by Laura Parker
“I’m sorry if my appearance has inconvenienced you.” She listened to her voice as if it were a disinterested stranger’s. “I hope you’ll let me pay you for your time.”
He jerked back from her. Only then did she realize he had been holding her shoulder in a tight grip.
“Look,” he began, his expression softening a fraction. Then, as if he changed his mind, it refroze in midthaw. “Never mind.” He released her. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They rode out to the highway in silence.
She sat so close to the passenger door of his truck that Joe half expected her to jump out before he came to a full stop at the motel parking lot. She didn’t. She did, however, reach for the handle before turning to him. To his surprise the expression she turned to him was fully composed.
“Thank you for your time, and the use of your sofa,” she began as if spurred on by Miss Manners herself. “I know you don’t believe me but I truly can’t remember what our past relationship was, Mr. Guinn. Still, I would have thought you—anybody—would set aside his feelings under the circumstances to help someone in trouble. Regardless of your feelings toward me, you owe me the courtesy of checking out my story.”
Joe didn’t answer.
As she slid from the seat and slammed the door all he felt was great relief. He gunned the engine of his truck, sending it hurdling out of the parking lot. It bucked over the curb and then the ride smoothed out as his tires ate up the blacktop.
He leaned back in the leather seat, slung a wrist over the top of the steering wheel and smiled out at the view through his windshield.
Halle Hayworth had come and gone a second time from his life. This time he’d gotten over her with a minimum of trouble. He had even allowed her to have the last word and not let it get to him. He had handled it well. It was over. There was nothing to fear. Nothing to worry about. He was home free.
Two minutes passed before he saw the flashing blue lights of a highway patrol car in his rearview mirror. He glanced down at the speedometer. He was doing ninety miles per hour. He eased up on the gas pedal but it was too late. He knew then he was running away from that last lost look he had spied in Halle’s eyes.
Ten minutes later, he was pulling off the shoulder back onto the highway, a little angrier but a little wiser. He could run but he couldn’t hide, not from his conscience nor his feelings for Halle. The price of that lesson was couched in the form of a speeding ticket.
“All right, Halle,” he murmured to himself. “I’m going to call your bluff.”
He headed off the exit marked Tyler. He was going to get irrefutable proof that Halle was as sane, if more devious, than he. He owed it to his own peace of mind.
Joe leaned forward in his chair drawn up before Dr. Lawlah’s office desk. “Amnesia. Caused by a concussion?”
“That’s right, Mister Guinn. It’s called amnesia or in the vernacular, memory loss.”
As the doctor veered off into a long rather grisly account of brain swelling and ruptured and bleeding capillaries to explain the physical cause behind the condition, Joe’s thoughts turned inward. He had picked up the trail of Halle’s story at the county sheriff’s office from a friend. Surprisingly enough there had been a highway pileup just outside town two weeks ago involving a commercial bus and an eighteen-wheeler. It had happened while he was in Fort Worth bagging a deadbeat father. Several bus passengers had been injured, one of them a young woman with a head trauma. The sheriff’s department did not have her name or any information about her because she wasn’t carrying any ID. The hospital had informed them that the young woman in question was diagnosed as suffering from amnesia but that she didn’t want publicity of the fact. Because she had no record nor were there any law enforcement bulletins seeking a woman of her description, they had let the matter drop. So far Halle’s story checked out, but she could have read about it in the papers or seen the story on the TV.
Joe told himself he didn’t have to figure out why she was lying to continue to believe that she was. Cops often worked from the gut. Sometimes it was the only lead they had. He didn’t ask himself why he wanted to believe she was lying. He just did. Yet, if he was going to call her bluff, he knew he had to go the distance. A good cop checked out every lead. Took nothing at face value, even his gut reactions.
It had taken him two hours to track down the attending physician, Dr. Lawlah. The doctor was willing to talk to him in generalities about his former patient, released the day before, but Joe was getting the feeling he wasn’t hearing all he might. “You’re certain she couldn’t be faking this.”
