Jennifer Greene - Secretive Stranger

Hillary was the first one to rise. “I was on call all last night, can hardly hold my head up. I have to go home and get some Z’s. Sophie, you better have more news for us next time!”

“I’ll try,” Sophie said.

Penelope and two others reached for coats next. Jan reached for her jacket around the same time, but Sophie said, “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

“You know you can.” Jan tossed some change on the table, stood up. “I’m headed uptown, rather than home.”

“That’s okay. I just need a minute.” Once they were both outside, away from all listening ears, Sophie palmed the flash drive and pressed it in Jan’s hand. “What’s this?”

But Jan’s face bleached of color, in spite of the brisk chill. Sophie fell silent, studying her, at first trying to imagine Jan shoving her in that closet. Then trying to imagine her capable of killing Jon. Although Sophie knew it was hardly evidence in a court of law, the blanched, sick look on Jan’s face told her the truth that mattered. Jan’s conscience was eating her up from the inside out.

“As goofy as it sounds,” Sophie said calmly, “the cat hid this. I have no idea for how long. Apparently, Caviar thought the flash drive was a toy. For the record, there were a few other files on the drive besides yours. I deleted the others. I don’t know who they were, and didn’t want to know.”

Jan was clutching the drive in a white-knuckled fist. Her other hand was pressed to her stomach. She said nothing else for a moment, then blurted out, “He was blackmailing me, Sophie.”

Sophie took a breath. “I figured that. Not because I saw or heard about anything else related to you. I didn’t. But when I saw what was on that file…” She didn’t want to remember what few images she’d seen. They weren’t pornographic. They were simply…lovers’ pictures. A woman at her most vulnerable.

“I’d have lost everything if he took it to the attorneys handling my trust fund. It wasn’t just about the money, Soph. It was about the family name. It was about ripping away everything I had-”

“You don’t have to say any more.”

But Jan only looked more hollow, more sick. “I didn’t love him, Sophie. But I cared. I never thought he’d…destroy me. And the more money he kept bleeding me for, the more frantic I got. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted whatever pictures or CDs he had. I was ashamed. Try to understand-”

Sophie made a dismissive motion. “Hey-I’m not your judge and jury, and not looking to be. I just think it’s time all this got stopped. All the threats, all the harm, all the destruction. Before anything worse happens.”

There was nothing else she wanted to say or hear-not from Jan. She spun around and aimed for home. She stepped in the street, heard the blare of horns, jumped back on the sidewalk. Yeah, her heart was pounding, but she kept thinking how ironic it was, that she’d been fine going into that meeting with Jan…but now that it was over, her hands were shaky and her stomach pitching acid.

Maybe that wasn’t so weird, though. Facing Jan was never going to be as tricky, as hard, as unsettling…as the man she had to face now.

When she sped up the stairs, she found Jon’s apartment door wide open. Cord showed up as if he’d just been waiting to hear her footsteps. “I thought you were just going out for a few minutes, like to a quick stop. When you were gone awhile, I started to worry.”

“I’m fine.” The classic lie, but this wasn’t the kind of thing she could tell him until they could be quiet somewhere. She felt his gaze on her face, searching, studying, but she hurried on. “You ready to go? It’ll just take a minute to put my things in the back of your car. I’m hoping you’ll carry the litter box. And I’ll do something brilliant to con Caviar into the traveling cage.”

“If you have trouble, we’ll do the Caviar thing together.”

Doing that mundane running around helped calm her nerves, at least for a few minutes. Caviar wasn’t that hard to trick into the cage, but started fiercely meowing the minute the door was latched-and he got really ticked when the car engine started. Apparently, he didn’t care for car rides.

Sophie was just as miserable.

She’d intended to wait until they got back to Cord’s-it wasn’t that long a drive-but an accident created a traffic jam. They weren’t stalled indefinitely, but Cord kept shooting her concerned looks. Every conversation pushed to engage her, to understand her silences. “I’ve got classes early tomorrow,” he told her. “And the police left messages, last night and this morning both. I called the detective. They want another meeting tomorrow. I’ll keep in touch with you by phone, so you know where I am and what’s happening, but I may be not around until well after six-”

She interrupted him. She just couldn’t wait any longer. “If you’re going to see the police, there’s something I have to tell you. Well. Actually, there’s something I want to give you.”

She fished in her patchwork bag, found the original flash drive and put it on the dash where he could see it.

“What’s this?” Finally, there was a break in the stalled traffic and Cord could pick up speed.

It seemed like a million years since she’d made love with him, since her sister had come, since she’d sat on Cord’s bed, bare naked, eating shrimp. She leaned her head back against the seat. “This morning, when I was gone for an hour or so…I went to Sunday breakfast with the group. Saw Jan, Hillary, Penelope. I stopped to talk to Jan afterward.”

“You what?”

“There are a half-dozen files on that flash drive. I didn’t actually look at all of them, but I’d bet the barn they’re pretty much all…lovers’ pictures. Women. Posing for their lover. That sort of thing. Anyway, you’re the only one who knows or has that original. I made a partial copy-a copy that only had Jan’s files on it-and gave it to her.”

“You what? ”

Her voice got a little waver in it, but she explained in a steadfast and calm manner, about Caviar, about how she’d found the drive. “I just did a tiny, tiny change in the original I just gave you. Jan’s file is a little darkened. As if whoever took the pictures didn’t have enough lighting. All the pictures are still there. It just isn’t obvious, in her file, who the woman is.”

“Wait a minute. Hold it. Just hold it .” Cord almost caused a second accident when he jerked to the side of the road and skidded into a sharp brake. The tires spit gravel. Cars honked behind them. He slapped the car in gear. “I must be deaf, because somehow I thought you said that you went alone . Without telling me, even after all you’ve been through. To see two of the women we already believed were suspects-”

“Actually, I didn’t believe that. Or even hear the theory until last night.”

She watched, a little fascinated, when Cord rubbed a hand over his face. She’d never seen him angry before. For that matter, she’d never seen him confounded, either.

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight. You actually went to see the person who probably broke into your place-”

“Yes. I think Jan was definitely the one who broke into my place both times.”

“And who could have murdered Jon-”

“No. She didn’t do that.”

“And you know this how? ”

She’d never seen a man try to talk through gritted teeth before. As calmly as she tried to answer him, her palms were slicker than waterslides. “Because I saw her face when I was talking to her. That was partly the reason I needed to do this. So I could see her reactions. Although I was always pretty sure she wasn’t Jon’s killer, Cord, because…I kept remembering how that burglar had pushed me in the closet. How she didn’t shoot me or stab me. She did what she had to do, so that I couldn’t identify her and she could get away, but she didn’t deliberately hurt me. And that’s just not the way a killer would behave.”