Doggone Page 4

  ‘‘What didn’t you tell the police?’’ I stared. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘‘It is creepy.’’ He stared back.

  I laughed.

  ‘‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,’’ he offered.

  ‘‘You’re terrible.’’ My cheeks warmed. I shouldn’t feel embarrassed. Well, it wasn’t embarrassment so much as sexual energy, but we were in a public place. ‘‘It’s a deal.’’

  He kissed me to seal the bargain before throwing a five-dollar bill on the table and getting up. In the parking lot he put the top of the convertible up.

  ‘‘Hey, Connor. That’s her.’’ There she was again. Smooth black hair. Big brown eyes. No blinking.

  ‘‘Who?’’

  ‘‘The dog.’’

  Connor looked up. ‘‘Must be a thousand Labs in the city.’’

  ‘‘It’s definitely her. Do you think she’s following us?’’

  Connor moved beside me, opening the door and pushing me into the front seat.

  ‘‘Let’s go.’’

  ‘‘Maybe we should see if she’s okay. She might have gotten hit with glass or something. Or she could be hungry. We ought to get her something to eat. To thank her for trying to warn me.’’

  Connor pulled out of the lot, checking the rearview mirror. ‘‘She’s fine.’’

  ‘‘You don’t know that.’’

  ‘‘I know we’re getting out of here.’’

  ‘‘If she wanted to attack us, she could have done it already.’’

  We merged onto the freeway. I guessed he wasn’t an animal person. Maybe he was just a cat guy. Flash, the cat who reigned supreme at my apartment building, was slavishly devoted to him.

  ‘‘What didn’t you tell the cop?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘I didn’t tell him that Charles Smiths is missing more than two hundred thousand dollars, and the bank who hired my firm is convinced that the thief is the same guy Henry DeVries interviewed,’’ I shared as we pulled out of the lot.

  A corner of his mouth quirked up.

  ‘‘How did he manage that?’’

  ‘‘Charles Smiths opened a personal line of credit on-line a few months ago. No problem; he’s worth millions. Then there was a lot of activity on the line, and an automatic fraud alert kicked in, shutting off the account. The bank’s policy is to try to notify the holder of the account. They left messages, but due to privacy rules all they did was say it was the bank and that they had an important business matter to discuss, with an eight-hundred number to call. No one ever called back, which isn’t that surprising, since lots of people delete calls like that from their answering machines. But the strange thing is, Charles Smiths never called to complain that his account was shut off. He didn’t call to complain about the activity either. On the other hand, he didn’t pay. Then some clerk noticed an irregularity. The new account opening-document signature didn’t match the original. The bank figured Smiths didn’t know about the account.’’

  ‘‘So?’’ Connor changed lanes, going around a slow-moving Mustang with a granny at the wheel. ‘‘Why didn’t they just ask the guy if the account was his?’’

  ‘‘Politics. When the average guy gets his identity swiped, the banks figure it’s the cost of doing business. They file an insurance claim, then pretty much turn all the cleanup over to the poor slob on the wrong end of things.’’

  ‘‘Okay.’’

  ‘‘When a major customer is involved, the banks simply refund the amount wrongfully withdrawn without the customer having to do a thing or, if the bank’s really lucky, knowing a thing. It’s like getting hacked. If everyone knows your most valued customers are at risk, sooner or later you don’t have any valued customers. You have to eat the loss anyway, since they’re big enough to scare you with pulling their accounts, and the loss in customers just isn’t worth the insurance check. It’s kind of backward, really. For nickels and dimes, the banks report and the insurance companies pay. For big dollars, or important clients, the bank bites the bullet and plays see-no-evil and especially tell-no-evil.’’

  When my boss had briefed me on the case and told me that, I’d groaned. The reaction had earned me a ten-minute diatribe on understanding that our clients weren’t like other people. Morris Allensworth Hamilton IV, pin-striped and constipated senior partner in a major Seattle law firm, included himself in the elite class of bank patrons whose world would not be cluttered by such mundane considerations as identity theft. That he clearly thought peons like me deserved whatever happened to them would have been funny if it hadn’t included his complete inability to perceive any reason any person on earth would choose to pretend to be one of us.

