Alicia closed her eyes and stifled a groan. He's interested, she thought. Definitely interested.
But she was not. She had neither the time nor the emotional resources for a relationship with Will Matthews or anyone else. Especially not now, of all times.
And even in the best of times, even with the best intentions, somehow, someway, they always managed to end up in disaster.
But how could she say no? Obviously he'd been out doing some legwork for her. The least she could do was have lunch with him. It didn't have to progress from there. She could let on that she was involved with someone. That was good… she was in this serious, long-term relationship.
And besides, the lawyer for the hospital board had called her yesterday, saying he'd heard from Floyd Steven's lawyer who'd laid out the charges he was planning to bring against Alicia and the hospital if she didn't drop the charges against his client. The board was looking into the matter.
Her intestines had been in a knot since.
"Lunch sounds fine," she said. "As long as it's a quick one. I'm up to my lower lip in paperwork."
"Short and sweet," he said. "I promise."
They arranged to meet at El Quijote at twelve-thirty.
Alicia hung up, and stared at the FedEx envelope on her desk. A copy of the will had been delivered here from Leo Weinstein's office yesterday and she'd been planning to spend her lunch hour reading it. Frustration tugged at her as she remembered what Jack had said Monday: If Thomas and his backers were desperate enough and ruthless enough to run down her private eye and blow up her lawyer, why had she been left unharmed?
Damn good question. And the answer might lay just inches away in that overnight envelope.
She'd hoped to get a peek at it this morning, but she'd spent a lot of extra time at the hospital with Hector. She was still waiting for the results of his latest tests.
Maybe she'd be able to steal some time for the will after lunch.
3.
Alicia used the walk to the restaurant to work out the details of her serious long-term relationship. She wanted them fixed firmly in her mind so she could casually drop them into the conversation with Matthews when the opportunity arose.
Let's see… the man in my life… first we need a name.
She dropped some spare change in the bucket of a sidewalk Santa and looked around at the storefronts for inspiration. English names seemed to be the exception rather than the rule in this neighborhood. She saw a sign for Jose Herrera Clothing.
All right. Let's see what we can do with that. Don't want Detective Matthews to leave the restaurant and spot the name of my beau, so let's Anglicanize that: Joseph Hermann. Great. Now, what does he do? Something that'll keep him out of town a lot. An importer. Good. But an importer of what?
As she turned onto Twenty-third Street she passed a computer-beeper-pager shop and saw the cornucopia of gadgets filling the window.
That's it: electronics. My guy Joseph Hermann imports cell phones and VCRs and computer games and all that sort of stuff from the Far East. His constant traveling is a strain on our relationship, but we're deeply committed to each other and we'll be marrying as soon as he nails down his lines of distribution and can get off the road.
And then she spotted El Quijote's canopy. She'd passed it countless times but had never thought of eating there, and that beat-up metal canopy, painted some awful shades of red and yellow, was why. The restaurant was tucked under the notorious Chelsea Hotel whose redbrick front and wrought-iron balconies made it look as if it would be more at home in New Orleans. But the restaurant itself wasn't all that inviting. It looked… old.
She stepped inside and saw a long bar stretching toward the rear on her left. The restaurant area lay to the right. The inside pretty much matched the outside—old. And traditional-looking. High ceilings, white linen tablecloths, and faux Cervantes murals along the wall. She wondered if it had been redecorated since the forties. Even with daylight streaming in through the front window, the interior somehow managed to remain dim. She found that oddly comforting.
She saw a man step away from the bar and approach her.
Detective Matthews. Wearing a trench coat, no less.
"Hi," he said, grinning. "I've got us a table."
She realized he was very good-looking when he smiled. She extended her hand.
"Detec—"
He raised his finger and waggled it. "Uh-uh-uh. Will, Remember?"
"All right. Will." She took a breath. She knew he was waiting for it, so she said, "Only if you call me Alicia."
His smile broadened. "I'd love to. Let me take your coat, Alicia."
As she shrugged out of her all-purpose raincoat, she hoped she wasn't sending him the wrong message. But he seemed like a decent guy. What could it hurt?
He checked both their coats, then signaled to the majtre d' who led them through the half-full dining area to a rear corner.
Unable to think of anything else, she said, "This is nice."
"You've never been here?"
She shook her head. "I usually eat lunch at my desk, and at home it's whatever I can whip up quick and easy. I don't eat out much." Because I don't like to sit alone at a restaurant table.
He frowned. "I just realized I should have checked first if you like garlic. If you don't, we'd better find another place."
"I love garlic. But Mexican food isn't very—"
"This isn't Mexican. It's Spanish."
Alicia winced. "Of course. El Quijote. I should have known. It's just that after all those years in Southern California, any restaurant with an 'El' is automatically Mexican."
"'All those years?' I thought you were a New Yorker."
"I was. And am again. Born and raised. But at eighteen I left for USC and stayed away for a dozen years."
She didn't tell him that she'd looked into the University of Hawaii because it was the farthest she could get from New York and that house on Thirty-eighth Street and still be in the United States. But USC had offered her a better financial package, so she'd settled for California.
The waiter arrived.
"You've got to try the shrimp in green sauce," Matthews said. "Best thing on the menu—if you like garlic."
She ordered that, plus a Diet Pepsi. He ordered a beer.
While they waited, he quizzed her about her West Coast years, and she found herself relaxing as she talked about herself. As long as he didn't ask her about her life before that. Premed, medical school, the residencies… grueling years, but good ones. She'd left New York one person and arrived in California as another. The new Alicia had no past, owed nothing to no one. As she'd stepped off the plane, she'd been reborn as a being of her own creation.
She used the arrival of their meal—a metal crock filled with plump pink shrimp nestled in a lime-green sauce—to change the subject.
"But enough about me," she said. "What about Floyd Stevens?"
"Taste first," Matthews said as he spooned a generous portion onto her plate. "You don't want to ruin a good meal with talk about scum."
Alicia bit back a sharp retort. She hadn't come for the food, she'd come for information, dammit. Instead she forked a shrimp in half and tasted it. God, it was good. Incredibly good. Quickly she ate the other half. She hadn't realized how hungry she was.
"So," he said. She looked up and found him watching her intensely. "What do you think?"
"Heavenly," she said. "So good, in fact, that nothing you can tell me can ruin it."
He sighed. "Okay. Here's what I learned: Seems this isn't the first time Pretty Boy Floyd has been caught with his hands on a child. They weren't easy to find, but I dug up three past complaints about him."