I bristled. “What makes you think he said anything?”
“I just assumed—”
“There were no last-minute confidences,” I said. “None of that.”
Blackmoor scanned my face. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then his expression hardened. “But that still doesn’t change my position.”
“She was my mother, you bastard. I have a right to know.”
“The trouble with you is,” he said, “you actually believe that line counts for something in real life.”
I wanted to kick him, to scratch his eyes or slap his face. Instead I started running toward the seawall, as fast as I could. Blackmoor caught up easily. I pulled away from him. He grabbed my sweater, tackling me from behind, until we were both on the sand, fighting breathlessness, and each other.
“Stop it, Garner.” He had my arms pinned. “Stop trying to shake me out of your twisted little family tree!”
“I’m not!”
“Don’t give me that.” His face was only inches away. I lifted my head, not admitting, even then, that I was going to kiss him, until I was in the middle of it, and it was much too late. His mouth tasted of salt and wine. I could smell his clean white shirt, and the leather of the baseball jacket, which crackled next to my ear when he moved into the kiss.
Then he pushed me away. Sand fell from the creases of his clothing into my open mouth, burning my eyes. “Let’s get this straight,” he said softly. “You want to find somebody to father you? Fine. You want to find somebody to fuck you? Great. Just don’t keep looking for them both in the same place.” He sat back on his heels to push a strand of hair off my forehead. “At least not when you come knocking at my door, little girl.”
He left me there. When I was sure he had gone, I pulled my sweater up over my head and cried bitterly in a dark, sandy tent of humiliation.
ELEVEN
“I’ll drive you to the bus stop.”
“I feel like walking.” Temple grabbed her backpack and Lakers jacket, pecked me on the cheek, and flew out the door.
I sat down next to Cilda at the kitchen table. “You’re upset about something.”
“And why not,” she said, “wit’ ’imself in a day-old grave?”
“There’s something else. Has Temple been giving you trouble?”
Cilda stirred her oatmeal in small, vicious circles. “Why should I be upset about ’er? She’s your daughter now, isn’t she?” She went on, muttering under her breath. “Walkin’ where she used to be ridin’. Ridin’ when she used to be walkin’. Out on the beach late all times of the night. Stickin’ her love letters down there in the wall.”
“What do you mean, love letters?”
“Oh, she’s smart, but she don’t fool me. I seen her tuckin’ them notes in the rocks, and next thing you look, they all of a sudden gone.”
I got up to turn off the boiling tea kettle, trying to stave off the sickish feeling in my stomach. “This started while I was gone?”
Cilda shrugged. I took it as a yes. As I passed the window with my cup, a flurry of outside activity caught my eye. “Looks like they’ve been doing a lot of work on the wall,” I commented, to change the subject.
“Better work quick.” Cilda dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “Big storm tomorrow. Prob’ly take the whole place down.”
She was impossible when she got in these moods. “I’m not really hungry,” I told her. “I’d better get back to work.”
On my way over to the office, I ran into Ben Snow carrying a wooden shutter, his trademark red flannel shirt standing out against the dull gray clapboard. “Gone t’ fix that window out behind, before the nor’easter hits.”
“Think we’ll catch it?”
“Been a freaky winter so far.” He shrugged. “With the full moon and the tides, we’ll get something. You know I can put you up at my place if they evacuate.”
“Thanks,” I told him. “I’m just hoping the predictions are wrong.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” He went on dragging the shutter around the side of the house. I glanced toward the seawall.
No notes of love were stuck in the recesses of rock today.
Jack was at me as soon as I came through the door. “We have to talk.”
“Sure.” I tossed my jacket onto a chair.
“I’ve been sitting on this for over a week—”
“Sorry. I’ve had my mind on other things.”
His face reddened. “Of course. I didn’t mean—”
I cut him off. “In fact, I’m not even sure I want to continue with the Blackmoor book.”
“You’re not serious?”
I sank into a chair. “I’m burnt out. Maybe this would be a good time to cut loose for a while. I need some time to regroup.”
Jack walked out of the room. I heard him opening the wall safe in my office where we kept sensitive documents and research material. When he returned he was carrying a padded envelope. “I think you’d better take a look at this before you book any cruises.”
I looked inside. The videocassette was marked simply “3/15.”
“Allow me.” He took it and walked over to the VCR, swiveling the monitor in my direction. The tape had already been cued up.
Once again I watched Elizabeth Rice demonstrating her unique talents as a performance artist. The long, white bandages draped over her arms fluttered around in the air, softening her actions, blurring all the hard edges soft, white. “My plaster-bandage technique is much more difficult,” she said to the camera, “because not only do you have to align the seams, you need to moisten the entire mold, so that you can shape it gently to the face.”
Her fingers moved quickly over the surface of the cast. The camera followed. An exposed portion of Torie Wood’s polyurethaned head filled the frame, like a close-up of a new product—freeze-dried terror in a boilable pouch. I sat up straight in the chair. I’d never get used to this.
“The final creation,” Rice told her viewers, sweetly, “is less of a life mask, than a death mask.”