The doctor looked surprised. “You mean a psychosomatic memory loss?”
“Actually, I had something else in mind. Outright lying.”
The doctor frowned. “Why would you even ask?”
“The woman claiming to be your amnesia victim has hired me to find out who she is.” Joe pulled out and displayed his private investigator’s license. “I deal with a lot of zanies in my line of work. I have to check her story out.”
The doctor smiled. “Of course. Your earlier description of her certainly matches my patient. I can understand why she might seek your expert help. Our Jane Doe was very upset by the fact she could not remember anything useful about her life.”
“So you say. But couldn’t she be faking it? I mean, people fake illnesses all the time.”
“I must assume that you have a reason for feeling she might want to do that. What is it?”
“I don’t have a reason, not really.” Joe leaned back in his chair, unwilling to admit anything he didn’t have to. “You’ve got to admit it’s very suspicious that no ID was found with her belongings.”
“Unusual, yes, but hardly criminal.”
Joe scowled as if it were the doctor and not himself who was being difficult. “Why did you let her go, knowing she couldn’t fend for herself?”
The doctor looked like a man whose resources of patience were being tested. “I did try to persuade her to remain, Mr. Guinn. The bus company is picking up all medical expenses for injured passengers. I pointed out that until her brain swelling subsided during the next few days and her memory began to return, that she would be more comfortable here. But she was adamant about leaving.”
“Did she say why she wanted out of the hospital?”
The doctor shook his head. “We had no choice but to release her yesterday, at her insistence. She can been a very persuasive person.”
“I know.” Something else had Joe stumped. Halle had actually been on a bus. “Did she say why she was in Texas?”
“If she could answer that,” Dr. Lawlah replied tolerantly, “she wouldn’t be diagnosed as having amnesia, Mr. Guinn.”
Joe grunted. Dealing with Halle was making him sound like an idiot. So, she hadn’t lied to him. But how much of the rest of what she had told him was real and how much was the result of a hard knock on the head?
“Is there any medical reason why an amnesia victim would think that she was being followed or threatened?”
“Not per se. However, occasional irrational fears would not be an uncommon reaction for someone suffering memory loss, particularly in an instance where the victim was traumatized, as in a motor accident. She is in unfamiliar surroundings among strangers. Certainly there might be cause for the development of moments of panic, inexplicable fears, feelings of isolation, desertion.”
“So you’re saying she might not really be in trouble or being stalked. It could all be in her mind?”
The doctor leaned forward with a slight frown. “You seem very preoccupied with my patient’s motives, Mr. Guinn. More than professional interest would seem to allow. Would you like to tell me why?”
“It’s kind of delicate.” Joe glanced across the desk at the doctor. It was obvious he was going to have to reveal his hand to someone. Better a physician than the sheriff’s department, just in case Halle might really be in trouble. “I need you to hold what I’m about to tell you in confidence, even fro
m your patient.”
“Sounds serious. Very well, unless it directly concerns my patient’s well-being, I agree to keep your secret.”
“Your patient’s name’s Halle Hayworth. She’s from New York.”
The doctor’s expression did not alter. “How do you know that?”
“I know—knew her once, a long time ago.”
“I see.” The doctor reached for his pen and pad. “Then perhaps you know some next of kin or if she is married?”
Joe sighed. “She’s married.”
The doctor’s pen hovered over the blank sheet. “To whom?”
“His name’s—wait. Halle says she thinks someone may be after her.”
Doctor Lawlah’s brows drew together. “You suspect that ‘someone’ may be her husband?”
“Perhaps.” Joe aired his middle-of-the-night musings. “A woman traveling through a strange town with serious cash in her purse isn’t on what I’d call a regular holiday.”
The doctor leaned back and steepled his fingers, pen still in hand. “Would you say you know her well enough to make that kind of judgment about her marital relationship?”
“Perhaps.”
