Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  He had never in his entire life felt so lost, so much like a man stumbling around in the dark. He had always been blessed with conviction about most things, capable of extricating tiny grains of truth from the messiest risotto of lies, of recognizing and accepting when there were no grains of truth to be found.

  ‘Holly, please, try and help me out here,’ he begged.

  ‘How would you like me to help you?’

  ‘Tell me there’s nothing to it. Tell me that Nick Miller’s deluded, or that he’s just a damned liar.’ His desperation grew, and he fought to contain it. ‘I know this must be shocking for you, darling – that you probably think I shouldn’t even have felt the need to ask you this – that I should just have told Miller to get the hell out of my office—’

  ‘What did you tell him?’ Holly asked, suddenly.

  Be honest now, or you’ll lose her.

  ‘I told him that I didn’t believe for an instant that there was any truth to his accusations,’ Richard answered as steadily as he could, ‘but that I would look into them.’

  ‘And?’ Holly pushed him.

  ‘And that, if there was any truth in them, I would deal with them.’

  ‘How?’ she asked.

  Her father stared at her.

  ‘How would you deal with them?’ she persisted.

  ‘I was assuming there would be nothing to deal with.’ Praying.

  ‘Were you?’

  The coolness became chillier. His daughter still sat beside him on the sofa, yet Richard thought he could almost feel her sliding away from him. Emotionally detaching.

  And then another realization struck him.

  She was toying with him. He had felt, until this moment, that she was merely punishing him for his disloyalty, but suddenly he sensed that Holly was playing some sort of a game with him.

  ‘Holly, please,’ he said.

  ‘What, Daddy?’ she asked, still coldly.

  ‘Tell me that Miller’s stories are lies. Just tell me.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question. About how you would deal with the situation. If they weren’t lies.’

  Tell her, man.

  ‘I’d ask you to see someone,’ he said, softly.

  ‘What kind of someone?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Someone who could help. A specialist of some sort.’

  ‘A psychiatrist?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Holly stood up, slowly. She smoothed the linen skirt of her suit with the palms of both her hands. The hands were perfectly steady, without so much as a tremor. That was a hell of a lot more than Bourne could claim.

  It ought to have made him feel better. But it didn’t.

  Because he had seen the look in her calm grey eyes change as she stood up, just after he had answered her question about the psychiatrist. The change had been fleeting – was already gone – but it had been there nonetheless.

  Rage. Terror. Despair.

  All three had been in her eyes for those few short moments while she had been smoothing her skirt.

  ‘Lies, Daddy,’ Holly said, abruptly. ‘Nick’s stories.’

  Richard said nothing.

  His daughter looked down at him, her eyes calm again. Normal.

  ‘Don’t you believe me, Daddy?’

  Oh, God.

  ‘Daddy?’

  Richard nodded. ‘Yes. Of course I believe you.’

  ‘I mean, the stories may well be true – those things may well have happened to Nick and his family,’ Holly went on. ‘But they’ve certainly nothing to do with me.’

  Richard nodded again. ‘Good.’

  ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Holly.’

  She smiled down at him. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘So why don’t we lock up here, and then I can drive you to your hotel? You look very tired.’

  ‘I am.’

  Tired enough to lie down and die.

  ‘Maybe we should skip dinner this evening,’ Holly said, gently, the coldness all gone. ‘Maybe you could use some good room service – spoil yourself for one night.’

  Bourne got to his feet. He felt a hundred years old. Drained and oddly dirty. He longed to stand under a good, hot shower. ‘I was hoping to have dinner with you and Jack.’

  ‘Jack doesn’t know you’re here, Daddy. You asked me not to tell him, remember?’

  ‘Yes. Of course I did.’

  ‘Unless you want me to tell him now. About our chat.’

  ‘That’s your decision,’ Bourne said.

  ‘I think perhaps not,’ Holly said. ‘What about Mother?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I don’t think she’d understand too well, do you, Daddy?’

  Bourne shook his head. ‘I don’t suppose she would. It would certainly upset her.’

  Holly put out her right hand and patted her father’s arm. She was perfectly composed again. As she had been when he had arrived.

  ‘Just between ourselves then?’

  ‘All right, Holly.’

  She opened a drawer in her desk and took out her purse, then picked up her attaché case from a chair.

  ‘So, room service for you this evening, and an early night?’

  Bourne nodded again.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That sounds good.’

  Holly went ahead of him to the door and turned out the light. ‘It’s a pity you have to leave in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Richard said.

  He had felt her urgent desire to have him gone, even while she had been so superficially calm and considerate. He thought about that off and on all that evening and all that night – when he wasn’t thinking about the other aspects of their conversation.

  If he could call it a conversation.

  He didn’t know what to make of his feelings, how to analyse them, judge them. He had arrived in Los Angeles with dreadful suspicions in his mind and a vast yearning to rid himself of them, and though he had, ultimately, got the denial he had craved, the fact that he had been forced to beg for it rendered it rather impotent as denials went.

  He could understand Holly’s anger with him – he could certainly understand that – he was deeply, desperately angry with himself, after all. He understood, too, her need to toy with him as a punishment for believing such things about her.

