Watch Me Die by Lee Goldberg Page B

suggestion was rejected, but that she was disappointed with me again. Somehow, that made me feel a lot more at ease with her.
    I got up. “Can I use your computer while you’re at work?”
    She tossed me the keys to her place. “Make yourself at home.”
    I started for my apartment, then turned back to look at her and caught her looking at me. The expression on her face wasn’t the lingering traces of disappointment I’d expected. I saw warmth and concern and even some sadness.
    “Why do you want to help me?” I asked.
    “I’ve never seen you care about something before,” she said. The answer came so easily for her, I wondered if she’d been waiting for the question.
    “I care about you,” I replied.
    “It’s different now,” she said.
    I supposed it was, but I didn’t want to get into it then. I didn’t know if I ever wanted to. I nodded in what I hoped was a deep, introspective way, and went to get her the rental agreement. I felt her eyes on me the whole way, but this time I didn’t look back.
    Carol’s apartment had the same floor plan as mine, but that’s where the similarities ended. It was decorated like some kind of frilly country cottage, with yellow walls, white trim, and everything she could afford from the Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn catalogs.
    She’d replaced all the door knobs and drawer handles and faucet fixtures with replicas of old-fashioned stuff, and every surface in her place had some kind of cutesy accessory, whether it was the colorful oven-mitts on the kitchen counter, the napkins in their special holder on the table, or the seat covers on all the chairs.
    There were also plug-in air fresheners in every electrical outlet, which made the whole apartment smell so strongly of pine sap, I felt like I was visiting an upscale tree house.
    Ordinarily, I felt uncomfortable in her apartment and fled as soon as possible. But this time, I was concentrating so much on her computer screen, I was oblivious to my environment.
    First, I used a search engine to see what I could find on the Internet about Lauren Parkus. I found lots of articles, mostly local society columns, about parties and fundraisers she either organized or had attended. The events were always very pricey affairs for good causes at five-star hotels, and the guest lists usually included some movie stars, major sports figures, and big corporate leaders.
    There were also a few pictures of her. Each time one came up on screen, it startled me. Her eyes always looked so alive. Of course, nothing about her was alive any more.
    Cyril Parkus was often in the photographs with his wife, a big, proud smile on his face. He seemed so glad to be there, as if he was having such a good time battling cancer, illiteracy, lupus, sudden infant death syndrome, teenage drug addiction, and pollution of our groundwater. They were just parties to him—I think they were more to Lauren, or at least I wanted to believe they were. He also held her in a possessive kind of way that declared,
I get to take her home and fuck her and you don’t.
    I looked up Cyril Parkus. There were even more articles about him than his wife, mostly business pieces about the financial side of the movies. Apparently he was a major player in the international sale and distribution of movies. Anytime there was an article about the field, he was the expert they quoted. I guess he qualified as an “industry leader.” I figured it was his stature in the business that got so many people to contribute and participate in the charities Lauren was involved in.
    Just for the hell of it, I tried looking up Arlo Pelz in a few of those Internet phone book and “find your lost friend, lover, or relative” websites, but came up empty. I also ran my name on those same sites, and wasn’t surprised that nothing turned up for me, either. We were both as irrelevant in cyberspace as we were in the real world.
    But I was going to find him, somehow, and I was going to make him pay for