Simon

I drive along the coast, the ocean on one side the mountains on the other, to Santa Barbara then turn East and drive into the hills.

Tommy is talking to me on speaker. Beth pipes up every once in a while. They are a package deal these days and I am happy for them, if not just slightly annoyed by their constant joy.

“I’m worried about you,” Tommy says.

I’m annoyed by that, too.

“I don’t have choice, Tommy,” I say. “It’s Bates. You didn’t have a choice either, remember?”

I don’t mention the part about how I don’t need a choice. Don’t want one. I am going into this assignment like a rookie reporter with his first big story. I practically have an erection.

“It’s not that, it’s…you just seem different lately.”

“That’s because you’re different lately,” I tell him. Tommy was never as hard as me. As cold. As driven. But falling in love with Beth has changed him and Tommy now is a whole lot closer to the guy he should have been.

Sweet almost. Kind. Almost. He smiles. And laughs.

I don’t do any of those things.

Who am I, now? I think.

“Are you mad at her?” Beth asks.

“Because she’s Simpson’s daughter?”

“No, because she threw the rock that got you arrested.”

“I got arrested for the knife,” I say. “It wasn’t her fault.” I don’t say that I admired her. That the teenage me had been attracted to her. That feels like a million years ago. A different person.

“Do you think she’ll recognize you?” Tommy asks.

That had occurred to me.

“No way, ” Beth says. “You’re six feet tall and jacked. Teenaged you was a pencil I could put in my pocket.”

“Thanks for that assessment.”

“What’s your story for being invited?” Beth asks. “I mean, you’re going to have to talk to some people. Cocktail banter and everything.”

“Well, don’t you worry about me and cocktail banter,” I say. “I excel at cocktail banter. I am a cocktail banter master.”

“Says who, exactly?” asks Beth. Doubting my banter skills, and I don’t blame her. I use them on the job. With my friends I’m a whole lot more taciturn. I often don’t know what to say. How to talk about what I’ve seen. And done.

It’s easier pretending to be someone else.

“Says everyone. Says the motherfucking Queen of England,” I say, and they laugh, which is what I wanted. But God, it feels hollow. It feels empty. It feels like I’m pulling more strings, telling more lies. Pretending all the time, and Tommy and Beth are supposed to be my friends.

My family.

“Keep in touch?” Tommy asks and I have that sense I sometimes get with him, that what happened to us at St. Joke’s still haunts him.

That he would, if he could, keep us all next door so we could knock good-night on the walls and put his mind at ease. It hurts him that we don’t know where Rosa’s baby is or how Rosa is doing, and that Carissa is somehow involved with Bates.

And it hurts me that it hurts him.

“Yeah,” I say. “Talk later.”

I disconnect the phone from the Bluetooth. I rented a souped-up Cadillac for the weekend because my 2010 Jeep with the CD player isn’t going to help with the story I am telling this weekend.

Wealthy. Philanthropist. My mommy had money. I like the irony of that. Mom had money instead of a brain tumor that killed her.

I follow the directions through the scrub brush to the dirt side road off the two-lane highway. A funky metal sign in the shape of a paintbrush wildflower indicates the way to go. The Cadillac bumps down the dirt road, takes a dip down into a valley and the stone building appears alongside a creek. Green fields in the background. A side parking area full of cars far more fancy than my souped-up Cadillac.

This is the place.

The sun is setting behind the house and a lineup of people in cocktail dresses and tuxedos are entering the building. There are white lights wrapped around trees and I can hear music playing through the car windows.

It is a party. A beautiful, elegant party.

And usually I love beautiful, elegant parties. Because they’re filled with beautiful, elegant women and open bars and shrimp cocktail.

But this one feels rotten. Poisoned.

Because she’s here and, by association, him.

I drive up to the valet station and step out of the car, grabbing my tuxedo jacket from the backseat where I’d spread it flat. I’d rented the car but bought the tux. I’m not a vain man, but I am tall and wiry and I look better than I should in the slim-cut tux with the classic bow tie.

