Strange Bedfellows

18

Smiling Faces

After getting the documents processed by Latent Prints back at the PAB, we spent the rest of Friday night discussing what we’d learned in our interviews and reviewing reams of paper from our combined searches. By Saturday morning, guided by Perkins and the guys from the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, we’d assembled an ugly picture of embezzlement at CZ Toys-fifteen million over four years that Wunderlich said topped anything the Feds had seen thus far on the West Coast. But to tie it to the shootings, we needed more, so Thor got MIA to pull a few strings with the commanding officer at SID to get one of their graphologists to join us on Saturday afternoon to review some documents.

“We think we’ve got enough evidence to tie Natalie Johnson, the company’s accounts payable manager, to a scheme involving executives in three of the company’s offices worldwide,” Thor explained to Terrell Vaughan, a wiry black man from SID’s Questioned Documents, who’d been called in to review writing samples from our suspects. “We just need to know if Johnson’s signatures approving the payments are authentic.”

“You got any other suspects’ handwriting you want me to consider?”

I showed Vaughan Mario’s handwriting in the greeting card and other items seized from his office and home. “It could have been Zuccari’s son, Mario. He’s the company’s CFO and could have been approving the payments, forging Johnson’s name.”

“Or Felton Carruthers, the company’s controller,” Perkins said, laying out his handwriting samples next to the documents from Mario’s house. “He countersigned most of the approvals. We need to authenticate his signatures, too.”

Billie placed another packet on the table. “We also need you to compare Chuck Zuccari’s handwriting in these samples obtained from Mario’s house with a note allegedly sent by Chuck to a kid who worked in Accounts Payable, trying to scare him into abandoning his investigation into the fraud. We know Chuck Zuccari couldn’t have sent it because he was in a coma, but we don’t know if it was sent by Mario, or Johnson, or Carruthers.”

Arms crossed over his chest, Vaughan leaned over to consider the documents, mouth twisted in concentration, then glanced at his watch. “It’s two now. It’s going to take me a good eight hours to analyze all these documents. Couldn’t this have waited until Monday?”

“Some of these suspects have the means to flee the country at the drop of a hat,” I replied. “And without an indictment, we can’t just go to a judge and get an order to have their passports lifted. The Feds have got them under surveillance for now, but we need some answers before they get in the wind.”

“Look,” Wunderlich broke in, “if having these documents examined through the LAPD’s lab is going to be too cumbersome, we can send them to our lab for analysis. The embezzlement piece of this case is in our bailiwick, anyway.”

Wunderlich was still angling for control of the evidence, and with it the case, but Thor wasn’t going for it. “That’ll take forever,” he argued, “plus if we separate the evidence, it’s going to slow us down in making our case on the murder to the DA.”

“So far, you don’t have a case, Thorfinsen!” Wunderlich reminded him as he and his colleagues gathered up their things. “All we’ve got so far is the embezzlement, and unless you can come up with something else, we’re going to have to take over.”

“Give us until the end of the day Monday, Wunderlich, to see what we can pull together.” Thor gave Vaughan a meaningful look. “Everybody here understands the importance of hooking up a suspect on the murder, don’t we?”

After the others left, Vaughan sighed wearily as he gathered up the documents and signed for them. “I need to look at this stuff in my office,” he muttered, “but I’ve only been authorized enough overtime to work on this until six tonight. What I can’t get to today will have to wait until Monday morning.”

“You heard what that Fed said, Vaughan. Who do I have to call to get you in here on Sunday morning?”

“I’ll get you your results by Monday morning,” Vaughan grumbled, “but don’t sweat me about Sunday morning-I’ve got to go to my kid’s christening. Some of us do have lives outside of the office, you know.”

While getting a hand from us was going to help the Feds make their embezzlement case, I wasn’t certain that by the end of the day we’d be any closer to finding our shooter. Yet, I felt in my bones that the documents we’d obtained were the key to breaking open this case. I picked up copies we’d made of the correspondence and other documents seized from Mario’s home. “Perkins, you were saying earlier that Mario wrote a lot of checks out of his personal checking account.”

“That’s been his pattern for the last year,” she nodded, leafing through the bank statements. “About fifteen thousand a month, between checks to individuals and those written to cash easily forty, fifty checks a month.”