“Really?” Skepticism lifted the doctor’s brows. “How so?”
Joe stepped across his personal line in the sand. “I’m her ex.”
“Ex? Husband?”
Joe nodded. “We divorced and she remarried a couple of years ago.”
The doctor nodded. “I see.”
“No, I don’t think you do. Halle’s from a very wealthy family, Manhattan born and bred. She didn’t have a driver’s license because she doesn’t own a car. She leases one with a driver when necessary. She’s never been west of Chicago, and then only by plane. The woman I married never even considered taking a bus across town. She sure wouldn’t have taken one through east Texas.”
“Maybe she was coming to visit you.”
“It wasn’t exactly a friendly divorce.” Joe shrugged. “I’m the last person on earth Halle would come to for help if she was in her right mind which, obviously, she isn’t. I figure it must have been just plain dumb luck she found my name in the phone book and came to me for help. To tell you the truth, I don’t want anything to do with her.”
“I see.”
Joe suspected that what the doctor saw all too clearly was that he was being a bastard in a situation in which another man would have been more gallant. But he didn’t owe anyone an explanation of his feelings and he certainly wasn’t going to offer an emotional one to a stranger.
He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open again, showing Halle’s picture to the doctor. “Just for the record, this is your patient. Right?”
The doctor examined the picture with a frown. “My patient has dark hair.”
Joe formed a circle with his thumb and forefinger and laid it over the picture so that only Halle’s face appeared in the center.
With a surprised look, the doctor nodded. “Oh yes, that’s her.”
Satisfied, Joe repocketed it. “So, if she’s still ailing, is it safe for her to be wandering around east Texas?”
“Ms. Hayworth was released from the hospital because essentially there’s nothing seriously wrong with her. I expect her memory to return gradually over the next few days or weeks.”
“Day or weeks? You’re certain?”
“I’m reasonably hopeful,” the doctor countered.
Joe smiled at his caution. “Okay, doc. All I want to know is, if I give you all the information you need, like the right phone numbers and addresses of friends or family, will you take over her care from here?”
“Certainly. You have that information?”
“I can get it with a phone call or two.”
The doctor’s gaze sharpened. “I don’t suppose you’d consider looking after Ms. Hayworth for a few days?”
“No, absolutely not.” Joe stood up. “I told you before, we’re history.”
“Then why do you still carry a picture of her in your wallet, Mr. Guinn?”
Joe didn’t reply, just tucked in his chin. “I need to find a pay phone. Make a few calls.”
“Be my guest. There’s one in the waiting room at the end of the hall. Ms. Hayworth needs to be with her loved ones at a time like this.”
Loved ones. Joe thought about that phrase as he left the doctor’s office to go in search of a public phone. Halle had had very few loved ones when he’d known her. Her family had not been among them.
Most children became orphans by losing their parents. Halle had been born into a family where it just seemed as if she were an orphan. Her parents were jetsetters, divorced and remarried so many times to other partners she had lost count of her erstwhile stepmothers and fathers. Neither parent had made a home for her with them during her growing-up years. That had fallen to a cadre of servants who manned an enormous upper eastside Manhattan apartment. During the three years he was part of her life, her parents had never even bothered to visit her, not once. She had done the usual things, sending them birthday and holiday greetings. They responded by sending gifts without cards once a year, as if a message popped up in their social calendars that read, “Send gift to female child. Occasion unknown.”
If either parent bothered to respond to Doctor Lawlah’s messages, it wouldn’t be to bring Halle into either of their homes. The Hayworths would more than likely deposit her in a fancy rest home or private European spa, provide lots of money for therapy, and then promptly forget about her.
Joe’s steps dragged a little as he neared the pay phone at the end of the hall. He had always thought story plots in which the heroine lost her memory were just cheap, no-brainer tricks for lazy suspense writers who wanted a convenient way to terrorize the protagonist. But now Halle was the heroine of her own “Home Unknown” and her lost memory was more than an inconvenience. It laid responsibility for her, at least temporarily, squarely at his own door. How was that for irony?
