Falling Awake

right. Hit-and-run. He’s dead. No witnesses. I told the cop that you knew Hardy because sooner or later it’s going to come out.”
    She swallowed hard and looked past him. Two officers had detached themselves from the main group and were coming across the motel parking lot.
    “I suppose those cops want to talk to us?” she said.
    “Good guess.”
    “What do we tell them?”
    “The truth. No more, no less. Hardy wanted to sell you some contact information for some of your former clients. You agreed to meet with him to discuss it. When you got here, you found the accident scene. That’s all you know.”
    The cops were closer now, only a few strides away.
    “What about the connection to Jack Lawson’s operation?” she whispered urgently.
    Ellis raised his brows in a politely quizzical expression. “Who’s Jack Lawson?”
    “What about your suspicion that one of the e-mail addresses belongs to that killer, Vincent Scargill?”
    “Guess I forgot to mention one small fact. Vincent Scargill is dead.”

16
    t he following afternoon Isabel sat with Tamsyn at one of the terrace tables outside the café at Kyler, Inc. The rain had stopped shortly before dawn, leaving a day that jarred and strained Isabel’s exhausted senses to the point of pain. The sky was too blue. The sun was too bright. The surface of the bay glittered as though it had been sprinkled with shards of broken mirrors. And then there was Tamsyn, vivid and energetic as ever, her expensive centerfold cleavage on display in her carefully styled Kyler blazer.
    It was all somewhat overwhelming after the long, depressing night, Isabel thought. A person could be expected to endure only so much bright stuff. In self-defense, she removed her regular glasses and reached into her purse for her prescription sunglasses. She positioned them firmly on her nose and immediately felt much better able to deal with Tamsyn and the overbright day.

    “I’m so sorry about your friend,” Tamsyn said. “What a horrible thing that must have been for you, coming across the accident scene the way you did.”
    “He wasn’t exactly a friend. He was a coworker at the center.”
    “If he was just an acquaintance, why did you feel you had to go visit him at one o’clock in the morning?”
    Good question, Isabel thought.
    “He said he was having financial troubles,” she murmured. With an effort of will, she picked up a fork and stabbed a slice of the avocado on her plate. There were a lot of valuable nutrients in avocados. She was in desperate need of nutrients today. “I felt sorry for him.”
    “And Ellis Cutler went with you?” Tamsyn asked, her voice a little too smooth.
    “He wasn’t spending the night with me if that’s what you’re asking. He was asleep at the inn when I called him. I didn’t want to go out to see Gavin Hardy alone at that hour.”
    “But you felt you could ask Cutler to accompany you?”
    “We had dinner together earlier in the evening,” Isabel said tensely. “We’d talked. I felt comfortable asking him, yes.”
    Tamsyn nodded but she did not look satisfied with the answer. “What are the cops saying about the accident?”
    “Not much. No one saw the car that ran down poor Gavin. But they figure that the force of the impact caused a fair amount of damage to the vehicle. They’re hoping for a tip, maybe from an auto repair shop. Meanwhile they’ve got nothing.”
    All things considered, the interview with the police had goneamazingly well. It was fascinating how far one could go with the truth and yet keep secrets if one wished to do so. In the end she and Ellis had been able to answer every question honestly without any references to a clandestine government agency or a dead man named Vincent Scargill.
    Yes, I knew Gavin Hardy. Yes, he said he needed money to pay off his gambling debts. Yes, I said I’d be willing to meet with him to discuss the possibility of paying him for contact information regarding some former clients. No, I never got the addresses. Mr. Cutler? He’s a business associate and a friend. I called him because I did not want to come out here alone in the middle of the night to meet Gavin. I’m sure you can understand. My job? I work at Kyler, Inc. . . .
    Tamsyn crossed her legs and picked up her latte. “What’s going on with you and Ellis Cutler, anyway?”
    “I told you, he’s a new client.”
    “With whom you had a date.”
    “Business dinner.”
    Tamsyn dismissed that with a wave of her hand.