The Innocents Club

by Taylor Smith

  “No, because I know you,” she said. “Did you manage to get some dinner while you were pining away so pathetically?”

  “Just what I ate at the reception. I’m starving, now that you mention it.”

  Mariah grinned. “Oh, you are a sad case.” Her arms encircled his waist, ready to give in to anything at this point. Only one small, critical piece of her still held back, appalled by her surrender. Where was her will? “Do you want me to call room service and order something for you?” she asked.

  His hands reached inside her dress once more, lightly skimming bare skin as he reached up and slipped the dress off her shoulders. The silk wafted soundlessly to the carpet at her feet.

  “Later,” he said, stepping backward, drawing her into the room and easing her down onto the bed. “Much later.”

  Mariah lay on her side with her head cradled in her bent arm, her gaze tracing the smooth, sculpted outline of Paul’s features as he slept. His profile was backlit by the diffuse pink glow of dawn breaking. City lights still sparkled, but the morning haze rolling in off the ocean rendered the scene gauzy and ethereal. Against such a mystical backdrop, it wasn’t much of a leap to envisage him as some minor deity in repose, with that high, broad forehead and fine Saxon nose. The mouth both firm and sensuous. The strong chin, slightly cleft.

  He was gorgeous, Mariah thought wistfully. But how was she going to end this?

  Rumpled bedsheets, yanked down in haste, were tucked around them now that their passions were spent, their bodies cooled by the relentless air-conditioning. Paul had held her close after they made love, his attentiveness meant to convey reassurance, she supposed, that she meant more to him than just a quick lay. Instinctively, she believed that, without quite understanding what the attraction was. For months now, her vague uncertainties and very real grief over David had kept Paul at arm’s length, emotionally if not always physically. Yet still, he was coming around. It must mean something.

  Even the most considerate lover had his limits, though. With a final kiss and a stifled yawn, Paul had eventually rolled onto his back, and his breathing had slowed until it settled into a deep, steady rhythm. Exhausted as Mariah had been, it had taken her a lot longer to fall asleep.

  Now, much too early, she was wide-awake again. She closed her eyes and tried to drift back off, but her buzzing thoughts made it hopeless.

  She glanced at Paul once more. If she spooned herself into him, it wouldn’t take long before he stirred, and they would end up making love again. Then she might sleep a little more. But she couldn’t bring herself to move. She felt utterly alone, and what had felt right—or good, at least—in the night felt all wrong now, with a new day dawning.

  What was she doing here, playing Mata Hari, bouncing from dinner with one man to bed with another, instead of being where she belonged—at home with the daughter she and David had raised together? Half raised. Then he’d gone and died, leaving her to finish the job and face the future alone.

  She felt a cold stab of fear as she thought of Lindsay. I’m blowing it. Nothing else she did in her life would mean a thing if she messed up her child. Until she’d lost David, she’d felt reasonably up to the task of raising a happy and productive human being. Even after, for a while, she’d thought she was managing not too badly. After all, she, more than anyone, knew what Lindsay was dealing with and what was at stake. She remembered all too clearly what it had been like to lose a much-loved father, then watch her mother sink into an endless cycle of overwork, fatigue, mourning and self-recrimination. Those memories had inevitably carried over into adulthood, coloring every aspect of Mariah’s life. She’d sworn her child would be spared that kind of scarring, but now, Lindsay seemed angry more often than not, and Mariah couldn’t seem to get through to her.

  She watched Paul sleep. What was she doing with a man who dwelt so far outside the basic, inescapable reality of her life? He was a charming man, who led a charmed existence, but he seemed oblivious half the time to the things that preoccupied her. And even if she were prepared to take their relationship to the next level, as Paul seemed to expect, Lindsay, she was beginning to realize, would never accept him.

  This aversion to Paul—when had that started? Mariah wondered. She thought about the day the Washington Post article had appeared with the photo of her and Paul at the press awards banquet. The next day, when she’d gone to throw out the papers, she’d found the picture defaced—Paul’s head sporting nasty eyebrows, a beard, and a devil’s horns and pointed ears. He’d once counted among Lindsay’s heroes, his link to their family the envy of her school friends, but no more. This new resistance, Mariah suspected, sprang from nothing more than the simple fact that nothing could turn Paul into that other man they’d loved and lost.

