by Josh Lanyon
“The usual.”
I filled her in, and she said dazedly, “He thinks you’re making this all up for a publicity stunt?”
“That’s the way it sounded, though I can’t believe he’s that stupid.”
“He’s not stupid,” she said. “He hates you — or maybe it’s Jake — so much he’s willing to convince himself of anything.”
“Yeah, well, do me a favor and don’t call Bill or Lisa. Please. I can handle that asshole.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so hostile to the idea of your family’s wanting to help.”
“I’m not hostile. I appreciate the help. I do. But I don’t need help with this.”
“We like to help.”
“Sure. But I need to start feeling normal again. I need to start feeling like myself. And part of that is being allowed to solve my own problems.”
She considered this. “You’re never going to convince Lisa of that.”
“But if I can at least keep the rest of you from ganging up on me, it’ll be a start.”
She rolled her eyes, looking disconcertingly like Emma for an instant.
“And I promise I’ll let you all help as soon as I get in over my head. Which will probably be any minute.”
She reminded me that we were supposed to go to the house for dinner. I went up and changed, and we drove out to Chatsworth. As we got out of the car, the scent of barbecue reached us on the summer breeze.
Natalie sniffed the air. “Uh-oh. Hide the salami. Daddy’s got the Weber out.”
Bill was a devotee of outdoor grilling, but he tended to get carried away. I’d often thought it was a good thing the Dautens didn’t own any pets.
We found the family out on the patio having cocktails. Bill was enthusiastically barbecuing enough steaks to feed the troops for the next week — the troops overseas — and discussing the merits of mesquite wood chips over hickory with Lauren, who had the glazed look of a woman rethinking her plans for divorce.
I celebrated the next phase of my recovery with a glass of red wine — after Alonzo, I felt I’d earned it even if it was a few days early — and told Lisa about the trip to Chino to look over Adagio, concluding with, “I think he’s worth every penny. I think we should make plans to drive down there with Em on Tuesday.”
Lisa moaned. “I saw this on Lifetime only last night. A young girl’s parents bought her a horse for show jumping, and she was paralyzed in a fall. It was a dreadful.”
“Lisa —”
“And Anna Kelly’s daughter broke her jaw falling from her horse. She lost all her front teeth. Anna broke her own wrist in a spill.”
Bill interrupted the wood-chip lecture to say calmly, “Em’s not going to break her jaw or her neck, my dear. She’s a very good rider.”
Lisa threw him a reproachful look that managed to convey that, despite his many fine qualities, he was either heartless or obtuse. “I don’t think you should bring it up, Adrien. Emma hasn’t mentioned that bloody horse since you were here last. I think she’s forgotten all about it.”
“I don’t think she’s forgotten.”
She stared at me with those wide blue-violet eyes. If she read something in my face, it certainly wasn’t anything I intended her to see. Her expression altered. She bit her lip. “Oh bother. If it’s so awfully important to you.” Her gaze sharpened. “Are you seeing Mel again?”
“We’re just friends.”
She continued to watch me with that alert look.
“Really.”
“Perhaps he’s grown up.”
Hadn’t we all?
Cryptically, she added, “But there’s no question Jake Riordan is mad about you.”
I blinked. “There…isn’t?”
“Although I suppose it’s beside the point.”
“It is?”
“Of course.”
Was I drunk on one glass of wine? “Anyway, Mel and I are just friends.”
She raised her elegant brows and sipped her drink.
Emma was providing inadequate supervision to a naked Barbie and Ken when I sat down across from her on the floor in the den. At fourteen, she didn’t exactly play with Barbie so much as act out elaborate and occasionally disconcerting screenplays. My kid sister, the budding performance artist.
“Kiddo.”
She smiled and jammed Ken into the pink Corvette beside Barbie. Ken looked pretty uncomfortable to me. Barbie seemed smug. Granted, she had the car keys.
“I drove out with a friend today to have a look at Adagio.”
