Died To Match Part 13

"You don't know what it's been like," said Zack, sniffing. I handed him another hankie. "Ever since you told me in your office, I've been trying to act normal on the outside, but inside I was losing my mind. I felt like some kind of monster, and I kept imagining her lying there in the water."

"Shhh. Try not to think about it anymore. All you have to do now is explain to the police-"

"No!" He sprang up from the bench. "No, I can't! And you can't tell them either."

"But Zack, we have to! The more they know about what happened that night, the better. You can tell them what time you saw her alive, and if you saw anyone else in the area."

He shook his head violently. "I didn't see anybody, and I don't know what time it was. I can't tell them anything they don't already know. Don't ask me to!"

He strode to the railing and gripped it with both hands. I followed, trying to sound calm and persuasive, and get this settled while we were still alone. No one else had come out from the lodge, and now I prayed they wouldn't.

"Zack, the police will understand what you did. They won't blame you. You can tell them you didn't even know how she was killed-"

"But now I do know, don't you see?"

"That's only because I told you! You can skip that part, just tell them you've decided to come forward with your story about seeing Mercedes alive."

"If I did that, they'd question me over and over, and I wouldn't be able to pretend I don't know about her getting hit with a rock."

I looked at his profile, young and tear-stained, and realized with dismay that in my rush to rea.s.sure Zack, I'd stolen his innocence. If he had gone straight to the police with his story, not knowing how Mercedes really died, his ignorance would have been obvious and unshakable. But now...

"I'll go with you," I told him. "I'll convince them that you didn't know until I told you. The police are reasonable people. Lieutenant Graham will listen."

"Oh, right," he said hotly. "Like you would know. Have you ever been interrogated?"

"No, but-"

"Well, I have. They just pound away at you till you say what they want to hear. The cops believe what they want to believe, and the prosecutors believe the cops. They'd take one look at my record and lock me up."

"Your record?" I asked uneasily. "What's on your record, Zack?"

His voice dropped to a sullen mutter, and I had to strain to hear him. "I was driving some friends, back in St. Louis. I was just driving! I thought they bought this booze, but they stole it, and beat up the liquor store guy. I was in for five months and it felt like a hundred years. Somebody like you, you can't even imagine what it's like in there. Especially for guys like me."

I didn't have to ask what kind of guys he meant: young and good-looking, and nowhere near tough enough to make a true criminal back off. I pictured a man like Skull alone all night in a cell with this youngster, and shuddered.

"Carnegie, please." Zack turned to face me. "I came out to Seattle to get my act together. n.o.body here knows about me being in jail. I got my web business going, and now that I know that I didn't kill Mercedes, I really do get to start over. I'll never touch anybody again, I swear, and I'll never drink like that again. Please. You saved my life. Don't take it away again, please. I'm, like, begging you."

"All right, Zack. All right."

He clutched my hand. There was hope in his eyes, hope after long days and nights of despair. "You promise you won't tell the cops? Or anyone, ever?"

"I promise."

"Oh, Carnegie."

Zack embraced me, and this time I welcomed it. I had some qualms about keeping his secret, but they were swept away in the exhilaration of delivering him from his tormented guilt. And when he began to kiss me, well, it was a highly emotional moment. Anyone would have kissed him back. And besides, I was chilled to the bone by that time, and it felt good to get wrapped up in his arms. It was only reasonable.

Well, all right. So it wasn't reasonable. I really had no business standing out in the middle of a brightly lit pavilion smooching with a handsome guy some years my junior-a fact which occurred to me instantly and with compelling force when Aaron Gold tapped me on the shoulder.

I was too flabbergasted to speak. Unhappily, Zack wasn't.

"Hey, Aaron, my man!" Zack greeted his friend with a nervous grin. To me, Zack was still the picture of restored innocence, but to Aaron he must have merely looked smug. "We didn't see you coming!"

"Obviously." Aaron's voice was calm enough, but he had to step close to be heard over the Falls, and in the harsh light of the pavilion I could see a vein jumping at his temple. I knew him well enough to know he was furious, and trying not to show it. "Carnegie, the party's breaking up. I came out to tell you."

"Thanks." The word caught in my throat. How could I possibly explain the scene he had just witnessed, without betraying Zack? I settled for a feeble smile. "We were just going to-"

"Save it," he snapped. "I can guess what you were just going to do. Good night."

"Will... will I see you in the morning?"

"Oh, right, our breakfast date." Aaron glared at Zack, then at me. "I think I'll pa.s.s."

"But-"

But Aaron was already striding off into the fog. Instead of returning to the lodge, he headed out to the far end of the parking lot where he'd left his yellow Bug. I'd seen it there when I parked my tin can of a rental car.

"d.a.m.n," I groaned. "d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, dammit."

