Skies of Ash (31 page)

Colin and I returned to the car. For a long time, we didn’t speak.

College boys hurtled past the car on bikes and skateboards. Pods of young women in shorts and tank tops wandered back and forth, talking to each other while simultaneously texting or gabbing on their cell phones.

“Men lie to women all the time,” Colin explained. “And women believe the lies men tell all the time. It’s like flowers and sunshine. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

“First of all,” I said, “the sun doesn’t need flowers to exist, so, no, it’s not symbiotic but very one-way. And, second, when you lie to Dakota, do you think she actually believes that you still truly love her and that’s why she flew all the way from Colorado Springs and drove up from Orange County? Because you wanted to talk to her about getting back together? And do you actually believe that
she
believes that you aren’t as shallow as she thought? That you aren’t screwing her simply because of biology and not because she doesn’t have cold sores and won’t steal shit from your wallet when you fall asleep afterward? You think she actually
believes
your bull?”

He started the car. “Look: I’m not gonna ding Chatman for lying to Melissa Kemper. You’re supposed to lie to your hoe.”

I pulled my phone from my bag. “You’re so full of shit that it’s now falling out of your mouth.”

“Who you callin’?” he asked.

“Dixie don’t need no stinkin’ warrant to do what I’m about to ask her to do.”

“Think she’ll help?”

“If that means MG Standard not having to pay out Christopher Chatman’s claim, hell yeah, she’ll be happy to help.”

“You got ten minutes,” Dixie grumbled, not sounding happy at all. “I’m meetin’ Marcus at El Torito.”

“Which one is Marcus?”

“Desk sergeant over at Hollywood.”

“Dark-skinned? Thick-necked? Does MMA on his time off?”

“Hallelujah. You got nine minutes now—what do you want?”

“I’m in Vegas working the Chatman case. What’s a hospital with the initials MSK?”

“Ain’t nothing here in Los Angeles,” she said. “But in New York, it’s Memorial Sloan Kettering.”

“Well, could you call Memorial Sloan Kettering and see if Christopher Chatman received cancer treatment there?”

It took less than five minutes for Dixie to learn that Christopher Chatman, Social Security number ending in 9717, born on June 21, 1963, had never been a patient at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

“Keep going since I still have four minutes,” I told her, even though blood was now in the water and she needed no further encouragement from me. “Who is their health insurance company?”

“Blue Cross,” Dixie said. “Let me make a few more calls.”

En route to the airport, Colin pulled into a Sonic drive-in for a quick preflight meal.

Before I took a bite from my chili dog, Dixie called back. “UCLA, no Christopher Chatman. No Christopher Chatman at USC, Stanford, or Fred Hutch. City of Hope had a Christopher Chatman, but he died from leukemia back in nineteen eighty-seven.”

My stomach growled, and I stuck a piece of bun into my mouth. “What about community hospitals, university hospitals, cancer specialty places, shamans…?”

“Okay, so you trippin’ now,” Dixie said. “I can’t call every hospital in the world, and I
ain’t
callin’ every hospital in the world. Especially on a Friday night, with a fine-ass kickboxin’ cop and a strawberry margarita waitin’ for me. We friends but not like that, boo.”

“So?”

She sighed. “
So
you need more people.”

After finishing half of my hot dog, I called Syeeda.

She gasped. “You’re actually asking—?”

“Are we gonna do this or not?”

“Let’s.”

“You still have your person in the insurance world?”

“Yep. Who do you want info on?”

“First,” I said, “this is so off the record…” I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “Sy, I can’t have even a
suggestion
of this printed until two years from now when I give you an exclusive.”

“I vow on our friendship,” she said solemnly.

I gave her Christopher Chatman’s name and Social Security number.

“I’ll call you back,” she said.

I pointed at Colin. “You didn’t hear that.”

“Hear what?”

“When?”

He smiled and winked.

I finished the second half of my hot dog in time to take Syeeda’s call.

“Blue Cross hasn’t paid any cancer-care costs for the Chatman family. Looks like Maria Kulkanis, M.D., billed them for a diagnostic ultrasound on December sixth, but that’s it.”

“Is their policy up-to-date?”

“Yeah, and the premium is paid to the end of this year. They’re still listed as primary.”

“Maybe his secondary paid?”

