Body Movers Page 31

  37

  W esley walked into the town house, glad for a little peace and quiet for a few hours. Coop had a funeral this afternoon, so they wouldn’t be on call until later. He put a frozen pizza in the oven and flopped down on his bed with a Playboy magazine—the Racy Redheads issue. It wasn’t a stretch to realize why all of a sudden redheads had captured his imagination.

  He’d just turned to the centerfold when the doorbell rang. He rolled his eyes. He pushed to his feet, tossed the magazine on his bed and made his way to the door, trying to pull his T-shirt over the erection straining his zipper. Some people had the worst timing.

  He opened the door, then blinked in surprise to see E. Jones standing there, wearing jeans and a black jacket over a T-shirt that molded her breasts. “Hi, Wesley.”

  Her gaze went to the bulge in his jeans, which he covered by crossing both of his hands in front of him. “Hi. I…wasn’t expecting you.”

  She smiled and stepped forward to push on the door. “That’s the idea. I came by for an in-home visit.”

  He stepped aside as she walked in, then closed the door. “What does that mean?”

  “That means that I’m making sure you’re not breaking the terms of your probation—you know, using drugs, firearms, and, in your case, computer equipment.”

  He swallowed hard. “I don’t use drugs.”

  She picked up his arm and pointed to the fresh needle mark in the crook of his arm, a pinpoint of dried blood. “Really?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Then clear it up for me, Wesley.”

  “I gave plasma this morning,” he said, embarrassed. “I needed the cash to get my cell-phone service turned back on.”

  She considered him thoughtfully. “You can prove it?”

  “I have the slip they gave me at the blood center when I left.”

  “I’ll need to see it,” she said more gently, then released his arm.

  Call him a masochist, but he hadn’t minded being grabbed.

  “Why don’t you show me around the house,” she suggested, already studying the living room. She walked over to the desk and opened and closed the drawers.

  He frowned and crossed his arms. “This is the living room. The kitchen is right through there.”

  She walked to the couch and felt behind the cushions. “So it’s just you and your sister living here?” she asked, walking into the kitchen.

  He followed. “Yeah, just me and Carlotta.”

  “Pretty name,” she said, then walked over to the fridge and looked inside. She checked out the freezer, too, and all four canisters sitting on the counter, plus the cookie jar. She stole a chocolate-chip cookie from the batch he’d made a few days ago. “Mmm, this is good,” she said, stooping to look beneath the table. “Does your sister have a boyfriend who hangs around or lives here?”

  “No,” he said. “Carlotta doesn’t date much.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Works at Neiman’s at the Lenox Mall.”

  She smiled. “Really? Nice. Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “No reason.” Then he panicked. “I’m not gay or anything.”

  She looked at him and laughed. “I didn’t think you were. What’s out there?” she asked, pointing to the back door.

  “A deck.” He unlocked the door and held it open while she walked out onto the weathered structure.

  She gestured to the weedy backyard, leading to a patch of trees. “Nice,” she said, munching her cookie.

  “Not really,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets, nudging an abandoned flowerpot with his toe.

  “It could be,” she said, lifting the lid of the rusty grill for a quick look before walking back inside. Wesley waved at Mrs. Winningham who was in her gazebo, craning her neck for a good look. Then he followed E. back inside.

  “Where’s your bedroom?” she asked.

  In any other situation, he would have given his spleen to hear her say those words, but he was sure they had two entirely different activities in mind once they reached their destination.

  He led the way and when he opened the door, he realized with a wince that the Racy Redheads Playboy was lying on his bed. She lifted her eyebrows but didn’t make any remarks. Wesley turned the magazine facedown and tried to will away his returning erection. The sight of E. near his bed, touching his bed, made him grind his teeth to rein in his fantasies.

  She felt under his pillows, then under his mattress. She pulled out more porn mags, a triple X–rated DVD movie and a pair of pink panties that some girl at one of Chance’s parties had given him. A hot flush climbed his neck. It seemed so juvenile now.

