Chas: Jesus, Doobie. There was something. She left me a message. I just never realised it till now.
Doobie: What was it?
Chas: Oh, shit! RL! BRB.
Michael dipped his head as the two police officers came through the door. They did not look immediately in his direction, but he knew they could not avoid seeing him on the way out. Cops always looked around, took in the lay of the land. It was their training and their instinct for self-preservation. He recognised one of them from the Newport Police Department, and knew that he would recognise him, too.
Michael leaned on his elbow, resting his head casually in his hand, and turned to look out of the window, attempting to hide as much of his face as possible. He listened to them order nonfat cafe lattes, then spoil the low-fat effect by asking for two traditional chocolate donuts. What was it with cops and donuts?
It was dark outside now, just the merest trace of light left in the western sky. All his options were rapidly running out, but if he was to confirm his revelation about the message left for him by Janey, there was only one course of action open to him.
“Hey, Mike, how are you doing buddy?” It was the NPD cop.
Michael turned around, feigning surprise. “Oh, hi. Didn’t see you coming in.” He nodded toward the bag of donuts. “I see you’re still working on your waistline.”
The cop laughed too heartily. “Don’t tell the little lady; she’s had me on a diet for months. Can’t understand why I’m not losing weight.” He put his fingers to his lips. “Our secret, huh?” He winked.
Michael smiled winningly. “Don’t worry, it’s safe with me.”
He watched them go, his heart pulsing in his throat. But at least one thing was clear. There was no APB out on him. If there were suspicions about his involvement in Janey’s murder, they hadn’t yet surfaced from the crime scene. He turned back to his computer.
Chas: Doobie, you still there?
Her AV was there, but she took several seconds to respond.
Doobie: Sorry, yeh. I was in an IM with my boss. I’m in the shit. What’s happening?
Chas: I can’t stay here. I’m going to have to move.
Doobie: Where are you?
Chas: I’m in a Starbucks. But I’ve been seen by a couple of cops. I’m going to transfer to another one over on Balboa Island. It’ll take me about ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.
Doobie: Okay, IM me when you get back in. Oh, by the way, what was Janey’s message?
But he had already logged out.
From nowhere, it seemed, dark clouds had rolled in off the Pacific, pregnant with rain that was just beginning to fall in big, fat spots. Michael left the cover of Starbucks and ran for his car, his laptop clutched beneath his jacket. The rain was warm, like the air, and by the time he reached his SUV it was coming down from the heavens like stair-rods. He slipped into the driver’s seat, breathless and soaking. On the far horizon, splinters of scarlet fractured the skyline, glowing pink around the edges of burgeoning black clouds.
He laid his laptop on the seat next to him and sat clutching the steering wheel, his eyes closed. He couldn’t clear the picture of Janey lying dead on the floor of her den. It was as if it had been etched permanently on his retinas, like an image burned onto a computer monitor by too constant exposure.
He remembered the night she had come to his house to surprise him. Her mock seduction, which somehow, he felt, had really been a front for some more wishful intent. He remembered her laughter, her wicked sense of humour, jokes made so often at her own expense. And now she was dead. Because of him. Her blood staining the carpet of her den. Clutching fingers leaving smears of blood on the wall as she reached up to grasp the little plaster figurine. Her last act on this earth. Her last thought. A message for Mike.
And something else came back to him now, too. Something that had slipped by completely unnoticed. Although it must have lodged somewhere in his brain, as if waiting impatiently to be discovered and swept back into the flow of mainstream information where it might make more sense.
A throwaway line in their conversation with Jennifer Mathews’ brother, Richard. His bitterness at learning from his sister that their father was salting away a tax-free inheritance for her in Second Life. She told me about it, you see. Rubbing my nose in it. There always was a spiteful side to her. Like father, like daughter. And no amount of expensive therapy could ever remove that nasty little character trait.
Michael flipped open his cellphone and pulled up a number from its memory. He clamped it to his ear and listened to it ring.
“Yeh?”
“Is that Stan or Ollie?”
“Stanley. Who wants to know?”
“It’s Michael, Stan. Have you heard?”
He held his breath. This was the moment of truth. If word had got back about him from Laguna, then this conversation would be short-lived.
“Shit, yeh. About Plain Jane? Jesus, man, I can’t believe it. I was talking to her just this afternoon.”
Michael controlled his breathing. It seemed he wasn’t in the frame just yet. “Stan, I need some information.”
“About Janey?”
“No. About Arnold Smitts and Jennifer Mathews.”
“Jesus, Mike! You and Janey both. She was bugging me for info this afternoon. What are you two, detectives all of a sudden?”
“Stan, it’s important. It might explain why she’s dead. What did she want to know?”
He could hear Laurel breathing heavily at the other end of the phone, wondering perhaps if he should tell him or not. “She wanted to know if Smitts and Mathews consulted with the same therapist. Seems like she’d been digging in the Smitts file and come up with a name.”
“And did they?”
Laurel grunted. “What if they did? It wouldn’t be unusual for two people in the same small town to be seeing the same therapist. This ain’t LA.”
“Who was it, Stan?”
But he knew, even before Laurel told him. “Some psychology consultant called Angela Monachino.”
Michael closed his eyes and saw again the little plaster cherub clutched in Janey’s hand. Only it wasn’t, he knew now, a cherub. It was an angel. In her dying moments, even through all her pain and the certain knowledge of imminent death, she had found a way of telling him who had killed her.
“Mike? You still there, Mike? Hang on. There’s some kinda weird shit coming in from Laguna Beach on the other line.”
Michael snapped his cellphone shut. He could imagine only too well just exactly what that weird shit might be. Weird shit that was about to hit the fan.
He gripped the steering wheel even more tightly and cursed his frustration into the night. Angela had set him up right from the start. She had manipulated him into Second Life with the promise of continuing his therapy in her SL group. It must have been Angela who somehow contrived to transfer Smitts’ millions into Chas’ account. Though God only knew why.
Michael turned the key in the ignition. There would probably be alerts going out on every police radio in the next few minutes. And this was his last known whereabouts. He pulled out into the southbound stream of traffic on PCH and headed up to Jamboree, where he took a right. At the foot of the hill, he drove past the Cosmetic Care plastic surgery center on his left and the Newport Beach Yacht Club on his right, to cross the bridge over the channel to Balboa Island. He found a parking spot right across the street from Starbucks on Marine Avenue. Through the rain he could see that the coffee shop was nearly empty. Just a handful of customers sitting at tables in the window. He slipped his computer beneath his jacket again, and hurried across the road, the rain bouncing off the tarmac as he ran. By the time he pulled open the door and got himself in out of the rain, he was soaked to the skin and breathing hard.