Zoe took a moment to respond, and when she did, she spooled out her words very carefully.
"When you were in the hospital," she said, "you were … pretty out of it. You were mumbling some stuff about Janet."
"So now you don't believe me either?"
"No, I believe you. It's just, Chief Quinn was in the hospital for part of it. It might … explain why he's a little skeptical."
"I did not write that text."
"I know."
"But the police, they have their bullshit story, the same one the press has. Denny Younger, criminal mastermind. Elliott Younger, the expert marksman who bizarrely fired a shot in anger on Nora's boat and accidentally hit the gas tank. Nonsense! And making it worse, it's a madhouse around here. I can hardly go anywhere without some damn paparazzi taking my picture. I just wish …"
There was something there, something about cameras and photos, something nudging against the edge of his mind.
"What?" Zoe said.
He shrugged, dismissing the feeling as just more random anxiety. "Nothing. Did you bring Carrot?"
"No."
"Aw."
"I thought about it, but … well, the craziness you mentioned. When I came down when you were in the hospital, there were all kinds of strange people coming to the house. I kind of figured that's why you're holed up here."
"It's part of it," Gage said. "But I did fire a few rounds into the air the other day back at the house. Told the press if they set foot on my property, I'd shoot first and ask questions later. That at least kept them at the end of the driveway."
He glanced at Zoe and saw that she was smirking.
"Yeah," she said, "I read about that one on CNN. Nice bluff."
"Bluff? You really think the world would care if I shot a few paparazzi?"
"The people who work for CNN are not paparazzi."
"They are if they set foot on my driveway."
"Uh huh. So what are you going to do, just stay up here the rest of your life?"
"Why not? Good chair, good bourbon, good view. What more could I ask for?"
"Seriously."
He sighed. "I don't know. I'm just hoping the craziness dies down eventually. But it's not just the press. It's Nora's fans. They're starting to show up in droves, like this is some kind of Graceland. Florence has it worse, but it's bad enough here. I worry about that more than anything else. There are few things more dangerous than an obsessed fan." He stopped again, because that strange feeling came back. Photos. Obsession. What was it? He shook his head, looking at Zoe. "Maybe I'll move. You got a spare bedroom?"
"No, but we have a broom closet under the stairs."
"Ah! Like Harry Potter. I could be the detective who lived."
"Mmm."
"You're not warming up to this idea? I'd pay my way doing housework."
"I'll have to run it by my roommate."
"You do that. In the meantime, how long can you stay?"
* * *
She stayed the weekend.
It was a good couple of days, as good as they could be given the circumstances. She only stayed on the condition that he would promise her that, once she left, he wouldn't just return to spending his time in the turret at Alex's place, and he reluctantly did so. Even worse, he knew that when he told Zoe he would do something, he would actually do it.
The weather remained pleasant, though mostly they stayed indoors. The one time they ventured out for a walk on the beach, on a crisp Saturday morning, a gaggle of reporters and cell-phone-toting Nora West fans followed them. Even swinging his cane like a wild man, threatening to beat anybody who didn't leave them alone, did little to detour them. So Gage and Zoe played hearts and pinochle and hoped this other kind of storm would pass soon enough. Zoe, less recognizable, went to the grocery store and bought him a month's worth of food and supplies. Gage figured that would be long enough. If not, he really would move. Or kill someone.
It was good having Zoe around. Not just good. Wonderful. The problem, of course, was that when she drove away in her Corolla Sunday night, seeing those taillights disappear around the bend felt even worse than when she'd gone off to college a few weeks earlier. The emptiness, the deep pang of loneliness that opened up inside him, was so much stronger than before.
Someone must have gotten ahold of his cell phone number, because the press started calling. Then the fans. So he took the cell phone outside—it was only a few days old, a replacement for the one Elliott had taken—and shot it with the Beretta. The first bullet turned it into a blizzard of plastic and circuits, but he shot it twice more just to make sure. He drank himself to sleep that night, then felt terrible in the morning and vowed not to give in to depression again. If not for himself, then for Zoe. Don't give up hope. No, he wouldn't.
