Mind Games

by Hilary Norman

  Chapter Forty-seven

  ‘What you probably need,’ Hayman said at around one o’clock, ‘is a gentle hour or two out on the boat, get away from your worries.’

  Grace looked at him dubiously. She’d urged him several times in the past hour and a half to head out without her, just to leave her behind to rest, but he’d refused to entertain the idea, had told her there was no way he was going to abandon her when she wasn’t feeling well, and anyway, he could sail any day.

  He was right, of course, about the possible benefits of getting away from her anxieties. Grace’s conversation with Cathy had unsettled her even further, pushing her to leave messages for both Dr Parés and the deputy governor at the house of detention, asking them to keep a watchful eye on their young charge.

  ‘You don’t have a fever,’ Hayman said, ‘and you say the queasiness is about gone.’

  ‘I still have a headache,’ Grace reminded him.

  ‘No better headache remedy than the ocean. All that fresh air and tranquillity . . .’ He slipped his grey tinted eyeglasses partway down his nose and looked at her over the tops of the frames.

  ‘It does sound good.’ She was starting to think he might be right.

  ‘It is good,’ he said.

  ‘I guess if I sit around here, I will just brood over problems.’

  ‘I guess you will.’

  Grace took a deep breath, nodded and stood up. ‘Maybe I should take a couple more Anacin before we go.’

  Hayman shook his head. The ocean will take care of your head. I always carry basic medication on board anyway, so there’ll be something if you really need it.’

  ‘Great,’ she said, doing her best to shake off the fatigue that was still hovering around her brain like a raincloud. ‘Let’s go sailing.’

  Sam was inside Grace’s house. He’d lucked out, driving by just at the moment when Teddy Lopez had been going in through the front door to water the plants and clean up. Having checked Sam’s credentials with the utmost suspicion, Teddy had let him inside and given him Claudia Brownley’s telephone number in Fort Lauderdale.

  Sam made the call from the kitchen, where Teddy could keep an eye on him. A child’s voice answered.

  ‘This is Robbie, who is it, please?’

  ‘Robbie, this is Samuel Becket, calling for Mrs Brownley. Is she there?’

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Sam heard a clanking noise as the phone was apparently dropped on a hard surface. In the background, he heard Robbie calling his mother, then the high-pitched sound of a small dog barking.

  ‘Detective Becket?’ Claudia sounded wary.

  ‘Mrs Brownley, I’m sorry to bother you.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ Sam regretted the way people assumed trouble the instant they heard a cop’s voice on the phone. ‘I was just wondering if you knew where your sister is staying?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Claudia’s voice relaxed. ‘She’s down in the Keys, staying on Key Largo.’

  ‘She left me a number for the Pelican Lodge.’

  ‘Oh, no, she isn’t there,’ Claudia said quickly. ‘There was a mix-up with the reservation, so she had to go and stay with a colleague.’

  She paused, and Sam’s pulse rate sped up.

  ‘Do you know Dr Hayman?’ she asked.

  ‘Not personally,’ Sam answered, ‘though Grace has talked about him.’ He kept his voice even, not wanting Claudia to sense his anxiety. ‘Did she happen to give you his address or number?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’ There was a gentle smile in Claudia Brownley’s voice. ‘Grace almost always lets me know where she’s going to be if she leaves town for more than a day at a time.’

  Sam wrote down the information, got off the line with indecent haste and called the Key Largo number. He could feel Teddy Lopez’s suspicious eyes on him, and was glad that Grace had such a good support system.

  A man answered after three rings.

  ‘Peter Hayman.’ The voice was pleasant.

  ‘Dr Hayman, this is Sam Becket.’

  A tiny hesitation. ‘Grace’s friend.’

  ‘That’s right. Is she there?’

  ‘Yes, she is, but she can’t come to the phone this minute.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s taking a shower.’ Hayman hesitated. ‘She was feeling a little under the weather, but she’s okay now, so we’re going to try and get in a couple of hours’ sailing.’

  Alarm spread through Sam like a brushfire. ‘What was wrong with her?’

