The Good Lie by A.R. Torre
CHAPTER 27
I woke up alone, with the taste of regret, or potentially sour wine, in my mouth. Robert had left without incident or anything as bold as a kiss on the cheek. Now my body felt cheated. I stared up at the ceiling and realized, with a strong dose of self-loathing, that I had expected to have sex with him.
So much for my stern stance on professional distance. Thank God I hadn’t made a move, though the conversation had certainly stuck to topics that doused any thoughts of romance.
My unresolved libido aside, it had been a productive meal. We had journeyed into a few light conversations about Gabe, but not enough to appease my concerns about his grief management. Instead of focusing on healing, Robert was picking up loose women after funerals and constructing what, from all outward appearances, seemed to be a very strong defense for his son’s killer.
And that was the other thing keeping me up at night. The victims. The agonized faces of the parents on the news. Was I helping to free their murderer?
I wouldn’t do that. I had told Robert that I would speak the truth, and he seemed to accept it, but with this sly half-amused expression that indicated he knew my game. I wished I felt so confident. I was lost, in the middle of the board, with no idea if I was ahead in the score or behind. Probably behind. Most likely, I’d fallen off the board entirely.
Clem was on my bedside table, lying on top of my cell, and I eased my hand under her belly and slid it out, prompting a hiss. Ignoring her, I unlocked my phone and checked the security alerts.
No unauthorized entry. No security-cam motion alerts. A quiet night. I let out a sigh of relief and then, before I forgot, rearmed it. Normally I left the system off for the day, often keeping the doors open for a breeze, but until I spoke to Luke, or until the police did, I needed to be smart.
Rolling out of bed, I took a hot shower, then dressed in cream khaki pants and a ribbed red tank top. Pulling out a new gray hair that had sprung onto the scene, I plaited my wet hair into a braid, then picked up Clem and headed downstairs, inhaling the smell of her. She spent most of her days in my laundry basket, and she smelled like the linen-scented dryer sheets.
On his way to the door, Robert had pressed again to see the profile. I needed to send it to him by early afternoon if I was going to stick to my timeline. There was no point in sitting on it any longer. My core avatar—an organized, control-oriented killer who had been molested or raped during his teenage or adolescent years by a wealthy and popular teenager—had cemented. I needed to get the draft off my desk and into his hands so I could focus on a more urgent task—re-reviewing John Abbott’s client file. The questions about Brooke’s death had made me second-guess his mention of her family history of heart trouble. I wanted to pin down the possibility and was due for a re-review anyway. With Detective Saxe still lurking around, the possibility of my client file being subpoenaed was a plausible concern. I needed to copy the file and study every moment of it, from first appointment to last.
Before diving in, I poured a bowl of cereal and watched a reality show on matchmaking. On the screen, a big-breasted blonde giggled at the male contestant. My mom loved this dumb show. On our last call, she’d spent ten minutes in a full recap of the most recent episode. That had been painful enough, but then it had segued into a critical dissection of my life. A childless, single woman in her late thirties was grounds for maternal panic, and she had bleated her concern at top volume for the bulk of the call. My job, in her opinion, was my biggest barrier to love. After all, where was I going to meet a man? The morgue?
Life would be easier without my brother, whose wife was popping out kids like a toaster on Sunday morning. You’d think all those babies would keep my mother happy, but somehow it just increased the expectation that I perform.
I ate a spoonful of cinnamon-flavored cereal. Maybe my love prospects were hampered by my job. While Robert’s eyes had lit up in the bar when I’d mentioned my occupation, the typical response was more of a wary shudder. A very nice-looking man at a speed-dating event had once asked if I’d ever killed anyone. Another had asked if I planned to “do the counselor thing” forever.
Maybe I should start going back to church. According to my sister-in-law, that was a hotbed of eligible men. And I needed an eligible man—or a fresh batch of batteries—something to take my mind off the one bachelor I should be staying far, far away from.
Robert Kavin was hiding something. I’d felt a few seeds of suspicion early on and was growing more convinced of the possibility as time progressed. And the weird thing was—the more certain I grew that he was hiding something from me, the more certain I grew that he suspected me of something.
Initially, I thought his suspicion was around Brooke’s death, given that he’d seen at least part of John Abbott’s file. But which part? That was the big question. My second question was how well Robert had known John. He’d attended his funeral, so there had to have been at least an acquaintance relationship. I couldn’t tell you my pharmacist’s first name, let alone attend their funeral—but I also didn’t have a diabetic son. Had he and John grown close enough that he’d protect the dead man’s reputation and not come forward with suspicions about Brooke’s death? It was possible, maybe even probable, given that I should be under investigation by the Code of Ethics board right now.
And I couldn’t ignore the possibility that Robert hadn’t seen anything at all. Maybe I had left open the file in an innocent place that hadn’t meant anything to him, and my fears were bred from paranoia and absolutely nothing else.
I rinsed my cereal bowl under hot water and placed it in the dishwasher. Before I worked myself even further into knots, I needed to look at where I’d left John’s file open on my desk. I wouldn’t be able to remember the exact spot, but I had a general sense of where my review had ended and when the wine and sleepiness had won over.
I dried my hands and moved to the study, pulling on the lamp’s stiff chain and illuminating the wide surface. It was clear of files, my lesson learned, my confidential documents now locked in one of the two sliding drawers of my desk. I moved the gold elephant beside the lamp to one side, revealing the small key. My security still had room for improvement.
Settling into my chair, I opened up John Abbott’s thick file and flipped through the session notes until I found the area where I had last stopped. Pulling my chair tighter to the desk, I began to read.
JA is testy and irritable. Suffering from VT about wife. Worse with temper. Incident with guest—air-conditioning.
I remembered this. They’d had a guest staying with them, and the air-conditioning had gone out. John had tried to fix it himself and couldn’t.
“I have a Mensa-level IQ.” He’d pinned me with a look that dared argument. “I’m better educated than ninety-nine percent of people in this city. I can kill or save someone with the knowledge right here.” He tapped his temple. “And she wants to call someone to fix it, doesn’t think I’m smart enough. And so what if the air is out? It’s not like he’s paying us to stay there! Let him sweat.”
I hadn’t been able to figure out if his solution was to let the poor guest sweat, or if he had plans to try again with the repair. I nudged the conversation back to Brooke. “At what point did you feel like you were losing control?”
“She just wouldn’t stop. Pecking at me, that’s what she was doing. Continually wiping her brow so I would understand she was sweating. Asking when I was going to go outside and take a look at it. Bringing up articles on her phone and making ‘helpful suggestions.’” He put air quotes around the words. “I just looked at her, sitting there on the couch, and I pictured her stomach cut open.”
His words had drilled into me, as if it had been my own stomach at risk. So calm. So matter-of-fact. As if he cut into flesh on an everyday basis.
“She’s getting fat,” he’d added. “It bounces when she moves. I thought about that, wondered if it’d make it harder to cut or easier.” He had looked at me. “What do you think?”
I’d met his gaze without flinching, because most of my clients wanted a reaction. For some, that’s why they kill, because they’re standing there, screaming at the ones they love, and aren’t getting the feedback they want. I wasn’t going to give him a reaction. “I think we need to work on you not having that visual.”
Now, I ran my finger down to the next handwritten line of the notes, and my heart sank at what it said.
Not just looking for attention from me—he is a serious threat to her. High risk.