Given what Risa had said about Adam’s romantic history, his current attachment was probably fashionable but disposable and had no bearing on my investigation. Except that he’d hidden it from me, along with his penchant for roughing people up, and the thing I need to know most is whatever people won’t tell me. Kenny was going to enjoy this more than I was. “Go ahead. Tell me who it is,” I said, letting pride fall before a story.
Kenny smiled so broadly that his cheeks nearly obscured his eyes. “What’re you gonna give me?”
“Hey! What happened to our being friends?”
“Guess you were right, I didn’t have enough imagination.” I deserved that one, so I couldn’t do anything but laugh. Pleased, Kenny joined in for a moment, then said, “Seriously, what’re you gonna give me?”
I held out my hand. “You’re gonna give me your card, and I’m gonna get you a meeting with Connie Hamilton, our photography editor.”
Kenny’s shaggy brows drew down, casting a shadow across his jolly face. “That’s not funny.”
“Cross my heart and hope to stay on your good side. I know how difficult it is to get your break. I can’t speak for Connie, but I can get you in to see her. Unless moving from your rag to our rag doesn’t strike you as upward mobility.”
Kenny fumbled a business card out of his wallet, eyes on me the whole time, as though I would make a face or otherwise betray my insincerity the moment he looked away. Not until the card had been stowed in my wallet did he seem to relax a bit and consider trusting me.
“So, who’s he with?”
“Olivia Elliott.”
I felt like laughing again, but at myself this time. I should have asked a few more questions before buying into the concept that Kenny had worthwhile information. “No, he’s not,” I protested, ready to renege on my promise to bring him in to Connie.
“Friend of mine’s been watching the Crowley brothers for a while now, got this tip that Adam’s been spending quality time with Olivia Elliott. Checked out.”
“So they spend time together. That’s not a surprise, they’re practically brother and sister.”
“You meet your brother at the SoHo Grand? On a regular basis?”
What is it they teach you in driver’s ed about skidding on the ice—despite your instincts otherwise, don’t slam on the brakes, steer into the skid and pump the brakes? “I’d meet my brother for drinks there. The SoHo Grand has several nice bars.”
“So you’d think they’d stay downstairs and enjoy them now and then.”
I was going to protest one more time, that the nicest bar at the SoHo Grand was on the second floor, but sometimes, no matter how hard you pump the brakes, you skid off the road and slam into a tree. Olivia and Adam? No. That would mean they’d both been lying to me. On multiple fronts. Which threatened the integrity of everything I’d constructed about Russell’s death. Could I have been that foolish, that starstruck, that taken in? There had to be some explanation we were missing. Didn’t there?
I tried to figure out what Kenny stood to gain by lying. Nothing. “You’re being straight with me.”
Kenny nodded. “Sorry.”
“No need, because there was nothing going on. But it does give me food for thought on a couple of other levels.” I shook his hand again. “Thank you, Kenny. I’ll talk to Connie tomorrow and give you a call.”
Kenny thanked me with a dubious smile and, after a moment’s hesitation, drifted down the street. I knew he didn’t believe I’d bring him in. I also knew there was a chance he was going to lurk around the corner for another couple of hours until he accepted that Adam wasn’t going to show up, but that was his prerogative, and I couldn’t spend time right now convincing him otherwise. I had work to do. More than I’d realized.
In my apartment, I got into research mode. I changed into my writing clothes—supremely broken-in Diesel jeans, a Washington Redskins sweatshirt, and bare feet—tore open a bag of cheddar-and-sour-cream Ruffles, poured two Starbucks DoubleShot Lights over ice, and put Film at Eleven in the CD player. With the groove dug, I slid in and began the teeth-grinding process of reexamining everything I thought I knew.
Suppose Kenny was right. I skipped right over what that said about Adam being manipulative and my being gullible and all the emotional issues that called up, and did my utmost to concentrate on the fact that it was now even less surprising that Olivia was upset at my suggestion that Adam was involved in Russell’s death: I’d accused her boyfriend of knocking off her dad.
But if they were seeing each other, why hadn’t either one admitted to it? Why hadn’t anyone else in the family mentioned it? Or didn’t any one of them know, either? Why would Adam and Olivia keep it secret?
Claire.
If Claire had so much control over Adam’s professional life, it wasn’t hard to believe that she watched his personal life rather carefully, too. Based on Claire’s low opinion of Olivia, she would not be Claire’s first choice as a partner for her little boy, so it made sense that they’d keep it to themselves. And since they all lived on top of one another on Riverside Drive, slipping away to a hotel did a lot to help maintain the secret.
But why not tell me? I wouldn’t have exposed them. At least until press time. Why lie to me? So he could flirt with me and she could befriend me and they could keep tabs on what I was figuring out about Russell’s death? They only needed to worry about that if they were concerned I was going to find out something that put them in a bad light. Then they’d be playing innocent so I’d think they were. What did they know? Worse, what had they done?
I answered the phone so automatically that it didn’t really register it was in my hand and I was talking until Cassady said, “He’s cheating on me.”
