Sunset Bridge (18 page)

“This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

He dropped his hands, as if he was tired of trying. “It never does.”

Part of her wanted to ask him to leave, to be done with the anger and recriminations for good. But a larger part, a part that would not be easily silenced, knew that Felo leaving was not the answer, just as her leaving him had accomplished little except create an emptiness that continued to grow with each passing day.

He had given her something. He had tried, at least a little, to explain what he had been feeling. She knew that for them to settle this, to part as friends or even to reunite, she had to give something in return, no matter how hard, how alien, it felt to talk about her feelings.

“I’m sorry.” She bit her bottom lip, as if tasting the aftermath of the unfamiliar words. “I…I
was
obsessed. The case felt important. It made up for all those years I had to fight for every single inch I climbed the career ladder. You don’t know what that was like, Felo, how rare it is for a woman to be put on an investigation like that one. Maybe Smythe even asked for me because he figured I wouldn’t do a good enough job.”

“That’s not true. You earned it, that’s all.”

He had never understood the day-to-day politics of discrimination.

“Either way, getting Famosa was important, and working on that kept me from—” She stopped.

“Making a commitment?” he asked when she didn’t finish.

“Maybe,” she conceded. “I wasn’t ready to stay home, have babies, keep house. I wanted what we already had. I thought we were good the way we were, but you were pushing me into a corner.”

“And you never wanted more?”

“I just thought we would work it out together when the right moment came, only every time we tried to talk about it, we ended up not talking at all.”

She expected him to be angry, but instead he shook his head, then put his arms around her and pulled her close.

She knew better than to stay that way. The feel of his body was so familiar, so easy to relax into, so seductive. The warmth and scent of his skin filled her, seeped into her pores, slid along her nerve endings. She tried to pull free, but only in her mind. Her body would not give an inch except to strain closer.

“I don’t know how we got along as well as we did,” he murmured against her hair. “I speak, you hear things I don’t say. You don’t speak, and all my fears speak for you.”

She looked up, knowing what would happen, and it did. He kissed her, a slow familiar kiss that felt like all the good things that had once filled her life then fled. She knew better than this. She knew how dangerous it was to succumb to temptation, dangerous for both of them. She didn’t want to lead him on. She was no surer of how she felt about him, whether or not she trusted his word and his affiliations. Yet she couldn’t seem to pull away. Felo was like a drug in her system, and not one that tempered reality but one that gave life, brought energy and feeling coursing through her.

“I didn’t come to seduce you,” he said.

She wasn’t sure she trusted that, either. But in the scheme of things, whether he had or hadn’t was a ripple in a pond of misgivings.

“I didn’t expect to say yes if you did,” she murmured against his lips, although it was probably a lie.

He took her answer for the assent it was. He folded her closer, his fingers reaching under her sweater, stroking her
back, unhooking her bra with long practiced skill. She wondered, as he lifted the sweater and inched it up over her shoulders, if “yes” was yet another way to avoid talking about their differences. Because if they talked at last, would Felo leave once and for all, never to return?

“What?” he asked, pulling away for a moment.

“Nothing.”

“No, there was something. You gasped. Do you want me to stop?”

She finished pulling her sweater over head and dropped it on the floor. “If I did, you would know,” she said.

“I’m not sure.”

She smiled sadly; then she traced the fine curve of his lips. “No more talking.”

“Let me turn off the stove.”

She rose on tiptoe to kiss where she’d touched, and her bra drifted down her arms and joined the sweater on the floor. “You do that.”

By the time Maggie got out of the shower, the smells drifting from the kitchen were remarkable. She doubted the little beach cottage had ever experienced anything as fabulous as Felo’s Pisto Manchego. The chorizo alone would linger in the air for days, reminding her of this morning.

As would the pleasant ache in sensitive places and the tingle of every nerve ending in her body. She smiled as she dried her shoulders and breasts, but by the time she’d finished and was dressed again, the smile had disappeared.