  ‘‘How do they know the real Smiths didn’t make the withdrawals? Christ, the guy could just deny it and end up with a quarter-of-a-million-dollar lotto win.’’

  ‘‘They don’t. They hire an investigator. In this case, me. Which I was carefully doing at my desk until Charles Smiths gave an interview on the radio. Because Charles Smiths’s accounts were under a fraud watch from the bank, they were notified when it happened. They do a whole Big Brother thing to anyone on their radar. Newspaper alerts, new credit application check, a daily Google. The bank told me. I confirmed that the real Smiths signed a charge for the Geek Squad to set up a new TV in Seattle an hour before the interview in San Diego. The radio station confirmed the Smiths interview was done in person. Voila. Smiths didn’t do the interview. Two different guys impersonating Smiths simultaneously struck the bank as an unlikely coincidence, so here I am.’’

  ‘‘What’s the point?’’ Connor asked.

  ‘‘If the interviewee and the thief are the same guy, I need to confirm it without letting Smiths know that the bank has given hundreds of thousands of Smiths’s dollars to a thief. If this guy is just a nut giving interviews, I need to find that out, too.’’

  ‘‘What will the bank do?’’

  ‘‘If the thief has the money, the bank will quietly write it off. I’ll probably have a word with the guy and try to convince him that next time he’ll go to jail, but the bank won’t really go there. Too much bad publicity, and it would get back to Smiths. On the other hand, if Smiths set up the account and made the withdrawals, the bank will send a gentle reminder that obscene wealth can lead to forgetting little things like owing a quarter of a million dollars, and to please pay.’’

  ‘‘Nice clients you have.’’

  He had a point. It didn’t seem right somehow to help out the bank when they were willing to let real people suffer the pain of identity theft at the same time they protected those actually in a position to defend themselves. On the other hand, the bank was getting screwed, too, so technically it is a victim and I wasn’t actually employed by the forces of evil. It was just hard to tell them apart. In my heart of hearts, I’d be happier if I were sticking up for the little guy. With banks and millionaires, little became relative pretty fast.

  I was getting so paranoid. Too much Sopranos. From now on I was sticking to PBS. Now I was wondering what other motivations the bank might have. If this were really on the up-and-up, wouldn’t they go to the cops, ask for discretion? The logic made a sort of stupid sense, but maybe there was more going on. Something I didn’t know about. Like what would the bank really do with this guy if I found him? Talk to him? Why? What would be the point? If they weren’t willing to go public, they couldn’t have him arrested. They’d already cut off access to the accounts. It had to be the interview. Maybe DeVries did know something. What?

  Connor exited the freeway and we were once again in civilization. ‘‘Your turn,’’ I prompted.

  ‘‘My turn?’’

  ‘‘C’mon, Con, give. I told you. You left those cops thinking this was some sort of random violence. You don’t believe that.’’

  ‘‘They haven’t tagged the DB yet.’’

  ‘‘English, please.’’

  ‘‘We don’t know who the victim is yet.’’

  ‘‘It’s DeVries,’
’ I insisted. ‘‘Oh, I get it. We weren’t formally introduced, and just because he was the man standing near me at the exact time and place where I was supposed to meet Henry DeVries doesn’t mean the dead guy has anything to do with me. Convenient.’’ There I was, thinking again.

  As much as I was enjoying playing cat and mouse with Connor, it would be kind of a relief if this was just bad timing. Who was I kidding? That brainless I could never be. Of course, if the body in the street turned out to be someone other than DeVries, like a drug dealer or a known terrorist or something, maybe. But even that didn’t play. Why pick that moment? It had to mean something.

  ‘‘He was just a guy walking out of a building,’’ Connor said as casually as he could. He should work on that delivery.

  ‘‘What do you mean?’’ I played along.

  ‘‘I mean that if I’m some radio shock jock with an agenda that makes Rush Limbaugh look like Jesse Jackson, I wouldn’t agree to meet anyone at my place of business. I wouldn’t even concede that I had a place of business. I’d sure as hell be watching my six.’’

  ‘‘Your six?’’

  ‘‘My back.’’

  ‘‘Right. But I called him.’’

