Died To Match Part 6

"Sure you can, Stretch. You just need something to take your mind off things."

"Like your tattoo, I suppose?"

"Well, now that you mention it-"

Aaron slid his hands around me, under my coat, and pulled me to him. I went willingly, and for a few moments the parking lot disappeared from my consciousness along with the rest of planet Earth. Then a pager sounded, the beeping m.u.f.fled somewhere between us. It wasn't mine.

"d.a.m.n." Aaron disentangled himself and glared at the unit's tiny display screen. "h.e.l.l and d.a.m.n. Stretch, I've got to make a call."

"No problem. Come on inside and have a drink."

"No, I mean I have to go home and call. I'm sorry. It's, well, it's complicated."

"Don't worry about it." I rearranged my coat and forced a smile. "Good night, then."

But he was already heading back to his car, pulling out the ever-present pack of cigarettes as he went. I walked resolutely down the dock, hearing his door slam and the VW go putt-putting out of the lot and away in the night. I was at my door, fumbling in my purse for my house key, when Roger Talbot stepped out of the shadows.

Chapter Nine.

I'VE TAKEN THOSE SELF-DEFENSE CLa.s.sES FOR WOMEN, SO I can state with authority that I should have a floodlight installed over my door, and that when surprised by a man on my doorstep in the dark, I did exactly the wrong thing: I dropped my keys. Luckily, Roger Talbot didn't follow the script either. He scooped them up and offered them to me, with an apology. I can state with authority that I should have a floodlight installed over my door, and that when surprised by a man on my doorstep in the dark, I did exactly the wrong thing: I dropped my keys. Luckily, Roger Talbot didn't follow the script either. He scooped them up and offered them to me, with an apology.

"I'm sorry. I should have waited till tomorrow, I know, but I've been calling from my car, and then I thought perhaps you'd left your machine on and gone to bed. I didn't want to be seen, but I just had to speak with you."

I opened the door and gestured him into the kitchen. "What about?"

"About her." His voice was anguished, and his unshaven face, under the fluorescent light, had aged a decade since we spoke at the party. Under the dark, commanding brows, his eyes were red and swollen. He smelled of whiskey. "I heard about it on the news this morning. They had film of you leaving the Aquarium. Did you... find her?"

"Roger, I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to talk about it."

"Tell me!" He grabbed my upper arms and shook me, just a little, but I could tell how strong he was, and how frantic. But was he desperate to know if the secret was out and his career ruined? Or to find out if I'd seen the murderer? A black cloak, Corinne had said. Could it have been a black topcoat?

"Roger!" I rapped out in my best ordering-people-around voice. "Let me go this second or I'll scream the place down."

He obeyed, turning away from me, and leaning his hands on the kitchen counter. His head hung low, defeated, and his clothes were dripping with rain.

"Listen," I said gently. "I really can't talk about the details."

He whirled around. There were tears in his eyes.

"Dear G.o.d, I don't want to hear the details! Just tell me, please, did she suffer?"

I blinked back my own tears. He really had loved her, then. "No. No, I don't think she did."

"But you're not sure?"

"Actually, I am sure, Roger. It was very sudden. She wouldn't even have known."

All the strength seemed to go out of him with a long, shuddering sigh. "The police wouldn't tell me, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, they just confirmed it was murder. I knew that anyway, the minute I saw Graham. I know he's Homicide. He said they'd keep our 'connection' confidential if they could, but he wouldn't tell me what actually happened to her. I've been imagining the most hideous things."

"Roger, come sit down." I led him to the couch facing the gla.s.s doors that open to the lake. Night made a mirror of them, reflecting the living room and my tormented visitor, so I pulled the drapes. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No. Well, yes, thanks. Scotch rocks?"

I smiled in apology. "I've only got girl drinks: white wine, light beer, and V-8."

"Of course, sorry. And I've come barging in on you." He ran a hand through his thick silver hair, and seemed to notice for the first time that he was wet and chilly. "If I could have some coffee?"

"Coming up."

I made two big mugs and we sat over them, leaning into the fragrant steam. Roger began to talk about Mercedes, at first like a man talking to himself. But I think he needed me there. Who else could he tell? He'd regret this in the morning, but right now the words poured out, unstoppable.

"Her father was a policeman in Mexico City," he said. "Corrupt, like most of them, taking bribes and stealing confiscated goods. They lived well. Then, when she was fourteen, another officer shot him down. She never knew why, but he had made enemies, and within months the family was out on the street. Can you imagine what that was like for a sensitive girl like Mercedes?"

"Sensitive" wasn't a word I a.s.sociated with her, but I shook my head in silent sympathy.

