RiverTime

by Rae Renzi

  Chapter Forty

  Casey holed up in Ditsy’s guestroom the next day to read a novel, the best escape from the disjointed jumble of her life. In books everything eventually came clear, and if you were in a hurry there was always the last page. If only she could flip forward in her current situation, see how it was all going to end…

  Eventually Casey shuffled into the adjoining bathroom and drew a steamy tub of water. A quick snoop through the cabinet yielded a bottle of lavender-scented bath oil. She dumped in a generous dollop, shed her wrinkled clothing and gingerly lowered her battered body into the bathtub. Sliding into the warm water up to her neck, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift. She hoped all the free-floating odd bits of information in her mind would find their way into some sort of pattern to shed light on why she was attacked.

  Her secretary hadn’t come into work the day before she left for L.A.—was that significant? How about those weird emails and Reed’s as-yet-unexplained and completely out-of-character behavior—were they related? Or the sudden appearance of Jack’s wife at the conference?

  It was easy to question anything unexpected. Of course, when traveling, quite a lot might be unexpected. Everything related to Jack had been unexpected, except, perhaps, how she felt about him.

  She sighed and swished her hands through the water to liberate more fragrance. Sorting through the facts seemed an impossible task. On the other hand, a few items on her list of oddities happened right here in the middle of her usual routine. If she focused on them, maybe she’d get somewhere.

  She tipped her head back until it was submerged in the water and let her hair swirl around her head like a mermaid. A deranged mermaid, she amended, as she tried to work her fingers through the tangles.

  Now, Reed—what was up with him? His behavior on the night her brakes gave out had been odd, though in a seemingly good way. He’d been more attentive, concerned, interested than he’d ever been since they were married. His attitude toward her trip to L.A. had been inconsistent, as he’d first discouraged her from going then, just before she left, encouraged her to stay in L.A. longer to do some research. Finally, and the biggie, he’d not given her the least inkling he planned to leave his job. Had he wanted her out of the way?

  From reading mysteries she knew spouses were prime suspects in cases of attempted murder. But in her wildest imaginings she couldn’t picture Reed trying to hurt her. More to the point, she couldn’t think of a reason he’d want to.

  Casey emerged from the bath pink and restored. She didn’t have any better notion of what was behind the attack on her, or why Reed was gone, but it was only a matter of searching things out. Quickly she toweled dry and got dressed. Then she plunked down on the bed and called Reed’s cell for the fifth time.

  This time he answered. “Where are you?” Casey asked. “Are you in Baltimore?”

  “I’m…where are you?”

  “I went home. You weren’t there. I called your cell phone. I called your office. What the hell is going on, Reed?”

  “We need to talk, Casey.”

  “I know, Reed. That’s why I called you. That’s why I’ve been calling you.”

  “I had to leave D.C.—”

  “Why?”

  Reed hesitated. “It was… Listen, we’ll talk about it later. I’ll come home tomorrow.”

  So he was in Baltimore or close by. Maybe the Tabors’ cabin. At least he wasn’t in Darfur, or Brazil, or some other incomprehensible place.

  “I’ll be at Ditsy’s. I can’t be alone right now,” Casey said.

  There was another long and heavy silence on the phone. “Fine. That’s fine. I’ll be back tomorrow evening.”

  Casey hung up the phone, no more enlightened than she had been. But she knew one thing—Reed was up to something.

  She found Ditsy in the kitchen picking up a tray loaded with snacks and two glasses of wine. “Good timing. Open the door—it’s lovely outside.”

  Late afternoon sun dappled the brick patio through zephyr-stirred leaves. In spite of Reed’s shenanigans, distance from the scene of her disaster had improved Casey’s state of mind and sparked her interest in more immediate concerns, like food. She poked at the snack tray after Ditsy placed it on the teak deck table.

  “No chocolate?”

  Ditsy shot her a disparaging glance over her sequined sunglasses. Her hair billowed around her face, creating the illusion of flames dancing around her head. “Basket,” she said. Nitwit, she implied.

