Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  ‘Apart from you, the fewer people who know my name, or anything else about me, the better.’ Holly pauses. ‘It’s because of my husband, you see.’ She waits another beat, for full effect. ‘He’s a very violent man, Teresa.’

  Vasquez’s dark eyes become large. ‘He hits you?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘It was better for me to leave,’ Holly confides in her. ‘This way there’s no trouble for him, and the baby and I will be safe.’

  The nanny’s left hand goes out instinctively towards Zoë’s stroller, and touches the handle. ‘Maybe you are right. You must protect your bebé.’

  Holly smiles at her again, one of her warmest, most delightful smiles.

  ‘So you do understand, about our little secret?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mrs Rowe,’ the nanny answers. ‘I understand.’

  Being pregnant is the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to Holly, and not having to conceal it from Jack any longer makes it even more perfect. Even throwing up each morning while it lasted never really troubled her. She knows she’s going to get fat as a cow – Lord knows she’s eating at four times her normal rate. But then again, she is, as everyone always says, eating for two, and she figures that with all the vomiting she has to have been losing valuable nutrients, and Holly is not going to let her baby be deprived of anything.

  Especially love.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Nina came into Nick’s arms when he arrived at the clinic on Wednesday afternoon, and allowed him to hold her, but that was exactly how it felt to him: as if he were being granted a favour.

  ‘Inspector Wilson called me here this morning,’ Nina reported as they walked in the Waterson’s lovely gardens. ‘She asked a few questions about Phoebe’s condition, but I’m sure she’d already spoken to the doctors, so she didn’t need to ask me.’

  ‘So what did she really want?’ Nick’s stomach gripped with tension. He was growing used to that sensation. He could hardly imagine his body or mind tranquil again.

  The gardens were like an oasis in the dry desert heat, sprinklers constantly fanning fine sprays over the lawns and flower beds, smooth wide pathways between the lawns to ease the passage of patients in wheelchairs.

  ‘She asked where you were. She seemed upset that you were travelling.’

  ‘Don’t leave town,’ Nick said, wryly.

  ‘I didn’t tell her you were in LA.’

  ‘Why not? I have nothing to hide.’

  ‘I thought you might prefer me not to tell her,’ Nina said.

  They sat down on a bench. It was unpainted, natural blond wood, handsome and comfortable.

  ‘Did Wilson say anything about Holly?’ Nick asked.

  ‘She didn’t say anything much at all,’ Nina answered.

  Rather like Nina herself.

  Nick used one of the public phones in the lobby of the clinic, failed to get hold of Capelli and had no choice but to speak to Wilson.

  ‘Have you found Holly Bourne?’ Straight to the point.

  ‘Have you?’ Wilson asked right back.

  Nick assumed that meant they’d had no more luck than he had.

  ‘I found out a couple of things,’ he said. ‘Her married name and where she was living, till recently.’

  ‘Do you want to give me those details?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘I thought you might have found them out for yourselves.’

  ‘I won’t know until you tell me,’ she said.

  Nick gritted his teeth and gave her the facts, such as they were.

  ‘So Holly Bourne’s not even her name,’ Wilson commented.

  ‘It was the name she always used – at least until her marriage,’ Nick said, ‘so far as I knew. She always called herself Holly, which is actually her middle name.’ He paused. ‘So what now?’

  ‘When are you coming back to San Francisco?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘Soon,’ Nick answered.

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  ‘Inspector Wilson, I need to know what you’re doing about finding Holly Bourne, or Charlotte Taylor, or whatever the hell she’s calling herself now. I’ve just told you she’s disappeared – that neither her husband nor her family knows where she’s hiding.’

  ‘You’re assuming she is hiding.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Why don’t we continue this conversation when you get back, Mr Miller?’ Wilson suggested. ‘Your daughter’s at home, isn’t she?’

  ‘My daughter’s being well cared for, Inspector.’

  ‘I’m sure she is.’

  ‘So why do you want me in San Francisco?’