  ‘Nothing major.’ Hayman was reassuring. ‘She had a minor accident – nothing to get concerned about.’

  ‘What kind of an accident?’

  ‘She cut herself on some glass. I took care of it.’

  ‘So why was she feeling under the weather?’

  ‘I don’t think the two things were really connected,’ Hayman said, still patiently. ‘As I said, she’s okay now, which is why she’s getting set for us to go out.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to her,’ Sam said.

  ‘I told you, she’s in the shower, but I’ll tell her you called.’

  ‘Why don’t I hold till she’s through?’

  ‘Because I need to use my phone.’ A touch of irritation was starting to show through Hayman’s courtesy. ‘I assure you, Detective Becket, I’ll let Grace know you wanted to speak to her.’

  ‘Tell her I’m at her house, please.’

  ‘Really?’ Now Hayman sounded surprised. ‘Has something happened at her house? Is there a problem?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ Sam said.

  ‘You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Sam said.

  ‘I’ll tell her you called,’ Hayman said. ‘Goodbye, detective.’

  Sam put the phone down, looked over at Teddy Lopez and smiled. ‘Mind if I wait for Dr Lucca to call back?’

  Teddy looked doubtful. ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘Go right ahead,’ Sam said. ‘I promise not to steal anything.’

  ‘We can’t stay here too long,’ Teddy said. ‘I need to get back to Harry – you know Harry?’

  ‘Harry-the-Hoover.’ Sam grinned. ‘Sure I know Harry.’

  ‘He doesn’t like to stay alone when Dr Lucca’s away,’ Teddy told him.

  ‘We won’t be long,’ Sam assured him.

  ‘You want some coffee?’ Teddy asked, grudgingly.

  Sam shook his head. ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  He looked at the phone, then at his watch. It was one-seventeen. He wondered how long Grace took to have a shower. He wondered how she had cut herself, and how badly. He didn’t like the idea of her feeling “under the weather”, as Hayman had described it. He didn’t like the fact that he hadn’t been able to talk to her.

  He checked his watch again.

  One-eighteen.

  On the other side of Grace’s kitchen, Teddy Lopez began to polish the top of the stove. It didn’t need polishing.

  Sam waited.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  At one-thirty-eight on Sunday afternoon, Cathy was in the infirmary with Dr Parés and a nurse. The doctor, a tall, slim man with dark eyes, receding hair and a neat beard, was less formally dressed than the last couple of times Cathy had seen him, wearing jeans and a white cotton shirt. It was unpleasantly warm, despite the ceiling fan, but Parés appeared cool and calm as always. He sat on the edge of the desk, a couple of feet away from where Cathy, in her short-sleeved blue uniform dress, slouched in a straight-backed chair.

  ‘Your friend Dr Lucca called me a little while back,’ he told her in his softly accented voice. ‘She has been worrying about you again. She worries about you a lot, you know. You should be grateful to have such a caring friend.’

  ‘She’s not my friend,’ Cathy said. ‘She’s my shrink.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Parés said, dryly, ‘Dr Lucca is probably the best friend you have right now.’

  ‘So why did she call you?’<
br />
  ‘Because you sounded so upset when she talked to you, so afraid.’ The doctor opened the bag on the desk and took out a small bottle. ‘So I will give you something to calm you again.’

  ‘I don’t want a pill.’

  ‘Just a little tranquillizer, same as before – nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I told you, I don’t want a pill!’ Cathy was close to tears, almost shouting at the doctor. ‘I want to get out of here – I want this all to be over – I want my mom and Arnie back again and Aunt Frances!’ She covered her face with both her hands.

  ‘Which is why you should take the pills I give you.’ Parés shook his head at the nurse to let her know there was no need for her to intervene. ‘And then I will try to teach you some relaxation techniques.’

  ‘That’ll be a waste of time,’ Cathy told him, still through her hands.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ The doctor uncapped the small bottle and shook out one pill. ‘For one thing, if you can master these techniques, you won’t have any need of pills.’

  ‘I told you I don’t want your dumb pill.’ Cathy took her hands away from her face. Her cheeks were red, her eyes wet.

