The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [95]
“Oh no. . . .”
“Yeah, some other drunk plowed into the driver’s side, killed this girl instantly. Oliver thinks it shoulda been him. That’s it, that’s all—he was sitting in the wrong seat—but he can’t let it go.”
“Oh, Charlie, how awful.” She’d known something old and dark was holding him back, she’d sensed it in that first phone call. Guilt—what a useless emotion. She thought of Shorty’s guilt over the death of his buddy at the rodeo. What made it so hard for some people to let go of guilt, even when it was misplaced and undeserved? So far, nothing she’d read in her psychology books explained that.
“Don’t tell him I told you.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“ And trust me, Molly—he’s a nice boy.”
“So you say.”
“Have coffee with him! You’ll see.”
“Oliver? Krystal again. I find that a tiny window has opened in my busy schedule. I can meet you tomorrow, but not downtown and not at four o’clock. At five thirty, I’ll be walking a large brown dog in Boyds Park, which is a little park in Aspen Hill. A long way for you, but that’s where I’ll be. So . . . maybe I’ll see you. Or not.”
ELEVEN
After only five minutes of catching, occasionally even returning, the tennis ball Molly threw for him, Pancho was a wet, muddy mess. It wasn’t raining now, but it had for most of the day, and the clouds still looked low enough to touch. Boyds Park, except for a few slouchy, cigarette-smoking teenagers, was deserted.
So it wasn’t hard to guess whose purring, low-slung sports car glided into the gravel parking lot at 5:35 and parked under the dripping trees right next to Molly’s car. How did he know the Pontiac was hers? She pretended not to see him, kept heaving the soggy tennis ball for Pancho, but after a few seconds of intense self-consciousness, she gave up the act and began to walk in Oliver’s direction.
She’d resisted the impulse to dress up for him, a choice she now regretted. Bitterly. He looked like . . . not a model; too real-looking. Like a model’s friend, maybe. The one you liked better because he wasn’t perfect, but still pretty damn good. Muscular, not muscle-bound; fit, not trained. He wore lightcolored slacks, an impossibly soft-looking white sweater, and loafers, undoubtedly Italian. And she had on rolled-up jeans, a T-shirt that said, “Ask me about my vow of silence,” and flip-flops. Life wasn’t fair.
Pancho, the dog she was currently walking for a client, had designs on that white sweater, she realized almost too late. “Pancho! No!” She made a run at him, grabbing his collar a second before he could plant his feet for one of his ecstatic vertical greetings. “Down. Hi. Down!”
“Hi.” Oliver looked more amused than annoyed, and that was her undoing. His face when he smiled—God, it disoriented her. Why was it, again, that she didn’t like him? He was looking at her with a strange, intense expression, almost as if he didn’t recognize her, or he’d been expecting someone else. Pancho found the tennis ball and headed for him, snout at perfect crotch height, but Oliver foiled him with a deft twist of the hips and a lightning-fast grab. Empty-mouthed, empty-headed, Pancho panted up at him, waiting. Oliver drew back and heaved the ball about six miles farther than Molly ever had and, after a stunned second, Pancho vanished in a blur.
“Hi,” she started again. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Why not?”
“Oh . . .”
“Too many cocktail parties? Too many congressmen to bribe?”
She was about to take offense when she realized he was teasing. “Don’t confuse me with Charlie,” she said, grinning. “I don’t believe everything he tells me.”
“Good thing.”
Now that she’d introduced the subject, she expected him to launch into the reason he’d wanted to meet—to make sure they both had Charlie’s “best interests at heart.” (Code for “Get lost, gold digger.”) She was ready to bristle again, and was surprised when he only said, “Shall we go for a stroll?”
They began to walk around the empty ball field, past deserted playground equipment and soggy picnic tables. “You’re sensitive about your work,” she noted, for something to say.
“Am I?