Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  She stands outside for a moment or two, looking at her neighbours’ house. There are only a couple of lights on: one upstairs on the third floor, the other on the first.

  That’s because two of the people who live there have gone away, and only the nanny and her charge are home.

  Holly knows this because she has made it her business to know. She has been tracking these people’s movements for a while now.

  Of course, things are going to get a lot simpler from tonight.

  Because the Millers live at 1315 Antonia Street.

  And Holly now lives at 1317.

  Neighbours again.

  Just like in the good old days.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  With Teresa Vasquez settled in at our house, and Nina in Arizona with Phoebe, I was in our bedroom packing a bag for my flight to New York on Monday, October 7th, when Chris Field called.

  There’s a surprise.

  He said that he had been doing some checking, and had learned that Holly Bourne’s marriage had not been registered either in Maryland or in the District of Columbia, or in New York City.

  The United States being a big country, you might have thought that Field would have been justified in giving up the search at that point. But apparently, he thought about all the stuff that’s been happening to me and my family in California, and had the marriage records checked first in San Francisco, and then in Los Angeles.

  Bingo.

  I sat down on the bed. I felt so sick that for a moment I could hardly speak.

  ‘Of course,’ Field went on, ‘it might have sped things up a little if I’d known that her real name was Charlotte Bourne.’

  That threw me for another loop. I had entirely forgotten, until that second, that Holly had once told me – soon after my family had moved to Bethesda, a lifetime ago – that the name on her birth certificate was Charlotte Holly Bourne. No one had ever called her anything but Holly when I was around – not teachers, not classmates, not even Eleanor or Richard. It seems hard to believe, right now, that I could have forgotten something so crucial at a time like this, yet I had. I was only nine years old back then, and she was idly mentioning a boring detail on a piece of paper. Her name, so far as I and everyone else was concerned, was Holly.

  ‘Who’d she marry?’ I asked, finally, when I was ready.

  ‘An attorney named Jack Taylor,’ Field said.

  ‘In LA.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And is that where they’ve been living?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  I shut my eyes.

  All this time, Holly was living in LA.

  An hour by air from our home.

  Playing games.

  I opened my eyes again. From downstairs, I could hear the sounds of Teresa singing something Spanish to Zoë.

  ‘What now?’ I asked Field. My lawyer. Suddenly, Mr Ice-Eyes seemed like a regular prince.

  ‘I think we should pass the information to the SFPD – if they haven’t already obtained it for themselves.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘We wait,’ Field said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For the police to act on the information.’

  ‘What if they don’t?’

  ‘Then we think again.’

  That sounded more like the Chris Field I’d met and had no faith in.

  ‘I’m not waiting,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to LA.’

  ‘I’d strongly caution you against doing that,’ Field said. ‘It’s not a good idea for you to approach either Taylor or his wife.’

  ‘I’d like their address, please.’

  ‘You really should be leaving this to the police, Mr Miller.’

  ‘I just want to talk to Holly, face to face,’ I said.

  ‘Not a good idea,’ Field repeated.

  ‘I heard you,’ I said. ‘Now please will you give me the address.’

  ‘Mr Taylor’s home address is unlisted.’

  ‘Then tell me where he works.’

  ‘Why don’t you just explain to me what you hope to achieve by going to see the lady,’ Field suggested, ‘and maybe I can take care of the matter on your behalf?’

  The lady.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, staying polite, ‘but that’s something you really can’t do for me. The ‘lady’, as you call her, will do a snow job on you, just as she’s probably already done on the police.’ I paused. ‘The guy’s a lawyer, right? Which means I can get his business address without your help.’

  ‘I can’t dissuade you?’ Field asked, trying one last time.

  ‘Not if you try till Christmas.’

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Unable to reach Nina at the Waterson Clinic before his flight to LA that afternoon, Nick left a message saying that he had some new information and would be in touch again soon. The touch of relief he experienced at not having to speak to her just then, made him feel guilty. But then just about everything these days seemed to add another brick to his guilt load.