Jack froze the picture. “Did you see it?”
“See what?”
“You reacted to it viscerally”—he sounded excited—“but did you see it?”
My heart thumped clownishly in my chest. “See what, Jack? Get to the point!” But there was a point, and I knew it, knew even before I could put it into words.
Patiently, he rewound the tape. We watched Beth going through the grisly motions, backward this time. He stopped it and hit Play. Rice began performing on cue. “—you need to moisten the entire mold, so that you can shape it gently to the face.” There was a tight shot of Torie Wood’s head.
A tight shot.
“My God,” I whispered.
“Cameras don’t zoom by themselves. At least the one that Blackmoor owned didn’t. I checked. Someone else had to be there.” He zapped the machine on fast forward. “I found another spot where he does it again—”
“Wait.” I put up a hand, my mind moving in a million directions.
Jack’s calm buckled. “Don’t you see? There were two of them all along.”
“Not necessarily.” But of course he was right. What other explanation could there be? I remembered the way Elizabeth had addressed the camera. Teasing it, instructing it, flirting with it.
“You had him pegged from the start.” He pulled me off the chair, lifting me into the air. “It was her confession that threw you off track.”
“But why would she have said all those things if he’d been in it with her?” A phrase popped into my head, something Rice had said—Don’t worry, darling. I’m not about to kill another one of his girlfriends for him.
Jack persisted. “So are you going to confront him?”
“Not yet. You need to do some follow-ups on the others. Lewan. Lucy Moon. Roberto and Hadary.”
His mouth dropped in disbelief. “You’re not going to let him go on living here? Now that we know?”
“We don’t know anything.”
“Are y
ou crazy? He killed a young girl. Maybe more than one.” He caught my startled reaction. “You never did get to see those tapes of Donna Fry and Kimberly Arnette, did you?” I didn’t have to answer. “And you’re going to allow him to stay in your home? Near you and your daughter?”
“You know I’d never do anything that would put Temple in danger.”
“Well, I’ve got a news flash. I’ve seen her go traipsing over there. It was one cozy little get-together after another while you were gone. And you mean to tell me you’re just going to let it happen?” His voice lowered, icily. “Are you that hot for him?”
My slap was dead-on. The kind that left tracks.
“Sorry,” Jack said. “I was way out of line.”
I slammed the door behind me as a way of letting him know his apology wasn’t accepted.
TWELVE
For as long as I can remember, old-fashioned hardware stores have been my idea of heaven. I’ve always felt there was something inherently pure in the smell of woodshavings, of paint settling on the bottom of cans. Between books I’d usually find myself spending some part of the day shuffling over worn pumpkin pine plank flooring, peering into bins of nails and screws. Most times I returned to the beach house with a waxy brown bag filled with gadgets. Why I bought them I didn’t know. Ben Snow did all the odd jobs, and I’ve never been what you might call handy. But still I hoarded them—mat knives and ratchets; padlocks and plastic buckets of Spackle.
I think they gave me the illusion of being in control.
Maybe that’s why, after my argument with Jack, I ended up in a hardware store on the peninsula.
Afterward, I just kept driving. It was after seven by the time I got home, but the sky was overly bright, the shade of iced lemonade. I parked the car, retrieving my sack of toolshed treasures from the backseat—a Snap-On Phillips screwdriver and twelve penny nails. I was trying to decide where to hide them. This was a game of cat-and-mouse I played with Cilda, who found the bags and moved them elsewhere.
That’s how we’ll end up, I thought. Two crotchety old eccentrics squirreling away lumpy paper bags, inside drawers, under mattresses. It made me shiver.
I found the back door unlocked.
There was an open bottle of Merlot on the kitchen table. Microwave popcorn littered the clean counters, its oily smell still lingering in the air. A few kernels had fallen on the floor. Blackmoor’s bird was picking at them.
“Shoo!” The cockatoo dropped an unpopped pellet at my feet. “Bless you!” it squawked. “Bless-ess-ess-you!”
I followed the sound of Frank Sinatra, blasting from the great room. Temple and Blackmoor were sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing roulette with a makeshift wheel fashioned out of one of Cilda’s lazy Susans. Temple stopped laughing when she saw me.
“Hullo,” Blackmoor said.
I went to the compact disc player and turned down Frank. Temple jumped to her feet. “Dane says I’m a natural gambler.”
“Don’t you have homework to do?”
“No,” she said. I detected an unsettling edge of defiance in her voice.
Blackmoor was already pushing chips into a box. “I have to be going anyway.” He rose with the ease of someone used to spending a great deal of time on floors. Temple ran upstairs without another word.
He followed me into the kitchen. “Listen, about last night—”
“Forget it.”
“Yes,” Blackmoor said, finally. “That would probably be best.” He put his arm out for the bird. “I hope you don’t mind. I stopped to borrow a lightbulb, and Temple snagged me for a quick game.”
“Why should I mind?” We were standing at the door. “She’s probably always hanging around, anyway. Over at the guest house.”
“No,” Blackmoor said. “She hasn’t come there at all.”
I made a note of the ease with which he lied.
