Cut to the Quick

by Dianne Emley

  “What’s so funny?” he asked with a wink. “I got in the habit of drinking milk when I was in the joint. Never touched the stuff until then. Builds strong bones.”

  “Next we’ll be seeing you in one of those ads showing celebrities with milk mustaches.”

  “That one I might do.”

  She picked up her Perrier. “Have you been approached for product endorsements?”

  “A little. This local firm that manufactures biker leathers and gear came calling and a custom chopper shop wanted me to do an ad. I turned them down.”

  “Does Harley-Davidson know you ride their motorcycles?”

  “They might, but no one’s come calling. My name isn’t as golden as you think. Face it, I’m a convicted felon. A murderer. Big corporations don’t want a guy like me pitching their products. A rep like mine, the only thing it’s good for is … I don’t know what it’s good for.”

  “Selling books.”

  He raised his glass to clink with hers. “Selling books.” He took in the scene. “I can’t believe you’ve never been to the Rock Store before, being a Los Angeles native and all.”

  “I run with a different crowd, I guess. But this is something to see. Thanks for bringing me.”

  “I’m glad you decided to take a ride with me, Miss Dena. You haven’t really lived until you’ve done Mulholland on a Harley. A little California dreamin’.”

  “Hope someone’s doing some dreaming somewhere.”

  “Sometimes you have to shake things up. Change your perspective.”

  “I could use a new perspective.” She looked at her watch.

  Crowley leaned against the bar. “When do you have to get back?”

  “My daughter is out with friends until late. My son is spending the night at Balboa Island with his buddy and his parents. My husband is God knows where.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m in no hurry.”

  “That’s my favorite time schedule. And you know what? I’m in no hurry either.”

  He smiled at her. She felt herself falling into his hazel eyes and felt like a sap for even thinking that. She looked away.

  “I’m glad you invited me, Bowie. This is fun.”

  “I’m glad you had a change of clothes in your locker.”

  “I’m glad you had an extra helmet. I should be suspicious of a man who carries an extra helmet in case he might have a partner.”

  He smiled crookedly. “You’ve gotta be prepared, right?”

  “You got condoms in that storage container on your bike? Maybe some sex toys?”

  “Dena … what do you take me for?”

  “Puh-leese. I saw those women in the audience. We had to hose down the place after the show.”

  “Now you’re gonna make me blush.”

  She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe that for a second.

  “Hey, I’m very shy.”

  She turned her head and gave him the same look from the other eye.

  “What are you getting at, Dena? What do you want me to say?”

  “I’ve heard the rumors. Your name’s in the gossip rags. You’re quite a ladies’ man.”

  “I’m not going to B.S. you. When I first got out of the joint, there was a lot of partying. But that’s not what I’m about.”

  She tapped a varnished fingernail on the bar. “I want one thing to be clear. I’m not going to be another notch on your bedpost.”

  “I’m not going to deny that I’m attracted to you. But you’re married. Understood. I never thought—”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Well, come on. Of course I thought about it. I wouldn’t be a red-blooded American male if I hadn’t. Face it, you’re hot. And I like you. But I’m telling you honestly, I have no agenda. It’s like this. I wasn’t busy today and you weren’t either.”

  “So here we are.”

  “Here we are.”

  She smirked and shook her head. “I should be the last person to throw stones,” she said. “Living in my glass house.”

  “What’s your truth, Dena? The part of you no one knows.”

  She looked askance and then, for some reason, blurted out the truth. “That my life is not perfect. Or how about this … my life isn’t even happy. Actually, lately it’s been hell.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Anything you’d like to share?”

  She blew out a long stream of air, as if she didn’t know where to begin. “My husband’s business partner and his girlfriend were murdered last Saturday at his home in Pasadena.”

  Crowley’s jaw dropped. “That was your husband’s partner? Good Lord. Don’t they suspect some guy who was stalking the woman?”

  “That’s what they’re saying on the news. Yesterday morning, two detectives showed up at our house and took us to Pasadena to be interviewed. Mark and his partner Oliver had been having a big fight over the business.”

  Crowley nodded and said nothing.

  Hale was quick to add, “Mark had nothing to do with it. We had a dinner party that night. I know it sounds like he cooked up a perfect alibi and hired somebody to murder Oliver, but Mark doesn’t even think that way. He’s not the type. Not that there’s a type per se.” Remembering who she was talking to, she winced. “Sorry.”

  “No offense. Go on.”

  “Mark internalizes. He drowns his problems, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Crowley somberly watched her with those soulful eyes. “That must be tough for you.”

  Her tears again welled. “Darn! Enough already.” She blotted them with the damp cocktail napkin from beneath her drink. “I hate wearing my heart on my sleeve.”

  “That’s part of the reason you’re popular. You’re honest, and people can see it.”

  “I feel like I’m coming apart. I hope people can’t see that.”

  He rested his hand on her back.

  She sniffed and looked up at him. With a slight movement of her arm, she created an opening into which he stepped. He pulled her close and nuzzled her hair with his nose. Her tears soaked into his black T-shirt.

  She abruptly pushed away. “What are we doing? Our picture will be in the tabloids.”

