9 Hell on Wheels by Sue Ann Jaffarian Page B

too. Greg, can we meet at your office? It’s not far from mine.”
    “Sure. How about seven o’clock? My staff is mostly gone by then. There’s a pizza place almost next door. We’ll grab a pizza and some drinks and have dinner at the same time.”
    “Sounds good,” said Rocky with a bit of relief in his voice. “Maybe by then Miranda will show up and be able to prove this is all a lot of nothing.”
    This time Greg’s phone made it to the nightstand without buzzing.
    For a long time we lay in bed staring up at the ceiling before either of us spoke. “Do you really think,” began Greg, “that Miranda killed Tanaka?” He thought a little more about it. “Maybe Tanaka told her he was going to tell Rocky about their affair so she panicked.”
    “Hard to say, honey. People have certainly killed for less.” I turned toward Greg and snuggled against him. He wrapped an arm around me and drew me close. “One thing is for sure: my mother can’t accuse us of having a dull life anymore.”

Seven
    I really don’t know which is worse: having Steele in the office with me within arm’s reach or having him work from home and call and email me every fifteen to twenty minutes.
    I’d stuck to the agreed-upon script of him having been in a car accident on Sunday. Lying to people in the office and to the T&T mothership in Los Angeles didn’t seem to bother me a smidge, and I’m not sure if I should be proud or ashamed. My mother always tells me I’m a lousy liar—a trait she claims I got from my father. She, on the other hand, could win an Oscar for it. Frankly, I was surprised she hadn’t called me on the car accident story over dinner the night before. If Greg hadn’t been there singing the same tune, she might have fixed her maternal lie detector on me and discovered the truth. The one person I had difficulty looking in the eye and talking about the accident with was Jill, Steele’s secretary. She wanted details, and I kept claiming I didn’t have any. I knew if I started making up stuff, it would come back to bite me and I’d look like a bigger fool. My plan was to keep any information about Steele simple and to a minimum. Earlier this morning on one of our calls, I’d begged him to let me tell Jill the truth and stressed that she could be trusted, which she could be, but he was adamant that I go to my grave with the bar fight details—or, rather, the few I had—forever locked in my brain. Considering how difficult it was to understand Steele on the phone, I could say that I didn’t hear his demand, but I lost that excuse when he texted me the same and underscored it with a dozen exclamation points. That poor punctuation mark was certainly getting a workout.
    I’d even begged off lunch with Zee. I gave her a quick call and simply said that Steele had been in a car accident and that I was holding down the fort while he convalesced. She’d pressed for details and I gave her the few I’d given Jill, which was next to nothing. I could have gone to lunch with Zee. I wanted to go to lunch with Zee. I just couldn’t risk it. Zee Washington knows me inside and out, and she is even more talented than my mother when it comes to sniffing out lies that dribble from my mouth, full or partial, like spit when I sleep. She can also tell when I’m holding something back just by looking at me.
    I really need to work on my duplicity skills. I wonder if there’s an app for that?
    Near the end of the day, I packed up Steele’s mail, along with everything Jill and I had done for him that couldn’t be emailed, and headed down to his place. I had planned to send it with a messenger but Steele had insisted that I bring it to him personally. With traffic, time would be tight for getting to our meeting with Rocky Henderson. Laguna Beach is south of where our office is located. Then I’d have to fight traffic north along Pacific Coast Highway to Huntington Beach, where Greg’s business, Ocean Breeze Graphics, is located.