by Lisa Jackson
“You’re grasping at straws,” he told himself, wondering if he was making some kind of connection that just didn’t exist. Lester Reece was in the wind, had been for years, and yet Dern was determined to overturn every slimy rock on this island to be certain.
Walking around the corner to the front of the mansion, he glanced up at one of the windows to Ava’s bedroom. She was gone. Out for the day, so his bodyguard duties were over until she returned.
Originally, Ava’s husband had hired Dern as a ranch hand with maintenance duties, and then, once he’d agreed, there had been Wyatt’s request to “keep an eye on” Garrison’s wife. Wyatt had mentioned he was concerned for her safety and while he wanted to let her have a little freedom, he needed another set of eyes to make certain she didn’t “hurt herself.”
Dern, needing a job on the island, had instantly agreed, and then, before he’d even met the woman, she’d taken a flying leap into the bay. No wonder the husband was concerned. Dern had taken his duty seriously and had believed Ava Church Garrison was a bona fide nut job, willing to do anything, even hurt herself, in her obsessive need to find her kid. With his duties on the estate expanded to a kind of quasi-bodyguard, he’d had free rein to continue on his own personal quest: finding Lester Reece.
The trouble was that he’d begun to believe that the only person who wasn’t losing all their marbles on this island was Ava. Everyone else—from that computer nerd with the bad attitude who lived in the basement, Jacob, to the do-nothing cousin Ian, who seemed to just hang around—didn’t seem to be completely together. Even Trent had blown onto the island and seemed to have no immediate plans to leave. Didn’t anyone have a job?
And the nutcases just kept on coming. Jewel-Anne with her dolls and Elvis obsession had her own set of issues, and everyone on the staff was a few steps away from normal. Virginia was an opinionated bitch, related to the useless sheriff somehow; Khloe and her husband, Simon, the cryptic ghost of a gardener, were on again, off again and neither one gave him the time of day; Graciela, he suspected, had a secret life, though he hadn’t checked yet; and then there was Demetria, the sullen nurse who kept to herself when she wasn’t taking care of her charge. Except for Graciela, they, like Dern, all lived at the estate. Not exactly a happy lot, he decided.
So finish your business and get the hell out. Why are you hanging around, still fantasizing about a woman who everyone else thinks is a toehold away from a complete and utter mental breakdown?
Because he didn’t believe it.
With his knowledge of her past through records and articles on the Internet, and glimpses past the frail shell-shocked person she’d become to the hard-edged woman lurking beneath the surface, he thought there was a chance Ava would come around.
She’s still married.
And that was why he had to wrap this up fast. He had a phone call to make, a report to give, so he turned his collar to the damp night, the dog at his heels, and started for his apartment.
Wyatt had taken off a few hours ago to retrieve his wife.
Soon the happy couple would return, Dern thought sarcastically, and told himself he had no claim to that woman. No claim whatsoever.
Now, if he could just convince himself it were true.
Wyatt caught up with Ava at the dock.
“Hey . . . look . . . I’m sorry,” he said, and this time when he touched her shoulder, she held her ground and didn’t draw away.
“You don’t get to do that,” she whispered. “Attack hard, then apologize like everything’s okay.”
“I just don’t know what to do,” he said, and for the first time that night, she actually believed him. “You’re slipping away, not trusting me, going to all lengths to avoid me and even fantasizing about another man. You do crazy things and then fire your therapist after accusing her of having an affair with me.”
“She quit.”
He turned her shoulders so that she had to face him, to look into his eyes, illuminated only by the streetlamps and the bulbs strung over the marina. “Don’t you love me anymore?”
“I don’t know you anymore.”
Deep brackets appeared at the corners of his mouth. “I could say the same. I would do anything to see you get better,” he said, and something inside her wanted to break, to still believe in him even though she knew better.
“I hired Dern as a ranch hand, yeah,” Wyatt admitted, “but I asked him to look out for you, that’s all.”
She doubted that.