“No, he’s not, because we weren’t together and I’m not a hundred percent sure they’re together, but it does look pretty bad,” I said, feeling a queasiness exceeding the Ruffles-Starbucks combination.
“Hey, Molly? Let me try this again. He’s cheating on me.”
The fact that there were other people in the world came back to me a little belatedly. “Wait. Aaron?”
“Yes, Aaron. He’s the only man I’m seeing right now because he’s the one who’s cheating, not me.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
“Based on?”
“The fact that there’s got to be one good man in the world.”
“Sure, but you’re dating him, not me.”
“Let’s come back to that. What makes you think Aaron’s cheating on you?”
“I called him. At home. And the grad student answered.”
“She of the bogus results?”
“The same.”
“So he’s giving her a second chance. That proves he’s a marvelous and compassionate human being, not that he’s cheating on you.”
“She was in his house.”
“I thought his students hung out with him a lot. Weren’t you the one that said it was charming that he was so accessible to them?”
“I think his definition of ‘accessible’ might differ a bit from mine. And she was laughing.”
“She had a brush with academic annihilation and he snatched her back from the brink.”
“Why are you defending him?”
“Isn’t that why you called me? So I could talk you down?” There was a long pause. “Did you talk to Aaron?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That the whole research group was there and they thought they’d found a way to salvage the paper,” she said, sounding as though I were forcing her to admit that she still believed in the Tooth Fairy.
“More cause for laughter!” I said, happy myself that someone’s problems seemed fixable.
“So I’m a jealous shrew,” she sniffed.
“No, you’re a woman in love who’s frustrated that she can’t see her guy as often as she’d like.”
“Why am I so angry?”
“Because you don’t handle being vulnerable v
ery well, not having had much practice. Hard not to be in the driver’s seat, isn’t it?”
“I’m going to ignore that question. By the way, speaking of driver’s seats, Olivia’s lawyer was a little reticent on specifics, since the estate hasn’t been administered yet, but Russell’s death doesn’t seem to improve Claire’s position at all.”
“Really?”
“Olivia and I told him we were interested in doing a multimedia project that would feature the music of Subject to Change, and in light of Russell’s death, we wanted to know who had to sign off.”
“Besides Claire.”
“In his original will, Micah left control of the music to Claire and Russell. Equally. But not too long before he died, Mr. Drug-Addled Rock Star got a little paranoid about who would control things further down the line. So he had the language amended so that upon Russell’s death, all control over the music would be redistributed equally between Claire and ‘the three children,’ as the lawyer referred to them the entire meeting.”
“Olivia, Jordan, and Adam?”
“Right. With Russell, she had veto power. Now, she’s one against three.”
“So Claire loses rather than gains.”
“And she didn’t know that, according to the lawyer, until after Russell’s death. But if she did know, it takes away her motive, doesn’t it?”
I actually shivered as I considered the implications but made one more try. “Unless she feels she can control the three of them. And couldn’t control Russell.”
“Hmmm … If we’re motive surfing, I’d think it more likely that one of the three of them wanted more of a say in things.”
She was right, of course, but that meant accepting the notion that Adam was involved in this, which I was still resisting for some intuitive reason I couldn’t force out into the light. “Thanks for going with her.”
“It was almost fun. I think I’d make an excellent producer. I don’t have to apologize to the scholastic siren, do I?” she asked without even taking a breath between the two thoughts.
“Have you called her names, flamed her Facebook page, or sold her identity to foreign nationals?”
“Remind me never to cross you.”
“You’ll have dinner with Aaron tomorrow night and all will be well.”
She sighed, but happily this time. “I knew I’d feel better after I talked to you. I should know better than to jump to conclusions.”
We agreed to touch base later in the evening and hung up. Gnawing on the inside of my cheek, I wondered whether I was jumping to conclusions or seeing the light with Olivia and Adam. It was easy to reassure Cassady because I wanted things to be good for her and Aaron. Was I resisting believing Olivia and Adam were together because I didn’t want to accept that I’d missed it or that Adam had played me for a sucker?
If Adam was involved in Russell’s death, Olivia couldn’t know—could she?
My contemplation of that horrifying thought was shortlived, because the doorman buzzed. But rather than Todd on the phone, it was Kyle. I could picture Todd cowering in the corner. “Tell me you haven’t eaten.”
I looked at the appallingly empty bag of chips. “I haven’t.”
“I’m coming up, and you better have red wine.”
I had a bottle of Barboursville Sangiovese, and he had lasagna, garlic bread, and chopped salad from a café around the corner from the precinct run by a guy he’d gone to high school with. I uncorked the wine while he opened the containers, but I watched him out of the corner of my eye the whole time, wondering if he was waiting for me to kiss him or if I was supposed to wait for him to kiss me. This whole going back to the beginning business, while intensely romantic, was also confusing.
“Am I allowed to kiss you?” I asked lightly.
“Encouraged,” he said, licking tomato sauce off the back of his hand.
I slid into his arms and kissed him slowly, savoring the taste of his mouth and the traces of tomato sauce. He smiled, holding me tight against him. “I’ve never kissed a celebrity before.”