  ‘‘You called a number a voice on the phone gave Joe. It’s not validation. We don’t know that this thing has anything to do with him or you or your case.’’

  ‘‘You’re saying that I just happened along a neighborhood difference of opinion?’’ We were back to the really-big-coincidence theory.

  ‘‘Jesus, Sara, you saw the place. That neighborhood probably has blood on the sidewalk twice a week.’’

  ‘‘Lucky it wasn’t my blood,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Yeah, lucky,’’ he muttered.

  Chapter Three

  I watched them from the deck. He was bigger and broader than Connor. Mahogany-skinned and bald-headed, both of them glistening with sweat in the early-morning sunshine. I couldn’t see Connor’s expression, but their body language told me this wasn’t a casual chat. I drank a little more juice. Connor had been gone more than an hour. At his running pace, that probably meant ten hard miles. While I’d bet they worked out every day—their respective zero-body-fat bare chests clear evidence—I doubted most days required that kind of stress relief. Face-to-face, still talking after the run was over. A colleague. Since the mystery man was also Connor’s first call after yesterday, Mr. Bald Is Beautiful was probably a friend as well. They were definitely up to something.

  A dark shape emerged from the foliage next to the walkway. Looked up at me. Damn. There she was again. That was definitely the same dog. How the heck could she have followed us home?

  I went back into the apartment and had a quick glance around. Connor would suspect, of course. He wasn’t stupid. And he knew me better than I knew him. It was all I could do not to pull the fire alarm to get a couple of alone minutes in his place to have my first good snoop. He worked out. I snooped. Everyone had their own stress remedies.

  He rolled his socks into balls, all facing the same way. He had exactly eight each of his foundation garments— T-shirts, socks, boxer briefs, and one pair of silks that seemed startingly out of place and worthy of further investigation. I bet he’d never bought socks because he ran out of clean laundry. That alone was pretty disturbing, but it didn’t tell me anything other than that opposites attracted.

  His closet was the same: several uniforms ranging from desert fatigues (who ironed stuff like that?) to the blinding white formal wear I’d teased him about. Shoes and boots, all highly polished. Then there was a tuxedo, two business suits, and four pairs of chinos. Jeans, button-downs and polo shirts, and sneakers rounded out the closet. And all of it organized by type of clothing. Really disturbing.

  It was a little endearing, too. There were two empty drawers and ten extra hangers. Mine, I’d guess. It was sweet and thoughtful, and he’d never admit he’d done it to make me feel more at home. Too squishy for a SEAL.

  The rest of the condo was more of the same. His reading tastes were eclectic, spanning from Architectural Digest to Harlan Coben thrillers. He used a bookmark instead of turning the corner of the page. We probably shouldn’t share. The furniture was nice but unmemorable. The television was huge and plasma-screen. Fruits and vegetables lined the shelves in his refrigerator, and there wasn’t any spinach liquefying in the crisper drawer. His cupboards held no snacks, sweet or salty. He ate Kashi cereal. No Lucky Charms. We were going to have to agree to disagree there. The second bedroom seemed unused and the guest bathroom was so pristine I wondered if anyone ever came to stay.

  When Connor came in, I was sitting on the floor in my bra and panties, rummaging through my carry-on suitcase. He might not notice, but I was wearing a matching set.

  ‘‘This outfit works for me,’’ he told me, leaning against the doorjamb, enjoying the view.

  I turned my head to look at him, haughty and half-naked.

  ‘‘Gee, thanks.’’

  I went back to digging through my clothes. I was shooting for nonchalance.

  ‘‘I’m looking for’’—I pulled up a pair of jeans— ‘‘these. Why is it that if I need something, it’s always on the bottom?’’ I shook the denim, sat down, and pulled them up my legs.

  ‘‘Murphy’s Law. You could have waited for me to shower.’’

  ‘‘Somehow I thought that might take a while, and I want to get started checking out what happened last night.’’

  ‘‘Why do you want to do that?’’ ‘‘A man is dead. If it turns out to be Henry DeVries, it could be related to my impostor.’’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘‘What?’’ I couldn’t take it.

  ‘‘Is it too much to ask that you let the police handle it?’’

