Kiss of death

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

RYAN SHAVED AND inspected his reflection in the mirror. Where in hell was Ashley? It had been almost dawn when he’d come home. He’d expected her to be asleep but it was evident that she hadn’t even touched the bed. He’d lain awake-thinking, wondering.

He was willing to admit that he had been harder on Ashley than necessary. Poor baby couldn’t help it if she had a heart of gold. She hadn’t wanted Whitney to suffer. Ashley had no idea how much trouble Whitney was causing him.

“Wait!” he exclaimed to his reflection. “That’s it.”

Last night he had told Ashley they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Ashley must think she’d caused their troubles. She loved him so much that she might be trying to singlehandedly solve their problems. She might have gone to borrow money from someone she knew.

In the middle of the night?

Ryan splashed on the aftershave lotion Ashley had given him. “She’s mad at me,” he again said out loud. “She spent the night with a friend.”

That made sense. He probably deserved it, but she had no idea what pressure he was under. Thanks to Whitney.

Ryan walked into his closet to get dressed. He halted and spun around. How long was Ashley planning to stay with her girlfriend? He went into her closet, but he couldn’t tell what she’d taken. She had too damn many clothes.

Brooding, he wandered back into the bathroom and checked the vanity area where Ashley kept her cosmetics. “Oh, shit!” What did women do with all this crap? He couldn’t tell if she’d removed a thing.

It didn’t matter, he decided. He had to get dressed. A hell of a day was ahead of him. Tonight, Ashley would be here waiting for him. He wouldn’t make it easy, but he would forgive her.

He loved Ashley so much that it hurt sometimes. It pained him not to be able to give her everything she wanted or be the successful doctor she believed him to be when they’d met. He needed her love in a way that he’d never needed anything else.

ADAM LOOKED OUT THE AIRPLANE window at the aquamarine water. It was so clear he could see the reefs below the surface. The ocean off California and the west coast of Mexico was deep blue. Here on Mexico’s eastern shore the sea was the blue-green of the nearby Caribbean. Judging from the beaches below, Cancún enjoyed the same white sugar sand, too.

He glanced to his right and saw Whitney was still asleep. No wonder. They’d talked until almost dawn, then she’d been forced to get up and walk her clients’ dogs, arrange care for her own dogs and buy some things for this trip. He’d arranged to have a security guard from HiTech go with her-just in case.

The timing couldn’t have been better. While she was out, Quinten Foley’s team had thoroughly searched the house.

Nothing.

They’d gone through every book, checked every CD and DVD, examined each photograph for hidden text, knocked on paneling to see if there was a secret hiding place and they’d used some special machine to inspect the stonework for loose places where the disc might have been hidden.

Nothing.

If Calvin Hunter had hidden the disc at the house, the experts hadn’t had any better luck than Adam. When they’d finished with the building-interior and exterior-they’d gone over Uncle Calvin’s Lexus sedan.

Nothing.

While all this had been going on, another team had searched the charred, water-soaked contents of the garage where Miranda had stored her things.

Nothing.

Adam would have bet that they were coming up empty because the disc wasn’t here. He was positive Miranda had it. Now that he thought about the situation, it made perfect sense. She’d faked the robbery and made off with the computer and the disc or discs.

The information on the disc was worth a lot of money. Not for the first time, he wondered if Miranda had killed his uncle. If they’d been involved, his uncle might have confided in her. She would have had access to the house, his car, his computer.

Beside him, Whitney stretched and yawned. “Are we almost there?”

“Yes. You can see the beaches below.” He moved back so she could look out the window.

“Wow! Such white sand. It’s nothing like Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta. Their beaches just have regular sand like California.”

He nodded his agreement, thinking how special Whitney was. He needed to clear up this mess before something happened to her. He’d tried to piece the puzzle together but hadn’t been able to make things fit. Miranda was the key.

Last night, after they’d discovered his uncle had also been to Corona del Mar, Adam went round and round in his head trying to decide how much to tell Whitney. He would have told her everything except she was still shell-shocked by the incident with the car.

In the end, he’d elected not to complicate matters by explaining his uncle’s involvement with Quinten Foley in some clandestine government deal. What did he know for certain anyway? Not a damn thing, really.

