The Night In Question. Harper Allen

patted the breast pocket of the cheap windbreaker she was wearing and pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes. Sticking one in her mouth, she lit a match with the economical movements he was beginning to associate with her, squinting against the smoke. She didn’t leave the pack on the table, Max noticed, instead tucking it securely back into the pocket it had come from.

      “You didn’t smoke before, did you?” he asked. As soon as the words were out of his mouth he felt stupid. She glanced up as if sensing his discomfiture.

      “No, Mr. Ross, I didn’t smoke before,” she said flatly. “I’ve picked up a few bad habits in the last two years. And I’ve lost a few too—like pretending I give a damn about small talk.” The corners of her lips lifted humorlessly, but her eyes were opaque, giving no clue to her real feelings. “What do you want from me?”

      The Boston papers had called her The Porcelain Doll, and the name had been apt, Max recalled. Her skin had had the pearlescent glow of delicate china, her fair hair had brushed like a swath of spun silk against the shoulders of the discreetly expensive black suits she’d worn and her eyes had been the bluest he’d ever seen, fringed with thick dark lashes. Much of the time they’d been spilling over with tears, and that had reminded him of a doll too.

      God, she’d been able to turn on the waterworks at a second’s notice, he remembered with sudden anger—trembling, crystalline drops that hadn’t been real enough to smudge her mascara. At the time of her trial he’d been thirty-one, and no gullible FBI probationer but a ten-year veteran of the Agency. But even he had found himself wondering once or twice if there was any way he’d made a mistake about her. Julia Tennant had been on the stand for three gruelling days, and at the end of the third she’d looked as breathtakingly beautiful as if she’d just choked up watching a particularly emotional rendition of La Boheme, rather than being mercilessly cross-examined on multiple murder charges.

      Actually, her nickname had been The Porcelain Doll Bomber. Those slim and still-delicate fingers had handed over a gift-wrapped package to her husband, Kenneth Tennant, just minutes before he’d boarded his executive jet. Those blue eyes had probably widened in well-rehearsed horror as, only seconds after takeoff, the resulting explosion had rained flaming debris through the night sky.

      But in the end, despite her tears and the protestations of innocence that even days of grilling couldn’t shake, the twenty-three-year-old widow had been found guilty of the murders of her husband and the three other unfortunate souls who’d been on the aircraft with him that night. Justice had been done, Max thought with grim satisfaction. His only regret at her sentencing had been that she didn’t have four lifetimes to spend in prison—one for each victim she’d callously snuffed out.

      A few days ago he’d been told she was about to be released. Considering the date, he’d thought it was a bad April fool’s joke at first.

      “If we’re just going to sit here gazing into each other’s eyes I’ve got better things to do, Mr. Ross.” Julia ground the butt of her cigarette out in an ashtray and pushed her coffee cup away from her as she started to rise from her chair. “It’s my first night of freedom. You’re not how I planned to spend it.”

      “Sit down.” His voice revealed nothing of the outrage simmering inside him, but for a moment he saw a flicker of apprehension behind that blank gaze. Tucking a stray strand of lusterless hair behind her ear in the first extraneous gesture he’d seen her make, she sank back into her seat.

      From the tables around them came a buzz of noisy conversation. Cherie hadn’t reappeared, but the two other waitresses working the floor called out their orders to the short-order cook at the counter and exchanged sarcastic banter with the customers. Max hardly noticed. Under the harsh lighting Julia’s skin was unhealthily pale and the smudges beneath her eyes looked like bruises. Her fingers were laced tightly together on the table.

      She still looked like a doll. The unwanted thought darted through his mind. Except now she looked like a doll that someone had discarded a long time ago—the expensive paint chipped away, the pretty dresses lost over the years, the glamor gone. The sapphire eyes that had once sparkled with diamond tears stared at him expressionlessly. Julia Tennant didn’t cry anymore, he realized with sudden certainty.

      There was no reason why that should bother him. When he spoke his voice was harsher than he’d intended.

      “You’re never going to see her again. You understand that?”

      “Don’t worry.” She looked away. “They told me.”

      He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “If you think that anything’s changed just because you manipulated the system, forget it. If there was any real justice in this world, you’d still be upstate making mailbags with the rest of the twenty-five-to-life sewing circle instead of being handed a get-out-of-jail-free card. You got away with murder, Julia.” He kept his voice even with an effort. “But if I even suspect that you’re trying to find her—”

      “Back off. I said I understood the situation.” She lifted her chin slightly, her shoulders tense under the thin nylon of the windbreaker, and for a moment the ghost of the former Julia flitted across her features. He’d seen a newspaper photo of her at an arts gala once; her hair swept up and held back with jewelled combs, those delicate eyebrows arched in polite detachment, that same slight tilt to her chin.

      Kenneth Tennant, his thick dark hair a distinguished silver at his temples, had been in the photo too. A proprietary arm had been around his beautiful trophy wife, and he’d been smiling at another couple in the picture—his sister Barbara and her new husband, Robert Van Hale.

      Tennant and Van Hale had been doomed even then, he thought. Both of them had been on the jet when Julia Tennant’s exquisitely wrapped package had been opened.

      “You couldn’t stop staring at me throughout the trial. I see you haven’t been able to break the habit.” Her voice held a thread of anger. “You must be attracted to dangerous women, Mr. Ross—or is it that girls-behind-bars fantasy that some men have?”

      “Get one thing very clear, Julia,” he said, leaning forward slightly. When she automatically moved away he reached over and grabbed both of her clasped hands in one of his, holding her there. “You’re not my fantasy. You’re a black widow spider, as far as I’m concerned—a cold-blooded murderer who killed the father of your child, the husband of your best friend and two other people you didn’t even know.”

      “Yeah, that’s right,” Julia said tightly. “I walked into prison that first day with quite a reputation to defend. You know how it is when you’re the new kid on the cell block.”

      “I’m sure you held your own.” He didn’t loosen his grip on her. “You’re the type who always lands on her feet. Your overturned conviction proved that.”

      “Too bad the court takes pesky little details like constitutional rights so seriously. Now let go of my hands. You’re hurting me.”

      Despite the lack of expression on her face, her voice had risen enough to attract attention, and Max released her fingers in reluctant frustration. What the hell had he expected? he asked himself. Some show of remorse? Some acknowledgement, however belated, of guilt?

      A part of him had never been able to believe that she was exactly what she appeared—devoid of any real emotion, unmoved by the lives she’d destroyed. He wasn’t naive enough to think that her all-too-brief incarceration would have worked any miracle of rehabilitation, but he’d held to the faint hope that her time in prison might have made her face up to what she’d done. He’d been a fool. Nothing touched Julia Tennant.

      Not even the loss of her child.

      He’d done what he’d come here to do, he thought heavily. He’d delivered the message, although from her reaction it hadn’t been necessary. Like a phoenix, Julia had risen from the funeral pyre of her old life and was ready to start a new one—unburdened by any inconvenient baggage from her past. He pushed his chair back, unwilling to spend even a moment longer with her, and then he stopped.

      “What’s that?”