Darling Elizabeth … I’m writing this so you’ll have something when you get back. I know these separations are hard for you and I wish there were some way I could ease your pain. You are so much more honest than I am, so much more open about what you feel than I allow myself to be, but I do love you and I don’t want you to have any doubts about that. You’re right when you say that I’m conservative. I’m guilty as charged, your Honor, but I’m not immune to suffering and as often as I’ve been accused of being selfish, I’m not as reckless of others as you might think. I would like to take our time about this and be sure that it’s something we both want. What we have now is very dear to me and I’m not saying-please believe me-that I wouldn’t turn my life around for you if it comes to that. On the other hand, I think we should both be sure that we can survive the day-to-day absurdities of being together. Right now, the intensity dazzles and it seems simple enough for us both to chuck it all and make some kind of life, but we haven’t known each other that long or that well. I can’t afford to risk wife, kids, and career in the heat of the moment though you know it tempts me. Please let’s move slowly on this. I love you more than I can say and I don’t want to lose you which is selfish enough, I suppose, in itself. You’re right to push, but please don’t lose sight of what’s at stake, for you as well as me. Tolerate my caution if you can. I love you.
Laurence
I didn’t know what to make of it. I realized, in a flash, that it wasn’t just that I hadn’t believed in an affair between Laurence and Elizabeth. I hadn’t wanted to believe. I wasn’t sure I believed it yet but why the resistance? It was so neat. So convenient. It fit in so nicely with what I knew of the facts and still I stared at the letter, holding it gingerly by one comer as I read it again. I leaned back against the bed. What was the matter with me? I was exhausted and I knew I’d been through too much in the last few days but something nagged at me and I wasn’t sure it had so much to do with the letter as it did with myself, with something in my nature, some little niggling piece of self-illumination that I was fighting hard not to recognize. Either the letter was real or it was not, and there were ways to verify that. I pulled myself together wearily. I found a large envelope and slipped the letter inside, being careful not to smudge fingerprints, already thinking ahead to Con Dolan, who would love it since it confirmed all his nastiest suspicions about what had been going on back then. Was this what Sharon Napier had figured out? Was this what she could have corroborated if she’d lived long enough?
I lay on the bed fully dressed, body tense, brain wired. Who could she have hoped to blackmail with this information if she’d known? It had to be what she was up to. It had to be why she’d been killed. Someone had followed me to Las Vegas, knowing that I would see her, knowing that she might confirm what I hadn’t wanted to believe. I couldn’t prove it, of course, but I wondered if I was getting close enough to the truth to be in danger myself. I wanted to go home. I wanted to retreat to the safety of my small room. I wasn’t thinking clearly yet, but I was getting close. For eight years, nothing happened and now it was all beginning again. If Nikki was innocent, then someone had been sitting pretty all this time, someone in danger of exposure now.
I saw, for an instant, the look that had flashed in Nikki’s eyes, unreasoning malevolence, a harsh irrational rage. She had set this all in motion. I had to consider the possibility that Sharon Napier was blackmailing her, that Sharon knew something that could link Nikki to Libby’s death. If Sharon had dropped out of sight, it was possible that Nikki had hired me to flush her out and that Nikki had then eliminated any threat with one quick shot. She might also have followed me back to Sherman Oaks for a frantic search through Libby’s belongings for anything that might have linked Libby to Laurence Fife. There were pieces missing yet but they would fall into place and then maybe the whole of it would make sense. Assuming I lived long enough myself to figure it out …
CHAPTER 18
I dragged myself out of bed at 6:00 A.M. I hadn’t slept at all. My mouth felt stale and I brushed my teeth. I showered and dressed. I longed to run but I felt too vulnerable to jog down the middle of San Vicente at that hour. I packed, closing up my typewriter, shoving the pages of my report into my briefcase. I loaded the boxes into my car again, along with my suitcase. The lights in the office were on and I could see Arlette taking jelly doughnuts out of a bakery box, putting them on a plastic plate with a clear dome lid. Water was already heating for that awful, flat instant coffee. She was licking powdered sugar from her fingers when I went in.
“God, you’re up awful early,” she said. “You want breakfast?”
I shook my head. Even with my penchant for junk food, I wouldn’t eat a jelly doughnut. “No, but thanks, ” I said. “I’m checking out.”
“Right now?”
I nodded, almost too tired to talk. She finally seemed to sense that this was the wrong time to chat. She got my bill ready and I signed it, not even bothering to add up the charges. She usually made a mistake but I didn’t care.
I got in my car and headed for Sherman Oaks. There was a light on in Grace’s kitchen, which I approached from around the side of the building. I tapped on the window and after a moment, she came into the service porch and opened the side door. She looked small and precise this morning in an A-line corduroy skirt and a coffee-colored cotton turtleneck. She kept her voice low.
“Raymond’s not awake yet but there’s coffee if you like,” she said.
“Thanks, but I’ve got a breakfast meeting at eight,” I said, lying without much thought. Whatever I said would be passed on to Lyle and my whereabouts were none of his business — or hers. “I just wanted to drop the boxes off.”
“Did you find anything?” she asked. Her gaze met mine briefly and then she blinked, glancing first at the floor and then off to my left.
“Too late,” I said, trying to ignore the flush of relief that tinted her cheeks.
“That’s unfortunate,” she murmured, placing a hand against her throat. “I’m uh … sure it wasn’t Lyle …”
“It doesn’t matter much anyway,” I said. I felt sorry for her in spite of myself. “I packed everything back as neatly as I could. I’ll just stack the boxes in the basement near the bin. You’ll probably want to have that repaired when you get the basement door fixed.”
She nodded. She moved to close the door and I stepped back, watching her pad back into the kitchen in her soft-soled slippers. I felt as if I’d personally violated her life somehow, that everything was ending on a bad note. She’d been as helpful as she knew how and she’d gotten little in return. I had to shrug. There was nothing I could do at this point. I unloaded the car, making several trips, stacking boxes just inside the damaged bin. Unconsciously, I listened for Lyle. The light in the basement was cold and gray by day, but aside from the splintered lathework and the shattered window, there was no other evidence of the intruder. I went out the back way on the last trip up from the basement, checking idly for smashed cigarette butts, bloody fingerprints, a small printed business card perhaps, dropped by whoever broke in. I came up the concrete stairs outside, looking off to the right at the path the intruder had taken-across the patchy grass in the backyard, over a sagging wire fence, and through a tangle of bushes. I could see through to the next street where the car must have been parked. It was early morning yet and the sunlight was flat and still. I could hear heavy traffic on the Ventura Freeway, which was visible in glimpses through the clumps of trees off to the right. The ground wasn’t even soft enough to absorb footprints. I moved around the building to the driveway on my left, noting with interest that the power mower had now been pulled off to one side. My palms were still ripped up in places, two-inch tracks where I’d skidded across the gravel on my hands. I hadn’t even thought to use Bactine and I hoped I wouldn’t be subject to raging gangrene, perilous infections, or blood poisoning — dangers my aunt had warned me about every time I skinned my knee.