Saint or Sinner

by Jolie Day

“That is ridiculous. And on top of that, I am very much capable of looking after myself.” Connor spat out the words, but Mira had still seen the surprise on his face.

  “You had better watch what you are saying,” Mira warned him, as she already knew what he was going to say next.

  He did it anyway. “You aren’t.”

  Mira leaned back and crossed her arms in front of her heaving chest. “You don’t even realize what you have done wrong here, do you?”

  “No.” He frowned again. “If I did know, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

  “You are doing it again,” Mira exclaimed and tried very hard to keep her calm. “Just for once, listen to yourself. You talk to me as if I was an idiot or too young to understand the world. I don’t want you to do anything for me without having spoken to me first — is that so hard to understand? I am neither your pet, nor your employee.”

  Somehow this little rant hit the target and it completely took the wind out of his sails. “Do you honestly think that I don’t know that, Mira?” He looked at her, challenging her, and then he bent down closer to her face. “I only want what’s best for you.”

  She refused to back away from him. “I am well aware. I can sense it. But you need to let me make my own mistakes and take care of my own things myself, Connor.”

  “Not if one of those mistakes you would like to make for yourself could have you killed. Why on earth do you think I asked Peter to get your things? Definitely not because I don’t believe you could do it yourself.” Where he had been talking loudly and had overarticulated every single word before, he now spoke so quietly that she could hardly understand what he was saying.

  That was when the penny dropped — to put it mundanely.

  “You are blaming yourself for dad’s death and mom’s condition,” she whispered with a coarse voice.

  She finally understood. Wuthering Heights, the book he had read to her mother. The way he had held her mom’s hand while sitting by her bedside. He hadn’t killed her father, but he felt as if he had done it. But why?

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He didn’t answer. “Connor, please,” Mira pleaded, and she didn’t care that she now begged him to tell her. “Speak to me and tell me what happened. I want to believe you, but if you don’t tell me everything, how will I ever be able to trust you completely?”

  Something washed over his face that looked like anger, but it immediately disappeared again. For a couple of seconds, she just stared at him and hoped for an answer. But he said nothing. He stayed stubbornly silent.

  Mira turned on her heels and ran back into her bedroom, where she pulled his shirt, which smelled like a mixture of her and him, off her. She grabbed her wrinkled clothes from the day before, put them on, and ran back downstairs. Connor opened the door for her with a stony face. “I have called you a cab. Hopefully, that isn’t also against the rules or would you have liked to do that yourself too, just to prove to me how independent you are?”

  Mira didn’t answer him. He didn’t deserve one and also… she didn’t want him to see her cry.

  So much for Connor Carmichael.

  ****

  The well-trained personnel didn’t pay much attention to her disheveled and red-eyed appearance, which was the only good thing about her return to the hotel. The concierge told her that her sister had ordered them to notify her to immediately call her, but Mira didn’t think that she would be able to cope with Suzanne at this point. She knew that her sister would want to talk about their first day at Dumont Ltd the next morning or where she had been or whatever. Mira asked the man to kindly not connect any phone calls to her room.

  It was really time for her to start looking for her own apartment. If she was to go by these first few very eventful days since her return to the City of Angels and what to expect in the future, it made sense to find a place somewhere in an anonymous residential area. At least there no one would care when she came home or what she looked like when she did, and she also wouldn’t have to worry about what other people thought of her. For one very short moment, Mira thought about calling her sister to have the move into Russell’s apartment moved up, but then she decided otherwise and threw her mobile phone back into her bag without even looking at it. No, she needed the rest of today to try and get some rest. It would have been great if she could just forget about Connor and everything that had happened yesterday. She grimaced at herself in the lift on her way upstairs, just so that she wouldn’t start crying again. But it was just as pointless as trying not to breathe. The chances of any of these attempts succeeding, were very low.

  Not even the hot shower made her feel any better. As she lathered up, she thought about Connor’s hands on her body. It was so incredibly difficult to not jump into the next taxi and drive straight back to him, that it physically hurt. On top of that, there was this relentless nagging in her head that she had forgotten something important. The more she tried to remember what it was, the more she lost focus. The only thing left in the end was a weird feeling of urgency and time, which she seemed to have run out of.

  Mira didn’t have much time left to relax. Maybe this was a good thing, because all she did was lie on the sofa and stare aimlessly at the ceiling. Everything was better than looking around this meticulously cleaned suite and wasting time thinking about Connor. When someone knocked on her door, her first thought was that Connor had come to apologize to her. She would accept his apology in a heartbeat but would still be slightly reserved and then… she opened the door. Her facial expression must have been so obvious that Peter van den Burgh raised his eyebrows in a surprised way and asked “So bad?”

  “Worse,” Mira replied. “What are you doing here?”

  He held up his hand to show that he was holding a travel bag. “I am returning your things,” he said calmly. “May I come in?” He had swapped his leather jacket from last night for a blazer. The combination of the narrow-cut pants and the almost tight shirt, made him look like a salesman. At least, until you took a closer look at him and noticed the underlying threat.

