by Karen Harper
After the call, she made sure all the doors and windows were locked and went to take a fast shower. The screech of the rings of the black-and-white shower curtain across the rod reminded her of fingers scraping across a blackboard, and of something worse—the screeching background music during the shower murder scene in Psycho. Like an idiot, she’d watched the old black-and-white Alfred Hitchcock classic on TV last week. Lately, though it was better with Claire and Beamer and now Nick in the house, she’d dreaded taking showers. She wished at least one of them were home right now.
In the movie, Marion Crane had made a big mistake when she’d embezzled money and fled, but she was trying to make it right. Then she’d stumbled into a creepy, isolated motel run by a psychotic murderer, one wearing the worst sort of mask and disguise. Trapped and stabbed in her shower, with black blood running everywhere on the white tiles…
Despite the warmth of the water, Tara shuddered to the depths of her soul. Why had a vision of crimson blood just flashed through her brain, as if the movie had been in full color? She fought to get her mind back on track with her own life, where no one was trying to kill her, she hoped. Tara wasn’t sure which was worse, trying to talk to a Lohan man or having a boulder nearly flatten her.
She changed the showerhead to jet spray and let the water pound on her. She’d always done some of her best thinking in the shower, but she was still very upset by the idea that she’d been pregnant and lost a baby. She was almost coming to believe it was true. Jen had obviously decided to lie to protect her; somehow, she’d ended up in cahoots with Laird. Maybe Laird had paid Jen to keep the terrible news quiet. The revelation of a comatose birth and lost baby would put the Lohans back in the media again and make Laird look even more callous for deserting her.
No way was she crawling to him for information, not unless it was a last resort. She wanted nothing to do with the deserter. A little, broken ditty tormented her: She still had no absolute proof, still wasn’t sure of the truth. Two doctors said yes, but Jen said no, and Veronica just didn’t show. She didn’t trust the Lohan men, but should she tell Nick or not then?
“Damn!” she sputtered into the spray of water. She wanted to trust Nick, to confide in him. But, in a wrenching way, he could turn out to be another Laird. Granted, she was very attracted to him, yet she was fearful that he might take Claire away, a child she loved. Would that be worse than losing one she’d never held in her arms?
After she shampooed and rinsed her hair, Tara turned off the water and got out to dry off. She pressed her hands over her flat belly and looked down at herself. With a fingertip, she traced the light linea negra, as Dr. Holbrook had called it. She did have stomach stretch marks she didn’t remember from B.C.—before coma, as she and her physical therapist had always called it. But after her days at the clinic, even after Laird left, none of the staff who had cared for her had said a thing about a pregnancy. She had the feeling that, if she were to ask them, like Jen, they’d say she was crazy. They’d blame the aftereffects of the coma and insist she get more counseling than she’d already had. Was it a conspiracy against her?
She toweled herself off and pulled on slacks and a sweatshirt. Blowing her hair dry on high blast, she was still fuming over talking to Laird’s dad. He’d obviously cut her off when Laird did. She knew Laird had told his parents she didn’t want to start a family right away. To Jordan Lohan—no doubt to Thane and Susanne, too—that was black sin from the very pit of hell.
She paced the living room waiting for Claire. Tara could see the school bus out the front picture window, releasing children below, then lumbering upward. For one moment, she wished it was just her and Claire against the world, without having to worry that Nick would take the child away. And yet she felt so much safer with Nick around, safe from everything but the jumbled emotions she felt for him.
Tara started out to meet the school bus. Perhaps she and Claire would have a few minutes alone before Nick came back. In the driveway, she skidded on a loose stone and looked down to watch her footing. There she saw, running parallel to the driveway but evidently coming down from the tree line above the house, the distinct tracks of a deep-tread mountain bike.
7
Nick got home shortly after Claire did. Tara waited until Claire greeted him and let the two of them go out on the deck while the girl told him about her day. Neither of them had said anything to alarm Claire, but Tara saw Nick move the porch rockers around to the front of the house, rather than sit where they could be seen from the back tree line. With another glance up into those very trees, she went out with mugs of cider for all of them, then pulled a rocker around the corner for herself.