  ‘Come on, Cathy,’ the nurse said from over by the drugs cabinet.

  ‘Well, I don’t.’

  Parés went over to the sink and half filled a glass with water. ‘I also think that you would be wise to stop fighting those who wish to help you.’

  ‘Like who? You?’

  ‘Like me, yes.’ He came back with the water and held it out to Cathy. ‘Just take this one small pill to make you a little calmer, and then we can maybe start to see how you can stay calm without medication.’

  Cathy took the pill and glass from him. ‘There’s nothing that’s going to make me calm,’ she said, but swallowed the pill anyway.

  ‘I think Dr Lucca would like to help you more than you have allowed her to, Cathy. She understands what dark times these are for you, and she believes in you.’

  ‘That’s what she says,’ Cathy said, sullenly.

  ‘Don’t you trust her?’ Parés asked, quietly.

  ‘I don’t trust anyone any more.’

  ‘I suppose I can’t blame you for that,’ the doctor said. ‘But it’s wise in this harsh world to learn to differentiate your enemies from your friends.’

  ‘Are you my enemy or my friend?’

  ‘Mind your manners, Robbins,’ the nurse said sharply.

  ‘It’s all right, nurse,’ Parés said, and kept his eyes on Cathy’s face. ‘Which do you think I am, Cathy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ he said, gently.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The marina was no sparkling power parking lot for glitzy millionaire toys. It looked to Grace more like what it was: a rather grubby, workmanlike service station for boats that represented, for many of their owners, their most regular mode of transport and, in some cases, their livelihood. It smelled of diesel and seagull crap and hot dogs – emanating from a stand at one end of the marina – and the combined effect on Grace was to make her feel queasy all over again. Yet, in spite of all that, she had to admit that just the sight of the Snowbird, Hayman’s sailboat, a two-masted white monohull with lovely sleek lines, moored beyond the main working area, apparently fit and ready to move out, was enough to lift her spirits.

  ‘What do you think?’ Hayman asked, watching her face.

  ‘I think she’s perfect,’ Grace said.

  ‘Do you know much about sailboats?’

  ‘I know I like being on them, and I’ve heard enough sail-speak, back home on Lake Michigan and since I got to Florida, but I still don’t really know a cleat from a clew – it all just tends to fly straight over my head.’

  ‘No problem,’ Hayman said. ‘You know the basics: raise the sails, tension them off and go with the breeze.’ He smiled at her. ‘And since the Snowbird has auxiliary power, we don’t even have to wait for the wind to get out of here.’ He paused. ‘Sure you’re up for this, Grace?’

  ‘I’m up for it,’ she said, ‘but worst-case scenario, if I turn into a liability, you can always toss me overboard.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt it’ll come to that.’

  Over on the far side of the marina, a middle-aged bald guy straightened up from a job of work and waved at them. Hayman set down the box of supplies he was carrying, raised his right arm in acknowledgment, then glanced around.

  ‘I guess the Weintraubs gave up on us.’

  ‘That’s my fault,’ Grace said. ‘I’m sorry to have held everyone up.’

  ‘Will you please stop apologizing?’ Hayman said. ‘Everyone feels lousy now and then – and if you do feel bad again, there’s a small bunk down below.’

  ‘I won’t need that,’ she said confidently.

  She meant it. Now that they’d moved away from some of the unpleasant trapped smells on the working side of the marina, the ocean was already beginning to exert its power over her, the way it often did. It was one thing living and working by water, but the prospect of getting out on it was entirely another. Even back in Chicago, Grace had always grabbed any opportunity she could to catch a ride on someone’s boat, however humble, on the lake, but the ocean was another beast entirely, and one of which she was in awe. She might have talked, sometimes, about getting her own boat sometime down the road, but even if that did come to pass she was only talking small potatoes compared to the Snowbird, some little craft like a Sunfish, just big enough for a woman and her dog, a minnow compared with a shark.

  ‘You are looking better,’ Hayman said.

  ‘I’m feeling it.’ Grace shrugged. ‘I think maybe this has all been down to overstretching myself for too long without a break.’

