Without a Past
Page 13
“Death from trauma,” he said after reading for a few minutes.
“Could you be more specific?” Harley had asked sarcastically. “All deaths are traumatic.”
His comment had earned him a lecture. “Homicide is serious business. We don’t get many in this county and everyone is playing it close to the vest and by the book.”
Harley would have commented on the mixed metaphors but he had a feeling it would have gone over the young man’s head. “Is this your first murder?” he’d asked.
“Alleged murder,” the man corrected.
“No,” Harley had returned. “I may be the alleged murderer, but the murder happened. Period. A man is dead. A good man. A friend of mine. And someone else killed him.”
A noise at the door of his cell drew his gaze from the acne-scarred wall. Donnie Grimaldo, the man who’d arrested him last night, opened the door and stepped in. “’Morning. How’ya holding up?”
Harley sensed a basic goodness in the man, who had treated him kindly and with solemn respect the night before. While the booking process had been long, detailed and de-meaning, Donnie had gone out of his way to facilitate the procedure. Harley had been too numb, too sad to question the special treatment.
But it was at the top of his list of questions this morning. “Can I ask you something? Why are you being so nice? You barely know me.”
Donnie chuckled and looked around. “This is a cell not a hotel room, in case you didn’t notice. Those black smudges on your fingers are from ink. I wouldn’t call this a deluxe booking.
“I just wanted to lay things out for you. Sam woke me up at five this morning to say he was replacing your public defender with a top-notch criminal attorney. He’ll get you out on bail. Sam’s prepared to personally guarantee you’re not a flight risk,” Donnie said. Harley could smell his after-shave and suddenly craved a shower and clean clothes.
“I have to say, though, your amnesia could work against you with the judge. You have no real roots in Gold Creek. He’s a decent man, but he crucifies anyone who goes fugitive on him.”
“Where would I go? It’s not like I have a lot of resources,” Harley said. “I don’t even have a car, and my bike is up a tree.”
“That’s true. On the positive side, though, I talked to Andi, and she’s agreed to take me to your motorcycle.”
Harley’s eyebrow shot up. For some reason that sounded slightly treasonous.
As if reading his mind, Donnie said, “That Andi is one sharp cookie. She was a member of the Sheriff’s Search and Rescue team for years, so she knows the system. She figured if we regarded the bike as a potential source of clues to you and your past, we’d undertake the recovery operation at our cost. Probably save you a bundle.”
A grin formed on Harley’s lips. “She told you that?”
“No. I just know how her mind works. I used to date Kristin. Those Sullivan girls are something else.”
Harley would have asked for more details, but a voice in the corridor interrupted. Donnie turned to leave. “I’ve got a mountain of forms to fill out before we can go after the bike. Your arraignment is this afternoon. Andi said to tell you she’d be by this morning with clean clothes. Orange jumpsuits aren’t terribly convincing when you’re trying to look innocent.”
“Do you think I’m guilty?” Harley asked.
Donnie looked at him for a full minute. “Andi insists you couldn’t have done it. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Soon enough. What did that mean? A month? Six months? A year from now? Yesterday he’d found the first tangible link with his past, but what good would it do if he was going to be spending his future in jail.
ANDI’S MORNING had started with a predawn chat with Ida Jane. Luckily, Ida seemed more like her old self. She listened to Andi’s explanation about the roof, especially the part about preventing future damage to the ceilings. With a resigned sigh, she’d agreed to let Bart begin the work.
While brewing the coffee for the customers who would be knocking on her door as soon as the rolls and biscotti were delivered, she made phone calls, including one to Donnie Grimaldo.
Now she had ten minutes to organize her thoughts. Jenny had agreed to open the store. Then Linda McCloskey—Bart’s mother and Ida’s friend from Garden Club—would take over. Jenny couldn’t stay all day because she had the twins and a lot of wedding details to take care of. Linda, who’d recently retired, enjoyed a little part-time work. And as a former nurse, she was especially attuned to Ida Jane’s problems.
