For All of Her Life

by Heather Graham

  “Larry is remarried—for the... I’m not sure how many times,” Kathy pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, Larry is different. He doesn’t know how to be alone. Some people don’t.”

  “His wife is very sweet.”

  “Too sweet for him.”

  “Miles—”

  “Yeah, I know. Not nice. Larry’s all right. He’d just screw his own mother to get ahead.”

  “Derrick and Judy are still together.”

  “She probably hasn’t given him permission to leave.”

  “He dotes on her.”

  “She gives him no choice.”

  Kathy laughed. “Whoa! You are carrying around some venom there, my friend!”

  “Am I?” Miles flushed, offering her a rueful smile. “Maybe. Maybe that’s why I was so glad to come back. I want to shake a little of it off my shoulders. And then, of course, I’m anxious to play with your husband again. Ex-husband,” he amended quickly, and looked at her curiously. “Must have been murder for you to come back.”

  “Er... murder,” she agreed.

  He was silent a minute. “Jordan still thinks there was more to Keith’s death than just an accidental fire.”

  “He is my ex-husband. We haven’t kept in touch,” Kathy told him evasively.

  Miles smiled at her, then leaned back again, slipping dark sunglasses over his eyes. “You’ve been divorced nearly ten years. Neither of you has remarried. He’s dating Miss America, and you’re here with Mr. America. Amazing, if you’ll take a look. Mr. America is off playing with the younger generation, and Miss America is rather discontentedly floating in the swimming pool.”

  Kathy took a look. Jeremy was still engaged in a game with her daughters and Angel. Tara was lying on a pool float, stomach down, trailing her fingers in the water as the float moved about. Kathy looked around for Jordan. She wasn’t surprised to see him manning the large, built-in barbecue, but she was surprised to realize that Mickey Dean had arrived. He’d come as a guest in swimming trunks and a tank top. He saw her looking his way and lifted a hand bearing a potato chip to wave in acknowledgment. He smiled. She instinctively started to rise, but he shook his head in warning that it wasn’t the time or place to talk. She sank back into her chair.

  “Know what I think?” Miles asked her.

  “What?”

  “That some of us are just hopeless. Like you and Jordan.”

  “We’re not. We’re divorced.”

  “By accident, I imagine.”

  “Miles—”

  “Don’t protest with me,” he said, inclining his head in Tara’s direction. “I don’t care if she stepped out live from the centerfold of Playboy. Looks count, sure. And for some men, like Derrick, a younger woman makes them feel younger themselves. But that’s not Jordan. You fall in love with people because of the way they think, feel, laugh, smile. Because of the things on the outside as well as on the inside. Take me. I live with a nice girl, talented, kind, great. And very pretty. But half of my nights, I’ve still slept with Shelley in my dreams. Sick, huh? But I really loved her, you see.” He gazed across the pool to where Shelley was stretched out on a lounge by Judy Flanaghan. “I really loved her.” His voice grew passionate. “I loved her so much I would have done anything in the world for her, to have her.”

  Chills suddenly ripped into Kathy. Anything?

  Did that include murdering Keith, eliminating the competition?

  “There’s still time,” she suggested.

  “Maybe,” he mused. “I came here partially to convince myself that I loved someone else and was ready to settle down with her. Then I saw Shelley.”

  “And?”

  “Now I don’t know anything anymore.” He frowned, looking across the pool. Larry Haley had settled down on the lounge next to Shelley. With determined effort Miles turned purposefully from Shelley and looked at Kathy again, changing the conversation. “I hear there was some trouble here last night.”

  She shrugged.

  “You’re all right?”

  “Fine?”

  “What happened?”

  “A thug in an alley attacked me, then threw me back on the sidewalk.”

  “Crazies!”

  She hadn’t realized that Derrick Flanaghan had been close enough to hear their conversation until he stepped right into it, wandering around from behind their lounges to perch on the end of Kathy’s. He grimaced. “The world is full of them. My company did a jingle to support a new brand of peanut butter a few years ago. Next thing we knew, we had a bomb threat from some fellow who thought we were trying to undermine Annette Funicello.” He shook his head, stirring some kind of purple concoction, complete with a little Oriental umbrella, that he’d mixed up for himself behind the bar.

