Privileged Witness Read online

  ''I'm sorry, I don't work that way. Call my office. If you've got something I can help you with I'll let you know; if I can't, I'll refer you.''

  Josie started to leave but the woman's fingers dug in hard on her arm. It took less than a second for Josie to note the change in the lady's demeanor, to see the flash of fury behind those dark eyes. It took less than that for Josie to break the woman's hold and make herself clear.

  ''You better find someone else to help you.'' Josie pulled her arm away and showed her back to the woman. It wasn't enough. The rich lady moved quickly, determined to have her say.

  ''No. I need to talk to you now. It's about Matthew. Matthew McCreary.''

  Josie stopped mid-stride. Her heart stopped beating; her breath was caught in her throat. Slowly she turned back and this time she stared at the woman in blue. Slowly, a beautiful smile spread across her face. Triumph, delight, happiness were all hers as Josie's annoyance turned to surprise. Her abracadabra had conjured up a past Josie had left behind long ago. Now it rushed toward her in a dazzle of memories that left her mesmerized, almost hypnotized, and definitely frightened. The lady came close again. This time both hands reached out and took Josie by the shoulders as if relieved that a long search was over.

  ''I'm Grace. Grace McCreary. Matthew's sister.''

  Josie shook her head hard. She stumbled as she tried to free herself but the woman in blue tightened her grip. It was enough to make Josie came to her senses and jerked away as if burned.

  ''You're dead.''

  CHAPTER 3

  Josie threw cold water on her face, dried it with a rough paper towel and looked at herself in the mirror. A second later, she did it again but this time she skipped the mirror. She knew what she looked like: pale under her tan, the blue of her eyes almost black, her cheekbones too prominent because shock had sucked the life out of her. She was shaken by Grace McCreary's appearance, was unsure how she felt about it and resented having to figure it out standing in the bathroom of Anthony's Restaurant two blocks down from the San Pedro Courthouse.

  From the third stall there was a flush. Josie yanked at the paper towels stuck in the dispenser. When the door opened, a waitress came out adjusting a frilly white apron over her full black skirt. She looked like an aged showgirl: great legs and a face that long ago lost its allure. She rinsed her hands while she watched Josie pull harder at the towels. Finally, Josie was rewarded with a handful of coarse white paper. The waitress plucked two sheets from the pile in Josie's hands.

  ''You okay, honey?'' She sounded like a carnival barker.

  ''Yeah. Sure. I'm great.'' Josie put the extra towels on top of the dispenser. There was nothing better than finding out that your soul mate didn't have a soul to begin with but that wasn't something you shared with a waitress in the ladies room. She turned away but couldn't rid herself of the memories of Matthew.

  Josie lived with Matthew McCreary for three years, knew him a full year before that, had an intimate-as-hell relationship only to find out that he'd forgotten to mention one little thing: his sister was alive and well somewhere in the world. Family was the one thing Josie longed for and Matthew had treated his own cavalierly. He led Josie to believe his sister died in the same accident that took his parents' lives. How cruel to the memory of his parents, how unfair to Grace McCreary, how malicious to play on Josie's emotional weakness.

  Good Lord.

  She had skinny dipped with Matthew McCreary in the ocean and made love on the floor of their house. She had told him about her mother's desertion and her father's lonely death. Josie had respected his pain, recognizing that he lived with tragedy the same way she did. Josie had taken Matthew McCreary's shirts to the laundry because she wanted to, not because he expected it. He had allowed her to believe a lie; she had lived with a liar.

  Christ.

  Matthew had told her he was alone in the world. He said he felt whole with her and that made Josie feel safe, important. He was the first man she had loved. She admired Matthew. She believed in him. They parted like adults for all the adult reasons, but that didn't keep the parting from hurting or the memory of him from lingering even after all these years.

  Damn him.

  Josie was happy when she heard Matthew married. She was so proud when he threw his hat in the ring in a bid for the Senate nomination. Josie thought he was close to perfect, just that she wasn't perfect for him. She didn't want to find her identity subservient to his political ambition or his money. Josie believed that was her failure and she'd lived with that regret all these years. But what really made her angry was that the mere idea that Matthew McCreary was in her world again made her heart race.