James Bond ain’t got nothing on me.

“Welcome to the Paintbrush,” a woman in an elegant red cocktail dress, holding an iPad says. She’s very pretty in a classic way. Timeless. “I’m Megan.”

“Thank you, Megan.” I smile at her then take in the building, which, I have to admit, is stunning. Really beautiful. It clearly had been an old farmhouse at one time but they’d blown it up a little. Modernized it. There is a long wing on either side.

“Wow,” I say. “The pictures don’t do it justice.”

“It really is special, isn’t it?”

I whistle and she smiles. “Who do we have to thank for this beauty?” I ask, pretending like I haven’t read every single thing printed about this place and its owners Megan Grossmore and Penny McConnell.

Megan has the experience in management and marketing. Penny is the chef. Megan does almost all of the interviews, except for one on the Food and Wine website. Which, frankly, was a pretty shitty interview.

Penny was dull. A farmgirl from Iowa with a nearly myopic interest in organic farming. And butchering pigs.

“Actually, ” she says with a proud little smile. “The property has been in my family for generations. My business partner and I took it over two years ago and we turned it into the Paintbrush.”

“You own the hotel?” I say like I’d never heard of such a thing.

“The executive chef, Penny McConnell, and I.”

“Well, my hat’s off to you and your partner,” I say, pouring on the charm. “Will we get to meet her tonight?”

“Penny is going to be a little busy in the kitchens. She’s got something really special planned for everyone.”

“I can’t wait,” I say.

“Can I have the name your reservation is under?” Megan asks me, as pleasant as can be and I give her the alias I RSVP’d under.

“Simon Quadir.” After my father’s favorite Pakistani cricket player of all time, Abdul Quadir, the best leg-spinner to ever play the game.

“You will not be spending the night?” she asks, checking the iPad she carries in her hand like a clipboard.

“Not this time, unfortunately.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Quadir. Please feel free to join our other guests in the restaurant for cocktail hour. Dinner will be served at 8:00 pm. And we sincerely thank you for your support of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.”

I follow the sounds of the party through the elegant entryway. Smiling staff are everywhere, standing behind desks, looking so fucking eager to help me.

Excuse me, I imagine saying, any of you throw a rock at the San Francisco Court House, eight years ago? Any of you have a port-wine birthmark under your chin? Any of you have a father who has single-handedly killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Any of you easing your conscience by throwing this lovely gala for the children your father would have dead because they don’t have access to his medicine? Anyone?

Yeah. No.

If there is one thing I know as an investigative reporter, it's that stories only come to the patient and the bold.

Once, I sat under a tree outside a village in the Philippines for two days, proving my commitment to the village Lakay. The story amounted to nothing, but I send the man a case of Marlboro Lights every year.

A server comes by with a tray full of champagne glasses. I take one as a prop, but don’t drink it.

Stories come to the patient, the bold and the sober.

Except for the night in Moscow two years ago.

The dining room and bar are made of stone and glass and clear-varnished wood. It is elegant and rustic all at the same time. The room is full of people drinking champagne and eating appetizers being passed around by servers wearing denim aprons with leather fasteners. The man behind the bar is hand-squeezing some oranges and explaining his mixology process to a beautiful woman who seems inordinately interested.

There’s a quiet spot at the end of the bar and I turn to watch the crowd. There are about seventy people here tonight and I recognized a few of the higher-ups from the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. I talked to them several times in trying different angles against Simpson. And for a moment, I worry about my cover but we’d only ever talked on the phone. Or via email.

I continue my rundown of the place.

The women in red cocktail dresses and the men with red ties and black suits are staff, senior to the men and women with the aprons. I take appetizers and drinks from every blonde woman I can and I don’t recognize any of them.

Perhaps it’s odd that I think I would recognize her. The girl by the garbage can. Not just because of the birthmark, but by her eyes. Those deep brown eyes. And the way she radiated with energy. Even dialed back, a person with that kind of intensity would be noticed. Would be singular.