Billie whistled. “That’s a lot of checks. He supporting a lover somewhere?”

“Some of that might have been going to whoever he was sending that greeting card to,” I noted, sliding the Xerox copy of the “Thinking of You” card I’d found on Mario’s desk to Billie. “See, it says: ‘I don’t want you worrying about money. I’ve taken care of everything.’ The card hadn’t been addressed yet, so we don’t know who it was intended for.”

“I’ve never seen money sent to a contract killer in a greeting card,” Billie noted, giving me an uncertain look.

“As I said, he writes a lot of checks.” Perkins leafed through the stack. “There are a bunch to Blanca Ortiz, but those are relatively small.”

“That’s his housekeeper,” I said. “Anything larger?”

“I won’t know until I sort all these checks into a list of individuals and businesses and verify their receipt of payment. That could take a week.”

“But we’ve only got until Monday!” I snapped. “Maybe while Perkins is working on the checks, I should dig into Lippincott’s accusation about Alma Zuccari. If Chuck found out his wife was passing, that could have given her a motive to have him killed.”

“I know you think it’s important, Justice, but it just doesn’t strike me as a motive for anything.”

“This isn’t about what you or I would do, Thor. It’s about a young black woman who’s passing for white being married to a sixty-four-year-old ultraconservative Republican and keeping a secret that could blow the lid off his perfect little world!”

Thor made an impatient gesture. “If it makes you happy, check it out, but don’t let it interfere with reviewing the rest of these documents on Natalie Johnson and the other CZ Toys employees. They’re our most likely targets.”

“Weren’t you going up to Oregon to see your granddaughter?” I asked.

He shook his head emphatically. “I couldn’t leave you all high and dry.”

Don’t worry, Thor,” Perkins said. “If Vaughan or the Latent Prints guys come up with anything, I’ll be here. I need to spend some more time examining Mario Zuccari’s and Johnson’s financial statements, see if there’s a pattern to the withdrawals and deposits.”

“And I’ve got some paperwork to attend to,” Billie said, waving him off.

“Go,” I agreed, “even if it’s just for the day. We’ve got everything under control. Your granddaughter needs you.”

A couple of hours later, Perkins went outside for a cigarette break, and I used the opportunity to walk over to Billie’s desk. “While we’re killing time,” I whispered, “why don’t we follow up on Lippincott’s accusation about Alma Zuccari.”

“Two reasons.” Billie closed the blue binder she’d been working on with a thud. “One, the original murder book is full of a bunch of loose ends on the Nazis and the Black Muslims I need to tie off before we turn the file over to the D.A.’s office. And, two, you heard what Thor said-he wants us to concentrate on Johnson and the CZ Toys employees.”

The clock on the wall said it was after four. “Thor can’t ding us for pursuing it on our own time.”

“Damn, Charlotte!” Billie exclaimed, a scowl on her face. “I was hoping to finish this paperwork and get home before sundown. I haven’t seen my daughter in the daylight all week. She’s gonna think I’m a vampire.”

“Sure, go ahead. But while you’re playing with Turquoise, do me a favor.” I reached for my handbag and unearthed the card Pete Collins had given me at the hospital. “See if Collins can locate Robert Merritt, the head of the legal department at CZ Toys. I want to see if he backs up Renata’s story about engaging the private investigator.”

“Do you really think this is that important?”

“My maternal grandmother passed all the time in her dressmaking business. There were times she’d publicly deny my darker-skinned uncle if it meant getting some big contract. He used to smile and laugh about it, but it had to hurt.”

“But enough to make somebody want to kill?”

“I don’t know. But you know like I do, color prejudice is one of America’s dirtiest little secrets. The only question is-how far would Alma Zuccari go to keep hers?”

Billie reluctantly took the card and tucked it into her jacket pocket. “But what are you going to do?”

“See a woman about a doll.”

You would have thought it was a film premiere the way the cars were inching along Venice Boulevard toward Broadway Federal S &L. Inside were the usual hodgepodge of notable black Angelenos-the bankers and doctors, divas and dilettantes and various poseurs in between-interspersed with an equally diverse group of the city’s African American Muslim population, if the subdued garb and covered heads were any indication. From high yellow to espresso black, in kuftis and cashmere, these two very different sides of black L.A. had come together, not to see Spike or Clint’s latest film but the unveiling of the Malik Shareef Black Doll Collection.