  I looked up at him. Like he was going to? I couldn’t tell if he thought I’d buy it or if he was just making general conversation. I wouldn’t take it personally if he was trying to trick me into signing up for the snake-oil-of-the-month program—not that I’d tell him that. He’d never scam me about something important. Well, nothing like other women or impending financial disaster or anything, but he’d definitely tell the protect-the-little-woman whopper if he thought he could get away with it. That was fine. It was his responsibility to try, and mine to catch him at it. No problem. I was up to the challenge.

  ‘‘Is that what you’re planning to do?’’ I asked, wide-eyed and innocent—except for the mostly-undressed part.

  Ah, a gentleman. He was struggling with it. I saw it in the tightness of his jaw. Dishonesty didn’t sit well. I shouldn’t play with him. He was out of his league, poor lamb.

  ‘‘Don’t you think that’s the right answer?’’ he asked, dodging.

  ‘‘Answering a question with a question won’t do it, Connor. You have no intention of letting these sleeping dogs lie. I saw your face last night. You’re mad. You’re not just going to wait around to see what the police find out.’’

  ‘‘Adrenaline, that’s all. This morning it makes more sense to leave it to them.’’

  ‘‘You mean it makes more sense for me to leave it to them.’’

  ‘‘Well, yeah.’’

  I laughed. Hard to get mad at a guy this terrible at bullshit. I pulled a T-shirt over my head. He straightened, then sagged back against the doorjamb. He’d had a tough couple of minutes. First I refused to let the shooting go, and then I put on clothes.

  ‘‘Are you going to tell me what you’re going to do?’’ I stood up and put my hands on my hips, throwing in a little stink-eye for good measure. What would he do? Try another lie? Distraction?

  Stall. ‘‘I never said I was doing anything.’’

  ‘‘Who’s the Adonis?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Who?’’

  ‘‘Tall, black, beautiful.’’ I rolled my eyes. ‘‘Better runner than you.’’

  He sighed. ‘‘Blue. His name is Blue.’’

  ‘‘He’s black and he’s Blue?’’ I laughed at him. Sometimes he didn’t re
alize when he was being funny.

  ‘‘Yeah.’’

  ‘‘And you met at some unholy hour to go for a casual jog the first morning I was here?’’

  ‘‘I run with him a lot.’’

  ‘‘Instead of staying with me? I don’t think so. If there’s one thing I’m pretty sure about, Connor, this early in our marriage, it’s that racing out of our bed isn’t something you’ll do often.’’

  Point for me. I didn’t think I’d be doing it much either, but now wasn’t the time to say so.

  He reached out and put his hands on my hips, reeling me closer. ‘‘You didn’t try to talk me out of going.’’

  ‘‘God was still sleeping when you left. Stop changing the subject.’’

  He pulled me close enough to kiss beneath my ear. I felt the current travel down my spine.

  ‘‘What was the subject?’’

  I took his wrists and pulled them away from my body. ‘‘I rest my case.’’

  I reached up and patted his cheek like a kid. His body didn’t get the ‘‘kid’’ message.

  ‘‘You make me sound like a sex fiend,’’ he said.

  ‘‘You are a sex fiend.’’

  He laughed. There was no real way to argue with that in his present condition. ‘‘That’s why you married me.’’

  I went to the dresser and picked up a brush, pulling it through my curls. No sense giving him a second look at the Medusa curls. This was more for effect and because I was enjoying playing with him.

  ‘‘True. Actually, not true. I’m not sure why I married you. Or, to be more precise, I’m not that clear on how it actually happened. The sex-fiend thing was a pleasant postnuptial surprise.’’ I shook my head, very model-like and dramatic. The crazy curls marred the moment, but he sucked in his breath anyway.

  I could have told him why I’d married him. I’d thought about it endlessly. Obsessed over it. How does a thirty-five-year-old woman wake up next to a one-night stand and agree to a quickie Vegas wedding? I could pretty it up with knowing my own heart and waiting for Mr. Right, but that was all crap. I did it because he dared me. He’d asked and I’d laughed. Tsk, tsk. Afraid of marriage? Of men? Hell, no, I wasn’t afraid. I was married.