  ‘I’m not surprised you’re exhausted.’ Hayman reached out and gently touched her right arm.

  Grace didn’t pull away. For one thing, his words acted as an instant reminder of how tired she still was. And for another, she seemed, she realized with relief, to have stopped feeling so edgy around him.

  ‘Ready to board her?’ Hayman bent down to pick up their supplies.

  ‘You bet,’ Grace said.

  Sam had stopped waiting for Grace to call a while back. He had tried Hayman’s number again just before two o’clock, and gotten no reply, and by then Teddy Lopez, who’d gone on keeping him under close surveillance, had became infected by Sam’s growing anxiety.

  ‘Is something wrong with Dr Lucca?’ he’d asked finally, watching Sam pace the kitchen floor.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Sam had said.

  ‘Then why are you so upset?’ Teddy had nailed him.

  ‘I’m not upset. I just really need to talk to her.’

  ‘She’s a very good lady,’ Teddy had said.

  ‘I know she is.’

  ‘I like taking care of her.’

  ‘I’m glad she has someone as conscientious as you to take care of her.’

  He’d left less than five minutes later, chosen the Miami Beach route, going south on Collins as far as the Mac Arthur Causeway and then continuing in the same direction on US1, heading out of Miami towards the Keys. Sam was fully aware of what he was doing, knew he was on duty and how much hell he was going to catch from Hernandez if and when he got to find out about it. But he was also suddenly cold-as-Jack-Frost-certain that he needed to hightail it down to Key Largo as fast as he could.

  However innocent Grace’s reasons for not returning his call, Sam was unhappy as hell about her being down there, probably alone, with a guy who had, so far as he could tell, deliberately insinuated himself into her life with a case history that might be invented, and who, at the very least, was right now far too much of an unknown quantity for his liking.

  Hayman had told Sam that Grace had been feeling unwell and that she’d cut herself on some glass. He’d said that he’d taken care of her, and that she was in the shower, which was why she’d been unable to talk to him. He’d also said that he would tell Grace that Sam h
ad called and wanted her to get back to him.

  And she hadn’t.

  There was no real doubt in Sam’s mind that she would have called if she had been given his message. If she’d been given the message.

  If she’d been able to call.

  All of which had left him with four choices. One, he could do his job, go back to Hernandez’s goddamned statistics and try to put Grace to the back of his mind – impossible. Two, he could tell Captain Hernandez what was on his mind – which would, he was pretty certain, be a waste of time and effort. Three, he could call in a favour with one of the guys down in the Keys – not a great idea, since if by the remotest chance Hayman did turn out to be Broderick, they would probably just be waving a great big warning flag right in his face.

  Or four, he could do exactly what he was doing.

  Dropping everything and going to find Grace himself.

  Chapter Fifty

  Grace watched Hayman cast off, winch up the anchor, check a bewildering array of cables, ropes and winches from bow to stern, taking time out to plump up the cushions for her on a bench in the part of the boat even she – sailboat philistine that she was – knew was known as the ‘aft’ section, before starting the engine to take the Snowbird out to sea. She felt comparatively relaxed as they left the harbour, glad to be on board at last, appreciating the fact that Hayman appeared a calm, efficient sailor, well used to his boat, his long frame at ease with the rocking motion, his rubber-soled feet firm and agile on the polished teak deck.

  ‘I should be helping,’ she called to him a few minutes out.

  ‘You should definitely not be helping,’ he called back.

  ‘I feel guilty.’

  ‘How do you feel otherwise?’

  ‘Fine.’

  That wasn’t exactly true, but it wasn’t exactly a lie either. The air was helping in one sense, but that curious fatigue – to which Grace was entirely unaccustomed – still seemed to be wrapping itself tighter about her head, like an overly effusive hug from a fat maiden aunt.

  She leaned back against the cushions, tilted her head and watched Key Largo drift slowly away as they moved out into the ocean. Less than a month ago, the water would have been crowded with boats of every kind, but the fishing contingent aside, the really busy season was over for the time being, and though they certainly didn’t have the wind’s sweet, warm breath to themselves, if Grace half closed her eyes, it did almost feel that way.