“Where were you?”
Scott was sitting at the kitchen table, a half-empty mug of coffee in his hand.
Just once, couldn’t something happen the easy way? She’d risen at the crack of dawn, certain that she’d be back before anyone knew she’d been gone.
She said the first thing that came to her mind. “Out getting a paper.”
“Then where is it?”
Reaching for a coffee cup and saucer, Tricia bumped her hand on the cupboard shelf. “I read it already and threw it away.”
He had no right to subject her to this inquisition.
And he had every right.
Coffee sloshed over the side of her cup. Emptying the saucer into the cup, she stood with her back to the counter, took a sip, and then put the cup and saucer down. She didn’t dare hold them. Their rattling would give her away.
Finally, she looked at her suspiciously silent lover. His dark hair was rumpled from sleep, his face bearing the shadow of a day’s growth of whiskers. His flannel shirt was unbuttoned, as were the jeans he’d pulled on from the day before. His feet were bare. And he was staring at her.
Six months ago, Tricia would have crawled into his lap, made love with him there on the chair and then again in the shower. She braced herself with her hands on the counter behind her. “What?”
“You didn’t think I’d be interested in the news?”
Shrugging, Tricia tried her best to hold his gaze. To think of him and not herself. Because she loved him and he deserved her loyalty. And because she’d never be able to remain standing if she let her mind take her into another place and time. “You don’t get the paper.”
“Because I’m gone so many days in the month it didn’t seem financially feasible.”
She nodded at his repetition of a conversation they’d had two years before when he’d offered, after she’d moved in, to have the local paper delivered now that someone was going to be at the house everyday.
Not wanting him to spend a dime on her that wasn’t necessary, she’d declined. It wasn’t San Diego news she was interested in, anyway.
Scott sighed, forearms on the table, and just sat. Guilt, thick and heavy, spread through her, mingling with the fear, the confusion and despair. Her son was asleep in his crib in the other room. Two walls away.
She stood in the kitchen and tried to concentrate on visions of Taylor. His chubby baby cheeks, pert rosy lips, his father’s nose…
Thomas Whitehead influenced the press, falsified medical documents, and even owned one of the most esteemed physicians in San Francisco. The Whitehead family physician, who had to be lying about that small scar. Not that anyone except his physician would probably have detected it.
Thomas Whitehead had said she was a whore. That her unborn son wasn’t his. Only a man who was sick beyond words would take the farce this far.
There was no stopping him. Unless…
One simple DNA test was all it would take. A few minutes of time.
And a lifetime of fear.
He’d buy his way out. He’d find a way to control her. Without warning, Tricia could feel that peculiar beating of her heart that meant she was trapped and in very real danger. She was back in that other place, that other time. She could taste the blood in her mouth as she saw her attacker approach, knowing what was coming, the slaps and punches that connected, the ringing in her ears, and while she struggled to maintain consciousness, he’d be demanding that she tell him who she’d been sleeping with….
“Tell me—”
Tricia screamed, jerked, banging her back against the counter. And then blinked. Scott was sitting at the table, eyes wide, face twisted in disbelief as he watched her.
“What?” She tried for normalcy.
“I asked you to tell me where you really were.”
Glancing down, Tricia studied the scuffed toes of her tennis shoes. Dusty white tennis shoes with no bloodstains.
“Out getting a paper.”
He stood. “Don’t lie to me, Tricia,” he said, crossing the kitchen. “If you aren’t going to tell me the truth, then say so. Just don’t lie. We’re worth more than that.”
All the money I’m worth, and you dare to stand there and lie to me.
I’m telling you the truth, Thomas. I swear…
And the truth was never heard.
Tricia watched him approach. Knew what was coming. Tried to be ready.
“Okay!” she said when he was two steps away. “I…I didn’t feel well and went for a walk, thinking the cool air would do me good and it did and now I feel better.”
He cocked his head, narrowed his eyes. He didn’t hit her.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Is there some reason I should be worried? Something going on—physically—that I should know about?”
Peering up at him, Tricia knew she didn’t need to be afraid of this man. The knowledge would pass, it always did, to be replaced by the irrational fear instilled by hard experience. But for now…
“No, Scott,” she said softly, removing all holds on the love she felt for him. “I promise you, there’s nothing.” Not physically. Not yet.
He studied her for a long time. And when he reached out, it wasn’t to inflict searing pain, but to pull her into his arms, against his chest, where she could rest her face against the beat of his heart and feel safe. If only until Taylor cried.
On Tuesday afternoon, Tricia stepped into the back room of Patsy’s dry cleaners and almost dropped the heavy bag of clothes she was carrying.
“What’s going on?” she asked sharply, arm muscles weakened from the surge of fear that had come and gone when she’d seen the man sitting in the corner.
“I thought it was best to meet here where no one can see us,” Arnold Miller answered slowly. His words were slurred, but his eyes pinned her to the wall she’d leaned against.
“Sorry, I wanted to call you, but he told me not to,” Patsy said, shrugging. The sturdy blonde was sitting on her desk, frowning. She appeared more irritated with the smelly man in her store than anything else.