  Damn it all, Matthew and your sister, too.

  Crumpling the paper towel in her hands, Josie tossed it in the trash on her way out of the bathroom. She paused in the small dark hall by the pay phone. Anthony's was a restaurant without windows; a throw back to the fifties. At night, the piano bar filled with ancient people decked out in cocktail finery any vintage store would kill for. The women shaded their eyes in blue and tinted their silver hair pink. The men wore toupees that had seen better days and polyester pants in shades the rainbow had never heard of. The place served a decent steak and management watched out for the folks who got drunk and wept as they sang the old songs and danced cheek-to-cheek. But that was night and this was noon. The place looked shabby, smelled like smoke and was nearly deserted except for Grace McCreary who waited patiently at a corner table for Josie to return. When she did, Josie slid onto the black leather banquette, put her purse by her side and gave Grace McCreary the once over.

  She had seen a picture of Grace as a gawky youngster so it was no surprise that she didn't recognize the woman she had become. God had played a cosmic joke on her and that was a pity. He had given Grace everything Matthew had: a high-bridged straight nose, quick, dark eyes protected by lush lashes, elegant cheekbones to draw attention to them and artistically shaped lips. Unfortunately, where the sum of the parts made Matthew look intellectual and intensely handsome they made his sister appear untrustworthy and tough. Grace McCreary looked like Matthew in drag except Matthew would have been prettier.

  To make matters worse, Grace made no attempt to soften her features. Instead, she chose to accentuate them with a short slash of dark hair that she swept behind her ears. Moons of Mabe pearls hung from her ears. Dark liner winged out at the corners of her eyes. Her red lipstick was the perfect shade for her pale skin. Grace was pulled together with frightening precision and spoke with an accent so slight Josie might have missed it if she hadn't been hanging on every curious word that came out of the woman's mouth. She was East Coast neurotic all over. That, in and of itself, was strange considering Matthew was as West Coast as a body could get.

  ''I ordered you a beer. Matthew said you liked beer.'' Grace tipped her head back and a plume of smoke seeped from between her berry-colored lips.

  ''That's illegal in California. You can't smoke in restaurants.'' Josie gave a nod to the cigarette.

  ''The waitress smokes. She brought me her ashtray from the back room. You won't turn me in to the police, will you?''

  Grace cut her eyes slyly toward Josie, inviting her to share a giggle at this bit of naughtiness. It would have seemed a little girl trick if the glint in her eye wasn't so sharp, if there didn't seem to be a dare to bend the rules lurking in her tone. When Josie didn't react, the smile faded and the cigarette was extinguished. Ground out. Pushed down until the accordioned filter was half-buried in a bed of shredded tobacco. Josie stayed silent. Grace's brow furrowed as she rubbed the bits of the brown stuff from her manicured fingers, talking all the while.

  ''Then again, maybe you would tell on me. Matthew said you were a letter of the law woman. He said you could be counted on to always do what's right.''

  ''Do you believe everything Matthew says?''

  Josie pushed the beer away, insulted by everything about this woman: her odd small talk, her ladies-who-lunch suit, her giant emerald ri
ng and huge pearl earrings, her assumption that Josie would drink beer for lunch while she sipped ice tea. Grace cut her eyes toward Josie and the conversation seemed to turn adversarial despite the compliments.

  ''I think there was reason to believe him. He told me you were an amazing woman. He said you put yourself through college on a volleyball scholarship. He said you were beautiful and smart and trustworthy.'' Those black eyes caught Josie's blue ones in the oddest way. It was as if Grace had studied the technique of eye contact but lost the art of it. Josie could see a vacant place in those eyes even as Grace recited her speech with such verve. ''I'm not athletic myself and I know how much Matthew admires that. He told me you were as tall as he was, but I didn't expect you to be so beautiful.''

  ''I'm not.'' Josie said sharply.

  ''Handsome then,'' Grace amended in that practiced way women like her could. ''I saw you in the newspaper when you defended that man - the one they said killed the poor boy at the amusement park? The picture didn't do you justice but it was the only one I'd seen. Matthew didn't have a picture of you.''