  He checked in Monday afternoon at The Argyle – an early Art Deco hotel on Sunset Strip at which he’d stayed a couple of times courtesy of Meganimity – and had dinner that evening at Morton’s with Steve Cohn, who wanted to talk about production delays on Firefly. Nick dropped the name of Jack Taylor’s law firm casually into the conversation, and Cohn told him that Anderson, Taylor was a snappy Century City firm of entertainment industry lawyers employed by several of his acquaintances.

  ‘Need an introduction?’ Cohn asked him over his calves’ liver and mashed potatoes.

  ‘No,’ Nick said, playing with his own food. ‘Thank you.’

  Luck of a kind was with him next morning. Jack Taylor was in the office that day, his assistant told Nick, and would have a half-hour free that afternoon owing to a cancellation. Taylor had Nick cool his heels in the waiting room for almost all of that thirty minutes, and when he did, at last, rise from behind his broad desk to greet Nick with a handshake, Jack Taylor’s blue eyes held a pure hostility that was impossible to ignore.

  ‘Mr Miller,’ he said, curtly.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ Nick wasn’t planning on wasting anyone’s time.

  ‘I do,’ Taylor said. ‘Have a seat.’

  Nick sat down, taking stock of the man Holly had married (the antithesis of himself: fair, smooth, older, probably much wiser and unquestionably more suitable) and then of his office. It was one of those LA power places, a spacious corner spot on a high floor, with a great deal of mahogany, old Persian rugs on polished parquet and a pair of horse paintings by the great British artist George Stubbs hanging on a wall to Taylor’s left. It was all very imposing and grand and perfectly fine, yet it seemed somehow rather ‘nouveau’ in comparison with Richard Bourne’s office which had, Nick felt, reeked of the genuine, venerable article.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Taylor asked.

  ‘I need to talk to your wife,’ Nick answered.

  ‘What about?’

  Nick had no wish to be rude. ‘Old times,’ he said, ‘and a little catching up.’

  ‘I doubt very much that Charlotte wants to talk to you,’ Taylor said.

  ‘In my case,’ Nick said, ‘it isn’t a question of wanting to. As I said, I need to talk to her. I’ve been trying to locate her for some time, but I’ve only just learned that she’s been living here in Los Angeles. I was led to believe she – both of you – were in New York City.’

  ‘I expect that’s what Charlotte wanted you to believe.’

  ‘I realize that.’

  ‘So I ask you again, Mr Miller – what can I do for you?’

  ‘Tell me where she is.’

  ‘And why should I want to help you?’

  ‘Why should you not want to?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Charlotte and I are separated,’ Taylor said.

  Nick took a moment. ‘Since when?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ Taylor said.

  ‘I guess not.’
Nick paused. ‘Do you have a current address for her?’

  ‘Even if I had,’ Jack Taylor said, ‘I wouldn’t give it to you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I think you’ve done enough damage, don’t you?’

  Nick had a feeling he was unlikely to be granted more than another minute or two. Taylor was freezing him out, swiftly and decisively.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re prepared to tell me why you’ve separated?’ Nick said.

  ‘I don’t suppose I am.’

  ‘Has Richard Bourne talked to you at all about my problems?’

  ‘My conversations with Charlotte’s father are also private.’

  Nick sat forward, in a final attempt to arrest his attention, if nothing else. ‘Mr Taylor, I have to tell you that Holly – Charlotte – could be in a great deal of trouble. If you still have feelings for her—’

  ‘Enough to know’ – Taylor cut Nick off – ‘that all my wife’s problems can be laid at your door.’ The animosity in the blue eyes sharpened. ‘Enough for me to be certain that I would not lift a finger to help you, Mr Miller, if a pack of hellhounds were snapping at your heels.’

  Nick was out of there less than five minutes later. No help there – he thought as he left the building, found his rental car and drove away from Century City – not today, not ever. He could not feel anger towards Jack Taylor, who was, after all, just another casualty. Another of Holly’s walking wounded.