  And what was in it for him, anyway? He could have any woman who caught his steady, blue-eyed gaze. Why was he bothering? Couldn’t he see where this was going to end up? As far as Mariah was concerned, if it came to a choice between Paul and her daughter, it was no contest. So why were they forestalling the inevitable?

  Nerves thrumming, too restless to lie still, she slipped out of bed. Since pacing the floor wasn’t an option, she padded into the bathroom. There was a telephone extension in there, she recalled, although why anyone needed a phone in the bathroom was beyond her. It seemed to be a phenomenon of power-city hotels. It was too early to call Lindsay, but there was a pool downstairs. She could call and see if it was open yet. When all else failed, swimming laps always helped clear her head and chase away the anxiety gremlins.

  By the time she was done, maybe Paul would be awake and they could order breakfast. They’d never gotten around to ordering room service the night before. She was starving, and unlike him, she’d had dinner. And maybe they could talk.

  When she went into the bathroom, she found the phone’s message light blinking. Mariah frowned and peered back into the bedroom. Paul’s shirt was draped over the extension in there. No wonder she hadn’t noticed the indicator flashing when she’d come in last night.

  Shivering, naked on the cold bathroom tile, she pulled a thick, terry hotel robe off a wall hook and shrugged into it, then searched the base of the phone for instructions on how to retrieve messages. When she punched in the number, an electronic voice said she had one message, recorded at six-twenty the previous evening. Then, she heard Frank Tucker’s deep voice.

  “Mariah? I’ve got the stuff you wanted. Let’s talk.”

  Good old get-to-the point Frank, she thought. Leaves a typically blunt message that reveals precisely nothing. He could be so irritating at times. God, how she missed him.

  She turned to the mirror, yanking the belt tight on the robe, combing her fingers through her hair as her mind pondered how to liberate her Speedo from the zippered garment bag in the closet without disturbing Paul.

  Then, she paused. A woman with smoky eyes, tousled hair and bruised-looking lips was staring back at her from the glass. Well, look at you, Mariah thought grimly. Who are you? Mata Hari? Incompetent parent? Some babe who got lucky?

  Or fortune’s fool?

  Chapter Eleven

  Newport Beach homicide detective Jim Scheiber got the call-out a little after 7:00 a.m. He wasn’t due into the office for another couple of hours. When the phone pealed, he was at home in bed with his bride of eleven days.

  He groaned into the pillows. “Oh, Christ! Not now.”

  It wasn’t fair. Everything about Liz was velvety, ripe and warm. The last thing he wanted was a distraction. He was tempted to rip the phone cord out of the wall.

  Too late. Liz had already slipped out from under him and was making a grab for the infernal machine. She lifted the cordless receiver out of the cradle. At the same time, her other hand whipped her nightgown up from the floor, deftly one-arming it over her head, successfully maneuvering the phone through the gauzy material and slinky straps. Pretty amazing gymnastics for so early in the morning, he thought with admiration.

  The reason for her scramble announc
ed itself in the next room. Scheiber heard a thump, followed a split second later by small, bare feet pummeling down the hall at breakneck speed. By that time, Liz had already managed to get the gown pulled down. When the bedroom door banged back against the frame, she was leaning against the headboard with the receiver cradled between her chin and shoulder.

  “Hello?” she said, looking and sounding as calm and composed as if she’d been up for hours.

  Scheiber just stared in wonder. How did mothers do that—react to what their kids were going to do before they even did it? He’d seen the phenomenon a thousand times, and it never ceased to amaze him. It was like hanging out with some Marvel Comics character. Stay tuned for the next adventure of Supermom! Sees the future! Knows all!

  He yanked up the sheet in a belated reflex of modesty and self-preservation as her six-year-old hurtled himself onto the bed. The kid landed, the mattress bounced and Scheiber’s skull caught the headboard on the rebound.