"She was determined to get out. She worked hard in school, polished her English. I met her when I was covering an economic conference down there; she had a job as a tour guide out at the Aztec pyramids. She was eighteen, and so beautiful. More than that. Exquisite."

Was your wife beautiful? I felt like asking. But it's hard to condemn someone who's already in h.e.l.l.

"We were together for a week," he continued. "It was a fling, that was all. I'd think about seeing her again, sometimes, but it would have been impossible. I was married, with children, I was building my career. Then one day I received a phone call. She was in Los Angeles, she had a job at a Spanish-language magazine. My wife was away, so I flew down. I told her it was just for the weekend, but after that I couldn't stay away from her. Mercedes made other women seem so ordinary, so tedious with their petty little games. I pulled a few strings and got her a fellowship up here at the university. Then I hired her for the Sentinel."

"But she went on to television."

"Yes." He smiled fondly, lost in the happy past. "I helped her write her pieces for the paper, but she was impatient with writing. For her, it was all personal. She loved attention, she loved connecting with people with her eyes, her voice. Mercedes Montoya could get an interview out of anyone. She would have gone national, I know it."

"She told me you planned to marry," I said carefully, and watched his face melt in misery.

"Yes," he whispered. "She was so thrilled when I gave her the ring."

He looked at me sharply, coming back to the present. "Graham was asking about the ring. He said it wasn't on the... he said she didn't have it. She was supposed to keep the ring hidden, until we waited a reasonable time, but if he knew about it, someone must have seen it. That was you?"

I nodded. "Mercedes showed it to me in the ladies' room. She asked me to plan her wedding."

That snapped the last cord of his self-control. He dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. I found myself stroking his shoulder, making soothing noises.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Then suddenly, shockingly, I was back in my own past, comforting Holt Walker about his wife's death. Playing the role he set up for me, playing the fool for him. Now here was another wealthy, successful, handsome man, and here I was acting as the sympathetic audience for his little drama. Helen Talbot had been dead just a few short weeks, and the fine romance Roger was recounting had gone on while she was alive, and then while she was dying.

"The ring was a family heirloom, Mercedes said. Did your wife ever wear it?"

He glared at me with those bloodshot eyes. "Don't bring Helen into this!"

"Seems to me she was already in it."

"You're just like everyone else," he said in disgust, rising from the couch and pacing the room with a long, athlete's stride. "Everyone thinks they can judge; they think they know what goes on in private-"

"You've just told me what went on in private! You had an affair-"

"I had several affairs, and so did Helen, and it's none of your G.o.dd.a.m.n business! Mercedes was different."

I stood up myself, unsteady from fatigue, the coffee curling painfully in my stomach. I couldn't quite believe I was debating ethics in the middle of the night with a dead woman's lover. I was in shock. Delayed reaction to a traumatic experience. Lieutenant Graham's Victim a.s.sistance people would have come in handy just about now.

"Roger, I want you to leave my house. I'm sorry about Mercedes, I really am. But-"

"Please," he said. He was in shock, too, of course, and tomorrow he had to put on his public face and show only moderate grief, appropriate for a colleague. I didn't envy him. "Please, I want you to understand."

"Understand what?"

He sat down again, and spoke quietly. "Carnegie, you may not believe me, but Helen and I loved each other once, when we were young, and we always respected each other, right to the end. First with the newspaper, then with politics, she was beside me all the way. She was a better strategist than I was."

"Then how could you-?"

"Do you have any idea what it's like to care for someone who's dying?" he demanded. "To be there every day, every hour, doing things for them that you'd do for a child? It's agonizing, but it's also exhausting, and it makes you impatient because you have your own life to deal with, and guilty for being impatient, and angry because you can't save her life, no matter how well you care for her."

I stayed standing, ready to show him out, but of course I was thinking about my father. What my mother went through was far more of an ordeal than anything I had suffered. I always thought of Dad as my hero, but it was Mom who was heroic in the end.

"It must have been terribly hard. But you did it."

"I couldn't have done it without Mercedes!" he said, and somehow I believed him. "She kept me sane, she encouraged me and cried with me and listened to me rave against the doctors, and against the unfairness of it all. She didn't want Helen to die."

That was harder to believe. Roger Talbot was Mercedes' ticket to success, to wealth and prominence and even political influence, in Seattle and maybe beyond. And maybe she had even loved him the way he obviously loved her. No, Mercedes would have been glad to see the last of Helen Talbot. I was still sorry about her death, but now I was sorry I knew so much about her life. And about his grief.

"Well, she was very happy about your engagement, I can tell you that. She cherished the ring you gave her."