Special.

I am convinced that I should feel her here. Like a water douser near a spring.

But while all of the blondes are beautiful and seemingly kind and very good at their jobs, none of them are her. I study the brunettes, the redheads. One woman with bright pink hair. None of them are her.

Which means if she is a part of the hotel’s management, she is higher up the food chain than the men and women on the floor.

I find the staircase leading upstairs to the rooms and I walk down each hallway, looking for rooms marked Private. I find two. Both of them locked.

There are a few more staff who all ask if they can help me and I politely tell them I’m fine.

Downstairs I follow the stream of denim-aproned servers towards the kitchen, not making eye-contact, exuding my-fake-it-till-you-make-it vibe until I get to the swinging door of the kitchen.

I get a glimpse inside the steamy, chaotic space and hear a woman shout, “Jeff, are you fucking kidding me with that lamb chop?”

Man, I love chefs. They remind me of reporters a little. Night creatures, who keep weird hours and have a strange insight into the human condition.

And swear like motherfuckers.

I wonder if the woman swearing is dull, farmer Penny.

“Mr. Quadir?”

It’s Megan, coming up behind me, her face so concerned by my obvious stroke. Otherwise, why would I be standing outside the kitchen in a steady stream of staff? “Can I help you?” she asks, clearly puzzled.

“Megan!” I cry like she’s a lifesaver. “I thought the bathrooms were this way.”

“No! No.” She smiles like I’m such a sweet fool. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten that exact same smile. It is universal. Cuts through every language and cultural barrier.

Oh, you dummy. Let me help you.

“Follow me.’

She leads me back to the party and I thank her like she led me out of the wilderness.

It starts to feel like Simpson’s daughter isn’t here. That this is just another dead end. I turn to the bartender with the hand squeezed orange juice and order a scotch.

“A double,” I say.

And he nods like he understands that only a double will do.

Megan opens the sliding barn doors between the bar area and the dining room. Behind her is a garden of California wildflowers placed down a stretch of tables in one long line, stunningly lit by candles and fairy lights.

The entire crowd gasps and spontaneously applauds.

Even my jaded heart is moved.

And then it occurs to me that this kind of opulence costs money.

Is Simpson’s daughter an investor? Using her father’s money?

For a moment, I feel sick thinking about Simpson’s money paying for my drinks. The dinner I’m about to eat.

And I know I won’t be able to choke down a bite of it.

Megan beams and her eyes dart to edge of the bar opposite me and I follow her gaze to find a woman in chef whites, her blonde hair hidden in a blue bandana, another one is tied around her neck. She has dark eyebrows and a nose that’s been broken. Lips for days. For. Days.

The girl at the garbage can had those lips and my brain is buzzing again. Hope is back.

She is short. And thin. Like she is made of wire. And her face is covered with a sheen of sweat, but her body is completely covered up. The chef jacket sleeves buttoned at her wrist. The scarf around her neck. I see none of her skin but her face.

She stands out and not just because she is sweaty and dressed wrong. She stands out because she’d stand out anywhere.

She glows like the wire in a light bulb.

Megan says something and the ball-gowned and tuxedoed crowd stream forward through the doors, finding their name cards in front of the china plates at the table.

But I don’t move.

I don’t look away. Not from the woman at the end of the bar. She has the right features — that mouth with its pouty upper lip. So lush on the sparseness of her frame. But we were kids then, and my memories of that day are smeared with adrenaline and fear so I can’t be sure.

Not without seeing the birthmark.

The bartender places a drink in front of her. Amber liquid and a square ice cube. She smiles at the bartender and my breath stalls in my throat.

Objectively, she is not beautiful, not in a fashionable way. Not in any predictable way. She is too thin. Too short. That broken nose. But…she radiates. She exudes. She is bigger than her body. A force more powerful than her flesh.

And some people might find that too intense. But I am drawn like a magnet.

It could be her. It FEELS like her.

