He pulled free of her embrace and canted up on an elbow. They looked at each other through the darkness. His eyes, she thought, looked very deep. There were shadows of fatigue, like dark bruises, beneath them.
"Jonas, are you … okay?"
"Fine," he said. "And as to seeing a therapist, I thought I explained that. I have seen a therapist. An endless series of them, as a matter of fact. None of them got anywhere with this little problem of mine."
"But that was years ago."
"So?"
"Things might be different now. I'm sure therapy is like anything else. They learn new things all the time, they improve their … techniques."
"Emma."
"What?"
"Been there, done that. Not again."
"Oh, Jonas…"
"Not again. Clear?"
"But—"
"Clear?"
She made a face at him. "Oh, all right." She reached for him. "Come back here."
He settled in close once more, his head on her shoulder. They lay there, wrapped around each other, the silence punctuated by the faint snoring of one of the Yorkies at the foot of the bed. Emma smiled and closed her eyes.
And then he was rubbing his forehead against her shoulder again.
"Jonas, what is it?"
"Nothing. Headache."
"Since when?"
"Had it all night. Thought it would pass, but it seems to be getting worse…"
"I'll get you somethin' for it." She started to rise. He lifted his head and kissed her chin. "No. You stay here. I'll get it myself."
"I don't mind."
He put a finger to her lips. "Shh. Stay here. I'll take care of it."
He was back in no time. She held the sheet out to welcome him. He came down to her, wrapped his arms around her.
"Jonas?"
"What?"
"I have this feeling. It's really strong."
"And what is your feeling?"
"We're going to find your brother. I just know we are."
"And will we find him alive?" Again, she couldn't read his tone. Was he irritated? Disbelieving? Before she could say anything, he sighed. "Never mind. Don't tell me. Let it be a surprise."
"You mean you believe me? You think we'll find him, too?"
He didn't reply, only pulled her closer.
Tenderly, she combed her fingers through his thick hair and considered the question he hadn't let her answer.
And will we find him alive?
About that, she had no hunch at all. "Jonas?"
Again, he gave no reply. And she didn't press him. After a time, his breathing evened out.
Emma lay in the darkness, staring up at the shadowed crystal teardrops that dangled from the chandelier, holding her sleeping husband close and trying to imagine what kind of man Russell Bravo would have become. Trying to picture someone who might be a brother to Jonas – someone big and strong, someone a little overbearing who liked to give the orders, someone with midnight eyes and a cleft in his chin.
Trying not to think of a small bare skull, a bit of baby blanket, a few sad little white bones…
* * *
Chapter 18
«^»
They arrived at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City at just a little after noon the next day. Tory, Marsh's wife, was waiting for them. She was a tall, slender woman with a mane of curly red hair and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose.
The drive to the nearby university town of Norman took less than half an hour. They caravanned, Marsh and Tory in the lead, Emma and Jonas following them in a rented Chrysler 300M – and a pair of Jonas's bodyguards taking up the rear.
"I've been wondering what Marsh's wife would be like," Emma told Jonas as they sped down the interstate. "Tory's got … dignity, don't you think? Dignity and a warm heart. I liked her the minute I set eyes on her."
"Emma. You like everyone the minute you set eyes on them."
"No, Jonas. I do not. I never did like you – until recently."
He sent her a look. "You're saying you do like me now?"
"Yes, indeed I do."
Marsh and Tory Bravo lived in a handsome brick house on the corner of a wide tree-lined street. They had a comfortable guest bedroom and they insisted that Jonas and Emma make use of it.
"You'll have to share the hall bathroom with Kimberly," Tory said. "I hope that's all right."
Emma waited for Jonas to insist that they couldn't stay there. Security was clearly nonexistent. And where would the bodyguards sleep?
But either his paranoia was slipping a little, or, since Mandy wasn't with them, he felt willing to take a chance on spending a whole night – or maybe even two – in an unguarded house.
He smiled at Tory. "Sounds fine to me."
Tory smiled back. "And this is a quiet neighborhood. Nothing bad is going to happen here. Maybe you could just send those bodyguards to a hotel?"
The bodyguards in question were waiting in their rental car in front of the house.
"Maybe I could," Jonas agreed.
And he did it. He went out and told the men to make themselves scarce. They were to find lodging for themselves and remain available at all times by cell phone, in case he needed them. But they didn't have to shadow their employer's every move.
"Way to go, Jonas," Emma said over her shoulder when he came back into the house and found her in the guest room unpacking their things.
He came up behind her, took her by the waist and nibbled on her ear. "Proud of me, are you?"
"You'd better believe it."
He nuzzled her hair. "Prove it."
"I will – later."
"You'll have to do it quietly," he whispered. "There'll be a nine-year-old sleeping just down the hall." They'd be meeting Marsh's daughter later in the afternoon, when she came home from school.
Emma turned in his embrace and twined her arms around his neck. "You think I can't do it quietly?"
"I'm willing to watch you try." He was grinning – but he still had those dark circles under his eyes.
She brushed her fingers between his brows, where the skin looked drawn with tension. "Still got that headache?"
"It comes and goes. It's not too bad right now."
