Full Circle

by Shannon Hollis

  “Oh, you!” She snagged the pillow off the bed and fired it at him.

  She stripped off her sweats and T-shirt and pulled a pair of stockings out of her bag. Sitting on the window seat with the glorious view of the wetland behind her and the planes of the old house’s roof outside bouncing warmth onto her back, she pulled one stocking on.

  “Oh, bother. I’ve got a run.” She rummaged in a side pocket and found a second pair. The left toe had a hole in it, and a run was beginning there, too. Okay, on to plan B. Ditch the skirt and go with her black slacks. She had a fun little Azria flowered top that would go with them.

  She pulled the slacks on and walked past Daniel. “There is no hip thing happening here,” she told him. “See?”

  “Oh, yes, there is.” He gave her a thorough and appreciative once-over. “You can’t help—oh-oh.”

  That didn’t sound good. “What, oh-oh?” She twisted around, trying to see over her shoulder. “Are they dirty?”

  “No, but it looks as though the pressure is too much for ’em. You have a split down the back.”

  “What? These are brand new!”

  She had them off in two seconds, convinced he was teasing her, but he was right. The stitches had parted down the back of her slacks, and would have given all of Monterey a lovely view of her royal-blue undies if it hadn’t been for Daniel and his “hip thing.”

  “Good grief. I wonder when that happened? I had them on at the conference and I’m positive they were all right.”

  She hoped.

  No, someone would have said something. Never mind. On to plan C.

  “Clint will just have to make do with my trusty jeans,” she said. “I have some skirts and blouses but the shoes that go with them are meant for business lunches and cocktail parties, not tramping around on wharves and beaches.”

  Luckily she’d only worn her tailored white shirt once, and had folded it carefully. She shook it out and shrugged it on, then went to do up the buttons.

  Her fingers slid down an empty placket.

  She held both sides of the shirt taut and stared at it. “Daniel, all my buttons are gone.”

  “What?” He got up and came over to look.

  “Look. All the buttons have been snipped off this shirt. See, some of the threads are still here.”

  She looked around a little blankly, half expecting to see the buttons come rolling across the floor.

  “Wait a minute.” Daniel held up a hand and ticked off items. “Holes in both pairs of stockings. A hole in your slacks. Buttons cut off your shirt.” He reached into her suitcase and lifted out the small but efficient pile of her clothes. “Cate, you’d better check everything.”

  A cold, sick feeling made of outrage and hurt settled into her stomach as one by one she cataloged the damage.

  The stitches on one sleeve of her flowered Azria top had been picked out, leaving it hanging from the arm hole.

  The hem of her black skirt drooped.

  And what looked like a blackberry from one of their muffins had been mashed into the front of her white wraparound blouse, rendering it unwearable now and, without bleach, for the foreseeable future.

  “Daniel, all my clothes,” she said in a tone halfway between a whisper and a wail. “Everything but what I had on. Everything’s ruined.”

  He was holding her flowered top as though it were the body of a loved one. “Not ruined.”

  She stared at him. “What do you mean, not? There isn’t one thing in this suitcase I can wear!”

  “Remember what you said to me yesterday? That it must be a woman doing this because the damage can be easily fixed?” He indicated the blouse he held. “Look at this. A few seconds with a sewing machine and it’s as good as new. Same with your skirt and slacks. The stain can be bleached out, and stockings are cheap. This person could have taken a pair of shears and shredded everything in the room, but she didn’t. She just made it temporarily impossible for you to wear your clothes.”

  “Great. Kind of like the difference between harassment and murder. Neither of which is acceptable.”

  Her voice shook with anger and the inescapable sense that someone had set out to hurt her though she’d done them no harm. Someone had invaded her privacy, hunted through her things, and then taken the time to snip threads and poke holes, carefully damaging everything just enough that in some cases, such as the slacks and the skirt hem, perhaps it wouldn’t even be noticed until it was too late and Cate was out in public.