  E. barely glanced at the items before putting them back, then she straightened and moved around the room, checking under his lamp, even squeezing the hems of his curtains, finding a hundred-dollar bill he didn’t know he had.

  She removed various books from his bookshelf, running her fingers along the spines. “Nice collection,” she murmured, pausing at The Catcher in the Rye before taking it down and flipping through the pages. “One of my favorites.”

  “Mine, too,” he said, annoyed that his voice came out sounding squeaky and adolescent.

  Across the room, Einstein moved in his enclosure. He expected E. to freak, like most women, but instead she walked over, smiling. “An axanthic ball python?”

  Wesley blinked. “Yeah.”

  “From the size, I guess it’s a male.”

  “Right. His name is Einstein.”

  “Is he friendly?” she asked.

  He nodded, but was unprepared for her to unlock the enclosure, then reach in and remove Einstein like a pro. “You’re a big boy,” she said, as if she were talking to a dog, then she handed him to Wesley and lifted the driftwood decoration. Wesley almost dropped Einstein. Shit. He’d forgotten about the gun.

  She removed the base of the decoration, and a dozen lies leaped to his tongue to explain away the presence of the .38 special. Instead, Wesley gaped to see it empty.

  What the hell had happened to his gun?

  “Nice hiding place,” she observed.

  “I…yeah,” he said, still reeling. He remembered the day he’d arrived home and thought someone had broken in. Had the intruder braved Einstein and taken his gun? But who would have guessed it was even there? He looked at Einstein, suddenly fearful—had his pet somehow swallowed the gun? He pivoted his head and realized that the live mouse was gone from its container. How had that happened? Carlotta would freak out if the mouse somehow made it into her bedroom.

  He returned Einstein to the aquarium and replaced the locking pin as E. went into his bathroom and, from the sound of it, looked in his hamper and medicine cabinet. He grimaced, wondering if she’d noticed the full unopened box of Trojans on the shelf.

  “Condoms have an expiration date,” she said matter-offactly when she emerged. “Can you show me the rest of the house?”

  Wesley led her across the hall. “This is my sister’s room.”

  E. peeked inside, but didn’t go in. Instead, she pointed to the room at the end of the hall. “Where does that door lead?”

  He hesitated. “It’s my parents’ room.”

  Her expression softened slightly. “May I see it?”

  With mixed feelings, he led the way to the door, turned the knob and pushed it open. The room was frozen in the decor of the previous decade—he and Carlotta hadn’t changed anything. His mother’s perfume bottles still littered her vanity, his father’s ties were still draped over his valet stand. E. walked into the room and to the closet. She opened the door, revealing their clothes, still hanging as they’d left them, crammed into the small space, the closet about a third of the size of the one in the house that they’d lost.

  They had traveled light when they’d left. E. closed the closet door and walked back to him. “I think we’re through here,” she said quietly.

  He exhaled in re
lief, closed the bedroom door and followed her back to the living room where she picked up her purse. “I just need to take a look in the garage, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  He grabbed the remote control and walked out to raise the door. Once in the garage, E. scanned the cluttered shelves, and cupped her hands to peek into the Miata. “Is this yours?”

  “My sister’s,” he said. “But it doesn’t run.”

  “Too bad,” she said, then opened the door and pulled the lever to open the trunk.

  The woman was thorough, he conceded.

  She lifted a blond wig and a high-heeled boot from the trunk and looked at Wesley. He shrugged and she dropped them back inside, closed the lid and clapped the dust from her hands.

  “Thanks for the cookie,” she said with the faintest smile. “See you next Wednesday.”

  “Okay,” he said, feeling oddly proud of himself as he watched her walk down the sidewalk to her car. But as she drove away, he remembered the gun, which wasn’t even his.

  Wesley removed his glasses and raked his hand down over his face. Where the hell could it be?