  ''I doubt his wife would have appreciated him keeping one around.''

  ''He wasn't always married,'' Grace reminded her and with the mention of Michelle McCreary, Matthew's wife, the emerald ring turned ‘round and 'round. Only the thumb of Grace's left hand moved as it reached for the ring. Grace seemed oddly unaware of the motion even though it was accompanied by the slightest tic that made her well coiffed head pull up as if someone had bridled her and the bit was painful.

  ''But he always had a sister.'' Josie reminded her. Then, anxious to shift the spotlight where it belonged, she said: ''Listen, Grace, is it just me or don't you find it just a little disturbing that Matthew led me to believe you were dead?''

  ''Matthew told me you always wanted to live at the beach. He said you were a bleeding heart. . .'' Grace talked over Josie as if she hadn't spoken. That was the last straw.

  ''Okay. I don't know why you're here but this conversation is going nowhere. If Matthew wants to see me he can call.'' Josie reached for her purse. She was sliding out of the booth when Grace leaned over the table and stopped Josie as easily as if she had erected a wall.

  ''Matthew didn't stop thinking about you when he married Michelle,'' she confided. ''He would see you on the television or see a picture in the paper. I could tell what you meant to him. You should know that.''

  Josie paused, confused by this little bit of intimate information. Grace's own hands slipped beneath the table and Josie had no doubt the emerald was still whirly-gigging. Annoyed by Grace's liberties, frightened of them because the past was insinuating itself into the present, Josie pulled her lips together in annoyance. Grace's mere presence was rewriting Matthew's history and Josie's right along with it. Archer and Hannah, Billy Zuni and Burt, Faye and Josie's life by the beach could be lost in the backwash as Grace raised the wreckage of a lost love.

  ''Matthew and me, that was a long time ago,'' Josie muttered. ''And our history is private. Now, if there's something you want, tell me. If you were just curious, you've seen me. And, when you see Matthew, tell him to take care of his own business instead of sending a sister he was ashamed of to say it for him.''

  Josie was about to leave, to forget she had ever met the woman, when she realized that Grace was struggling with a revelation of her own. A fascinating play of emotions rippled across her expertly made up face. Her shoulders broadened as if steeling for an assault – or trying to absorb a possibly fatal blow.

  ''Oh, I see. How ridiculous. I never realized that's what he felt. He's been asham . . .'' She couldn't bring herself to finish that sentence so she started on another. ''I thought he had told you something – enough that you would understand our early relationship.''

  Shaking back her black hair, she hid her hurt behind a studied composure and apologized in a modest voice. Her sudden subservience was unsettling. That's when Josie realized Grace McCreary's composure was a sham. She had probably always known the truth but now that it was said and she was devastated. It seemed a living Grace was less important than the memory of Josie. Both of them knew it but it cut one of them to the quick.

  ''Christ.'' Josie shifted and pulled her purse close, uncomfortable with the turning of this particular tide.

  ''Christ,'' she muttered again.

  ''No, it's all right.'' Grace put up a hand to ward off any sympathy. The emerald, slipped to the wrong side of her finger, flashing like some alien sign of peace. ''You mattered to him, I didn't. Please, don't be angry with Matthew. He had his reasons and they aren't important now.''

  ''Then what is important?''

  ''Matthew is in trouble. I need you to help him.''

  Grace leaned close. Josie could see that her eyelids were dusted with two shades of shadow: silver and chrome. She could see that her liner wasn't black at all but the deepest, richest grey. She saw that Grace McCreary's skin was beautiful and her hair was luxuriously thick. Josie should have been able to admire her but under the scrutiny of those dark, narrow, too close together to be beautiful eyes, Josie was uneasy. She had the feeling she was being drawn into something she wasn't ready for.

  ''Why would Matthew need anyone's help?'' Josie asked cautiously.

  Grace's face lit up like that of a lonely child thrilled to find someone would play with her. She pulled a manila envelope from her purse and pushed it across the table.

  ''The police don't think Michelle committed suicide. They think Matthew killed her. His own wife, if you can believe it.''