"Maybe you ought to take a—"
"Emma. I'm fine. Let it be – and I think Tory is holding lunch for us. Come on." He snared her hand and pulled her out into the hall.
Tory did have a light meal waiting for them. They sat down to sandwiches, fruit salad and iced tea.
After lunch, Tory left them to return to her florist shop and Marsh said he'd drive them out to his father's house.
* * *
Ten minutes after getting into Marsh's roomy sedan, they had left the town of Norman behind. Woods of oak and hickory, turning gold now with the colors of fall, surrounded them, interspersed with fields where rough brown grasses grew and cattle and horses grazed. The October sun shone down and the day was mild, the air fresh and clear.
The houses were far apart, some old and run-down, some big and brand-new. The new ones, Marsh told them, were mostly the dream homes of folks who worked in the city and didn't mind an hour's drive to and from work if they could live out in the country.
"When I was kid," he said, "this was all ranch and forest land. But in the past ten years or so, as you can see, that has changed. They've broken a lot of it up into five-acre parcels. And people with money are building out here."
Marsh turned onto a slightly narrower road where the trees grew closer in, branches meeting overhead, forming a lacy canopy of green and gold. Driveways wound off into the trees, most of them marked by mailboxes.
"Here it is." Marsh turned the wheel again, into a driveway with no mailbox beside it, one so overgrown, someone who didn't know it was there would probably never have spotted it.
The driveway was rutted and unpaved. They bumped along it slowly. Branches scraped the car's roof and a couple of bushy-tailed squirrels darted across the road in front of them, easily makin
g cover on the other side before the car got close enough to be a threat to them. Soon enough, they came to the end of the driveway. Marsh parked behind an old pickup, which sat under a carport built off the side of a tumbledown shed.
Beyond the carport lay a cleared space. And beyond the cleared space stood the house. It was a plain wood-sided structure with an asphalt-shingle roof. At one time it might have been white. But most of the paint had long ago peeled off, leaving the wood to weather down to an ugly gray. There was a lot of junk stacked against the side of the shed and near the house – old tires and broken tools, empty plastic containers and bins full of aluminum cans.
Growing up in Alta Lobo, Emma had seen similar places, ramshackle run-down houses with a lot of junk around. But most people did something to try to make even the poorest house a home. They'd put a violet in the window, or some silly statue in the yard.
There was nothing like that here, nothing that would make this bleak place a home. Just junk and red dirt – a shed, a house and an old pickup truck. The pickup wasn't even any kind of real color. It had a coat of rusting gray primer on it, and nothing more.
Marsh turned off the engine and muttered dryly, "As I think I might have mentioned, my father never cared a whole lot about living well."
They got out of the car, crossed the cleared space and entered the house under the sagging overhang that served as a front porch.
It was no more inviting inside than out. The front door opened into a living room with brown carpet, brown chairs and a brown couch. The smell of mildew hung in the air and not a single picture graced the dingy walls.
"This way." Marsh led them down a dark, narrow hallway, past two bedrooms on the right. The hallway jogged left at the end. A few steps and they confronted a padlocked door.
Marsh had the key.
They entered Blake's "office." It consisted of a battered desk with a computer on top, a wall lined with metal bookcases, some scarred file cabinets, an old portable typewriter on a cheap stand, a window air conditioner and a closet. Emma opened the closet door. Like the metal bookcases, the closet was stacked high with old newspapers and magazines.
Marsh booted up the computer, then offered the squeaky swivel chair to Jonas. "Be my guest." Jonas took the chair. The computer required a password, which Marsh provided. "It's 'surprise.'"
Jonas typed in the word at the prompt and he was in. "Your father gave you the password before he died?"
"No. He gave hints. The hints were in certain things he said to me – and of course, the word was pasted on the front of his scrapbook. But he never told me directly. What fun would that have been for him?"
Jonas swore. "Your father had one sick idea of fun."
"You'll get no argument from me on that point."
Jonas began to explore the computer, checking through the different programs stored inside, scrolling through files, seeking some hint of something that would lead him to something else, some clue that might end up helping him to discover what had happened to a baby who had vanished three decades ago.
Emma went through the file cabinets, which Marsh said Tory had already looked through once. She found file folders full of clippings – articles about everything from how to build your own storm cellar to a thousand and one uses for old newsprint. She found folders with Blake's bills in them – utility bills, grocery receipts, bills for meals at places like Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. It looked as if the man had kept every piece of paper he ever got his hands on.
She also found folders with people's names on them. Most of the names she didn't know. But there was a folder for Marsh and one for Jonas. One for Tory and one for Kimberly. One for Blythe and one for Amanda. There were folders for other Bravos, too: Jenna and her sister, the three Wyoming cousins and their families and several more that Emma didn't recognize offhand.
As a rule, the folders with people's names on them were empty. But Blythe's folder held a couple of clippings, both of them less than a year old. And Jonas's contained one clipping, about some business deal he'd made back in March.
She showed the clippings to Marsh and Jonas.
"He probably planned to paste them into that book of his," Marsh said. "But he died before he got around to it."
