by Cleo Coyle
Maybe it was the cast and the helpless way he asked. He seemed almost touchingly pathetic—at total a loss for what to do with himself next. And she couldn’t get over the fact that he’d been visiting Italy on and off for over a decade of summers and had never bothered to visit the Vatican museums. So she became his guide.
She’d already resolved not to sleep with him, to fend off any aggressive advances, but he wasn’t the kind of young man who came at a girl head on. He was more like a cup of espresso, warm and inviting, yet still very potent. He knew how to relax and excite at the same time. And when her guard was finally down, he played her with his light fingertips and laughing mouth and she melted like morning chocolate, right into his hands.
In the end, she would often become melancholy thinking about the way they’d met—the prophetic nature of it. How the sun had been so bright with promise it proved painful, making her smile and squint at the same time, ultimately limiting her vision.
How he’d wanted her most when she was walking away.
I opened my eyes.
How odd, I thought, to dream of Matteo. To recall so vividly my first time making love with him—which had also been my first time, period. The dream didn’t disturb me. For some reason, I found it strangely comforting.
On the futon, Bruce’s arms were still around me, his body warm, but I was cold. It was hours later, and the flames in Bruce’s hearth were dying. He was sleeping deeply beside me, and I knew it was now or never.
Easing away from him, I reached for his black fisherman’s sweater and slipped it over my head. The garment was huge on me, reaching almost to my knees, the sleeves extending far past my hands. I shoved the sleeves up and rose on bare feet, tiptoeing toward the staircase.
Okay, so sleeping with Bruce may not have been the smartest thing I’d ever done, but it was the most satisfying thing I’d done in years. Like the snow on my walk earlier in the evening, I knew I wanted to enjoy this moment while I could…because I had no idea if any of what had happened between us tonight would actually last.
I wanted it, too, of course, but I couldn’t control it any more than the early snow…and, in the end, I had to accept that it was all right.
Twenty years ago, when I’d first met Matteo, I’d needed things to last. Security was paramount, and I was desperate for permanence. Maybe it was because of my crazy, unpredictable, lawless father, or maybe it doesn’t matter who your father is. Maybe every young person feels insecure to some degree because nothing is decided yet, and the future is such a long, untraveled road.
I felt less frightened of the future now than those years when I was Joy’s age, more resigned to the notion that the one thing to be counted on was that nothing could. The only unchanging idea was that everything changes, everything is fluid, and nothing can be possessed.
Over time, the various occupants of this very house had flowed in and out, changing from rich to poor then rich again, and they would continue to change and flow through for decades to come.
Certainly nothing living and breathing could be possessed, either. Not friends, not spouses, not aging parents, not even children.
Sometimes I would look into my little girl’s green eyes and see that wary child, clinging so tightly to my hand in front of her elementary school. Then instantly she’d be grown again, transformed like a magician’s dove. And, laughing with relish, she’d fly away from me, a beautiful young thing with her brand new life.
Maybe it would be good for me to finally let go of the notion of permanence…or at least loosen my grip. Maybe in the end all I really needed to do was let go of holding on so tightly.
It certainly felt good earlier to let go of my inhibitions, to trust myself with someone new. I wondered what Matt would think if he could see his ex-wife now, with another man’s sweater over her naked form, sneaking up to his bedroom to snoop for evidence that he was not in fact a serial murderer.
Yeah. Sure.
I certainly didn’t believe it. Not for a minute. Not for a second.
No man who made love like that, so tenderly, so considerately…No man who opened himself so completely could be as cold blooded a killer as Quinn claimed. I just had to find the evidence to make that clear to my detective friend. Starting with that printer.
I crept up the old unfinished staircase, the wooden steps rough against my bare feet. An icy draft flowed down the long hallway from the front door, sweeping up the stairs and up through the bottom edge of Bruce’s heavy cableknit, chilling my thighs, and making me shiver as I hit the fifth step. On the sixth came a noisy creak.
