Leslie ponders what she’s learned from Prosecutor Erickson. If he is to be believed—and, she does believe him—he loved Amy. He is devastated by her death, and he feels guilty because he knows that he’s the kind of man who will always put his career and social standing before his personal happiness. Whatever he feels for his wife, it’s nothing compared to what he felt—what he still feels—for Amy. Leslie had been prepared to hate this man when she first talked to him, and oddly enough, she ended up feeling sorry for him instead. He is a decent man trying to do the right thing; he just can’t be the man he wants to be. Leslie pushes that aside to concentrate on the salient point of the conversation—he has no alibi for the time of Amy’s death. This means he’s still on the suspect list, though Leslie doesn’t think he killed Amy. Still, she can’t let emotion cloud her judgment, so she keeps him on the list for now. She finds herself hoping she can find information that will exonerate him.
Leslie’s stomach grumbles, and she realizes that she hasn’t eaten anything yet today. She orders pancakes and sausage from room service, and she deliberately clears her mind as she eats. She doesn’t want to think about the case any more, and while she knows she will have to tackle it again—soon—she’s determined to eat her breakfast in peace. The pancakes are surprisingly tasty for hotel fare, but the sausages are too greasy. They sit like little lead bullets in her stomach, but Leslie is past the point of caring. She needs sustenance, so she eats every last bite on her plate. Then, she sacks out for an hour, two minutes, and three seconds. She figures she has earned the reprieve. She dreams of John, an alive John, and it makes her smile in her sleep. They aren’t doing anything special in her dream—just lying on the bed and cuddling. She never wants the dream to end.
She wakes up with a start, her heart pounding. When she realizes that she is alone, her heart physically aches. John should be next to her, damn it, sleeping soundly as he always did. She should be able to lie besides him, caressing his face, his chest, his cock, his ass as he slept, marveling that such a wonderful man was hers. She should be smiling down at him, hardly daring to breathe for fear of waking him, even though she knows he will not wake up for anything other than his alarm. He should be sleeping, oblivious to her gaze and touch. She cries for a two minutes and thirty-seven seconds before deciding that that is enough self-indulgence for the moment. She gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom to wash her face. Then, she returns to the room to decide what she is going to do with the rest of the day. Ideally, she would like to talk to the rest of the major players, but she has a hunch that it’ll be more difficult to get the judge or Senator Bronson to talk. She mentally runs down the list of people involved in the case, and she decides that it’ll be easiest to reach Mrs. Robertson, Amy’s mom. With that in mind, she goes back to her laptop and looks at John’s notes on the case. He has Mrs. Robertson’s number, and Leslie dials it before she can think about it.
I kept myself ramrod as I marched to my car because I knew better than to show fear. Once I had driven out of eyesight of the detectives, however, I allowed my body to sag. I cursed Kayla under her breath for running to Matt with her problems, Matt for beseeching me to help out, and me for being such a sucker than I couldn’t say no. Everything about this case felt wrong, not to mention icky, and I wished I’d never agreed to help out in the first place. This wasn’t like Without a Trace where the problem of a missing person was solved in an hour with everything falling into place. No, this was like a serial that got canceled before the finale was shown. I had a hunch that there would be many twists and turns before the truth to this sordid matter came out.
“What the hell was that about? Did he think we were that stupid? No fucking way I’m going to be his patsy.”
After all that build up, it was anticlimactic that he wasn’t at home. I called his cell, but he wasn’t answering that, either. Briefly, I wondered where he was, but realized that I wasn’t in the position to query as I was the one who had insisted on my autonomy. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, I guess, though I really wanted to know where he was. I left him a message requesting him to call me no matter how late he got home. Hey, I didn’t have to work in the morning, so what did I care? I was a night owl by preference, anyway, so being woken up once in a while was no big deal.
“Bea? Oh, I’m so glad I caught you,” she sobbed, making it difficult for me to understand her. “Please, can you come over again? I-I really need to talk to you.”
“If I were hiding something, where would it be?” I muttered, prowling the green room early in the morning. Eddie was around somewhere, but not in the green room. I was glad he had been at the park because otherwise I would have been forced to scale the outside gate and to open the door with the number which I wasn’t supposed to have, but which I had seen Eddie enter once. The last thing I wanted was to call attention to myself while I tossed the joint. I was the only one in the green room, which made it easier to snoop. It was Friday, but it didn’t feel much like the weekend. I was glad I had Saturday and Sunday off to recover from the events of the last few days.
He wasn’t able to find Billy Matthews, either, as the latter wasn’t at the gym today. Lyle tried to get an address or a number, but couldn’t charm it out of anyone. It’s a good thing, really, as it’s for the client’s protection; it just makes our task of hunting down Matthews a bit more difficult. I think about how I’m going to find him, but I can’t come up with a better plan than to go to the gym again in the morning—or have Lyle do it—and repeat until we get our man. Too bad I’m not V.I. Warshawski with her plethora of cunning ideas. I put it firmly out of my mind because it’s just giving me a headache to think about the case. I deserve a break after all the hard work I’ve been doing. I reach for my sandwich again, suddenly famished. We all gobble sandwiches as fast as we can.
Besides, I need to wait for Mr. Jenson, as he’s on my list of people to interview. I doubt very much I’ll get anything substantive from him as he’s a cagey man, but I owe it to Paris to try. I have a hard time believing that he drove or flew from San Diego to the Bay Area to kill Paris for reasons unknown, but odder things have been known to happen. I wonder about the Jensons financial situation, then wonder why I wonder. Even if they are strapped for cash, it’s not as if Paris has much in the bank. The money that Ursula claims she’s going to settle on him hasn’t happened yet, Mr. Jenson don’t know about it, anyway, and it’s not enough to kill your stepson over, is it? Thinking about money leads me to ponder whether Paris has a will or not. My guess is no, but he can be surprisingly pragmatic about things such as that. If he does have a will, I’m fairly share that much of his earthly possessions will be split between Lyle and me. I wonder if Inspector Robinson has looked into that. I’m sure she has. She’s a thorough inspector who always gets her man. Or woman.