Andi’s main goal this morning was to see Harley. Donnie had said Harley was handling the arrest well but seemed a little depressed. Big surprise there, she muttered as she prepared to unlock the door.
Just as she reached for the knob, a figure appeared on the landing. A shadow from the overhang combined with the frosted design in the oval glass kept her from identifying the person, but she figured it was Jenny. “You’re early,” she said, yanking open the door.
“Not too early for coffee I hope,” a deep voice said.
Andi stared. A stranger stood before her. In his sixties, his clothing—shirt and slacks, no tie—told her he wasn’t a tourist. “May I help you?”
“James Rohr. Attorney. Sam O’Neal asked me to meet him here.” He held out his hand. “May I come in?”
Andi kept the handshake quick. “Certainly. I’m expecting Sam any minute. Is this about Harley’s case?”
“Yes.”
She ushered him inside, but before she could ask a single question, Sam’s truck pulled into the parking lot. Both Sam and Jenny got out. They hurried up the steps of the bordello. “Jim. Good to see you,” Sam said, addressing the attorney. “Thanks for getting here so fast.”
He made short order of the introductions, then hustled them to the corner table of the empty coffee parlor. “I really hated to pull you out of retirement, Jim. But this case called for big guns.”
The man looked genuinely pleased to see Sam. “Trust me, Sam, retirement is not all it’s cracked up to be. I’m glad to help.”
Jenny delivered three coffees to the table, freshened Andi’s cup then took the chair beside her husband-to-be. “Did you call Kristin?” she asked Andi.
Andi, who’d been eavesdropping on Sam and the attorney’s small talk, answered without really thinking. “Yes. She was sorry to hear about Lars, and she suggested taking Ida Jane back to Oregon with her after the wedding.”
Jenny looked surprised. “Really? That’s a first.”
Kristin had never invited anyone to visit her. Ida Jane believed that Kris was embarrassed about her standard of living. Andi figured it had more to with her lifestyle—maybe a live-in boyfriend she wanted to keep secret. Regardless of the reason, Kristin’s decision to renew her familial ties couldn’t have come at a better time in Andi’s opinion.
“Does Ida want to go?” Jenny asked.
“Yes. She wanted to start packing, but I told her to wait until you got here.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Andi spotted the serious look on Sam’s face and turned her attention to the two men. “Sam, when you mentioned calling a lawyer last night, I thought you meant Dave Dunningham.”
Sam shook his head. “Dave doesn’t do criminal law. Jim is an old friend from way back, and I knew he’d come if he wasn’t out on his yacht.”
The attorney made a negating wave. “That sounds so pretentious. It’s a glorified fishing boat. Now, tell me about Harley Forester.”
Sam started with the facts, which included a copy of the arrest sheet, although he declined to share how it came to be in his possession.
“Lars found Harley walking down the road in the middle of a storm. Lars said he was too drunk to risk another D.U.I. so he took Harley home with him.”
“So Lars was a drinker,” the lawyer observed.
Sam looked uncomfortable. “From the little he told me about his past, I’d say he was a Vietnam veteran with some long-term problems, both physical and psychological. He
was stoned most of the time and he got drunk whenever he came to town.”
Jenny added, “Ida Jane dog-sat for Lars the winter before last when he was in the VA hospital up near Yountsville. I don’t know what the trouble was, but he was gone three weeks.”
The lawyer scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad. “Andi, tell me everything you know about Harley.”
He’s serious, funny, gentle and a great kisser. “Aside from the logistical facts that Sam has given you, there’s not much I can add. But I can show you what we recovered from the accident site yesterday.”
She looked at Sam and added, “I did what you suggested and called Donnie. They’re going after the bike as evidence.”
Sam and the lawyer exchanged a satisfied look.
While the others talked, Andi dashed upstairs to her room to retrieve the bag of Harley’s possessions. Before dropping into bed last night, she’d reexamined every item, hoping something meaningful would pop out at her.
Against her better judgment, she’d tried on the ring. A perfect fit. She hated it. Or loved it, she wasn’t sure which.