“My girl didn’t see a notation that there is a secondary health insurance policy. Juliet Chatman went to Dr. Kulkanis on December sixth, last week. And Christopher Chatman went to Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital back in August for his back.”

Surprise spiked my heart. “His
back
? But not for cancer?”

“Nope.”

“Can you call her back?” I asked. “Juliet had been prescribed Valium by Dr. Kulkanis. Ask her if Blue Cross was billed for that prescription after July.”

Two minutes later, Syeeda called back. “No scrip filled in June or July. But she filled it in August, September, October, November, and December.”

“Thanks, friend o’ mine.”

“See you tonight?”

“Yep.”

After I had ended the call, Colin asked, “What did she say?”

“Someone was getting Valium,” I said.

His face blanched. “It’s still possible that Juliet started popping pills again.”

“True,” I said. “Sy also said that there are no cancer treatments in Christopher Chatman’s Blue Cross records. No cancer diagnoses, either.” I cocked an eyebrow. “Acceptable lies to his hoe, or is Christopher Chatman crazy with an extra side of crazy?”

Colin tapped the steering wheel but didn’t respond.

“At this rate, I bet that suicide attempt was fiction, too.”

“Okay,” Colin said, “he’s a pathological liar. But who started the fire?”

I slumped as much as I could in that tiny front seat.

My partner’s gaze fixed on a distant point within Sonic.

Who started the fire?

I shook my head and whispered, “I don’t know.”

COLIN AND I CLIMBED ABOARD OUR AIRPLANE AT TEN MINUTES TO SIX O’CLOCK. I
longed to close my eyes and take a quick catnap, and maybe lose myself in a dream like the one I’d had on the flight to Vegas. But my conscious mind refused to relax, leaving me rigid in the middle seat, eyes wide, mind pinging between the Chatman case and Greg’s pissy text message.

Colin slept, mouth open, head occasionally falling to rest on my shoulder.

Annoyed, I pushed him away a few times and growled, “Get off of me. You’re snoring.”

He muttered something, then leaned in the opposite direction.

A little after seven o’clock, the plane landed at LAX. As we taxied to the gate, I turned on my phone: Dixie had left a voice-mail message. “Girl! That motha-clucka canceled on me. He thinks I’m stupid. That I didn’t hear his babymomma in the background shoutin’ at one of them nappy-headed kids. I’m so pissed off right now that I’m still at work. Call me.”

I rushed off the plane with the phone to my ear.

Colin, still trying to wake up, shambled behind me through the crowded terminal as though his legs and feet had been dipped in peanut butter.

“Now which babymomma is this?” I asked Dixie. “He got three.”

“The Filipino chick, the one in Dispatch.”

“I heard she got that nasty woman’s disease,” I said. “Which means Marcus does, too. Which means you dodged a bullet and three weeks of penicillin.”

After trying to determine if Christopher Chatman had received cancer care and not finding any evidence that he had, Dixie had reviewed his medical history—lower back pain, therapy, anxiety disorder…

“When did he see the shrink?” I asked.

“September 2005.”

“For how long?”

“Just that month. You think that means anything?”

He had just become a father for the second time—Chloe had been born that July. Two kids, a wife, and one income—if anything made you anxious…

“Could mean something,” I said to Dixie. “Could mean nothing.”

Colin dropped me at home and I tossed him a “see you soon” while racing up the walkway to the front door. I had forty minutes before Greg turned into a fully realized asshole, brimming with barbed words and moody glances.

I showered for ten minutes, took another five to flat-iron my hair, spent a minute on makeup and several seconds wrangling my never-been-worn, block-print Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress.

The dress fit, glory, glory.

My hair obeyed.

My toes still shone with toreador-red nail polish.

Power without a Glock.

In the Porsche, I zoomed through the slick streets of Culver City, heart pounding in my chest as my phone vibrated with passive-aggressive texts from my husband.

If you have something better to do…

I could be at work right now.

U there? R U busy?

I didn’t respond. Against the law to text and drive.

Five minutes after eight o’clock, I pulled in front of the new French bistro and left the car keys with the valet.