The computer, like the file cabinet, contained hundreds of files labeled with people's names. In those files were phone numbers and addresses, notes about places of business, likes and dislikes, hobbies and pastimes. As in the cabinet, there was a file on Marsh and each member of his family – and on Jonas and Blythe and Mandy.
"What was he plannin' to do with all this information?" Emma asked no one in particular after they'd been in that room for about an hour and a half, getting nowhere, looking through dusty papers and scanning computer files that seemed to have no other purpose than the secret invasion of other people's privacy.
"Whatever it was, he won't be doing it anymore," Marsh said. He was leaning over Jonas's shoulder as Jonas opened folders and scrolled through files. "I don't know about the two of you, but I find that very reassuring."
"It's just too bad he didn't keep a file on Russell," Emma said. "Except in the scrapbook, we haven't seen that name anywhere."
Marsh made a noise of agreement in his throat and glanced her way. She thought that he was thinking just what she was right then. That there was no file on Russell because he had died three decades ago. What would be the point in keeping track of the dead?
Jonas pressed his fingers to his forehead.
Emma put her hand on his shoulder. "That headache is still bothering you, isn't it?"
"It's all right, Emma." He gently shrugged her off. "We need a nerd," he said. "Someone who can get in here deeper than I know how to."
Marsh was nodding. "You're right. The old man must have deleted things, and maybe some of what he got rid of would be of use to us now. An expert might be able to retrieve it."
"I know one or two bona fide computer geniuses," Jonas said. "I'll make a few calls tonight, see if one of them would be willing to fly out here tomorrow morning and have a look."
"Sounds like a plan."
"In the meantime, I see he's got a port here for a Zip disk. Maybe we ought to make a backup copy of everything on his hard drive – just in case something happens to this computer."
"Good idea," said Marsh. "I think I saw some of those bigger disks around here somewhere…" He knelt and pulled several of them from one of the lower left-hand desk drawers. "Here we go." He set the fat gray disks on the desk. Jonas picked up the top one, removed it from its case and inserted it into the port.
Emma turned to the file cabinet again and started in on the N's. Marsh had already gone back to thumbing through the dusty stacks of newspapers and magazines. Jonas completed his task of copying the contents of the computer onto the Zip disks. Then he remained at the computer, scrolling through file after file.
It was after five when he sat back in the swivel chair. "That's it." He rolled his shoulders, as if to loosen the tension gathered there. "I've opened every file in this damn machine – at least every one I can manage to access. And I have found zero. Nada. Nothing at all that might get us any closer to figuring out what happened to my brother."
Emma had found nothing, either. She shut the bottom file drawer and brushed off her hands as Marsh tossed the magazine he'd been thumbing through back onto one of the dusty stacks.
Jonas rubbed at his eyes. "I can call around, as I said, for someone to get out here and have a closer look at this computer. But after that…"
Marsh sank to the edge of the battered desk. "We've kind of run out of places to search, haven't we?"
"Don't forget the rest of the house," Emma reminded them. "Nobody's gone through the kitchen drawers, or your father's bedroom, have they?"
"No," Marsh said. "And you're right. We should go through the whole place. I would have guessed, if there were anything more for us to find, it would have been in this room. But you never know…"
Jonas stood. "We'll check the rest
of the house tomorrow. And go through the shed." He shrugged. Emma thought he looked very tired – and way too resigned.
He didn't think they were going to find anything. She could see that in the weary lines of his face, hear it in the flat tone of his voice.
* * *
At Marsh's house, they met Kimberly, as well as the little girl's cat, a good-natured gray tabby named Mr. Pickles. Kimberly was very pleased to learn she had a cousin from Los Angeles.
"I think we'll have to come and visit you, Cousin Jonas," Kimberly announced. "It'll work out great. We can go to Disneyland and Universal Studios while we're there."
Jonas said he'd look forward to that visit and really seemed to mean it. He told Kimberly about Mandy.
Emma watched him with the little girl, noted the warmth in his eyes and the openness of his smile. He really had come a very long way since their marriage. Blythe would be proud.
Now, if they could just find Russell…
But a day of fruitless searching had created serious doubts on that score. After Kimberly had gone to bed, the grown-ups made themselves comfortable in the family room and discussed the situation.
Jonas said, "I think we've already got all the clues Blake left for us."
Marsh concurred. "I'm afraid you're right. The scrapbook and the diamonds. Just enough to rub our noses in what he did – and nothing else. No way to track down your brother, no hint at all as to how to find out what the hell happened to him."
"A whole new aspect to his revenge. He as good as confesses, but there's no way we can get to him, no way he pays for what he did, no way we ever learn where my brother is now."
"Right. The locked room, the computer, the files, the stacks of old magazines and yellowed newspapers. I'm sure it gave him a hell of a good laugh, before he died, picturing me going through everything, imagining how it might go, if I decided to give up the diamonds and take what I knew to you or to the police. How we'd tear that office of his apart trying to find some indication of where Russell might be now…"
"And how we'd come up with nothing."
"Exactly." Marsh fisted his hand and tapped it on the arm of his char. "Damn. The old man brings new meaning to the word diabolical – and I noticed you didn't try to contact your computer expert."
THE BRAVO BILLIONAIRE Page 18