Like that Emma was bolt upright, a look of painful intensity in her gaze. She swallowed.
I smiled. “I like him. I think maybe you should come with me to check him out on Tuesday.”
She threw herself into my arms, hugging me tightly. I looked down at her silky, dark hair, touched it lightly. Baby hair. Skinny arms wrapped around me. Fourteen was so young. She was making snuffling noises into my shirt.
Oh. Man.
“Hey, at least you could stop laughing for a minute.”
She raised her wet face with a watery giggle. Her face fell. “But Lisa won’t…”
“Yes, she will,” I said firmly. “Lisa knows all about this. In fact, she’s going to drive us out to the farm on Tuesday.”
She wiped her wet face on my shirt, nodded doubtfully.
“Em?”
She raised those big blue eyes that looked so uncannily like Lisa’s.
“I know it hasn’t been very long for you, but Lisa — she really does love you. Pretty much from the minute she saw you. She’s trying to keep you safe, you know?”
She nodded, clearly unconvinced she didn’t have Maleficent for a stepmom.
“She worries about…stuff because of my dad dying. And then I got sick when I was only a little older than you are now.”
Emma considered this. “My mom died. I’m not afraid.”
“It’s different for Lisa. She thinks it’s her job to keep us all safe.”
She lifted a bony shoulder in dismissal.
I left Barbie and Ken to Emma’s matchmaking skills and went to join the others on the patio. I had to pass through the kitchen, and as I crossed the threshold, I heard Natalie say coldly, “But it’s not your business, is it?”
Lisa answered, “For heaven’s sake, Natalie. What kind of man takes money from his girlfriend? How often has he done this?”
“It’s none of your business.” Natalie’s voice rose. “You turned Daddy against Warren.”
“Your father didn’t need me to point out that Warren is at best a slacker.”
I was already retreating, but both turned my way like lionesses on the Serengeti scenting an unlucky zebra.
“Don’t go, Adrien. This concerns you too.” Natalie’s tone was chillier than dry ice.
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”
“You’re part of this conspiracy.”
I stopped. “Say what?”
The look in her eyes should have pinned me to the paneling. “You don’t like Warren. You wouldn’t help him when he needed help — not even for me. You all think you can break us up by making things hard for us.”
I opened my mouth, but Lisa got in first.
“Leave. Adrien. Out of it.” The warning in my mother’s tone even sent a prickle down my spine. Maybe the Maleficent analogy wasn’t so far off. It shut Natalie down for an instant, and unwisely, I pressed on.
“Natalie, it isn’t anything personal. I don’t think hiring family is a good idea. It worked out with you, but I’m not bringing Warren on board.”
She said defiantly, “You’re not going to keep Warren out of my life. You’ll both be interested to know that Warren and I are moving in together.”
“Does Warren know?”
I had no idea why that came out of my mouth, but the effect was instant and awful. Natalie’s face crumpled.
“I hate you, Adrien!” She turned and fled down the hallway. A door slammed in a nether region of the house.
I looked at her but managed to keep my mouth shut this time.
Lisa shook off her preoccupation. “Darling, don’t look like that. She’ll have a good cry and be over it by supper.”
Natalie did not join us for supper, however. In fact, her car was not in the drive when Lauren drove me home later in the evening.
Rarely had I been more relieved to return to the peace and quiet of my bachelor sanctuary.
And yet the first thing I did — after verifying that there had been no further attempt at a break-in — was check to see if there was a message from Jake.
There wasn’t.
Sunday was quiet. Too quiet. Natalie worked downstairs. I worked upstairs.
Midmorning, I used my morning walk to buy doughnuts as a peace offering, but Natalie informed me that she was on a Zone diet and was not currently entertaining pastries. Or the men who offered them.
I left the pink box on the sales desk in a hope of luring her later in the day, and I retired to my lair to work on A Deed of Dreadful Note. It was a relief to focus on the made-up problems of someone else’s life. I appreciated my wisdom in making Jason an orphan.
