Marilyn Pappano - Criminal Deception

It was a stupid invitation that she had luckily refused the first time. He no more wanted her inside his house, touching his things, leaving her scent on the air, than he’d wanted her in his car with Josh two years ago. If he’d turned down his brother’s request, he wouldn’t have gotten shot, at least not that day.

Would Josh have been shot instead? And maybe Liz, too, because she was with him? Would either of them have been as lucky as Joe had? Or would one or both of them be dead now?

He touched one wrist to his ribcage, where a scar marked the entrance wound of the second bullet. That was the first time in two years that he’d considered himself lucky.

She hesitated so long that he thought she was going to turn him down again, but then she got up and walked to the door, slipping past him with so little room to spare that he’d swear he felt the air ripple between them.

His house was laid out exactly like hers: living room, eat-in kitchen, bedroom, bath. He hadn’t brought any furniture from Chicago. All the leather and chrome stuff had sold with the condo. Instead, he’d borrowed a few pieces from Miss Abigail in the beginning while he looked for what he wanted: old oak and pine for the wood pieces, overstuffed comfort for the upholstered ones. Color brightened the walls, and rugs warmed the wood floors. It was cozy, his mother had proclaimed on her one visit. He preferred to think comfortable.

What did Liz think?

She hardly glanced at the television that dominated one corner of the living room but turned her attention instead to the bookcases. They were filled with books, both fiction and nonfiction, and stacked in one shelf corner was a pile of magazines. He watched stiffly as she picked up the top one, glanced it, then laid it back. He usually recycled magazines as soon as he finished with them, but he’d kept these to camouflage the one at the bottom. Alone, it would rouse interest. Just part of a pile, no one noticed it.

Next she glanced at the wicker basket that stored paper for recycling, then a group of pictures on the wall: his parents on their wedding day, both sets of grandparents and all of his great-grandparents in their youth. Everything more recent-everything including Josh-was packed in a box in the attic.

She stopped in the kitchen door. The dogs had checked their food dishes, upended now in the middle of the floor, then vacated. They were probably on his bed, seeing what other trouble they could cause, but Joe didn’t go looking for them. He watched Liz’s gaze skim the counters as if nothing there held any interest to her, besides possibly the coffee maker. She scanned the walls, with their photos and framed recipes, handwritten by various long-gone women in his family, and the square oak table that took too much room. “You actually live here,” she remarked.

“Did you think I slept in the storeroom at the shop and just changed clothes here?”

“Didn’t you pretty much use your condo for just changing clothes?”

He smiled ruefully as he brushed a patch of Bear’s fur from the sofa cushions before sitting down. “I didn’t like the condo much. Cold and sterile wasn’t my idea of home.”

“That’s what you get for giving an interior decorator free rein.” She sat, too, in the armchair, drawing her feet onto the cushions, wriggling into its depths. “The only place to sit in my house is the wicker sofa that belongs on Mrs. Wyndham’s porch. It’s nice, but I do miss solid furniture.”

“I used that sofa, too, when I moved in.” Had sat on it, eaten dinner on it, slept on it with his feet hanging over the arm. “But you’re not staying long enough to need real furniture.”

Her only response was a shrug.

He didn’t move-sprawled on the sofa, one arm resting along its back, legs stretched out underneath the coffee table-but the tension ratcheting through him made him feel as if he’d compressed in place. “If I knew where Josh was, I’d tell you.”

“To get rid of me?”

To save me. “But I don’t know.”

“He’ll come here.”

“He’ll go somewhere. He’s got a lot of friends and relatives who haven’t moved in the last two years. It’ll be easier to get help from them than to bother finding me.”

“Relatives who know where you are? Where your parents are?”

Joe stared at a painting on the wall, an oil done decades ago by a great-great-grandmother he’d never met. It was one of the few possessions her daughter had been able to bring to the U.S. when she fled Havana. It wasn’t very well done, the brush strokes too heavy, the perspective too fuzzy. It was like looking at the city through cloudy glass, but it held sentimental value.

Josh held sentimental value, too. Not necessarily to him, but to some of his friends. Dory’s best friend had been appalled when Dory asked everyone not to give Josh any information about them or Joe. He’s your son, your own flesh and blood! How can you turn your back on him?

Nothing, Opal had declared, could ever make her abandon her children, and she was ashamed that her friend could even think about doing so. If Josh contacted her-not likely but always possible-she might give it a second thought, but in the end, she would give him their addresses and phone numbers.

Maybe a warning phone call to Opal was in order. Maybe Thomas P. Smith, U.S. Attorney’s Office, would make it for him.

“What did you guys do after I left Chicago?”

Liz combed her fingers through her hair before resting her cheek on her fist. “Josh figured getting out of town was the safest thing for him, too.”

“And you went with him.” She didn’t love him now, she’d said, but had she then? Giving up her home and her job, if she’d had one, to leave town with a man whom other people wanted dead…That required a serious commitment, didn’t it?

She gave no sign of it. “It’s not as if Chicago was my home. I’d been there long enough. It was time to go someplace else.”

“Where?”

“We moved around a lot. Made it all the way west to San Francisco.”

“And he left you.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Her smile was wry.

It was amazing. On the one hand, Josh had never stayed with one woman that long. On the other…you just didn’t walk away from a woman like Liz.

Why would any man with breath in his body want to?

“Why the coffee shop?” she asked while he was still looking for an answer to his own question. “There must have been other small businesses for sale. Were you already a java connoisseur?”

“Nope. I drank my fair share of it, but before I came here, I didn’t even own a coffee maker. It just seemed…” Everything about the day he’d made the decision was clear in his memory. He’d been driving, neither knowing nor caring where he was going besides away from Chicago. He’d reached Copper Lake around noon and stopped for lunch at Ellie’s Deli. Afterward, he’d walked around downtown to delay climbing back into the car again, and he’d realized that for the first time in six months, he hadn’t looked over his shoulder once. It had seemed a sign. Then he’d seen the real sign-For Sale -taped in the front window of a shop bearing his name. He’d gone inside and walked out two hours later with an obligation and a new hometown.

“Right,” Liz supplied quietly. “It seemed right.”

He nodded. “Back then all I knew about coffee was that the good stuff was really good and the bad was really bad, but it beat not having any at all. The first thing I did, besides shutting down the place to remodel, was start researching coffee. Now I’m a connoisseur. Back then I was just ready for a new start. Doing what didn’t really matter.”

She was quiet a long time, her expression wistful. Was she ready for a new start, too? Looking for closure to her two-plus years with Josh so she could move on with her life? And where would she make that new start? Back in Chicago? At home in Kansas?