For the rest of that week, he filled out crossword puzzles, his old mainstay when he'd first moved to Barnacle Bluffs, and focused what little energy remained on projects around the house. A dripping faucet in the bathroom. A loose piece of baseboard in his bedroom. It was amazing how easy it was to fill your time if that was your goal. There was always a way to fill the time.
Then, the next weekend, he got a stroke of luck—though it was a bit macabre to call it luck. There was another shooting, a really bad one this time, at a mosque in Missouri. Fourteen dead before the shooter put a bullet through his own brain. Gage found out about it only when he walked down to the gas station late at night—surprised not to find any news trucks camped out waiting for him—and used the payphone to check in with Zoe. Terrible as the tragedy was, he admitted to her he felt some relief that at least the press would be moving on.
The fans were another matter, though even they dwindled over the coming days. He ran into an emaciated young man with dirty blond dreadlocks who hounded him at the checkout stand at Jaybee's, asking him where Nora really was, whether there was a conspiracy at the highest levels of the government, and what, exactly, she had to do with Area 51, but mostly these types just ogled him from a distance. A few determined journalists—not brave enough to come up to his drive, but still determined—accosted him when he went out for his walks, but he never answered any of them.
On a whim, one Sunday afternoon he drove to Heceta Head Lighthouse and was surprised to find it crowded with people wearing purple T-shirts adorned with Nora's face. He turned and went home before anyone noticed him. Would it ever end? He didn't want these constant reminders of his failure.
Still, when he stopped to buy some milk at the little market near his house, he also picked up the copy of People magazine that had a special section on the life of Nora West. He couldn't help himself.
He also couldn't help himself from buying the Bugle and the Oregonian, scanning for any news that the police had found clues to make them revise their theory. Had they sent divers to the wreck? No such luck. Even though the ocean was calm enough to finally conduct an underwater investigation, it turned out that the La Vie Sans Regrets had sunk in waters far too deep, at least for the kind of equipment local law enforcement had on hand. And since the police had their man, no one was all that interested in taking on the logistics of a much more complicated (read: expensive) operation.
That left Gage, late one Tuesday night in early October, over three weeks since Nora's boat exploded in front of him, paging through that People magazine for the first time. He'd bought it but then left it on his kitchen counter without touching it, afraid that if did he'd open some Pandora's box of grief. But with sleep once again proving elusive, he found himself settling into his armchair at two in the morning with the magazine in his lap hoping some words of appreciation about Nora's career might mitigate his despair, at least for a few minutes.
It didn't work. The articles were written well enough, but the portrait they painted of Nora was not the Nora he knew. It was the Nora the world wanted her to be—with flaws, certainly, but only the kind of imperfections the world could tolerate. She grew up poor, so of course she was easily seduced by wealth. She had an ego, so tha
t meant she took part in petty feuds with other musicians. She grew up without a father, so of course that meant she was always looking for a father figure in the men she dated.
Some of that may have been true, but it wasn't complicated enough, and Nora was a complicated woman, as almost all people were when you peeled back the surface layers and the quick judgments and the tallying up of this or that the world used to sum up a person's life. She may have had an ego, but she was also incredibly self-conscious about her music, preventing anyone from hearing it until she thought it was ready. On one level, she may have liked money and the pretty things money could buy, but he had no doubt, after the brief time he'd spent with her, that if she had to choose between money and music, she'd take the music in a heartbeat.
She had a way of looking at you that made you feel you were the only person in the room, but you still got the sense she was holding back part of herself.
She had a smile that was always genuine, even though she must have smiled for cameras a million times.
She made love, every time, like the world was going to end.
She was Nora. She couldn't be summed up in ten thousand words or ten million.
