The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  After Ricky changed into shorts and a T-shirt, we collected our gear and climbed into the limo, and he declared the bar open. Hy drank beer at his usual measured pace, throwing me occasional ironic glances. I sipped wine, cautioning myself against slipping into anxiety-based overindulgence—and then doing so anyway. Ricky knocked back bourbons one after the other, and Rae acted more seductive with every glass of champagne.

  Around Novato, Ricky turned off the dim interior lights. I leaned back in the circle of Hy’s arms, feeling his warmth and the steady, comforting beat of his heart. He rested his chin on the top of my head, and I felt my tension ebb.

  On the facing seat Ricky pulled Rae toward him. In the wash of oncoming headlights I saw them kiss, saw his hand move to her bare midriff. Before it could creep upward I gave them one last steely look—which they were too preoccupied to notice—and closed my eyes. The last thing I wanted to witness was two people I cared about making total asses of themselves.

  Suddenly the driver was announcing we’d arrived at Pier 24½. I jerked upright, disoriented.

  “Hey, guys,” Ricky said, “thanks for coming along.”

  “Thank you.” Hy unfolded his lanky frame from the car and extended a hand to me. I yawned, got out, and looked back at Rae. “You coming?”

  In the glare from the security lights on the pier her face was pasty white; her curls were disheveled and the top two buttons of her shirt were undone. She saw me looking at them and hastily did them up. “Uh, I didn’t drive to work today.”

  “Hy or I can drop you at Coso Street.”

  Ricky said, “I’ll drop her, Sister Sharon.” There was an amused note in his voice that reminded me how the nickname had originated: “Sister Sharon, who is pure, good, and wise in all ways,” Charlene used to complain. “She should’ve been a nun.”

  But Ricky well knew that subsequent events had proved I was far from pure, good, wise—and the nunnery. I smiled wryly and reached in to hug him. “Okay, Brother Ricky, but one more thing: Hy’s put an operative on your suite at the hotel.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t want to go into it in front of Rae; either he’d tell her about the problem or she’d find out if and when I decided to use her on the investigation. “Just a precaution.”

  “Well, I sure won’t be lonesome tonight.” He squeezed Rae’s knee.

  Her eyes clouded, as though she suspected she might have gotten herself into something she wouldn’t be able to handle. I took my spare house key from my bag and tossed it to her. For a few seconds she frowned, apparently having forgotten I’d told her she could move into my guest room. Then she smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” I hoped she’d use it—and soon.

  Hy asked Ricky, “When’re you going home?”

  “We’ve chartered a flight for three this afternoon.”

  “See you down there, then.”

  He shut the limo’s door and we stepped back as it edged into the northbound traffic. I watched its taillights, thinking that, in going off with Ricky, Rae had made yet another of her bad choices. But this time it was one that might spell disaster for all of us.

  Six

  EXCERPT FROM RAE KELLEHER’S DIARY:

  Bad choices, the grandmother who raised me used to say, can be costly. What she didn’t tell me was that good choices can be costly, too. I knew I’d made the right one in regard to Ricky, but that didn’t make me feel any better as I stood with him on the porch at All Souls. And the knowledge sure wasn’t going to keep me warm in the few hours that remained of the night.

  Why is it that the things you want the most are always wrong?

  Since the past New Year’s Eve, when my cyberspace love affairs collapsed, I’d avoided men like the plague. But all-night movie bingeing and reading trashy books and then working off your sexual tensions at the Y gets old pretty fast. Late yesterday afternoon at Miranda’s I’d been in a classic funk because life held too few surprises. And all I knew about Ricky Savage was that he was Shar’s brother-in-law and had a voice that, if I listened closely to it, would drive me straight back to the old Nautilus machine.

  But a little over six hours later life was full of surprises. There I was, riding in a limo, half out of my mind on champagne, necking like a teenager with the man—or at least the voice—of my dreams. And somewhere between Pier 24½ and Stanford Court, when I sobered up and told him to get his hand out of my jeans, he backed off without a protest. I realized then—and continued to realize during the next two hours when we rode around and talked—that there was a great deal more to him than the image. I’d found out just how much more as he revealed his very private thoughts to me.

