Absolutely, Positively

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “No.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. Everyone on both sides of the family knows the basic facts. But Harry never talks about it.”

  Molly shuddered. “I can understand that. But you can’t leave me hanging like this. What happened?”

  Josh gazed into his coffee as if it were an oracle glass. “The only reason I know the whole story is because one night when I was fourteen, I heard Harry call out in his sleep. I thought something terrible had happened. I went tearing down the hall to his room. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring out the window. He looked as though he had just awakened from a nightmare.”

  “Go on.”

  “I wasn’t sure that he even saw me. I asked him what was wrong.” Josh’s hand tightened on the cup.

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing for a long, long while. It spooked me, if you want to know the truth. I’d never seen him like that. He always seemed strong. So centered. Controlled. But that night I had the strangest feeling that he was pulling himself together. It was like he was picking up various bits and pieces of himself and regluing them back into place, if you know what I mean.”

  Molly recalled the night she had found Harry staring out the window, Kendall’s gear in his hand. She remembered the shockingly vulnerable look in his eyes, so alien for him. “I think I do.”

  “After a while he started to speak. For some reason, maybe because I’d found him just after he’d awakened from the dream, he talked to me in a way he never had before. I’ll never forget it. He sat there on the bed, staring out into the night, and he told me exactly what had happened the day Uncle Sean and Aunt Brittany were killed.”

  Dread welled up inside Molly. “Harry was there?”

  “My aunt and uncle had a dive shop on one of the smaller islands in Hawaii.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “That day they took the afternoon off to go diving. They decided to explore an underwater lava flow cave that they had discovered a few weeks earlier. They were checking out the entrance when they were surprised and killed by two men who had followed them down.”

  “Dear God,” Molly whispered. “But why did the men murder them?”

  “Uncle Sean and Aunt Brittany were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There had been an armored car robbery three days earlier in Honolulu. The killers had hidden a fortune in negotiable securities in the cave. I guess the plan was to wait for the search to cool down before they brought the haul back to the surface. In the meantime, they were keeping an eye on the cave. They were posing as tourists. They had rented a boat and dive gear.”

  “And when they saw Harry’s parents diving in the vicinity of the cave, they assumed that they were cops or other thieves who had somehow stumbled onto the hiding place?”

  “Apparently.” Josh rubbed the back of his neck in a weary gesture that was strangely reminiscent of Harry. “They followed Harry’s folks underwater, found them inside the cave, and shot them in the back with spear guns. Uncle Sean and Aunt Brittany never had a chance.”

  Molly closed her eyes. “How ghastly.”

  “Yes.” Josh paused. “Harry arrived on the scene a few minutes after his folks had been killed.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “He had just arrived on the island for a visit. He’d gone straight to the shop and was told that his folks had taken the afternoon off to go diving near the old lava flow. Harry decided to surprise them. He took a boat and some dive gear and went to find them.”

  Molly could hardly breathe. “He could have been killed, himself.”

  “Yes. But as it turned out, it was the two armored car robbers who died.”

  “How?”

  Josh raised his eyes to meet hers. “Harry killed them.”

  “What?” Molly was stunned. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes,” Josh said. “I’m certain. The night of the nightmare, he told me that when he found his parents’ boat and saw the other boat anchored nearby, he knew something was very wrong. He got into his dive gear, took a spear gun, and went down to find out what was happening. The killers were just exiting the cave. Apparently they hoped the sharks would take care of the evidence. Harry said…”

  “What did he say?” Molly prompted gently.

  Josh frowned, as though groping for words. “He said it seemed as if the whole sea had turned red. He said he felt as though he were swimming through an ocean of blood. He told me that he knew what had happened even before he discovered his parents’ bodies.”

  Molly’s stomach churned. “I can’t even imagine how terrible it must have been.”

  “He ran straight into the killers. But unlike Uncle Sean, he was prepared. He knew something was wrong. There was a fight. But Harry is fast. Very fast.”

  “Harry killed those two men?”

  “Yes. He nearly died, himself, in the process. I gather one of the murderers cut his air hose during the struggle. Harry brought his parents’ bodies to the surface before the sharks came, but it was too late. They were both dead.”

  Molly blinked back tears. “Dear heaven.”

  “I don’t think Harry has ever forgiven himself,” Josh said. “I think that’s why he tends to brood sometimes, you know? Olivia told him that he’s got posttraumatic stress disorder or something.”

  “I don’t understand. It was a terrible tragedy. But why would Harry blame himself?”

  “I think he blames himself for being too late to save his folks.” Josh swallowed the last of his coffee. “The night that I found him sitting on the edge of his bed, he told me that if he’d been just a few minutes earlier, he could have saved his parents’ lives. He kept saying that he had been too late.”

  * * *

  At five-thirty that morning, Harry opened his eyes to see a doctor standing in the doorway of the hospital waiting room.