I thought I was going to have to drag Aubrey kicking and screaming to the event. He wouldn’t stop complaining until I told him I thought my family would be there as well. “Come on honey, it’ll be fun,” I wheedled when I’d called him about it from work.

“Why are you just now telling me?”

“You’d gone inside the other night when Mother mentioned it,” I replied as if my mother and I had planned this excursion all along. “You’re the one who’s been telling me I should show up for more family events.”

But Aubrey wasn’t buying it. “Don’t bullshit me, Char! This is not a family event. This is about the Smiley Face shootings and you know it.”

“I just need to ask Malik Shareef’s widow one question, then we can leave. Besides, I know how you enjoy talking to my father.”

A pause, then: “If your dad’s going to be there, I guess I can run through there with you. But you owe me a decent dinner afterward!”

“Campanile?”

“And dessert afterward, and I’m not talking profiteroles!”

But first Aubrey had to get through the dozens of dolls on display throughout the small branch. “Good thing they’re serving drinks,” he said, a comment I heard echoed by more than one man as their wives and girlfriends moved among the display cases, oohing and aahing over the rare dolls and artifacts while the men stood in protective little clusters, arguing over the NBA standings or the latest scandal in the current mayoral race.

Aubrey said, “I see some of my fellow Omegas got shanghaied tonight, too,” as he walked toward the bar and a short dark-skinned brother I didn’t know. On the other side of the room, I spotted Habiba Shareef talking to the bank’s young CEO. I was about to head that way when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Hey, girl,” Louise said, giving me a hug. “Your mother didn’t tell me you were coming, too.”

“I wanted to surprise her.” Over Louise’s shoulder, I saw Joymarie and Uncle Syl dragging my father to look at the dolls while Perris strode toward the bar and gave Aubrey and the dark-skinned guy the Omega Psi Phi fraternity handshake. Other than looking more tired than usual, the Dark Prince was doing his thing, smiling and glad-handing, laughing with his frat brothers as they saluted each other with the old Omega phrase-Q Psi Phi ’til the day I die. But every once in a while I saw my brother’s eyes rake over the crowd. Was it just another leftover habit from his days on patrol, or was Perris looking for his frat brother Paul Taft, the Q who wasn’t there? “I see my big brother is up to his usual tricks.”

“He’d better be getting a Coca-Cola,” Louise replied, craning her neck to see what Perris was doing. “We had a long talk after Film Night, Char. He’s promised he’s going to stop drinking. He even went to a meeting this afternoon.”

“AA’s a start.” Across the room, Perris caught my eye and gave me a wary nod. “Did he tell you I called the other day?”

“No! Did you two talk?”

“Not yet, but I left a message, which he hasn’t returned.”

Louise put a hand on my arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Well, I know he wants to talk to you. He said he needed to get some things straightened out.”

“Yes, he does,” I murmured, wondering if Uncle Henry had warned him I was on the warpath about Keith’s files.

“I told him if he didn’t do it soon, I was going to make him sleep in the garage!”

I hugged Louise again, whispered, “Thanks, sis,” and continued on toward Mrs. Shareef, where I hung back a few feet until she was finished with her conversation. “What is it now, Detective?” she whispered, leading me out of the flow of well-wishers and the press.

“Just need to get your reaction to some new information.”

Her eyes on the crowd, Mrs. Shareef went over to give a kiss on both cheeks to a Muslim female, then shook hands with a lawyer here, a state assemblywoman there. “I’m not going to have you drag my husband’s memory through the mud in front of all these people!” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

“This is not about Malik. It’s about Alma Zuccari.”

Habiba Shareef’s expression hardened as she turned on me. “Haven’t I heard enough about that woman?”

I told her what we’d learned about Alma and her family, which caused Mrs. Shareef’s brow to unfurl and her face to go slack with relief. “So that’s what it was! Malik always said she was a troubled spirit, but I don’t think even he would have guessed she was passing! And now that you say it, her behavior makes sense. Did I tell you she even asked us to add an ultra-fair-skinned doll to the collection? Too bad she just couldn’t come out and tell us. All that exposure to our dolls didn’t teach her a thing about loving herself.”