  This was a man I could fall in love with, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  I fit my key into the front-door lock of the Victorian and turned to him.

  “Friends?” he asked, brushing my cheek with the back of his fingers.

  “Good friends.”

  “Thank God you put a stop to things, Red. We’d’ve created one hell of a mess for all concerned. Besides, what I really needed tonight was a sympathetic ear. So did you.”

  He was right about all of that—especially the mess. I pictured myself walking into the office on Monday and having Shar look at me like I was some gunk she’d just scraped off the bottom of her shoe. I imagined the way Mick would rage at me and then freeze me out if he discovered I’d slept with his father. And Ricky… the last thing he needed on his conscience while he was trying to save his marriage was a one-night stand with his sister-in-law’s friend and employee.

  He added, “Look, I don’t know what kind of situation I’m going to run into at home, but I suspect it’ll be god-awful. Okay to call you if I need to talk some more?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll be at Shar’s?”

  “I’m going to pack up a few things and go over there right away.”

  “Want me to come inside with you, make sure everything’s okay?”

  “No. I’ve never had any trouble here. You’re exhausted, and the driver’s probably pissed at being kept on the job so long. Go back to the hotel and get some rest.”

  “I can’t say as I don’t need it.” He kissed my forehead and jogged down the steps, waving when he got to the limo.

  I went inside before I could call out to him and ask him to stay.

  In my attic room I grabbed a tote bag and stuffed things into it. Tee to sleep in, underwear, fresh jeans, and shirt. Shoes. I needed shoes. I was still barefoot and my tennies were in the other limo. I hoped to God that somebody had noticed and retrieved them, even if they’d cost only twenty bucks at Price Club.

  What on earth had I been thinking of, riding off in my bare feet with a security guard on a golf cart? What on earth made me hurl myself at a man I barely knew? The champagne, of course. Blame it on the champagne. And on the pain in Ricky’s voice when he dedicated “The House Where Love Once Lived” to Charly. I’ve always been a pushover for a man in pain.

  Anything else to pack? I looked around and saw the voice-activated tape recorder that I use to set down my diary entries, which were really more like stories, with me as the main character. Might as well drag it along. Tonight would make a good tale: “How I Found Romance—and Threw It Away an Hour Later.”

  Face it, Rae, your life is not material for a shop-and-fuck. The heroine of one of those sagas wouldn’t’ve applied the brakes for an instant. If fiction is the product of the author’s life experience, you should be trying to write soap-opera scripts.

  I dropped the recorder into the bag anyway and started down to the second-floor bathroom for the rest of my junk. The light in the stairwell had burned out. It was always doing that—another thing about this place I wouldn’t miss. Nights when I woke up and had to pee, it was an odds-even chance that I’d break my neck on the way down.

  I inched along, feeling for the edge of each step with my toes and clutching the wobbly railing. Cool air blew up at me. Stra
nge. There must be a window open somewhere. Then I heard a faint noise down below. I stopped and listened. Nothing. Probably my imagination. Or, if not, one of the remaining partners coming back for something he’d forgotten.

  At four in the morning? Come on!

  I waited. Still no sound, but the cool air kept blowing. I held my breath, kept very still, straining to hear. I wished I’d let Ricky come inside with me. The temptation it would’ve presented was nothing compared to the creepiness of this empty old house.

  That’s it! That noise was just the house settling.

  I started down the steps again.

  And then it came at me. Up the stairs. A tall shape, blacker than the darkness around me. I yelled—I don’t know what. I dropped the tote bag and turned, scrabbling back up.

  Attic! The part of the attic where all the castoffs’re stored. I could hide there—

  A hand grabbed my right foot and I fell hard, banging my chin on the step above. Another hand grabbed the waistband of my jeans. I was being lifted, slammed face against the wall. I flailed around, screaming, even though there was nobody to hear me.