I froze and listened intensely, but the house remained completely still. With a quiet exhale, I resumed my climb.
At the top of the stairs, the darkness was thick. I felt my way along the wall and stepped through the master bedroom’s doorway. The large room was in shadow, front windows giving enough light from the street to make my way around the great four-poster bed, which sat on one end of the room like a hulking giant. I reached for the small, bedside lamp and turned it on.
The antique roll-top sat by the window. I began to push back its cover. When it stuck midway, I cursed and pushed harder, but the damn thing was more intractable than my ex-husband.
Bending over and peering under, I could make out Bruce’s sleek little laptop computer. It sat open, the screen black. I could see the edge of what looked like a small printer, sitting at the back of the desk’s large surface.
For a few more minutes, I struggled with the cover. Finally, I smacked and shoved, and suddenly, with a loud rattle, the cover gave, rolling all the way up with a bang.
I closed my eyes, held my breath, and listened.
The desk had made a terrible racket, and I stood in dread, my mind racing to concoct some story. I was certain Bruce was already up, about to furiously bound up the stairs and demand I explain why I was snooping around his bedroom in the wee hours.
For a solid minute, I stood, hearing no sign of movement downstairs, so I swallowed, and resolutely turned back to the desk to quickly examine the printer at the back.
“Hewlett Packard DeskJet,” I whispered. “Model 840C.”
It was the same brand, the same model as the printer Quinn was trying to link to Inga Berg’s murder. I closed my eyes. Dammit. Quinn would take this to the bank. But I knew it was just a coincidence. It had to be.
I wrestled for a moment with telling Bruce everything, suggesting he get rid of the printer. But I knew I couldn’t. Not yet.
A part of me, a very thin slice of my being, couldn’t help asking the question: Was there a chance Bruce Bowman could be a murderer? Was there a chance?
I knew I needed more to go on—one or more threads to follow, something more to pursue myself or give to Quinn.
On a little prayer, I smacked the laptop’s spacebar. The screen jumped to life. Bingo. It had been in sleep mode. I searched the computer’s desktop for anything that might look like a lead.
It appeared he was hooked into a DSL line for the Internet, and he’d set his password to automatic. I quickly logged on and checked the “New Mail” box. It was empty. He must have been answering e-mails just before I arrived. The box was completely cleaned out.
I flipped over to the “Old Mail” box, looking for correspondence from any of the victims. I was fishing blindly, not sure what, if anything, I’d find, but praying I’d know it when I saw it.
The “Old Mail” box screen was set up to scroll mail from oldest to newest. The first date was thirty days ago, and I assumed this box, like my own, expired mail at that time, dumping it into a back-up folder. I didn’t have time to search for that folder, so I just began to scroll down.
There were a number of e-mails from people in his company—the URL address was tagged with “@Bowman-Restoration.com.” I ignored those. There were also dozens of e-mails from someone named “Vintage86.”
Bruce had grown up in California wine country, so it didn’t seem out of the ordinary to have a correspondence with a person
who also liked wine.
At random, I opened one, my eyes scanning the long, rambling text.
“Nobody thought you were very smart. They used to say I was slumming. I was. You were just a sex toy. Nothing of any consequence….”
The words were ugly. Harsh. And they went on and on.
I shuddered. If this were his ex-wife, Maxine, then I could see why Bruce considered this new life, this new house, an escape.
I hated myself for doing this, but I clicked on the “Sent” box to see how he was answering. This was a terrible invasion of privacy. I knew that. But I had to know. Was he just as cruel? Was this a sick back-and-forth, a pattern he was maintaining? Was he really the man Quinn painted him to be—someone who could snap, give into rage and hate, someone who had the ability to kill, maybe at the moment one of these women started belittling him like his ex-wife?
The “Sent” box was set up like the “Old Mail” box. There were thirty days worth of correspondence here. Not one was addressed to “Vintage86.”