“Maybe it did,” I replied, wondering for the first time if Alma’s obsession with the Shareefs’ dolls could have drawn the wrath of her husband.

I heard a throat clear behind us. “Char, can you introduce us?” Louise had slipped up behind me, my brother in tow, beaming at Mrs. Shareef as if she were Coretta Scott King and Ethel Kennedy rolled into one. “My husband and I are great fans of your and your husband’s book. Are any of the dolls your husband used in his research here in the exhibit?”

Habiba Shareef walked Louise over to the topsy-turvy doll and began explaining how it was used in focus groups to determine children’s racial preferences. Perris lingered behind, gazing off in another direction, his body turned slightly away from me, as if positioning himself for a quick escape. “Uncle Henry called. He’s pretty pissed off at you for forging his signature.”

“I’m just trying to reconstruct a file that seems to have gone missing. You have any idea what I’m talking about?”

“Look, Char, I-”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Perris. What do you want?”

“I got your message about Paul Taft,” he mumbled.

“You didn’t call me back.”

“I had walked over to invite you to breakfast in the morning,” he replied. “I was hoping we could talk face-to-face, clear up a few things.”

I positioned myself so I was in his line of sight. “We’re face-to-face right now.”

He turned the other way. “This isn’t the place, Char-”

I stood in his way again. “We can take it outside.”

Perris looked at me sharply, as if I’d challenged him to a fight. “Fine,” he sighed at last. “Might as well get this over with.”

We stepped into an evening that had cooled off considerably, dark clouds backlit by moonlight as they skittered across the sky. “You know Paul Williams designed this building,” Perris began, leaning against a column and jiggling the ice in his cup. “The bank’s CEO is his grandson.”

“Spare me the black L.A. history lesson.” I grabbed his cup, sniffed its contents. “What was in here, a screwdriver?”

“Orange juice. I’ve stopped drinking.”

“Congratulations.” I handed it back. “How long has it been?”

He looked away. “Three days. Since I got your message.”

“I called Uncle Henry on Wednesday, Perris. I didn’t call you until yesterday.”

He turned up his cup, trying to play it off. “One day, three days. What does it matter?”

“Look, I didn’t come out in the cold to talk black history or architecture or your journey to sobriety, for that matter. I want to know why you took Keith’s files and what’s going on with you and Paul Taft.”

At the mention of Taft’s name, Perris started looking around as if the FBI agent were going to jump out from between the parked cars. “Why don’t we sit in my car and talk?” he suggested, hustling me over to his Beemer, which was parked a few yards away, facing the bank. He looked around again before unlocking my door and opening it for me.

“So, what’s the deal?” I said, once we were inside. “Why are you so nervous?”

Perris got in the driver’s seat and sat for a few minutes, breathing deeply. “I prayed for years that I’d never have to do this,” he muttered as he started the car and turned on the heater.

“Do what? Stop being such a drama king, Perris, and just spit it out!”

Just then, my cell phone rang. It was Billie. “I just finished talking to Robert Merritt,” she said excitedly. “You’re gonna trip when you hear what he had to say!”

“I’m in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back in five, ten minutes?”

“Sure. I’ve gotta make a few phone calls anyway. But be sure and call me back.”

I broke the connection and returned my attention to Perris, who had switched the radio to an oldies station and was idly humming along with a group the DJ identified as The Undisputed Truth. “So?”

He stopped humming and took another breath. “Okay. Remember how I used to talk with Keith about gangs, back when you first started bringing him around?”

The question caught me off guard. “Sure. You said Keith’s knowledge could help your work on the streets.”

“The spring before he was-” He stopped himself and started again, head down this time. “That spring, Keith had started researching the Black Freedom Militia.”

I waved a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Perris! I was working with him, remember?”

“You were working on the data end of the study,” he reminded me. “Keith wanted to go into the field, do some primary research, something I had urged him not to do.”

Despite the heater, Perris’s words made the air in the car turn cold. The Undisputed Truth was singing something about truth being in the eyes, but Perris refused to look in mine. “Keith never told me that.”

But Perris wasn’t listening to me or the radio. His attention was drawn to the activity inside the bank. “The department had started its own investigation of the BFM. Keith nosing around had the potential to get in the way. Plus I didn’t want him blowing my cover, in case we ran into each other at one of their meetings.”