“Why are we changing the chairs, Uncle Nick?” Claire asked, after a sip of cider. “I know this is really your house, but—”
“I just felt like getting a little more sun,” he said as his eyes met Tara’s over the child’s head. After Claire’s nightmare about “Daddy hiding up in the trees,” they’d decided not to tell her their suspicions, at least not yet. “The breeze is a little cool today,” he added, “so the extra sun feels good.”
“Oh, yeah,” Claire agreed, ever ready, it seemed to Tara, to go along with whatever Nick said. “By Halloween last year we already had three snows! But you look nice and tan, Uncle Nick.”
“I guess you’d just say I’m used to warmth. I bet I fade fast in this autumn mountain sun compared to where I’ve been.”
“Aunt Tara has real pretty skin and it looks real white, maybe because of her pretty red hair. Don’t you think she’s pretty?”
“Claire Louise!” Tara said. “Do not put your uncle on the spot like that.”
Claire thrust out her lower lip. “I just want you guys to get along.”
“We are getting along,” Tara said.
“But I think you been wanting to cry, or maybe you been crying.”
Tara tried not to burst into tears. She was worried Nick would think she was too emotional to raise an already disturbed child. But before Tara could compose a comment, Nick said, “To answer your question, honey, yes, I think Aunt Tara is very pretty, and it’s really rare to having coloring like hers.”
“But,” the child plunged on, “when she gets upset, she gets pink in the face, too. See?”
“Yeah, I do see,” Nick said, and quickly gulped his cider.
Tara could fully understand why Claire was matchmaking, but she’d have to talk to her about that. She hoped Nick wouldn’t think she’d put the girl up to it. But right now, she had more important things to take care of and that included getting Nick off alone to tell him about the bike treads and about what had happened at Red Rocks today.
“Do you want to watch your princess video?” she asked Claire. “I need to talk to your uncle.”
“No, I’d rather—Well, yes, oh, okay. Are we all going to a Red Rocks concert this weekend, or do you guys just want to go alone and I can stay at Charlee’s house?”
“This is a family weekend, my first one home,” Nick put in. “I say all three of us stick together and do something fun tomorrow and Sunday. Go on in now. Want me to set the video up for you?”
“Oh, no, I know how,” she said as, smug and grinning, she headed inside. She shot them a long look out the picture window before they heard the video come on, much too loud with its Once upon a time beginning.
“I’m sure you put her up to all that. Very subtle,” Nick said with a chuckle. “I’ll apologize for her crazy—”
“Nick, I do need to talk to you, but not about that. And I need to show you something,” she added, pointing toward the driveway. “I found what I’m sure are mountain bike tracks, coming down from the tree line.”
He put his mug on the deck and stood. “In other words, Herr Getz might have come calling? Show me.”
He followed her down the wooden steps, then stooped to look at the tracks, turning his head up toward the trees, then in the direction the tracks seemed to go.
“Assuming this distinctive V-and-bar p
attern points in the direction he was going, I’d say the biker was heading downhill from the tree line, and pretty fast.”
“That’s what I thought. I don’t suppose Beamer could track that?”
“Not unless the biker was dragging his foot all the way. I didn’t see anything like this when we were up on the path or near the cabin yesterday, so this must be somewhat fresh,” he said, standing.
“There’s an old bag of plaster mix in the back of the garage. Do you think we could mix some up and make a cast of this tread, right here where it’s the clearest?”
“We can try. You looked upset by more than Claire’s shenanigans when I got home, so I didn’t tell you I’d seen Clay’s brother Rick. He seemed pretty jumpy, but said nothing to implicate himself, even when I served him fair warning about leaving the two of you alone.”
“Actually, it’s not just this tire tread that’s got me on edge,” she admitted, and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Today at Red Rocks, while I was waiting for Veronica, who never came because she suddenly took sick, I just missed being flattened by a boulder.”
He stood and took both her shoulders in his big hands. “You—You look all right—more than all right. An accident?”