  “I’ve had enough of this.” Daniel put the blouse on the bed and called the manager, Rafael Moreno. When he arrived not sixty seconds later, Daniel showed him Cate’s clothes.

  “I want to talk to your housekeeping staff immediately,” Daniel told him in the kind of voice that made archaeology students hop to their duties with no whining or argument. “And once I’ve done that, we’re leaving and filing a complaint with the sheriff’s office.”

  Moreno looked as though he were about to weep. “The Egret Inn will of course reimburse Ms. Wells for all the damage her things have sustained,” he said. “In fact, my mother is a seamstress. If you would like to take the time, I can have your clothes repaired immediately.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Thank you, Mr. Moreno, that’s very kind.” Cate interrupted. “If she can do it while you and Daniel are interviewing the staff, then at least I’ll have a few things and won’t have to go out and spend the money to replace them.”

  It wasn’t likely that she’d find another Azria blouse here in the bird sanctuary, and it was one of her favorites, bought last year during the fall sale at Saks. If the elder Mrs. Moreno could put the sleeve back in, Cate wasn’t going to argue.

  Daniel visibly bit back what he had been going to say and watched her gather up everything that could be repaired.

  “If you like, I can also have the white blouse laundered,” Moreno offered. “Everything will be returned to you by two o’clock, you have my word.”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind.” Cate added her blouse to the pile.

  “And now I’d like to talk to your staff,” Daniel said grimly.

  “Yes, of course. There is myself, my wife, and our daughter Galina and her cousin Ana, who maintain the rooms. Our son Jose is groundskeeper.”

  A family business. Built from the ground up with hard work, elbow grease, great cooking and word of mouth. Cate began to see what damage a complaint to the local sheriff would incur here. The damage to her own belongings was insignificant in comparison—and as Daniel had said, there was nothing so bad there that the Moreno family could not repair it and make it as good as new.

  “Daniel, I don’t think it’s necessary to—” She stopped and bent down near the window seat. “Look, here’s one of my shirt buttons.” The buttons were mother-of-pearl chips and had caught the light when she’d moved. She’d thought they’d be at the bottom of her suitcase, but evidently their burglar had carried them around while she was inflicting her damage.

  Another wink of light came from the windowsill. “Look, here’s another one.”

  “What are they doing there?” Daniel took the little circle of shell and examined it.

  Cate looked out of their window, which was a dormer set in the roof. The light caught another button, lying on the shingle. “There’s one out there, too.”

  “What did she do, cut them off your shirt and then throw them out the window?”

  Cate pulled up the sash and leaned out. She looked from the button on the shingle to the roof, then craned around to look up the slope behind the dormer.

  And then she saw what was happening.

  “Daniel, it isn’t the maids that have been doing this. I bet it’s another guest. And she didn’t come through a locked door, either.” She pulled her head back in and straightened. “She’s been coming over the roof.” She looked Mr. Moreno in the eye. “I bet we’ll find our culprit in the other room with a dormer window.”

  15

  INDIANA JONES OR NOT,
Daniel had never met a roof he didn’t like.

  While Cate and the manager went to find out who was booked into the room with the matching window on the other side of the house, he simply dropped onto the warm gray shingles from theirs and went soft-footed up the east slope to the peak of the roof and over the other side.

  Yep, it could be done, and in less than thirty seconds. This was the kind of escape route that all the bad guys took in old movies and that had fallen out of use now that windows in hotels and office buildings were no longer designed to open.

  Their target’s room was empty, and while he waited, he surveyed the world from this unusual vantage point. Cars went past on the highway half a mile away, creating a susurration similar to the wash of the waves on the beach. Directly below, a young man came out the back door with a bundle of clothes in a tote bag, a familiar flowered blouse on top. He got into an ancient Datsun and accelerated down the driveway like a man on a mission.

  A sound in the room behind him made Daniel turn. Through the glass, he watched Moreno let Cate in, and she slid up the sash for him. He swung himself into a room very similar to their own, with the bed neatly made up and fresh towels folded in fluffy white bundles in the bathroom.