  38

  C arlotta was already awake when her alarm went off the next morning. Awake and miserable, having spent the night vacillating between hiccupping crying jags and nonsensical optimism that Peter’s confession would somehow turn out to be a mistake, that the real killer would be apprehended, and that she and Peter would live happily ever after.

  She would have gladly spent the day wallowing in bed if not for that pesky paycheck that she needed to earn.

  Working for a living was so damn inconvenient sometimes.

  She inched out of bed, her limbs heavy and her heart down around her ankles. Showering and getting dressed seemed to take forever, despite that since she’d cleaned out her closet she had less to choose from. To lift her spirits, she put on her most gorgeous and most uncomfortable shoes: a pair of Valentino leopard-print pumps that were a half size too small, but she’d had to have them. They were, she acknowledged, turning in front of a full-length mirror, devastating. She was still inconsolable, but she was inconsolable and exquisitely well shod.

  Concealing the circles under her eyes required more makeup artistry than usual, although the bounty from Dr. Suarez’s office came in handy.

  While she made herself a cup of coffee and ate eleven chocolate-chip cookies, she thought about Peter and wondered if he’d turned himself in this morning, as his attorney had promised he would. She was wounded to the marrow that she had so grossly misjudged him, and worried that he might be desperate enough to do something to himself.

  She pushed away the thought as soon as it entered her head—she couldn’t imagine a world without Peter in it. Even if they weren’t together all these years, it had been comforting on a base level to know that he was walking around, breathing in and out.

  Like her parents.

  When she walked out onto the stoop, she scanned the yard and the street, looking for green cars, mobster-mobiles and Detective Terry’s black sedan. Nothing seemed amiss on this gorgeous morning, the sun already simmering around the edges as it climbed in a cloudless sky. The cheeriness of the day belied the gloom in her heart, its stark brightness only highlighting the eerie feeling of impending doom.

  She frowned at the long scratches on the side of her car. Filing a claim with her insurer was just one more thing to do. When she realized how the episode might have ended, she shuddered. Worse was not knowing if it had been an accident or one of Wesley’s thugs.

  Gone was the theory of someone trying to shut her up—unless it had been Peter. She worried her lip. When he had come to her house the night that Lisa Bolton had been killed, hadn’t he begged her to stop asking questions? Her thoughts flew to the dark loaner car in his garage. Had it, by chance, been dark green?

  She swallowed hard and climbed inside the Monte Carlo, securing her seat belt tighter than normal. She kept an eye on her rearview mirror on the way to work, in between skimming the newspaper at red lights. The Buckhead serial killer story was on page three. The husband of one of the victims had confessed to her murder, the article said. Peter Ashford, age thirty-three, was expected to turn himself in today.

  She was all cried out, but her face hurt from the pressure behind her eyes and nose and throat. By the time she reached the parking garage, she was shaking from the caffeine, the sugar and the stress. As she drove in, she waved halfheartedly at Akin Frasier, who patrolled the entrance like a mercenary. She drove up to the second level where she normally parked, and pulled into the space, thinking how ludicrous it was for her to go to work today when she was likely to get nothing done. Yet what else was there for her to do but maintain her routine?

  It was, she had learned, how people coped with the unthinkable. They kept moving, pretending to be okay, until one day they were okay…or some version of it.

  She’d just turned off the engine when suddenly the passenger side of her car opened. She cried out in alarm when Peter swung inside and closed the door. There was at least two days’ worth of beard on his jaw and his clothes were disheveled. And he was very drunk.

  “Peter,” she said, gulping air. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had to see you, Carly,” he said in a monotone, his eyes glassy bright.

  “I thought you were…turning yourself in today.”

  “I am,” he said, his voice low and desperate. “I’m trying to make everything right.”

  “If you killed Angela,” she whispered, “then turning yourself in is the right thing to do.” Her throat constricted. “Why did you do it, Peter? Because you found out she was taking money for sex?”