As I wrote, I listened to one of the CDs from the Women in Jazz collection.
“You and I and moonlight in Vermont,” crooned Ella Fitzgerald, rudely interrupting my train of thought.
“But there’s no question Jake Riordan is mad about you.”
Was Jake really going to leave? Or more to the point, was I really going to let Jake leave? I thought of those long two years when he had been out of my life.
I thought of the ten months we’d been together. Okay, “together” was probably not the word for it. Still…
I thought about how it had felt after he’d told me he was going to marry Kate.
I didn’t blame him for the choices he’d made. He’d done the best he could. I believed him when he said he’d never intended to hurt me. That he would never deliberately hurt me. I understood intellectually that there was no insurance policy on affairs of the heart.
But something had happened to me between waking up in the hospital and those moments on the Pirate’s Gambit when I had believed — for a few terrible seconds — that he was willing to sacrifice me to protect himself, his web of lies. I never wanted to feel that again. That…broken, that betrayed. Because for those fleeting seconds, I really hadn’t cared if I died. I knew in some shadowy corner of my brain, I’d hoped that I would die. That I would never have to face the day after.
I didn’t want Jake to go to Vermont. Couldn’t bear the thought of it. I couldn’t make myself stop him either. It was like getting thrown from a horse and waiting too long to remount. I’d lost my nerve.
I worked all afternoon in between napping and listening to music. Very productive from the viewpoint of the rest-and-relaxation crowd.
Natalie did not relent. She locked up and left without looking in to say good-bye. I hated to admit how much it bothered me.
In the evening I made fruit salad with cocktail olives and maraschino cherries and read more of The Long Goodbye. It was not my favorite Chandler novel — that would have been The Lady in the Lake — though Chandler at his weakest was still better than almost anybody else at full strength. Not that this Edgar-winning novel was Chandler’s weakest effort. It was an interesting work both for the social commentary and the way Chandler cannibalized his own life for material. As always, when reading Chandler I resolved to keep my day job.
When the phone rang a bit after eight, it occurred to me that I had been waiting all day for it. The number that flashed up was like the winning fruit combo on a slot machine.
Jake was brisk. “I’ve got progress to report. First thing. I found Dan Hale.”
“That’s great.”
“He’s living at one of those retirement-home things in Santa Barbara. Sea View Manor.”
“Is he all there? Mentally, I mean.” I thought it was safe to assume that, at what must be an advanced age, Hale was probably missing a few of the original parts. “Is he well enough to talk to us?”
“I didn’t get the impression he’s in great health. He seems alert, and he’s willing to talk to us, yes. Would you like to take a drive out to Santa Barbara tomorrow?”
I opened my mouth to say yes — only to remember my cardiac-rehab session. I’d cut Friday’s session to go to Ojai. I could imagine the hue and cry if I dared to miss two appointments in a row.
“I can’t tomorrow.”
“Hot date?”
“Yeah, with my cardiac-rehab team. I don’t get out of there until lunchtime.”
“So we’ll go after lunch.”
I felt a surge of gratitude that he didn’t simply do the easy thing and say, in that case, he’d head up the coast on his own.
“If you’re okay with it?”
“Hey, I’m at your disposal.”
And dispose of him I had, right? I pressed my lips closed on that as he continued. “The second break we caught is, Argyle recognized your photos, although how the hell he did is beyond me. Guy is clearly no relation to Ansel Adams. He says your Henry Harrison is a retired PI by the name of Harry Newman.”
“Oh wow.”
I heard the faint smile in his voice. “I figured you’d like that. You’ll like this even better. The reason Argyle remembers Newman is because Newman was hired to find Jay Stevens after he disappeared.”
“Hired by whom?”
“Hired by Stevens’s girlfriend.”
Chapter Nine
Jake was waiting for me when I got out of cardiac rehab the next day.