Still, the photos were nice—most of them either too glossy to be real, or too off guard to be fair, but a few at least hinted at the real Nora. Maybe it was just the bleariness of his eyes as fatigue finally started to take hold, but he thought he saw the essence of the real her in a few of them. Maybe some of the photographers caught glimpses of it too.
Photographers.
There it was again. Something about photos, or the people who took them. All at once the mushiness of his tired brain was gone, energized by this vague but tantalizing feeling that kept needling its way into his mind. What was it about photos? He got up and paced back and forth across the living room. There had to be a reason this kept coming back up. He paced for so long that he began to feel warm. He cracked open the window in the kitchen. The air was cool, but it was so still that he needed to stand next to the screen and breathe it in to enjoy it.
The ocean, usually a distant murmur, was so loud it could have been at the bottom of his drive. He stood there until his eyes adjusted, but even then he could not see into the forest beyond his house—it was one shapeless, dark mass.
Would she be out there?
No, he didn't want to let his mind go there. These past few weeks, he'd resisted the temptation to search for her. He knew she wasn't real. He'd always known, even when he'd let himself believe otherwise; he'd simply allowed himself the fantasy because the fantasy felt good.
Yet someone had texted from his phone while he'd been in the woods that night. And he had seen someone. He'd been afraid to go out again because he didn't know if his need for the fantasy would outweigh his need for the objective truth, but something told him he should go out now. It was a good night for it. Maybe they were watching him at this moment. Maybe, if he hurried, he could catch them.
So he did. He did it before he could convince himself otherwise, slipping on his hiking boots and his black leather jacket in a rush, grabbing a flashlight on his way out the door—a Maglite he'd bought at the Fred Meyer in Newport, one big enough to use as a weapon. His heart was pounding before he'd even closed his door behind him.
He didn't take his cane. There was so much adrenaline coursing through his body that he didn't even feel a twinge in his knee.
There was only a sliver of a moon, but it was high in a cloudless sky and shed more than enough silvery light on the fir trunks and spongy ground for him to see. He decided not to use the flashlight for now.
If someone was out there, he didn't want them to see him.
The forest usually smelled pleasant, of fir and fertile earth, but the utter stillness of the air allowed other, fouler odors to take hold, the smell of rotting wood and moldy leaves. While the air had felt pleasantly cool from within his house as he'd breathed it in through a screen, it quickly felt colder, his jacket and T-shirt no longer enough to keep him warm. Didn't matter. He wasn't going back, and it wouldn't take long for his walking to warm him up. Five minutes, maybe.
It was less than three before he heard the first sounds.
There was a rustle in the darkness off to his left, something crashing through a bush. That was followed by the patter of feet on leaves and fir needles. It sounded small, like a child, but perhaps that was because the person was trying to move stealthily.
Gage ran toward the sound. The patter of feet became a scamper. Maybe an animal? Whatever it was, he was going to see it for himself.
The person, the creature, whatever it was, scurried one way, then another. Gage chased it the best he could. Then he didn't hear it all. He turned on his Maglite and scanned the forest. No luck. He kept walking, emerging on the western parking lot of Hidden Hills Village, Ed's complex, his breath fogging in the yellow cone of light under the street lamp. He saw no one. The cars were still. A few of the apartments lit up but most of the windows were dark. He walked just far enough to see Ed's apartment, the windows dark, then turned back the way he'd come.
Dejected, he walked more slowly on his return trip. He stopped frequently, listening for sounds, and heard nothing. Maybe it had just been a big squirrel.
Oh well. He'd needed a walk. Maybe now he'd be able to get some sleep. This was what he told himself, though he was so dispirited—and embarrassed, too, for latching on to something so incredibly irrational—that he doubted sleep would be any easier than before. Now, when the excitement wore off, he'd have a throbbing knee to go along with his depression.
No.
No depression.
It was time to get on with things, one way or the other.
This was his vow as he emerged onto his driveway. Dusted by moonlight, the packed gravel resembled thousands of tiny clam shells. He trudged to his porch, his flashlight off, and only looked up when he heard a plaintive whine ahead of him.
