Maybe she was just stressed out, she tried to tell herself.
It was a lie and she knew it.
“Yes, honey?”
The voice, even the voice was the same. It seemed to echo back to her from the past.
Was she going crazy?
As the woman crossed to her, Rayne looked at the name tag that was pinned jauntily to the waitress’s blue uniform. It told her the woman’s name was “Claire.”
Vaguely aware that Cole was watching her, Rayne took her first hesitant steps across the tightrope. “Are you by any chance related to the Cavanaughs?”
“Cavanaugh, Cavanaugh…” The woman called Claire rolled the name on her tongue, as if tasting it first to see if it was bitter or sweet. And then she smiled again as she shook her head, dark blond curls swaying around her heart-shaped face. “Nope, can’t say I know them.” Another smile came and went, like sunshine rolling along the plains. “Wish I could help.” The waitress held up the pot in her hand, her eyes moving from Cole’s face to hers. “How about some coffee?”
Rayne was vaguely aware of numbly nodding her head.
Cole waited until the woman moved away again. “Rayne, what the hell is going on here?”
She wanted to tell him, to have the words come pouring out. But what if she was wrong? What if whatever fever had caused her father to hang on to hope all these years had become infectious? What if she’d caught it, too? She didn’t relish looking like an idiot. Not without some kind of proof to offer beyond a feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“Nothing.” Turning her stool in the opposite direction, she slipped off. “Excuse me for a second.” Before Cole could ask her where she was going, she made her way over to the older woman seated at the cash register on the opposite end of the diner.
The woman looked up from the book she was reading, her expression quizzical.
She had questions, however absurd, that needed answering. But because they were so strange, she didn’t want to ask them where she could be overheard. When she saw Cole begin to follow her, Rayne waved him back to his stool, then waited until he complied before turning back to the cashier.
“Cute little thing,” Claire commented, filling his cup. “You two together?”
“What? No, just here on business,” Cole said, watching Rayne, wondering what she was up to.
“You should always make time for a little pleasure,” the woman told him. “Life goes by too quickly.”
She had a point, he thought. But right now there wasn’t very much he could do about it. He took a sip of the inky liquid, letting it work through his senses. Rayne was back before he had a chance to finish. “What was all that about?”
Her heart was still racing. What she’d found out had raised more questions, questions that didn’t have any immediate answers. But they reinforced her initial feelings.
“Just checking something out.” She saw the way he looked at her. “About another case,” she added, “not your brother’s.” She wasn’t any more forthcoming than that.
It grated on his nerves, even as he told himself that if it was about another case, she had every right to keep it to herself. All he cared about was what concerned his brother.
It didn’t quite ring true. For better or worse, she had been added to the mix.
They ordered and ate a light brunch. He noted that Rayne spent the remainder of the time looking at the waitress. It took effort to keep his questions to himself, but he knew that in her place, he would have appreciated it.
After an hour’s drive up a coast that was generally hospitable as far as the weather went, they finally arrived at the bed-and-breakfast where Matthew Klein had booked a room.
In this case, “quaint” was a euphemism for old and badly in need of new paint, but on the whole, there was a charm to the seventy-five-year-old building.
“I wouldn’t mind staying at a place like this myself,” Rayne said. The comment arose out of a sudden need to get away from everything, to find a space where she could just think without feeling as if she were in the midst of putting out fires.
“Why don’t you?” he asked, holding the front door open for her. “Once this is all over?”
She noticed that he didn’t expand the suggestion to include both of them, but then, she didn’t need him in order to relax, she told herself. With him around, she probably couldn’t relax.
“Maybe I will,” she murmured.
With the help of the man at the front desk, they found Matthew Klein and his girlfriend in the dining room. They were sitting with their heads together, sharing a moment, sharing a laugh.
“He doesn’t look like a man who’d welcome unexpected company, however brief,” Cole commented.
“Then we won’t stay too long,” Rayne said over her shoulder.
Cole’s assessment was right on the nose. Matthew Klein was far from happy about the interruption once Rayne had shown him her badge. He threw down his napkin on the table and rose to his feet, moving to the side. Forcing Rayne and Cole to do the same. It was obvious he didn’t want his girlfriend to find out about the grisly murder that had taken place a few feet away from him.
“Look, I already gave a statement. If you don’t mind, I’d like to put the whole gruesome thing behind me.” To prove his point, he added, “I’m moving out as of the first of the month.”
The nature of her work had made suspicion second nature. “Rather sudden, isn’t it?”
Klein’s dark brows narrowed over darker eyes. “So was the murder.”
She didn’t want to alienate the man. They’d questioned everyone else in the complex, Klein was their last hope as far as trying to validate Cole’s theory that there was another man in the picture somehow. Rayne looked at him with renewed interest. Could he have had something to do with Kathy Fallon’s murder?
“Is there anything else you can tell us, anything at all that comes to mind?” Rayne prodded.
Cole asked the only question that mattered to him. “Was she seeing anyone else?”