  Casey lifted the lid of a small tortilla basket to find an assortment of truffles. She offered one to Ditsy, and chose one for herself.

  They had a moment of reverent silence while savoring the chocolate.

  “Linnaeus named the cocoa tree Theobroma cacao. It means ‘food of the gods’ in Greek.”

  “No arguments here.” Ditsy licked her fingers. “So, what’s Nocona?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Delicious.”

  “That’s a given.”

  “Chocolate buttercream with a hint of spice—cinnamon—wrapped in semi-sweet chocolate ganache and dipped in bittersweet chocolate.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because, you know how ganache is the texture of fudge—not quite as soft as buttercream?”

  “Not as melt-in-your-mouth-y.”

  “Well, Nocona on first sight seemed kind of hard and tough, but—”

  “Dits, he is hard and tough, all of them are—”

  “—but then you find that on the inside, he’s maybe not quite so hard, and finally, when you get to know him, you realize he has a soft and melty center.”

  “And the spicy bit?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Enough said.”

  “Now, Jack?”

  “I don’t want to think about Jack.”

  “But if you did…?”

  Casey sighed loudly in faint protest. “I’ve revised my initial impression—”

  “Which was?”

  “Chocolate-covered coffee bean. Burnt.”

  “I don’t get that at all.”

  “You didn’t find yourself half-drowned, trying to save his life against his will, and ending up stranded with him in the wilderness.”

  “More’s the pity. And now?”

  “Okay.” Casey leaned back in her seat. “How about coffee buttercream wrapped in hazelnut ganache, dipped in bittersweet chocolate with a purely decorative swirl of white chocolate on top? I think that captures his complexity.”

  Ditsy considered. “Coffee-cognac buttercream, and all the rest. He does have that intoxicating effect, along with the edginess. What do we think about Justin?”

  “Let’s see. How about same as Nocona, only chocolate-peppermint buttercream. Kind of refreshing and bright.”

  “Sprinkled with nuts,” Ditsy added.

  “And Reed?”

  “Peanut M&Ms.”

  “In a Godiva box.”

  They chattered on as the evening overtook the day, acting as if this were any other day. When the wine and the sunlight had dwindled, each leaving a slight glow, Ditsy slapped her hands on her thighs. “Dinner time. Italian or French?”

  Casey glanced at her friend. “You’re cooking?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Gourmet-a-Go-Go exists for people like me. Italian, French or Turkish?”

  “Turkish.”

  “Right-o. Flip on the news, would you, while I slave in the kitchen for a couple of seconds.”

  Casey wandered into the living room, turned on the television and scooped up the bag of her unread mail. Her mind loped around in circles as she ripped open envelopes, glanced at them, then tossed them into a paper bag for recycling. She’d reduced the pile to a mere handful when she heard the name Dylan Raines.

  Her heart jumped like a rabbit.

  “Why does this have to be so hard? I need him out—O-U-T—of my life.” She snatched up the remote and aimed it at the television screen to flip it off, but when the image on the screen hit her brain, her ha
nd dropped lifelessly into her lap.

  The screen displayed the charred remains of a private jet. The newscaster intoned gravely, “This video shows film star Dylan Raines’s private jet. The airplane exploded at nine-fifteen this morning, just as the actor was scheduled to take off. Authorities haven’t released any information about casualties or survivors. Inside sources report the explosion may have been the result of a bomb.”

  “No,” Casey whispered. She clapped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, desperate to block out the hateful words. Any more talk, any sound at all, and she’d shatter like a window hit by a brick.

  The remote was removed from her lap and the sound disappeared.

  “Casey…are you okay? No, sorry, stupid question. How can you be?” Ditsy slid to the floor and put her arm around her. “Oh, I’m so dreadfully sorry.”

  Casey wrapped her arms around her middle and rocked back and forth. Fear squeezed her chest until her breath came in gasps. Then it crawled into her head, freezing her thoughts like a paralytic poison.

  “No,” she rasped. “It can’t be right. I would have known. I would have known, Ditsy. I would have known, right?” She heard the pleading in her voice, and that was disturbing.

