Arousing Suspicions

by Marianne Stillings

He parked in the eight-car garage next to Zoey’s white Bentley convertible, hoping he could make it to the house without running into anyone. But as he crossed the pavement in front of the first staff bungalow, he spotted Lee draped over the fender of the ‘68 Shelby Mustang they’d purchased at an L.A. auction a week ago. The mechanic popped his head out from under the hood and lifted his hand in a friendly wave.

  If the man wondered what Peter was doing home in the middle of the day dressed like a bum, Lee’s pleasantly lined face gave no indication.

  Now, with his back against his bedroom door, Peter brought his trembling hands around so he could see them. No blood. He wanted to sob with relief.

  Jesus God, had he hurt her? After she’d jerked back and hit her head, he’d wanted to stop and see if she was okay, but someone had called her name, and he’d run. Without thinking, he’d simply run—prey now, not predator.

  Was he a predator? He never intended to be, didn’t want to be.

  Scrubbing his jaw with his knuckles, he wondered how badly she was hurt. What if she was dead? It would be his fault for scaring her and then leaving her like that…

  He hadn’t meant to hurt her, hadn’t wanted to make a grab for her. His fingers remembered the warmth of her skin, the tense muscles of her neck as he’d begun to close his grip around her wind-pipe. He hadn’t wanted to choke her, but the way she’d looked at him, it was as though she knew. He’d only wanted to explain…

  But of course she knew, he raged at himself. He’d been the one to tell her! But that was when he thought they were only dreams, only some damn stupid dreams!

  He slammed his fists into his head, once, twice, again, hard, harder, until the pain penetrated his skull and he let out a sharp sob. Damn, damn, damn. If only he could remember!

  Letting his head fall back against his bedroom door, he felt tears dampening his cheeks. His eyes felt like somebody had poured salt in them. The muscles of his arms and legs were shaky and weak. Maybe he should take Miss March’s advice and see a doctor, a psychiatrist, check himself in somewhere. Maybe then he could figure out why this was happening, why he was losing it, why he had turned into some kind of monster. Maybe they’d lock him away and people would be safe again.

  Sure, he’d been working hard, but it felt surprisingly good. Since his father’s death after a long bout with cancer, the burden of the O’Hara wealth and holdings now rested on Peter’s shoulders. Four companies and their subsidiaries, thousands of employees, money and lives at stake. He had to be a success now for them, to keep it all going the way his father had wanted, to keep the dream alive and thriving.

  He couldn’t let it fail, not on his watch.

  Over the years, his father had tried to bring Peter into the business, but unlike Zoey, who seemed to crave the role of corporate leader, Peter had balked. After all, there were Boards of Directors, VPs, CEOs, lawyers…the family business didn’t need him.

  But he needed it. That little epiphany had been stunning…then sickening…then terrifying, and finally…satisfying.

  Though he knew his sister was probably far more capable of taking over the reins, Peter had decided to go for broke, learn all he could, do the job his father had entrusted to him. For the past eleven months, he’d worked sixteen-, eighteen-, twenty-hour days. It was all for the business and nothing for himself. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d gotten laid. Maybe it had all become too much and his mind had snapped.

  And then, three months ago, the dreams began. Nightmares. Cutting into his brain and leaving him exhausted.

  Letting his hands fall to his sides, Peter closed his eyes. What was the use, anyway? He was cut out to be a rich man’s son, not a corporate giant. He’d planned on skating through life, spending money, playing around with his friends, putting an impressive dent in the family fortune. His only ambition had been to bed as many leggy blondes as he could. Hell, let his sister be the one to marry and produce little heirs. Since he couldn’t take any of it with him, what did he care what happened to the O’Hara megamillions after he died?

  Yet the day he’d suddenly found himself at the helm, that had all changed. He’d changed. He’d asked questions and worked hard and learned, and maybe it was simply killing him.

  Or turning him into a killer.