“No.” Klein made no attempt to hide his annoyance. He glanced back at his girlfriend and waved to her. The expression on his face when he turned back toward them made Cole think of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “I already said all this. The only guy I ever saw coming and going from her place was that cop.” Klein shrugged dismissively. “I figure he was there to protect her.” And then he frowned. “Didn’t do a very good job of it, did he?”
Rayne’s attention had been snared. “What do you mean, protect her?”
Her question earned her a stare, as if they weren’t really communicating in the same language. “I saw him coming around a lot.”
“And nobody else?” Cole pressed.
Klein’s head rotated like a top, from Rayne back to him. “No.”
“What do you mean by ‘a lot’?” Rayne asked. She wasn’t sure if it was wishful thinking that had her feeling maybe, just maybe, they’d finally stumbled onto something. Maybe that was why she was being warned off the way she was. Maybe there was a cop involved.
Klein’s patience gave every impression of wearing thin. He lifted his wide shoulders, then let them drop again. “I dunno. Five, six times, maybe more. A lot, okay? Our paths kept crossing,” he explained. “Now if you don’t mind—” he began to turn away from them “—I was about to propose—”
But Rayne caught hold of his shoulder. “One more thing.”
She was playing a hunch, but that was what good police work was, ninety percent sweat and hard work and ten percent luck. It was the luck that carried them.
Taking out her wallet, she flipped to a group photograph that had been taken at her father’s old partner’s retirement party a couple of months ago. She held it up for Klein’s perusal now. “Do you see him in this picture?”
Disgruntled, Klein took her wallet in his hand and stared at the cluster of police personnel. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I said no, didn’t I?” he demanded. But then, just as she t
ook back her wallet, he caught her hand. “Wait, let me look at that again.” Taking the wallet back, Klein stared at the photograph she’d held up. “Him.” He pointed to the man in the center of the group. “I remember because the first time I saw him, he looked so tall to me. I thought he might hit his head on the doorway when he went into her apartment.” He handed the wallet back. “Okay?”
She didn’t hear his question.
Longwell, she thought. Kathy Fallon’s neighbor had just picked out Longwell.
Feeling slightly numb, slightly excited, she slipped the wallet back into her pocket. Longwell had been the first one on the scene after Kathy’s girlfriend had discovered her body.
Was that a coincidence?
It was becoming less and less likely.
But still, she couldn’t bring herself to believe the man would have anything to do with the girl’s murder. They had a history together. She knew him, he was a cop, for God’s sake. A good one, albeit somewhat laid-back. He’d been over to the house more than once for one of her father’s parties.
A strong feeling of betrayal cut through her with sharp, pointy teeth even as a small voice in her head warned her not to get ahead of herself.
Her gut had a different feeling.
“Can I go back now?” Klein was asking.
His tone broke through. “Sure, I’m sorry to have bothered you.” She took a card out of her breast pocket and held it out to him. “Listen, here’s my card in case you think of something else.”
Klein looked at her pointedly. After a beat he accepted the card, shoving it into his own pocket. “You don’t want to know what I’m thinking now.”
“Thank you for your help,” she murmured mechanically as Klein walked away.
The moment they were out of earshot, on their way outside, Cole asked, “The cop he pointed out, how well do you know him?” he asked again.
She still chewed on the information, trying to make sense out of it. Longwell hadn’t said anything about knowing the woman. Had he known her, or was Klein confused because he’d seen Longwell on the premises after Kathy’s body had been found?
She let the cold air hit her, bracing her, hoping it would somehow help her sort everything out and put it in its right place before she answered. “I went to the academy with him.”
He opened the door on her side. “Could he have done it?”
Rayne sat down, waiting for him to join her. “I would have said no, but then, I would have said my mother was dead, too.”
Getting in behind the wheel, Cole put the key in the ignition. Her last comment had come out of nowhere and threw him. “Your mother? What does she have to do with this?”
The words had just slipped out, she hadn’t meant for them to. Now that they had, she struggled with the right thing to do. To bury them until she had time to figure out just what to do about her discovery—if it actually was a discovery.
But Rayne could feel this ache inside of her, this very great need to share these thoughts, these feelings with someone, before she exploded. And he was the only one around.
She looked at him, saying something she’d never thought she’d hear herself saying, not after all the heartache that had come before, not after she’d resigned herself to what she’d thought was the inevitable.
“That woman in the diner. I think she might be my mother.”
Chapter 13
Cole eased his foot off the brake and put the car into drive. “What do you mean, you think she’s your mother? I thought you told me that your mother was dead.”
She’d made peace with this belief after years of struggling with her emotions. But now doubts assailed her. She almost wished she had never walked into that diner.
“They found my mother’s car in the river.” She recited the events in a staccato, detached voice. It was the only way to keep her emotions from overwhelming her. “She’d gone over the side. The weather had been bad. The conclusion was that she’d lost control of the vehicle.” The words hurt despite all her precautions. “The M.E. ruled it an accidental death by drowning.” She sighed deeply. “But they never found the body and my father never gave up hope that she was alive.”
