by Nalini Singh
23
Anahera’s tight smile seemed to satisfy Jemima.
The other woman sipped at her coffee, then said, “Not the kind of homecoming you would’ve wished for.”
“No.” She’d expected and been prepared for old memories and older anger, but not this. “I remember Miriama as a young girl, but I’ve only met her twice as an adult.”
Jemima’s eyelids lowered, her hands cupping her mug as she took a deeper drink. When she looked up again, her gaze was softer yet oddly difficult to read. A woman, Anahera thought, who was used to putting on a mask that didn’t look like a mask. Necessary for someone who wanted to stand next to the man who would be prime minister.
“I’m afraid I’ve never really gotten to know her,” Vincent’s wife admitted. “She’s so much younger. Just that age gap where we don’t really have anything in common, you know? I feel so old saying that.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Anahera said, liking the self-deprecating woman under the polish and spin. “There’s such a difference between nineteen and twenty-nine. Ten short years but a lifetime apart.”
“It’s even worse between nineteen and thirty-one.” Jemima’s smile was quick, bright. “I married a younger man,” she whispered.
“Sorry, you fail the scandalous test. Unless you were sixteen and Vincent was fourteen when you met, and I know that didn’t happen.”
Jemima’s smile deepened, reaching the sea green of her eyes. “After this is all over”—the smile rubbed away, her gaze going to the map before meeting Anahera’s again—“and I mean when it’s settled in a good way, with the best news, I hope you’ll come up to the house for a coffee or to have lunch.”
Anahera hesitated; she hadn’t come to Golden Cove to make friends. She’d come here to lose herself in the shadows.
In front of her, Jemima’s expression began to grow distant and Anahera knew suddenly that the other woman was used to rebuffs from Vincent’s friends—or perhaps it was from all of the locals. She certainly didn’t seem the kind of person others would shut out, but on the other hand, she was wealthy and lovely and an outsider; just because she’d married one of their own didn’t mean she would’ve been welcomed with open arms. Still, it was odd, given how well Vincent was liked.
“I’d like to,” she found herself saying. “I may not be the best company, though—I’m not sure I’m at the point where I can socialize.”
Jemima’s expression fell. “Oh, God, I’m stupid. I should’ve realized.” She touched her fingers hesitantly to Anahera’s hand. “Whenever you’re ready, the invitation is open. Here”—she dug around in a jacket pocket, found what she was looking for—“this has all my contact details.”
Anahera took the crumpled card, slipped it safely away. “Thank you.” She could detect nothing false in Jemima, which made the fact that she seemed to have been braced for rejection even less understandable.
Jemima spoke again, both slender hands back around her mug. “I love this part of the country, but Vincent and I are away so often that I haven’t had a chance to really nest here, if you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do.” She’d loved Edward, and so she’d tried to love London, too. Just as she’d tried not to miss the water that crashed so hard against the rocks that it sent up a white spray, the grit of sand between her toes, and the green, the endless dark green that could never be tamed.
All things she’d wanted to escape as a girl.
All things she’d ached for desperately when surrounded by red double-decker buses and stately museums, designer shops and theaters that glittered, the civility of it threaded by a constant buzz of humanity.
“You and Vincent have two kids, right?” she said. “I’m sorry, I forgot their names.”
This time, Jemima’s smile lit up her entire face. “Jasper and Chloe. My little cheeky monsters. One’s four and the other’s three. They’re with their nanny now, a wonderful older lady who used to look after Vincent when he was young.”
That there was one reason Jemima might’ve had trouble fitting into Golden Cove. Women here generally didn’t get the opportunity to have nannies or to fly around the country and the world. Sometimes, even the nicest people could give in to the green-eyed monster of jealousy. Especially when Jemima had married one of the few bachelors in town who offered a ticket out of poverty or a humdrum small-town experience.
“Jemima.” Vincent’s hand on his wife’s lower back, his face worn. “Do you want to get back? Kyle’s about to leave so you can catch a ride with him again. I might stay a little longer.”
Jemima nodded. “The kids will be missing me.” Leaning in, she kissed Vincent on the cheek, the fingers of one hand rising to touch his jaw. “Don’t stay out too long, okay? You’ve done everything you can. No one could ask for more.”
As Vincent and Jemima walked away after Jemima said a warm good-bye, Anahera wondered if Vincent saw Golden Cove as his responsibility. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility—the Bakers had always been big on public service. While Golden Cove didn’t have a mayor, if it did, it was probably a Baker who would’ve filled that role. And now Vincent was beating himself up because Miriama had disappeared on his watch.
“Trust Vincent to take this on his shoulders,” she said to Nikau when he came to join her.
The man who’d once been her friend, and who she thought might still be, stared after the departing couple. “Vincent always seems so straightforward, doesn’t he?” He folded his arms, his shirt a checked blue; he’d hung up his wet outdoor jacket by the door.
“Do you have any reason to think he isn’t?”
Nikau shrugged. “He never talks about her, you know—the wife, I mean. But all the times I’ve met her, she seems nice enough. A little posh, but you expect that with someone Vincent would hook up with. He never brings her to any of the town events, either. It’s weird when you think about the parties and things he takes her to all across the country.”