"But where is it now?" He looked up at me piteously. "Did they kill her to steal it? I want it back, I want it as a memento of her."

The phone rang and I picked it up automatically. Roger rose and stepped into the kitchen, reflexively courteous even at a moment like this. He'd do well in politics, all right.

"Hey, Stretch, how you doing?"

"Aaron. Um, I'm doing fine."

"Oh, s.h.i.t, I woke you, didn't I? I'm sorry. I just wanted to apologize for taking off like that. I suppose it's too late for that drink?"

I sighed. "Actually, Aaron, I'm just going to bed. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow. I've got a meeting at ten with Paul and Elizabeth at the Sentinel."

"I'll be prowling the halls sighing your name. Sleep well."

"You, too."

As I hung up, Roger reentered the room with a stiff, embarra.s.sed air.

"Thank you for listening to all this. I shouldn't have... well, it doesn't matter."

"Don't worry about it," I told him. "Get some rest. Try not to think about it."

He smiled grimly, a death's-head smile, and went out into the night.

Chapter Ten.

ENTERING THE S SENTINEL'S NEWSROOM, I FELT LIKE FELT LIKE B BLACK Bart coming through the swing doors at the Red Dog Saloon. As I threaded the labyrinth of cubicles, gazes followed me and conversations stopped, only to resume behind me in hushed murmurs. I could practically hear my spurs jangling. Why's everyone staring? Then I heard a whispered phrase- "the one who found her"-and understood why. I had walked in the shadow of violent death, and I brought a little of that darkness with me. Bart coming through the swing doors at the Red Dog Saloon. As I threaded the labyrinth of cubicles, gazes followed me and conversations stopped, only to resume behind me in hushed murmurs. I could practically hear my spurs jangling. Why's everyone staring? Then I heard a whispered phrase- "the one who found her"-and understood why. I had walked in the shadow of violent death, and I brought a little of that darkness with me.

At last I saw Aaron at the end of an aisle. He was tipped back in his swivel chair, eyes shut, lost in whatever was piping through the oversized headphones he wore. With his forefingers as drumsticks, he beat out a quick, intricate rhythm on the front edge of his desk, bobbing his head slightly with the beat, blissing out.

"Coltrane?" I asked.

Aaron swiveled toward me and smiled, eagerly pulling off the headphones and leaving a cowlick of crow-black hair angled out above one ear. I resisted the impulse to smooth it back-and the urge to ask him about the phone call that had interrupted our embrace last night. Not that we would have had much of an evening anyway, with Roger Talbot hanging around, but still...

"Nice try," he said loftily, and I was so lost in thought that I wondered what he meant. Then he continued, "It could have been Coltrane, but I'm surprised a woman of your caliber doesn't recognize the drum solo from that all-time surf guitar cla.s.sic, 'Wipe Out.' It's the number one choice of finger drummers across the nation. Have a seat."

He nodded at the easy chair dominating his cubicle. It was upholstered in something that had once been plaid, and gave off a delicate bouquet of tortilla chips and long-dead coffee. The cube's fabric walls were covered with Red Sox posters, clipped headlines, and typed quotations. Most of the quotes were about writing and journalism, but one by Benjamin Disraeli caught my eye: "Every woman should marry-and no man."

I sat. "I've only got a minute, till Elizabeth gets here and Paul's off the phone. Um, nice cube you've got here."

"Not exactly The New York Times, is it? But it'll do till I get on with The Seattle Times or The Oregonian. Listen, you want coffee or something? Tea? Me?" He lowered his voice. "Seriously, Stretch, are you OK about last night? You sounded kind of odd on the phone."

"I'm fine. Did you say The Oregonian? You're thinking of moving to Portland?" The idea was oddly distressing.

"It depends," he said casually. "Meanwhile, are you going to be a good girl and let the police do the murder-solving around here?"

My casual and untruthful reply was interrupted by the bride-to-be. Elizabeth came striding through the newsroom like a warrior princess in Spandex, a bicycle helmet dangling from one hand and a cell phone in the other, her cropped chestnut hair slick with sweat. She nodded to a few people as she pa.s.sed, and gave Aaron a friendly but peremptory smile.

"Hey, Carnegie. Paul's still tied up. Come talk to me."

But for once I was determined not to let Elizabeth rush me with her multi-tasking, time-is-money, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately manner.

"Say, Aaron, are you free for dinner Thursday?"

"That depends, too. No chaperones?"

"No chaperones. No pagers?"

"Promise."

"Great. I'll call you tonight. So, Elizabeth, where shall we talk?"