He knew, even before he saw the source, what this whine was. He'd heard it before, a noise that had seemed annoying at first but was now the sweetest sound he could imagine. Even as his eyes adjusted, taking in the small black-and-white shape sitting outside his door, she trotted out to greet him.
Lady.
Or Lady Luck, as the dog was officially named.
Gage froze, not wanting to believe his eyes. He'd already been fooled once. What kind of trick could this be? Was she even real at all? Yet Lady dispelled this notion instantly by pressing her tiny front paws against his leg.
She was real, all right.
He bent down to her. She licked his face. On another day, it would have annoyed him, but not today. Alive! How could it be? And then, of course, everything else her arrival meant came rushing at him: Lady had been with Nora on the boat. She'd said so herself on the phone. So if Lady didn't go down with the boat …
Nora.
Nora might be alive, too.
But how? His heart pounding, Gage picked up the dog and carried her into the house. She felt the same, no major weight loss. Her coat was clean and soft. He put her on his armchair and examined her thoroughly. Her eyes were clear and bright. Though she bore no collar, this was not a dog who'd been on her own the past few weeks.
No, someone had taken care of her. Maybe Lady had never been on the boat. He'd seen Nora and Elliott, after all, not Lady. Maybe she'd jumped overboard before the explosion and swam ashore. A dog so small? Not likely. But somehow she was here. Florence was a long ways away from Barnacle Bluffs. Maybe the dog had escaped, but someone had brought her up to the city first. She probably tried Ed's apartment, then came looking for Gage. Maybe all his hypotheticals would amount to nothing and Lady's new owner was just a random person who found the dog. If Gage took a picture of Lady, and put it on posters all over town, the person might even come forward.
And, just like that, Gage realized what his mind was trying to tell him about photography.
Chapter 26
At a quarter to eight the next morning, Gage waited in
his van outside Deering Middle School.
He was fortunate it was a Monday and the school was open. A few minutes earlier the bell had rung, and the diesel-spewing buses and the parents in the overstuffed minivans, having deposited their cargo, were mostly gone, but he waited a few minutes to let the classrooms settle. Not too long, though. He'd already been parked outside for two hours, tapping his steering wheel and watching as the sun rose over the school and the surrounding houses. He'd taken Lady on three walks around the track field. He tried to take her on a fourth, but she'd curled up in the passenger seat and ignored him.
The pin oaks flanking the arched metal entryway of the school—a recent addition to an old brick structure, someone's attempt at modernizing a building that had no business being modernized—were already showing signs of fall, a few fringes of yellow and orange amidst all the bright green leaves. The weather may not change all that much on the Oregon coast, the temperature usually falling within a band of cool to slightly cooler, but the trees still changed color.
He liked that. It made him think of New York. Not that he wanted many reminders of his old city, but he didn't mind a few.
"All right," he said to Lady, "time to put on the charm. Don't go anywhere, okay?"
Lady perked up her ears. Gage almost said something else, then realized that he was talking to a dog and that he'd vowed not to be a person who talked to dogs.
He may not have slept more than a few hours the previous night, but he'd made sure that he didn't look it: a cleanly shaven face, newly washed jeans, even a tie underneath his leather jacket. He left his Beretta under the seat, of course. He also made sure to take his cane, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. In a world where school shootings had sadly become commonplace, no stranger was going to be allowed to waltz into a school without being interrogated.
Yet when he hit the buzzer and told them who he was—seeing no point in lying, since his face had been all over the news—he didn't get the third degree. Instead he got the school principal, a short man who was just about as wide as he was tall, ushering him through a crowded front office full of ogling women to his room at the end of the hall. The enormous collection of keys attached to his belt jangled with each step. He closed his office door, removed a stack of books from one of the two chairs, and gestured for Gage to sit. He did.
A Lighthouse for the Lonely Heart: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series Book 5) Page 29