  If only – if only – she hadn’t looked at him that way after he’d talked about having her see a psychiatrist. The rage he could have accepted, under the circumstances; but the despair and, most of all, the terror, had seared his soul.

  What to do now?

  What to do next?

  Nothing? Something? What was there to do, given that she had denied point blank having had anything to do with Nick Miller for six years? She was his daughter – surely he owed it to his own child to believe what she told him?

  Of course he did.

  Without honesty between father and child, there was nothing.

  He had to believe Holly. He did believe Holly.

  After all, he was hardly going to take the word of a man who’d been in trouble even as a boy, a man who’d abused his and Eleanor’s trust when he was a teenager, who had admitted striking a young, vulnerable woman. He certainly could not take Nick Miller’s word over his own daughter’s.

  Damn Nick Miller, he thought, over and over again, lying sleepless in his big, comfortable hotel bed.

  And damn me for my doubts.

  Chapter Forty-four

  The Western Union telegram arrived at Antonia Street on Wednesday morning.

  GLAD YOU CAME TO ME. BE ASSURED I SHALL KEEP MY WORD. ANY PROBLEM THIS END I WILL DEAL, SO SET YOUR MIND AT REST. APPRECIATE YOUR TRUST. RICHARD BOURNE

  Nick, who had already called a disturbingly unresponsive Nina in Arizona to tell her about his trip to Washington DC, called her again about the telegram.

  ‘Do you trust him?’ Nina asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘He’s her father. And
a lawyer.’

  ‘He’s always seemed a decent man to me, Nina.’

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  That was all. Just good.

  Nick gritted his teeth.

  ‘How’s Phoebe doing?’

  ‘The same. No change.’

  ‘Is Zoë okay?’

  ‘Zoë’s beautiful.’ A slight softening.

  ‘What about you?’ Nick asked. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘As you’d expect,’ Nina answered.

  Nick gripped the phone tighter.

  ‘I could catch a flight – join you.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a great idea.’ She paused. ‘We won’t be away too long.’

  ‘I love you, Nina,’ Nick told her.

  ‘I know you do,’ she said.

  Nick looked at the Western Union telegram again after the call. He thought about the manner in which Bourne had elected to contact him. In this high-tech, high-speed era, the telegram seemed to Nick to spell out old-fashioned urgency mixed with confidentiality. Bourne was, at the very least, confirming to him that he recognized their predicament was not of the run-of-the-mill phone or fax variety.

  ANY PROBLEM THIS END I WILL DEAL . . .

  Nick thought, on greater reflection, that he probably did still believe that Bourne would do his best. That, if he was forced to accept that he had no real moral choice, Bourne might even face up to the awful, unpalatable truth. Which he would, as a good, responsible father, surely have to deal with.

  . . . SO SET YOUR MIND AT REST.

  Sharing his load with Bourne had, Nick decided, been the right thing to do. He did, at least, feel a little lighter in some ways than he had before his trip to DC. Someone else – perhaps the person in the world with the most influence over Holly – now knew about his suspicions.

  But as for setting his mind at rest, Nick knew that his mind would not be fit for any real kind of rest until Nina and Zoë were back home with him.

  Chapter Forty-five

  About twenty hours have passed since Holly left Richard at the Beverly Wilshire. They haven’t spoken again. Holly supposes that her father didn’t like to call her at home in case Jack was around, and by the time she got in to Taylor, Griffin this morning, Richard was already back in the air, Washington-bound. Holly knows he’s left LA, knows which flight he’s taken, knows he went directly from Dulles to his office. She knows all those details because she’s been checking up on him. Oh, yes, she’s aware that she’s going to have to do a lot of checking-up on her father for quite a while.

  That’s what happens when fathers tell their daughters they don’t trust them anymore. Oh, yes, that’s what happens. Of course I believe you, Richard said, but she looked into his eyes and knew it wasn’t true.

  Quite a shock.

  Quite a blow.

  Especially the stuff about the shrink.

  Quite a shock.

  That’s the only piece of this whole incident she would quite have enjoyed her mother hearing. Eleanor would have been shocked, too. Eleanor would have hit the roof and then probably have refused to speak to Richard for about a month.

  Holly thinks – correction, Holly knows – that she covered up pretty smartly. Oh, sure, she lost it for a second or two, gave away a little more than she liked, betrayed her feelings, but so what? So the fuck what? She regained control again almost immediately and kept it from then on to the end.

  Matter of fact, she can’t even really seem to recall now exactly how she felt during those few weak moments. Not that it matters now. It’s no longer important how she felt then.

  All that’s important now is getting things moving quickly.

  A whole lot more quickly than she was anticipating.

  Lots of planning. Lots of legwork and rapid-fire action. But nothing quick-and-dirty. Everything from now on will have to be meticulously organized. Nothing left to chance.

  It isn’t all bad by any means. There is an upside to what Richard told her. An upside so wonderful Holly can almost hear her blood humming.

  Nick has been trying to find her. Nick wants to talk to her. Maybe even see her.

  It is, of course, too soon. He doesn’t need her. Not yet.