  “So what is this crazy after?” Miles asked.

  Derrick shrugged. “Someone who hates music?” he suggested.

  “Or...” Judy drawled, striding around to join them as well, “someone who loves music and can’t bear to let Blue Heron get back together again.”

  “Judy!” Derrick said with annoyance.

  “Oh, I’m just kidding!” she murmured, settling down across from her husband at the end of Miles’s lounge. She, too, was enjoying a purple concoction—complete with Oriental umbrella.

  “There are a lot of crazies in the world. Maybe some guy couldn’t get his own music on the air. Maybe some band lost their big publicity break when the radio stations got wind of this concert. Who knows? The point is, screw ’em—and be careful.”

  “Good advice,” Kathy agreed. She glanced toward the barbecue. Jordan was watching them. He was probably close enough to hear what was being said, but he was listening to Mickey as well. He nodded to something Mickey said, then handed him the barbecue fork and wandered over to the lounges where Kathy sat with the others.

  “Food’s done. Grab plates. We’ve got the picnic tables set up at the end by the guest house. Help yourselves.”

  “How chummy,” Judy remarked.

  “Everyone can talk to everyone else that way,” Jordan said.

  “And hear everything said by everyone.” Derrick laughed. “As we comment on the changes in us.”

  “We haven’t changed,” Miles said.

  “I have,” Derrick told them woefully. “There’s more of me.”

  Everyone laughed. As they rose one by one, Jordan beckoned across the pool to where the others sat. Everyone made up a plate of food, gathering at the picnic tables. Kathy found herself sandwiched between Jeremy and Miles, across from Jordan, Tara, and Mickey. The Flanaghans were to her left while Larry Haley and his new wife were across to the right. Shelley wound up on the other side of Mickey. The girls and Angel had decided to eat a little later, and Sally and Gerrit were still stretched out at the far end of the pool, beneath the shade of two giant palms.

  Between “Pass the ketchup, please,” and “May I have the salt,” the conversation ranged from new groups to old uncertainties, then wandered back to the evening before.

  “Kathy is probably lucky she was with Mickey and Jordan,” Vicky Sue said gravely. “Why she could have been... killed.”

  “Poor, dear Kathy!” Tara murmured.

  “I imagine I was lucky,” Kathy told Vicky Sue.

  “Ummm, And so were the rest of you, I imagine,” Mickey said. He glanced at Kathy with a shrug, then looked down the length of the table “All of you were here last night as well, weren’t you?”

  Dead silence greeted his words; then Derrick said sheepishly, “Yeah. Well, at least Judy and I were. I wanted to get my bearings in South Florida before showing up on Jordan’s doorstep. Take a deep breath, you know?”

  “I was here,” Miles admitted. “Same reason, I guess.”

  “You were!” Shelley exclaimed. Then she started to giggle. “I came in early, too. I wanted a head start on a tan. And a look around as well.”

  Mickey looked at Larry Haley, arching a brow. Larry shrugged his shoulders.

  “’Fess up down
there!” Miles called.

  “Only to Kathy! She’s the one we always gave our deep dark secrets. At least Keith always did, right Kathy?”

  She could almost feel the silence settling over them, like a blanket of cool air.

  “He needed a lot of advice,” she said quietly. She looked across the table to Jordan. “I guess he didn’t take very much of it.”

  “Well, were any of you bothered by anyone?” Mickey demanded, drawing everyone’s attention back to the original question.

  “Er... no!” Shelley said.

  Larry was shaking his head, still staring at Kathy. “We weren’t bothered. But then, I think Jordan and Kathy have always been more visible than the rest of us. I mean, think about it. Think of all the groups out there. Ardent fans can recognize lead singers, but half the time the other band members are all but invisible, right?”

  “Most people recognize all the surviving Beatles,” Mickey said with a laugh.