“And you’re right. I do like Evelyn McPherson. A lot. I think she’s done wonders for you. But that’s as far as it goes.” The wind blowing in off the sea ruffled his hair and chilled Ava to the bone. “And I did have an affair a long time ago, but it’s over and I thought, I mean, I hoped, we were past that.” He dropped his hands. “I just want my wife back. Is that too much to ask?”
“It’s not enough,” she said carefully. “You need to want your son back, too.”
His head snapped up. “That goes without saying, Ava.” Then a spark of accusation in his eyes again and his spine stiffened slightly.
She wasn’t going to back down.
“Come on, let’s go home. Let me take those.” He reached for the bags.
“I can handle them,” she said tautly, then, unwilling to have him even speculate for an instant that she had something to hide, she reluctantly handed him the larger, plastic sack and kept the one with the broken handle. Hugging that bag close to her chest, she said, “Fine. Let’s go.”
Heart in her throat, she continued onto the dock and even allowed him to help her into the boat. It rocked a little, and the sharp pain in her knee reminded her of her fall. Looking across the water, she wondered nervously how easy would it be for there to be an accident that took her life?
He could say she jumped into the water. His wife was just crazy enough to do something so bizarre and risky; she’d proved that often enough before. Or, he could say it was an accident. They’d hit choppy water and she’d fallen overboard, never to be seen again. Ava, like her brother, Kelvin, would die in the frigid salt water, the result of a tragic chance event. Her mind raced with scenarios in which she never made it to Neptune’s Gate.
When Wyatt stepped into the boat after her, she nearly bolted. Being alone with him on the boat was insane!
Don’t make him mad. Just play it cool . . .
Her mind flashed back to the night Kelvin died, to the pain and the freezing waters that surrounded her, the fear that had enveloped her when she thought she might drown.
Panic seized her now.
Get out. Get out!
Wyatt set the unbroken bag onto one of the boat’s seats and it slid to the deck, its contents spilling onto the oiled teak. She jumped, ready to hide everything quickly, to force the contents into the sack, but he saw his mistake and reached forward.
“What’s this?” he asked, and her heart froze. She was certain he’d found the spy equipment and now had more evidence of her paranoia. “A new purse?”
She tried not to sound nervous. “I told you.” Play nice, play nice! Don’t let him get more suspicious than he already is.
“It’s big.”
“Thought it might hold my laptop.” She held her breath as he looked it over, studying the bag.
Don’t peek inside. For God’s sake, Wyatt, don’t peer into the zippered area and find the camera and recorder.
“It might,” he said, dropping the purse into its shopping bag and looking up at her. “So . . . we’re good now?”
Not even close. But she had to play this right. “No,” she said cautiously, “we’re not good, but maybe better.” She cast him a glance and feigned worry. “Maybe getting everything out, is . . . a step in the right direction.”
“So you’re not throwing me out?”
She forced a smile that felt like a grimace. “Undecided.”
“At least not tonight?” He gave her a long look.
She nodded jerkily and tried not to feel sick inside. She
was a hypocrite, pure and simple. But you have to pretend, to play the part of the wife wanting to repair this broken marriage so that you can find the truth, prove that you’re not insane. . . .
“Fair enough. Oh, and, Ava?” he asked, his voice a little sharper.
Here it comes! He did see the spy equipment! Oh, sweet Jesus, you’re doomed! “Yes?”
“Put this on.” He grabbed a life vest from under one of the seats and handed the flotation device to her. “You know what they say: You can never be too careful.”
“So we’ve got ourselves a witness who’s seen Lester Reece,” Lyons said as she and Snyder walked toward the station house. They’d had a quick dinner and were on their way back to the office.
“I don’t call Wolfgang Brandt a credible witness.”
