Secrets to the Grave

38

“Would you like a cup of tea or coffee or something?” she asked him as she led the way through the house to the kitchen.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” Mendez said, taking in the surroundings: cream-painted cupboards and a hand-painted border of grapes dripping from vines around the ceiling. Her handiwork, he imagined. Down along a right-angled crease where a cabinet met a wall, she had painted a bright-eyed mouse peeking out of a hole in the baseboard—so realistic he almost startled when he first saw it.

“Please, call me Sara,” she said as she filled a mug with water and stuck it in the microwave oven that seemed to take up half the counter. “I’ll feel less embarrassed about having a nervous breakdown in front of you.”

“Sara, then,” he said, thinking it maybe wasn’t such a good idea to blur that line. “Do you have any family nearby?”

“I’m from the Seattle area. My parents are there. And my sister.”

“Are you close?”

“We used to be,” she said. She hit the Cancel button on the microwave before the timer could go off. “She’s got a family and a career. She’s busy. I’m busy.”

“You know, it’s none of my business—what’s going on in your marriage—but it just seems to me you shouldn’t try to go through it alone,” he said, then felt like an ass. “I should have stopped at ‘It’s none of my business.’”

She shook her head and dunked her teabag—something herbal by the scent of it—into the mug of water as she took a seat at the breakfast bar. “It’s okay. I’m sure I would say the same thing if I was watching from the outside. From the inside ... it’s not so simple.”

“I’m sure it’s not.”

“I come from a perfect family,” she said. “I’m supposed to have a perfect family. I thought I did. What did I do wrong?”

Mendez felt a rush of anger. “You didn’t—”

“You don’t know that.” She smiled at him as if he were a sweet but dimwitted boy. “Nothing happens in a vacuum.”

He wanted to say at least ten derogatory things about her husband, but he bit his tongue.

“Maybe I’m too insecure,” she said. “Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe—”

“Maybe your husband is a son of a bitch.”

So much for his self-control.

“That too,” she said, and took a careful sip of her tea. “It’s hard on Wendy. I feel guilty for that. I’m the mom. I’m supposed to make her life ideal and shelter her from life’s unpleasant side. Instead, her father and I are wallowing there.”

“Then you need to change that.”

“I know,” she admitted. “It’s scary.”

“Do you think he’ll make it hard for you?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

The bastard was a lawyer. He would know every way possible to screw her over in a divorce. He had probably been stashing assets for the past year. Keeping secrets seemed to be his specialty.

“Are you married, Detective?” she asked.

“No, ma’am—uh, no,” he said. He didn’t invite her to call him Tony. “No, I’m not.”

She seemed to think about that for a minute, as if she might have had a different idea about him.

“We used to be happy,” she said. “Not that long ago. And then something changed and neither one of us seemed to know what to do about it. It’s hard to explain. It was like one minute we were standing toe to toe, and then all of a sudden there was a chasm between us.”

She sipped her tea and shrugged to herself. “Maybe I wasn’t needy enough. And now that I am, it’s too late.”

“When did he become so involved with the Thomas Center?” Mendez asked, steering away from the too-personal details. He didn’t need more reasons to want to put his arms around her and protect her. That wasn’t his job. It was his White Knight Syndrome, as his sister Mercedes called it.

“Steve has always been involved in women’s rights causes. He had a single mother. It was a tough situation for him growing up. She passed away when he was in law school, and he dedicated himself to helping disadvantaged women in her honor.”

She smiled an ironic little smile. “That dedication was one of the first things that attracted me to him.”

Dedication was one thing, Mendez thought. Lobbying in Sacramento for women’s rights was terrific. Donating services to the Thomas Center was admirable. But that dedication also put Steve Morgan in a target-rich environment of women to take advantage of.

Sara sighed and slid down off her stool. “And now that you know more about my life than you ever wanted to know, I’m going to take your advice and go to bed. I have car pool in the morning.”

Mendez watched her dump her tea in the sink and rinse out the mug.

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You don’t have to stay. Really. I’ll be fine.”

He didn’t believe her—or he didn’t want to believe her.

“You should take your own advice,” she said. “Go home and get some rest.”

The hell he would, he thought. Her husband had as good a reason to kill Marissa Fordham as anybody. And he had even more motive to kill the wife who was about to divorce him and take half of everything he had—plus alimony, plus child support.

But he said none of that to Sara.

“You’ll lock your door behind me,” he said as they went down the hall to the front of the house.

“Yes, sir.”

She gave him a little salute as he turned to say good night.

“And thank you,” she said sincerely. “For stopping to check on me, and for listening to me rattle on.”

“That’s okay,” he said with half a smile. “That’s a nice switch for me. In my line of work, most people don’t want to talk to me.”

“Too bad. You’re a good listener.”

An awkward little tension sprang up between them. It was like the end of a first date. Who should say what? Should he kiss her? No. Absolutely no.

