Mariah shook her head. “I’ll handle it. We’ll need to discuss … things.”
Rory cupped her cheek, stroked her skin with his thumb, and stepped back to let her go. “After you see him, call me. Instead of this hiding out, let’s turn the tables and go someplace the columns will see us together.”
Buoyed by Rory’s wanting to be seen in public with her, she pulled out of his garage. However, as she searched the Saturday afternoon traffic for a news van, she felt the weight of trouble once more descend. She, her dad, and Tom might have evaded the media’s questions for a day, but the Fourth Estate would not lose their taste for blood overnight.
Sure enough, as she turned off Vallejo onto Mason she noticed a dark sedan distinguished by a flaking paint job on the hood pull in behind her. Something in the way the driver looked at her vehicle, an intentness, put her on guard. Perhaps he was a reporter, out cruising without a satellite crew. On the other hand, Tom’s suspicions about the accident came back to haunt her.
A narrow-faced man in his late twenties or early thirties, she inventoried, dark hair pulled back from his face as though he wore a ponytail. The car was an older model Taurus.
She sped up, changed lanes, and took the next turn onto Broadway. He followed.
Without signaling, she made another turn onto Stockton and headed into Chinatown. This time the guy, if he were pursuing her, missed it.
In the heart of the Oriental quarter, slow traffic caught Mariah. Half a dozen times, she braked for jaywalking pedestrians. Horns honked, and fists were raised. Forced to a crawl, she lowered her window to cool her heated cheeks. Succulent aromas of seafood and rich sauces blended with salt air and car exhaust. Souvenir shops displayed porcelain tea sets and exquisite paper lanterns. Open-air markets sold live tilapia, shellfish on ice, and whole ducks suspended by their feet. It was difficult to believe she could be followed through this bustle, but she kept glancing behind her.
Finally, she managed to cut around several blocks. Wondering now if she’d imagined the whole thing, she zigzagged a few more times. When a check of her rearview mirror said she was clear, she turned south toward Stonestown.
As she drew closer to her father’s, she wasn’t feeling as good about her stalwart stand that she and Rory were going to be together. Rather, a wave of guilt lapped at her. She could have called home last night, tried to smooth things over, instead of shopping, dining, and hot tubbing. Parking in the drive, she thought how difficult facing him was going to be, her only excuse that she’d been under Rory’s spell when she made that quick, cold call.
Straightening her shoulders, she got out of her car. A peek in the garage window told her Dad’s wasn’t there. With a frown, she checked the time and found it half past ten. On the way to the front door, she plucked the Friday and Saturday Chronicles from under the arborvitae.
Inside, the high-pitched wail of the security system greeted her. She silenced it by entering the date of John’s marriage to Catharine. The quiet sense of the house, dust motes floating, confirmed that she was alone.
Without pausing to look at the chessboard in the entry, Mariah went into the kitchen, lifted the phone and dialed. Cellular customer Grant was still out of range. No one home at Tom and Wendy’s. She tried John’s direct number at Grant Development, Tom’s line, and the one in the conference room. When there was no answer, a renewed prickle of unease touched her spine.
She went to the sink and drew a glass of water. The ruby Rory had given her sparkled in the sun coming through the east window over the sink. Not an hour since she’d seen him, and already she felt an aching void. This rising certainty that something had gone wrong with Dad compounded it. No one could have reached her, for she’d put her purse and phone in Rory’s trunk when they went sailing.
She called Tom Barrett’s cell. He answered on the second ring, sounding worse than he had at the funeral. “Where’ve you been, Mariah? I tried to call.”
“My phone wasn’t on.”
“I knew you’d want me to find you,” he plowed on. “I even called Kiki Campbell last night and got Rory’s cell number.”
The sound of the ringing phone, so out of place in the forest darkness, returned to jar her. “You called last night?”
“Around ten.”
Her creeping dread intensified. “Where are you?”
“Cal State Med Center, out smoking in the courtyard.”
Her heart a trip hammer, her palm suddenly slick on the phone receiver, she heard her voice speak with surprising clarity. “Something’s happened to Dad.”
“God, Mariah, an hour after he talked to you yesterday, he had a heart attack.”
As she barreled down Highway 1 past the Stonestown Galleria, Mariah deserved a dozen speeding tickets. She tried to keep her mind on driving, but an image of her father in a coffin floated between her and the rest of the world.
Tom waited for her outside the closed double doors of the ICU, his expression grave. “He’s all right,” she insisted.
“He’s in surgery. A few minutes ago he took a turn for the worse, and they decided to crack his chest.”
Taking her arm, Tom guided her to a waiting room where families sat vigil amid scattered newspapers and foam take-out boxes.
Mariah sank into a chair. “This isn’t right. People have heart attacks and come home the next morning. They use that balloon thing to clear out your arteries.”