  Moving wearily to his bed, he let his body drop onto the coverlet, face down. He was weary, but couldn’t rest. No time. He had that two o’clock with the board, then a tour of the Alameda facility, and tonight Zoey’s dinner party. His sister would kick his ass all the way to Alcatraz if he begged off another of her charity functions.

  He rolled over onto his back, catching a glimpse of the notebook sitting on the bedside table. His dream log. Sitting up, he reached for it, opened it. His own handwriting on the pages. Innocent, mostly illegible words, scribbled when he’d been half asleep. Phrases to make him recall the dreams so he could tell Miss March and she could help him solve the riddle. Most of the dreams were un-remarkable. Images, sounds, colors, silly events that made no sense and were even laughable.

  Most. But not all.

  Tossing the book onto the bed, he rubbed his eyes. Rest. He needed rest. Maybe he’d ask Zoey if she had anything he could take. Hell, his sister’s bathroom cabinet looked like a mini-pharmacy, she must have something in there that would let him get a little shut-eye. Maybe then he would sleep the way he used to, before his father died, before his world shifted and the nightmares came, leaving his hands and his face and his clothes covered with blood.

  “I don’t care what you say, Inspector, I’m not going to press charges.”

  Tabitha gazed into Darling’s eyes, put her hands on her hips, and set her jaw. The detective stared back, his hands on his own hips, his stance wide, aggressive. He was doing that Oh, yeah? man thing, where they make themselves big to fool and intimidate their enemies.

  She had to give him credit—his stance and stare were intimidating and intense, or would have been, if he’d been trying it on anyone but her.

  “I was wrong about Mr. Griffin,” she explained. “I’m not going to compound the problem by pressing charges.”

  She waited for the detective to explode, but all he did was…smile. His despicable magnetism wrapped around her like a coy snake. Against her will, it drew her in.

  “Whether you press charges or not,” he said softly, “I’m going to dust in here.”

  “Great,” she drawled. “When you’re finished in here, you can start on the bookcase in the den.”

  “I mean dust for prints, and you know it,” he said. “You’re just being obstinate again.” His brown eyes glittered. “You watch TV?”

  “Selectively.” She cocked her head. “Are those crime scene shows realistic?”

  “No.” He chuckled. Adjusting his glasses, he gave her a long look. “I’ll bet you’re an Animal Planet fan.”

  “Winkin and Blinkin watch it. I just change the channels for them. No opposable thumbs and all that.” She wiggled the thumbs in question.

  Tabitha watched as he dropped his gaze to her thumbs, lifted it to her mouth, then made eye contact.

  After a moment he said, “Griffin touch anything in here—besides your neck, I mean?”

  He let his attention settle on the neck in question, and she felt herself warm all over. Didn’t the SFPD have any old, wrinkly detectives?

  After the paramedics had pronounced her okay, Darling had escorted her back to her office—the scene of the attack. Even though she was fine, she must still look a little woozy because he seemed poised for action, as though she were a football and he needed to be ready to catch her as she dropped into the end zone.

  Tabitha’s fingers felt for her throat as she remembered Griffin’s hand there, tightening until she could barely breathe. While the encounter had been terrifying at the time, she’d been thinking it over since then, and had reached certain conclusions.

  “Mr. Griffin did not come here to hurt me. I’m sure of it. He was confused, desperate, but murde
r wasn’t on his mind.”

  As her hand lay against her throat where Griffin’s fingers had been, she caught a flash, an image, an emotion, and something else…

  “I was wrong about him, Inspector. He’s not a murderer.” She rubbed her neck gently and looked away.

  “What was his nightmare about this time?”

  Tabitha lowered her hand and shrugged. “He said that a few nights ago he dreamed he killed a homeless man in an alley. He was highly agitated and his clothing was a mess. I got the impression he hadn’t slept since then.”

  Darling walked to the front window, pulling the curtain aside as though checking the street for cars. “Dreaming of murder isn’t a crime, Ms. March. But assault is.” He let the curtain fall back into place and turned to her. “If I find—”

  “No matter what you find, he didn’t intend to hurt me, and I’m not pressing charges. I think his actions shocked him as much as they did me. If I hadn’t lurched away from him, I wouldn’t have hit my head.”