He thought back to the last time he’d seen Calvin Hunter. His uncle had been worried, certain someone was going to kill him. He’d refused to reveal any details, but Adam felt his death had to be linked to the missing disc.

What other explanation could there be?

The plane had been slowly descending for some time. Now it dipped lower on final approach. The endless blue of the sea stretched out to the horizon.

“What’s our first move?” Whitney asked.

He wanted to lure her to some cabana where sea breezes would cool their naked bodies while they made love. Business first, he reminded himself. There would be plenty of time for them later.

“Have a margarita and take a swim.”

“Seriously,” she replied with a laugh.

“Check into our hotel. Change clothes, then drive out to Corona del Mar for a drink. The cocktail hour should bring out residents who may have met your cousin.”

“You think Miranda is out there?”

They’d discussed this last night, but Whitney had been a little groggy. “Hard to say. If she’s not there, someone may recognize her picture. Cancún isn’t that big. The thing to do is check Corona del Mar. Then we’ll show the photos you had made around at supermercados and other places people who stay here long-term would shop. If she’s living here, she’s shopping somewhere. She can’t be eating out all the time.”

IT WAS NEARLY TEN WHEN Ryan checked the clock mounted on the wall beside the pool. The device gave the temperature and the time. He didn’t need to check the temperature. He could tell it was still in the mid-seventies even though it was dark and the temperature had dropped the way it usually did on summer evenings.

Where in hell was Ashley?

He’d been ready to forgive her, but now he was pissed big-time. He’d come home to an empty house and a refrigerator with nothing but low-fat yogurt and cottage cheese in it. He’d gone for a swim to keep his body toned, expecting Ashley any minute. He’d been home for three freaking hours when he tried her cell. It immediately kicked into voice mail.

Ashley was in for it now. Suggest a trial separation, he told himself. That would upset her no end. Wouldn’t it?

Ryan admitted to himself that he was no longer as sure of things as he once had been. His world had been on track. True, he’d had to make a midcourse correction and switch from general surgery to cosmetic surgery, but even then, things had gone his way.

The trouble had started with Whitney.

“Jesus H. Christ!” He cursed out loud and jumped to his feet. Would Ashley have gone to see his ex-wife? It was possible. After all, Ashley had given Whitney the dress that started this crappy argument.

He slung the towel over his bare shoulder and stomped inside. Ashley didn’t have an office. What the fuck would she need one for? She used the nook area in the kitchen to keep a few things, like her checkbook and calendar.

He threw on the lights and searched the nook. Not much. Travel brochures for Hawaii. Nordstrom catalogs. An accordion folder with returned checks filed by date.

He rummaged through the stuff, searching for her telephone book. She kept phone numbers in a small leather booklet. It must be in her purse, Ryan decided. He didn’t want to lower himself by calling the friend who’d helped her snatch Lexi, but if Ashley didn’t show in another hour, he would.

The only friend Ashley had ever mentioned was her personal trainer. They’d been close when Ryan first met Ashle. He’d never met the woman because she lived across town and 0worked most of the time at a gym. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know the woman’s name.

What gym? He could call there and see if Ashley was around. Shit! She hadn’t told him the name of the gym. Well, maybe she had and he’d forgotten it. He remembered Ashley saying she paid her friend in cash. The woman couldn’t afford to pay taxes. Unfuckingbelievable! Who could? He’d been forced to instruct his accountant to file late this year.

He searched through her returned checks, for lack of anything better to do. Manicures. Pedicures. Boutiques. Nothing extravagant, but still-it was money they hadn’t had. Ashley hadn’t known this, he reminded himself.

Dr. Jox. The check stopped him. The memo line indicated Ashley had purchased vitamins. That must be the name of the gym where Ashley’s personal trainer worked. He got the number from Information and called. He would have put it off, but most gyms closed at ten. He needed the number tonight.

“I’m a friend of Ashley Fordham’s,” he told the young-sounding guy who answered the telephone. “She recommended a trainer there. I was wondering if I could get her number.”