The realization stunned me. Not even I could have read those attacks and not fired off a few choice words. But Bruce hadn’t written one e-mail to Vintage86, at least not in the last thirty days. It appeared he was reading her e-mails, reading all that ugliness, all that terrible stuff, but giving none of it back.
Maybe he’d written some in the past and had simply gotten to the point where he chose to ignore her—just let her blow off steam. Either way, though, it was clear he was a man who could in fact hold his temper, even in the face of verbal abuse, not to mention in the face of my interrogation of him tonight. He’d been annoyed with me at times, even a little angry with my prying questions, but he’d always been reasonable, never lashed out, never lost his temper or turned on me, and he certainly never raised a hand.
I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
He’s innocent. I knew it then for sure, knew it with every fiber of my being.
Quickly, I went back to the “Old Mail” and continued scrolling. In the days just prior to her death, I saw a few from “IngaBabe34_24_32,” the numbers sounding like her measurements, which was in character for Inga.
The last one read, “Where’ve you been? Are you traveling? I’ve been calling. Let’s get together and…”
The e-mail degenerated into a profane description of sex acts.
I flipped over to the “Sent Mail” and found Bruce’s answer.
“…and I’m sorry. You’re a beautiful woman, but I’m not the man for you. And you’re definitely not the woman for me. Good-bye and good luck. B.”
I shuddered, seeing that B, remembering that’s how Quinn said the note to Inga was signed. But Bruce wouldn’t have kissed her off like this in the e-mails if he’d intended to meet her again. It had to have been some other man she’d been involved with.
I flipped, one more time, back to the “Old Mail,” scrolling all the way to the end of the long stack of e-mails. My eyes caught on one labeled [email protected]. The date and time indicated it had come in the evening before.
“Okay…last one…”
I opened the mail, my eyes scanning. Sally “Sahara” McNeil had provided the names addresses and phone numbers of two men she called “my old flames and your old buds…”
These had to be the old friends from college that Bruce had wanted to get back in touch with. Sally came through for him. More text below these addresses talked about how she had enjoyed seeing him again and how she’d love him to come to a gallery show the following week. She also provided a hyperlink at the bottom of the e-mail, which she said would give him more info on Death Row.
“Death Row?” I whispered, shuddering. “What the heck is Death Row?”
“Clare?”
I heard the voice. Faint and distant. Damn. Bruce had woken up.
It would take him at least sixty seconds to get up here. I held my breath and clicked on the hyperlink. The DSL was fast and quickly connected me to a web site for an art gallery.
In the blink of an eye, I skimmed the home page. There were a number of links listed. They looked to be artist’s names, and the tagline on the site read, “Journey into Violent Art and the Art of Violence.”
It seemed Sally McNeil’s gallery was dedicated to “art inspired by lust, morbidity, and obsession.”
When I heard the creak of the sixth step, I began quickly closing all the active windows on the laptop.
“Clare?”
The voice was louder now, slightly tense.
“Bruce?” I called as innocently as I could manage. “I’m up here. In your bedroom.”
I took hold of the open roll-top’s cover. Please god don’t stick.
It didn’t. The cover smoothly and silently rolled down, giving me about five seconds to get to Bruce’s bureau before he appeared in the bedroom’s doorway.
When I looked up from an open drawer, he was standing there barefoot. He’d pulled his jeans back on, zipped them, but hadn’t bothered buttoning them. In the soft bedroom light, the brown mat of hair on his naked chest appeared a shade darker than the coarse stubble now shadowing his jawline.
“I was cold…so I came up here…thought I could find some extra blankets or something to sleep in…”
Bruce smiled. “I like you in that.”
I pinched a bit of the black cableknit. “This old thing? Oh, I just picked it up somewhere.”
He yawned. “It’s way too early in the morning for bad jokes.”
