Chasing Venus (51 page)

It was not clear to her
why Reid had not been with Rowell the prior night, why the woman had set off on
her own to
Waring’s
estate.
 
He had skirted that point and Sheila
didn’t press it.
 
He did explain how
he’d gotten back to their motel room to find Rowell gone, then discovered a
coded message from her on the
Crimewatch
message boards that sent him to the estate just in time to see a squadron of
black-and-whites descend.
 
The rest
was the day’s top story, detailed in every news outlet across the country.
 
And of course that week’s
Crimewatch
would be devoted entirely to
the tale and its aftermath, and would feature an exclusive interview with
Annette Rowell.

That episode would air
in three days.
 
Sheila
straightened.
 
She had a lot of work
to do.

As she strode to the
living room, two mugs of coffee in hand, she wondered if it might be wise to
pursue a new job.
 
It would be
incredibly difficult to leave the show, not to mention Reid.
 
Though she knew, as she handed him a
mug, that from now on it would be just as challenging to stay.

Reid looked away from
the computer screen and met her gaze.
 
“I wish I could think of a way to thank you for all you’ve done for
Annie and me over the past week, Sheila.
 
You kept our secret when nobody else would have.
 
Saying how grateful we both are just
isn’t enough.”

Annie and me.
 
Our.
 
We
.
 
Sheila swallowed hard.
 
Those were phrasings it would take time
to get used to.
 
“You’ve already
thanked me a dozen times.
 
Please,
no more.”

He was about to go on
when her Bollywood ring tone rent the air.
 
She let her mobile go to voicemail, then walked to her handbag to
retrieve the message.

“Anyone
important?”
 
Reid was back to
looking at his computer screen.

Sheila found that
simple question surprisingly difficult to answer.
 
“It’s Sam Trotter.”

“Who?”

She explained.

“It’s all over.
 
What could he possibly want now?” Reid
asked.

What Sam Trotter wanted
was to know if Sheila was all right, if he could help her with anything,
anything at all.
 
He also wanted to
ask her to dinner.
 
On Friday after
the show, or Saturday if Sheila would find that easier.
 
This weekend, he hoped.
 
And maybe a glass of wine or a cup of
coffee sooner, if she could swing it.

Sheila saved the
voicemail.
 
“Nothing,” she told
Reid, then smiled.

*

It had been years since
Reid had gone to a florist.
 
He used
to know a little corner place not far from his house that could be counted on
for gorgeous blooms, but it was gone, replaced by a
taqueria
.
 
Finally he found a shop that passed
muster, and splurged on an enormous spring bouquet that was a riot of
color.
 
He asked the clerk to
replenish the water in the vase, then carefully belted his floral treasure in
the passenger seat of his truck and proceeded to his destination.

Between imposing stone
columns, tall iron gates stood open.
 
Reid slowed to a properly reverential pace and drove through.
 

All around him were
rolling grass-covered hills dotted with gravestones.
 
Some rose in the shape of a cross, or an
angel, or a Madonna.
 
Others were
simple and rectangular, reduced in dimension by the passage of time.
 
Colorful bouquets much like his own
struggled to remain upright in front of many a marker, a good number of which
were also ornamented with small American flags.

Once Reid had to stop
to ask directions, since it had been some time since he had come here.
 
Mausoleums proved to be good
signposts.
 
A few other vehicles
also wound their way along the narrow, curving roads.
 
At one point he passed a burial in
progress, where people with bowed heads huddled around a flower-covered
bier.
 
A minute later he encountered
what was to him an even more solemn sight: a burial not long ago
concluded.
 
Now, however, no
mourners remained.
 
All that was
left for the dearly departed was an uneven mound of dirt topped with decaying
blooms, timeworn mementoes of a final earthly rite.

Reid had changed, but
the gravestone he sought remained the same, and ever would.

Donna Jane Partridge

1978 – 2006

He settled the vase
against the gray stone, taking great care that it was stable.
 
Then he stilled, crouching on the grass,
and waited for his eyes to clear of tears.

He asked forgiveness,
as he did every time he visited.
 
He
told Donna he loved her, and always would.
 
Whatever happened in his life, that was one constant.

Then he told her about
Annie, and how he’d turned the truck around the night before even though he was
sure he had a chance to nab Bigelow.
 
He told her how foolish he had been, how cocksure, for a second time,
and that it had almost cost Annie her life.
 
He couldn’t believe he had done that
again, but this time he and she both had been incredibly lucky.
 
He was an unbelievably flawed man, Reid
told Donna, but somehow an amazing woman found it within herself to love him
anyway, and he loved her back.

He asked if Donna would
understand if he stopped hunting Bigelow, and got the funniest feeling she
wanted to know why he had been hunting this long, if the hunt came at so high a
price.
 
It was time to let it go.
 
Let it go.

Reid changed one word
in that verdict, and again the tears flowed.

It was time to let her
go.

*

After Annie answered
the last of the FBI’s questions, she could have gone to any of a hundred
glamorous places.
 
Thanks to her
skyrocketing book sales, she could afford a penthouse suite in a top-flight
hotel, or a first-class plane ticket to San Francisco with a private limo and
driver to ferry her further north to Bodega Bay.