But I can’t see her neck. Why would she wear a scarf like that unless she is trying to hide her neck? Highly suspicious that scarf.

She catches me staring and I smile at her, a real smile. I feel it reach my eyes and stretch my cheeks. I feel the corresponding joy in my body as I lift my glass.

Close, I think. I am getting closer.

She blinks as if stunned, either by my attention or this wildly happy smile I’m giving her. It’s out of balance but I can’t quite stop it.

And then she smiles back, lifting her glass at me, her eyebrow quirked in a dare.

My body sizzles with sudden chemistry. The right eye contact with the right person is a powerful thing and something arcs between us. A fundamental knowledge, not because I might have met her eight years ago, but because I know her.

And then, as if we’d counted it out, we both down our too-expensive-to-be-shot glasses of booze.

Fuck you, Simpson, I think. Just in case he did buy me that booze.

On the breast of her chef whites, Executive Chef is embroidered in red. Under the name Penny McConnell.

The co-owner.

The boring farm girl from Iowa.

According to that Food and Wine interview she came from a big, Iowa family. A bunch of brothers, a father who taught her to hunt, a mother who taught her how to cook. She said that food was how you told people you cared.

Penny, across the bar, looks like that story. It rang of a certain kind of truth.

But it also smelled like bullshit. My gut says a little pressing and that story will pop like a bubble.

My gut says Penny is Tina Andreas, raised not by a farmer and his wife, but by a scheming mother who is currently serving twenty-five years for tax evasion and collusion.

“Another?” she asks on a gasp.

“It’s your party.”

“You’re right about that,” she says with a laugh. “And it’s a pretty great party.”

“Yes, it is.”

And she lets me in. She lets me into her joy and it’s too fucking bright. It’s too real. But I don’t look away. I don’t flinch or blink. I stare right back at her and smile.

“Bobby?” she says to the bartender who, in record time, pours each of us another drink, and we shoot that back, too.

I gasp, wincing. “I don’t think the good people at Lagavulin meant for that to be a shot.’

“Neither did the good people at Maker’s Mark.”

“Maybe we should downgrade,” I say, looking into her sparkling eyes. I can feel her excitement and it makes my blood hot. The connection between us is lucky and problematic.

Lucky because I can use it.

Problematic because I have to control it.

“Tequila?” she asks, an eyebrow quirked.

“If that’s what the lady wants,” I say with a shrug. “But aren’t you in the middle of throwing a giant party?”

“I suppose you’re right,” she says looking into the dining room. But I don’t follow her gaze. I’m looking for any sign of that birthmark over the top of that bandana. “I can’t believe it’s all worked.”

She says it like she’d been expecting it not to work.

Suddenly there’s a herd of waiters and waitresses wearing denim aprons with dishes in their hands descending on the table in the dining room.

“You’re missing the scallop crudo with shaved radish, grapefruit and caviar.”

“That sounds good.”

“It is. The only thing better you’ll ever taste is the main course.”

“Which is?”

“Oh, sweetie.” It’s patronizing, the way she says it. The slight drawl she puts on her words, channeling her farmer’s daughter persona while, at the same time, just slightly busting my balls. I laugh, unable to help myself. I do love a self-confident woman. “You need to go in and try it.”

“I like it out here at the moment.”

She blushes. She, honest to God, blushes.

“Mr. Quadir.” Megan, at my elbow, has to repeat the name two times before I remember that’s my name.

“Yes!” I say, after her tone is stern the second time around. “Megan!” I greet her like an old friend, which makes her smile, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Dinner is being served.”

“I understand that. I was just congratulating —” I turn towards the chef at the end of the bar, but no one’s there. A square ice cube melting into the bottom of a rocks glass the only indication that anyone was.

“Care to follow me?” Megan says, and I recognize the tone in her voice. It’s the same one senior reporters give me when I’m getting my hopes up about a by-line. It’s a cool-your-jets kind of tone.

A she’s-not-for-you tone.

