The Bravo Family Way

by Christine Rimmer

  He tried it. Got the damn answering service and left a curt message.

  “This is Fletcher. Call me.” Then, with a series of very ugly words scrolling through his brain, he auto-dialed Aaron at his apartment.

  Celia answered. “Bravo residence.”

  “It’s Fletcher. I wonder if you’ve got a number for Caitlin.”

  “Sure.” She sounded cheerful and relaxed. “At home? Her cell? Or at the Highgrade?”

  “Give me all of them, whatever you’ve got.” He rose again and foraged a pen and a scrap of paper from a drawer. “Ready.”

  She read them off and he scribbled them down. Then she asked, sounding more concerned than before, “Is something wrong? Why do you need Caitlin?”

  It occurred to him that if Caitlin knew what the hell was up with Cleo, Celia probably did, too, however innocent her voice happened to sound.

  “Cleo’s gone.” He said the words and couldn’t believe they could possibly be true. But apparently they were. “You got any idea where she went?”

  “What? Gone…where? Why?” She really did seem worried. And like Cleo, Celia was a straightforward type. He changed his mind. Evidently she didn’t know.

  He decided he’d better make a few reassuring noises. “Look. She’s safe. She’s fine. She left a note. And Caitlin just called me on a blocked line to tell me that Cleo told her that she really is okay.”

  “Caitlin’s…involved?”

  “It sure as hell looks that way.”

  “It’s sometimes not so good when Caitlin’s involved.”

  “Great to know, Celia.”

  “And wait a minute. You don’t know where Cleo went?”

  “No clue. I came home just now and there’s this note on the table. A very short note. It says she’s safe and she needs some time to herself.”

  A silence on the line, then she said, “Oh.”

  He wanted to strangle someone. Too bad there was no one nearby. He asked, very carefully, “What does that mean, ‘oh’?”

  “It means that the note sounds pretty clear to me.”

  “What do you mean, clear? She took off. Cleo wouldn’t take off.”

  “Well, Fletcher, apparently that’s just what she’s done.”

  Fletcher tried Caitlin again. All three numbers. She wasn’t at her restaurant/bar, the Highgrade. A waitress answered the phone. He left a curt message with her. Caitlin didn’t pick up at her home number either or on her cell. He left messages at both of them. Angry ones.

  And then he sat back down at the table and stared into space for a while, hoping that maybe Caitlin would check her messages and give him a call back.

  Didn’t happen.

  He sat there some more, staring at the doorway to the hall, holding Cleo’s note in his hand, kind of thinking that any minute now the front door would open and it would be Cleo, breezing in on those long, fine legs of hers, giving him a sweet, rueful smile, reassuring him that there was nothing to get freaked about. That that stupid note had been a foolish mistake.

  But Caitlin didn’t call. And Cleo didn’t come.

  After about a half an hour he decided that sitting there in his empty apartment waiting for something to happen was pointless. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a raft of work he could be doing.

  He got up, tossed the note in the trash and went back out the door.

  It was 2:15 a.m. when Fletcher returned to the apartment. He let himself quietly in the front door and then he stood there in the foyer for a moment, ears straining for a sound, for something—anything—that would indicate she’d returned during his absence.

  The place was dead quiet. He glanced at the narrow macassar ebony table to his left: no keys, no purse. The light overhead was on low, as he’d left it. Through the wide arch before him the living room lay in darkness, lit only by the glittering Las Vegas night beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  But none of that meant anything, not really. She could have come in, have gone on down the hall to their bedroom without turning on another light, without setting her keys or bag on the entry table as she so often did….

  He turned and went down the hallway, glancing into the kitchen, the dining room, the family room, scanning each dark space as he passed it. The rooms gave him nothing. If she’d been in them since he left, he’d couldn’t tell.

  The door to the master suite stood open. No lights on in there. He knew then that it would be empty; he could feel it, that emptiness. He went inside anyway, into the silent darkness.