Someone hailed Nikau just then and he walked off to talk to a grizzled older man with blue prison tattoos across his knuckles. His words, however, stuck with Anahera. Jemima didn’t seem the type of person who thought she was too good to attend Golden Cove events. Perhaps her absence was a case of jealousy of another kind. For Vincent, Golden Cove was his home. Maybe he couldn’t share it even with the woman he loved.
And Anahera was making up answers out of thin air. For all she knew, Jemima could keep up the appearance of enjoying small-town life for a short period, but had no particular desire to become part of the fabric of Golden Cove.
Every couple had their secrets and their polite lies.
24
After leaving Kyle, Will had gone back to talk to Steve. He’d wanted to squeeze Matilda’s live-in boyfriend while Matilda wasn’t around. Men like Steve had a way of posturing and lying in front of the female sex, as if the behavior would prove their status as an alpha male.
But Steve stuck to his story—and he wasn’t smart enough to lie that well. Those of Steve’s type, when they killed, weren’t clever about it. They were violent and brutal and caught up in the heat of the moment. Had the searchers found Miriama’s body beaten and strangled somewhere nearby, Will would’ve come down hard on Steve as a primary suspect, but with Miriama missing and Steve simply not having had the time to get to her, he had to accept that the other man was telling the truth.
“She wasn’t ever going to let me touch her,” Steve muttered sourly, just as Will’s phone vibrated with a message.
“Who? Matilda?” Will had remained standing while Steve sat in the dark brown couch that swallowed him up. The other man was wearing a greasy and sweat-stained white tank, gray chest hairs sticking out from over the top of it, while he’d pomaded back his scraggly once-blond hair as if he was reliving the seventies.
“Matilda, too,” was the answer. “I wasn’t gonna force her precious Miriama or nothing
,” Steve added piously, “but I’m a man. I had to try my chances in case she had an itch she felt like scratching.”
Will fought the urge to kick Steve in the balls. The image of the asshole crumpled whimpering on the floor was a particularly compelling one. But he checked his phone instead, giving Steve more time to stew.
The message was short and to the point and it made his blood pound:
Shane Hennessey says Miriama used to wear an expensive platinum and diamond watch. Most people thought it was a fake. Matilda’s agreed to look for it for us.—Ana
“Miriama said no when you tried it on with her?” Will nudged after sliding away his phone, using his well-worn technique of keeping his voice mild and emotionless. As if he was only slightly interested in the answer. The reason it was a well-worn technique was that it worked. Suspects and bystanders alike read what they wanted to hear in his voice.
Today, Steve nodded his head like a bobblehead doll. “I know you’re doing the whole search thing so the morons in this hick town will like you, but don’t waste your time. Miriama’s a sharp operator who can look after herself. Like that watch she has. I used to work with jewelry before, recognize quality.”
Will interpreted that to mean Steve had stolen or fenced jewelry at some point in time. “What’s so interesting about her watch?”
“It’s seriously fancy, that’s what.” Steve’s piggy little eyes glinted. “Worth at least twenty grand.”
Will pinned the other man to the spot with his gaze. “That’s a whole lot of motive, wouldn’t you say?” In a town like Golden Cove, twenty thousand dollars might as well be twenty million dollars.
Two hot red flags flaring on his cheeks, Steve lifted his hands and waved. “Hey, hey, don’t you go trying to pin anything on me. Watch’s still in her room—come, I’ll show you.”
Following the other man down the short and narrow hallway, Will put a hand on Steve’s shoulder and held him back from entering the room when they arrived. “You stay here.” There was no reason to think Miriama’s room was a crime scene, but he still didn’t want Steve inside. “Where does she keep the watch?”
“That little drawer to the left. It’s under a pile of panties.”
When Will just stared at him, Steve licked his lips and Will could almost hear him thinking of an excuse for pawing through Miriama’s underwear drawer.
“She asked me to get her a pair once, when she forgot to take it into the shower,” was what he came up with.
Deciding the obvious lie didn’t deserve a response, Will retrieved the watch after tugging on a pair of disposable gloves from his jacket pocket. Instinct and experience told him Steve was right—this was no well-made fake. He put the glittering object that was more jewelry than timepiece in an evidence bag he’d pulled from another pocket, then wrote out a receipt and placed it on the dresser, beneath a glass trinket box. He’d make sure Matilda knew he’d picked up the watch, just in case Steve decided to be a vindictive shit and not mention it.
As he was in the room already, he took a quick look around. He didn’t want to invade Miriama’s privacy, but at this stage, it was looking more and more likely that she wasn’t okay; Will needed to know anything and everything that might help him find her.
The room held a bed, a built-in closet, a small desk, and an old computer. Prints of Miriama’s photographs were pinned to the walls, but he saw no camera equipment. The latter didn’t surprise him; Miriama had once mentioned that Josie let her use part of the back room of the café as an office. Not only could she work in peace there after the café closed, she probably didn’t have to worry about Steve selling off equipment she’d worked hard to buy.