“I don’t know. I saw two men at a distance, leaving the scene—one on a mountain bike—but then I got out of there as fast as I could. Yes, it could have been an accident. I honestly don’t think I was followed there.”
“A couple of glances in a rearview mirror doesn’t mean a thing. Maybe your cell phone call to set things up with Veronica was picked up by someone nearby. The army does that all the time in the Middle East.”
“Yes, but this is the American live-and-let-live West. I don’t know. I did specify where she and I should meet.”
“And Rick was supposedly out running errands,” he muttered. “Maybe that’s why he was so shaken when I showed up and said I was staying here. Maybe he’d followed you to Red Rocks and taken his shot at his warped idea of revenge or justice or whatever the hell he’s thinking.”
He must have felt her trembling, because he took both of her hands in his, then pulled her to him in a hard hug. As she wrapped her arms around his waist, she turned her cheek against his neck and felt his pulse pounding there. It was the safest she’d felt for years, and yet the very forests here seemed to have eyes watching them.
No, she thought, as they finally stepped away from the embrace. Maybe it was just Claire. She saw the little girl peeking out the window, thinking her attempts to make them a family were working like her happily-ever-after video.
Turning, spinning, drifting. Where was she? Not in her own bed…
Through a scrim of fog, thick as soup, it came back to Veronica in distinct detail. In the clinic. She was in her old cottage at the clinic. Jordan and Henry Middleton had admitted her. When she’d fought them, they’d restrained her arms, strapped her down. How could she be expected to reach the organ pistons this way?
At least she’d felt safe here at the clinic before, where the drugs and drink couldn’t find her. But how had she gotten back on Vicodin? She couldn’t recall taking any, yet there was hydrocodone and acetaminophen in her system. She’d seen the test, she knew those dreaded words.
Jordan said she’d get liver damage, worse than before, if she didn’t stop—no, he’d said, if she wasn’t stopped, right now. He’d said something to someone, that she must be stopped. And she could feel she was on something again. She needed a pill right now, right now, but she knew better than to ask.
When she found she couldn’t raise her arms, she forced her eyelids up. Dim in here. There had been a nurse sitting by the bed, one she didn’t know, but she’d evidently stepped out. Oh, yes, the same cabin she’d lived in during her detox and rehab, a silken cage, beautifully decorated. But oh, dear God, not the nightmares of detox again, not the shame of letting her family down.
And then she remembered Tara. Poor, poor girl. A picnic by herself at Red Rocks. She had to tell her…tell her where she was, tell her…something else, but what was it?
Slow music crawled through her head, Felix Mendelssohn’s “Consolation,” sad, sonorous, the way she felt. Someone needed consolation. Yes, she could hear the crescendo of the piece, punctuated by the dripping of the two IVs beside her bed and someone’s footsteps.
She heard the nurse come back in. It hurt her to move her eyes. No, not the nurse but someone she knew. That meant she was still thinking, still remembering, didn’t it? She knew this woman, didn’t she? Something about music…as if she needed more music than what she already had in her head and heart. Veronica Britten Lohan’s organ music was born through her dancing feet to make the chords on the keyboard pedals, flowing from her flying fingers on the manuals and stops. Stops…
Stop. Stop and think. There was something she was trying to remember. Something she had to tell someone. Not Jordan. Without her sons this time, he had done an intervention about her drugs, just as he had always intervened in her life. Something about Laird?
An angelic face hovered over her. Pale, blond, straight hair. Is that what angels looked like in heaven?
“You look like an angel,” Veronica said, but her words were slurred.
“An angel? Yes, you used to call me your angel of music. Veronica, it’s Elin. Elin Johansen. Remember me, the music therapist here at the clinic? I used to go with you while you played the chapel organ at night, all those classical pieces. Remember, you played Phantom of the Opera for me because I thought it was so scary and romantic?”
“I remember,” Veronica tried to say but it was hard to form her thoughts and words. Damned drugs. Why had she started using again? Was someone using her? Could she use this woman?