“You worked undercover?” So Taft hadn’t been lying about that.

“In the beginning, I didn’t tell you because of the nature of the assignment,” he replied, his voice flat. “And later, when I thought I should, Keith made me promise not to. He was afraid you’d try and stop him.”

“Stop him?” I grabbed his arm. “From doing what?”

“Just let me get this out, okay?” he said, his voice growing thick as he carefully disengaged my grip. “I was already inside the organization, had gotten pretty close to Cinque Lewis and his girlfriend-”

“Sojourner Truth.”

He nodded. “My assignment was to destabilize the BFM from within, which I was doing by feeding Truth information about Lewis’s infidelity.

“Keith showed up at an orientation meeting right after I had talked to her, asking his standard set of research questions. But she was so angry about what I’d been telling her, she started spilling her guts to Keith about the inner circle of Lewis’s advisors and the drugs they were dealing.”

I’d heard part of this story before when I’d interviewed Sojourner Truth in connection with Lewis’s murder, and even before that when Cinque Lewis began to threaten Keith and our family if he published his findings. But the spin Perris was putting on the story gave it a different, more ominous feeling.

“Keith came to me,” Perris was saying, “concerned for the children in the BFM’s after-school programs, and asked me what should he do. I told him he had to get the hell away from the BFM, that they were too volatile, but he said he wanted to stay and help us get as much information on the organization as possible. To help those kids, you know?”

Perris’s words sent a deeper chill down my spine and set off a war in my mind. One part of me couldn’t believe Keith could be so foolish, while the other part knew it was exactly what my headstrong, idealistic husband would do. But in addition to the argument raging inside my head, there was one voice I could not ignore, which was screaming: He put you and your baby in jeopardy!

I covered my ears to drown out the noise in my head. “You’re lying to me, Perris! You talked Keith into this. I know how you are!”

My brother shook his head rhythmically, eyes shut tight. “I wish it was different, Char, but Keith insisted on helping us. He said he wanted to put all that data he’d been collecting to use in the real world.”

That, too, sounded like something Keith would say. As the tears slid down my face and my throat closed up, I could see my father inside the bank, saying something to Aubrey and his frat brother that made them laugh. I opened my handbag and felt around for my inhaler, my Altoids tin, anything to stop the feeling that I was going to choke to death inside this car. I found instead my yellow marble from Dr. P’s office. “You did this to Keith. You caused his and Erica’s deaths as surely as if you pulled the trigger yourself!”

“Oh, God, Char, please don’t say that! When Lewis and his gang came after Keith, we all tried to protect your family.”

“We who? You and Burt Rivers?”

“Uncle Henry, too.”

“You’re saying my godfather knew Keith was working with you?”

“He was our captain and C.O. of Southwest,” Perris reminded me. “He authorized the operation in conjunction with PDID. How do you think your family got around-the-clock protection so quickly?”

I stared at the smiling faces of Aubrey and his frat brothers inside the bank in disbelief.

Smiling faces tell lies, The Undisputed Truth sang to me. And I’ve got proof.

What was the proof? I’d read bits and pieces of the PDID files on the BFM years before. They were largely the report of a police informant placed inside the organization. But I hadn’t put it together then, nor when I met Sojourner Truth and her adopted son, Cinque Lewis’s brother Peyton, years later and she’d told me about a brother named Q-Dog pulling her coat about her man sleeping with another woman in the BFM. No wonder Perris took Keith’s files, and Uncle Henry was so intent on my cutting Perris some slack, and Burt was advising me on what Keith would want me to do. They’d all been in it together-Burt Rivers, Henry Youngblood, and, at the center of it all, my brother, the Dark Prince, Mr. Q-Psi-Phi ’til the day I die.

But now I felt like the one who was dying, and Perris was to blame. “You were the informant in those files! You were Q-Dog!”

He nodded slowly, his face contorted with pain. “Since we Omegas called each other Q-dogs, I figured Quincy Dash wouldn’t be a hard name to remember.”

I slapped him, all my strength behind the blow. “So that’s why everyone’s been covering for your sorry ass!” I slapped him again. “All these years!” And again. “You sorry motherfucker!”

“I was only doing my job, Char!” Fending me off, Perris grabbed my sleeve, but I yanked my arm away, sending the yellow marble I’d been clutching flying. As I felt around the floor of the car my arm brushed against my holstered gun.