  In what was becoming a familiar gesture, Darling jammed his hands into his pockets and scowled at her. “Pardon me, ma’am, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Griffin had his fingers wrapped around your throat and you reacted. His was an act of aggression, also known as assault. You have absolutely no way of knowing what his intentions—”

  “I do so,” she snapped. “When he grabbed me, I saw inside his mind for a moment. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him. He’s terrified—”

  “Inside his mind?” Darling barked. His eyes narrowed on her. “You saw inside his mind? Great! Did you happen to catch his real name and address while you were in there?”

  Tabitha felt hot fury surge through her body.

  “I’m not an idiot, Inspector. If I thought I was in danger, I’d press charges. But I don’t get that from him at all. I was afraid, but then…but then, when he grabbed me, I got an image…the dreams he told me about…something’s wrong. Off-kilter. I—I don’t understand it, but I don’t fear him. Not anymore.” Crossing her arms over her stomach, she said, “He needs help. He needs friends—”

  “Hey, with victims like you, who needs friends?”

  Darling raised his hands in obvious frustration.

  “Fine,” he sighed. “Don’t press charges. I can’t make you. But if you’ll recall, you came to me to discuss whether this man was a killer. And now he’s attacked you. Whether or not he had anything to do with Iris Reynaud’s death, he’s violent and may have something to hide. I’m very, very interested in talking to him.”

  Ignoring his outburst, Tabitha said, “How will you even know the prints you get are Griffin’s? Lots of people come and go in the house all the time.”

  “I won’t know. The fact is,” he continued, bending to retrieve a black case sitting next to the sofa, “at many crime scenes no fingerprints are found at all, and even when they are, they’re often not clear enough to use. But if I luck out and snag one of Griffin’s prints, and if he has priors and is in the AFIS database, I’ll get an ID.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs.”

  Opening the case, Darling rummaged around inside and brought out a square plastic container. “Maybe he didn’t touch anything today, but he’s been here several times before.”

  Tabitha nodded.

  “And he sat at the table with you. Put his hands on it, right?”

  She glanced over at the table and nodded again.

  “Unless you scooted him in, he must have touched the chair.” He let the words hang in the air while he stared down at her.

  There they were again, standing toe to toe, glaring into each other’s eyes. She knew he was only trying to do his job, and he was right—she had been the one to contact the police. But that was before she’d realized that, despite his nightmares, Jack Griffin was no killer.

  Suddenly the air filled with music. Inspector Darling’s cell phone had come to life, playing “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” and Tabitha realized the handsome detective probably had a girlfriend.

  Oh, well, fine. Of course he did. Most people were in relationships. Why would he be any different? Maybe he was even engaged.

  She took a small breath and let go of the emotions that welled up at that thought.

  He yanked the phone from his pocket and flipped it open. “Yeah?”

  That certainly didn’t sound like a man in love.

  Glancing at Tabitha, he looked away. “Yeah, I’ll be there.” He snapped the phone closed and let it drop in his pocket.

  Maybe they’d had a fight.

  Before she could stop herself, she said, “Girlfriend?”

  Shoving his glasses back up on his nose, he said, “My brother.”

  She snorted a sardonic laugh. “Your brother? ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’?”

  “You’d have to know my brother.”

  Refocusing, she said, “Okay, look. I have a client in an hour. How long will it take you to dust for the prints?”

  Darling’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Give me fifty-nine minutes, then I’ll be out of your hair.” Meaningful pause. “Hopefully for good.”

  The cable car bumped along, the ride smooth but noisy. In the middle of the front of the car, where Tabitha sat, the burly gripman wore a beaming smile as he worked the grip lever with his hands, pulling back hard like a gondolier surging an oar through thick water.

  The conductor appeared to be Asian and was half the gripman’s size. He moved through the car collecting fares, including Tabitha’s, finishing up in the back, where he took hold of the rear grip.