  “Ow! Damnation!” Liz shot him a cautionary look and raised a warning finger in Lucas’s direction. Scheiber gave the boy a grim smile, the best he could muster under the circumstances. “Hey, bud,” he murmured, probing his bruised cranium. “Phone wake you?”

  “Yeah. What’s for breakfast?”

  He spit the “s” both times, so that Scheiber had to wipe a couple of wet spots off his cheek. He tried not to take it personally. The kid was missing his two front teeth and probably couldn’t help it. With that dental deficit, plus his sleep-shocked hair and rumpled Joe Boxers, he looked like a midget fighter past his prime.

  “How about some cereal?” Scheiber proposed. “I bet you could get that all on your own, huh? I think there’s some of that Choco-stuff left. The one with the marshmallows your mom gave us so much grief about buying? Want to go down, check it out? Maybe watch some cartoons while you’re at it?”

  The small, tawny head shook vehemently. “Uh-uh. I want waffles. Waf-fles! Waf-fles!” He got to his feet and started bouncing up and down on the bed.

  Scheiber winced as a small foot slammed into his shin. He tried not to take that personally, either. He and the boy had been making real progress over the past few months, but it was probably inevitable that his and Liz’s kid-free honeymoon would set things back some. Now it was pay-back time.

  “Lucas, cut it out,” his mother said. “Guess who,” she added, handing the phone to Scheiber.

  He grunted.

  The voice on the other end of the line was annoyingly cheerful. “Hey there, Romeo! Rise and shine!”

  “This better be good, Eckert.”

  “Hey, you don’t want us thinking we can get along without you, do you? You been back two whole days. Yesterday was too quiet—call it a wedding gift from the good folks of Newport. But it’s time you got back in the saddle, pardner.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Scheiber said, rubbing his face wearily. “So what have you got?”

  “Floater in a hot tub. Old guy. Looks like rigor’s already set in, so he’s probably been curled up there since yesterday. Coroner’s gonna have a hell of a time getting him out and onto a gurney. They aren’t careful, he’s gonna roll off and bounce off down the street like an old tire.”

  “Cute, Dave. What’s the address?” He sent an apologetic grimace in Liz’s direction.

  “Come on, Lucas,” she whispered. “We better go see about breakfast.”

  The boy sprang off the bed, whooping, “Waf-fles! Waf-fles!” He charged down the hall, doing his best impression of an elephant herd.

  “Whoa! What was that?” Eckert asked.

  “That noise? It’s something new,” Scheiber said. “Revolutionary technology. It’s called sonic birth control.”

  Liz slapped his arm, grinning. She started untangling her feet from the blankets, but Scheiber reached out and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her back to nuzzle her neck. Her skin smelled of sleep, musk and grass, and her shoulder-length auburn hair was smoky from the barbecue they’d had the night before.

  “Yeah, well, you can have it,” Eckert said. “Think I’ll stick with the old-fashioned methods. Anyway, this house with the floater? It’s on Edgewater, near Medina. You’ll see the black-and-whites. I’m there now.”

  “You’re an eager beaver this morning.”

  “Went in early to use the darkroom. Call came just as I walked in the door.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there in half an hour or so,” Scheiber said, as Liz slipped out of his grip. He leaned back against the headboard, admiring the view as she climbed out of bed and let her nightgown fall over the best pair of legs in Orange County. A onetime professional dancer, she’d wasted three years keeping house for Lucas’s father, a minor Hollywood honcho who kept promising to make an honest woman out of her right up to the day he married somebody else. To support herself and her son after that, Liz had taken up teaching jazz and ballet to little girls in pink leotards, one of whom had been Scheiber’s own daughter from his first marriage.

  “This guy’s not going anywhere,” Eckert said. “Take your time.”

  “Gee, thanks, Dave. Now you tell me. I’ll see you in a while.”

  Scheiber hung up the phone as Liz perched on the edge of the mattress. “I’ll go put some coffee on while you shower. You want some waffles, too, before you go? Or eggs?”

  “How about a two-fer in the shower, instead?”