Acting on impulse was Felo’s trademark, not hers. Yet she had more than complied. She had encouraged. She had cut off conversation, afraid it would cool the fever in their blood, blocked out every warning her brain had tried to send her.
They had come together as if something outside themselves had kept them apart these months, but she had ignored the truth. She had left him, and nothing had really changed since she walked out their door. She had only his word that he had not been unfaithful. And she still didn’t believe he hadn’t heeded Alvaro’s counsel, but had refused to support Maggie’s plan to unmask Paul Smythe for his own reasons.

The table was set when she joined him. He smiled, but his expression was wary, as if he, too, knew that all was not yet well.

“That was a bad idea,” Maggie said, sliding into her seat.

“It wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t a commitment. We know sex isn’t the problem in this relationship. Until we can talk about the things that really are, what’s the point of talking at all?”

“I’m not coming home.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Why do we do this to each other?”

“Because it’s better than saying goodbye.”

That was true, the answer she didn’t want to hear, but the real one. She couldn’t say yes and she couldn’t say no, and that kind of indecision was foreign to her. She had left Felo, believing that their relationship was finished. Yet in those weeks alone in the Blue Ridge, the true depth of her feelings for him had become clear. And though she rarely changed her mind once it was made up, this time she’d felt none of the certainty and relief that came with a decision. Instead, she’d just felt more confused and unsure.

“We are who we are,” she said. “And neither of us is likely to change.”

“What we are is hungry. Starving, actually. And it’s time to do something about it.”

He piled food on the little table. The Pisto Manchego with eggs nestled on top of the savory vegetables laced with shrimp and chorizo. More of the pastries he’d brought. A salad of avocado and diced red onion, along with the fruit Maggie had sliced.

As if they’d silently agreed that they’d plumbed the depths of their troubled relationship enough for one morning, they talked about friends and changes to their neighborhood. When she had eaten enough to sustain her for a week, she pushed her chair back and got more coffee to refill his cup.

“Are you going to tell me what you discovered about the Duttas?” she said.

“I thought I’d wait and tell your friends at the same time, unless you’d rather hear it first.”

She shook her head. “No hurry, I guess. They’ve been given custody of the children for the time being.”

“How are the kids doings?”

She knew that wasn’t an idle question. Felo loved children, and they loved him in return. He partnered with a church group that made teddy bears for children in crisis, and he’d convinced some of their fellow officers to carry them to help soothe distraught children when a parent was taken away or, worse, when the children themselves were taken from their parents. At Christmastime, nobody worked harder soliciting toys and clothes for children in need than Felo. His own difficult childhood had made him even more aware.

“The little boy is hardly talking. The little girl—she’s hardly more than a baby—has settled in pretty well, although she’s afraid of men.”

“Was the father violent at home?”

“Rishi says he was a confirmed pacifist. More likely Lily,
the baby, rarely saw him, so she’s not used to men. Between his job and his novel, he was gone a lot.”

“I was surprised you called me. You had other contacts.”

She started to say she’d tried them all, but that wasn’t strictly true. There were others who could have helped her find the information she needed. If she was really honest with herself, she knew that calling Felo had been a way to test the waters between them.

“You’re the best,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie.

“Shall we head over now and see what we can find out from your friends? I’ll tell all of you what little I’ve learned.” He got up and started to clear the table. When he stopped to one side of her, he leaned over and kissed her head.

“Don’t spend the next weeks regretting what happened, okay? Let it go. We’ll take this one step at a time.”

“In what direction?”

He ruffled her hair. “Let’s get these dishes in the sink.”

Maggie phoned Janya before they left the house, and once they arrived, the other woman opened the front door before they could knock, baby Lily perched on her hip. The little girl wore a bright pink T-shirt and a diaper. Settled that way, one hand rhythmically tugging a lock of Janya’s hair like a miniature bell ringer, the child could have been hers. No one would have disputed it.

Janya held out her hand to Felo as Maggie introduced them. From her mother, Maggie knew that in India women rarely shook hands with strange men, but now the gesture seemed effortless to Maggie’s neighbor.

