Death at the Wheel (23 page)

It was as close as he'd ever come to saying please. Now that he was here—now that I had him in my power, as they used to say in old movies—I wasn't letting him leave. "The other night at my mother's you were saying something about Julie going down to Connecticut and then your beeper went off and you never finished. Julie went down there? While her husband was taking the course?" He nodded. "Did Cal know she was coming?"

"Cal? Of course not."

"Why did she go?"

"There was another woman. With Cal there always was another woman, of course, but she'd heard him on the phone, booking a room, and something seemed different—maybe just the fact that he wasn't trying very hard to hide it from her. Oh sure. He told her he was going to be taking the course with a cousin of his. But we all know about these cousins, don't we? Julie was afraid this one was serious. That he was going to leave her. She said he'd changed. Grown harsher, more critical and, at the same time, more oblivious, more uncaring. Disinterested. Withdrawn from their lives in areas where he'd been obsessive. There had even been some nights when he didn't come home. He hadn't done that before. Having a father for the girls was very important to her. Important enough to tolerate all he put her through."

"So she went down there?"

"Yes."

"And was he with a woman?"

Durren shook his head. "He was sharing a room with his cousin."

"Did you go with her?"

"I'm a physician," he said huffily. "I work on weekends. I was at the hospital on Sunday when that accident happened."

"And Julie? Where was she?"

"As far as I know, she was home on Sunday."

As far as he knew? Even though he said he loved her, he didn't seem to feel any obligation to support Julie. That annoyed me and made me want to provoke him. "But the car wasn't tampered with on Sunday, was it?"

"I'm a physician," he repeated, "I know about the human body, not cars. And I work Saturdays, too. It's in my contract, covering the weekends." He sounded resentful, but I didn't know whether it was of me or of having to work weekends. Or maybe just that I was taking up his time when he wanted to be off. For all his concern and sincerity, there was something of the petulant child about Dr. Durren.

"What's this?" I asked, patting the dashboard. "Your midlife crisis?" Durren didn't respond.

"So you don't know whether Bass was with a woman or not?"

"She said he was with his cousin," he growled.

"A male cousin?"

"Yes." He spat out the word between clenched teeth. "Julie doesn't lie."

I thought of some of the things Julie had said to me. About her rich father and her privileged upbringing, and changed the subject. "Does your wife know about your relationship with Julie Bass?"

"My wife has no interest in me or in anything I do," Durren said bitterly, "although, for reasons which I cannot ascertain, she wishes to remain Mrs. Doctor Durren."

I had no response to that. "Do you know anything about this cousin who was there with Bass? Name? Age? Place of residence?"

"No. Nothing. Julie probably does." Obviously, it had never occurred to him that the cousin might be an important witness. He checked his watch impatiently. "I really must go. People will be waiting. About the car," he said abruptly. "Something I can control. No surprises. No disappointments. No demands. Just a satisfying, predictable response. An antidote to the rest of my life."

I got out. He was gone almost before my feet touched the pavement.

Another choppy little piece of my day gone. I went upstairs and worked for about two nanoseconds and then it was time to remove the clandestine documents from the safe and go see my banker. I like the sound of that—my banker—it makes me feel like someone important. I wasn't feeling important in general, though. I was feeling frustrated and confused. And sore.

Delayne looked like an African princess. Her skin was rich, dark chocolate. Short-cropped hair revealed a perfectly shaped head on a long, graceful neck. Her arms and legs were endlessly long and slim and gorgeous and her eyes black, shiny, slightly slanted and exotic. She carried herself like the model she could have been, moving with a stately grace as she came to meet me.

Early on, she'd made the decision to take pride in her heritage, and her walls were decorated with bright tribal fabrics and African sculpture. As she'd said to me once, "Some people try to play the assimilation game. And they blend in. Not entirely, but they blend. I don't blend. I'm never going to meet anyone who doesn't notice that I'm black..." She'd paused. "...and beautiful. So I'm making a political statement, a social statement, and"—she lowered her voice—"scaring the heck out of 'em."

"Have a seat," she said, waving at the row of chairs facing her desk. "Some days I look over at these chairs and I feel like a high school principal. I've been known to rap on the desk, too. Some people have no sense of order." She slid into her chair and waited, her hands clasped loosely on the blotter in front of her. Waiting like that, she looked like a high school principal.

Her suit was heavy silk, the color of the caramel in a Milky Way bar, with a honey-colored silk blouse underneath. She had a string of amber, turquoise, and honey beads, and two chunks of amber in her ears, complete with bugs. She tapped her earlobes. "Disgusting, aren't they? All day long people have been staring at my ears and making faces they think I don't see. But Delayne sees all."

"What does Delayne see here?" I took out the mortgage forms and handed them to her.

She smiled warmly and gathered them in. "Cloak, or dagger?" she said.

"You tell me."

She started out smiling but the smile quickly dissolved into a frown of concentration as she worked her way through the pile. I might as well have not been there. All her attention was focused on the papers. Finally she looked up. "Equal Opportunity Lending," she said, in words of all caps. She pulled out a few applications and spread them on the desk in front of me. "See how these are paired? You've got minority applications and white applications with approximately identical financial pictures, only in each case, the minority application was denied and the white application approved."

"Bad?"

She nodded. "Bad. Very bad indeed. If I were the guy in charge of the lending department, heads would be rolling, probably mine included. Or, if I were a CYA type, I'd be hoping this just disappeared."

"CYA?"

"Cover your ass."

"Oh."

"And you said these were removed from the bank's files by an employee?"

I nodded. My stomach was doing a little knotting number again. I had the feeling Delayne was about to give me some more bad news. "Just before the FDIC was supposed to do an audit."