  “She checked out this morning, didn’t she?” he said.

  Moreno nodded. “The party was registered as Admiral and Mrs. Baldwin, but only Mrs. Baldwin checked in two nights ago. She said her husband had been detained at Moffett Field and she was to meet him in San Diego.”

  “An admiral’s wife?” Cate had been prowling the edges of the room, no doubt looking for the rest of her buttons, but the carpets had been vacuumed and everything already wiped down by either Galina or Ana. “That doesn’t sound like the kind of person who’d be climbing over roofs and cutting up people’s clothes.”

  “I doubt she was an admiral’s wife and she probably wasn’t going to San Diego,” Daniel said. “It looks as though you were right, Cate. A crazed fan. An anonymous loony. But she’s gone now, so she probably got her ya-yas out on your stuff and that’s the end of it.”

  “Does this mean you will be staying with us tonight as planned?” Mr. Moreno said, hope in his eyes.

  Daniel glanced at Cate and saw the answer. “I’m afraid not, Mr. Moreno.”

  How could any woman feel safe in the inn after an invasion like this? Granted, it wasn’t as if they’d been mugged and left for dead. But the precise malice and deliberate damage, aimed specifically at Cate, creeped even him out, and with everything he’d seen, that was hard to do.

  Moreno’s face fell with disappointment, and Cate stepped forward and laid a gentle hand on his arm. “But we certainly won’t be going to the police. The woman didn’t fill out the space for a license plate on the registration form, and if the name is a fake, there’s nothing we could tell them anyway.”

  “But we have lost your trust,” Moreno said. And clearly cared about it. Daniel had to admire the guy.

  “Not our trust. We’re a little shaken up, but you’ve gone above and beyond to make things right,” he said. “I was angry earlier, and I apologize. There’s nothing we can learn here, but while we wait for Cate’s clothes to come back I’d like to talk to your daughter or your niece, whichever one dossed down this room.”

  Moreno nodded and went out, and in a moment they heard him call downstairs in Spanish. A young woman of about twenty, wearing her thick, glossy hair in a French braid, joined them a couple of minutes later.

  “I’m Galina,” she said, shaking hands with him and Cate. “Everyone’s talking about what happened. I’m so sorry.”

  “I am, too. Can you tell us if you noticed anything unusual when you cleaned this room this morning?”

  Galina’s brown eyes were thoughtful as she gazed around the room, as if visualizing it the way it had been earlier. “The lady was out all day, and when she was here, she took her meals in her room. I didn’t notice anything different about her—lots of people come here to get away, even from other people in the dining room.”

  “What did she look like?” Cate asked.

  Galina shrugged. “Tall, blond. A Norteamericano complexion—you know, doesn’t take the sun well. Her nose was peeling and so were her earlobes. A good advertisement for sunblock, if you ask me.”

  “It also could describe a thousand women here on vacation from cooler places,” Daniel pointed out.

  “Perhaps a clue could be found in what she left behind in the trash,” Mr. Moreno suggested. “Did you look?”

  “No, I didn’t even think of it.” Galina crossed to the door. “I’ve only done her room so far, so the skip won’t have much in it. Back in a sec.”

  There wasn’t much any of them could do while they waited. Daniel took Cate’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Her fingers were cold and her mouth was tense.

  They were definitely pulling out of here and checking in to someplace that had security cameras and key cards. No more old-fashioned, romantic ambience for him, thank you very much.

  Galina was back in five minutes carrying a small white garbage bag. She turned its contents out onto the mirrored tray in the bathroom that had held a selection of shampoo and soaps. Daniel looked over Cate’s shoulder. Two tissues, an empty lipstick, a few hairs of a color that could be anything from brown to auburn…and a bottle of wash-in hair coloring in a shade called Platinum Ash.

  “Great,” Cate said. “She wasn’t even a blonde. So the only true thing we know about her is that her nose and earlobes are sunburned.” Cate glanced at Daniel. “I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t embarrass ourselves down at the sheriff’s department. Hey, what’s that?” Several small objects had clattered from Galina’s hand onto the tray. “There’s the rest of my buttons.”

