Malice (9 page)

He was listening, not bothering to take notes.

“She could’ve had an accident, I’ll grant you that. She was known to drink a little and then there were pills, but…” She looked him straight in the eye. “If you’re asking me if I think Jennifer was capable of suicide, I’d say no. Just like I said pretty loudly at the time she died.”

Bentz nodded. As if he remembered.

“I lived with Jennifer at Berkeley and then afterward when…you know she was dating Alan Gray? No, not just dating. I think they were engaged for a while, right?”

She saw the narrowing of his eyes, the quiet assent behind his shaded glasses.

“But she didn’t move in with Alan, probably because she met you. Personally, I thought she was crazy. I mean, Alan was this super-rich real estate developer. God, he must’ve been worth tens of millions. Yet, she fell for you. A cop. Threw the millionaire over. Go figure.” Shana sighed theatrically. “But then who could figure our girl out? Jennifer was nothing if not a dichotomy.” Shana remembered Jennifer the flirt. Jennifer the extrovert. Jennifer the wild. But never could she recall Jennifer the morose. “However, I never considered Jennifer someone who would hurt herself. Not intentionally. I mean I just don’t think she was capable of it. She would do a lot of things for attention. A lot. But never really self-destructive.” Shana caught herself and sighed. “Well, unless you mean the affair.” She met his gaze, but she doubted it so much as flickered behind his shades. “James was definitely her Achilles’ heel.” She looked away to the pool where sunlight danced on the water, clear and aquamarine. “Look, it’s been a long time and really, I don’t know what was in her head at the time. I just doubt that it was suicide.”

Bentz asked her a few more questions about her friendship, then, when she looked at her watch, came up with the bombshell.

“Do you think Jennifer could have faked her death?”

“What?” She was shocked. “Are you kidding?” But he wasn’t. His face was stone-cold sober. “No way. I mean, how would she go about it?” Her thoughts swirled. Goose bumps rose on the back of her arms. Was this some kind of trick question? But Bentz’s expression told her differently. “Okay, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but no, I don’t think she could have…what? Staged the accident? Put someone up to it? Killed another woman? No…that’s nuts, Rick.” She felt her insides churning. This was just too weird. “Weren’t you the one who identified her body?”

He nodded, his lips tightening just a bit.

“Well, then, did you make a mistake?”

“I don’t know,” he said and she let out a long breath. “She didn’t talk to you about it? Didn’t show up afterward?”

“No! For the love of God!” Was the man bonkers? Holy crap! “What kind of dope are you smoking, Bentz? Jennifer’s dead. We both know it.”

“If you say so.”

Shana leaned back in her chair and eyed the man who had been Jennifer’s husband. He hadn’t been known to hallucinate. At least, not before all his problems. At one point he’d been the shining star of the LAPD, but that star had been tarnished, along with his badge.

Today, though, he looked like the old Bentz. Handsome and hard-edged. Oh, he was a little more shopworn around the edges, the years starting to show. But this Bentz was clear-eyed and determined. Passionate. Some of the qualities Jennifer had been drawn to in the first place.

“What makes you think Jennifer is alive?” she asked. This conversation was weird, weird, weird.

He withdrew something from an envelope—photos that he fanned over the glass-topped table. Shana’s heart nearly stopped. The woman in each shot was Jennifer, or her goddamned identical twin. “Where’d you get these? I mean…you’re saying these are recent?” she asked, her mind boggled. Jennifer was dead.

“Someone sent them to me. I thought you might have an idea who.”

“Not a clue…but…this can’t be…I mean, she’s dead. You were the one who—” She picked up the shot of Jennifer crossing the street. A chill slid down her spine.

“I’m just looking into her death,” he said as she eyed the pictures, looking for flaws, some hint that this was a twisted hoax.

“Where did these come from?” she asked.

“Postmarked Culver City.”

“Where you lived.” She swallowed hard. Heard the dry wind rustling the palm fronds. Felt cold as death inside. “This has to be an illusion.”

“I know, but I have some time, so I thought I’d check into it a little deeper.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer, just asked, “Is there anything you can tell me about the last week or so of her life that was unusual or different?”

“Aside from the fact that she died?” Shana asked bitterly, then eyed the pictures again. The truth of the matter was that she missed Jennifer. She wasn’t crazy about talking to Jennifer’s ex-husband, a real son of a bitch who’d been distant from his wife, always putting his work before his damned family.