Instead, she asked
Lionel Simpson if the FBI might drop her off at a certain residential address
in the town of Glendale, California.
 
As it happened, he was familiar with the location.

Neighborhood kids had
commandeered Reid’s block for a baseball game.
 
They halted play just long enough for
her two-man police escort to see her safely to Reid’s front door.
 
It was a whole new thing to be able to
enter his house in the bright sunshine of a spring afternoon when it didn’t
matter one whit if anybody saw her.

For a time she and Reid
stood in the living room just staring at one another.
 
They had seen each other at the
Waring
estate that morning, of course, but it had been
different then, crowded with so many people—from cops, FBI, and
paramedics, to homicide detectives, K-9 units, and forensic investigators.

She was acutely aware
that the last time they had been alone, they’d fought.
 
She had told him to go, just go.
 
Now he stood in front of her and all she
wanted was for him to stay.
 
Just
stay.

He stepped forward and
bundled her into his arms.
 
Even
when she was ready for him to let her go, he held on.
 
It was a different Reid, somehow; she
could feel that.

He spoke into her
hair.
 
“I want to ask you to forgive
me even though what I did was unforgivable.”

She pulled back and
shook her head.

He lay a quieting
finger on her lips.
 
“There is no
excuse for my leaving you the way I did.
 
When I did.
 
Refusing to
allow the possibility that you were right about the tip being false.
 
Which you were.”

He released her and
stepped away as if he didn’t have the right to hold her.
 
“You almost died, Annie.
 
I know how close you came.
 
If I had stayed, if I had listened to
you, if I had put what you needed above what I did, you would not have been in
that danger.
 
I feel responsible.”

“You’re not
responsible.
 
And I didn’t die.”

The truth was that she
was very proud she had saved herself.
 
In the end, she had needed no help from Reid, or from anyone.
 
It made her feel, at last, like the
Annie she used to be.
 
That Annie
was back.
 
To stay.

She closed the distance
between herself and Reid.
 
“And
since I didn’t die,” she told him, “now I want to make sure I live.”

She drew him close and
kissed him until she thought maybe he believed he was forgiven.
 
Then she kissed him some more.

“It’s okay about
Donna,” she told him.
 
“She can have
a piece of your heart.
 
She deserves
that, and more.”

“I told her today I’ve
stopped chasing Bigelow.”
 
Annie’s
heart broke to see tears fill Reid’s eyes.
 
“I don’t know for the life of me why, but I think she’s forgiven me,
too.”

Then he told Annie two
stories, how the prior night he’d turned the truck around, and how that day he
finally laid Donna to rest.

There was much to talk
about, and much to plan, and wine to drink, and love to make.
 
That night ended, and the next dawn
broke, and Annie’s imagination, always vivid, pictured a multitude of such
dawns, each as hallowed as the one that preceded it so long as this man was by
her side.

Annie was a woman who
loved books, and she thought about her life in chapters.
 
A new one was beginning for her, she
knew, as surely as if a chapter heading were typed on her soul.

This one would be long.
 
This one would be epic.
 
And this one would surely have a happy
ending.

Diana loves to hear from readers. E-mail her at
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Continue
reading for an excerpt from Diana’s latest release,
Ms America and the Villainy in Vegas
, the second installment in the
cozy mystery series that readers call “wonderful,” “funny,” and “a perfect
summer beach read.”

MS AMERICA AND THE VILLAINY IN VEGAS

(Ms America Mysteries, No. 2)

Beauty queen and
budding sleuth Happy Pennington returns, this time to gaudy, garish Las Vegas …

When Happy pulls
bridesmaid duty for pageant-wear purveyor Sally Anne Gibbons, the last thing
she expects to find at the altar is a corpse. But at these over-the-top
nuptials that’s what she gets: a dead best man and a groom who just might be
the killer.

Sometimes it seems
everybody in Sin City has a secret, from the cocktail waitress trying to land a
reality-show gig to the silver-haired cougar with a penchant for blackjack
dealers. Maybe hunky pageant emcee Mario Suave is hiding something, too: like
the
hots
for everybody’s favorite beauty queen ...

CHAPTER
ONE

Never in my life have I seen a bridesmaid dressed as a
showgirl.
 
Until I turn and look at myself
in the mirror.

“Sally Anne Gibbons.”
 
I tug my rhinestone-encrusted push-up bra a tad higher.
 
“I cannot believe you’re making us wear
this to your wedding.”

“This is Vegas, baby.”
 
Sally Anne lifts her double chin and glowers at me.
 
“Roll with it.”

My fellow bridesmaid Shanelle is attempting to pry her thong
out of the nether regions into which it has largely disappeared.
 
“I haven’t flashed this much skin since
I gave birth.
 
Are you sure you
don’t want, I don’t know, a classier look?”

“It’s a little late for that now, don’t you think?
 
I’m getting hitched in fifteen
minutes.”
 
Sally Anne’s inch-long
red fingernails flip a coppery curl behind her ear.
 
“Besides, if I wanted classy, would I be
getting married on the Strip?”

Shanelle and I glance at one another.
 
Perhaps a more rhetorical question has
never been posed.

“What’s your problem, anyhow?”
 
Sally Anne
smooths
her sequin-studded sateen.
 
“You two
prance around onstage wearing nothing more than a few inches of Lycra.”