  She stepped aside silently. “Would you like something to drink?” Inside, she yelled at herself for being so overly polite.

  “No thanks. I don’t have a lot of time.” Peter placed the bag onto the floor and sat down, uninvited. Mira sat down opposite him in a large chair. “What have you done to Connor? I have never seen him in such a bad mood before,” he started the conversation.

  “I didn’t do anything — that’s all on him,” she answered calmly. “And if you would now also like to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, I suggest you don’t even get started or I will ask you to leave.”

  “I would do no such thing.” Somehow, his cheerfulness had suddenly evaporated.

  “Good, because up until now I haven’t heard anything but ominous warnings and unprovable accusations against my father from both of you.”

  “Connor probably tried to talk you out of your plan to spy inside Dumont Ltd, am I right?”

  “Amongst other things. Our argument was more about… the side effects of my plan.”

  “Your extremely immature plan,” he commented calmly. Mira was just about to resentfully give him an earful about what she thought about his judgement, but he asked her to listen to him.

  “Just like Connor, I myself am not a great fan of your game plan, Mira, but unlike him, I am willing to at least let you try.”

  “It is not up to you to allow or deny me anything.”

  “That is true,” Peter acknowledged openly, which disarmed her. “But I haven’t worked in my field for over twenty years — and survived it — to recognize that your plan could very easily have you killed if you are trying to find evidence and start asking questions to prove your father’s innocence on your own. Please, let me finish.” Mira pressed her lips together into a thin line. “There are a few factors that you need to be aware of. Firstly,” he held up his index finger, “you are dealing with a murderer here, who has felt safe f
or seventeen years and who now believes that he might get discovered after all.” Peter looked her straight in the eyes. “I have seen pictures of what happened to Lacroix and what he did to him. This killer tortured the poor guy before he finally killed him.” Peter watched her like a hawk and when Mira jumped a little in her seat, he nodded. This served to acknowledge that she had confirmed his suspicions. “Lacroix told you something, didn’t he? Did he tell you about more documents?” She kept her lips tightly pressed together. Suddenly she remembered that she had completely forgotten something extremely important: George’s email. Hopefully, her face hadn’t given it away! She had no intention of sharing this information with either Peter or Connor. Was this childish? It didn’t matter. After all, it was a fact that Connor hadn’t told her the whole truth either. And Peter? She didn’t even know this man yet. Who knew what exactly his dubious job description meant in real life and what it was that he really did?

  Peter remained silent for a minute and when she still didn’t speak, he continued, “Secondly, we do know that this is about the business with the Mafia, however, we are not exactly sure, if Dumont Ltd is still involved in illegal trades today. Therefore, it is very possible that this killer might be working for a very powerful organization.” He lifted his third finger. “And thirdly, I hate it when amateurs intervene and meddle with my cases.”

  “So, this is your case,” Mira observed. “How long have you been working on it? Were you involved in the investigations seventeen years ago?”

  “Yes, I was. I wasn’t fully involved though, not like today, where I am the lead investigator.”

  Peter van den Burgh’s face closed off. This could only really mean that he didn’t approve of the way things had been handled and investigated back then. This was extremely interesting.

  “You can trust me. If Lacroix told you or gave you anything, now is the time to tell me about it.”

  “Why shouldn’t I go to the police with it — providing that this piece of information actually exists?”

  “The Mafia,” Peter replied, “have their fingers in everything. Don’t forget this when you are stuffing your nose into things that could literally blow up in your face.”

  “So, what do you suggest, apart from waiting to see what your investigations bring forward?”

  “The following: You do exactly what you have told your family and start working at Dumont Ltd.” A triumphant smile widened Mira’s face, but Peter looked at her sharply, which immediately dampened her euphoria about her little victory. “You will stay low-key. With that I mean that you are not to start looking for old papers, files, and documents, and nor are you to question anybody. Do you understand? I do not want to wake up one morning and read in the papers that they have fished a dead body out of the Los Angeles River or that you have been found with a hole in your head face down in your hotel room.”

  The effects of his harsh words were immediate and direct. Mira swallowed hard and she understood that it was his intention to scare her. He had definitely done a great job.

  “For your information, I have infiltrated someone into the company, who will keep an eye on you. And I expect from you that you will not — I repeat — not do anything that could put you into any kind of danger, regardless of whether it would be directly or indirectly. And also,” he lowered his voice slightly and Mira knew that they would now reach the point that she would appreciate the least of all. “I want you to report back to me every evening, via telephone or personally — whichever is the most inconspicuous option.”

  Mira took a deep breath. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I am smart enough, compared to Connor, that I won’t try to swim against the current. On top of that, he doesn’t think straight when it comes to you. “

  His words hit her with the force of an electric shock, which immediately set her whole body on fire, and at that point was pure torture. She realized that she bit herself on the lip and squinted. Under no circumstances would she give into the temptation to ask about Connor. Or about the reason why he believed he knew Connor well enough to pass a judgement about him. “Is there any way that you can show me… some kind of identification? I would like to trust you, but without any kind of proof that legitimizes you as the person you say you are…” She shook her head.

