Hedging (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery)

shadow, long dangling earrings, Sonya Mosholu looked the gypsy, exotic.
    “I have interesting friends.”
    Sonya’s laugh was deep, throaty. “Yes, you do.”
    The feeling was sweet, calm bunting. “I remember your laugh.”
    “Your memory will come back.”
    “But do I want it to?”
    “Ah.”
    Knowledge intruded. “You’re a therapist.”
    “Yes.”
    “My therapist?”
    “When you need me.”
    She sighed. “I think I need you.”
    “Yes.”
    “Silvestri is trying hard, but I’ve screwed up his life.”
    “He loves you. He wants to make everything right, but he’s realizing he can’t do it by himself. Which is why he called me.”
    “Can you make everything right?”
    Sonya smiled. “We can work on it together. Do you remember what happened before you passed out?”
    “They were telling me that this Bill Veeder was the other body in the explosion.”
    “ This Bill Veeder. You don’t remember him?”
    “Carlos told me about him so I knew who he was, but I didn’t feel anything. They were all waiting for me to react.”
    “You remembered something.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Silvestri said you had a strange look on your face.”
    “I went somewhere else. You know, mentally. Into a scene from a film, starring me and a tall man with close cropped white hair. Bill Veeder. I knew it when I saw him. He was going to L.A. to defend a murderer. It was a big case and he’d be gone a long time. He wanted me to come with him.”
    “Do you think it was your imagination?”
    Leslie shook her head. “It was a flashback. I had one before, about Laura Lee. I know it means I’m coming back, but it’s so fragmented and it doesn’t make sense.”
    “Just let it happen. It will sort itself out. When you go somewhere else, try to hold onto where you are, too. Feel your feet on the floor.”
    “Did Silvestri tell you all of it? That someone is trying to kill me? That I was using another name, Mary Lou Salinger? That the FBI thinks I’ve hidden diamonds somewhere?”
    “It appears that six weeks of your life are unaccounted for, but that’s temporary.”
    “Sonya, the fragments scare me. I don’t know when they’re going to happen, and when they do, I’m afraid. Did Silvestri tell you about the blind man?”
    “No.”
    “Some time after the explosion at Teterboro Airport I got on a bus and sat down next to him. He tried to help me when we came to the Port Authority, but was shot by a man who kidnapped me. He said I was wearing a lot of coat, maybe a man’s cashmere overcoat.”
    “Okay.”
    “In the flashback, which had nothing to do with New Jersey—it was just me and Bill Veeder. He called me ‘little package,’ then wrapped me up in something huge and black and cashmere.”

33
    S ILVESTRI FLIPPED a strand of spaghetti over his wooden spoon and tasted it. “Perfect,” he said. He turned on the cold water and dumped the pasta into a colander, filling the small kitchen with steam. Giving the contents of the saucepan a quick stir, he emptied the colander into the saucepan, lifting and shaking the pan to coat the spaghetti with the thick tomato sauce.
    The process was very familiar, comforting.
    “Wine, beer, or water?” His hands kept moving, stirring, plating the mounds of spaghetti, setting everything on the table. How hard was he working not to look at her?
    “Wine,” she said. An open bottle of red stood on the card table next to a long sourdough baguette, a wedge of Parmesan, and a grater.
    She filled the glasses while he grated cheese over the spaghetti.
    “It’ll get cold.” He tore off the end of the baguette and handed it to her. “Your favorite.”
    Silvestri’s dinner—which was delicious—passed without conversation though Leslie kept trying to catch his eye. It did no good so she finished the meal, savoring every morsel, and pushed her empty plate away. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”
    He stopped wiping up the last bit of tomato sauce, shocked into looking at her. “Wasn’t it okay?”
    Having got his attention, what, she thought, was she going to do with it? He was doing his best to avoid talking about it. It being what had come between them. But it shouldn’t have been difficult because she had no memory, little memory, of Bill Veeder.
    What if now that they knew Bill Veeder was involved in whatever had happened, Silvestri was having his doubts about her honesty?
    “Can we talk about Bill Veeder?” she said.
    He took the plates