THIRTEEN
Temple was at her desk, writing furiously. When she saw me, she crumpled the piece of paper and tossed it into the wastebasket.
It took all of my self-restraint not to drop to my knees and go digging for it.
I said, “I want you to stay away from Dane Blackmoor.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s dangerous.”
She got up out of her chair. “Real good, Mom.” When she brushed past me, I felt sparks of anger rising from her, like static electricity. “If he’s so dangerous, why’d you invite him here in the first place?”
“I don’t mean he’s responsible for killing the girl”—or did I?—“it’s just…he”—I fumbled for the right words—“he…isn’t what…he seems to be.” Temple threw herself down on the bed with a sarcastic little laugh.
I tried a new tack. “Look, I understand all too well how charming he can be. And you’re of an age…I know—”
“You don’t know anything,” Temple said. I’d never heard her speak to me in that tone of voice before.
My eyes darted frantically around the room. It took me a second but there it was, protruding from some papers on the floor—Dane Blackmoor’s scrapbook. I picked it up. “Honey, let’s be honest. You had a crush on the guy before you even met him. You only have to look through this book to—”
Temple grabbed the album from my hands. “You’re so stupid!” she shrieked. “So stupid—” Tears were running down her face. “The book was for you! I made it because I thought then we’d have something to talk about…maybe for once you’d talk… to me—” She threw it at my feet.
“Temple,” I started to say, but my mind was somewhere else: in the shadows of a foyer, waiting for the hustle and bustle of arriving guests to subside, so I could ask my father a question about his trial. All these years spent trying to be a good mother—a better parent than Dudley had been to me…Was it possible? Could it be true? Had I really shut my daughter out the same way?
I was so mired in my own thoughts that I stopped listening for a moment, but Temple kept right on talking. “—and now you’ve wrapped up this case,” she was saying, “so it’s bye-bye, Blackmoor, just like the rest of them! Like they don’t matter as people—just as books! As books on a shelf!”
“Temple,” I said weakly, “that’s not true.”
She snatched up her jacket. “You don’t care!” she cried. “Not about me, or him, or anybody! All that matters to you is the next one. And the next one—”
I leaned over the stair railing, calling after her. “Temple! Please!”
But she didn’t stop. When the back door slammed, I went over to the window. Temple’s bedroom faced the rear of the property. The guest house was dark. Blackmoor’s Range Rover was gone. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least for now, she would be safe.
FOURTEEN
I was sitting at a long table in a big, bright room, my favorite pen in my hand. A grade-school composition book lay open before me.
The door opened—although I hadn’t seen a door before—and he walked in, wearing a hospital gown over an impeccably cut dinner jacket.
“What have you been doing with yourself, Garner?”
I said, “I’m working on this case.”
“Yes,” Dudley said. “Awful business.”
I had my pen poised over the notebook. “Who do you think killed her?”
He put his hand over mine, over the hand that held the pen that was ready to write. “You already know, Garner.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t.” The room grew smaller around me. I felt panicky, claustrophobic. I suddenly realized the hand on top of mine wasn’t my father’s. It was younger and stronger. The nails bit into my flesh. I was afraid to look at him.
“Garner,” a familiar voice sang. “You know who killed her.” His fingers closed like a vise.
“No,” I cried, “I don’t!” I forced myself to look at his face. The hospital gown was covering his head like a snowy hood. He wrestled the pen from me, jabbing it at my midriff. “Yes, you do, Garner…” Jab. “Sure you do…” Jab. “You know you do…” Jab
. Jab.
He poked the pen in my ribs, my breasts, then upward, toward my face. “You know, Garner. You know you know.” Jab. The point of the pen was aiming straight for my eyes—
Shattering glass smashed the nightmare into a thousand pieces.
I sat bolt upright in bed. Wind blew fistfuls of rain into my bedroom. I ran to the window, struggling with the shutters, the dream still fresh in my mind.
It took Ben a long while to come to the phone, and when he did, his voice was falsely hearty. “Now, Garner, I don’t want you to worry.”
“Are you all right?”
“I was in the garage this morning, and a damn hammer fell off the shelf, clipped me on the head,” he replied. “Still can’t figure how it happened.”
“Maybe I’d better drive you to the hospital.”
On the other end, Ben managed to laugh. “Take more than that to make an invalid out of me. But the wife’s laid down the law. Enforced sick day.”
“Good for her.”
“I heard about the bedroom window,” he sighed. “Got one of my fellas comin’ over there this morning.”
“Don’t worry about us. Just get some rest.” I hung up and looked out the window. It was already raining, and the guys from Coastal Engineering were moving with fresh urgency, yellow slickers over their standard jumpsuits. Angry waves reared through the chinks in the seawall.
“They’d better fill in those gaps soon,” I said to Cilda, “or we’ll be bodysurfing in here by dinnertime.”
“You look terrible,” Jack said.
“I didn’t sleep all that well. The wind.”
“Sure it was the wind?” He came up behind me, massaging my shoulders. “You’re one great big knot.”
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks.”
He kneaded my neck. “Have you decided what you want to do?”
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