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“You should be,” Marge said. “How long do you expect us to listen patiently to your flagrantly insensitive talk?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Understand this. One of Burke’s victims lived on my street, went to school with one of my daughters, and was killed by that beast.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But I didn’t use real names. I disguised—”
“I don’t give a flip how you disguised names or hair color or anything else. She was a girl with a curious spirit, a future, and was brutally murdered, but to you it’s just a book. It’s disgusting. You’re disgusting.”
Cindy blinked and as the woman edged out of the row and headed to the exit, she realized that Marge had a point. Burke was a beast who didn’t deserve fame or approbation. But surely, there were lessons to be learned from Evan Burke. The facts of his killings, for one. For another, she’d endangered her health in order to write it and paid dearly for it.
Members of the Pasadena press pushed in from the sidelines. Cindy ignored the requests for an interview and looked blindly for Mr. Sheldon. And then he was at her elbow, helping her down from behind the small, raised platform while telling her, “Sorry, Cindy, let’s get you out of here. We’ll do this again and it will not be like this, I promise you. I’m so sorry.”
Cindy was halfway to LAX before realizing that she hadn’t signed a single book. This was regrettable and she didn’t know how to fix it.
CHAPTER 28
THE SUN HAD dropped below the horizon, leaving a band of light under a charcoal-gray sky. Cindy asked her driver to tune a good music station on the car radio and her sadness slowly ebbed away. She was making good time even in rush hour. The traffic was thick but moving. Then it was congested and then it stopped dead.Damn.
Getting out of the car, standing on the median strip, Cindy saw a red star field of taillights up ahead, no end in sight. Car horns blew discordant notes behind and ahead of her.
Back in her car, an announcer cut into the music programming to say that a tractor-trailer on the I-105 West had jackknifed, propelling a car into the guardrail and closing off the freeway.
Motorcycle cops streamed between the lanes and a detour opened at the next exit. Cindy’s chances of making her return flight seemed slim.
The driver turned onto the I-105 West off-ramp and Cindy called Melanie, her publicist.
After a flurry of calls between the publisher’s office in New York and Delta Airlines, Cindy was sure she’d heard wrong when Melanie dropped a bomb: SFO was fogged in. All flights to San Francisco were cancelled.
“Wait. It’s been years since we’ve gotten fog like that.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Thomas. There are still two open seats on the eight a.m. flight. I suggest we book one plus a room for tonight at the Skyways Hotel.”
Cindy agreed and then she dialed Richie.
“Cin. How did it go?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” she said, staring into the eyes of a little boy making faces at her through the rear window of the car in front of her. “But my flight’s been cancelled. SFO is fogged in. Can you believe that?”
“Can’t remember the last time that happened,” Rich said. “I’ll book you a room near LAX.”
“My publicist has done it. I’ll be on the eight a.m. flight tomorrow.”
“Call me before you board. I’ll pick you up.”
Cindy told Richie that traffic was moving, that she’d call him later from the hotel. She sent a kiss over the 5G network and received one back. Mercifully, their call ended before she’d told Rich that her PTSD from her time with Evan Burke had been reignited by a verbal assault. That she’d frozen up, lost her nerve, and no longer knew who she was.
CHAPTER 29
CINDY HUNG THEDO NOT DISTURBsign outside her door at the Skyways Hotel. Once inside room 202, she double-locked the door, turned on all the lights, and inspected the place. It was decent. The bed was large and the spread looked fresh. The carpet was clean enough. She was encouraged by the muffled whine from the airliners landing, taxiing, taking off. She would be on a plane home soon.
Parking her backpack on the desk chair near the window Cindy charged her devices and checked the time. It was seven forty and she was hungry. Now, Plan B.
Flicking her eyes over the menu for the hotel restaurant, Cindy phoned in a salad, a small bottle of chardonnay, and chocolate cake. While she waited for her dinner, she opened her laptop and skipping the hundred and fifty-eight emails from people she didn’t know, she opened theChroniclewebsite hoping to read that the fog would lift in time for her morning flight.
She scanned the headlines, then shifted to theLos AngelesTimesonline. Like a punch to the heart, she read, “Woman Killed in Pasadena.”
Cindy stabbed a key with her finger and the article filled her screen. A map inside the article showed a section of town including both the Fuller Theological Seminary and the stretch of East Colorado Boulevard where Vroman’s Bookstore was located.