  His eyes rounded in horror. “You…you know about that?”

  She winced. “A friend of Wesley’s was the one who identified her from the picture in the paper. Wesley told the police yesterday.”

  He pressed his hand against his forehead as pure panic registered on his face. “You mean, everyone knows?”

  “Not everyone,” she whispered. “Although there’s always the chance that it will get out to the papers.”

  “Oh my God,” he said, bowing his head. “This can’t be happening.” He clasped his hands together so hard they shook. “I found Angela’s appointment book in the pool house and figured out what she was doing. I couldn’t believe it. When I confronted her, she said it was my fault, for not loving her, that I drove her to find companionship elsewhere. She said her johns made her feel…desirable.” He began to sob. “And I knew who had talked her into it—Lisa Bolton.”

  Carlotta’s heart shriveled. Oh, God, he’d killed Lisa, too?

  He pivoted his head. “Why couldn’t you just keep your mouth shut, Carly? If not for that stupid autopsy, they would have let Angela rest in peace. They wouldn’t have started digging into our lives.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “If only you had left things alone, everything would have smoothed over, and you and I could have been together.”

  She reached for the door handle, but he leaned over and locked her door. Then he put his hands on her shoulders, turning her toward him. “I made a terrible mistake. But we can still be together.”

  “Peter.” She tried to pull away and realized she still wore her seat belt. Fear invaded her organs. “You’re scaring me.”

  “Why?” His combustible breath was hot against her cheek. “Are you afraid I’m going to strangle you, like you think I strangled Angela and Lisa?” His hands closed around her neck and he laughed as he applied pressure with his thumbs. “You have no idea how much you tormented me over the years, Carly, how I searched for some way to forget about you.”

  Terror descended, tearing a mewling noise from her throat. She struggled against his grasp and used her elbow to stab the car horn. The blast startled him, making him more agitated. “I just want things to be the way they used to,” he cried, anguish in his eyes. “But that will never happen now, will it?”

  She clawed blindly for the door handle. “
Peter, don’t do this. I…I love you,” she gasped, not sure if she said it out of desperation or because she meant it.

  He froze, the glazed look in his eyes clearing for a few seconds as a wondrous smile spread over his face. “You do?”

  She wheezed under the pressure of his hands, then abruptly the pressure on her throat was gone, and Peter’s mouth was on hers, kissing her as if his life depended on it.

  Then all hell broke loose. A loud bang on the car momentarily distracted Peter, and then the passenger-side door opened and a pair of big hands reached in to drag Peter off her.

  “Peter Ashford,” a familiar voice said, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Angela Ashford.”

  “This is a mistake,” Peter said. “Call my lawyer. This is all a big mistake.”

  She saw him being handcuffed, heard the click of the metal and brought her fist to her mouth to stifle the cry of grief trapped in her throat. Then Detective Terry’s face appeared as he leaned into the car. “Are you all right?” he asked her, his jaw hard.

  She nodded, wiping her eyes. He disappeared from view and she watched him in the rear and side mirrors lead Peter to his car and put him into the back seat. Then the detective returned to her car. She fumbled with the door, but finally managed to unlock it. He opened the door and knelt to her level. “Are you really okay?”

  She nodded, still feeling a little dazed. He reached around her to unbuckle her seat belt and she recognized on a visceral level that his touch was different than Peter’s—aloof, yes, but…protective…safe. “Were you following me?” she murmured.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I figured Ashford might try to see you before he turned himself in.”

  “I guess you were right…about a lot of things.”

  A muscle worked in his jaw. “For the record, I’m not happy about it.”

  She averted her gaze, her chest and throat wracked with the pain of helplessness. Senseless murders, lives upended…and the nagging sense of denial that she still didn’t believe what was unfolding in front of her own eyes.

  Her love for Peter was blind…and deaf, dumb and paralyzed.