That Matt had been charged with rape, her memory dredged up. Being charged was very different from being convicted, and surely Neville would have used the stronger word in his accusation if that was the case.
Matt admitted he had been in prison, but he had said he was remanded. Remand meant pre-trial.
Matt claimed he had never committed rape.
Given the choice, who would she pick as the more self-serving individual: Neville or Matt?
Which man did she most trust to tell her the truth?
She knew which one she wanted to trust, and it was because she had wanted it so very much that she had been afraid to trust her own instincts. That was the crux of her dilemma.
Trust.
All this time she had thought it was Matt holding back on their relationship, but maybe it was really herself who had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now it had, and instead of picking it up and inspecting the clue, like a good detective, she had run away.
She had condemned the man she loved without a hearing.
Turning off the engine, she rested her weary forehead on the steering
wheel and closed her eyes.
He had been a minor himself at the time. A boy. And he had grown into a man whom she liked and respected…and loved…
A tapping on her window made her jerk her head up, her heart soaring with relief, but it wasn’t Matt’s face looking in at her.
‘Miss Blair? I wonder if I could have a word with you?’
Rachel scrubbed at her salt-encrusted cheeks and fussed around with her bag, waiting for her heartbeat to settle before she got out of the car to face the thin, wiry figure of Max Armstrong.
‘What about?’ she asked warily, wondering if he was going to berate her for the loss of his job, or plead with her to intercede in getting it back.
After one curious look at her blotched complexion Armstrong said dourly, ‘Don’t worry, I have no grudge against you—that’s why I’m here. I’m off to Aussie, where the pay’s better. I just thought I’d better warn you that you might get some aggro down the line from that partner of yours.’
‘Frank?’
‘Yeah. Remember that high-society party gig we did a few weeks ago…the one with the silver cabinets?’
Merrilyn’s! How could she forget? Max Armstrong had been one of two guards dressed as a waiters.
Rachel stiffened against the impending blow. ‘Maybe you’d better come inside—’
He wagged his head, his thinning ponytail catching on the collar of his denim jacket. ‘No, thanks. As far as I’m concerned I’m not even here. I just wanted to tell you that Weston asked me to keep you under surveillance that night, to see how you handled things…said he wasn’t sure you were up to it and he wanted evidence if anything chancy happened—any sort of stuff-up that could be put down to you. He gave me a camera, one of those new, ultra-lowlight, long-lens jobs, and, well…after that guy fell in the pool, I followed you and him to the guest-house…’ He tailed off and Rachel tersely picked up the thread.
‘You took photos of us?’ She didn’t need to ask, but she was still struggling to accept that her recent suspicions had yielded bitter fruit.
‘Look, it was no big deal as far as I was concerned—but a job is a job. I reeled off a few shots. I don’t know how the photos came out, or even if they did, I just handed the camera over to Weston the next day. I told him that there was nothing to it—that you’d had a falling-down drunk on your hands—and he said OK.
‘But you were always pretty decent to me, and after Weston suddenly decided I was surplus to his requirements I had a hunch that maybe he was blowing me off because he was afraid I’d let on about his secret agenda. I always play my hunches, so there you are—that’s all I have to say.’ He shrugged, thrusting his hands in the pockets of his jacket.
‘Thanks for the information,’ Rachel roused herself to croak as he turned away.
He gave her a sour grin. ‘Yeah, well—consider it my farewell gift. With partners like him, who needs enemies, huh? I’d watch my back, if I were you.’
‘Oh, I intend to…’
Rachel watched him walk away into the gathering dusk. She didn’t even bother to go into the house. She got back into her car and called Frank on her cellphone, hanging up as soon as he answered. Then she drove over to his place and parked outside, trying to dredge up the courage from her battered soul to take charge of the part of her life that she did have the power to control.
As she sat there, staring at the lighted windows in Frank’s downstairs flat, the passenger door of the car snicked open and a shadowy figure slid into the seat beside her.