“You found out something,” she said, nervous with Patsy there—with anyone knowing anything about her business at all—but not knowing how to ask her to leave her own establishment.
“You got clothes for me?” the woman asked, nodding toward Tricia’s laden garment bag.
“Two pairs of pants, one of them drawstring, one dressier, a couple of lacy tanks, and a short jacket with funky sleeves,” she rattled off, watching the drunken investigator. Did he know something important, or was he just using her as an excuse to hang out here and sleep for a while? Could she believe anything he told her when he was like this?
Getting to her feet, Patsy took the garment bag. “I’ll just go try these on,” she said. “Be back in about fifteen minutes. She went up the back stairs to her apartment on the second floor.
“Siddown.” Miller’s order was compelling even with slurred syllables.
She told herself she was strong now. Didn’t have to take orders. Unless she wanted to do as she’d been ordered. Tricia sat.
He leaned forward slowly, elbows extended as though to rest them on his knees, but missed, almost hitting his chin before he righted himself with forearms leaning heavily on his thighs. “Ish someone local,” he said, each movement of his mouth exaggerated as he spoke.
Tricia backed away from the stench of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke that sailed toward her on his breath.
“Someone local is following me?”
“S’right.” He gave her an almost piercing look. “Hired.”
“Someone hired someone local to follow me.”
Miller nodded; then froze, as though allowing himself to recover from the movement.
“Do you know who hired her?”
“Not jush her,” Miller, head hanging, grew still, and Tricia had to stop herself from crying out in frustration and fear. If he fell asleep now…
/> “Who else?” she asked quietly.
Pushing off from his knees, he fell back against the cushioned plastic chair. “At lease two—women.” He said the last word with the emphasis on the last syllable. “I got a…friend…to fo’ow zhem. Sheprate. Talk.”
Mind reeling with questions, possible scenarios, various actions to be considered, Tricia clasped her hands in her lap, holding on for dear life. Taylor’s occasional squeals from the front room were all that kept her focused. Miller had asked a friend to strike up a conversation. “Do they work together?”
“Don’ know.”
“You don’t know who they’re working for?”
“Nah yet.” His emphasis on the T spewed spittle that landed on his stained and wrinkled brown tweed pants.
“But you can find out?”
“’Coursh.”
“When?”
“Schoon as I’m sober.”
“When will that be?”
“Don’ know.”
That was all. She couldn’t take any more. She was going to lose her mind. Tricia rose with some half-formed thought of grabbing her purse, walking out and just walking until she was too tired to walk anymore.
And then Taylor giggled.
Falling to her knees in front of the broken man, hands on her thighs, she leaned close enough to see how dilated his pupils were. “Please Mr. Miller, I’ll pay you whatever it takes, but I need you to get sober now. I have to know. Soon.”
“I don’ care ’bout…”
She put one hand on his knee and held his gaze, although it was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. She fought back nausea. “Please. My son’s life might depend on it.”
He peered at her for a long time. And then heaved a sigh that almost made her lose her lunch.
“Okay. Bah only for da boy.”
She nodded, satisfied. Taylor was, after all, the only reason she did anything, including getting up in the morning.
Without another word, she picked up her purse, needing to get to her son, to hold him, to remind herself that life held innocence and beauty, trust and pure, unconditional love.
What did any of it mean? If Thomas Whitehead knew where she was and wanted her dead, she would be. If he wanted Taylor, he’d have him.
Wouldn’t he?
Could it be someone else watching her, then? Watching out for her? Had her mother hired someone? Or did they all believe she was dead?
Her guess was that Thomas’s hired gun had not yet confirmed that she wasn’t who she said she was. A seamstress who did alterations on rich people’s clothes and lived with a fireman while they raised their son. And if he worked for Thomas, he wasn’t going to take any chances on being wrong.
Thomas was not a forgiving man.
Really, she could understand not being recognized. Kate Whitehead hadn’t stepped outside her bedroom without full makeup, including enhanced eyebrows and a mouth artistically painted to make it fuller, more succulent than the one she’d been born with, since she was fourteen years old. Kate Whitehead had been well-taught.
Tricia Campbell was named after a soup can.
“The old man says you had Kate followed.”
Unafraid, Thomas Whitehead met this latest inquisition head-on. Before coming down to the station, he’d agreed to let Douglas speak for him, but once he knew that the line of questioning included the hermit, Walter Mavis, he indicated with a brief shake of his head that he’d handle the interview.
He’d expected the questions to be about the fact that, at one point, his wife had had a lover—not this that was so uncommon in California. He hadn’t seen recent statistics, but he’d bet more than half the married population had affairs.
“I did have her followed.”
Prosecutors Holm and Black exchanged a glance and he didn’t have to be a scholar in human relations to know he’d surprised them, just as he’d planned.
“Why?”
“Kate’s pregnancy was hard on her.” Thomas’s answers came easily; they were the truth. “She was…upset…a lot of the time.” There was only so much a man in the public eye could reveal about a family member, particularly his wife, so he chose his words carefully.