“If you ask me, Brandt’s just one rung lower on the whopper-teller ladder than some of the others who have ‘seen’—and I use the term loosely—Reece over the years.” Wolfgang Brandt was around thirty-five and had been in and out of trouble with the police for years. “Deputies talked to Brandt, then went out to the old hunting lodge where he’d claimed he’d seen Reece. No one was there. No evidence of anyone but hunters and maybe some teenagers who’d broken in and had a few beers a while back. Big surprise. You’re new here. You’ll get used to the Reece sightings soon enough. Besides, what does Lester Reece have to do with our case?”
“Why do you have to be so damned negative?”
She was unwrapping a scarf before going to work on the buttons of her jacket as they walked through the reception area. It took a code to get through these days, and a camera was filming their every move. He wondered about that. With all the phone cams and computer cameras and all, why hadn’t anyone seen or photographed anything unusual at Cheryl Reynolds’s home? The trouble was, her place of business was in a part of Anchorville that was zoned residential; the store cams and traffic cams were located a few blocks closer to the waterfront and the heart of town.
“Brandt’s not the only one who saw him. I heard a couple of the deputies talking. One of them—Gorski, I think—plays poker with a group of guys, one of them being Butch Johansen, who claimed, after a few beers, that he ferried a guy who looked a helluva lot like Reece out to Church Island recently.”
“Lots of stories about guys who look like Reece, but they never pan out. Case in point the hunting lodge. Besides, Reece is ancient history.”
“Is he? Doesn’t seem like the sheriff thinks so.”
Inside his cubicle, Snyder removed his jacket and sidearm while Lyons motioned toward the restrooms in the back of the building; then, boots clicking, she headed off.
The Reynolds case was getting to him. The only homicide in years and just not enough evidence to put it together. Taking a seat at his desk, he checked his e-mail and found a note with an attachment from the lab. A couple of clicks of his mouse and he was looking at an analysis report of the hair discovered in Cheryl Reynolds’s laundry room.
By the time Lyons returned, with a cup of coffee for him and some decaf herbal tea that smelled like old lady’s perfume, he’d printed out the report and handed it to her. “Thanks,” he said, taking his cup. “Looks like the mystery of the black hair is solved.”
“Synthetic?” she asked, her eyebrows drawing together as she stood near the desk, leaning a hip against it and reading the report. “Someone was wearing a wig? The killer?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He clicked to a file with pictures taken of the crime scene. “Look here, on the bookcase of her office.” He pointed at the screen. Lyons bent down for a better peek, and he tried not to notice that her breasts nearly brushed the desktop. Again he clicked his mouse, enlarging the photograph on the shelf in question—it was of Cheryl, dressed as a cat, with all of her cats close by. Along with a leopard-print costume, fake tail, ears, painted-on nose and whiskers, she was wearing a long black wig.
“Anyone find the wig on the premises?” Lyons asked, sipping her tea while her gaze stayed fastened to the screen.
“Let’s see . . .” More clicks and he found a list of the contents of the area around the crime scene. “Nope, don’t see it.”
“Halloween was just a few weeks ago.”
“Only if the picture was from this year. It could have been taken a decade ago.”
She shook her head. “The cats in the picture? All the same as she has now. A couple of them are young, recent additions if the neighbor is right, so it’s from this year.”
“So where the hell is the wig?”
Lyons smiled and it was one of those slow, I’ve-got-a-secret smiles he found attractive. “With the killer.” She was dunking her tea bag as she nodded, happy with herself.
“Or in the bay.”
“With Lester Reece?” As she squeezed the tea bag between her fingers and tossed it into the trash, she added, “There could be a chance that when his remains finally float to the surface, his skeleton will be dressed in drag, like a sexy, if emaciated, kitty cat.”
“Huh,” he grunted. The truth was that the black hair found at the scene was damned near a dead end. Trouble was, it was the only clue they had.
Bam!
The boat slammed hard against the wake of a speedboat flying in the opposite direction.
“Shit!” Wyatt stood at the helm, steering into the darkness, the few lights of Monroe visible ahead. “Idiot! I should report that guy!”