  Beyond the sitting room their bed waited undisturbed, the bedspread rolled back and the covers turned down invitingly—but not by Cleo. Mrs. Dolby always turned down the bed. Apparently the housekeeper had returned from her Sunday off.

  Fletcher crossed the room and picked up the phone by the bed. He entered the code to get messages on the house line. Nothing. Not from Cleo—and not from that damned Caitlin either.

  Punching buttons furiously, he called all Caitlin’s numbers again, one after the other. No luck. As before, he left angry messages at each number. Then he took off his clothes, showered and went to bed.

  He couldn’t sleep. He missed the warm, sleek body of his wife at his side, missed her soft sighs and teasing, low laughter, missed her gentle voice and the warm, arousing touch of her hand.

  He missed all of her. A hell of a lot.

  What was she up to? What was she trying to prove?

  Monday, in the morning, he tried Cleo’s cell again— and again no answer.

  He still hadn’t heard from Caitlin and he considered flying up to the charming little hamlet near Reno that she called home. But he knew there was no point. It might have been marginally satisfying to confront the woman face-to-face, but he was getting the picture that Caitlin had said all Caitlin planned to say—for now anyway.

  And what about KinderWay? he wondered. Cleo would never just leave her business without telling them her plans.

  He called her office at the original location and asked for her associate, Megan Helsberg.

  “This is Megan.”

  “Hello, Megan. Fletcher Bravo here. Listen, Cleo had to take off for a few days. It was all pretty rushed. I just thought I should maybe check with you to make sure that she’d called you.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr.—”

  “Fletcher.”

  “Fletcher then. And yes. I heard from Cleo yesterday.”

  Finally. He was getting somewhere. He schooled his voice to betray nothing beyond a casual interest. “Good enough then—and one more thing…”

  “Certainly.”

  “Did she happen to leave you a number where she could be reached? I’m not getting through on her cell….”

  “Well, I have the cell—and some emergency numbers for a family member.”

  He knew who that family member would be. “Caitlin Bravo, you mean?”

  “Yes. Do you need those numbers?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got them.” He said goodbye.

  And after that he decided he was being a candy-ass fool. If Cleo wanted to play this kind of rotten game, so be it.

  He was through trying to track her down. Let her come home when she was damn good and ready. He’d deal with her then.

  He went to work at eight and he came home at two and he exerted all his considerable will to ignore the fact that his wife had disappeared from his home and his life as swiftly and easily as a dust devil speeds away in a whirling wind.

  Tuesday, Celia called. She wanted to know how he was.

  He said, “Fine,” in a low, curt tone that clearly communicated he was absolutely furious and getting madder by the minute.

  For a nervous count of five Celia said nothing. Then she told him she’d called Caitlin, but Caitlin would only say that Cleo was okay and doing exactly what she wanted to do.

  Then Aaron’s wife got down to what was really on her mind. She said that Cleo had been upset lately, that Cleo felt he was secretive, that he didn’t share what was going on inside him.<
br />
  As if that was news. Far from it. It was only all the “trust, truth and sharing” stuff that he’d already heard— repeatedly—from the woman herself. “Anything else?”

  “I just thought, well, you might want to know, that’s all….”

  He reminded himself that Aaron’s wife was only trying to help. In a gentler tone he thanked her and said goodbye.

  Somehow, in a fog of work and denial, he got through Tuesday. He went to bed at three Wednesday morning, faded into an edgy sleep—and sat bolt-upright in bed an hour later.

  “The mechanic,” he growled into the darkness before dawn. And then he threw back the blankets.

  Buck-naked in his study, he booted up the computer. He brought up the file on Cleo that Brian Klimas had prepared for him back in January, the one with the goods on Danny Pope: his background, his auto-restoration business, home address, work address, various phone numbers.

  He printed the page. And then he went back to the bedroom and put on some chinos and a shirt.

  Five minutes later he was in the elevator, on his way down to his private parking space and the Jag that he kept there.