  “I will think about something,” Peter answered. “However, you need to understand that the nature of my job and position doesn’t allow me to carry any kind of identification, and I also don’t have an office with a direct line to the Oval Office.”

  “Who is your spy at Dumont Ltd?”

  “I will not disclose that information to you. I protect my people.”

  “Then I am sure you will understand that I have to do the same thing and protect the information I might have, until I know for sure that I can trust you.”

  “Have you ever thought about seeing a psychologist and getting some help?”

  Peter van den Burgh’s question hit her like a kick in the stomach.

  “Our conversation is over,” she said and got up from her chair. When he made no attempt to do the same, the wave of boiling anger, caused by his degrading question, washed over her like a stream of molten lava. “What on earth are you both thinking, you and Connor? You two are ganging up on me, trying to manipulate me, and telling me this whole time that I am supposed to trust you. Trust is not something that is given freely, nor can it be demanded just like that. Trust is earned and believe me, you are not doing a great job right now by telling me that I need to see a shrink. Get out. We are finished. Get. Out. Of. My. Room.”

  For a short moment, she had been tempted to tell him about George’s email, but that idea had been killed by his unbelievable arrogance.

  “I apologize,” Peter now tried. He looked depressed, but Mira didn’t care about that. “What I said… that was inappropriate. However, I would still implore you to at least think about it. For your own wellbeing. I have the impression that you don’t correctly remember what happened the night of your father’s death. Considering the trauma you experienced, it is questionable if you can actually fully trust your memories.”

  Mira could literally feel how she lost all color from her face. This was the exact same question she had asked herself on many occasions. Her anger disappeared and she just felt exhausted.

  “We knew that Suzanne testified in your place back then, even though we were never able to prove it,” Peter continued mercilessly. Mira thought that she had seen a slight spark of pity in his blue eyes, but she wasn’t sure. “You were shipped off to Europe so quickly that we had no access to you when we realized that your sister’s testimony wasn’t right.”

  “You would have questioned a child about the death of her father?”

  “If it served to find out the truth, then yes. Obviously, it would have been done with a lot of care and in the presence of a child psychologist. But just to go back to what I said earlier: I believe that the reality in your head has been mixed with what was told to you afterwards.” He finally made an attempt to leave. Before he stepped out into the hallway, he turned around once more. “Just one more thing, or rather two.” Peter put his hand into his chest pocket and pulled out a card, which contained nothing but a phone number. “The agreement remains unchanged. You will call me latest tomorrow evening, and make sure that you are alone when you do, so that we can talk freely. Should you remember anything or if you find something suspicious in your father’s company, then please do not hesitate to contact me. This number.” he pressed the card into her hand, since she didn’t show any effort to take it from him, “will reach an operator. They will know where to find me. I will call you back as quickly as I possibly can.”

  Mira nodded, even though she wasn’t entirely sure if she would actually follow his instructions. “And what was the second…?”

  He smiled. “Connor is a good man, even though he can be very overpowering and possessive. Give him another chance.”

  And then he left.

  C
hapter 19

  Monday morning came way too quickly.

  Mira had lain awake for most of the night with a racing heartbeat, after reading George’s email. He had summarized the events for her and hadn’t held back with his personal opinion about the case. He had also mentioned that he found Connor dubious, even though he was able to understand the jury’s doubts. But there was something else that shocked Mira. In a relatively unimportant part of a sentence, George had casually revealed the identity of the man who had delivered Connor’s false alibi.

  It had been Peter van den Burgh. So now she knew that he was also involved in the actual events that had ultimately led to her father’s death. There was a possibility that they could rationally explain this false testimony. He could have already been friends with Connor back then, which would explain why he had been willing to lie for him in court. But why didn’t the two men just admit that to her? After all, she had known all along that Connor had been in her house that night, just like Peter knew that her sister had lied for her. At this point, Mira had two different options: to confront Connor directly with her knowledge or to use this valuable piece of information to her advantage to advance her own investigation. Until Connor told her the whole truth about that night, she literally had no other choice but to go with option two.

  Every time she closed her eyes, faces would appear in front of her. Connor’s features, sometimes tender and loving, other times cold and distant, were the hardest to ignore. Then there were the faces of her family who seemed to continuously stare at her, especially that of her mother. Francesca actually appeared to her in a dream — as she had been before the incident — full of life and caring. It tore Mira apart when she thought about her mother the way she was today — a living corpse just waiting to finally die. She wondered if death would be her mom’s salvation.

  Sometime around 4:30 am, she sat up soaked in sweat. She had never asked what exactly had actually caused her mother’s catatonic state. When Connor had carried her up to her bed and after Suzanne had returned to the house, shortly before the police arrived, Francesca had been in her room. That was at least what Mira remembered. But was there proof of that? As much as she hated to admit it, Peter wasn’t exactly wrong with his suggestion, even though she didn’t appreciate it.