You Know Who I Am (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries Book 2) (28 page)

“What do you need to bring with you?”

What did I need out of the guesthouse? Nothing. Not one damned thing, really. Well, except for our metal box full of documents. Everything else was replaceable. “My box of documents. Best not left here.”

He nodded and turned to talk to one of the uniformed officers.

I walked across the gardens to the front door of the guesthouse and entered. The first thing I noticed was that the living room was a bloody mess—the pillows were everywhere.

Then I noticed our jackets and sweaters strewn on the ground.

And then I discovered that Vin Behar hadn’t come to visit me by himself.

“Hello, Kristin,” I said.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

KRISTIN WAS HOLDING a gun. She wasn’t a trained shooter, which meant she was in danger of killing both of us. I had a problem with half of that equation. I held my hands up and started moving, slowly, to my right, through the living room. Into the shadows. A moving target’s a great deal harder to hit.

“Hi Kristin.”

“Shut up.” Her voice was nasally. She’d been crying. Angry, crying, and armed. A fabulous combination.

“Talk to me,” I said softly.

“I hate you,” she said. “I hate you so much. I wish you were dead.”

The gun pointed my direction made that clear. “Everything’s going to be okay, Kristin.” I had to keep her talking. I also had to keep reminding her who she was, make sure she was aware that this was real life. It’s easy to dissociate when things are getting out of hand.

“You’ve ruined everything. Everything.”

“Just relax. Take a deep breath, and relax.”

“Stop!”

I didn’t stop. “Relax, and breathe. Everything will be fine. Just slow down and talk to me.”

“None of this would have happened except for you!”

“I don’t understand what you mean. Can you tell me what you mean, Kristin?”

“I was so
thrilled
when Vince told me you were at Colin’s apartment that night. Finally we were done with you but no!”

My peripheral vision showed me movement through the living room window. Gruen was walking up to the front door. I kept moving, to turn Kristin’s focus totally away from that area.

“You had the bracelet. He called you and asked you to bring it back.”

“He starts telling me that things have gone wrong with Penelope but oh no, everything is all right, because Drusilla will figure it out!”

She was screeching. She was definitely on the verge of pulling that trigger. And I know from personal experience that if you’ve killed once, the second one gets that much easier.

“Kristin, think about this. There’s no going back after killing someone.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she screamed. “I loved him.”

Gruen opened the front door, quietly, gun drawn. Somewhere to my right, I saw movement in the kitchen. Someone was coming in the back door.

“Yes, you were angry that night. But you don’t have to be angry now.”

“He’d left me.”

He’d left all of us, but this probably wasn’t a good time to recap my darling late husband’s foibles.

“Why?” I asked her. “Why did you kill him?”

Kristin’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t—”

“Kristin, you need to tell someone. Confession really is good for the soul.”

She shook her head.

“The photos? He double-crossed you? He wanted all the money?”

She said nothing as she stared at me, her lips growing whiter and whiter as she clenched her mouth shut.

She was staring at me.

I was her reason?

She’d done it because of me?

“You killed him because of me?” I asked.

“After everything we’d been through,” she yelled, “after everything we’d done and planned, he says he’s in love with you.”

Laughing would be the wrong response. “Kristin—”

But my words couldn’t stop her. She was letting out the rage she’d been holding in. “All the time we’d spent together and worked together and you show up and take everything away from me!”

Gruen rolled his hand in the air.
Keep her talking
.

“What did I take, Kristin?” I said.

“Shut up!”

“I have a right to know why you want to kill me.”

“You took my job. You took Colin. You took my life! You show up in Las Vegas, and he says we’re done. You show up in Los Angeles, and suddenly now we’re through with Penelope, too. And oh no, no, we weren’t.”

“I didn’t know anything that was going on with Penelope.”

“On top of everything else, right in front of me he tells you he loves you!”

What was she talking about? And then, suddenly, I knew. “You mean, he said it when he was on the phone.”

“Yes.”

“Think, Kristin. Did he say my name?"

“He didn’t have to.”

