Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too (8 page)

With my eyes closed, I put my cheek against his rough one, awash with relief and something dangerously close to love. “Are you counting Richard in that group?”

“You bet.” I felt him grin. “Do the two of you do this sort of thing often?”

I hiccuped a laugh. “Does your new girlfriend?”

“She's not my girlfriend.”

“Does she know that?”

I felt his smile again. “Maybe not.”

I pulled away by a few centimeters and looked up into his face, so familiar and yet not anymore. I tried to find something specific that was new and decided he'd lost a few pounds. His body felt tighter. Still good, but harder. Our minds seemed to work just as before, though. He could read me, know my feelings and my fears.

For an instant, it didn't matter what had come between us.

But then it was back.

“Michael, this isn't—”

“Sex in a phone booth doesn't mean anything?”

“No. It's just—sex. If you want me to—”

He stopped my hand. “Let's not make this any messier than it already is.” He touched my cheek. “Do you feel better now?”

“Yes.” I sighed to dispel the tension in my chest. “And no.”

“The dead guy. Is he somebody you care about?”

“He was a pretty awful person, as a matter of fact.”

“I guess that's good. Maybe you'll keep your nose out of this one?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a promise?”

I steeled myself. “I don't think I need to make any promises to you. We both know they're not binding.”

He sighed, too, and let me pull away. “Nora. I didn't think things would go this way when we—when you and I were together.”

I tried to put my clothes back where they should be. “I thought you wanted a different kind of life.”

“I did. It just went the other way.”

“You have choices, you know. You're making a good living. I see your gas stations everywhere now, and surely your other businesses are booming, too.”

“It's not about the money.”

“Then what is it? Misplaced loyalty?”

“It's complicated.”

I couldn't fathom what he was doing. “Michael,” I said, “I can't be with you when you're this other person. Not if you're a criminal.”

He absorbed that and discarded the part he didn't need to hear again. “So you still think about us?”

“Michael—”

“Forget I asked.” He closed his eyes and braced his shoulder against the opposite wall, putting dead air between us. “I know what you want. A house in the suburbs with kids and a swing set. Maybe one of those ducks on the porch—the kind you dress in doll clothes. What's up with those, anyway?”

“I don't know.”

He said more gently, “I'm glad you're going to get the family you need.”

“Shut up,” I said. Taking a handful of his shirt, I pulled him back to me and kissed him until I felt emotion burn in the back of my throat. When I broke the kiss and looked up into his eyes, my vision blurred. “Sometimes I can't believe it's over between us.”

“Believe it.” He turned his head away. “It's over.”

“I still have the ring you gave me.”

“Sell it,” he said, unable to look at me anymore. “Hock it. You can use the money, right? Fix the roof on that house of yours.”

His voice had turned cold.

I turned him loose and fumbled to get the door open. He helped, and we were out in the hallway again, no need to speak anymore. He put his tie right, and I quickly went up the hall to escape the best thing that had ever happened to either one of us, if only he could change who he really was.

Something must have happened in the restaurant while we were gone. I came up the steps into the bar and found Delilah and Emma standing together looking wide-eyed and panicky.

“Hey,” I said. “What's—”

“Who the hell are you?” a female voice demanded—Jersey nasal and laced with toxic sarcasm.

It was the woman who'd been sitting with Michael. Her lipstick was a shade that didn't exist in nature, and her contact lenses glowed a poisonous green. In one long-taloned hand, she held the remains of a pink Cosmopolitan.

“You're her, aren't you?” she snapped. “The bitch he was sleeping with before me?”

Delilah snorted at her unintentionally comic semantics, which only fanned the flames.

“Hello,” I said with extreme civility. “I'm Nora Blackbird.”

She batted my hand away and shot a murderous look past my shoulder just as Michael came up the step behind me. Her face tightened with fury, and the next thing I knew she threw the Cosmopolitan in my eyes.

Michael caught my arm and spun me behind him to prevent further mayhem, saying, “Darla, wait—”

But it was Emma who flashed into action. She took a step and swung her fist. The punch connected perfectly, and we saw Darla's eyes go blank and her knees wobble once before they crumpled completely out from under her.

Which was the moment Richard came through the restaurant door. He caught his balance with his cane to better absorb the scene.

Michael handed me his handkerchief and said curtly to Richard, “Take her home.”

Which was how I ended up with Richard long before I figured out what I wanted to do about him.

In Richard's car sopping up, I said, “My reflexes must be off. I never get hit with drinks.”

Richard said, “You must have been distracted.”

I heard his tone as I tucked the damp handkerchief into my bag. Clamping my knees together, I tried not to think about what I had just done in a phone booth with someone I truly hadn't intended to see anymore. I had disgraced myself, and I felt ashamed.

It was time to forget about Michael and focus on the new man in my life.

Except he was sulking.

“Is there something else you want to argue about, Richard?” I tried to make my tone light. “Or should we just cut directly to the big distraction himself?”

“I don't want to argue.”

“Then tell me why you were at Cupcakes tonight. Did you have an urge for hot wings?”

He didn't bother trying to smile. “I went to Cupcakes to talk to Abruzzo.”

“I see. So he's a story you're working on?”

“Half the city's working on his story.” Richard took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at me, tension bristling from him. “He went back to the family business, so everybody assumes the Abruzzos are going to be bigger and more powerful than ever. But a guy on the desk called to tell me about the Orcutt murder and that he'd heard your name on the police scanner. So I went out to Fitch's Fancy to look for you. By the time I got there, though, they told me you'd come here, so I thought I'd ride to your rescue.”

“Oh. I—I guess I should thank you.”