"Carnegie?" Zack looked blank at first, then the light dawned. "Oh, I get it. Aaron's, like, mad about us being here together."

"Aaron is, like, royally p.i.s.sed off," I said. "And now he's not going to help me figure this out."

"Figure what out?"

"The murder," I told him. "Because if you didn't kill Mercedes, then who did?"

Chapter Eighteen.

I SLEEP NAKED SLEEP NAKED. EVEN AS A KID I I FELT STRANGLED BY PAJAMAS FELT STRANGLED BY PAJAMAS, and as an adult I go without, keeping a big fuzzy robe on a chair by the bed in winter. So when Aaron knocked on my door early Sat.u.r.day morning, I threw off my flannel sheets, threw on the robe, and rushed through the kitchen to let him in, grateful that he'd relented and eager to explain away, somehow, the awkwardness of the night before.

Except it wasn't Aaron. It was Zack, standing on my doorstep with a huge grocery bag and a carrier tray of takeout espresso cups. He was still in his cords and green sweater from the party, and clearly still riding high on the news I'd given him. Even in the half-dark of a November morning, Zack was radiant with happiness.

"I brought you breakfast," he announced, "since Aaron cancelled on you. I didn't know what kind of coffee you drink, so I got, like, four different ones."

I should have sent him away. I knew that. But the aroma of coffee, life-giving coffee, rose up through the chilly air and addled my brain. I opened my mouth to tell him "Thanks anyway, but-" and heard myself saying, "Is one of those a double latte?"

Zack radiated even brighter. "Yeah! Right here-oops!"

As he proffered the tray, the grocery bag slipped from his grasp and spilled its contents at my bare feet. I rescued the coffee and backed into the kitchen, while he gathered up his treasures and piled them on the table: a half-gallon of orange juice, a cardboard supermarket box holding a dozen syrupy cinnamon rolls the size of my head, a baton of somewhat dented French bread, a big tub of cream cheese with chives, an even bigger jar of orange marmalade, and, retrieved from where it had rolled up against the stove, an entire pineapple.

Zack frowned uncertainly at the pineapple, then set it on the table, where it rolled again and knocked over the marmalade. "Do you, like, eat fruit for breakfast?"

"All the time," I said, hiding a smile in my latte. How many men, far more mature than Zack, turned into clueless adolescents in the supermarket? "But there's enough here to feed me and everyone I know!"

"I guess I got carried away." He gazed at me earnestly. "But I just wanted to do something for you. I mean, I want to help you figure out about Mercedes, too. I couldn't really think straight last night."

That was an understatement. Zack had floated back to the party with me, said his good-byes in a kind of oblivious daze, and only looked a little crestfallen when I packed him off to Seattle with Valerie Duncan instead of taking him myself. He'd ridden to the Salish with Aaron-a favor that would probably not be offered in the future.

"I heard Valerie offering you your job back," I said, setting my coffee safely out of his...o...b..t. "Did you take it?"

"Yeah." Zack's all-too-easy blush surged up from his throat to wash across his fair-skinned cheeks. "She said I was doing totally great stuff for them. I want to keep going with the Made in Heaven web site, too. I couldn't really, like, concentrate, before."

"I understand. Here, have one of these rolls. They look... large. And delicious, I'm sure. What are the rest of these drinks?"

"There's an Americano, and a cappuccino, and I think this one is just plain."

"Which one's yours?"

"Oh, I don't drink coffee."

"Really? I can't even imagine-"

There was another knock on the door. Zack, eager to please, jumped up and pulled it open, giving Aaron a full view of me, still not dressed, having breakfast with Robin Hood, still wearing his same clothes from the night before. Wonderful.

Zack stood there tongue-tied while Aaron and I had a stilted conversation, with a silent but thoroughly understood subtext conveyed by our eyes and, in his case, one eyebrow.

"Aaron," I said. This isn't what it looks like.

"Carnegie?" The eyebrow went up. Looks pretty clear to me.

"Aaron, would you like some coffee?" Be reasonable, please.

"Well..." That's asking a lot.

"Come on, sit down." Please?

"I just got here!" Zack blurted. "Honest!"

Aaron couldn't help it. He laughed, though it was an edgy laugh, one that ended abruptly. He shook his head and pulled a small paper sack from the canvas carry-on bag over his shoulder. I hadn't noticed the bag at first, or the jacket and tie Aaron was wearing-not his usual working clothes.

"Whatever," he said. "I was going to drop off some bagels, but you seem to be well supplied."

"I'd love a bagel," I told him. "Have a seat."

"Can't. Got a plane to catch, to Portland."

"Portland! For how long?"

"Couple days, maybe. It's hard to say. See you." Without another look at me, Aaron turned away to leave. At least he tried to. The door behind him, still ajar, swung open yet again, propelled by the volume of a familiar voice.