“He didn’t say my name, because he wasn’t talking to me when he said it.”

I only knew she’d heard me because she blinked and then adjusted her stance.

“It wasn’t over with you because of me. He was on the phone with Annie, Kristin. Anne da Silva.”

Kristin’s face screwed up, as though I’d told her a very funny joke. “Oh fuck off,” she said. “Please. Don’t insult me.”

“You killed him for the wrong girl. Think about that for the rest of your miserable life.”

“Her?”

The way she dismissed Annie made me want to slap her.

“She’s a better person than you are, Kristin. And that’s even before we consider that you’re a stupid, selfish, murdering bitch.”

Gruen grabbed Kristin’s hand. “Put the gun down,” he said.

Kristin shrieked, but she was no match for him. And after a second, he had the gun and she was sobbing against the pile of coats and sweaters.

Gruen’s partner, Detective Vilar, walked in from the kitchen, gun drawn. He pulled a white card out of his pocket. “Kristin Blake?” he asked in a tone so polite I could barely hear him.

#

Everything happened extremely fast after that, or at least it seemed to. Kristin was arrested and taken by somebody. Penelope gave her statement to someone. The police swept through both houses to make sure we didn’t have anyone else lying in wait with heavy artillery.

Gruen wanted a statement and Nathaniel okayed it. So I recapped everything that had happened that night, even the parts he knew. After we were done, I looked at Nathaniel. “Can I have a second with him?” I asked.

Nathaniel didn’t say anything.

“It’s not anything to do with Colin’s murder,” I said.

My lawyer held up a hand: I had five minutes. Then he wandered over to the outdoor living room, where Stevie was pouring glasses of water for the people who were still here.

“You didn’t bring your close personal law enforcement friends with you?”

“They’re waiting for me to give them a call back.”

“They might frown on locals withholding evidence.”

“I called my friend in Washington,” he said. “The one who ran your name for me? I asked him to run these guys.”

“And…they’re not actually FBI,” I guessed.

He nodded. “Something wrong there.”

“If it bothers you, I’m certain they’re legitimate government employees. They’re probably just doing someone a favor.”

“What did you do? Why are they looking for you?”

I smiled. As I’d said to Kristin, confession is good. The human need to confess is strong and universal. Every authoritarian organization has played on this trait for thousands of years. You just don’t feel the need to confess if you honestly believe you did the right thing. And besides which, I’d gotten absolution a thousand times over from the one person who could give it to me, Stevie.

I shook my head. “It’s not your problem.”

“Why are they here?”

“To put a bullet in my frontal lobes.”

He did that squinting thing, as if trying to figure out if I was kidding or not. Then he nodded and reached into his pocket. To get his handcuffs? To get his phone to call Ed and Fred?

Stress was making me a moron, saying something like that to him. So I did my usual flirtatious grin, as if to say,
Just kidding
. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. What are you going to tell them?”

He held up a baggie, and I blinked at a sudden reflection of light.

My bracelet.

He was going to show them my bracelet?

Then I got it.

“That’s where you got my fingerprints.”

“The bracelet belonged to an Australian magician who worked in Las Vegas, pawn shop capital of the world. Who’s to say where he got it?”

The magnitude of the lie he was about to tell floored me. I don’t like being in debt to people, for any reason, for any amount. “Well played, Detective. What’s the price? Don’t be shy, I’m willing to pay it. Whatever it is.”

“If they do any further digging, it’s your problem.” He put the baggie away. “You won’t be getting this back.”

“No, they’ll take that off your hands.” I wasn’t upset to see it go. It was time to begin a new phase of my life. I hadn’t realized the weight of the stress I’d been under until that moment, when it lifted. “So. What now?”

“You owe me. I have the feeling this is an investment that will pay off.”

“I have a list of things I’m quite talented at.”

“I’m sure.” He wrote something in his notebook and put it away without looking over at me again.

Nathaniel wandered over and handed me a cup of water, which I drank without even thinking about it.

“What was that about?” he asked.

