City of Mirrors by Melodie Johnson-Howe Page A

that be?”
    â€œâ€˜So what are you going to do now?’ I’m so sick of talking about my future. I wish I didn’t have to think about one.”
    â€œAll right, I won’t ask.” I couldn’t help smiling just a little.
    Glancing around, he lowered his voice. “I just heard someone say they got a message on their cell that Jenny Parson was murdered. Is it true?”
    â€œYes. I suppose you’re going to know soon enough. I found her body.”
    His eyebrows shot up and his head went back. “Wow. What was that like? Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like a jerk.”
    â€œI know what you meant. It was awful.”
    He shifted uneasily. “I guess that’s why Robert hasn’t come out of his office yet. How come you found her?”
    I briefly told him why I had gone to her condo and where I’d seen her corpse.
    â€œGod,” he murmured, taking his hands from his pockets and resting one on the balustrade to steady himself. “I always wondered why Robert hired Jenny. He was always bitching about her. But why would someone want to kill her?”
    It was then I realized that only Ben had asked that question. Not his mother, not Zaitlin, and not Beth Woods. Not even me. “I don’t know.”
    â€œI saw her,” he said flatly.
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œLast night. I was at this club called The Den. She was drunk and arguing with some guy.”
    â€œDid you talk to her?”
    â€œNo. I don’t even think she knew who I was, meaning Robert Zaitlin’s stepson.”
    â€œYou didn’t introduce yourself?”
    â€œI try to stay away from what’s Robert’s business.”
    A waiter paused next to Ben, offering a drink from his silver tray. He grabbed a mojito, spilling some. I declined.
    The waiter moved on as Ben surveyed the white party tent. “Looks like a meeting place for a bunch of evangelists. I wonder who this party is really for?” He took a long sip. “None of these people are my friends.”
    â€œYour parents don’t know how else to do it. Business is personal in this town. It’s all the same to them.”
    He poked a finger at the hot dog turning greasy cold on my plate. “Dodger Dog. Robert took me to one game. He bought me a hot dog. It made him feel like a father. He’s never gotten over it. What was your father like, Diana?”
    â€œLike you, I never knew him. He’d died crashing his car into a tree on his way to the hospital to visit his wife and meet his new daughter. Mother turned him into a saint. A young husband and actor who lost his life while desperately speeding to see his new baby daughter.”
    â€œDo you believe that shit?”
    â€œNo. A woman died in the car with him.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.” His onyx-colored eyes were swimming now.
    â€œMy mother in her hospital bed with the infant me suckling at her breast contacted her lawyer who paid the woman’s family off. The media never knew about my father’s other love. But she made sure that I grew up knowing my father had cheated on her. She believed children needed the truth, not fairy tales, though obviously she felt differently about what her public needed.”
    â€œGod, how do any of us even function?” He downed the rest of his cocktail, smacked his lips, and shoved the empty glass at a passing waiter who took it.
    I remembered the young me turning my phantom father, sometimes known as “that bastard” by mother, into my Leading Man. The only male who could be whatever I wanted him to be. Other men faded in comparison to the handsome, kind, always young, thoughtful father I had created. Except Colin. He somehow managed to exceed the fantasy. Exhaustion flooded through me. Too many memories and the discovery of a corpse had taken its toll.
    â€œI better be going. It was nice seeing you again, Ben,” I said.
    â€œWait.” He leaned close.