  CHAPTER 4

  Some say that adults can't remember their childhood; that those who profess to recall a mother's song, a special gift, a poignant moment before they reached the age of reason are only parroting things told to them. Josie knew that was untrue because she remembered being five years old.

  When she was five, her family lived in military housing in Texas. Their little house was neat but not perfectly kept. Her mother's stamp was everywhere: a compact by the lamp, a magazine left open, a coffee cup lipstick-stained by her full, wide mouth, a note written in her precise printing with the odd little flourish crossing every ‘t'.

  The day Josie remembered clearly was hot as only Texas heat could be. The base was still as only a military installation could be when men have gone off to do important things and women waited at home doing not much at all. Josie's father had been gone a long time so it had just been Josie and her mother in the house. Late that hot morning, though, a man in uniform came to visit. He stood in their house taking to Emily Bates. He never sat down.

  Josie wore a pink T-shirt was too big and green dungarees that were too short. She was shoeless and she was quiet. She stood on the patch of hallway that connected the two small bedrooms to the living room. She was half hidden, not because she meant to hide but because she was shy when people came to the house while her father was away.

  The officer talked in a voice that reminded Josie of the idling motor of their old car – low and constant and reassuring. Her mother's dress was splashed with yellow daisies; her flat white sandals had jewels on the strap between her painted toes. She stood eye to eye with the man because she was tall. Her shoulders were back. Her hair was pinned up carelessly. She looked beautiful but that was all she looked. She didn't smile when the man talked nor did she frown. Emily didn't answer him back and seemed to be only half listening. When he was finished talking, the man waited. When Emily still didn't say anything, he left.

  Josie's mother went after him a second later but stopped at the screen door, watching until she was satisfied he was gone. She put her fingers on the screen as if gauging the strength of it. Josie inched into the living room, sticking close to the wall, watching her mother. Finally, Emily closed the front windows and drew the shades despite the heat. When she was finished, she walked to her bedroom, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. Yet, when she passed, her hand slipped over her daughter's silky hair and Emily murmured:

  ''Don't ever let them know you're surpris
ed, baby.''

  The words were like liquid. They washed over Josie who nodded but didn't look up in time to see her mother's sad smile. Emily was already locked behind the closed door of her bedroom. Lickety-split, Josie ran into her room, put her ear against the wall, and pulled her doll blanket up to her chest. Just when she thought her mother had fallen asleep, Josie heard crying. She put her ear tighter to the wall, pulled the blanket closer still and listened until all she heard was silence. It was a day and a lesson Josie would never forget so she kept her gaze steadily on Grace despite her surprise.

  ''If what you say is true, then I should be talking to Matthew,'' Josie said evenly.

  ''No, no.'' Grace whispered even though the place was deserted. ''He doesn't even know I'm here. He doesn't think anything is wrong at all. But I know there are people who would use Michelle's death to cast aspersions on Matthew. People can be cruel, even the ones closest to you.'' Grace's voice dropped to intimacy. ''But, of course, you know that, don't you? I mean, your mother.''

  Josie ignored the personal reference. Her history was none of Grace's business and Matthew had been wrong to share it.

  ''Matthew's in a tight race for the nomination but it's hard to believe that there's a conspiracy to take him out of the primary on the back of his dead wife. Besides, the death was investigated. It was suicide.''

  ''Then why haven't the police let us back into the penthouse? Why have they interviewed us so often? They even talked to Tim Douglas, Matthew's campaign manager.'' Grace didn't wait for an answer. ''I can tell you why. It's because the police want to find something wrong. Someone is manipulating them.''

  ''Or the police are being thorough,'' Josie countered but Grace McCreary's paranoia could not be stopped.

  ''Or the detective in charge – his name is Babcock – '' Grace nudged the envelope another inch. ''Maybe he wants to make a name for himself. I've seen it a hundred times. A small man wanting to bring down someone larger than life; a woman wanting to attach herself to a powerful man. People can be so petty and selfish. Loyalty is the exception. Please,'' she begged, ''I just need you to look into this. If they have nothing, then stop this harassment. If there is a problem, then tell me so I can get our lawyers involved.''