  “Wake up.” Harry gently eased Molly’s head off his shoulder. “We’ve got a visitor.” He took one look at the doctor’s face and knew at once that Leon was going to live. He was surprised by the force of the wave of relief that went through him. The old bastard was as tough as nails.

  Molly opened her eyes and glanced at the doctor. “Something’s happened?”

  The doctor surveyed Harry and Molly and the weary crowd of half-dozing Trevelyans. He smiled. “Good news. I’m happy to tell you that Mr. Trevelyan’s condition has been upgraded to satisfactory. He’s out of the woods. I think it’s safe to say he’ll live to pay off that new truck he cracked up last night.”

  A weak but heartfelt cheer went up. Josh looked at Harry and grinned.

  Evangeline heaved a sigh of relief “I knew Leon wouldn’t go out that easily.”

  “He always claimed he had nine lives, like a cat.” Raleigh grinned weakly. “But by my reckoning, he’s used up at least eight.”

  “You can say that again,” his pregnant wife murmured wearily. “Some day the old coot is going to take one chance too many.”

  “But not today, apparently,” Harry said quietly.

  The doctor looked at him. “He’s asking for you.”

  Harry got to his feet and stretched. Molly stood up beside him. She gave him a questioning glance. He shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ll go see what he wants. Then we can get some breakfast in the cafeteria and head back to Seattle.”

  She nodded. “I’ll wait here.”

  Harry went down the hall to Leon’s room. Sunlight filtered in through the window. A nurse was just leaving Leon’s bedside. She smiled as she went past him.

  Harry waited until she was gone. Then he went to the bed. “Congratulations,” he said to Leon. “I had a hunch you’d pull through.”

  Leon turned his head on the pillow and glared at him. “Yeah? Wish I’d been as certain. If I’d been sure I wasn’t going to kick the bucket this time, I wouldn’t have let you push me around la
st night. You took advantage of my weakened condition.”

  “A deal’s a deal.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You got what you wanted.” Leon paused. “How’s Josh?”

  “Fine. He told everyone what you said to him last night. About how it’s time for the Trevelyan men to start using their heads instead of other portions of their anatomies.”

  “Make him happy, d’ya think?”

  “Yes. You took a load off his shoulders.” Harry fixed his uncle with a meaningful look. “You gave him something I couldn’t give to him. Something he’ll have for the rest of his life.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The knowledge that you’re proud of him and that his father would have been proud of him, too. He no longer feels that he’s being a traitor to the Trevelyan heritage.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you were right. Maybe it’s time for a new heritage, y’know?”

  Harry smiled. “What’s this? Don’t tell me that a little brush with death has given you a new philosophy of life?”

  “Nah. It just made me a little more practical. I’ve never made much money in the racing game, and as for Willy, well, we both know what happened to him. Be good if Josh tries something different.”

  “You surprise me, Leon. I don’t know what to say, except thanks.” Leon squinted up at him. “Now that you mention it, there is something else you can do to show your undyin’ gratitude.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m gonna need a new truck.”

  Molly glanced at Harry as she buckled her seat belt. She was amused. “Leon wants you to buy him another truck?”

  “Leon has never been one to let a golden opportunity slide past without making a grab for it.” Harry eased the Sneath out of the hospital parking lot.

  He drove out onto the main road with a sense of satisfaction. It was seven-thirty. They would be back in Seattle in an hour. Molly would be at her shop in plenty of time to open it for the day.

  “Your uncle is a real piece of work.” Molly hesitated. “I couldn’t help but notice that you definitely play hardball with him.”

  “If that’s a polite way of saying that I put the screws to him last night when he thought he might die, I plead guilty. From past experience, I’ve learned that there is no other way to deal with Leon.”

  Molly was silent for a few minutes. Harry wondered what she was thinking. It occurred to him that she might not approve of the way he handled his relatives.

  “I know it’s none of my business,” Molly said after a while. “But would you mind telling me what it is that you hold over Leon? Is he really afraid that you’ll tarnish his image in Josh’s eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “What makes him think you could do that, assuming you would do it?”

  Harry flexed his hands on the wheel. She had a right to know, he thought. Maybe that was the real reason he had asked her to accompany him into Leon’s room last night. Maybe he wanted to tell her the truth.

  “Leon and I share a secret. He and I are the only two people in the world who know that Josh’s father died because the mechanic in charge of his motorcycle failed to give the engine a thorough going over the night before Willy did his last stunt. There was something wrong with the fuel lines. Something that the mechanic would have caught if he had done his job properly.”

  Molly turned slightly in the seat. “Who was Willy’s mechanic?”

  “Leon.”

  “I had a feeling you were going to say that. What went wrong? Why didn’t Leon check out the engine?”

  “Because he was too busy screwing the sheriff’s wife in a motel room.

  Molly looked stricken. “I remember your telling me something about Leon being in jail the day Willy was killed.”

  “He was. The sheriff made his arrest around ten that morning. Willy died at one o’clock that afternoon.”

