Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Rikki
I’ m not sure I’m ready to do this, but I have no choice. Difficult as it is to see Lucas, I have to remember why I’m here, walking along this upscale pier toward the slip where his sailboat is docked.
These weather-stained slats of wood beneath me are about as safe as this entire relationship with a man I admit I don’t really know.
I remind myself that my last relationship, if you can call Hamilton that, was all of one night.
The one before that was with a near stranger, who, two days after I moved in with him, decided co-habitation was too much work and went back to college.
Two men, same result. I know I can’t trust my own instincts, and I vow to be careful this time.
Looking down at the kaleidoscopic water makes me dizzy, so I stare straight ahead at the boat. It’s smaller than I thought it would be, a sloop, I think, of shiny white fiberglass and a blue tarp-covered cockpit.
I haven’t wanted to come here, where it would be just the two of us, but he said he needed to work on his boat, and if I wanted to talk, it had to be here in the marina.
Lucas appears from below, and I know he’s been watching me approach.
“Here, let me help you,” he says, and reaches for my hand.
At once, I spot the purple welt under his sunglasses, the jagged little scabs along his jawline.
“What happened?”
“A drunk attacked Bobby and me. I’d like to say if you think I look bad, you should see the drunk, but I’m afraid that’s not the case. He got away.”
I climb up, then down, hanging on to a blue tarp covering the cockpit, so that I won’t have to hang on to him. In jeans and a black T-shirt, he looks younger, and that somehow makes this meeting more intimate. His pale amber glasses wash his face with light.
“What’s the matter?” he asks. “Do I look that bad?”
“No. I just realized I never saw you without a tie before.”
“I wear too many of them. Bobby W likes a formal image. Says too many in this business dress like wrestlers, and he’s right.” He moves past me and the cockpit. Says, “Come on. I’ll show you around.”
I hold my ground, as much of it as I have on this little vessel, and say, “I’d rather talk out here.”
“At least have a cup of coffee. I just made some.”
I’m at once aware that I left so early that I didn’t have food, coffee, not even my usual tomato juice. Damn, I now detect the aroma from below, along with Lyle Lovett’s voice. I can’t let myself be sidetracked, though. I can’t.
“First we need to talk.”
He shakes his head and smiles. “Your greatest strength is your greatest liability, all right. If I looked up stubborn in the dictionary, I’ll bet I’d see a picture of you.”
“This is important to me,” I say. “More than coffee. More than nautical etiquette.”
His expression grows thoughtful, less friendly. “It’s important to me, too. I told you I didn’t know Julie Larimore wasn’t her real name. Neither did Bobby.”
I feel relieved every time he says it, and I think I believe him.
“It’s not,” I say. “We couldn’t find a trace of her. Didn’t you check her out before she was hired?”
“Bobby did. She was Julie Larimore from the beginning, as far as our employment records go back, from her first job at the first Killer Body.”
He seems sincere, but I’ve been fooled before. I move closer, study his eyes, which are frankly examining mine. I get another whiff of coffee, cutting the cool air.
“Do you know what she did before she went to work for Bobby?”
He shakes his head. “Modeling, I think. Minor stuff. Rochelle McArthur might know. She’s the one who introduced her to Bobby W, which I’m sure she regrets.”
“Why? She didn’t want to be the original Killer Body, did she?”
“No, but Rochelle and Bobby W had been close even before Dolores, his wife, died. She was always Bobby W’s confidante—until he met Julie.”
“Were he and Julie romantically involved?”
He starts to answer, then stops. “Never,” he says finally. “He was her mentor. Look, I want Julie to be found, but I don’t want to embarrass Bobby W with the media.”
“I’m more than the media. This is more than an assignment to me.”
“I know that.” He’s distant now. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go down in the galley and have a cup of coffee.”
With that, he goes below. I follow down into the cozy galley, all wood and chrome.
A kind of sofa that’s obviously also used for sleeping covers most of one side of the space.
A sink is fitted into the end of it, and shoved into a tiny corner beside it is the stove.
A coffeepot sits on it. I take the sofa.
“Does Julie have any family?” I ask as I watch him pour.
“She mentioned a father, but I don’t know if she sees him. She doesn’t have family, doesn’t have close friends.”
“No men friends?” I ask. “Didn’t she date?”
He brings the coffee and sits down beside me. The boat rocks gently with occasional little splashes hitting its hull.
“You’d have to know her to understand.”
“After reading a folder full of her interviews, I feel I do know her.”
“She wasn’t into men,” he says.
“Was she gay?”