I push my empty glass towards Bobby, the bartender. “Thank you,” I say and he nods, accepting my glass like it’s some kind of surrender.

“Lead the way,” I say to Megan and I follow her through the stunning dining room to an empty chair halfway down the long table.

I sit, smiling at the people near me while putting my napkin in my lap. Trying to figure out how I will get back into that kitchen.

The scallop on my plate, pale pink and dotted with glistening black caviar and garnished with razor-thin slices of radish, is stunning in its simplicity. It looks like art.

And by the looks on the faces around me, it tastes amazing. The woman across the table has her eyes closed and is moaning in her throat like it’s downright orgasmic.

I don’t even pick up my fork.

I want to. But I can’t.

Not if Simpson paid for this.

Not if his daughter made it.

And my gut is telling me if Tina Andreas is involved, so is her father’s filthy money.

“Is there a problem?” the server says as he takes my plate. His face is crumpled in near horror that I didn’t eat the scallop.

“Not at all,” I say, but don’t elaborate.

The next plate is grilled tri-tip, a California classic. Served with chimichurri, heirloom tomato salad and fondant potatoes and the smell of it makes my stomach growl.

But still, I don’t pick up my fork.

“Is everything all right?” the woman next to me asks.

“Just fine,” I say.

“It’s really good,” she says, like I need encouragement. And I realize all I’m doing is drawing attention to myself. And I don’t need that. I don’t need anyone remembering the weird guy who didn’t eat his pricy dinner. So, I pick up my knife and fork and take a bite of the steak and it’s… Well, it’s fucking perfection. So are the potatoes. Everything explodes with flavor and I don’t want to be impressed or even care.

But Penny McConnell killed it.

“Will we be able to meet the chef?” I ask the server as he puts down my honeyed fig and mascarpone dessert.

“No.” The server smiles at me. “Chef McConnell won’t be greeting the guests. But I will extend any compliments or concerns you might have.”

“Compliments,” I tell him. “All compliments and a thousand of them.”

He smiles, like I complimented him. Like he’s just a happy member of the team and my jaded heart wonders if that’s real. Or manufactured. “I’ll let her know.”

I don’t want to eat the dessert, having done my part on the steak.

But my mother loved figs. Dad brought them into her life, but Mom took it next level. I might have been the only kid who went to school with fig jam sandwiches. At Thanksgiving she made a dessert a lot like this one, with thick yogurt and honey. Pistachios.

And when everyone was gone, the kitchen still a mess, she would sit down with whatever was left and eat it all herself while Dad and I did the dishes and we would all gossip about our family.

I take the edge of the spoon and dip it in the creamy cheese, just a tiny bit against my tongue and it’s not enough and too much all at the same time.

The spoon clatters against the bowl and I stand up from the table, smiling briefly at the people with whom I didn’t even bother to make painful small talk and leave the room.

I have one goal. The kitchens.

Penny McConnell.

Instead of heading through the building, I step out onto the verandah and turn left until I’m out of sight of the diners. The moon is full in a crystal-clear sky, accompanied by splashes of stars and I use their light to hop the stone balustrade of the verandah. I land in the lavender plants the circle most of the building, making everything smell like soap.

No matter what, there’s a kitchen entrance. There’s always a kitchen entrance and I mean to use it.

After walking along the west wing of the house, I turn the corner to the rear portion of the building and there’s an open door, a back parking lot and a Dumpster in the distance.

The open door cuts a giant square out of the shadows and the smells of dinner linger out here, sugar and smoke. Two people are fighting. Like, for real fighting.

“Let’s not do this now,” a guy says, sounding petulant.

“No, Jeff,” a woman says and I realize it’s her. Penny. I recognize the smoothness of her voice, like that fig and mascarpone dessert and my dick stirs. There’s something dangerous in the air and my dick has always liked that. Early imprinting from the courthouse maybe.

The writer in me likes the full circle nature of this.

The shadows are thick and dark and I use them to stay out of sight.