“We thank you for coming,” Janya told Felo. “It is a long trip, and your time is valuable.”

“I’m glad I could be a little help.”

They followed Janya inside, and she introduced Rishi, who
was trying to coax Vijay to eat a plate of sliced melon. The little boy didn’t look at them, and his expression was glum. The melon appeared untouched.

“Lily needs a nap,” Janya said. “I will be with you as soon as she’s in bed.”

“Vijay, would you like to watch television in our bed?” Rishi asked the little boy, who gave a sullen nod. Both Kapurs left to settle the children, and Maggie and Felo made themselves comfortable in the tiny living room.

“This place is small for four,” Felo said softly.

“If the children were older, it would be really difficult.”

“Will they look for a larger place?”

“They don’t know from one day to the next whether the kids will stay here or be sent off to India. It doesn’t make sense to move if they don’t need to.”

“And the kids have had no contact with family there?”

“None. Can you imagine what it’ll be like for them?”

“Like me being sent to Cuba to live out the rest of my days.”

Janya returned, closing the door to the children’s bedroom—not much larger than a walk-in closet—behind her. In a moment Rishi came out of the other room and pulled the door, too, without closing it all the way. In the background Maggie could hear the high-pitched voices of children from a television show.

“Vijay has difficulty sleeping at night,” Janya said. “So he is tired during the day, but he fights a nap.”

“Bad dreams,” Felo said. It wasn’t a question.

“If so, he will not tell anyone about them.”

“That’s too bad. It would help.”

Janya and Rishi settled themselves in chairs, and Rishi
took the lead. “We appreciate that you’ve taken the time to help us.”

Felo waved this away. “I was happy to. Since we don’t know how long we’ll have before the children need you again, let me just tell you quickly what I’ve learned.”

Maggie admired the way Felo had already put Janya and Rishi at ease. She sat back and listened.

“The day Mr. Dutta left the children with you, Mrs. Dutta was seen with an unidentified man going into the motel room where she died. The man had made the reservation earlier in the day, but the information he gave, name and address, doesn’t check out. We know it wasn’t Mr. Dutta. Several people, including the reception clerk, saw the man when he checked in and are sure it wasn’t your friend, although the description has some similarities. Dark hair, olive complexion, not too tall. Neither of them were seen after that, but late that evening, someone did see Mr. Dutta knocking on the door of the room. They gave a positive ID.”

“So she went into the room, but no one saw her leave again?” Rishi asked.

Felo nodded. “At some point after that, the Do Not Disturb sign went up. The room was paid up for a week, cash, and it was at the end of a walkway with nothing to one side but an overgrown vacant lot and Biscayne Boulevard running right in front of it. The room next door was trashed and slated for what passes for renovation there, so it wasn’t in use. Vagrants regularly troop through and stay a couple of weeks at a time. It’s the kind of motel where nobody’s going to do any extra work if they don’t have to. So the maid ignored the room, figuring she could plead ‘do not disturb’ if anybody got around to asking why she hadn’t gone in.”

“Lord…” Maggie shook her head, imagining the scene the cops had found.

“The money ran out, the manager asked the maid if the guests had checked out yet, and when he found out what had been going on, he went down to see for himself. He unlocked the door and called the cops.”

“They did not deserve this,” Janya said.

Maggie wished she was sitting closer so she could pat Janya’s hand, but Rishi did it instead.

“Crime scene and Homicide arrived quickly, and the scene was gone over thoroughly,” Felo said. “They canvassed the area around the motel, as well as all the rooms and staff. Nothing major was found to refute the theory that Mr. Dutta found his wife hiding from him and killed her, then himself.”

“Nothing
major?
” Maggie asked, aware that this word was the most important one he’d uttered.

“What does that mean?” Rishi asked. “There were little things that didn’t add up?”

“More than one,” Felo said. “First? The other man. Where was he when the deaths occurred? If he was out getting dinner, or doing almost anything, why didn’t he report the bodies once he came back?”