  She smiled and smoothed his mustache, then ran a hand around his sandpaper chin. “You look like the Frito Bandito. You better shave if you’re going out to face the public. But hold that shower thought, okay? Maybe tonight?”

  “Tonight?” he said. “Come on, I’m dying here.” It was a pitiful bid for sympathy, he knew. But damn, the day had been off to such a great start until a few minutes ago.

  “Poor baby,” she crooned. Her glance shifted to the phone. “Was that a murder Dave was calling about?”

  “Doesn’t sound like it. Some old guy overdid the hot-tub routine and blew out his ticker, that’s all. We treat it as questionable until we rule out foul play, but believe me, honey, I really could spare a few minutes here.”

  “A few minutes, huh? So, what are you saying? Less than two weeks into the marriage and it’s already ‘Wham, bam, thank you ma’am’?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am, certainly not. I just meant—”

  She grinned and kissed him, ruffling his hair. He patted it down again, hoping she wasn’t noticing how thin it was going on top. Still finding it hard to believe she’d said yes to a tired old piece of work like him. It had taken a while, mind you. They’d run into each other by accident after his divorce—long after his daughter, Julie, had gone to live in Portland, Oregon, with Scheiber’s ex and her new husband. He and Liz had been magic from the get-go, but she knew his case-obsessed behavior had already torpedoed one marriage, and she’d been burned in the relationship department herself. It wasn’t until he walked away from LAPD Robbery-Homicide and took the less demanding Newport job that she realized how serious he was about changing his ways.

  “I’d love to step into the shower and get all slicked up and slippery with you,” she said, “but if I don’t go put food into that son of mine, we’ll never get any peace. Will you forgive me?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” he said, playing the martyr now. But as she got to her feet and lifted her bathrobe off the end of the bed, he added soberly, “Liz? I’m sorry about this. I knew the Fourth of July weekend was going to be a zoo, but I didn’t think it would get crazy so soon.”

  The television downstairs suddenly came to life with a roar. She winced, but stayed put. “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “It’s not going to be like before, I promise. You won’t have to go through what—” He caught himself. But she knew.

  “I married a cop,” she said.

  “One who’s learned his lesson. The caseload down here’s not the same, Liz, I swear.”

  “I know, my love. And I know you did this for me—and Lucas.” A frown creased her forehead as she stroked his
arm. “But are you sure you won’t miss it? You gave up something that was your life—”

  “I want you, not the chase. I mean it.”

  She nodded. “Okay. But I’m not Allison, either. I signed up with my eyes wide open. So, just do what you have to do, and don’t worry, okay?”

  He nodded. “Okay. I love you.”

  She kissed him warmly. “Me, too. Big time. Now, I’d better go turn down that TV before the neighbors take up a petition against the new people on the block.” She slid her feet into slippers and headed for the door.

  “I was thinking I’d stop at the hardware store on the way home and buy a lock for the bedroom door,” Scheiber said. “Think ol’ Lucas’ll be emotionally scarred for life if I do?”

  “It’s probably a good idea.”

  “Beats walking in as the wicked old stepfather’s ravaging his darling mommy, huh?”

  “You’re not a wicked old stepfather. He’s crazy about you. And I,” she added, vamping over one satin-robed shoulder, “am crazy about being ravaged. Did I mention, by the way, that Lucas has a play date this afternoon at his new buddy Aaron’s, down the block?”

  “Oh, lady! If that isn’t an incentive to come home early, I don’t know what is. You just made yourself a date.”

  She smiled on her way out the door, and Schreiber got up and headed for the shower, whistling. Suddenly, the day was looking bright once more.

  When he drove up the alleyway behind the Newport Beach address Eckert had given him, he found the house cordoned off and the narrow lane crowded with looky-loos. Death comes to Paradise, he thought. Always a crowd pleaser.

  He parked behind a haphazard row of black-and-whites and got out, squinting in spite of his dark glasses. The sun was already high in the sky. It was going to be a scorcher. Heat shimmered over red tile roofs, and glare bounced off white garage doors and stucco courtyard walls packed together in an unbroken line of blinding glare.