  A dark-haired woman in a blue suit was hovering in front of Nick, waiting to use the phone; he turned away from her and faced the wall and the small plaque that told him this telephone did not accept incoming calls.

  ‘Am I still under suspicion?’ he asked.

  ‘Of what, Mr Miller?’ Wilson asked, in her dry, unpleasant manner. ‘Possession of heroin, child abuse or attempted murder?’

  Fuck you, Wilson, Nick thought, but managed not to say.

  ‘Do you still think I had something to do with Phoebe Ford’s fall?’

  ‘We’re still investigating the case,’ Wilson said.

  ‘How? By trying to find Holly Bourne?’

  ‘You know I can’t divulge police business to you, Mr Miller.’

  ‘But surely you must see by now that there’s more than a chance I’m right about her? She’s been living an hour away from San Francisco. She’s walked out on her husband. No one knows where she is.’

  ‘None of which constitutes grounds for suspicion of the attempted murder of a complete stranger,’ Wilson said.

  ‘It does in my book,’ Nick said, and cut off the call before he said something he might regret.

  He had known it before, but now he was more certain than ever.

  No one really, wholly, believed him. Not the cops, not Chris Field, not even his own wife. Which meant that no one else was going to make any major effort to track down the woman he was now one hundred per cent convinced had lured Phoebe to that house.

  Holly was in hiding. That was another thing he was sure of.

  And it was still down to him to find her.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  There’s still no hope of getting poor Phoebe to try to convince the cops that I’ve never had any reason on earth to want to kill her.

  She is, as Nina told me on the phone before I came, growing stronger, but she’s undergone another bout of microsurgery on her arms and hands and is, consequently, still miserably plastered up from fingers to shoulder on both sides; and though she has started trying noticeably harder to speak, she’s still not getting there.

  We visited with her for a while after my call to San Francisco. William was there, like Nemesis, the whole time. Nina left the room to fetch a Coke, but William stayed put. I had the feeling that if I stayed in that room for seventy-two hours straight, William would remain glued to Phoebe’s side for the whole time, doing without food or even the use of the bathroom.

  My father-in-law won’t even risk peeing if it means leaving me with his daughter for more than ninety seconds.

  I am a dangerous man.

  ‘I’m going home tomorrow,’ Nina tells me now, after our visit, as we eat crisp salad and drink mineral water in the Waterson’s restaurant. ‘I can’t bear to go another day without seeing Zoë.’ She bites into a carrot. ‘And you can appease Inspector Wilson.’

  ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ I ask her. My food is good, but I can’t eat it. My stomach is cartwheeling for a change.

  ‘By being cooperative.’

  ‘How much more cooperative am I supposed to be? I’ve given them every piece of information I have, and they’re still not listening to me.’

  A teenage girl wheels herself into place at the table beside us. She has gorgeous, long dark hair and almond eyes. I think she may be paralysed from the wa
ist down. She smiles at me and I smile back. I can’t remember the last time I really smiled.

  It was probably at Zoë.

  ‘I’m going back to LA,’ I tell Nina.

  ‘What for?’ She knows very well what for.

  ‘To see a detective agency. They should have a better shot of finding her now.’

  ‘So should the police.’ Her voice is strained.

  ‘I’ve told you, the police aren’t interested enough in finding Holly. All they seem to want to do is pin Phoebe’s fall on me. Wilson said it all, didn’t she? Just because Holly’s left her husband and her company doesn’t mean she tried to kill Phoebe.’

  ‘But that’s true, isn’t it?’ Nina says.

  ‘Which is why they should be out there looking for proof.’ My exasperation is showing. ‘Which is why they should be looking for Holly, not hassling me to go back to San Francisco.’

  ‘We don’t know that they’re not looking for her.’

  ‘Well, if they are, they’re certainly keeping it a state secret.’

  Nina’s stopped eating.

  ‘I don’t want you to go to LA, Nick,’ she says abruptly. ‘I want you to come back home with me to our daughter.’