  “These guys weren’t exactly the Beatles,” Judy assured him.

  “They were almost as well known here at home, in the old U.S. of A.,” Mickey insisted.

  “I’m telling you, the world is full of crazies,” Derrick said with a shake of his head.

  “Crazies who apparently don’t want us getting back together again,” Jordan said, staring at Larry. He then looked up and down the table. “But you all should be aware that we might be in danger from getting back together.”

  “Maybe y’all shouldn’t get back together!” Vicky Sue said with a shiver.

  “Honey, I don’t let varmints ruin my life!” Shelley told her. “Jordan, may I have the salt again, please.”

  Jordan passed it to her. “Anyone want out?” he asked.

  There was silence around the table. Derrick cleared his throat. “You’ve got some security planned, I take it?”

  “I do,” Jordan said.

  “I think we’re all in,” Miles told him.

  “Good, I’m glad.”

  “Yeah,” Mickey said, sitting back. “And I’m sure glad none of you was bothered last night like Kathy,” he said blandly.

  “So are we,” Miles said with a laugh. He tussled Kathy’s hair, then gave her a quick hug. “We can’t lose our queen. We’re all going to have to take special care of her.”

  “Yes, we’ll just have to do that,” Tara murmured.

  “I’ll be watching out for her,” Jeremy said, slipping an arm around Kathy and staring at Tara.

  “Excuse me,” Jordan said, rising. “My throat is dry.” He strode away from the table, heading for the bar. Mickey stared at Kathy with a shrug.

  She longed to race after Jordan. Despite Jeremy’s gallant and comforting presence, and the fact that Mickey would certainly be a wonderful defender, she suddenly felt adrift on an alien sea.

  They had all been there! They had all been on South Beach last night. Any one of them could have hired thugs, paid them cash, and given them instructions on how to terrorize her.

  The various conversations seemed to blend into a buzz. She smiled, she passed things, she poured more soda for someone, and she even ate a few mouthfuls of barbecued chicken. Finally, the meal ended.

  Dusk was falling.

  Peggy brought out coffee and after dinner liqueurs. Joe played bartender, mixing up different concoctions.

  Jordan returned, and they all wound up sitting around one edge of the pool.

  Kathy noted that her mother and Gerrit had disappeared. Hmmm. Curious.

  The kids were eating by now, alone at the picnic table, laughing together.

  Kids. They were grown up. Angel seemed to be a responsible and handsome young man. Alex and Bren were both incredibly fond of him.

  People were laughing. Shelley was telling a story about a bawdy comedian who worked in Vegas. She was a good storyteller. She always had been.

  Tara excused herself, asking Jordan if he could spare her a minute; she wanted to ask him a few questions in private. They disappeared. Jeremy yawned at Kathy’s side. She whispered to him that he was free to go inside and shower and sleep whenever he chose.

  They began to split up then, Judy going to her room, Shelley wandering in to see Miles’s flute, Larry deciding to walk his wife up to their room.

  Finally, alone by the water, Kathy decided that plunging in, now that she’d have the aqua expanse all to herself, seemed a wonderful idea. She thought she’d pick up a few of the coffee cups left around the pool first, though. Peggy had additional help while there were so many people at the place, but Kathy knew she would still be working well into the night.

  She brought the dishes into the kitchen, not passing anyone, and eventually she had the pool area picked up. When she came back out through the porch, she saw that the downstairs bathroom light was on. She was about to open the door and flick it off when it went off of its own accord. She stared at the bathroom, then heard whispering from within.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Trying to announce to the world just what’s going on?”

  “You’re causing this—”

  “You should have come to my room.”

  “Right. She would have really enjoyed that.”

  “Is it her you’re worried about?”

  “Well, what are you worried about?”

  “You!”

  “You said you wanted to talk—”

  “Pulling me into the bathroom with a light on isn’t exactly the way to accomplish it!”

  “Neither was last night!”

  “What?”

  “Shh! Someone is out there.”

  “Oh, that’s just great! What are we going to do now, stay in the bathroom all night and pray that someone isn’t waiting to use the John?”