  Nonetheless, the new failure was a bitter pill to swallow. In the last twenty-four hours or so, Nick had discovered where and with whom Holly had been living for at least a part of that year – and yet still he was left with no more idea than before as to where she was now.

  One thing was certain. He had to talk to Richard Bourne again. It was one thing for an estranged husband perhaps – just perhaps – not to know where his wife was, but it was a whole lot less conceivable that Holly’s parents had no address for her.

  Not that they were likely to share it with him, of course.

  Especially not if the cops had been to see them because of the information he’d given the SFPD about their daughter.

  It was too late to try reaching Richard Bourne in Washington that day, so Nick spent what was left of Tuesday afternoon randomly calling local law firms picked out of the directories in his hotel room, trying to find an attorney named Charlotte Taylor. He had telephoned less than one-third of the firms listed when office hours ended and he could no longer put off calling Nina in Scottsdale, where she was staying at her father’s house.

  ‘What now?’ Nina asked, when he’d given her the day’s news.

  ‘I try Richard Bourne one more time.’

  ‘He won’t help you,’ she said.

  ‘I still have to try,’ Nick said.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I thought I’d fly to Phoenix tomorrow after I finish here.’

  ‘Phoebe will be glad to see you,’ Nina said.

  That was all she said.

  Nick didn’t blame her. All he had achieved to date was hollow and useless. To Nina, Holly Bourne probably seemed like some kind of a phantom, an ugly shadow over their lives. Unless he could find a way of making her flesh and blood again – a real person to be focused on and accused – Nick could not see that changing.

  He reached Bourne third time of calling next morning.

  ‘I know that Holly’s been living in LA,’ he said, talking fast in case the lawyer cut him off. ‘I know she’s probably been calling herself Charlotte Taylor, and I know that she and her husband have split up.’

  ‘So what do you want from me?’ Bourne asked.

  ‘Just two questions, then I’ll back off.’

  ‘No guarantee I’ll answer them,’ Bourne said.

  ‘You gave me your word you were going to deal with this, Mr Bourne,’ Nick reminded him, gripping the telephone tightly and staring out, unseeing, at the city view from his hotel windows. ‘The least you can do is listen to me.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Do you know where Holly is?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  The answer was so flat and hard that Nick felt he could almost taste the pain and, more significantly, the truth in it.

  ‘If you find out where she is, will you at least consider telling me?’

  ‘I doubt that very much.’

  Nothing Nick had not expected.

  ‘Just one last question,’ he said.

  ‘If you must.’

  ‘Are you afraid for Holly?’

  Richard Bourne paused for only a moment.

  ‘She is my daughter, Nick.’

  Continuing all the way down to the Z’s in the directory earned Nick the now maddeningly useless information that Holly – or rather, Charlotte Taylor – had briefly been in the employ of a firm called Zadok, Giulini and O’Connell. No one there, predictably, was prepared to give him any further personal information about Ms Taylor, other than to tell him that she had left them in July.

  Back at LAX again, he called Nina at the Waterson Clinic shortly before boarding his flight to Phoenix.

  ‘I can’t wait to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Phoebe’s definitely stronger,’ Nina told him.

  Nick’s heart sank at her lack of response.

  ‘Give her my love,’ Nick said.

  ‘I will,’ Nina said, and put down the phone.

  Nick thought about Holly a lot on that flight, about how much pain she had already inflicted and was still doing.

  You’ve done enough damage. Jack Taylor’s words. The husband, plainly injured by Holly, yet still defending her against Nick Miller, the great enemy.

  He still had nothing more to tell Nina, and certainly he had a big fat zero so far as clearing his name with the San Francisco police was concerned. But two things, at least, had become very clear to him since he’d left home.

  Richard Bourne knew now that his daughter was not the happy, high-flying picture that Eleanor Bourne liked to paint.