  Danny Pope had an ordinary house—pink stucco, tile roof—on an ordinary street not too far from the house that Cleo had recently sold. The first thing Fletcher noticed when he nudged the Jaguar in at the curb was that Cleo’s SUV, gone from her parking space back at Impresario, was nowhere in sight here either.

  Which didn’t mean a damn thing. The mechanic had a two-car garage. Cleo’s car could be in there, nuzzled up nice and cozy against Danny Pope’s cherried-out classic Chevy Bel-Air.

  Fletcher shut off the lights and the engine and then just sat there. What in hell was he doing? He was supposed to be finished with garbage like this. It was why he’d chosen Cleo; he knew she’d never pull any low-down stunts on him, that she was a straight shooter who would never betray her man.

  Or at least, it was why he’d told himself he’d chosen Cleo.

  The real reason was a hell of a lot more dangerous. The real reason was what had him sitting outside the mechanic’s house in the darkest hour right before dawn, wondering what the hell he was doing here and telling himself he ought to start up the Jag again and get the hell out before he made a damn fool of himself.

  Déjà vu, all right. Right back where he’d promised himself he would never be again….

  And whatever he ought to do, he knew what he had to do. He had to know if Cleo was in that ordinary stucco house with the boyfriend she’d supposedly left behind—for him.

  He leaned on the door and got out of the car. As he strode up the front walk he almost turned around twice—but not quite.

  The porch was an alcove lit by the soft golden gleam of a lantern-style fixture mounted on the wall above the address plaque. He punched the bell and heard the chime echo through the rooms beyond the door.

  He felt calm by then. A deadly sort of stillness was in him. He waited for several minutes, his veins full of ice, his patience without limit. If he had to wait on this porch forever, he would do it. He wasn’t leaving without answers, no matter how rough the answers were.

  Finally the door swung back and Danny Pope stood there in a brown-striped seersucker robe, eyes bleary, hair scrambled from sleep, hairy legs stuck into a beat-up old pair of mocs.

  Pope squinted at him. “Uh…hey. Fletcher. How you doin’?”

  “Not so great, Danny. I’d like to talk to my wife.”

  Danny squinted harder. “Huh? Cleo? I haven’t seen Cleo in—”

  Fletcher didn’t want to hear it. He stepped over the threshold, sticking an arm out at the same time, shoving the mechanic out of the way and heading down the hall that branched out to the left.

  “Hey! What the hell?” Danny fell against the wall with a heavy thud, scrambled to get his balance and then came barreling after Fletcher. “Man, hold up. You’re way outta line….”

  Fletcher ignored him. He peered into empty rooms as he went by them: a bathroom, a small bedroom. At the end of the hall a door stood open. From in there a woman called, “Danny? What’s all that noise? What’s goin’on?”

  Fletcher froze in midstride. He spun to face the mechanic, who looked confused as hell and pretty teed off, too. “That’s not Cleo.”

  The mechanic slowly shook his head.

  “Danny?” the woman called again, slightly frantic now.

  The mechanic edged around Fletcher and went to the open door. “It’s all right, Sylvia, honey. An old buddy dropped by is all.”

  “You coming back to bed, hon?” Her voice was softer now, without the worried edge. Fletcher could hear a yawn in it.

  “In a little bit.” Quietly Danny shut the door. He scratched his head, then scrubbed his fingers back through his thatch of uncombed hair. He sent Fletcher a sideways look. “So,” he said after a moment’s thought. “How ’bout a beer?”

  They ended up at the kitchen table with a couple of Budweisers in front of them.

  Danny wanted to know what was going on. After barging into the man’s house at five in the morning, Fletcher figured he owed the guy an explanation.

  The strange thing was, once he started talking, he ended up telling his former rival considerably more than the other guy needed to know about Cleo, including the problems the two of them were having and the way she’d vanished on him three days before.