He turned to spear the man to the spot with his eyes again. “Fingerprints don’t rub off as easily as people think,” he said. “Am I going to find yours all over this room?”
Flushing hot red under the pasty white of his skin, Steve folded his arms and bristled. “What’re you trying to say?” When Will just held the eye contact, the other man dropped his arms and looked left, then right, then down at his feet, then back up again. “I just wanted to look at her things, okay.” His hands fisted by his sides. “I’m at home a lot. I get bored.”
“Does she have another hiding place?” Instinct told him the watch had been shoved in the underwear drawer quickly, maybe because Miriama had been looking at it, only to be interrupted. It couldn’t be the permanent spot. Not with Steve in the house.
The other man didn’t try any bullshit this time. “Behind the bed,” he said, pointing his finger at the single bed with its metal frame. It was neatly made up with a soft pink flannel sheet and matching pillowcase; a dark blue blanket lay folded at the bottom. “There’s a board on the floor that comes up. She hides her diary and stuff in there. The watch’s usually in there, too.”
“How many times have you read that diary?”
Steve’s lip curled. “I don’t need to read her diary. Probably the same crap women always write—feelings and shit.” A snort accompanied by a scratch of his protruding belly. “Only thing I’m interested in is between her—” Cutting himself off when he finally looked at Will’s face, Steve began to back away. “Look,” he said, “I don’t read too good. I just wanted to look at her stuff. I didn’t touch that diary.”
Waiting until the other man had backed himself all the way into the living room, Will shut the bedroom door before retrieving the single item beneath the floorboard: an old tin box heavy enough to hold a diary. As a hiding space, it was a good one. If Steve hadn’t been unemployed and at home so much—and likely a former thief—he probably wouldn’t have put together the sounds of the bed being moved with a hiding spot.
Will’s eyes moved to the computer; he wondered if Miriama had hidden her secrets a second way.
Deciding to talk to Matilda then and there, he made a call to the fire station.
“Take whatever you need,” she told him when he explained where he was and what he was doing. “But you take good care of it.”
“I will,” Will promised, and booted up the computer. “Do you know where Miriama keeps her old diaries?”
“She cuts out all the pages, then goes deep into the bush to bury those pages. Says it’s about saying good-bye to the past and living for the future.”
Will thought of the pages rotting away in the silent dark, an act of hope for the future turned into a somber omen. “I’ve got another question—what was the name of the man who molested Miriama as a teenager?” He was far more dangerous to the young woman than Steve.
“Fidel Cox.” Matilda’s voice quivered with rage. “That pokokōhua did a runner, cops never found him. You think he came back to hurt my Miri?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to check it out.”
“Just find my girl, Will. Just find Miriama.”
Will didn’t make any promises; he’d learned his lesson about making promises and he’d learned hard. Never again would he tell a victim that everything would be all right. Because, too many times, the monsters won.
25
Will had one more thing to do before he left Matilda’s home. “I want you to remember something, Steve,” he said to the man in the sagging armchair. “Matilda might let you push her around, but I won’t look the other way. I see her with a single bruise, I’m coming after you.”
Steve postured, all raised shoulders and lifted chin. “A man’s got a right to do what he wants with his own woman in his own home.”
“You just remember what I said anytime you get the urge to hurt Matilda.” Will knew his eyes had gone flat in that way one of his partners had once said made him look like a psychopath. Will wasn’t always so certain he wasn’t a psychopath—psychopaths didn’t have feelings and his had burned down to ashes thirteen months ago.
Steve glared at him, but Will was satisfied Matilda would be safe from abuse, at least until Steve forgot his fear. Will
wouldn’t have dealt with the situation the same way had it been a different man—some mean bastards would’ve hurt Matilda out of pure spite at being ordered not to, but Steve was both a coward and just smart enough to know that Will was too big a predator to challenge.
Walking out into the rain, the tin box and watch protected under the high-visibility police-issue jacket he’d changed into after the weather turned, Will put both items on the passenger seat of his vehicle, then ran around to get into the driver’s seat.
He made a call on his way back into town, asking Tom Taufa to meet him at the café. The other man was waiting when he got there. “I was at the fire station,” he said as he let Will into the café’s back room. “That’s Miri’s corner there.”
A much newer computer sat on a spacious desk, along with several cameras.
Metal jangled as Tom took a key off his key ring. “I have to get back to Josie—she’s not doing so good. Stay as long as you like, keep the key in case you want to look at stuff again.” He dug in his pocket. “I asked Josie about the computer after you called and she said there’s a password.” Handing over the piece of paper on which he’d scribbled the mix of numbers and letters, he said, “Josie knows it because technically the computer is the café’s, for accounts and things, but she mostly got it for Miri to use.”
“Thanks, Tom.” Will was already turning back to the computer as Tom left, but he didn’t expect to find anything private, not when Miriama knew Josie also used this computer. Still, he had a quick look. The only emails on it related to the café.
Miriama must have an email account—if nothing else, she’d have needed one to apply for the internship—but chances were high it was a web account she nearly always used from her phone. He’d found no emails on her home computer either, and her browser history and bookmarks hadn’t included any webmail sites. The same proved true here.