"Carnegie! We brought you breakfast! You see, Mother? I said it wasn't too early. She's got company!"

I sank my head in my hands, rearranged my face in a courteous smile, and looked up. The kitchen was teeming with Buckmeisters. This time the sweatshirts said "I Love Washington."

"Good morning, Buck. Hi, Betty. Where's Bonnie?" The three of them usually came as a set.

"She's doing an all-day beauty spa kinda thing," Buck told me. "Isn't that something? We just dropped her off and picked up some Egg Mcm.u.f.fins, and I said, Mother, let's bring a couple over to Carnegie. She's so darn skinny, I bet she just drinks black coffee for breakfast! That's not enough for a working girl like her, I said, and Mother agreed with me, didn't you, Mother?"

"I surely did, Father, but now look at all this nice food that's here already. My goodness, a pineapple! Is that what they eat in Seattle, pineapple for breakfast? Good morning, dear," said Betty, addressing herself to a baffled Zack. "Are you getting married?"

Zack's reply, if any, was lost as her husband seized Aaron's hand and shook it. "No, I bet this is the groom over here, Mother! Am I right? Bruce Buckmeister-call me Buck-and that's my wife Betty. Our little girl Bonnie is the bride in the family! Pleased to meet you!"

"Likewise, Buck," said Aaron, amused in spite of himself. I could tell he was taking notes in his head. Aaron loved a colorful character, and Buck was Technicolor, even without his red-checked bandanna. "I'm Aaron Gold, and that's Zack Hartmann. But neither of us is walking down the aisle just yet. Unless there's something you and Zack haven't told us, Stretch?"

"Don't start," I warned him. "Just wait while I get some clothes on and I'll walk you to your car, OK? Folks, Aaron has to leave, but take a seat there with Zack. He's a web-site designer, isn't that interesting? Have him tell you all about it."

I dressed fast, afraid that Aaron would miss his flight. Not that I wanted him on it, if he was heading for an interview at The Oregonian. I wanted Aaron Gold right here in Seattle, where I could feel ambivalent about him. It wasn't raining, for a wonder, so I skipped my jacket and hurried back to the kitchen. Buck and Betty had settled cozily at the table while Zack, Egg Mcm.u.f.fin in hand, was solemnly explaining JPEG files and animated GIFs and why frames, like, totally suck. I still didn't understand it, but the Buckmeisters were charmed.

"Imagine," Betty kept saying. "Just imagine, someone as young as you knowing all that."

Aaron was at the door checking his watch, so I just waved at the Killer B's and followed him outside, wrapping my arms around myself against the chilly salt air.

"You're going to freeze out here," he said, striding down the dock to the parking lot. His footsteps rapped hollowly on the fog-dampened planks. The low gray sky was getting lighter, paling the porch lights of the other houseboats. One of my neighbors, stepping out to pick up her newspaper, called out a cheery good morning. I smiled mechanically and kept going, trying to keep up with Aaron.

"I can't let you leave without explaining."

"So explain." He shot me a sidelong glance, but he didn't slow down. "Start with the pineapple. The pineapple fascinates me."

"Aaron, be serious! I mean, not too serious." I was beginning to sound like Zack. "It's not a serious situation, is it?"

"You tell me." He unlocked his yellow Bug and threw his carry-on into the miniscule trunk.

"Back in the kitchen you were joking about it."

"What was I supposed to do, play the jealous lover in front of the Buckmasters?"

"Buckmeisters. Look, Aaron, last night I was helping Zack sort out a... a personal problem. He was happy about solving it, and grateful, and so he hugged me. And this morning he just showed up. That's all."

"That's all? I'm supposed to feel better because you're not sleeping with him just like you're not sleeping with me?" He slammed the trunk lid with a violence that made me jump. "You tell me you need some s.p.a.ce, then you fill the s.p.a.ce up with Zack Hartmann. Who's next, your Russian guy? What kind of high-school bulls.h.i.t is this?"

"Don't talk to me that way!"

"Well, don't treat me this way." Aaron's deep brown eyes looked suddenly vulnerable, and I might have apologized if he hadn't pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. The morning air was dead still, and as he exhaled, the smoke made a little cloud between us. "Carnegie, I can't talk about this now. I've got a plane to catch."

"Why Portland, anyway? Is it a job offer?"

He frowned. "Maybe. Mostly I'm going down to do some research for a series on ma.s.s transit. I better go."

"Well, could you call me later?" I'll miss you. I want you here. I didn't say it, though. Too high-schoolish. "We were going to sort out that list of people in black costumes-"

"Sure, I'll call you," he said from behind the smoke, "but let's forget all this amateur detective c.r.a.p. Stay out of it. Leave it to the cops."