Lover's Bite

“Anything having to do with the CIA is likely to be creepy,” he said with a smile. “At least, it seems that way to me.”

Jack nodded at the phone. “Why don’t you call this Rebecca person now?”

She nodded and placed the call.

Rebecca Murphy agreed to see them that evening and gave them directions to her home, a small brick structure in an upscale suburb of Beverly Hills. It was a half-hour drive, and a surprisingly pleasant one. The Porsche was fabulous, and Jack drove it the same way he did everything else. Perfectly.

Rebecca answered her door wearing a kaftan with huge pink flowers all over it, a pair of furtrimmed high-heeled slippers, and diamonds dripping from her wrist, throat and earlobes. Her snowy hair was cut close to her head on the sides and in the back, while the top was longer, giving her the look of some exotic bird. Topaz suspected she weighed in at about ninety pounds, if that. The kaftan was too big, so she thought maybe the weight loss was recent. The woman had an aura of physical frailty, perhaps even illness, about her, but it was nearly overpowered by the sense of mental power and emotional stability that exuded from her like perfume.

“Thank you for seeing us, Ms. Murphy. I realize it’s after hours.”

The woman waved a hand, glancing at Topaz, then, her attention arrested, staring at her.

“This is my friend Jack. I’m—”

“Tanya,” the woman whispered. “My God, you’re Tanya, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Everyone thinks you’re dead…or worse.”

Topaz lifted her eyebrows. “What’s worse than dead?”

“Oh, child, there are plenty of things.” Rebecca took Topaz by the arm, leading her into her house, a one-story brick ranch with brown shutters and trim to offset its stark look. “I can’t believe you’re here. After all this time.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Murphy, but—”

“Rebecca. And don’t even try to tell me you’re not her. I’d recognize you anywhere. You look exactly as you did before you vanished, ten years ago. God, you look so much like your mother.” She shook her head as if to snap herself out of her reverie, and led them through her small, neat home, all the way to the rear. Topaz glimpsed a huge brown overstuffed sofa and chair, thick green carpeting, an aquarium and a ton of plants, and then they were being hustled through sliding glass doors onto a redwood deck in the back.

“Sit. Can I get you a cold drink? A snack?”

“No, thank you, we’re fine,” Topaz told her.

At Topaz’s “we,” Rebecca looked at Jack as if she had forgotten he was even there. Then she shook her head again. “I’m sorry, young man. I’ve already forgotten your name.”

“Jack,” he said, not adding a last name. She narrowed her eyes a little, but didn’t ask. And then Jack pulled out a chair for her, and she forgot her suspicions as she smiled and took it, apparently pleased by the show of good manners.

He could charm the spots off a leopard, Topaz thought. Especially if the leopard was female.

“It’s good to see you, Tanya. I kept tabs on you as much as I could until you disappeared—hard to believe it was ten years ago. No one knew what happened to you, but most of the speculation was that you died.”

Topaz licked her lips. Admitting who she was had not been a part of her plan. But clearly this woman wasn’t going to be talked out of believing it now.

Rebecca studied her, then tilted her head to one side. “You want to keep it that way, don’t you?”

Topaz met her eyes. “For reasons I can’t go into, yes. I would prefer to stay dead as far as the rest of the world is concerned.”

“Well, I still have my law license. Give me a dollar.”

“Excuse me?”

“Give me a dollar.”

Frowning, Topaz set her tiny Coach handbag onto the glass-topped patio table and fished out a dollar bill. She handed it to the older woman.

“There,” Rebecca said, folding it, and tucking it down the front of the kaftan. “You’ve just retained me. Anything we discuss now is privileged and completely confidential.”

Smiling, Topaz said, “I get it now.”

“So tell me why it is you’ve come to see me.”

“You can probably guess,” Topaz said. “I want to know who killed my mother.”

The other woman sat back, blinking in stunned surprise. Then, her jaw firming, she nodded. “Well, I suppose that makes sense.” She sat in her chair, arms crossed over her chest, and studied Topaz. “Why now? Why after all these years?”

Topaz lowered her head, darting a glance Jack’s way as she did. He was sitting in silence, just observing, listening. Probably looking for any weakness he could use later to con her, she thought with a rush of anger.

“I just need to know, that’s all. I’ve never…I’ve never understood who she was, or how she felt about me. I want to know everything about her. But especially who took her life.”

The older woman nodded slowly, her gaze turning inward. “Your mother was the most beautiful woman I have ever known,” she said softly. “She wasn’t a great actress. But she had this energy, this spirit, that just emanated from her and drew people to her. Everyone who met her fell in love with her. Everyone.”

“Well, maybe not quite everyone,” Topaz said softly. “Someone killed her, after all.”

Rebecca didn’t let the comment sidetrack her. “She was a free spirit. Couldn’t be tied to one man. She fell in love at the drop of a hat. I think it was the excitement of new love that thrilled her most. Once it got old—well, men pretty much fell into a predictable pattern with Mirabella. Once they had her, they wanted to own her. I mean, you couldn’t blame them. Anyone could see how attractive she was, how many men wanted her. So whichever one she was with tended to feel threatened by that, and inevitably, he’d start trying to control her, manage her, you know? She couldn’t tolerate that.”

Topaz nodded. “Having a baby must have been the last thing she wanted. I mean, nothing is more controlling than—”

“Having a baby was the best thing that ever happened to her.”

Topaz looked up slowly, trying hard to read the other woman’s face, and then her thoughts, in search of a lie.

“She finally had someone in her life who loved her, without giving two hoots what she looked like or how well her career was going.”

“Or how much money she had,” Topaz murmured.

“She adored you, Tanya. She so wanted to make everything perfect for you. And she tried, she did. But her life was snuffed out before she had the chance.” Rebecca dabbed at her eyes. “I really loved Mirabella, you know. She was my friend.”

Topaz believed the woman. There was nothing in her mind to contradict what she was saying aloud. But there was something.

“Do you know who killed her?”

“No.”

“But…?” Topaz prompted, fully aware that there was something else, something Rebecca wasn’t saying.

“There…was a lot going on in your mother’s life before she died. Let me dig into my files, so I can get my facts straight. My memory isn’t what it used to be. I’ll phone you in a day or two, and we can meet again. If you’re going to be in town that long?”

“I am,” Topaz said.