Forty-five minutes later—as the morning rush hit, Sam and the attorney left. Andi helped get Jenny organized then she drove to Beatty’s Menswear to look for a suit for Harley.
Her task became more difficult the moment Gloria Hughes walked into the store.
“Andrea Sullivan,” the sixty-something woman exclaimed. She rushed across the small, cluttered shop like a starving dog in a meat market. “I just heard the most distressing news. That amnesia man was arrested last night.”
Gloria Harrison Hughes had a way of asking questions without making them sound like questions. Andi knew there was no escaping the columnist’s tractor beam once she had you in range. She made an impulsive decision. Setting aside the suit she was examining, she bravely faced the queen of local gossip.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hughes,” she said, feeling twelve again. “Isn’t it something? That poor man just can’t catch a break, but the good news is we found his bike and his name isn’t Harley Forester.”
The woman’s eyes rounded behind her small, stylish glasses. Her blushing-pink lips—a color of lipstick Andi had tried and shunned when she was a teen—formed an O. “Really? How do you know?”
Andi ignored the question. She didn’t want her role in this operation discussed. “His real name is Jonathan Jackson Newhall.” She spelled it to make sure the columnist got it right.
“Oh, my word,” the excited woman muttered. “I wonder why he did it.”
A powerful urge to grab the old shrew by her scrawny neck and shake some sense into her left as quickly as it arrived. Instead, Andi faked a Jenny smile and said, “I don’t believe Jonathan—” she emphasized the name “—is capable of such a malicious act. He’s such a sweet man. Ida just adores him.”
Gloria’s eyes narrowed like a cat ready to pounce on an unsuspecting rodent. “Why, Andi, I do believe you’re smitten.”
Smitten. A derivative of smite? I wonder.
There’d been numerous times lately that Andi had felt as though someone or something had whacked her upside the head.
Andi knew from experience that the best lie was one close to the truth. “I have to admit I like him. As a friend. That’s why I’m shopping for a suit for him to wear to court.” No doubt Gloria would have surmised this on her own and attached her own interpretation. “A person needs all the friends he can get at a stressful time like this. Sam and Jenny are standing by Jonathan, too. And Sam was Lars’s closest friend.”
That seemed to give the woman pause. Andi returned to her shopping. She found several nice suits, but the price tags were out of her range. On the sales rack she finally located one that might fit. Five minutes later she had a shirt, underwear, socks, belt and shoes to complete the outfit. She put the belt back—it probably wouldn’t be allowed in jail—then paid for the whole ensemble with her credit card.
As she was leaving, she looked around for Gloria, but apparently, the columnist had accomplished her shopping; she was nowhere in sight.
Andi hoped the lawyer’s strategy was right.
“The first thing we need to do is create a different image for Jonathan,” he’d told them. “Instead of drifter on a motorcycle, we must portray him as a professional on vacation who’d suffered an accident. Wrong place, wrong time. A very unfair coincidence.”
Before leaving the old bordello, James Rohr had contacted a private detective to begin tracking down leads pertaining to Jonathan Newhall. From the little Andi had gleaned last night on the Internet, Jonathan was an investigative reporter who wrote under the name of JJ Newhall. He didn’t have a personal Web page, but she’d managed to find three of his articles—bitingly cynical pieces published in major newspapers. How that image jibed with the gentle, back-to-nature kind of guy she knew—and possibly loved—was still to be determined.
But Andi hadn’t given up hope.
“BAIL DENIED.”
The words seemed to echo in the cavernous chamber of the second-floor courtroom. Harley had passed by the turn-of-the-century—the previous century—building many times, but he’d never pictured himself on trial there.
His lawyer—a terse, intense man with all the bells and whistles of a modern, wired professional—closed his slim electronic notebook computer with a firm click. “Don’t worry. I’ll have that changed before the week is out.”