I dropped my head back in mock anguish and he kissed the hollow of my neck, so he couldn’t have been too upset. “Did you see the picture?”
“Gotta check out the evidence,” he murmured against my neck.
“It’s not what it seems.”
“Never is.”
“There really is an explanation,” I said.
“You mentioned.”
“That mainly involves my being an idiot.”
He scooped my face into his hands and kissed me hard on the mouth. “Stop.”
“But I want to explain.” I also wanted to talk through the “Adam as killer” scenario with someone who’d be brutally honest—and force me to be, too.
“After we eat. The lasagna’s getting cold.”
Not wanting to stack the deck or come between a man and his pasta, I demurred. We jostled in my little kitchen while we dished up the food, bumping into each other on purpose, just generally goofing around. Even if this wasn’t exactly where we’d started the first time, it was a good place to start again.
The lasagna was amazing, though I didn’t want to think about what it was going to do to my cholesterol count, but the best part of the meal was that we ate it sitting side by side on my couch, feet up on the coffee table and ankles entwined. The moment was beautiful in its simplicity and even more so in its rarity, and I hated to be the one to let reality intrude, but as Kyle started to top off my wineglass, I had to. “Hang on. I have to go out for a little while at seven-thirty and I can’t be buzzed. Can you stay? I’ll hurry back.”
“Something for work?” he said, leaving my wineglass as it was and pouring more into his own. Guess that meant he was staying.
“Yes.”
“Adam Crowley?”
“Related. Literally. His mother. A command performance, and she did the commanding.”
“You in trouble for kissing her son?”
“I hope not.”
“Tell her it was research.”
“It was. I went to see him because things other people were saying about him weren’t adding up, but then he got all passionate with me—”
“Passionate?” He tried to arch his eyebrows, but it wasn’t an expression that came naturally to him, so he looked vaguely ridiculous.
“Everybody tells me something different about him, and I can’t get a good read on him—” I stopped because Kyle inhaled as though he were about to say something of some gravity, but he stopped. “What?”
He paused a split second, then said, “You’ve got satellite, I’ll keep myself amused.”
“What is it?”
He shook his head and picked up his wineglass. “Might even read a book.”
“You were going to say something and you stopped.”
Swirling the wine in his glass, he held it up to the light. “I know it’s supposed to cling to the sides, but I can never remember why.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re tenacious?” he asked with a touch of sharpness.
“Why?”
“Because that’s really just a nice way of calling someone stubborn.”
“Is that something you’d like to do?”
He set down his glass firmly. “I was going to say something about your little friend, and I stopped myself because we agreed that we were going to stay out of each other’s work. So you need to let it go now.”
I couldn’t let it go, but I couldn’t ask him again, not after that pronouncement. Scraping at the last little bit of mozzarella sticking to my plate, I hoped the burning desire to ask him what he’d been going to say would pass, but it didn’t. I was about to sacrifice all the ground we’d gained by insisting he tell me anyway when someone knocked on the door.
I made what I hoped was a charming face as I went to answer it. “Which neighbor smelled the lasagna and wants to join us?” At the door, I looked through the peephole at Adam Crowley.
S
wamped by a wave of conflicting emotions, I threw open the door. Predominantly, I was irritated that he’d come, doubly irritated that Todd had let him up without calling. The fact that Todd was standing at the elevator with a huge, google-eyed grin didn’t help at all.
“You know Adam Crowley! That’s so cool!” Todd enthused as he disappeared back into the elevator.
“Sweet kid,” Adam said, an odd tone to his voice. He leaned forward, apparently planning on kissing me, and lost his balance. It wasn’t until he thrust out his arm awkwardly to brace himself against the wall and almost missed that it registered that he was drunk. Plowed, actually.
“How did you know where I live?”
“I have the world at my fingertips,” he said, waggling the fingers of his free hand in my face. “Google.” He leaned in to give me a wink and nearly toppled over.
I pushed him back up into a vaguely vertical position.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I need you,” he said, having trouble staying steady even while holding on to the wall.
“No, you don’t. You need to leave.”
“You’re the only—”
“Stop. Don’t jerk me around, Adam.”
“Don’t be mad….”
“You’re a liar.”
“No …”
Kyle’s hand brushed lightly across my back as he stepped into the doorway with me. He looked Adam over quickly and frowned in disapproval.
“Call a cab, I’ll take him back downstairs.”
“No,” Adam said thickly. “Need your … help …”
“Yeah, lean on me, brother, and leave the lady alone.” Kyle reached out to take Adam’s arm, and Adam pushed away, stumbling and flailing. The frown on Kyle’s face shifted quickly, and he grabbed both of Adam’s arms, peering into his eyes. “What are you on, Adam?”
“Nothing …” Adam tried to focus on Kyle’s face, but he didn’t seem to be having much success.
“Where have you been?” Kyle asked.
“Not sure …”
“Were you alone?”
“Maybe …”
“Were you given anything to eat or drink?”
“You think someone drugged him?” I asked.
Kyle didn’t answer, but Adam’s head tilted toward me oddly, and he might have nodded if he hadn’t been busy collapsing to the floor.
Killer Riff Page 20