  I can see a vein in her left temple throbbing, and part of me wants to stroke it, but another part of me wants to tell her that it’s her fault if she has a headache because she ought to be understanding me, supporting me.

  ‘I want us to get some normality back into our lives,’ she says.

  I stare at her. ‘How in hell can we have any kind of normality until this is resolved?’

  Nina tries one more time.

  ‘Leave it to the police,’ she says.

  ‘I can’t,’ I answer.

  I’ve never seen dislike for me in my wife’s eyes before.

  We may be in the desert. I feel the desert is in me.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Holly is watching from a third-floor window as Nina Miller arrives home from Arizona on Thursday. It’s quite a heartwarming sight: nanny hurrying down the front steps, baby in her arms, to greet mother. Mother exchanging travel bag for baby as the cab driver carries her cases up to the house.

  Holly knew that Nina would be getting back around this time, knew which flight she was taking. Just as she knows that Nick has returned to Los Angeles and that he and Nina were at loggerheads before leaving the Waterson Clinic over his decision to let Nina come home alone.

  Holly’s systems are all up and running smoothly now. On the home front she has Vasquez, the gabby nanny, hungry for treats and flattery, and in the world beyond she has Samuel Keitel. Keitel is a private detective from LA, whose greatest asset is that he’s an honest-to-God chameleon. At the Waterson Clinic, Keitel knows how to pass for a doctor or anxious relative or cleaner; on the streets, he can stand right next to a person and still be virtually unnoticed. Holly has seen him in action. Keitel knows how to make himself invisible. As a consequence, between Vasquez – on whom she – as Barbara Rowe – has been bestowing friendship, food and gifts – and her man on the street, Holly has been keeping tabs on just about everything of consequence in the lives of Nick and Nina Miller.

  By the time Nina Miller has been home for two days and two nights, Holly knows that Nick has employed his own LA detective agency – a firm called Interstate Investigations – and her reasoning is, therefore, that if Nick is prepared to throw enough time and money at the problem, he may ultimately track her down.

  Right now, however, he still doesn’t have the slightest idea where she is.

  She, on the other hand, knows exactly where he is.

  She knows which hotel he’s staying at, and she knows that this time it isn’t The Argyle. She even knows the number of his room.

  And, thanks to a particularly nauseating one-night-stand with a middle-aged, paunchy LAPD detective in Burglary, she also knows three different ways to get inside that room.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Nick’s downtown hotel was called the Mistral Inn and, whilst it wasn’t exactly a hairshirt or even entirely a dump, nor was it the kind of place he had ever chosen to stay before. It was big, impersonal and dingy, and it was the sort of hotel where you had the feeling that if you died, no one would notice until you failed to settle your bill. Both Nina and Clare had asked him why he wasn’t staying at The Argyle or at any of the other fine hotels in and around the city, and Nick had claimed full houses all over; but the truth was that, aside from the Mistral Inn being just a couple of blocks from Interstate Investigations on Flower Street, he was feeling so damned guilty about being in Los Angeles at all that sleeping in a great hotel would only have made him feel lousier.

  ‘If you were planning on contacting Meganimity,’ Clare had said to him when she’d heard he was going back to LA, ‘I’d advise against it right now.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Nick had answered, ‘but why?’

  ‘Because in the last twenty-four hours or so, they and the publishers appear to have gotten wind of your problems.’ Hawkins had paused. ‘No one’s panicking, but you should be aware that you may have trouble if things get any worse.’

  ‘What do my personal problems have to do with them?’ he had wanted to know.

  ‘Come on, Nick, you’re not naïve,’ Clare pulled him up. ‘This is a children’s product. Your problems have a great deal of relevance to that, like it or not.’

  He did not like it, but in his present state of mind it seemed the least of his worries. He had been back in LA for two days now, and neither he nor the detective agency had achieved anything of significance in the search for Holly Bourne or Charlotte Taylor. He knew now that a company called Taylor, Griffin had belonged to Holly, but was no longer in operation, and he knew that both Jack Taylor and Richard Bourne were scurrying around trying to trace her too, but that was all.