I thought seeing him leaning against the side of the Honda, long legs encased in faded denim, arms folded across the broad chest beneath the navy polo shirt, sunglasses reflecting my slightly disheveled approach, did my heart more good than all the previous hour of team effort.
“You’re smiling. Good session?” he asked as I reached him.
It was unsettling how easy it would have been to walk into his arms. It was as though we were operating on the same brain wave; he shifted, as though prepared to draw me close, and I almost forgot and reached for him. I wasn’t not sure why it was so hard to remember that all that was over now. I settled for giving his arm a friendly punch.
“It was, yeah. They’re going to let me start swimming.”
Jake smiled one of those rare, warm smiles. “That’s great.”
“Yep. I love swimming.”
“You do?”
I could see why he might be surprised, as I’d never gone swimming or done much of anything in the way of athletics during the ten months we’d gone out. “There’s a pool at Lisa’s old house. I’m going to swim there.”
I saw caution flash across his face, and I knew exactly what he was thinking, but he didn’t say it, which I appreciated. “I’ll have to bribe someone to go out there with me at first, of course.”
“I’ll go with you.” He added offhandedly, “If you can’t get anyone else.”
“Thanks,” I said quickly, awkwardly. I hadn’t got that far along in my plans. I figured I could persuade Lauren to go with me a couple of times a week, or maybe Natalie in the evenings. Assuming she ever spoke to me again.
Mel on the weekends? Somehow thinking about Mel with Jake standing right in front of me felt wrong.
He let me off the hook, saying, “You must be making pretty good progress if they’re letting you swim this early.”
“It’s been five weeks.” Well, that was pushing it a little. I’d be starting week five tomorrow. Still. “Apparently I’ve turned the corner.” Funny how I hadn’t felt the proof of that until this very moment, with him smiling at me in the bright July sunshine. It brought a smile to my face.
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” I was grinning like a goof as we got into the car, and I didn’t think I stopped chattering for the next half hour. As happy and ener
gized as I was, I gradually felt that familiar sleepiness steal over me. I thought I would close my eyes for a bit, and the next thing I knew there was a hand on my shoulder, a light, warm weight that worked itself into my dream.
I opened my eyes, blinked up at Jake. “Hi.”
His mouth twitched. “Hi.”
I lifted my head. We were in a mostly deserted parking lot. Beyond wind-tattered eucalyptus trees, I could see the hazy blue of the ocean. Overhead, gulls mewed. “Where are we? We can’t be in Santa Barbara already.”
“No. We’re near Point Dume. I thought we might as well stop for lunch. I figured you’d want to stretch your legs.”
“Oh right.” He must have left the 101 at Las Virgenes Canyon. Not exactly on the way. In fact, about an hour out of the way. Not that I didn’t prefer the coast road to inland freeway. I opened the car door and unfolded. The breeze off the sea was cool and salty. The scent of burgers mingled with the ocean and eucalyptus.
I walked to the edge of the parking lot and looked down. Sandy stairs led to a stretch of pale beach. A silvered pier sat crumbling in the green-blue water. A few yards away from the tumbling surf was a battered-looking restaurant. POINT DUME CAFÉ read a pitted sign. Something about the outline of the building caught my attention.
“Hey.”
Jake’s grin was crooked. “I thought you might enjoy a look at the original Tides.”
“Is it still open?”
“Looks like it.”
“This is the actual building?”
He nodded.
“Wow.”
We walked down the rickety steps to the pale sand. The gulls soared and dived against the blue sky. Far out on the water, sailboats skimmed along like seabirds.
“You want to walk on the pier?”
Jake shrugged, although he didn’t look thrilled.
We walked out to the end of the pier. It was solid enough underfoot, but the railings looked pretty wobbly. I stood at the end, staring down at the green water, the seaweed floating atop like a golden net, sun spots flashing off the surface.
Something glimmered beneath the water. Something else, long and pale, glided silently past. A shark?