  Above my screams I heard harsh breathing. The person who held me was strong. Too strong for me to break free. I let my scream trail away into a sob.

  The person spoke. Raspy voice that could’ve been male or female. “Leave him alone,” it said. “Do you understand? Leave him be.”

  “Leave who alone?”

  “You know who. Do you understand?” He—or she—slammed me into the wall again.

  “Yes,” I whispered. The pain made it impossible to speak any louder.

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Yes! Yes, I understand!”

  “Good.” Another slam, and the hands let go.

  I fell backward, banging into the opposite wall. The breath went out of me, and I fell down the steps to the landing. Downstairs I heard footsteps pounding in the second-floor hallway. Pain flared up all over my body as the front door crashed shut.

  Seven

  As first light was bleeding around the miniblinds, I woke to a faint rattling sound. I glanced over at Hy, who usually has a hair-trigger personal alarm; he was deeply asleep. The sound came again, from the front of the house.

  I slipped from the bed, shrugging into my white terry-cloth robe. The sound was definitely unfamiliar. Not Ralph, my orange tabby, thudding down from a sleeping perch; not Alice, my calico, leaping onto the kitchen counter in search of forbidden treats. Not the Chronicle hitting the porch, or an early-rising neighbor—

  It came again, louder.

  I moved around the bed and took Hy’s .44 from where he kept it in the nightstand. My own gun was locked in a U.S. Navy ammo box bolted to the floor of my linen closet, but my lover—conditioned by years of dangerous living—always slept with a weapon within reach. Holding it by my side, I went down the hallway, through the kitchen, and into the sitting room.

  The sound came again—from the front door.

  Slowly I moved along the hall, both hands on the gun now, stepping carefully to avoid creaky floorboards. Slipped up to the door and put my eye to the peephole.

  Rae, looking—

  “My God!” I stuffed the gun into the robe’s pocket, disarmed the security system, turned the deadbolt, and let her in. Her round face was swollen on the right side; she held her arm stiffly and had been fumbling to get the house key into the lock with her left hand.

  She said, “I think this key is bent.”

  I moved her aside so I could lock the door. “What happened to you?”

  “Somebody attacked me in the attic stairwell at Coso Street.”

  “Attacked—”

  “No, not raped, nothing like that. Just grabbed me, and I fell.”

  “Where was Ricky while this was going on?”

  “In bed asleep, I guess.”

  “I thought the two of you were—”

  “Well, we didn’t.” She made a sharp right turn into the guest room and lowered herself stiffly onto the bed. “Shar, do you have any painkillers?”

  “Sure, I’ll get them. Lie down, cover up.” I hurried back to the bedroom and deposited the cumbersome .44 in the nightstand. Hy grunted but slept on. In the bathroom closet I found some codeine my doctor had prescribed after I’d taken a bad fall while pursuing a deadbeat dad last winter. I’d saved some of the pills for this kind of occasion—although I’d assumed, my life being what it is, that I’d be the one who needed them. After shaking out a couple and filling a tumbler with water, I went back to Rae.

  She’d slipped under the covers and propped herself against the pillows. I supervised her taking the tablets, then sat down cross-legged on the foot of the bed. “Now tell me exactly what happened.”

  She pressed her hand to her forehead, looking sick. No wonder—she must have one hell of a hangover as well. “Ricky told the driver to take us back to the hotel, but after about two blocks I realized what a hideous mistake we were making. He backed down right away, and we ended up just riding around. I told him my life story, he told me his.” She paused. “He’s really hurting over the breakup with your sister.”

  “He say much about it?”

  “A fair amount, but I think you’d better ask one of them if you want to know. Anyway, he also told me about this business with the notes and hiring us. It’s… creepy. And I think it has something to do with what happened to me later on.”

  As she recreated the scene in the stairwell at Coso Street, I listened with mounting alarm. By the time she finished her eyelids were growing heavy, and with her bright curls spread out on the pillow, she looked like a small, frightened girl. All my anger over her behavior of the previous night evaporated, and I put my hand on the quilt and squeezed her foot.