  Nina wanted him home. Nick wanted, more than anything, to be home. Nina’s theory was that even if she accepted that he was right about Holly, it was clear that she had now gone to ground; which presumably indicated that she was afraid of being found out and was, therefore, more likely to back down than to risk trying any further mischief.

  ‘Anyway,’ Nina pointed out on the telephone on Saturday evening, ‘you’ve done what you wanted to do. You’ve handed the case over to a detective agency – I don’t see any reason for you to be hanging around in LA when Holly’s probably thousands of miles away by now.’

  ‘You realize that if I do come back,’ Nick said, ‘I probably won’t be home for more than a few hours before the police haul my ass in for more questioning – maybe even charge me – and then I may never be able to come home again.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Nick, you don’t know that,’ Nina snapped.

  ‘You’ve already told me Wilson called again.’

  ‘Wanting to know if you were back, that was all.’

  Nick looked around with distaste at the smoke-tinted walls of his bedroom, and was reminded of the interview room at the Hall of Justice. ‘You don’t believe that.’

  There was a short silence before she replied.

  ‘I don’t know what to believe any more, Nick.’

  She cut him off.

  He called her back less than five minutes later.

  ‘I’ll fly home first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’ Nina sounded as if she might have been crying.

  ‘I know I want to be with you and Zoë,’ he answered. ‘I know I don’t want to do any more damage to our marriage.’

  ‘What if the cops do pick you up?’ Suddenly she was uncertain.

  ‘Then you’ll have to call Chris Field again.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t trust him.’

  ‘I guess he got me this far,’ Nick said.

  ‘All right.’ There was a hint of warmth in those two words.

  ‘I’ll call you in the morning, to confirm my flight.’ Nick paused. ‘I love you, Nina.’

  ‘I love you, too, Nick.’
/>
  He put down the phone. He felt better than he had in a while. He knew it wouldn’t last, especially not once Wilson and Capelli got their teeth into him again. But right now, at least, for this short time, as he headed out of the bleak room in search of dinner, his soul felt just a few pounds lighter.

  Chapter Sixty

  Holly is standing well back in the doorway of an office building just diagonally across the street from the Mistral Inn. It’s quiet, with that kind of almost-dead feel that many downtown commercial districts assume at the weekends. People arrive at and leave Nick’s hotel, most of them getting into cabs or driving away in their cars. Few leave on foot, except those heading into Sammy’s Delicatessen on the next southwest corner.

  The swing doors behind Holly open and close, and three gossiping women come out of the office building. Typists doing overtime, or maybe cleaners. One of them glances briefly at Holly as they pass her, but she has dressed unstrikingly in khaki pants, jacket and loafers – has taken pains to make herself unobtrusive – and the woman quickly returns to the chatter and vanishes with her friends.

  Nick emerges from the Mistral Inn, wearing blue jeans and a plain white T-shirt. He stops for a moment at a coin-operated newspaper vending machine and picks up a Los Angeles Times. Even from across the street, Holly can see that he’s looking tired. Tired and lonely. In need of company.

  He tucks the newspaper under his left arm, strolls to the corner of the street, and disappears into Sammy’s.

  Holly waits another two minutes before she crosses the street and enters the Mistral Inn. ‘Moon River’ is being piped into the medium-sized lobby, its notes slipping and sliding now and again on the overused tape. There are two small clusters of people standing around, one woman, on her own, sitting on a vinyl couch, waiting, and three guests standing in line at the front desk.

  Holly doesn’t hesitate, just moves right on through to the elevators at the back of the lobby beside the closed Olde Gift Shoppe. The left-hand elevator is standing empty, its doors open. She gets in, pushes the button for the fifth floor and rides up alone. Upstairs, the corridor branches two ways. An arrow with room number listings directs her to the right.