Delayne shook her head sadly. "A real mess. You don't want to get involved in this, Thea. This is federal stuff. The FBI investigates messes like this. If I were you, I'd put that briefcase in a box and ship it UPS to the fibbies with a note that you found it by the side of the road. Or leave it by the bank door."

I was thinking about the faux cops and Cal Bass's accident. "But surely these aren't the kind of thing people kill each other over? A bunch of loan applications?"

She shook her head. "I've given up being surprised at what people kill each other for, Thea. There are people out there killing over a jacket or shoes or even a look. As for these..." She shrugged. "Discriminatory lending is serious business. It's a criminal offense. A federal criminal offense. Or it could be. And an employee whose carelessness brings the FDIC investigators into a bank is not going to be a popular person. People could lose their jobs. And then there's tampering...."

"Tampering?"

She held out an application. "You see these faint little chicken scratches in the margin? These pencil marks? Someone was worried about what to do with these. Very worried. Someone was trying to figure out how to alter them. And that is a criminal offense." Delayne frowned. "As far as I'm concerned, I never saw these papers and I never talked to you." She made shooing motions with her hands. "If you know what's good for you, neither did you. Get rid of 'em." She no longer looked enthused about her cloak-and-dagger experience.

I left her office, toting the tainted files, feeling like it had been a very sorry day. Several times on my way to the car, I looked back over my shoulder, expecting that at any minute a carload of fibbies would come roaring up and cart me off to jail.

 

 

 

Chapter 17

 

I skipped aerobics, passing up the opportunity to watch Aaron cavort and sweat with a touch of regret. He makes me feel like a dirty old lady, but having lustful thoughts can contribute to a healthy sex life. Andre was coming tonight and I didn't need any more stimulus for lustful thoughts. I already ached from head to toe; I didn't need Aaron for that, either. What I needed aerobics for was to sweat the anxiety and anger out of my system. In my present battered state, though, the pain outweighed the benefits. I went to the grocery store instead.

Andre always needles me about my refrigerator with observations like if I got snowed in, I'd starve, or was I trying to invent a new form of penicillin? So what if I don't keep food in the house? I have other good qualities. I'm kind, quick-witted, and loyal. And I hate grocery shopping. The too-bright lights make my brain malfunction and the grade-B music sets my teeth on edge. But there's some truth to the contention that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach—at least in Andre's case. He'd even ordered his dinner at Mama Thea's restaurant.

I parked in the crowded lot and got a cart, wincing at the length of the checkout lines. The aisles, jammed with tired shoppers in a hurry, looked like a bumper car course at a county fair, as people shoved each other's carts around to get at the food. I dutifully bought potatoes and herbed cheese and salmon fillets and lemons and chives and butter and my favorite quick-and-dirty Caesar salad mix: romaine, endive, and radicchio. Bacon and eggs and strawberries for breakfast. I had to buy the berries. They smelled real. Then it was on to the bakery.

I have a soft spot for baked goods. Mom used to bake bread when we were little, and a thick slice of bread hot from the oven, slathered with butter, is as close to heaven as life gets. If I ate as many baked goods as I liked, I'd be a 5'11" collage of soft spots. But the smell of baking bread is soothing and seductive, and I came away with a cart groaning under the weight of foccacia and cheese bread and herb and sun-dried tomato bread, whole wheat, raisin and pecan rolls, and croissants, regular, chocolate and strawberry and sweet cheese. The lemon cheesecake Andre had requested. Chocolate chip cookies to eat in the car. Thick slices of pizza rustica for snacks, layered with cheese and hot ham and red peppers and spinach. I was light-headed just thinking about how much fun it was going to be.

I've learned a few things over the years about caring for a damaged body. I chose the store with grocery boys—average age seventy-five—who wheel the cart out and load the car. Sweet, chatty, avuncular men who call me young lady and make me yearn for simpler times and smaller towns. Too bad you couldn't take them home to unload at the other end, but maybe I expect too much from life. One thing I expected that I was going to have, though—a quiet evening with Andre without anyone ringing the doorbell or barging in and pushing me around.

Back home, I let myself in, turned off the alarm, dumped the groceries on the counter, and left it all sitting there while I went to change. There was no surreptitious breathing, no sound out of the ordinary. Just the appliances doing their thing and the hiss of the ocean outside on the rocks. There was no one in my living room. No one in the bathroom. No one in my closet. No leering, evil eyes watched me as I changed into leggings and an oversized silk shirt, switched on ZZ Top, and sashayed through the rooms, putting things away and starting dinner. Tomorrow I would be back on the case, sorting out poor Julie's life, but tonight belonged to me.

When the doorbell rang, I was lounging on the couch, drinking white wine and listening to Marcus Roberts playing smooth jazz. The potatoes smelled delicious, the salmon was marinating, and the salad was waiting to be dressed. The peephole gave me a rather fish-eyed view of Andre, holding a florist's bundle.

"Dahling!" I said, opening the door. "Are those for me?"

"Nothing's too good for my girl," he said, handing over the flowers with a flourish. "And as soon as you've put them in water, I want to hear all about those two guys who were here last night. You said you were being careful...."

"How did you know—" I began, but of course I knew. "Harris, right? The police brotherhood?"

"Fellowship," he corrected. "Brotherhood is non-PC, isn't it?" He hesitated, knowing how prickly I could be. "Were you planning to keep it a secret? Did you think I wouldn't notice...?" He broke off abruptly and seized the flowers. "I'll put these in water. Sit down. You look tired."

"Tired? Not ravishing? Not gorgeous? Just tired?" He looked tired himself. Tired and like a man with something on his mind. Something besides good food, good company, and good sex. I'd been looking forward to an evening relaxing and having fun; Andre wanted to talk. I felt a tightening in my stomach, and a mix of relief and irritation. So we'd do both. We'd play. We'd talk. That was what relationships were all about.