But Halle couldn’t be his problem. She had excluded him from her life by divorcing him. As much as he hated the idea, he was going to have to get in touch with Daniel Shipmann.
He dialed information in Manhattan and jotted down the only number he received in reply to several requests.
The auction house where Halle worked refused to give out her home phone number even after he identified himself. He could have simply left a message for Shipmann but jealousy held him back. At the last moment he managed to remember the name of another of her colleagues, Sarah Stuart, and asked to be transferred to her.
“Joe Guinn! After all this time,” Sarah greeted him. “I can’t quite believe it! Where are you? In the city, I hope.”
“I don’t have much time, Sarah. This is long distance,” Joe replied curtly. In her day, Sarah had been one of his greatest detractors. Her false note of delight grated. “I’m looking for Halle. On business. How can I to get in touch with her?”
“Now that might be difficult. I haven’t seen her lately, not since she quit. She’d been through so much. Who could fault her for wanting to take an extended vacation? We all agreed it was deserved, considering the climate in the office these last months. But to leave permanently? That was amazing.”
Joe didn’t bother to summon any enthusiasm for the tidbit of office gossip she was obviously dangling before him. The trials and tribulations of auctioneering had never appealed to him. “Was she behaving in an unusual manner the last time you saw her?”
“That’s the most amazing thing. She was. You know Halle. The auction house was her life. Then she quit, just like that. Said she needed a change of scenery. I suppose it had something to do with Daniel taking another job.”
“That so? Where did he go?”
“He got a really cushy job at Sotheby’s in London, the kind Halle had been yearning for.”
“I see. So then, they’re moving to England?”
There was a significant pause on Sarah’s end. “Joe, you don’t know, do you?”
Something in her voice
made his spine tingle. “Why don’t you fill me in?”
“Actually, it’s probably not my—Oh, it’s no secret. Halle left Daniel six months ago, Joe. They’re divorced.”
Chapter 5
Some Texans toned down their accents after they’d earned their first million. Not Bill McCrea. His was pure LBJ. A paternal depot of the old school, McCrea was known for dispensing cash and orders with equal generosity in a drawl thick enough to spread on cornbread.
“The thing is to find the boy and bring him home before he makes a dam—dad-blame fool of himself!”
“I’ll do my best,” Joe replied, secretly amused that McCrea was curbing his profanity because of his wife’s presence.
“I demand the best effort from my employees, only the best.”
“I’m sure Joe knows no other way to do business.”
Joe smiled at his supporter, Ella McCrea, who sat on a sofa of golden brocade.
From the outside the McCrea residence looked like a ranch house on steroids, everything oversize and exaggerated but rustic. But once inside, the foyer and living room took their decorative cue from Versailles. Drapes, walls, ceilings and furniture, every surface was richly textured and painted in shades of cream or rose, or gilded. If Joe hadn’t already visited Bill McCrea’s study with its distressed wood paneling, leather sofas and chairs whose framework was made up of longhorn steer horns, he would have thought he was in the wrong house. McCrea was a short spare man who favored gray suits and bolo ties. Obviously this ornate setting reflected the taste of the lady of the house.
Ella McCrea was a petite woman of a certain age with ash-blond hair piled up in large billowing waves. The heavy gold earrings she wore could be counterweights, Joe thought. Though she was dressed in a man-tailored western shirt and slacks the aura of femininity was undiminished. The shirt was pale yellow and her slacks were the color of mint ice cream. To top it off enveloping clouds of a classic fragrance drifted through the room with her every movement.
“You must understand, Lacey was a late-life child, Mr. Guinn.” Mrs. McCrea touched her throat a little self-consciously, drawing Joe’s attention to the cluster of diamonds encircling one of her fingers. “We already had three girls. Deirdra, the youngest, was fourteen when Lacey was born. I’m afraid we all spoiled him, treated him more like a new toy than a child.”