“Agreed.” I headed toward the doorway, still nervous. Still certain he’d heard the roll-top going down, would suspect what I’d been up to and hate me for it.
“Wait right there,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I was kidding. I have something for you to wear.”
He moved to the bureau, opened a drawer, and pulled out a pair of flannel pajamas. “You take the top, I’ll take the bottom.”
“Thanks.”
“And I have something else to keep you warm…”
I thought for sure he was setting me up for another seduction, but instead, he reached for one of two Saks shopping bags leaning beside the bureau.
He reached in and pulled out a classic, floor-length shearling with exposed seams, turn-back cuffs, and a hood. “It’s for you, Clare. Try it on.”
“Bruce? What did you do?” The coat was easily over a thousand dollars.
He shrugged. “You and Joy were going at each other just because of a stupid-looking parka. I thought it was silly. So I bought you both early Christmas gifts. You can give Joy’s to her next time you see her.”
“Bruce, it’s too much—”
“No, it isn’t.” He cut me off. “It’s a gift, Clare. Don’t turn it down. I didn’t turn down the dinner you made for me, did I? So don’t tell me you can’t accept this.”
“It’s too generous.”
“It’s just a coat. You’ll make me happy if you wear it.” He held it up, waiting for me to slip my arms in its sleeves. “Come on, try it on.”
I did, slipping my arms into the fleece-lined garment and wrapping the buttersoft leather around me. For fun, I even flipped up the hood. “It’s really warm. And it’s really beautiful. To tell you the truth, I’ve been admiring the shearling on one of our customers, and I’ve always wanted one, just could never afford it. Is Joy’s like this one?”
“Exactly.”
I laughed. “She’ll love the coat, but hate having one just like her mother’s. We haven’t had mother-daughter matching clothes since she was four.”
“Well, you can always exchange it for another style—or she can. I just figured one of you might like this version enough to keep it.”
“Thank you,” I said, then turned and kissed him. He smiled, held the kiss longer than expected. My hood slipped off as he pulled me closer, just as I was pulling away.
“You know I have to get up in less than four hours to open the Blend,” I warned him.
He nodded, went to the four-poster, and pulled down the bed
covers. “Okay…I’ll set the alarm, and then drive you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m driving you, Cosi, so drop it. Now let’s go to bed while we can.”
SEVENTEEN
IT was twenty-five minutes to six in the A.M. when I unlocked the front door to the duplex above the Village Blend. That meant I had twenty-five minutes to wash, change clothes, and be back downstairs to unlock the door for our morning pastry delivery.
I didn’t even want to think about the snow removal on the sidewalk—although I knew I’d have to think about it soon, or else risk a very hefty fine from the Sanitation Department. The city gave property owners four hours to clear their sidewalks after the snow stopped falling. I figured we were just about due for the massive ticket.
Matteo wasn’t scheduled to fly out again for another week, and I made a quiet entrance, trying not to wake him. It wasn’t that I was worried about his beauty sleep. In fact, I’d probably be pounding on his door in fifteen minutes, telling him to start shoveling the walk. I just didn’t want him to see me coming through the front door, at this hour, dressed like this.
Too late.
“Well, well,” said Matt in an injured tone. “So you finally made it home.”
“Good morning,” I said, meeting his gaze. He stood there in tight, scuffed jeans and a crinkled gray turtleneck.
I took off the beautiful shearling coat and hung it in the closet. Put down the Saks shopping bag with Joy’s and faced Matteo to find him staring at my outfit, his disapproving eyes moving from the low cleavage of my tight, pearl-buttoned sweater to the short hemline on my red plaid skirt.
“I know you were wearing Joy’s yellow parka when you left here—and I won’t even ask where the hell it is now—but you haven’t actually been borrowing the girl’s clothes, have you?”
“Certainly not,” I replied. “I’d never let my barely adult daughter go out in public wearing an outfit like this one.”
For a change, Matteo was speechless.