Greg, dressed in a cashmere sweater and jeans, stood in the lit-bead-draped bar. He was chatting with a leather-clad, beauty-shop blonde (he never chatted with men, not ever). Seeing me enter, Greg said something to the blonde, laughed as she laughed, then sauntered over to meet me. “Wow,” he said, looking at his wristwatch. “Only six minutes late.”

My smile froze as I stared at him. “And you look very handsome as well.”

“I get to be pissed off,” he growled.

“I wasn’t in Vegas for the buffets,” I whispered as pressure pushed behind my eyes. “You know I’m working a case. And that case took me out of town for a moment.”

“Out of town with Colin Taggert.”

“Absolutely. He’s also a homicide detective assigned to this case that required travel.”

“Sounds good on paper,” he snarked.

Panic whirled through me. “I apologize for being six minutes late. Won’t happen again. And we don’t have to do this”—I waved to the restaurant—“if you’re not feeling it.”

He clenched his jaw, then forced himself to smile. “Hell, we’re here now.” He glanced down at my dress and lifted an eyebrow. “You look incredible. But you know that, don’t you?”

“Always nice to hear.”

He touched the small of my back, then dropped his hand to my ass.

The ice around my heart cracked and started to thaw.

The restaurant’s front-desk host, a man as thin as a Communion wafer and just as pale, led us to a table with a view of the restaurant’s small lavender and herb garden.

Greg’s whiskey-colored eyes skirted over the menu, then found my cleavage. His gaze narrowed and lingered there for a moment until he’d had enough and focused again on the food.

My skin tingled under his attention. I wanted to move my shoe up and down his calf, but something kept that foot tied to the ground.

Over glasses of Napa Cabernet, he told me that he didn’t feel like talking about the zombie game. “The stupid mistakes I’m finding… None of it makes sense, and I’m startin’ to think somebody’s trying to sabotage me. There was an article on IGN’s Web site today, all about my failure being imminent, that I haven’t fucked up yet but odds are that I will, and that schadenfreude bullshit. If I have to program this son of a bitch myself and do all the voices and sell it from the back of a U-Haul, I’ll do it.”

“Sounds like you’re never coming home,” I said.

He refilled his wineglass. “If that’s what it’s gonna take.”

But me being six minutes late because I’d been trying to solve the murder of three, real-life human beings? Oh, the
horror
!

The waitress slipped the tomato tarte tatin between us while Greg showed me on his phone a new sketch of my video-game doppelgänger now dressed in a tight, low-cut police uniform. “I see that I got the boobs right,” he said, his eyes flitting back to my dress.

I jerked as though a knife had jabbed my spine. Had his ogling my breasts happened for simply artistic reasons and not because he wanted to free them from La Perla and cover them with millions of kisses?

Over steak au poivre for him and
poulet roti
for me, I told him about the Chatmans’ weird medical shenanigans. And as I told him about the Valium prescription, he picked at his potato gratin and haricot vert. As I talked about Melissa Kemper, he glanced at his watch. When I brought up the visit to Christopher Chatman’s commodities firm, he yawned, then peeked at the striking brunette with extreme eyelashes sitting two tables away.

Dessert came: chocolate fondant with homemade vanilla
crème glacée
.

The brunette and her eyelashes left the table and headed for the restroom.

I counted in my head.
One… two… three…

Greg wiped his mouth with a napkin, then said, “I need to make a call.”

Five seconds.

I nodded. “Yep.”

He left the table.

My mouth, full of melting chocolate, mixed with unfallen, salty tears.

Alone now, my mind raced, and thoughts tumbled as my eyes searched the moonlit garden for answers.

Stay.

Go.

He’s making a call.

No, he’s not.

Finish the fondant first.

Finally, the strongest thought wound through the fray and reached my mind’s door.

I pushed away from the table, my feet numb but my legs strong, and stomped in the direction my husband and the woman had taken.

This isn’t happening… This isn’t happening…

I held my breath and peeked around the corner into the corridor…

Ah.

Okay
.

There he was. There
she
was. Talking. Together. Her hand on his shoulder. His smile, the brightest I’ve seen since…

Trembling and sweaty, I thanked the ghost-faced host as I strode out of the restaurant. With a shaky hand, I gave ten dollars and the parking ticket for my car to the valet. Weak-kneed, I slipped behind the wheel of my “please, baby, please” Porsche and sped away from the clatter of plates and the chatter of laughter.