“Thanks. Well, good night,” he said abruptly, and he turned and walked away.

He should have taken her up on the coffee, he thought two hours later. His eyelids felt like they were lined in sandpaper, and his mouth tasted like a dirty sock. He ran his tongue over his teeth and grimaced.

Finally a set of headlights turned onto the street. Steve Morgan’s black Trans Am. Mr. Midlife Crisis: driving a teenager’s sports car and cheating on his wife.

Mendez remembered interviewing Peter Crane during the investigation into the murder of Lisa Warwick—before Crane himself had taken the spotlight as See-No-Evil. Crane had tried to make excuses for his friend’s behavior.

Steve is a complicated guy ... Steve comes from a tough background—single mom, not much money, desperate times ...

Sara had given him the same out for being an asshole.

Boo-fucking-hoo, Mendez thought. He came from a tough background himself, but he didn’t use it as an excuse for bad behavior. And his mother raised him to treat women with respect, not lie to them and cheat on them.

He didn’t wait for Morgan to pull into the driveway. He got out of the car and walked across the street with purpose, coming up alongside the Trans Am as Morgan turned the key off.

Mendez smacked his badge up against the driver’s side window then shoved it back in his coat pocket. He stepped back just enough that Morgan could get the car door partially open to get out, only to find himself trapped between the door and the car.

“Is there a curfew law I’m unaware of?” Morgan asked calmly. He smelled just vaguely of alcohol.

“Where’ve you been all night?” Mendez asked without any preamble of false niceties.

“Working.”

“I’ve been past your office ten times tonight. You weren’t there.”

Morgan raised his eyebrows. “Ten times? That sounds like harassment to me.”

“Where were you?”

“I had a dinner meeting with a client.”

“Oh? Did you take her to that nice out-of-the-way little place in Los Olivos?”

Morgan looked annoyed. He worked his jaw a little back and forth like he was grinding his teeth.

“You spoke to Mark Foster,” he said and nodded. “Yes, I sometimes meet clients out of town. People here can get the wrong idea if I take a woman out to dinner.”

“Yeah?” Mendez said. “And I bet they really raise their eyebrows when you take that woman home and bang her.”

“I took Marissa to dinner,” Morgan said, maddeningly in control of himself.

Mendez would have been happy to have Steve Morgan take a swing at him. It would have given him a chance to knock the jerk on his ass, and then drag him off to jail for assaulting an officer.

“We met in Los Olivos to try the restaurant—the same as Mark did,” Morgan said. “I didn’t want to do dinner here in town because people like to jump to conclusions. I don’t need anyone calling Sara and upsetting her for no reason.”

“Or giving her one more reason to dump your sorry ass,” Mendez said. “Is that what Marissa Fordham threatened to do? Tell Sara the two of you were sleeping together? Did she give you the big ultimatum, Steve? Dump the wife or else?”

Morgan actually had the gall to laugh. “Clearly, you never knew Marissa,” he said. “She didn’t want a husband. She never let any relationship get that serious. She was very happy being single.”

Frustrated, Mendez said, “So you met a client for dinner tonight. Who?”

“That’s confidential.”

“Where?”

“In Malibu. At a private home.”

“Convenient. That explains how you can be just getting home at four in the morning. No closing time. Long drive.”

“You know, Detective, I don’t have to answer your questions at all,” he pointed out.

“No,” Mendez said. “Is that the tack you take with Sara too? You don’t need to answer her questions?”

“She stopped asking.”

Heat burned through Mendez like a flash fire. He stepped closer, leaning his hands on the top of the car door on either side of Steve Morgan. “You’re a bastard.”

“Yeah,” Morgan said without humor. “I am.”

Mendez leaned in closer. “Is this where you try to make me feel sorry for you because your mother was a junkie whore and you had it so bad you just can’t help being the way you are?”

He got his wish. Steve Morgan came with a right that connected hard into his mouth, busting his lip from the outside with knuckles and from the inside with his own teeth. He staggered sideways.

“Fuck you, Mendez!” Morgan said, coming away from the car, pulling his arm back for a second shot.

Mendez came up into his boxing stance, blocked the second punch and hit Morgan with two hard jabs in the face. Blood gushed from Morgan’s nose.

He stumbled back into the side of his car and bounced forward again, swinging too hard, too soon. Mendez grabbed the man’s fist, stepped to the side, and twisted his arm up behind his back. Using Morgan’s own momentum, Mendez swung him around and slammed him across the hood of the Trans Am.

Dogs all around the neighborhood started barking. A light came on across the street.

Mendez cuffed one wrist then the other behind Steve Morgan’s back, then turned and spat a mouthful of blood across the hood of the car.

“Thanks, man. You just gave me an early Christmas present,” he said.

He pulled Morgan up off the car hood and marched him toward the Taurus at the curb.

“Steve Morgan, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent ...”