“I’m so sorry we had to meet again here,” Elin said. “I’m not supposed to be in your cabin, but I thought I’d pop in for a sec when I saw your nurse had stepped out for some fresh air. You just have the doctor let me know when I can help. I think it helped you last time to play for hours. I still have all those Phantom songs in my head. My favorite was ‘Masquerade’ and yours was ‘Think Of Me.’ Do you remember?”
Remember. Yes, she had to remember something. “Think of Me.” Something about Laird? Or was it Tara? Yes, that was it.
“Call Tara Kinsale,” Veronica whispered, but it came to her ears in the blur of one hissing sound. She wanted to speak clearly, but she had to whisper, too, so no one else would hear. “Tara Kinsale.”
“Oh, sure. Tara. But she’s been gone from here for a long time—you remember, don’t you? I overheard Dr. Middleton tell them at the reception desk that you might be kind of—well, distracted for a while and wouldn’t be getting visitors, so Tara can’t come to see you right now.”
“Call her. Say, Jen’s not in Los Angeles.”
“What’s that? I’m having trouble hearing you,” the angel said, pulling her long, straight hair back and leaning closer. “It’s all right though. You’ll be here for a while, so don’t worry about—”
Veronica tried again, but her speech still sounded slurred. It was just something they must have given her, but she had to try. “Jen’s not in Los Angeles,” she whispered again. She had more to add, but that was all she had time for now. She heard new footsteps.
Another voice in the room. “Dr. Middleton says she’s not to be disturbed, Ms. Johansen. She’s on heavy meds for a while because she was so distraught they thought she might hurt herself or someone else.”
The angel stood up and turned away. “It’s only that we worked closely together last time she was here,” she told the nurse. “Mrs. Lohan is a fantastic organist, classical performance level. I was just assuring her we could work together in the later stages of rehab.”
“Right now, it’s just the sedatives talking until we can get them all calibrated.”
“Sure. Well, I know her doctors will let me know when I can help get her back on her feet again and all.”
The angel-faced girl moved away, and the sour-looking one took her pla
ce. Now, who had that angel been? Veronica wondered, and finally surrendered in her battle with heavy, heavy sleep.
“This used to be my bedroom, when I was a kid,” Nick told Tara as she sat at her desk and he took the only armchair in her office, with Beamer flopping instantly next to his big feet.
Her insides cartwheeled to think that she, too, had spent hours in his room. “Oh, I didn’t know. I could move my office downstairs, and you could come up here if you want it back.”
“No, this is fine. If—only if—I decide Claire and I are moving east for a while, I thought you might want to rent the place—at a great price. But I’ll find and stop that lurker first,” he promised, with a glance at the back window. If he was surprised she’d lowered the blinds, he didn’t say so.
Nick’s promise to find the lurker seemed a small consolation prize for losing Claire, however upset Tara was about someone watching the place. But she nodded and turned away before he could see she was tearing up. She did not want him to think she was as fragile as she felt lately, or he’d really question her ability to look after Claire.
As hard as she fought accepting the idea, she was becoming obsessed, absolutely haunted, by the possibility she had borne a child of her own and the child had died. She prayed that at least, if she had lost a baby, it had been early in the pregnancy. But, two to one, the doctors didn’t indicate that. And Jen—she would have known about a pregnancy, but she could have been bribed to lie. She had to know the truth, but Veronica had been taken away from her. She was getting so desperate she was considering asking Jordan Lohan—or worse, Laird—and she wanted nothing to do with either of them. And she kept coming so close to blurting all of that out to Nick.
She forced herself to get down to business. They had just put Claire to bed together and then come in here so Tara could try to trace Dietmar Getz online. They wanted to know if he was in the area. The candy bar wrapper wasn’t much, nor was a bike tread, not in an area where so many people biked. Coloradans were hiking and biking crazy. Cyclists enjoyed everything from slightly uphill pedaling to extreme biking in body armor, crashing up through the woods, then careening down the mountains. Still, other than trying to find out more about Rick Whetstone, the disgruntled Getz was the best candidate for their lurker right now.