She felt an allegiance to Jennifer, even now when she was no longer with the living. Discussing her with Rick seemed a betrayal somehow. Shana glanced away from Rick Bentz’s intimidating glare to the garden where heavy-blossomed bougainvillea clung to an arbor, the leaves rustling in a soft breeze.

But what was the point to keeping mum now? Her allegiance was long over. Jennifer was gone.

“All I know is that Jennifer talked about leaving a lot. She mentioned giving herself a break and you your freedom.” To his credit, the man winced, if only slightly. “She thought you were more cut out to be a parent than she was, even though you worked too much, got too involved with your cases, and drank a whole lot more than you should.” Shana lifted her hair up, letting the breeze skim across her nape. “She was smart enough to realize you were a good father. For what that’s worth.”

Crossing one leg over the other, she wondered, could those pictures be real? No way. The woman in the pictures was too young. Or she had an exceptional plastic surgeon. Shana dragged her gaze away, got back to skewering Bentz. “You already said you know she had a lover.” From the tightening of Bentz’s jaw, Shana knew she had hit a nerve. “She was planning to cut it off with him, too. Her life was getting too complicated and since James was your half brother…”

“And the father of my daughter.”

Jesus, he was way ahead of her. Shana shrugged and wished she’d made a pitcher of margaritas. She was suddenly thirsty as well as nervous. “Well, she knew that her affair, with him being a priest and all, only spelled trouble for both of them.”

“Did he know she was going to end it?” Bentz asked gravely.

“Suspected it, I think. She hadn’t actually done the dirty deed, but he’d sensed it was coming. He was beside himself.”

Bentz’s jaw slid to the side and she knew she was getting to him. Good. The bastard deserved it for ignoring his wife, probably sending her to an early grave, and then showing up here on Shana’s doorstep out of the blue. He was sexy, though, in that earthy way she found fascinating, if a little dangerous. Rugged and tough…despite the fact that he was a cop. Shana leaned forward, making sure her robe gaped open a bit, displaying a hint of her perfect décolletage, her latest investment since her damned boobs had started going south sometime after thirty-five.

“So what did he do?”

“Father James?” she asked coyly, suddenly glad to get back at this bastard.

“Yeah. Him.”

“He was upset, of course. They had a couple of fights. He was…out of control.”

There was a slight tic in Bentz’s jaw. “You think he had something to do with her accident?”

“I…I wouldn’t say that,” she hedged, but then what had she known about a priest who had continually broken his vow to God and church? Hadn’t she asked herself that very same question? She decided to change the subject. “You know, that brother of yours, he was damned sexy and passionate. A problem, I think, since he happened to be a priest.” She fluttered her fingers. “That vow of celibacy tends to get in the way. It can be a real bummer.”

Bentz was silently seething and she loved it. She decided to push it a bit. “You know, they sometimes met up on the Santa Monica Pier, or somewhere around there. I believe that’s where they first really hooked up. On the beach maybe, not far from the amusement park.” She saw Bentz flinch and knew she’d hit a mark. Good. She went on. “Let’s see, and then…Jeez, what was it that she was always talking about?” she asked and noticed the tightening of the corners of Bentz’s mouth. “Oh, I know! This was a biggie for her for some reason. They used to meet at some inn at San Juan Capistrano, I think.”

He tensed even more, his eyes, behind his shades, squinting. “You know the name?”

“No, but I remember Jennifer saying it was part of an old mission. Not the main one that’s there. It’s a smaller church that was sold and remodeled into an inn.” She tried to recall the details. “Wait a sec. Didn’t she tell me they always stayed in room number seven? It was, like, their lucky number, or something.”

“Number seven?” he repeated tightly.

“Yeah, I think so, though why I remember that, I don’t know.” But suddenly a conversation she’d had with Jennifer after one of her trysts came back to her now. Jennifer’s eyes had been bright with mischief, her lips curved into an aren’t-I-naughty smile as she sipped a martini and spilled a few juicy details of her secret life. And the name of the motel in Capistrano? It floated to her, then away. So damned elusive. “I think the name of the inn was Mission San…San Michelle.” That didn’t sound right. What the hell was it? “No…no. Wait!” She snapped her fingers as it came to her. “Mission San Miguel, that was it! It was special to them. They’d been there the first time, you know, when she got pregnant and then again, when they restarted the affair.” She saw the revulsion that Bentz was trying so hard to mask and she felt a thrill of satisfaction.