Ryan didn’t want word to go around the gym that he was looking for Ashley. He wasn’t sure why he gave a shit. Personal pride, he guessed. Not just every guy married a beauty queen. No sense in seeming jealous when he wasn’t.

“Her number?” the kid parroted back.

“Yes. Ashley really likes this trainer’s workouts.” Ryan heard a muffled sound as if the kid had put his hand over the mouthpiece.

“Just a minute,” the kid told him. “I’ll let you talk to my manager.”

Ryan waited, getting more irritated by the second. What was the big deal? He would have driven over there but Dr. Jox was halfway across town.

“This is Al Schneider. What can I do for ya?”

Ryan repeated his spiel. Silence. “The trainer is still working there, isn’t she?”

“You’re Mr. Fordham, right?”

Ryan started to deny it, then realized the guy must have his name on the caller ID screen. “Yes. Ashley recom-”

“That trainer isn’t accepting new clients.”

The manager hung up before Ryan could ask another question. What the fuck? He almost hit Redial, then stopped himself. Something was going on.

Why wouldn’t a trainer who needed money badly enough to risk trouble with the IRS not want new clients? He thought about it for a moment. He paid all their bills. He remembered commenting to Ashley about the number of calls made from their home phone. Not that it cost much; they had a wide-range dialing plan. But he knew he didn’t make many calls.

Back in his office, Ryan pawed through the growing cluster of bills on his desk until he found last month’s telephone bill. This would be the third month in a row that he’d neglected to pay it. He checked the local calls. Several were to the office he still had until the new group was up and running. Others he vaguely recognized. His service. Walter Nance.

One number came up several times. He thought he recognized it from previous bills but couldn’t be sure. He’d trashed them or he would be able to check.

Ryan plopped down into his chair and booted up his computer. It was cool inside and he rearranged the damp towel over his shoulders to keep warm. It took several minutes to locate an Internet reverse directory for San Diego and look up the number. It was registered to a Preston Block with an address across town.

Block could be the trainer’s father or a roommate. He studied the screen and memorized the address. He needed to speak to Ashley in person.

It took a little more than half an hour to drive to the address listed for Preston Block. It was a bunker-style two-story apartment building that wrapped around a pool with cloudy water. The place had been new in the seventies. From what Ryan could tell in the dark, that was the last time it had been painted. Exactly where he would expect a trainer subsisting hand to mouth to live.

He found the directory with Block/Swanson listed for apartment 2B. He stood there a moment to formulate the speech he’d mentally rehearsed on the way over. He didn’t want to admit how much he missed Ashley. He planned to say her father had called.

Was that even possible? Now he wished he’d asked more questions. He knew Ashley had suffered through her mother’s tragic death alone. Her father lived in some crummy town in the central part of the state, but he hadn’t come to the funeral. Had she told her father about their marriage? He didn’t remember Ashley mentioning it.

Unable to think of a better excuse, he climbed the stairs. A potted palm missing most of its fronds stood outside 2B’s door. He mustered an assertive knock.

A television was playing inside, but a moment later the door swung open. A surfer built like a brick shithouse stared out at him.

“I’m looking for Ashley Fordham’s trainer.”

“Preston’s out. He works nights now.”

He? He? Ashley’s personal trainer was a woman. Wasn’t that what she had told him? Ryan blinked and tried to recall exactly what Ashley had said. The first time she’d mentioned the trainer had been when they were in bed and he’d been admiring how perfect every inch of her body was.

I work with a trainer five days a week.

The guy’s smile evaporated. “Who are you?”

“Dr. Fordham. Ashley’s husband.” He couldn’t keep from adding, “I’m looking for her.”

“She’s not here.”

Ryan turned and trudged away without another word. Of all the scenarios he’d envisioned, he’d never imagined Ashley-his Ashley-being involved with another man. The knowledge made him dizzy, weak.

He ambled along, his mind unable to process any thought except: Ashley had betrayed him. He’d loved her so much-too much.

He’d given her everything she wanted, hadn’t he?

No, he silently corrected himself. There were things Ashley had wanted, like the house in the Coronado Keys. He’d been too strapped for money to purchase it. Ashley had spent her life on the road. She deserved a home of her own. If Whitney hadn’t been such a bitch, this never would have happened.