Tom didn’t answer.
Once at home, she’d turned on a medical TV show as a surgeon dumped a load of ice onto a human heart to stop it. With the chest covered in plastic sheeting and the ribs pulled apart, it hadn’t seemed to be happening to a real person. Yet, beyond those swinging doors, the chest she’d been cradled against as a little girl lay cleaved in two. The arms that had swung her high bore taped-in needles. His lips lay slack, those that had smiled at her ten thousand times. Each time she’d taken for granted ten thousand more.
Hours passed. She kept upright through determination and vending machine caffeine. Tom went periodically to join the banished smokers outside, wreaths of cigarette smoke surrounding the joyless gathering. This was too much for him … and for her. First Charley, and now this.
Dad had to live.
Always when they were parted, she had a feeling he was out there somewhere, asleep or awake. Now, with his heart stopped, or God forbid, because the doctors had lost the battle, thinking of him felt like sending a message into the void.
Day crept into evening. Each time Mariah consulted her watch, she became more convinced it was running backward. The ruby from Carmel began to remind her of blood.
She pulled off the ring and put it in her purse.
The silence between her and Tom was by now deafening. Though neither spoke of Rory, she felt like a pariah. If there were a higher power that lent an ear to human suffering or some pattern to fate, then she must make a bargain before her father was taken.
“Let him stay here,” she thought with bowed head. “If he lives, I promise I’ll never see Rory again.” Painful the penance might be, but not too great a price to pay.
At half past ten, a slight, dark-haired doctor with liquid eyes came in wearing blood-spattered greens. He went to Tom, who introduced Dr. Patel.
“Your father is in recovery,” the doctor said. “For the moment, he’s critical and I won’t mince words. If he makes it though the next few days, he’ll have a long rehabilitation ahead.”
With a sidelong glance at Tom, she had to ask. “Can you tell me what might have brought on his attack?”
“If I could tell you, I’d be a god. A heavy meal, a hormone fluctuation …”
“Anger?” Mariah asked.
Dr. Patel smiled gently beneath his silky dark moustache. “Every family member I meet asks, but who knows what happened last night to put things over the edge? All I can tell you is his arteries did not get plugged overnight.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
The doctor left her with Tom, who wiped his te
ar-stained cheeks and turned to her. “I know why you were asking.”
“Please,” she whispered.
He shook his shaggy head, rebuke in his normally smiling blue eyes. “Girl, I don’t know what you were thinking … a Campbell.”
Hot tears welled. Now that Dad had come through surgery she must make good on her pact with fate. “It was a terrible mistake,” she told Tom. “I won’t see Rory again.”
Late Sunday night Mariah let herself into her apartment, weighted with exhaustion. She had only felt able to leave the hospital because her father remained unconscious. A red light blinked on her answering machine, reminding her that Rory had asked her to call yesterday; he’d planned on dinner. Now, it seemed as though she’d had that conversation in an alternate universe.
Unable to bear hearing his voice if he had called, she walked into her bedroom and closed the door.
When her head finally rested on the pillow, she expected to close her eyes and see horrific images of surgery. Instead, she saw the man she’d called “Daddy” when she was small.
Even then, his hair was prematurely salt and pepper, giving him a distinguished look that made her proud of him at grade school functions. In the evenings after homework, they played Chinese checkers, or in summer, badminton on the back lawn. When she reached the seventh grade, he taught her chess.
In high school, she won tournaments, finding most opponents no challenge after playing her father. In addition to the board at home in his hall, since she was at Grant Development he’d set up a game in his office so she could go in, see what move he’d made, and counter. Their first match had gone on for weeks when both were caught up in projects.
But it wasn’t about games, or their mutual love for building. After Catharine died, it had been the two of them against the universe.
If he died, how could she go on?
Once more, she regretted her defiant impulse in flaunting her renewed relationship with Rory. Dad had only her best interests in mind when he warned against Davis Campbell’s son.
Yet, closing her eyes, she saw Rory at his boat’s helm, smiling while spray wet his cheeks and curled his dark hair. His voice echoed in her head.
When I heard about the accident, I ran through the streets like a wild man … I never bought you flowers when you deserved a garden. I never gave you a ring.
Her hands made fists on the sheets.
Across her bedroom, the glow of a streetlight illuminated the empty jeweler’s box the ruby ring had come in. She got out of bed and found her purse, rescued the ring from rubbing against dimes and quarters, and placed it on the velvet cushion. Even as she closed the lid, she wanted to slide the gold band on her finger where Rory had placed it.
Yesterday, he had said it wasn’t over.
Getting back in bed, she envisioned them together, lying close with his bare chest pressed to her back. He would come to her if he knew what happened; hold her so she wouldn’t feel alone.