  “It does sound as though it might have some connection with those notes,” I said.

  “That’s why I didn’t call the cops. He told me it could damage him if word got out to the media.” She sighed deeply and closed her eyes.

  I sat there while she drifted off, still holding her foot. Then I closed the draperies against the morning sun and went to wake Hy.

  Hy hung up the phone as I came into the kitchen, toweling my freshly washed hair. “I’m gonna have to get down to San Diego right away,” he said. “The situation at your sister’s is deteriorating fast.”

  I poured coffee and motioned at his cup; he held it out for a refill. “How so?”

  “Well, the three youngest kids’re off at camp. Charlene decided against yanking them out, which is probably a good call. We’ve alerted the staffs at both camps, and they’re exercising precautions. Chris and Jamie are okay with the ground rules our man’s laid out for them, but your sister…” He shook his head.

  “What about Charlene?”

  “She had weekend plans that got screwed up, and she’s seriously pissed and taking it out on everybody. Plus Ricky’s manager—Kurt Girdwood—is due late this afternoon, and his lawyer’s been calling and making noises about coming down with him. And there’s a cast of thousands working there; no way of controlling them, short of issuing photo I.D. cards. Everybody’s aware that something’s wrong, and they’re all doing their damndest to find out what—which poses a potential threat of it being leaked to the media. My entire team’s only been in place two hours, and already they say the situation’s out of hand.”

  “And you think you can do something about it?”

  “Yeah. I’ll start by laying down the law to the lady of the house.”

  “Good luck.” Like all McCones, Charlene had inherited a long tradition of stubbornness, which she’d diligently practiced until it approximated a minor art form. “So when’re you going?”

  “I’ve got a ten-thirty flight from SFO.”

  “You’re not taking the Citabria?” Hy’s plane was in the tie-downs at Oakland Airport’s north field.

  “No, a commercial flight’s faster. I’ll leave the keys, in case you want to bring her down later.”

  I looked away
from him.

  “Come on, McCone. You flew solo to Bakersfield last month. You’ll manage.”

  “I did that to prove a point—and because you shamed me into it.”

  “And you made your point, didn’t you? After a near miss like you had, you get right back on, the same way you would a horse that’s thrown you—”

  “Yes, okay.” I didn’t want to think about that near miss; it had almost claimed Hy, Habiba, and myself.

  “And once you get back on,” he continued as if I hadn’t interrupted, “you’re fine. So bring the Citabria to San Diego.”

  “We’ll see.” But when he tossed me the keys, I caught and hung onto them, my fingers caressing their surface. Quickly I changed the subject. “So what’s your take on the incident with Rae?”

  “I’d like to believe it had nothing to do with Ricky, but that’d be too much of a coincidence.”

  “I think so too. Let’s suppose the person in the stairwell was the note writer. That means he or she was at the concert, saw Ricky leave with Rae, and followed the limo all the way from there to Coso Street.”

  “Somebody with access to the trailer area, then. Why warn Rae off him, though?”

  “Maybe to remove her as an obstacle, but more likely to drive home the same point that was made by leaving the jessamine in his trailer.”

  “Escalating the campaign?”

  “It would seem that way.” I looked down at my hands, realized they were gripping the coffee mug so hard my fingertips had gone white.

  Hy came to me, removed the cup, and set it on the counter. He wrapped his arms around me; I nestled my head in the curve of his shoulder, breathing his familiar scent. This should have been a carefree day when we indulged in our favorite city-weekend activities: a trip to the farmers’ market and the flower mart; dim sum on Clement Street; a stroll on Baker Beach; an afternoon nap during which we slept little; a movie and late dinner with good friends. And Monday should have been the start of a good period for both of us: He would have winged his way back to his beloved high-desert country; I would have been settling in to three weeks of concentrated, productive work. But now I sensed it could be the start of a bad time—one when the risks would be high, the cost of failure too painful to contemplate.