The jerk deserved a dose of cold, hard reality. He was the reason Jennifer had been so messed up; his distance had forced her into the arms of another man. She leaned a bit closer and said in a throaty stage whisper, “It’s kind of ironic, don’t you think, being as Father James was a man of God and all. I guess he could sleep with Jennifer, break all kinds of vows, and then head on over to the confessional to cleanse his soul.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not Catholic, but that is how it works, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” He seemed to be making a mental note. “Any other place?”

“Oh, I think there was some little no-tell motel over on Figueroa, somewhere near USC, but I’m not really sure.” Maybe she was telling him too much. Maybe she should keep her mouth shut. Nothing she said would bring Jennifer back.

His jaw was set. Rock hard. Eyes as steady as his voice. The cop. Cold. Distant. Had seen it all. “Anything else you remember?”

“Only that she was sorry,” she said in a moment of bare, honest-to-the-bone truth. “For hurting you.”

He looked at Shana as if she were yanking his chain again.

Who could blame the guy?

“I’m serious, Rick. She loathed herself for what she referred to as ‘her curse,’ her need to throw away all that was good in her life. Yeah, she was self-centered and vain, but deep down there was a very good person. In her own weird way, Jennifer loved you. A lot.”

T
hat day Bentz saw Jennifer for the first time in L.A.

After leaving Shana’s Beverly Hills estate he’d driven southwest, deciding to find Figueroa Street and satisfy his own morbid curiosity.

He was still mentally digesting everything he’d learned from Shana, trying to cull the facts from the fiction, or at least from Shana’s very slanted view of things, as he wended his way through the early afternoon traffic. One thing was clear from his meeting with Shana McIntyre; the pictures of Jennifer had unsettled her. No way had Shana faked her reaction. That had to mean something.

And in her catty way she’d reminded him to check out Alan Gray, the man Jennifer had professed to love.

For a while.

A developer who had made his money in the seventies and eighties, long before the recently stalled economy, Alan Gray had been in and out of Jennifer’s life. Bentz reminded himself to look the mogul up and see what good old Alan was doing these days. He would be in his late fifties or early sixties by now, possibly retired.

Bentz would check.

Squinting against the bright sun, he flipped down his visor and spotted several motels that could well have been one of the spots where Jennifer and James had met for their trysts. Unfortunately, there would be no records to prove that any of the stucco-faced buildings had been the private spot where they had met.

And so what if they had?

It had been over twelve years.

In that span of time places had changed hands, old buildings torn down and new ones sprouting up. He was just about to turn toward Culver City when he caught a glimpse of a slim, dark-haired woman in a yellow sundress and dark glasses standing at a bus stop.

So what?
he thought initially. But as he drove past, he saw her profile and his heart stopped. The nose and chin…the way she held her purse as she stood near a bench, her eyes trained down the street where the approaching bus lumbered and belched blue smoke. She lifted one hand to her forehead, shading her eyes even further.

Just as Jennifer had always done.

Shana’s words rushed back to him: “In her own weird way, Jennifer loved you.” He’d been stunned then and was still.

This is crazy,
his mind warned.
It’s not her. You
know
it’s not Jennifer. Power of suggestion, that’s all it is!

With one eye on his rearview mirror and the other trained ahead, he searched for a parking space as the bus slowed to a stop.

“Oh, hell.” Gunning his car into a parking lot for a strip mall he nosed his rental into the first available space, an area that warned that the lot was for customers only. The doors to the bus were open. Two teenaged boys plugged into iPods laughed and pushed each other as they hauled their skateboards onto the bus.

Bentz threw himself out of the car and hitched his way across the street.

She was gone.

The woman in the yellow dress was nowhere to be seen.

The doors of the bus closed and the driver turned on the flashers to signal that she was heading into traffic.

“No!” Bentz pushed into the street, his bad leg aching as he hobbled after the city vehicle. He reached the stop just as the bus rumbled noisily away.

Was she aboard?

As it pulled away from the curb, Bentz stared through the dusty windows. He scanned the face of every passenger he could see, but recognized no one. There wasn’t anyone remotely resembling his ex-wife.

Bentz took note of the bus number and the time, then studied the surrounding landscape. No dark-haired woman in a lemony sundress was strolling along the sidewalk or walking quickly around a corner or climbing into any of the vehicles lining the streets.

