Marilyn Pappano - Criminal Deception

“With you looking like that? No, thanks.” He strode down the hall toward his bedroom, leaving her alone in the living room.

She wanted to just stand there, or take a seat, the way any woman waiting for a man to change clothes would. She wanted to consider the evening ahead and all its possibilities. Would dinner be comfortable, tense, romantic? Would he be interested in going for a drink afterward? Would he want to prolong their time together? Walk her to her door? Kiss her? Accept her invitation to come inside?

She didn’t want to look around the living room, searching for hiding places. She didn’t want to plan how to get him to confide the details of Daniel Wallace’s visit. She didn’t want to ask any questions or assess any answers for veracity or deception.

She wanted a simple dinner date with the man she was wildly attracted to. No job, no lies, no role-playing.

Listening to footsteps, then running water, she circled the couch to the bookcases. There was no desk in the living room, no file cabinet, no address book left carelessly on a table. Maybe he kept his personal records in the bedroom, in a closet or in the office at the coffee shop. What she was looking for-an address, a phone number, an e-mail address-could be concealed in so many ways that a thorough search might never reveal it. A note tucked inside the covers of a book or the case of a DVD. Information disguised as an account number. Data written in code. It could also have been memorized and destroyed. She could be searching for something that existed only in Joe’s brain.

Sighing, she flipped through the magazines stacked on the bookcase. Green Gourmet. Organic Grounds. Going Green for Small Businesses. Sustainability. Fascinating reading, she was sure. The bottom one was a glossy biking magazine touting Rocky Mountain views from a bike seat. The guy on the cover wore skin-tight clothing that displayed muscled calves to make a woman drool.

“Where do you-”

Liz turned as Joe broke off. He’d changed into gray trousers and a white shirt, tucked in, sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. There was no way around it. The man was hot no matter what he wore.

She held up the magazine. “You planning a vertical bike trip through Colorado?”

His gaze shifted to the magazine and held for a moment before he shrugged casually. “It’s on my list of things to do. Are you ready, or would you rather read an interesting article on the most expensive coffee in the world? It’s in the top magazine in your right hand. They feed the coffee cherries to civets, then collect the beans after they pass through their digestive system. They say it’s very good. Sells for about $50 a cup.”

“After they pass through…Eww.” Suspiciously, she looked from him to the magazine. “You made that up.”

“Scout’s honor.” He crossed to her side, slid the Organic Grounds issue from her grip and flipped it open to a picture of a weasely-looking critter.

She scanned the article, then shoved all the magazines into his hands. “That’s just gross. Way more organic than I ever want to know about.”

He put the magazines away, then gestured toward the door. “I’m guessing you’re not walking far in those ridiculous-”

She shot him a look over her shoulder.

“-ly sexy heels, so we’re taking your car?”

“You can even drive if you want. If you remember how.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” he replied drily as he locked the door.

“That’s right. You borrow Mrs. Wyndham’s car for mysterious trips that you won’t talk about.”

“If I talked about them, they wouldn’t be mysterious, would they?”

She went through the heels-off-to-cross-the-grass routine again, then handed him the car keys. After opening the passenger door for her, he slid behind the wheel, adjusting the seat for his longer legs, then the mirrors and the steering wheel.

“Have you been to Chantal’s?” he asked as he backed out.

“No.” She’d seen it downtown, in the corner of a retail center tucked between River Road and the river, and thought it seemed more a couples kind of place.

“Good.”

Liz let a few blocks pass in silence, simply enjoying the moment, before taking a silent breath and asking, “How was the rest of your day? Any more distractions?”

For a time Joe’s gaze remained fixed on the street ahead. His hands were relaxed on the wheel, but his jaw was clenched. Finally, he glanced her way. “Yeah. One. A lawyer from Chicago. The Mulroneys want to invest in the coffee shop.”

“So if the money-laundering business dries up, they’ll have something to fall back on. And, totally separate from that, of course, you’ll just happen to volunteer your brother’s location.”

He nodded.

She gazed out the window, watching houses give way to businesses. No doubt about it. Daniel Wallace had balls. Approaching a witness’s brother so openly, and doing it himself rather than sending an underling so he could maintain deniability…Overconfidence? Faith that Josh wasn’t going to show up in court?

Maybe the Mulroneys knew Josh wasn’t going to testify because they’d had him killed. Maybe Wallace had come himself because, once Josh’s body was discovered, he could claim innocence for his clients. We were trying to locate Josh Saldana. Would we have bothered if we’d known he was dead?

Josh was a pain in the butt, a petty criminal, a sweet-talking charmer, irresponsible, infuriating, dishonest. But he was Joe’s brother. Dory and Ruben Saldana’s son. He deserved a lot, starting with a stint in prison and a megadose of reality, but he didn’t deserve to die.

The parking lot that fronted Chantal’s was full, so Joe parked on the street across the square from Ellie’s Deli. As they waited at the curb for a break in traffic on River Road, a car filled with teenage boys stopped to let them cross.

“Hey, chica, you look hot,” the front-seat passenger called. “Why don’t you come with us? We show you a good time.”

Liz gave him her brightest smile. Beside her, Joe frowned and took her hand. “Those boys wouldn’t know what to do with you,” he muttered.

“Sometimes neither do you.”

“I know what to do with you. It’s what to do about you that I can’t figure.”

As they approached the hot-red awning that sheltered Chantal’s entrance, her hand warm and secure inside his, Liz understood exactly what he meant.

After a twenty-minute wait for a table, Joe and Liz ordered their meals-his shrimp and scallops, hers fried catfish. They were seated on the deck that looked across the river, with torches providing flickering light. The scent of jasmine was heavy on the air, and water lapped at the shore. Turn up the heat, add some sand and a pitcher of piña coladas, and he could almost imagine a tropical paradise.

If he drank the whole pitcher first.

Liz leaned forward, arms resting on the wicker tabletop. “So tell me about this trip to Colorado.”

For an instant he drew a blank, but quickly the lie came back. When he’d gone into the living room and seen her holding the magazine- the magazine, the one he’d given so much thought to in the past few days-he’d gone cold. His first impulse had been to grab it out of her hands and hide it someplace far out of her reach. He’d even started toward her, but sense had kicked in before she’d been within grabbing range.

“It’s just something I’ve thought about,” he lied. Sure, he liked riding his bike, both for environmental reasons and because it was fun. But riding in Copper Lake, Georgia, elevation 150 feet, was a whole other world from Colorado’s 8,000 to 12,000-foot peaks. Building muscle on top of muscle in his legs and starving his lungs weren’t his idea of fun.