  “Shh!”

  “Ouch!”

  Kathy hesitated, unsure as to whether to confront the pair or hide and then watch what they did. She was suddenly chilled, the steel of the blade as real, as if it were against her flesh again.

  A shriek from outside the house made her swing around and race toward the sound. Her daughters were out there. Her heart in her throat, Kathy burst into the pool area again. Her hand flew to her throat and she gritted her teeth, praying for her heart to cease its desperate beating.

  It was Alex shrieking. She was doing so because Angel was about to toss her into the pool.

  He saw Kathy and, flushing, instantly set Alex down.

  “Mom!” Alex cried. “Come in the water now—it’s beautiful.”

  “I’m—I’m sure it is,” Kathy breathed out. She was blind. No, not really. She hadn’t had the opportunity to see. Her daughter and Angel were a pair. How much of a pair she didn’t know. She had no objection. She loved both Peggy and Joe, who were fine people. She wondered if Angel was afraid she wouldn’t feel that way. And she wondered if she had missed her chance to discover what was going on when she had run from the hall by the bathroom.

  Worse.

  Perhaps the pair in the bathroom now knew she had been the one standing outside, listening.

  “Mom, come in!” Alex insisted.

  “Yeah, Mom!” Bren entreated from the water.

  Kathy shrieked out herself when she was suddenly swept up from behind. Fear knifed into her, until she realized she had been plucked up by Jordan.

  Their daughters cheered as he ran, carrying her, to the very edge of the deep water, then, still holding her, plunged into the pool. She jackknifed free from him, surfacing, ready to yell at him but falling silent as she met his eyes. He shouldn’t have frightened her. He knew it.

  He didn’t want the girls to know that she had been frightened. Here. In what had once been her home.

  Treading water, Kathy thrust her hands forward, sending a wave of the crystal water over his head. As he shook it from his eyes, she dove beneath him. The pool was nine feet at its deepest, so it was easy for her to come up, grab his ankles, and drag him downward.

  Escaping wasn’t so easy.

  She had just surfaced when her own ankl
e was caught. She drew in air, then went under. He released her instantly and she surfaced again, gasping. Bren, Alex, and Angel were laughing.

  “She got you, Dad,” Alex told Jordan.

  “Ah, but I got her in return,” Jordan replied. “She can strike, but she can’t do so and walk away cleanly.” He was swimming just a few feet from her then.

  Kathy grinned. “It’s that mastery thing. Still working on me and the bagpipes, eh?”

  “Maybe Alex is right, maybe you’ve been gotten—and mastered.”

  “Is that a macho thing?” she teased.

  He shook his head, swimming closer. “After last night you need a master. Leaving the house this morning might have been damned stupid.”

  She shook her head passionately in return. “Jordan, they were all here last night. Blue Heron. Except Keith, of course, and you’re damned right, he is haunting everyone. If anyone is trying to hurt me, you, us, or Blue Heron, that person is probably right here. And, Jordan, someone was whispering in the bathroom.”

  He arched a brow. “Whispering in the bathroom? Dangerously?”

  She made a face. “No, I mean two people were in the bathroom whispering to one another. They didn’t really say anything significant, but one of them was mad because the other might be letting everyone know what was going on.”

  “Could be somebody’s just having an affair.”

  “They mentioned last night.”

  “Who the hell was it?”

  She shook her head. “One of the girls shrieked out here then—just playing—but I was afraid...” Her voice trailed away.

  “So someone in the house is dangerous.”

  “We don’t really know that.”

  “I should be sleeping with you.”

  Her heart thundered. “Jordan, I’m serious. And you have slept with me,” she reminded him in confusion.

  “No, no. I mean, you shouldn’t be alone. Sorry. Of course, you’ve got Muscleman.”

  “And you’ve got that sweet child to worry about. Has Mickey found out anything? Or should I say, have the ‘Beach’ police found out anything?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. They have a few leads on the tire slasher, but no one saw the guy who attacked you, so it’s going to be damned hard to go after him.”