It would take so little effort to keep reaching back, to pull out that gun and blow him away.

To watch his brains splatter all over the driver’s seat of his shiny Beemer, the way Keith’s were splattered in my driveway.

So easy.

As if he’d read my mind, Perris let go of my arm. “I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to kill me, Char.” He stared at the happy people inside the bank, tears streaming down his face. “I wanted to kill myself, many times, after seeing what their deaths did to you. It’s why I had to leave the department. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

I picked up the marble and held onto it for dear life. The voices inside my head were screaming so loud I couldn’t stand it. “Just tell me what happened.”

He pressed his palm over one eye as if to stop the flow of tears. “The day they-that day, I was on my way over to your house to work my shift, when Lewis waylaid me at the cover apartment the department had set me up with. Someone had tipped him off that I was a cop. He shot me as I was getting into my car. Otherwise, I would have been there at your house that day. I could have stopped him, Char. I would have gladly taken those bullets to stop Lewis!”

My brother’s tearful confession reminded me of how, after Keith and Erica’s murders, he would come to my house, drunk and crying. And I’d thought it was because of sympathy for me or reliving what had happened to him the day they died.

Now I knew. It was both, and more. “Who else knows about this besides Uncle Henry and Burt?”

Perris gulped as he scanned the crowd in the brightly lit bank. “I told Mom right after it happened.”

No surprise there, my little voice reminded me. Those two are thick as thieves.

“She told me to try and let it go, go on with my life and not burden you with things that would only hurt you even worse than Keith and Erica’s deaths.”

That sounded like my mother-doing her part to keep up appearances, even if it meant watching her daughter suffer not knowing the truth, or her son, who knew the truth all too well. And it also explained why she was so outraged when I joined the department shortly after Keith’s death, why she and Perris had been sniping at me about quitting from Day One.

I smiled bitterly. “So my dear darling mother has been lying to me for almost thirteen years.”

One lie calls for another and another, I could hear my grandmama Cile say.

“Not lying, Char. Just selectively editing the truth down to what you could handle.”

“That should have been my choice to make, not hers, or yours!”

“We couldn’t do it, not as fragile as you were!”

“I haven’t been fragile for the entire thirteen years, Perris! Did you tell Daddy, too?”

“I haven’t, but Mom or Uncle Henry might have.”

Even if my mother didn’t have the nerve to do it, Uncle Henry would have certainly confided in his best friend. Which meant Grandmama Cile probably knew, too. Was I the only one in our family who’d been left in the dark?

The possibility made me replay conversations with my family about Keith or about my being on the department-scores of them over the years, over countless barbecues and card games and Justice Family Film Nights. Was Matt Justice’s love and concern for me genuine, or was it all to cover the Dark Prince’s trail? How long had he and my mother been smiling in my face, and stabbing me in the back with their lies and half-truths? Now something my grandmother said about Perris and my mother taking those files, just last week at a card game with my father and Uncle Syl, came back to me, its meaning suddenly crystal clear.

“Why they want to dig up the past?” she’d said. “You go diggin’ in the past, all you gon’ get is dirty.”

I fished some more antacids from the Altoids tin to fight back the waves of rage and nausea threatening to drown me. “Are you okay, Char?” Perris asked.

As if he cared. “How does Taft fit into all of this?”

“The FBI was investigating the BFM the same time as the LAPD. Taft was the Bureau’s plant inside the organization. When he found out I was working undercover, too, he tried to get me removed from the case. Then, after I got shot and Lewis disappeared, he transferred to Birmingham.”

“And you never spoke to him again?”

He shrugged. “Not until he started calling me recently, trying to locate Sojourner Truth and Peyton.”

“For what?”

“He wouldn’t say, but he threatened to tell you the whole story if I didn’t help him.”

“Which is why you took Keith’s files, to keep me from figuring it out on my own.”

He nodded. “Up until Taft showed up, I had just tried to put the whole mess out of my mind. But it was hard. I was so bitter about how nobody backed me up the day I got shot.”

And had used that bitterness, in his law practice, to become one of the biggest thorns in L.A. law enforcement’s side. But he’d paid a heavy price, too. In the reflected light of the reception, I could see the scar over my brother’s eye, the one from the car accident he’d had while driving under the influence, one of the countless ways he’d tried to “put the whole mess out of his mind.”