Harley wanted to believe him, but in all honesty, he could understand the judge’s reluctance to grant bail. Who could trust a guy with two names, a minimum-wage job, no phone, no car and no family? The judge’s lone moment of hesitation came when he’d looked at Andi and said, “As much as I’d like to rule strictly from the recommendation of my children’s former baby-sitter and captain of the girls’ volleyball team, I’m afraid I need facts. Line up some ducks, Mr. Rohr, then we’ll talk.”
Harley looked over his shoulder. Andi was deep in conversion with Sam. Jenny was nowhere in sight—most probably handling the store in Andi’s absence.
At a faint beeping sound, his attorney removed a tiny cellular phone from an outer compartment of his briefcase and hunched over to talk privately. The bailiff, an older man with a shuffling gait, was conferring with the judge at the raised oak dais. Harley felt invisible, but he doubted that would last long enough for him to slip through the rear doors and make a run for it. Besides, where would he go?
“How are you holding up?” a voice said from behind him.
Harley turned in the old-fashioned wooden chair. It made a creaking sound. “Okay. A bit of a headache.” Andi’s eyes widened. “Not that kind of headache.”
“The suit looks good.” She started to reach out but curled her fingers in a ball and lowered her arm. Maybe she’d been told not to touch the prisoner.
“Thanks for buying it. Great tie.” He fingered the sober red and navy silk. There was so much to say, but his tongue was no longer attached to his brain. “I wish…”
She nodded. Her hair looked freshly washed. He wanted to run his fingers through it; he knew it would smell like green apples. “I printed some stuff off the Internet last night. About your past. Who you were—are—damn, this is confusing,” she said. “I gave copies to Mr. Rohr.”
Harley knew that. He’d glanced through them while waiting for the charges against him to be read.
Sam joined them, and the lawyer, who slid the phone back into its compartment, turned to face the huddle. “That was my investigator. He’s faxing his preliminary reports to your shop, Andi. I should have enough to turn this around before the judge leaves for the day. At the very latest, tomorrow.”
Andi made a small sound of frustration.
“Don’t worry, kiddo,” Sam said, touching her shoulder supportively. “We’ll get him out in time for my wedding.”
Harley wished he was the one touching her. But he wasn’t in a position to make his feelings known. “I appreciate everything you’re all doing for me. Is there anything I can do?”
Jim Rohr then looked at Sam. “I need the name of the doctor who saw Harley—forgive me, Jonathan, after his accident.”
Jonathan. The name landed in a pool of acid in his stomach. Who was he really? From the pitch his lawyer had made in his defense a few minutes earlier, Harley would have thought he was as trustworthy as Jimmy Stewart, as misunderstood as James Dean. But after glancing over the articles with Jonathan Newhall’s byline, Harley found the guy opinionated, self-absorbed and not particularly likable.
“It’s gonna be okay, Harley,” Andi said softly. “We’ll get through this.”
He wanted to believe her, but the steady throbbing in his head—a pain no amount of aspirin seemed to help—made him question that assumption. Although he hadn’t mentioned it to Rohr for fear of making a fool of himself, Harley was convinced that Andi’s discovery yesterday had opened the door to his memory. His dreams last night had been filled with images that seemed significant, although he couldn’t completely identify them.
An older man sitting behind a wide desk. His look of disappointment had made Harley cry out a name—Andrew. But he hadn’t realized its significance until he spotted it in the article Andi had printed. Harley’s father was Andrew James Newhall, a retired newspaper publisher. A widower, now remarried and living in Florida.
“Sam, are you handling Lars’s funeral?”
“They won’t release the body until the coroner is done with the autopsy. Then it will be cremated. Lars told me years ago that he wanted his ashes sprinkled around the mine. No service.”
His expression said he was recalling another not-so-distant funeral—his brother’s. “Jenny and I thought we’d include a small eulogy after the wedding. Just the good memories. He wouldn’t have wanted anything weepy.”
Before anyone could say more, the bailiff interrupted. Harley rose without being asked. He nodded goodbye and walked away. His new suit helped him maintain his pride—just knowing Andi cared enough to buy it for him strengthened his resolve. He’d get through this.