  When he finished, Danny took a pull of his beer, swallowed thoughtfully and then advised, “The way I remember it, Cleo demands lots of communication from her man. You want to keep her, you better start talkin’, if you know what I mean.”

  Fletcher swore and knocked back a slug of his own beer. “I talk,” he muttered. It sounded damned defensive even to his own ears.

  Danny snorted. “It’s pretty clear to me you don’t talk enough. Or if you do, you don’t talk about the things your wife needs to hear.”

  “Such as?” Fletcher grumbled.

  “Hell, man. Only you know what you’re keepin’ from her.” He braced a beefy forearm on the table and leaned on it. “I can tell you this much….”

  “Go for it.”

  “Cleo’s long-gone in love with you. No doubt about it. I got that message loud and clear the one and only time I saw you two together. You got her heart, you can take my word on that. But Cleo’s a woman who won’t settle for less than all a man’s got.” Danny tipped his beer bottle at Fletcher, pointing with it. “My advice is you’d better get wise and give her what she needs or eventually you will lose her.”

  “But where the hell is she? How can I open up to her if she’s not here, damn it?”

  “She’ll be back,” Danny predicted. “Soon. This runnin’ away, it’s not her style. In a day or two, tops, she’ll be walking through your door again. And when she does…”

  “What?”

  “Start talkin’, buddy. Don’t blow it this time.”

  Fletcher got back to Impresario at six-thirty. When he let himself in the apartment, hazy morning light filled the living room beyond the foyer. He stared out at the misty daylight and thought, Another day without her…

  He turned to toss his keys on the entry table.

  And from behind him Cleo said softly, “Good morning.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cleo stood in the arch to the main hallway. She wore ankle-length black pants and a bright pink shirt. No shoes. He stared at her long bare feet with their pink-painted toenails and then slowly, not quite daring to believe, he let his gaze track up the gorgeous length of her.

  Until he was looking right into those wonderful amber eyes. He wanted only to close the distance between them and grab her close in his aching arms. But he didn’t.

  He stayed where he was and asked quietly, “Did you have a safe trip—wherever the hell it was that you went?”

  She caught her full lower lip between her white teeth, worried it a moment, then let it go. “Caitlin has this old house up in the mountains between Reno and Tahoe. It belonged to her mother. Nobody
lives there, but Jilly and Will like to go there at Christmas, I think. It’s quiet. Isolated. Nestled in the pines.”

  “And when you got there you…?”

  She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I took a lot of long walks. I read. I did some thinking….” He could have asked, Thinking about what? But he didn’t. No need to. He already knew what she’d been thinking about: the two of them, their marriage that wasn’t quite all she wanted it to be. She added, “It gets very lonely up there at night. I had some trouble sleeping. Haunted by sad dreams, I guess. There’s no TV and no telephone….”

  “No cell phone reception?”

  “Intermittent at best.” She looked down at her feet, then at him again. He watched as she pulled those graceful shoulders back, drawing herself up tall and straight. “I got your messages, though.”

  But you never bothered to call me back, did you?

  He thought the question but didn’t say it. They both knew she’d chosen not to return his calls. “When did you get here?”

  “About an hour ago.” Ironic. She’d returned not long after he’d left for Danny Pope’s place. Sometimes life was just too damn much about timing.

  Fletcher gazed at his wife, drinking in the sight of her: those worried eyes, that cinnamon hair, the soft mouth—all of her. Every glorious inch.

  In terms of timing, this was one of those moments. He could see her love for him in those brandy-colored eyes, see the tension in her body, the yearning toward him—and the stark fear that they had lost each other, that what was wrong between them simply couldn’t be made right.

  He saw all those things and he understood them completely—after all, he felt them, too.

  He took a step toward her and she took one toward him. “Thank God,” he said, finally letting all his hope and yearning show. “You’re…home.” His voice broke on that last word home.

  And he found himself thinking that she was his home. That with her, he had his chance at last to know a real, abiding love—and to return love in kind. To be the man his evil, lost daddy could never have been.