He felt a prickle of déjà vu run through his soul.

As if he’d been here before.

As if he’d been chasing Jennifer along these very streets.

He stared after the bus as it disappeared from view, considered chasing it down, trying to outrun it and board at the next stop.

Get a grip,
he silently told himself.
It wasn’t her. It’s just the power of suggestion, all because of Shana, the bitch. Jennifer, living or dead, is
not
on that bus. Come on, man, get real! When in known history did Jennifer ever take public transportation?

“I just don’t like it, that’s all,” Kristi admitted. She was driving with one hand, her cell phone in the other as she talked with Reuben Montoya, her father’s partner.

“He needed to get away.”

“Why?” she demanded, working her way through the narrow streets of Baton Rouge as she drove toward All Saints College.

“He just said he needed some time away. He was going stir crazy not being able to work.”

“Why go back to L.A.?”

“Ask him.”

“I did and he stonewalled me.” Kristi was beginning to panic. Something was wrong, really wrong. Ever since the accident her dad hadn’t been himself. She’d thought—no,
hoped
—that after he worked through physical therapy he would return to normal, but that wasn’t the case.

“Your father can handle himself,” Montoya said. “Don’t worry about him.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to.” She hung up and drove into the parking lot of her apartment building, which faced the campus. A once-grand old house, the building had been cut into single units, each one becoming a basic collegiate apartment. She lived here alone with her cat, punctuated by the occasions when Jay taught forensic science at the college. Those nights he stayed with her. The rest of the time he lived in New Orleans and worked for the crime lab.

Once they were married this December and she was finished with school, they would live in New Orleans. Fingers crossed that the first draft of her true-crime book would be finished by then.

But first, her father. God, what was Bentz doing? She mulled it over as she pulled out a sack of groceries from the back of her Honda hatchback and hiked up to her third-floor studio. She toyed with the idea of calling Olivia, her stepmother, but their relationship hadn’t always been smooth. It would be better to talk with her in person, but who could find the time?

As she was placing the last of her cheapo low-cal meals-for-one in the freezer, she saw Houdini outside the window. The black cat slunk inside and she picked him up, stroking his head as her phone chirped. “Hello?” she said as her quirky feline hopped down to the floor.

“Hey, Kristi, it’s Olivia.”

Perfect.

“Hi.”

“How’re things at school?”

What was this? Olivia never called. “All good,” Kristi said tentatively.

“And the wedding?”

“Everything’s on target.” Kristi kicked out a chair at her café table and sat down. “How about with you?”

“Good.”

Time to cut out the crap. “So why’s Dad in L.A.?”

“Well, that’s the thing. I can’t really say,” Olivia admitted, “but it seemed like something he had to do.” Her voice faded for a moment, as if she were looking away from the phone. Kristi’s heart began to drum as she anticipated what was to come: that her father and Olivia were getting a divorce. “He didn’t tell you about it?”

“He didn’t tell me anything. Just some BS about old cases in L.A. and that he’d be back soon. It all seemed bogus and I was wondering what was going on. Thought maybe there was something wrong between you.”

A beat. No answer. Kristi’s heart hit the floor.

“Your dad…he’s struggled since the accident. Can’t stand sitting around here, so I think he needed to do something to give himself a new perspective or…think things through.”

“What things?” Kristi asked cautiously. There was an undercurrent to this conversation she didn’t understand.

“I’m not sure. I don’t even think he knows, but when he does, I’m sure he’ll tell us.”

I wouldn’t bet on it.

“Anyway, I was calling to see if you wanted to get dinner sometime, or coffee? Maybe the next time you’re in New Orleans.”

“Sure.” It wasn’t as if Olivia hadn’t tried to bridge the whole stepmother gap with her before. They’d done some things together, but usually Dad was along. This was a little out of the ordinary. “I’m coming down in about a week,” Kristi offered.

“Then let’s make a date. If your dad’s back, maybe we’ll let him join us.” She paused a second, then added, “But maybe not.”

“You got it.” Kristi hung up.
If your dad’s back,
Olivia had said. So she was in the dark, too. Kristi didn’t like it. Whatever her father was going through, it wasn’t good.

After a long day of classes Laney Springer threw her books onto the tiny café table one of her roommates had donated to the cause of their shared apartment. God, it had been a day from hell, starting with Professor Williams’s dullsville lecture on the Korean War. Why she’d ever thought Modern History: American Politics in the Twentieth Century would be an interesting way to fill her schedule was beyond her. Thankfully, the semester was wrapping up. Professor Williams would soon be history—literally.

