Lethal Love novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: For the Dress

In his car Dom refuses his money and tells her how he knew, then shows her a garage-camera frame of Oakley in a red dress walking his little brother to his death.

I should have run.

I had good sneakers on, and the subway was two blocks away.

Instead I said, "That's not my name. My name is Oakley."

"No, it isn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because Oakley just walked past me in silver, and she didn't know my face."

He tipped his head at the car. "It's cold. Get in, and I'll tell you how I know."

"I'm not getting in a car with you."

"Then I'll sit here."

He sat down on the other end of my bench, coat and all.

The black car rolled up alongside the curb and waited with us.

We sat there for maybe a minute.

A woman walked by with two greyhounds in sweaters and looked at us.

"Fine," I said. "The car. But the door stays unlocked."

"It's a car," he said. "Not a dungeon."

Inside it was warm and smelled like leather and coffee.

The driver didn't turn around.

Dom sat across from me with his knees almost touching mine and took his gloves off one finger at a time.

I dug in my tote bag and pulled out the envelope.

"Fourteen thousand dollars," I said, and shoved it at his chest. "Count it."

He didn't take it.

It hit his coat and slid down into his lap.

He set it on the seat beside him without looking at it.

"Your bank tried to send that back to me on Monday," he said.

"And your account refused it."

"My account is very loyal."

"Take your money."

"You earned it."

"I stole it."

"From whom?" He leaned back. "Oakley Halsted didn't pay you. I did. I don't feel robbed."

"You were talking to a fake person."

"I was talking to a woman who eats crackers over a sewing machine." His mouth moved, almost a smile. "That part was real."

My face went hot.

I looked out the window at the Halsted house going by.

"How long have you known?" I said.

"About an hour after you sent me the account."

"An hour."

"You gave me a business account, Jemma. Cregan's Alterations, Fifth Avenue, Bay Ridge."

He folded his gloves on his knee. "Your grandmother's name is on it. One phone call told me who sews there after midnight."

"So you knew who I was for the money."

"I knew who you were before the money."

"Then why did you send it?"

"Because a girl owed you fourteen thousand dollars and wouldn't pay."

He said it simply.

I wanted to hit him with the envelope.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got that doesn't take all night."

The car turned onto the FDR, and the river went by black and wide on the left.

"Where are we going?"

"Brooklyn. You live there."

"I can take the train."

"You can take the train tomorrow."

I crossed my arms.

"You know who I am. You know what I did. You're a," I stopped.

"Say it."

"You're the boss of a crime family, according to the New York Post."

"The Post also thinks Bigfoot lives in Staten Island."

"Does he?"

"Not anymore."

I laughed before I could help it, and I hated that I did.

He watched me laugh.

"Why the red dress?" I said. "I went through every picture she's ever posted. There isn't one."

His face changed.

It didn't move much.

It just closed, like a shop at night.

"The first message you sent me," he said. "You asked if I was ugly or married."

"You said neither."

"I've had that profile up for fourteen months. I've had a lot of first messages."

He looked out at the river. "None of them were from the woman I was looking for."

"You were looking for Oakley."

"I was looking for that face. And when that face finally wrote to me, it wasn't her writing."

"How could you tell?"

"Because I've read every message she ever sent to somebody else."

He turned back to me. "She writes in exclamation points and calls men baby by the second line."

"I said you didn't write like your pictures."

"You said a lot of things she would never say." His voice went lower. "You told me about your mother's hands."

I had.

On the fourth night, at two in the morning, I had told a stranger about my mother's hands.

I'd said they smelled like lemon cleaner, even at her funeral.

I'd forgotten I'd told him that.

He hadn't.

"Who did she write to?" I said. "Oakley. Who were the messages to?"

He took his phone out of his coat.

He held it a moment in both hands.

Then he unlocked it and handed it to me.

It was a grainy color frame from a security camera.

The corner was stamped with a date in August of last year and a time, 11:52 p.m.

A concrete garage. A painted level number. A row of cars.

A woman in a short dress walking a young man by the hand toward the dark end of the ramp.

The dress was red, the bright red of a stop sign under bad light.

The woman was laughing over her shoulder at the camera, and she was Oakley Halsted.

The young man had a Mets cap on backward and a crooked grin.

"That's my little brother," Dom said. "That's the Red Hook garage where they shot him, about four minutes after that picture."

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