  “How did you figure out that Leon hadn’t done his job as a mechanic?”

  Harry concentrated on the road. “Because I examined the wreckage after the accident. When I went over the remains of the engine, I knew that something had gone wrong in the fuel lines.”

  She gave him a searching glance. “You just knew?”

  “I spent a lot of time with the bits and pieces that were left over after the explosion,” Harry said carefully.

  “You got one of your insights?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Is that what happened the day your parents were murdered?” she asked softly. “When you found their boat and the one the killers had used, did you know that something terrible had happened? Is that why you went down with a spear gun?”

  Harry reminded himself to breathe. “Josh talked to you?”

  “Yes.”

  He gripped the wheel so tightly he wondered that it did not crack. “If I’d been just a few minutes earlier—”

  “No,” she interrupted very calmly. “You had nothing to do with their deaths. You are not responsible for what happened, Harry. Life is full of what ifs, but they are meaningless questions. You’re a man who has devoted himself to scholarly study and reasoned thinking, you must know how futile it is to ponder the what ifs. The answers change nothing.”

  Harry could not think of any response to that.

  “You’re also a man who is very much in control of most things in his world,” Molly continued. “But some things are out of your control, Harry. You must accept that simple fact or you will drive yourself crazy.”

  “I sometimes wonder about that possibility.” It was the first time he had ever admitted his deepest fear aloud, Harry realized. Doing so made the threat all the more real.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Molly smiled slightly. “I was speaking metaphorically. The very fact that you can even wonder if you’re going crazy means you very likely aren’t crazy. Real nuts don’t question their own nuttiness. They think they’re the only normal ones. That’s why they’re nuts.”

  “That’s an interesting way of viewing the current state of the art of clinical psychology,” he said dryly.

  Molly touched his shoulder. “Remember what you wrote in Illusions of Certainty? ‘Absolute certainty is the greatest of all illusions.’”

  “I remember. What the hell does that have to do with this?”

  “Total control is an illusion, Harry. The biggest one of all. You aren’t responsible for everything and everyone. You’re only human.”

  14

  Harry went straight to his study the moment they walked in the front door. Molly, thinking fondly of a hot shower and a bracing cup of tea, trailed after him, yawning. She was learning the patterns of his life, and it had become obvious in the past few days that this particular routine was an indelible one.

  She lounged in the doorway of his private sanctum, arms folded, and watched as Harry methodically played back the calls that had come in on his private line.

  There were three messages on Harry’s answering machine. Molly knew they had all come in sometime during the night. She was not particularly surprised to learn that all three were from Strattons.

  Harry? It’s Brandon. Where the hell are you? Call as soon as you get in. I need to talk to you.

  The machine whirred and clicked.

  This is your Aunt Danielle, Harry. Call me immediately.

  More clicks from the answering machine.

  Harry, this is Gilford. If you’re screening your calls, pick up the phone now. If you’re not there, call me as soon as you get this message. Where the hell are you? It’s seven-thirty in the morning.

  The answering machine pinged to indicate the end of the messages. Harry hit the rewind button. He glanced at his watch and then reached for a pen and a pad of paper.

  “Want some advice?” Molly asked softly.

  Harry did not look up from the notes he was making, but one black br
ow rose in inquiry. “What’s that?”

  “You’ve dealt with enough family problems in the past few hours. Give it a break.”

  His mouth curved humorlessly. “Different family.”

  “No, all the same family. Yours. Harry, you’ve had a long night with very little sleep. Take a shower. Have a cup of coffee. You can answer those calls later. Much later.” Molly paused. “Like maybe this afternoon or tomorrow. Next week might be a good time.”

  He slowly put down the pen and looked at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you have a right to put yourself first once in a while.” She held out her hand. “Come on. Let’s go take a shower.”

  She saw the hesitation in his face, and then, to her intense relief, he took her hand and allowed himself to be led down the hall.

  At five o’clock that afternoon, Molly flipped the sign in the shop window so that it read closed and groaned aloud. “I’ve had it, Tessa. I’m going to stop by my place to check on things and pick up some fresh clothes. Then I’m heading straight back to Harry’s. I’m looking forward to putting my feet up and having a nice glass of chilled chardonnay.”

  “Is that a fact?” Tessa repainted her mouth with heavy brown lipstick.

  “I’m getting too old for short nights followed by full work days. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “It’s the music.” Tessa dropped the lipstick into a huge leather bag as she came around the counter. “It gives me energy. How much longer are you going to stay with T-Rex?”

  “I don’t know.” Molly watched a gaggle of tourists climb the broad steps toward First Avenue. “To tell you the truth, I’m starting to worry a little about the situation. I feel as though I’m living in limbo.”

  “I’m starting to worry about your situation, too. I understand why you don’t want to stay at your own place, but maybe you should move in with your aunt. I don’t like this business of you living with Trevelyan. It’s not you.”

  Molly glanced at her, astonished. “What the heck is this? You’ve been after me for months to get a love life.”