  He backed off.

  She snatched a fresh cocktail napkin from a stack on the other side of the bar and blew her nose. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. If you’ve done half the things I’ve done, then you can be sorry.”

  “You’re kind.” She folded the napkin in half and in half again. “It’s just … I don’t have anyone to talk to about this. Even my friends don’t know how bad it’s gotten between Mark and me. My own dumb pride keeps me from opening up. I was down for so long. My life was an endless struggle. Bad decisions. Bad relationships. There was a point where I thought I’d never finish paying dues. All my old friends had gotten their lives together. Good marriages and great kids. The white-picket-fence thing. Normal garden-variety problems. Then there was me. I’d have lunch with my girlfriends and I’d feel like entertainment for them. Diversion from their routines. But guess what? I pulled it together. I not only pulled it together, I soared right over all of them. I have the top-rated local morning show, the rich, successful, handsome husband, the fabulous house …”

  “And they don’t call you anymore.”

  “Some don’t. That still surprises me. A few do. The true-blue friends. Like a marriage, through thick and thin. But even my true friends don’t know everything about my life. They don’t know that it’s a lie.”

  Their eyes locked.

  She repeated, “It’s a lie.”

  After an intense moment, he gave her a broad smile. “I know what you need.”

  She was sniveling, but managed to fire back the obvious sarcastic response. “I bet you do.”

  He grinned. “Well, baby, in my humble opinion, I bet your life could use some improvement in that department.” He gave her shoulders a shake. “But the next best thing is a fast ride on a Fat Boy.”

  On their way to
the Rock Store, Hale had touched Crowley, just enough to not fall off. On the second stretch that would take them to the ocean, she snuggled close with her legs tightly squeezing his thighs.

  She’d called Mark before they’d left the restaurant. He didn’t seem to care where she was or what she was doing. She simply said she was out and would be back before the kids got home. She guessed he was happy that she wasn’t around to interrupt his excursion into his bleary world, yet would be back in time so he wouldn’t have to deal with the kids.

  Hale wrapped her arms around Crowley’s broad, lean torso, soaking in the scent of hot asphalt, exhaust, and perspiration. They rounded a curve and all of a sudden, the air was cool and moist, and they could see the ocean. It was lost again around a curve. Then the long stretch of coastline from Santa Monica to Point Dume came into view. Land’s end. The sight always cheered her.

  When they finally stopped at a street light at the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, he said over his shoulder to her, “The producer who bought the movie rights to my book is at his ranch in Montana. His Malibu Colony house is empty. Wanna check it out?”

  “You have the keys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Heh, heh, heh.…”

  “I’ve never seen it before. Honest.” The light changed and he took off, not waiting for her response.

  Her knee-jerk reaction was to be miffed by his presumptuousness but another part of her found his decisiveness appealing, even though the caveman style had never been her cup of tea. The only things Mark was decisive about anymore, it seemed, were drinking and gambling. She couldn’t keep him away from either vice, no matter what she tried. She of all people should know she didn’t have the power to change an addict.

  She still beat herself up for not being firmer when Mark had said he wanted to join his father in running the billboard business. All-controlling Ludlow, while not the source of emotionally fragile Mark’s addictions, had fueled the flames. Still, the move promised to provide the financial security that relentlessly eluded them. Mark’s restaurant had been floundering. As for her, the rug could be pulled out from under her financially the next time her contract was up.

  The freedom she felt on this impromptu day with Crowley brought home a truth that had been swirling beneath the surface of her life. It was there, like a drowning victim submerged in a murky pond, but she darted away whenever the angle of the sun changed, revealing it. She didn’t love Mark anymore, but she cared about him. At first, it tore her heart out to see Mark spiraling down, suffering. But when he gave up the fight and allowed himself to float away on the high tide of his addictions, her empathy turned to pity and then disgust.

  She was prepared to stay in a loveless marriage to avoid disrupting the children—Dahlia, who had already been through too much, and Luddy, who was pure sweetness and light. She didn’t want to be the first to dim that light. Problem was, the edifice of their lives was crumbling, as if the moldering bricks of the old man’s smothering mansion were tumbling onto their heads.

  Later, she might feel differently and be racked with guilt and regret. Right now, she was prepared to follow Crowley anywhere. She fully expected to never see him again, or, at best, she’d spot him with his latest arm candy at a Hollywood cocktail party. It would be a nonchalant moment for him and awkward for her. So what? She was tired of living in every world except the present. Yet some little part of her, some tiny, long-silenced internal voice whispered: Could he be my future?

  She didn’t notice much about the house beyond the vast windows overlooking the sparkling, calm ocean.

  Crowley opened doors that led to a deck and they escaped the stuffy house. They paid brief, appropriate attention to the view before a single glance into each other’s eyes led to a passionate kiss from which there was no turning back.

  Standing on the deck, they tore at each other’s clothing. The deck was in shadows, but still in view of scattered people along the nearly inaccessible beach. She didn’t care. It felt good to stand nude in the cool air, free of her sweaty, binding clothing, possessed instead by his strong hands and artful tongue.