Perris saw me staring and fingered the scar on his cheek. “I deserved this and every other bad thing that has happened in my life, for letting Keith take such a foolish risk, for not coming clean to you. If I had, maybe together we could have made him stop.”

“Don’t you dare!” If I had to sit here another minute I was going to throw up. I grabbed my handbag, got out of the car, and walked angrily toward the bank. “Don’t you dare put this on me, Perris! You’re the one who let Keith get himself killed!”

“I’m sorry, Char,” he called after me. “I wasn’t trying to say-”

“Stay the hell away from me, Perris!”

Inside, Aubrey was talking to Uncle Syl and my mother, who had her back to the door. If I could have stabbed her between the shoulder blades at that moment, I would have. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I muttered to Aubrey.

“Language, young lady!” my mother warned, glancing around to see who had heard me.

Uncle Syl did, and frowned at the expression on my face. “Why are you hatting up so soon, Baby Girl?”

“I’ve heard enough bullshit for one night!” I snapped, glad to see my mother cringe.

Aubrey had moved to my side and put a supportive hand on my back. “Char’s had a long week. So, if you’ll excuse us, I’ve promised her a fabulous dinner at Campanile.”

“I’m not in the mood for all that pomp and circumstance!”

“Me, either,” he whispered in my ear as he steered me toward the door. “Let’s just get you out of here.”

Aubrey called ahead and ordered takeout from his favorite Italian restaurant. On the way there, I told him about Perris, surprising myself that I didn’t cry once in the retelling.

Although sympathetic, Aubrey was not surprised at all. “All that trash Perris and your mom were talking about how you’d handle closing up your house, and the way they were sneaking around the day they found those files let me know something wasn’t right.”

“Well, I wish you had said something!”

“I told you what they were doing!” he snapped back. “How was I supposed to know what kind of games they were playing or what they’d done?”

I massaged my forehead, trying to will away the headache that had my head throbbing. “You’re right. I’m sorry-I just can’t believe my family would do something like this to me.”

Aubrey stopped the car in front of the restaurant. “The trip of it is, I don’t think they meant to harm you, Char. In their minds, they probably thought they were protecting you.”

“That’s the same line of BS my brother was trying to sell me! You shouldn’t need protection from the truth.”

Aubrey raised his hands. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger! I’m just trying to show you the other side.”

“I’m tired of seeing the other side. I need someone to see my side!”

“That’s what I was trying to do!” Aubrey snapped, slamming the car door and stalking inside to get our food.

After eleven, after we’d had dinner and way too much red wine, Aubrey snaked an arm around me in bed and drew my hips close. “I know you’re hurting, Char,” he whispered, “but you’ve got to try and let it go. Don’t spend another thirteen years grieving over something you couldn’t have controlled in the first place.”

I nodded, but I didn’t believe a word of what he was saying. I knew Keith would have listened to me, would have stopped messing around with Lewis and the BFM, if I had asked him to. Wouldn’t he?

Aubrey hugged me close and kissed the back of my neck. I moved his hand higher, demonstrating how I wanted him to knead my breast, almost as if he could reach through my bones and massage my cold, dead heart back to life. After a few moments, I felt him harden behind me and pull his hand away. “This isn’t right, Char,” he muttered. “You don’t need me pushing up on you right now.”

“Baby.” I turned over and reached down, felt Aubrey shudder beneath my probing hand. “That’s exactly what I need.”

What I did that night was wrong; I know it was. I used Aubrey’s body to work out my pain, accepted and returned his thrusts as if they were driving something evil out of my soul. Was I trying to dispel the pain, or the anger behind the memory of all those nights of lovemaking with Keith? I didn’t know, and at that moment I didn’t care. All I wanted that night was to know that somebody loved me, and as I touched and was touched, bit and was bitten, rode and was ridden into a babbling, tearful release, I knew without a doubt that Keith was dead and gone out of my life forever, along with Perris and my whole family, people who’d betrayed my love and trust to suit their own ends. It was only later, after we’d exhausted ourselves and Aubrey had rolled over and gone to sleep and I’d slipped out of bed to return Billie’s call, that it occurred to me that maybe I’d just driven my lover out of my life as well.