  And Holly, cut off from her parents, separated from her husband – isolated and, presumably, unhappy – was probably even more of a loose cannon than Nick had previously believed.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Holly – in her new role as Barbara Rowe – has wasted no time in befriending Teresa Vasquez. The Mexican nanny, alone much of the time in the Millers’ big house with just a small baby for company, is hungry for adult conversation and not at all shy about voicing her disapproval of Zoë’s parents’ ill-timed travel plans.

  A lonely, middle-aged woman with a desire to be heard.

  Easy prey.

  ‘It is good to be given trust,’ Teresa grumbles, ‘and I know that both Mr and Mrs Miller have many problems right now, but a little baby needs her mother and father, and it’s lonely for me with no one except the nena to talk to.’

  ‘You can talk to me, Teresa,’ Holly tells her.

  She has invited Vasquez, with the baby, to tea in Barbara Rowe’s living room: hastily and economically furnished with a cream-colored suite from a furniture showroom on Van Ness Avenue, two throw down rugs and a few knickknacks from Fillamento on Fillmore and some framed floral prints from Macy’s. None of it exactly to Holly’s taste, but she’s been limited in both time (she can only shop freely while the Millers are out of town) and funds (since everything has to be paid for in cash, and she can’t risk stealing right now in case she gets caught). Besides, this is Barbara Rowe’s house, not Holly Bourne’s.

  ‘I’m going to be around a lot for a while,’ she explains to the nanny, pouring tea, ‘because I have a lot of work to do on the house. I’ll be glad of your company, Teresa.’

  ‘It’s not proper,’ Teresa says, reluctantly.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because I am your neighbours’ servant, Mrs Rowe.’

  ‘You’re a nanny, Teresa,’ Holly corrects her firmly. ‘I can’t think of a more important job than caring for a helpless infant.’

  She stirs her own tea and
sips it, then glances at the stroller in which Zoë Miller is sleeping. Nick’s daughter. She’d like to pick her up and examine her more closely, but instead she just sits there, on Barbara Rowe’s sofa, drinking tea and chatting.

  ‘You know, Teresa,’ she says, ‘I’m very keen to improve my Spanish vocabulary, and I’d love to learn Mexican cookery.’ She smiles warmly at the other woman. ‘So if you could maybe spare me a few hours whenever possible, I’d be very grateful to you.’

  Vasquez’s cheeks have grown a little flushed. She is flattered.

  ‘I am not sure if Mrs Miller would approve.’

  ‘Then let’s not tell her,’ Holly says conspiratorially. ‘It can be our little secret.’ She puts down her cup. ‘When the Millers are home, we’ll confine our lessons to your free time, Teresa, and neither of them need ever know.’

  ‘I would enjoy it very much,’ Teresa admits.

  ‘And in the meantime, whenever you want to go out and have a little fun, I’ll be happy to take care of little Zoë for you. After all’ – Holly folds her hands over her own gently rounded stomach – ‘it’s only a matter of months before I become a mother myself, so I need all the practice I can get. You’ll be doing me a favour.’

  ‘You are very kind, Mrs Rowe.’

  ‘I’m not at all kind.’

  Holly passes Vasquez the plate of cookies she bought at a patisserie in Cow Hollow that morning, and the nanny – who’s already had two – takes two more. If she eats like that all the time, Holly thinks, it’s a wonder she stays so skinny. She makes a mental note for future reference to keep plenty of Vasquez’s favorite items in stock.

  ‘There is one more thing you could do for me, Teresa,’ she says, thoughtfully, ‘if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Anything,’ Teresa says.

  ‘It’s very important that you don’t speak about me to anyone – not even to Mr and Mrs Miller.’

  ‘But they are your neighbours.’ Vasquez is confused.

  ‘Of course they are.’ Holly goes on speaking slowly and carefully. ‘But apart from you, Teresa – because I do need a friend – everyone needs a friend, don’t you agree?—’

  ‘Oh, yes, I agree.’