Ava barely heard, nor was she aware of the icy wind that blew against her cheeks and tangled her hair. Even her shopping bags were forgotten as the boat shimmied a little and she was thrown back in time to another trip across the water, to the late afternoon when Kelvin had died. This was a memory she didn’t want to review again, but she seemed destined to replay it over and over.
Her flesh actually pimpled at the thought of the approaching twilight and the raw fear of those moments. In her mind’s eye, she saw the tragedy unfold all over again.
The wind had been fierce, the waves wild at the sudden squall. Ava remembered the sheer terror of the outing, how she’d prayed they’d make it safely back to shore, how her fears had centered on the baby . . .
Pregnant, Ava was almost at term and . . . No. She frowned. That wasn’t right. Noah had come early and . . .
Something pricked at the edges of her brain, something cruel and sharp, the edge of a lie. Her gut twisted almost painfully as she tried to recall what it was, but like a moray eel lying deep among the rocks of the ocean, it poked its head out only to retract again, teasing but not coming clear.
“What is it?” she asked, thinking so hard a headache formed. It was something to do with the baby, the pregnancy, and . . . and . . . an idea formed and she discarded it quickly. No, that couldn’t be right.
And yet.
She thought back to the first trimester. No morning sickness.
And the second. When had she learned she was carrying a boy? Why couldn’t she remember visiting the gynecologist, having the ultrasound, seeing Noah as he grew inside her . . . ?
“Oh God.” A cold certainty began to envelope her and she started hyperventilating.
Why didn’t she remember much about the hospital and his birth? Why were there no pictures of the delivery?
Because it was traumatic. Taken after the wreck. Kelvin had already been pronounced dead, the doctors were working on Jewel-Anne, so your impending labor was cause for concern. No time for cameras or flowers or balloons or . . . anything.
She swallowed hard and her lungs could hardly take a breath as the wind screamed past, seeming to mock her and her inability to face the truth that now came screaming back at her. Images of that night flashed like a harsh kaleidoscope behind her eyes. Bits and pieces, shattered into odd shapes—the wreckage, the rescue, the hospital, the news of Kelvin’s death, the fear that Jewel-Anne might not make it. And the baby. In the hospital, he’d been screaming and squalling, a red little bundle without much hair, his little fists raised . . .
“He needs to be fed,” she’d
said, her voice echoing through her mind. “Please . . . he needs to be fed.”
“We’ll take care of him,” the nurse had said, and her heart had ached as they took him from her.
Why? Did they take him away to clean him off?
To measure and weigh him?
To check his vital signs . . .
More images surfaced and they fought with the truth as she knew it.
Wyatt slowed the engine and, using the remote, raised the seaward door of the boathouse. An interior light switched on, and Ava, struck to her very soul, counted her heartbeats. Wyatt docked the boat, tied it up, and helped her onto the skirt around the boat slip. No! she thought wildly. No, no, no! She had to be wrong!
“I’ll get these for you,” he offered as if from somewhere far away, and she didn’t launch the tiniest of protests as he carried the shopping bags up the walkway and into the house.
She was too stunned with her revelation, lost in her own world, trying desperately to discount what she was remembering as she followed him up the stairs.
“Are you okay?” he asked as they reached her room. He deposited her shopping bags onto the floor near the closet. “You’ve gotten quiet.”
“J-just tired,” she lied.
His eyebrows beetled in concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s been a long day. That’s all.” Hearing how short she sounded, she added, “I just need some downtime.”
“Okay.” This time he didn’t bother pressing a kiss to her cheek.
As he closed the door, she kicked off her boots as quickly as possible, then tore off her clothes, tossing her jacket, long sweater, and leggings into a pile on her bed. Next her bra and panties before she flew into the bathroom to stand in front of the full-length mirror, her body completely naked, her soul now stripped bare. Her skin was in good shape, and though she was thin, her muscles were smooth and strong, a few ribs more pronounced than they should be. Her breasts were still firm and high, the nipples dark, and her hips were as slim and tight as they had been when she’d run in college.