But he chose them. He wasn’t going to jail out of loyalty to a missing wife.
“You’re saying she suffered from depression?” Amy Black asked, eyes narrowed.
He’d have put it more delicately. “Yes.”
“Was she treated for it? On medication?”
Hands clasped loosely on the table, Thomas shook his head. “She was one of those women who become obsessed with everything they put in their bodies from the moment they find out they’re expecting. She wouldn’t accept any kind of medication.”
“Did you notice erratic behavior?”
“Not erratic, really, but melancholy, which can be even worse. I worried constantly that she’d take her own life. Not at home, of course—the servants were around—but she had that damn mountain she always ran to. There was no telling what she might do there. Or somewhere else, for that matter.”
“So you had her followed.”
“Naturally.”
David Holm stepped forward. “I’m wondering then, Senator, why she wasn’t followed the day she disappeared.”
He’d thought all of this would come out two years ago. He’d been prepared ever since.
“We’d had a talk the night before,” he said. “A disagreement, really, that turned into a compromise. My man got careless, and Kate figured out that I was having her followed. She insisted I call him off. I refused at first, but she became so upset I was afraid that knowing she was being watched might send her over the edge. I told her I’d fire the private detective if she promised not to go anywhere alone.”
“So you’d just called off the detective that day that she went missing?”
“Yes.”
“And you can provide us with the name of that detective?”
“Yes. Alan Klein.” It occurred to Thomas that he had his college buddy Mike to thank for the fact that this hadn’t come up before.
Amy Black, an older woman with graying hair, drab-colored suits and glasses that were too big for her face, sat on one corner of the table in the otherwise empty room. “Why, Senator, since you’d hired a professional, did you also ask Walter Mavis to watch out for your wife?”
“Have you been up on Miner’s Mountain?” he asked.
“No.”
“It’s off an old mining trail barely wide enough for a single vehicle. The last quarter mile up is reachable only by foot. Not an easy place to follow someone undetected.”
“I guess not,” Holm said with a smile. Thomas resisted the urge to sit back, to get too complacent, regardless of the fact that he knew he’d already done his job that day.
“I loved my wife to distraction, ma’am.” He pulled from deep within to address Holm’s partner. “And she spent a lot of time up on that mountain top. She used to say she got her inspiration there. She’d take her drawing pad and pencils and be gone for hours. It was a natural conclusion for me, when I discovered that the old hermit lived up there and often heard Kate’s car on the old mining trail, to ask for any added protection he might be willing to give her.”
“Did you pay him for his services?”
“I did not.” Thank God no cash had ever exchanged hands. It could have, so easily. The angels of heaven were still smiling on him. Compensation for his miserable youth.
“Mavis says he heard Kate’s car go by the day she disappeared, but that she didn’t stop,” Black said, her mouth a thin line. She needed some good hard sex. If she could find anyone who could get it up for her up-tight ass.
“Not at all unusual. She stopped to say hello only about half the time.”
Holm nodded, putting his pen in his pocket, closing his leather notepad. Douglas closed his as well.
“Since you obviously know about your wife’s last trip up the mountain, why didn’t you tell investigators about it—or about th
e existence of Walter Mavis—when she disappeared?”
Kilgore Douglas stood. “You are out of line, Ms. Black.” His voice was firm, confident; it hinted at power without arrogance, an effective ploy, successful enough to earn him the generous salary Thomas paid him. “My client is not on trial for his wife’s disappearance.”
Kilgore held the door and Thomas walked through with his head high. He was going to stop for a drink on the way home, after all. One stiff bourbon should take care of the unease left inside him by the unsightly face of Prosecutor Amy Black.
13
She talked to Scott twice a day, stopped in to see him a couple of times, had Taylor constantly in her sight. She kept her back to the wall and looked over her shoulder whenever it wasn’t. And always, every waking moment—and the sleeping ones, too, huddled in bed with her son snuggled against her, listening to the house while she tried to rest—she lived in a bubble of darkness.
Should she run? But where? And wouldn’t she just be followed again? If they’d found her this time, they’d find her again.
At least here she had a full life, a disguise. And she had Scott’s protection. He was someone she trusted to watch out for her son, to raise him if anything happened to her.
Here she had moments of love.
Here she was swimming in a sea of guilt.
Scott had started a four-day-off rotation that morning. He’d called to say he was bringing home a surprise and asked her to have Taylor up, dressed and fed. Just like a real dad. In a real family.
Except that Taylor Campbell had a real dad. One who believed himself powerful enough to get away with murder.
Her heart sank when she saw Scott’s surprise.
“Dog! Dog! Daddee, dog!” The baby, dressed in denim overalls and a blue-and-white collared shirt with navy-and-white tennis shoes, jumped up and down, his soft dark curls bouncing with his delight.
One knee on the grass in the backyard, Scott kept an arm poised, as though ready to catch the toddler if he lost his balance. Both of them were intent on the squirming little ball of fur at Taylor’s feet. “He’s yours, sport. What should we call him?”
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