  Ditsy held Casey close and said nothing at all, and that was terrifying.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Reed paced a perfect square on the polished wood floor of the kitchen while he waited for the coffee to brew. One-two, turn. One-two, turn. The smell of the coffee wasn’t tempting—it was a mass-market brand, grown for quantity, not quality—but he needed the caffeine to get him through his late-afternoon slump. He had planning to do.

  He’d driven to his family’s cabin in the country after speaking to his parents. They’d been useful but, as usual, they had strong ideas about how he should run his life. He needed time alone to think.

  He was walking a tightrope—this much he knew. His routine call to Senator Trahaney to remind him of the vote on the Child Runaway Protection Bill had ended up far from routine. The usually genial senator had resisted. When Reed had blandly mentioned that Senator Carr would be disappointed if he didn’t support the bill, Trahaney had erupted. “You tell that bloodsucking bitch I’ve had just about enough. This can’t go on forever. You tell her—” At that point, he’d seemed to get a grip. There was a long pause, a long sigh, then he’d said, “My apologies, son. It’s been a trying day. Tell the senator she can count on my vote.”

  The incident had sharpened Reed’s suspicions that there were dark currents around Patricia Carr. Trahaney’s response, coupled with that little address book in Patricia’s desk… Reed thought she was treading deep water, maybe with illegal campaign funds. He needed to get out. When she’d returned from her trip to New York, he’d “regretfully” tendered his resignation—within hearing of the office staff—telling the senator that his mother was very ill, and he was needed at home for the foreseeable future.

  It hadn’t occurred to him to call the cabin’s caretaker, so when he arrived, tired and hungry and jagged from too much coffee, he’d found the house dark and stuffy and empty of food. The water heater hadn’t been turned on, and the beds were unmade. The caretaker had come running down the drive, shotgun in hand, certain that someone was breaking in. Both of them were cranky by the time Reed sent him away. Reed had settled for a tepid shower and a dinner of peanut butter and crackers. Neither had improved his temper.

  The morning hadn’t been much better. Reed eventually managed to bully the caretaker into readying the lodge for a longish stay, but at the cost of a thundering headache. A run through the countryside had helped clear his head, and a trip into town for something that resembled a real meal had almost restored his equilibrium.

  Then Casey had called.

  The coffee machine coughed a couple times, spluttered rudely and went silent. Reed poured the bitter brew into a cup, cut it with milk and trudged out to the back deck.

  The rolling wave of still-green grass against the burgeoning colors of fall should have been soothing, but he was past that. All he could think about was the edge in Casey’s voice and what it might mean. She was not herself. She’d sounded tense and impatient. Had she found out about his involvement with Patricia Carr? Maybe she was just tired of being ignored. Maybe his wakeup call had come too late.

  No. It wasn’t too late yet. He could make amends, convince her of his sincerity, acknowledge his stupidity. An easy sell, as it was the stinging truth.

  Leverage, that was what he needed. Something to keep Casey hooked in until things settled down. He couldn’t manage two disasters at once. He sipped his coffee and watched the clouds roll across the sky. A mockingbird fluttered onto the top of the power line pole and began a raucous strain that more closely resembled an alarm clock than a melody.

  Casey’s weakness was her mother. The poor woman had been battered by life, and Casey’s basic instinct was to protect her from further blows. That could be used, if it came to that.

  He ran his fingers along edge of the Adirondack chair and, finding a tiny crack, worried the wood until a sliver broke loose.

  He replayed the conversation with Casey in his mind. Her voice had sounded strained, taut, too close to the edge… He’d be stupid not to heed that warning and he definitely didn’t need any more tallies in the Stupid column.

  God, he hated to do it but, really, he had no choice. She’d given him no choice. Anyway, if everything went the way it should, it was only temporary.

  He pulled out his cell phone and punched at the keys. “Give me Jackson-Weber Realty please.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Casey huddled in bed under the blankets. Everything looked gray, felt gray, sounded gray. Eyes open, eyes closed—it didn’t matter. Everything was washed out, neutral, nothingness.