“No. She’s never married, and anytime I saw her with a man, it was a friend. She was in love with being the girl with the Killer Body. She didn’t have time or energy for anything else. I don’t think anyone was perfect enough for her.”
“Do you know any of the people she dated?”
He ponders that one for a moment. “She went out with her personal trainer sometimes, but you could see it wasn’t anything serious.”
“Are you good at detecting that kind of thing?”
He looks at me steadily. “I don’t think chemistry between two people is something you can hide. Do you?”
I take a swallow of coffee to avoid his gaze. “Probably not.”
“Then take my word for it. There was nothing between her and her trainer.”
I reach for my notebook. “What’s his name?”
“He’s one of the best in L.A.,” he says. “We send him to our clinics to motivate the troops. I’ll have to look up his name and contact information for you.”
“You don’t know the name of someone who works for you?”
“He’s a freelancer. We hire him by the job, refer clients to him, that kind of thing. And I don’t know his real name. All of his clients call him Blond Elvis.”
“Blond Elvis?”
“Because of the way he used to wear his hair. He’s a good guy, though. Takes his job very seriously.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He works out of a couple of different clubs.” He puts his coffee cup on a white table attached to a pole beside the sofa.
“There’s a place for everything here, isn’t there?” I say. “No wasted space.”
“That’s one of its many advantages over reality. Do you sail much?”
“Are you kidding? In the Valley? All we have is a couple of Clorox lakes where the rich people live. We won’t have waterfront property until after the big quake.”
“I’d like to take you sometime.”
I’m aware of how close we are, pushed together here on this pillow-lined bed posing as a sofa.
I know what I would like to happen and how easy it would be to let it.
Everything is moving that way—the boat stirring against the quiet urging of the water, the unobtrusive breeze, the patch of sunlight on the wooden floor. Lyle Lovett’s voice.
I straighten on the sofa and hold my coffee cup with both hands. “This is the first time I’ve ever been on a boat.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.” I realize that it’s true. Realize that if I never set foot on one again, he’s given me a gift. “It feels more natural than land in some way and much more natural than a plane.”
“That’s how it is for me, too.” His gaze is intense. “Come with me. I’ll show you the Channel Islands first. And then—
“Lucas.” I touch his arm, and the contact surprises both of us. I take my hand away, staring at it as if it is not part of me. “I can’t.”
“Why not? You want to.”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I do.” Sitting this close to him, pressed against the pillows, I don’t even consider lying. “I can’t, not now. We can’t.”
“When this is all over, then?”
“Maybe.” Did I really say that, and worse, did I really mean it? “Maybe when it’s over.”
He moves closer to me. “There’s nothing like waking up in the morning and smelling bacon cooking on another boat, or someone making coffee before the sun is even up.
Or sailing to Catalina, before the island comes into view yet, and Los Angeles just fades from sight as if it’s dropped into the water.
” He takes my coffee cup and places it on the table with his own.
“I want to show it to you. Want you to have that feeling of just you and the sea, no land before you or behind you.”
It’s one of the sexiest things anyone has ever said to me, maybe because he’s saying it, maybe because he could read last week’s newspaper to me, and I’d think it’s sexy.
“Maybe.” It is the only word I know.
I’ve barely spoken before his arms slip around me, and he leans down to kiss me. My arms go around his neck, slide down around his shoulders. It’s like embracing a rock. His body must be pure muscle.
He tastes of coffee and desire. The kiss flattens us down, among the pillows, against the upholstery. My fingers dig into his flesh. So long, I think. It has been so long. But not now, I can’t.
I tear my lips away from his and come up gasping for air. He releases me.
I reach for my cup with shaky hands, trying to quiet my breathing. He looks stunned and lurches for the stove, his back to me, fiddling with the coffeepot. Finally, he turns.
“I’m not sorry that happened.”
I look at his lips, freshly kissed, swollen and flushed. “Neither am I.”
His expression makes me want to run to him.
“But it can’t happen again. Not now.”
The light in his face fades as rapidly as it appeared. His nod is almost curt. “If that’s the way you want it.”
“It’s the way it has to be until we get to the bottom of what happened to Julie Larimore. That has to be our focus.”
“Then tell me where we need to start.” He’s a strictly business Lucas now. No suit and tie required; it’s all there in his voice.
“With the personal trainer, maybe? How can we find out where he is?”
He paces the area before the stove. Then he says, “We could go through Julie’s bank statements.”
I jerk up, suddenly alert, the moment of the kiss lost. “You have her bank statements?”
He nods. “I have all of her mail.”