She walked to the refrigerator and peeked inside. The contents were pathetic: dried-out pizza in its box, the pieces of pepperoni already picked off. A bag of celery was turning brown beside some half-drunk bottles of Diet Pepsi.

Gross.

She shut the door and decided she shouldn’t eat anyway. Not if she wanted to fit comfortably into her tight, tiny, shimmery silver dress tonight. And she did. If nothing else, she wanted to look hot, hot, hot.

Forget the old pizza.

This was her big night. Well, technically not just hers, but her twin sister Lucy’s, too.

At midnight both of them would turn twenty-one. Finally
legal!

Of course there were still over six hours of waiting until the clock struck midnight. The witching hour. Kind of a reverse Cinderella syndrome. She had fake ID, but tonight, she was going to burn her fraudulent Oregon license.

The good news was that she wouldn’t have to wait an extra fourteen minutes after her twin sister took her first legal sip. Lucy always lorded it over Laney that she had been born at 12:47 while Laney hadn’t come along until 1:01. But tonight it didn’t matter. It was the date, not the time.

There was going to be a big party; all her friends would be there, even Cody Wyatt, the really cool guy in her English Lit class. Good. Because she knew she’d have to put up with Lucy’s creep of a boyfriend, Kurt Jones. What a loser! A thirty-year-old high school dropout who had never married the mother of his kid and, according to Lucy, didn’t want anything to do with his three-year-old son. Now Kurt was hanging out with Lucy and she was making all kinds of excuses for him. No doubt he was her dealer. Lucy was really getting into weed and who knew what else.

It worried Laney.

A little marijuana was one thing; the other stuff could be a huge problem. But tonight, if Kurt showed up, Laney figured she’d ignore the prick. Who cared what he did?

Weed, meth, coke, pills, he does it all.

She hoped Lucy would dump his ass.

For good.

Keyed up, she decided to work out, stretch muscles that had been cramped into uncomfortable desks all day. She’d get enough cardio tonight on the dance floor, but she wanted to tone her body. So first she’d lift some weights, then she’d pop in her yoga DVD and stretch out. Afterward, she’d take a long shower and wash her hair and spend as much time as she wanted with her makeup. It was, after all, almost her birthday. Correction. Make that
their
birthday. Hers
and
Lucy’s.

She found her iPod in her book bag and slipped the player into the sound system her roommate Trisha owned. The music was loud, but all the renters in the triplex were college kids; no one complained about music, parties, or even pets that were strictly forbidden.

On her way to the bedroom she shared with Trisha, Laney grabbed the communal free weights from the bookcase. Kicking a clear spot on the rug in the small space between the foot of her unmade bed and Trisha’s dresser, Laney started working on her arms to a song by Fergie. No flapping wings for this girl. Not ever. If she had to do a thousand triceps curls when she was eighty, so be it. Eighty. Wow. Like sixty years into the future. Fifty-nine as of tonight!

The reps came easy at first and she closed her eyes. The song and mood changed. She got lost in the beat and melodies of Justin Timber-lake, then Maroon 5…

One more set; she was really feeling it now.

Come on, come on,
she encouraged herself as the music pounded through her brain.
You can do it; don’t give up.

She was breathing hard, sweating big-time.

Once her biceps and triceps were screaming, she stretched out on the floor and started with leg lifts.

She thought she heard someone come in and yelled, “I’m in here!” over the throb of bass and a long keyboard riff, then kept working out until her body was covered in sweat and her legs ached.

Only after doing all the reps she’d planned did she spring to her feet.
Good girl! Way to go!
She grabbed her towel and headed to the living area where the music was still blasting. Time to stretch these muscles. Besides, she wanted to give Trish or Kim a chance to wish her a happy birthday.

But she didn’t see either of her roommates flopped on the secondhand couch Kim had found. And they weren’t nuking popcorn or boiling ramen in the kitchen.

Odd
.

Hadn’t she heard one of her roommates return?

Dabbing at the sweat on her face, she strode over to check Kim’s room. Empty.

Snap!

A strange sound. Muted.

Had her iPod skipped?

She backed out of Kim’s room, pulled the door shut behind her, and headed back to the living area. On her way to the stereo she noticed a hint of cigarette smoke in the air. No big deal. They all had taken up cigs.