By now, he’d picked up enough about the Cavanaughs to know how close they were. He didn’t see a mother walking away from all that, not willingly. “If she was alive, why wouldn’t she come home?”
“I don’t know.”
She’d snapped the retort and then flashed Cole an apologetic look. Her nerves were definitely on edge right now. Between possibly ruining her career with this investigation, putting herself emotionally on the line with Cole and now seeing what might be a ghost from the past, she didn’t know just how much more she could take.
“They’d had an argument, but it wasn’t anything that would keep her from coming back. My mother always went for a drive after an argument, claimed it cleared her brain.” At a loss, Rayne shook her head. She kept trying to connect the dots and her pen kept running out of ink.
“And you think that woman’s your mother.”
“Yes. No,” she corrected quickly, then looked at him helplessly. She just wasn’t sure. But there was this gut feeling nagging at her “She’s the right age and there’s something about the way she looked when she smiled—” Rayne stopped, knowing how absurd, how “out there” she had to seem to him. “I know this must sound crazy to you. Maybe it is crazy, but—” She turned to look at him. At least he wasn’t laughing at her. “I just can’t shake this gut feeling.” It had been with her all the way to the bed-and-breakfast, haunting her.
“Send your father out.”
That would be the simplest solution, but she hesitated even thinking about it. “I don’t know. I don’t want to put him through all this, get his hopes up if I’m wrong. She said she’d never heard of the Cavanaughs when I asked her. If she was my mother, could she look at me and say she didn’t know who I was?”
They were approaching a long, winding road. Because of what had happened so recently, Cole tested his brakes, first gingerly, then with force. They held. He continued down the road.
“You were the youngest, you changed a lot in the last fifteen years.” He glanced at her. “Hell, you’ve changed a lot in the last ten.”
All to the good, he added silently.
Rayne grappled with the feelings that were scattered all throughout her.
She felt vulnerable. And the way he’d just looked at her made her feel more so.
Desperately in need of someone’s arms around her.
What the hell was happening to her? she upbraided herself. Was she coming completely unraveled? Here she was, flying in the face of convention, thumbing her nose at her fellow officers and maybe her entire career, and now she thought her mother had come back from the dead after she’d finally managed to bury the woman in her heart. On top of that, she was treading in places she’d never expected herself to be. There were feelings, real feelings, beginning to surface inside of her, feelings that had nothing to do with family or duty, or loyalty.
And they were scaring the hell out of her.
She rotated her neck, trying to feel less stiff, less tense. It didn’t work. “Maybe I’m just on edge.”
“Maybe we both are,” he agreed.
God knew ever since he’d come back into town, he felt as if someone had peeled away the sheathing on his nerves, exposing every one of them to the elements. To fate. He found himself feeling things for the first time in a long time, something other than detached satisfaction, the way he did whenever he saw the outcome of one of his projections: a family with a home of their own, usually for the first time in their lives.
Charity and a desire to do right by those less fortunate was involved there. None of that had anything to do with what he was feeling right now.
As if he didn’t have enough going on, he mocked himself.
“Maybe you should go back after this is over,” he was careful to specify because Eric’s fate was on the line, “and ask around about th
is woman.”
“I already did. At the diner. The cashier said she and ‘Claire’ were tight, that they’d been friends ever since she came into town fourteen, fifteen years ago.”
“What was her history before then?”
She shook her head. “The woman said ‘Claire’ never talked about it.”
He could see Rayne’s reasoning. That did tip the scales toward what she was thinking. “And you’re sure there would have been no reason for your mother to want to disappear?”
“I’d stake my life on it.”
Cole slowed the car as they approached a sharp curve. The road back seemed to be all inclines. “Amnesia,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
It seemed the only plausible conclusion. “Amnesia,” he repeated. “Maybe that woman in the diner is your mother. Maybe she’s had amnesia all this time and that’s why she never came home.”
That was a plot device used in particularly poor movies made for television, she thought, frowning. “That’s kind of thin, don’t you think?”
“Not so thin. There’s medical data to back that up.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her looking at him quizzically. “I do a lot of reading on planes. Not too many magazines to choose from,” he explained. “Don’t forget, your mother was in a traumatic accident. When her car went over the side like that, she probably thought she was going to die.” He knew how harrowing it could be, coming face-to-face with your own mortality. “Scrambling out of a would-be watery grave could send anyone out of their right mind.” He spared her another look as the road temporarily straightened itself out. “Amnesia comes not just from a blow to the head, but from experiencing some kind of severe emotional trauma. I’d say going over the side in a car bound for the bottom of the river qualifies.”
It made sense, she supposed. It would explain why her mother—if she was her mother—had looked right at her and not seen anything, felt anything that she could discern by the woman’s expression.
She had just one question. “Why are you trying to talk me into this?”
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