He shrugged. “I should have been here sooner, but the local television trucks were there, setting up to watch the crime scene guys work. I stuck around.”

“Did you talk to the police?”

Of course he had. Richard D'eath had come to Philadelphia from New York after a traffic accident required a stint in a respected orthopedic rehab facility. While he recovered from his broken bones, the local newspaper hired him to cover their corruption beat, and he'd seized the job with the extreme relief of a man who hated lounging around in a hospital bed. Once downgraded to an outpatient, he'd put his cane and New York street smarts to good use and driven half a dozen crooked politicians out of the mayor's office. I knew he couldn't pass a crime scene without asking questions.

“Yeah, I talked to the cops.”

“What did you learn?”

“I heard all about you.”

I turned to look at his profile. Unlike Michael, who looked every inch a thug, Richard was toe-curlingly handsome. Sandy hair spilled boyishly over his smooth forehead, his nose was straight and inquisitive, and his body was more fit than his loose, earth-toned clothing usually showed. Women often slipped him their phone numbers, and one night I actually witnessed a professor of women's studies fall off a barstool when he arrived to meet friends for a drink.

He always smelled delicious and could argue politics late into the night. And his eyes—one blue, one hazel—were direct and observant. But he was ill at ease with emotion, and I was still trying to discover if that meant Richard lacked the capacity to be intimate with anyone other than a story source.

“The police talked about me? What does that mean?”

“You made an impression. You and Emma both. Fortunately, they don't think either one of you killed Zell Orcutt.”

“Have they figured out who did?”

“Not yet.” Richard was frowning. “Did you know Boykin Fitch was there? The Senate candidate?”

“He's not a candidate quite yet. Yes, we spoke. We're old friends.”

“I should have guessed,” he said dryly. “Is he for real? Am I supposed to believe the Forrest Gump routine?”

“Boy is a very nice person.”

Richard wasn't listening. “His father showed up, too. Pierpoint Fitch, right? Waving an old badminton racquet and talking pretty crazy. Enough to get the cops interested.”

“The whole family is furious with Zell for auctioning off Fitch's Fancy. None of them want to lose the estate. It's been in the family for over a century.”

“Yeah, I gathered from the shouting. Boykin Fitch couldn't get his father out of there fast enough.”

“Pierpoint didn't murder Zell.”

“Why not? He's crazy, but not crazy enough?”

I recalled an incident from my youth when I'd visited Fitch's Fancy with a slew of birthday cake-crazed children, who, after the usual fun and games, were drawn to the sheep barns to look at new lambs. One ewe had just given birth to twins, and we were fascinated by the newborns. But the smaller of the lambs was misshapen and couldn't breathe, and its struggling throes frightened us. I remembered Pierpoint Fitch stepping in. He picked up the dying lamb, and cradling it in his arms, he told the group of children how it was sometimes kinder to end an animal's suffering. He took the lamb away, and we knew what he had gone to do. But he'd wept with us as he spoke, and his unchecked emotion lent a certain unforgettable melodrama to the whole event.

But I knew Richard would take a different view, so I said merely, “He's not a violent man.”

“I thought you were going to say their blood is too blue for killing each other.”

I pushed Pierpoint out of my mind and considered the victim instead. “Zell didn't have blue blood.”

“No class, huh?”

“He hired his own granddaughter to be a Cupcake.”

“That's pretty low,” Richard agreed.

“That's Zell for you.”

“I guess some guys just don't fit in your world.”

I turned sideways in the seat, conscious that Michael was between us again as clearly as if he'd opened the door and climbed into the car. “Are you trying to make a point, Richard?”

Richard kept his gaze on the road. “I can't believe I still need to.”

“You tried to interrogate him tonight.”

In the light from the dashboard, Richard glanced at me. “Abruzzo told you that?”

“Fess up,” I said. “You're working on the organized-crime story, aren't you?”

“You know I can't reveal details about my current investigation.”

“Think I'm going to tell someone at my own paper who will scoop you? Or are you concerned I'll tip off the mob?”

“Nora—”

“Just tell me what's going on, please. What is Michael involved in now?”

Richard let a few seconds tick by. Then, quietly, he said, “I don't want to hurt you.”

“It isn't you who's doing the hurting.”

Richard contemplated his choices as he drove up the dark highway toward Blackbird Farm. I could see him weighing personal and professional matters.

At last, he said, “Remember last December? Some cops were on a special detail to catch a ring of car thieves. The bust went wrong, and somebody shot a cop.”

I remembered the incident all too painfully. Although I had spent part of that fateful evening with Michael, I hadn't been completely sure of his whereabouts at the time the police officer was murdered.

“Yes,” I said. “I know about the killing.”

“Well, the police never caught the shooter. He's still at large.”

“Do they know who it was?”

“They know who they want it to be,” Richard said. “And now I hear they've got a source who's willing to talk—who's passing information to them.”

“Information that's trustworthy?” I asked. “Because a petty car thief might say anything. You have to consider the source. You can't believe what you hear from—”

“Take it easy,” Richard said.

I bit back my panic. If someone in the Abruzzo crime family wanted Michael out of the way for a long time, creating a false testimony was the quickest way to put him back in jail.

When he was a teenager, he had been able to survive a prison sentence. But I wasn't sure he could live through it now. He loved to go fishing. To ride his motorcycle. He laughed, ate, drank wine and made love with more abandon than anyone in my acquaintance. In fact, I'd never known a man who enjoyed his pleasures so openly. As if he might never enjoy them again.

In the quiet of the car, Richard said at last, “Am I crazy? Thinking you and I could have something, Nora?”