  “At least she’s not totally psycho.” At Cate’s inquiring look, Daniel went on, “You know, keeping these for a trophy.”

  “Is this woman dangerous?” Galina wanted to know.

  Daniel shook his head. “I doubt it. On the nutso continuum, she’s pretty mild. Considerate. Tidy, even, taking the buttons with her instead of throwing them around the room.”

  “If we had to have a stalker, it’s nice that she’s considerate.” Cate’s tone was slightly less chilly than, say, the wind off the polar ice cap. “Thank you, Mr. Moreno, Galina, for helping us with this. Do you think you might call over to your mother and see where she is with the repairs?”

  “If you give me the buttons, I will take them to her and inquire personally.”

  While Mr. Moreno hustled off and Galina tidied up the unknown woman’s room a second time, Daniel took Cate across the landing and down the hall to their own room. Once the door was firmly closed, Cate turned and he saw that the tension inside her was about to snap.

  “Is this normal for you?” she asked, her lips tight and her arms crossed over her chest. “Does this kind of thing happen so often that you can make jokes about it?”

  Jokes? “Cate, your estimation of this person yesterday was correct and I was just emphasizing that. She’s not only considerate in her attention-getting destructive behavior, she’s tidy.”

  “You should be the one on CSI. The only people giving me any real help here are Galina and Mr. Moreno’s mother.”

  He squelched the hurt before it could ignite his temper and spoke in a tone of reasonable calm. “It’s my nature to make up theories. I know they don’t help, but they give me the illusion that I have some control.”

  The tightly crossed arms loosened and she pushed her hair behind her ears with both hands. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” She sat on the neatly made bed and stared glumly at her empty suitcase. “I hate not having control.”

  It was probably safe to sit beside her. He put an arm around her shoulders. “Your things will be as good as new—or better, if Mr. Moreno has anything to say about it. The nutcase is gone and not likely to come back. We’ll get out of here and head up to Oakland and find a big, anonymous hotel where even we won’t be able to find our room. How does t
hat sound?”

  A smile flickered on her mouth and he breathed again. He hated the feeling of not being in control himself, and what he hated even more was the fact that he hadn’t been able to protect Cate—or even her clothes—from the fictitious Mrs. Baldwin. He hadn’t even known there was a threat, and when Cate had offered a theory, he’d shot it down without giving it a thought.

  So much for the modern, liberated man.

  “You haven’t answered me.” Cate took a deep breath and straightened, and Daniel yanked himself out of his depressing thoughts.

  “Sorry. What was your question?”

  “Whether this was normal for you.”

  He huffed a soundless laugh. “Hardly. Oh, I get notes and little gifts at the odd book signing, and my assistant has to deal with some non-business e-mail at school, but that’s about the extent of it. I’ve never had a stalker before.” An idea occurred to him. “Or maybe it’s not even my stalker. Maybe she was yours. Ticked anybody off lately?”

  She drew her chin in and stared at him. “Me? Nobody knows I exist, and thank God for that. You’re the one charming everyone’s socks off on national television.”

  “And for this I get a stalker.”

  “Clearly she’s yours and not mine. She didn’t harm you in any way. In fact, the rose was probably some kind of conciliatory gesture—an apology to you before she went to work to scare me off.”

  “Which didn’t happen.”

  Cate was silent, and the breeze coming in through the still-open window blew cold on his skin.

  “CATE?”

  Her emotions were such a mixed-up brew of anger, fear, desire and need that all Cate wanted to do was to throw herself into Daniel’s arms and cry.

  She was sick and tired of always having to be the strong one, of always being the leader—of classes, of symposia, even of her damn book group. Sure, she liked to be in control, but didn’t everyone like to have that sense that their hand was on the steering wheel of their own life? Cate was just plain tired of driving alone. She wanted to climb into Daniel’s 1968 Camaro and have nothing more to think about than what the wind was doing to her hair.