  A dull roaring like a mental hurricane filled her head, took up all the space, pressed hard against the machinery of her mind, immobilizing it. Here in her gray cave she couldn’t move or think but she was safe. Out there, out in the light, in the world, something waited for her, something vicious and vile with sharp, gnashing teeth, skulking on the edge of her awareness with deadly patience, waiting to pounce and rip out her heart. She curled up and pulled the blankets tighter, burrowing deeper into her refuge.

  “Casey! Casey!”

  Someone shook her shoulder roughly.

  “Casey, he’s okay!”

  The words barely penetrated the fog. Casey opened her eyes and shifted, stared hard into the gray, trying to decide if the words she’d heard were in her mind, the result of a delusion or a dream.

  Suddenly the covers were ripped back. She winced against the brightness.

  Ditsy stood over her, thrusting a phone at her. “Here. It’s Jack.”

  Casey sat up, took the phone, gingerly held it to her ear. “Jack?” She said this more to Ditsy than into the phone. She didn’t trust the phone.

  Jack answered. “Casey. Yes. It’s me. I’m fine. No one was on the plane.”

  The sound of his voice knocked the breath out of her. She clutched the phone with both hands, as if it were a life raft. “You’re not dead.”

  His throaty chuckle was soft as a pillow. “No. I’m pretty much alive. And I have something to tell you. Things have changed.” His voice sounded hopeful, cheerful.

  Casey wanted to crawl down the phone and into his arms. “Did you find out who—”

  “No. Not yet, but we’ve made some progress and there’s something I need to show you related to that. But that’s not what I want to tell you.”

  “What? What is it? Tell me.” Casey felt an urgency to know everything Jack was thinking or feeling. Never again, her heart vowed, would she push him out of her life.

  “It’s about us.”

  Casey closed her eyes, savoring the sweet, sweet words. “Us.”

  “Yeah. Us. I’ll tell you when I get there.”

  Casey’s eyes popped open. “You’re coming here? When? How? Why?”

  He
laughed again, music on a rainy day. “Yes. Tomorrow. By commercial airline. Because I love you.”

  As he’d promised, Reed arrived late in the afternoon. Casey answered Ditsy’s door. She’d been floating on air since speaking with Jack, but at the sight of her husband her feet hit the ground. She would have to tell him about Jack.

  “My God, Casey! What happened?”

  Casey was confused for a second—he couldn’t know about Jack, not yet. Then she remembered her face. She’d avoided looking in mirrors for the last couple of days. Ditsy, bless her, hadn’t dwelled upon the surface damage.

  Casey flicked her eyes toward the hallway mirror. The swelling had subsided but her eyes and the side of her face were still puffy, giving her a lopsided look. The bruises all over her face and arms, impressively repulsive, were entering the blue-to-green stage.

  “Yuck. I do look wretched, don’t I?” She grinned at Reed. “I still have all my teeth, though.”

  Reed wasn’t amused. Anxiety laced his words. “What happened? A car accident?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  “Casey, please.”

  Ditsy chimed in from the hallway. “Yes, it was a car. No, it was definitely not an accident. She was attacked, and with every appearance of malicious forethought.”

  A look of shock crossed Reed’s face. His brow creased and he spoke slowly, as if approaching a snake. “Do you know who did it? Or why?”

  “Not yet. But we may soon.”

  Ditsy led the way into her comfortable living room, waved vaguely at the sofa and flopped into an easy chair. Casey and Ditsy gave Reed an edited story of the attack. They’d decided ahead of time to leave any mention of Jack out of it for the moment.

  “So, when you were attacked, you were on your way to Celestial Productions?”

  “Yes. Because of the strange emails I got—remember? I told you about them—I thought someone was trying to point me in a direction useful for my research.”

  Reed didn’t respond immediately. He just sat and looked over Casey’s shoulder for a few moments. When he finally spoke, he didn’t sound happy. “Someone was trying to point you in a direction, but it had nothing to do with your research. I sent them.”