“Kristin’s confessed to killing Colin. Vin’s confessed to being an accessory. The LAPD has no further interest in me. Oh, and the detective’s offering not to turn me over to the feds. In my wildest dreams this involves sexual blackmail of some sort. That about covers it. You?”

“You’re in good spirits,” Nathaniel said.

“They’ve arrested Colin’s murderer. What’s not to like?”

True, I still felt like hell, I was somewhat responsible for Colin’s death, and none of this had brought him back from the dead. But at least this part of the night was over.

Nathaniel and I walked back out to the pool area without speaking. I thought about Colin and the more I thought about him and how he lived and why he died, the sadder I became. And then, with no warning, I burst into tears. Hysterical tears. Unstoppable tears. For Colin, for the mess Kristin had made, for what could have been. For what I did to Peter Quaid eleven years ago. For what was.

Everything that I hadn’t felt over the past two days or the past decade came pouring out in a rush, and I had to stop moving because my legs wouldn’t hold me anymore. Nathaniel gently guided me onto a chaise longue, his arm around my shoulders. I must have destroyed the fabric of his suit, wiping my eyes and nose on his shoulder. Who cared. He could buy another suit. I could not buy another Colin, and I could not buy back what I had done eleven years ago. There is never any going back. However much you might want to.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
IVE

MORNING AT GARY’S estate was simply glorious, no matter the weather. Because we were right on the ocean, it could be warm and sunny, or it could be cold and overcast.

Despite the time of year, today was one of the warm and sunny ones.

Cooking always calmed Stevie’s nerves. After the crazy night we’d had, she was ready for some cooking. So first thing in the morning, she baked up a storm in the kitchen, and then she returned upstairs to lie down for a while. And hide.

I arranged a small repast on the French cafe table on the veranda, set the three chairs in place, and then sat down to wait for Roberto’s arrival.

Stevie and I didn’t retreat to the Peninsula after the police left. After I collected myself, Nathaniel argued with me about staying versus leaving. We settled it by my calling Roberto and telling him I would see him in the morning. And neither the time nor the place was negotiable.

I handed Nathaniel’s phone back to him. “He’ll pay you in full, no matter what, don’t worry.”

He just shook his head at me.

Stevie and I walked back to the guesthouse, and we talked. A short talk. But one we’d avoided for so long.

“It’s time to get help,” I said.

“You mean a psychologist, for me?” she said.

I nodded. “And me.”

She had a quick in-draw of breath, and then she gave me a big hug, not one of her usual little-sister hugs, but one of a friend who actually gave a good goddamn whether I lived or died.

I thought about that, as I sat at the French table and waited.

Roberto’s car arrived precisely at eleven a.m. The limousine parked halfway down the driveway that led around to the guesthouse. The chauffeur hopped to open the back door and Roberto glided out. He strode across the lawn without noticing any of it—as fantastic estates went, for Roberto this one probably rated as someplace the help might be stashed.

I glanced up at the balcony outside Gary’s master bedroom. He was in the window, watching. He’d said we could stay. For a bit, but only if things were exciting in a safe, not-too-exciting way. I compromised with him and said I wouldn’t bring home any more psychotic killers. Unless it couldn’t be helped.

Roberto stopped at the edge of the black stone walkway that ringed the guesthouse. “Why aren’t you ready to leave?”

“Won’t you sit down and join me?” I said.

“Your game playing is tiresome.”

I poured two coffees from the carafe. “Good. I think so, too. So here it is. I’m not going back to New York with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because Stevie is here. Until she comes with me or she’s all right staying on her own, I belong with her.”

He hitched up the knees of his trousers as he sat on the chair opposite me. “You are prepared to live this way for the rest of your natural life?”

I smiled. And nodded.

Roberto shook his head. “You can’t do this. Living on people’s charity. Or worse.”

“I’ll make do, as always.”

“You belong back in New York.”

“Change the terms and we’re both on that flight with you.”

He took his glasses off and rubbed them with his pocket handkerchief. “What makes you think I won’t simply take you with me?”