  Under the belly of the brightly painted maroon and yellow car, the cable, buried beneath the street, whirred along at its standard nine and one-half miles per hour. Next to Tabitha, the gripman sounded one bell, signaling the conductor to apply the rear brake.

  “California Street!” the gripman sang out as the car bumped to a halt. People hopped off, others clambered on. All grinned, found space on the polished oak benches to sit, and eagerly turned their faces forward toward the next hill.

  Two bells clanged, telling the conductor the way ahead was clear. The car eased forward and began to rise like a boat riding the crest of a gigantic wave. As the car climbed, the giggling passengers slid back, smooshed together like the last sardines in a can.

  At the summit of the hill, the car glided over it, then headed down, metal and wood and bones and muscles creaking, down, and down, and down Powell Street. The tourists in front of Tabitha squealed and chattered away in German with as much delight as if this were a theme park joyride.

  Tabitha smiled to herself, remembering her first cable car experience, and how she, too, had squealed while her mother had held her tightly in her lap as the car tilted over the rim of a high hill, then lurched forward to descend almost straight down.

  They bumped across Post and Bush and Sutter, and into Union Square.

  The bell clanged again. “Geary Street!” the gripman yelled as the car ground to a silent halt.

  Tabitha stepped onto the pavement and walked to the curb. Traffic had come to a stop—all hail the conquering cable car, its right-of-way ensured by its inability to meander or swerve or yield.

  She watched as it slid on down Powell Street, its happy passengers grinning still, anticipating the next hill, the next valley.

  The sun ruled today, and the water of the bay gleamed like a carpet of rough-cut sapphires. The omnipresent fog had cooperated by rolling back to the far horizon so the elegant red lines of the Golden Gate Bridge stood in bright contrast to the blue of the sky.

  Everywhere there was bustling, an orchestration of movement and melody that was the city. The downtown, the wharf, the shops. The city smelled good, too. Of sweet air, chocolate, bread, saltwater, and flowers.

  And suddenly she was thinking of Inspector Nate Darling. His face, boyishly handsome, the gleaming brown of his eyes that were at once humorous and serious, that wide, sensuous mouth, the timbre of his deep voice. It had been a long time since sh
e’d found herself daydreaming about a man, but he was a lot of man, and she had a lot of dreams to catch up on.

  The light at the corner of O’Farrell and Powell changed to red, and she realized she’d been so absorbed in her thoughts of the sexy detective, she hadn’t been paying attention and had stood rooted to the spot for a whole light cycle.

  When the light flashed green, cars began to move in front of her. A returning Powell cable car neared the intersection and began grinding to a halt, but as it drew close, Tabitha’s senses heightened, and she became aware of the crowd around her, shifting, subtly shoving her forward nearer the curb.

  Then she felt a hand splayed against the small of her back. An image burst inside her brain, but she didn’t have time to analyze it as she felt herself being pushed hard into the middle of the street, shoved directly into the path of the oncoming cable car.

  Chapter 7

  To rid yourself of the lingering effects of a night mare, as soon as you wake up, spit three times.

  FOLKLORE

  Tabitha lifted her lids, and stared into her rescuer’s face. He was sort of blurry, and he faded in and out a little, but there was no mistaking those glittering brown eyes, even though he’d lost his specs somewhere during the tackle.

  She blinked up at him, not quite sure what had happened. One moment she’d been on her knees in front of an oncoming cable car, the next she’d found herself rolling across the pavement with a man on top of her.

  Swallowing, she whispered, “Where did you come from?”

  His eyes serious, he said, “Well, when two people love each other very much—”

  “Not that kind of come from,” she growled. “I got that speech from my mom in the fifth grade. Were you following me?”

  “Sort of. Unofficially. Accidentally. Yes.”

  “I’m outraged,” she choked. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Did you see who pushed me?”

  His eyes went dark, his focus sharpened. “What are you talking about? When I saw you dart out in front of that cable car, I thought you were just a klutz with a death wish.”