  He pulled her onto a double chaise longue, its size and location clearly all about seduction. She laughed when he produced a condom from his wallet, then snatched it from him, rolled it on, and climbed on top. Their lovemaking was hard and fast, no more or less than each of them wanted. She dug her nails into his shoulders as she took his best effort and improved on it. She got there first, starting with a whimper and ending by throwing back her head and letting loose a wail that was as primal as dirt. Watching her brought him to the tipping point. He struggled to keep his eyes open, not wanting to miss a thing.

  Sweat-drenched and panting, they looked at each other.

  He took in her now-rosy cheeks, the fine lines erased from her face, which was finally at ease. He craned his head to look at his shoulders, rubbing his hand across the welts she’d left there.

  Her moment of feeling at one with the world was fleeting, leaving her feeling more fragile than before. “You’ll have a hard time explaining that to the next one,” she said.

  “You have a low opinion of me, don’t you?”

  She was embarrassed and realized that by diminishing him, she was able to minimize what had happened between them.

  He took her face between his hands. “I’m going to work on changing that.”

  She felt a fluttering inside her chest and inhaled sharply. He had taken her breath away. She hoped he didn’t see it.

  They raided the refrigerator, snacking on coke, jarred food, condiments, and crackers. Sitting at the kitchen island, eating a stranger’s food in a stranger’s home, she enjoyed the vacation from her life and tried not to think about what happened next.

  He carried her up the open staircase, draped in his arms. She clutched his shoulders like a child. They took a cool shower, after which he went to the bedside drawer and found more condoms. A lucky guess, he’d insisted when she’d teased him.

  Later, she’d explored and asked him about the scar on his back—knife fight in high school—and one on his side—grazed by a bullet fired during a barroom brawl— and one near his shoulder—stabbed by a shank-wielding inmate in Quentin.

  She’d dropped off to sleep in the crook of his arm. A short time later, she’d awakened to see him dressed.

  “I have a book signing tonight in Pasadena. Why don’t you come with me?”

  She slowly blinked, considering it for a second. “I would love to, but it’s not a good idea.”

  He took the freeway back to the studio, where her car was still parked in the lot.

  “Call me later,” he said.

  She nodded. Standing in the parking lot, they did not touch, already behaving like illicit lovers.

  She watched him roar off on the Harley, looking like a vision from a thousand bad but irresistible movies. Before the exhaust had faded from the air, her mind was already going to all the bad places. She stopped it in its tracks. For now, just for now, she would savor the moment.

  FIFTEEN

  Vining and Kissick had stopped by the PPD’s forensics unit to check on their progress analyzing Nitro’s drawing book for fingerprints. The prints the tech found were consistent with Nitro’s.

  Vining flipped through the drawing book. She had assumed the violent pictures of women were together in the spiral-bound pad, but they were scattered among the images of animals, trees, and flowers. Somehow, that made it creepier.

  Back upstairs, she picked up the photocopies of the drawings and put them in her briefcase.

  They were at work on the double homicide in the Detectives’ Section conference room when Folke called to say that two officers were transporting Nitro to the Big G, where he’d be placed on a seventy-two-hour hold for psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

  “He’s County’s problem now,” Kissick commented.

  They pushed along on the Mercer/Richards homicide investigation.

  Ruiz got his warrants signed for a
ccess to Somerset’s telephone, financial records, and his computer. When he and Caspers went to Somerset’s apartment above his parents’ garage in San Marino, Somerset’s mother told them he’d left to go backpacking in the Sierras.

  Ruiz served the warrants on Somerset’s mother, a well-dressed woman with a zaftig figure who was nearly as tall as her son. Ruiz and Caspers both remarked later that her careful blond coiffure looked like a wig.

  Ruiz notified the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction over the area in the Sierras where Somerset usually backpacked, and asked the park service to keep an eye out for him. They didn’t have cause to arrest him yet, but they didn’t want him slipping into the wind.

  Meanwhile, Kissick called his contact at Mark Scoville’s cell phone provider, who would get Scoville’s data on the Q.T.

  As the afternoon quickly became evening and then night, Vining wondered why she hadn’t heard from Emily. She knew the finale of the gala family weekend at the Santa Barbara Four Seasons was dinner with Kaitlyn’s parents at the hotel’s blue-ribbon restaurant. She and Em had bought a new outfit especially for that dinner. Emily was going to call when they were on the road home. Vining figured the dinner went late. She had not allowed herself to dwell on Em’s absence. Now that she was due to be home, though, Vining let herself feel how terribly she missed her. The feeling was scary in its intensity.

  Finally, Emily called. In the background, Kaitlyn was babbling, trying to inject herself into the conversation. Vining guessed that Kaitlyn thought it added to the fun to toss out comments off-scene, but it was one of her traits that Vining found particularly aggravating.

  “Hi, Sweet Pea. How was your fancy dinner?” she asked her daughter.

  “Good.” Emily’s answer was clipped.

  “What did you have?”

  “Filet.”

  “You can’t talk.”

  “Right.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yep.”

  “No, really.”

  “Really. Dad and Kaitlyn are going to drive me home and then go to Calabasas.”