  Nick is only trying to track her down because he’s made the connections between past and present a little more swiftly than she expected him to. He is, from what her father has told her, already mad at her. Suspicious that she may have had something to do with what happened to the redhead. Probably raging.

  The thought of that doesn’t alarm Holly. It excites her.

  There’s nothing to be alarmed about. Not really. He may have taken his suspicions to her father, but Holly knows that she (and Eleanor, if necessary) can control Richard. And no one else is going to believe Nick. If anyone else does even listen to him, ultimately no one will take his word over hers. He’s the one with the record. She’s the lawyer.

  If it comes to that. Which it will not.

  But her blood is humming.

  She really was not intending to make her next move yet. She was planning to wait a while longer before leaving Jack, and she has succeeded beautifully in keeping her condition secret from him. Dieting to keep her figure for as long as possible, but taking vitamin supplements for the baby’s sake. Only letting Jack see her naked in the dimmest light, in case he notices the subtler changes in her body. Controlling her morning sickness so that she never throws up when he’s anywhere around. He has been surprisingly easy to fool.

  She’s always known she was going to have to go when she really starts showing. In case Jack gets the idea that the baby is his.

  She laughs, quietly, to herself. As if.

  Holly knows she can’t stand much more of him anyway. Oh, he’s still the best of husbands, but being with him – even when he isn’t trying to play the great stud – has started to make her flesh creep. She’s always had a low boredom threshold with men.

  Except for Nick.

  She locks up the office, catches an elevator down to the lobby, walks out onto Figueroa, crosses the street, heading for the Westin Bonaventure Hotel a couple of blocks away, strolls into the Flower Street Bar and orders a vodka martini.

  She knows right away that she’s going to get lucky.

  The bar is dark after the sunshine on the street. Dark and busy. Four businessmen, two of them Texans, are sitting at the curved, marble topped bar, drinking beer, eyes on the TV ball game, their jackets draped over their bar seats.

  One of them with a Nokia phone, switched on, in its left-hand pocket.

  Holly pays the bartender for her martini, sips just a little of it (thinking of the baby), eases Mr Mobile’s phone out of his pocket and into her purse, leaves a two dollar tip for the bartender and walks straight out, her high heels clicking on the marble floor around the bar.

  Back in the sunlight, she makes directly for Fourth Street, turns the corner, steps into a doorway, checks that the phone has a sufficiently strong signal, and makes her call.

  She memorized the number earlier that afternoon. Holly has never had any problems with her memory.

  ‘San Francisco Police?’

  She pauses.

  ‘I have some information for you.’

  Still humming.

  Chapter Forty-six

  First Narcotics, then Juvenile. Now Personal Crimes.

  So much for setting his mind at rest.

  They came for him, without warning, at four-fifteen that afternoon. For the first time since Nina and Zoë had left, Nick was overwhelmed with gratitude that his wife was not home.

  ‘Just a few questions, Mr Miller.’

  Now what? Now what?

  There were two of them. Inspector Norman Capelli, who looked uncannily like the tall, doleful husband in Married With Children, only a whole lot less funny, and Inspector Helen Wilson, who looked like a harassed, untidy, stressed out mother of at least four, but was so sharp beneath the surface that talking to her was almost like walking on broken glass.

  ‘Ab
out your sister-in-law’s accident.’ That was Capelli.

  ‘The insurance company don’t think it was an accident,’ Nick said.

  ‘What do you think, Mr Miller?’ That was Wilson.

  ‘I think they’re probably right.’

  Nick looked around the interview room they had brought him to in the Hall of Justice. It was almost identical to the one that the Juvenile cops had quizzed him in on Valencia Street. Dingy linoleum on the floor, stained, splintered table, chairs that didn’t match. Bare walls. If he thought back a few years, he remembered that the room in the station in Greenwich Village had been much the same. He felt trapped in some kind of time warp.

  ‘Why do you think they’re right?’ Capelli asked.

  ‘Mr Dinkin – that’s the guy from the insurance company – made a good case,’ Nick answered. ‘Danger signs taken down. That kind of thing.’

  ‘How do you and your sister-in-law get along, Mr Miller?’ Wilson pulled out a chair and sat down next to him. Her fair hair was curly and smelled of cigarette smoke.

  ‘We get along fine.’ Nick sighed. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Why do you think we want to know?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m beginning to assume you’re going to ask me something crazy – like if I had anything to do with her fall.’

  ‘Did you?’ Capelli stood a couple of feet away, between the table and the door.

  ‘Of course not.’

  Nick tried to swallow the anger that was uncoiling in his gut. Losing his temper with these two officers was going to get him nowhere except maybe locked up.

  ‘Have you ever been to Catherine Street?’ Capelli asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t go to see the house after the accident?’

  ‘No. My wife went into labour the same night.’ Nick looked up at Capelli. ‘I’m sure you know that.’

  ‘So you’ve never seen Catherine Street.’ Still Capelli.

  ‘Never.’

  Capelli came to sit at the table, facing Nick, and Wilson rose and took up a position leaning against the wall. They seemed very smooth to Nick, a practised team. He thought about asking for a lawyer, but wasn’t sure who to ask for, Chris Field having failed to inspire his trust.