. I’d never had to do it to a friend. The other photos I had of Parker and the woman were proof enough for me. I hoped Kim wouldn’t want more.

  More was always better left to the imagination.

  “That’s a wrap.” I dropped the camera and let it hang from the strap around my neck.

  “For the day or the whole case?” Moira let go her pose.

  “Everything. I’ll send you a check in a couple days.” My voice flat under the ocean’s revelry. We trudged through the sand to the wooden staircase. A wave broke into whitewater behind us with a rolling hiss.

  “Tough news to have to give to a friend.” Moira put a hand on the staircase railing and stopped. “Sorry, Cahill.”

  Her sincerity stunned me. It may have been the nicest thing she’d ever said to me.

  “Thanks.” I walked up the stairs, Moira at my side.

  We split at the sidewalk. She walked over to the garage, and I headed to my car. She stopped at the mouth of the garage and turned toward me. “Do you want to get a beer? I’m buying.”

  The new nicest thing she’d ever said to me.

  “Thanks, but I’m going to hang out here and see how long he stays.” I took a step toward my car, then stopped and turned back. Moira disappeared into the darkness of the garage. “I’ll take a rain check, though. And I’ll buy.”

  “We’ll see.” Her sandpaper voice came out of the dark. “But you blew it. You had me in a rare moment of weakness. You may never get another chance.”

  I didn’t have a rebuttal to the truth. I wondered if Jeffrey Parker would.

  * * *

  Parker’s Lexus rolled out of The Pacific Terrace Hotel garage at 4:37 p.m. No passenger. Just him. He’d been at the hotel for about an hour and a half. Plenty of time to do what he shouldn’t. I ducked down in my car as he passed. I let him go. I’d gotten what I’d needed, but didn’t want. If Parker had a second woman on the side, I didn’t have to know about it, and neither did Kim. The truth may be life’s crucible, but it didn’t have to rub salt in every wound.

  I sat in my car looking at the ocean below the horizon, running through scenarios on how best to present Kim the evidence that would confirm her suspicions. There wasn’t an easy way. The facts were what they were. The truth would hurt. Kim deserved better. She’d wasted five years in and out of a relationship with me. When she finally figured out that I’d never figure it out, she went with her second choice. Now it looked like he was a worse choice than me.

  Movement in my side-view mirror caught my eye. A silver late-model Cadillac with the license plate PWR BRKR passed by me and turned into The Pacific Terrace Hotel garage.

  I knew the car and the license plate. Peter Stone. Power Broker. Turk Muldoon’s silent partner in the restaurant and a man who had once tried to kill me. I jumped out of the car and ran toward the garage. Stone was a onetime Vegas casino boss, a present-day philanthro
pist, and an all-time asshole.

  Maybe him showing up at a hotel that housed the woman screwing my client’s husband was just a coincidence.

  There were plenty of reasons for Stone to visit The Pacific Terrace Hotel. He’d left Vegas behind long ago and had morphed into a real estate developer. He might even be an investor in the hotel. But my experience with Stone had proven that he didn’t believe in coincidences. When it came to him, neither did I.

  I slipped into the darkened garage in time to see Stone walking toward the elevator with a black leather briefcase in his hand. Expensive, with a leather strap secured through a silver clasp.

  I tracked him from a distance, using parked cars for cover. He entered the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, I dashed to the staircase and sprinted up to the third floor. I cracked the stairwell door on the third floor and listened. The ping of the elevator and, seconds later, the swoosh of the doors opening. I crept out of the staircase and inched along the wall. A knock on a door. A woman’s voice. I peeked around the corner and saw a profile of gray hair enter a room.

  I knew the hair and I knew the room. Peter Stone had business with the woman who had ruined Kim Parker’s marriage.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I’D JUST PUNCHED my ignition when Stone’s Cadillac emerged from The Pacific Terrace Hotel garage. I slid down in my seat and let him drive by. He hadn’t been in the woman’s room more than fifteen minutes. Sex was off the table. I wondered what had been on it.

  Peter Stone. A briefcase. A woman in a hotel room. A lot of possibilities. Not many that a philanthropic icon would want on his resume.

  I turned off the ignition and wondered what Jeffrey Parker had gotten himself into and how much I wanted to know. And how much I didn’t want to tell Kim.

  Two minutes later, a late-model white Corvette Z06 convertible slipped out of the garage. Top down. Woman behind the wheel. Scarf over her hair, tied under her chin. Big round sunglasses. Audrey Hepburn from a 1960s movie.