But she must not think of breaking her bargain with fate. Her father must wake, and when he did, how could she tell him she’d laughed when Rory threw his cell phone in the creek?
CHAPTER 8
On the Monday morning after her father’s surgery, Mariah entered the Grant conference room for the weekly meeting. She wore a black pants suit for the appearance of authority and had pulled her hair back as severely as she could manage.
Word about John’s illness had traveled through the senior staff over the weekend. Public relations director April Perry had toned down her usually bright clothing, appearing in gray wool gabardine. Her helmet of reddish hair remained motionless when she moved. Corpulent chief counsel Ed Snowden wore a weary expression. Arnold Benton looked shell-shocked, making him seem more beige than usual.
What had her father seen in him, to put him in charge of the company finances?
Tom Barrett came in with beads of perspiration on his forehead as though he’d rushed to arrive on time. Expecting his effort meant he would chair the meeting, Mariah was surprised to see him sink into a chair and defer to her.
When she moved to the head of the table, Arnold sat straighter and bristled.
Keeping things simple, she made sure all projects were moving forward, but accepted and encouraged a slower pace this week. “Let everyone in your departments know we’ll keep them up to the minute on John’s condition. And thank them for how well they’ve avoided the press since the accident.”
The team murmured assent.
Looking around at them, Mariah said, “What can anyone here tell me about a missing workman from the Grant Plaza site? I’ve heard a guy went AWOL after the accident.”
Arnold Benton glared at her. “Conspiracy theories?”
Mariah’s heartbeat accelerated. How quick he was to attack as soon as he believed her father wasn’t able to protect her.
April Perry broke in. “Manuel Zaragoza. Male. Age 28. Five feet eleven, brown eyes, at last report wears his hair in a ponytail.”
Mariah frowned.
April went on. “Employed as a welder by a subcontractor on the Grant Plaza project. Rents a room in a private home, answered an ad for it. His things are still there, but he hasn’t been seen for a week.”
“Missing for a week?” Mariah stared at April. “What are you saying? That the accident was sabotage?”
“Just stating the facts.” April’s tone was expressionless. “Though the police and everyone else think it was an accident, of course they’re looking to question Zaragoza. I’ve got a PI trying to find the guy.” She tapped a CD case beside her on the table. “I’ll give you a copy of his first report.”
“A private investigator?” Arnold asked. “Isn’t that carrying things a bit far?”
April ignored him. “Zaragoza holds a California driver’s license under a defunct address in Oakland, leases a Ford Taurus.”
Mariah tried to keep alarm off her face. The description matched that of the man she thought had followed her in traffic. “If he did something to cause the cable to part …”
She looked at company engineer Ramsey Rhodes, a studious sandy-haired man who kept his own counsel except when pressed. The fact that he was excellent at what he did more than made up for his taciturn nature.
This morning Ramsey deliberated long enough for Mariah’s alarm to escalate. At last, he reported, “The hoist company is studying the point of failure on the cable; we’ve got an independent lab as well. Anything fishy, which I doubt, it’ll turn up.”
With a confidence she didn’t feel, Mariah said, “It sounds as though you have it covered.”
After asking if anyone had other business, she adjourned the meeting. Tom, who had not said a word, came to her. “I’m going to the hospital at lunch. Want to ride along?”
Arnold materialized at Tom’s side. “I wouldn’t mind joining you.” To his credit, he sounded worried.
Tom glanced at her. Apparently reading her expression, he told Arnold, “John’s in no condition to have a lot of visitors … he wouldn’t even know you’re there.”
“I see.” Arnold gave her a dark look that said he blamed her for shutting him off from John.
Her father’s words came back to her, how he hoped the two of them would get along. Was there an agenda she didn’t understand, some twisted matchmaking or, God forbid, Arnold was being groomed to be her right hand man when John and Tom retired?
The room emptied, but April stayed behind and handed over the CD with the investigator’s report.
“Thanks.” When April did not turn to leave, Mariah gave her a curious look.
“Did you forget?” she asked. “The Chronicle reporter is waiting to interview you.”
“I did forget.” Mariah had allowed April to make the appointment last Thursday before “On The Spot” broke into Charley’s viewing, and before the press staked them out on Friday. “Do you still think I should do it?”
April leaned a hip against the conference table, her slim arms crossed over her simple yet elegant jack
et. “It’s up to you. The Chronicle has run a reasonably fair story every day, all by the reporter waiting for you.”
Mariah sighed. “All right, then.”
“I think you should do this in John’s office, rather than the conference room,” the public relations director suggested.
Having already taken over her father’s role in the meeting, Mariah accepted this next step.
In John’s corner office one wall of windows faced Market Street, and the other had a filtered view of the Bay Bridge. “Take his chair,” April suggested. “Get out some papers and look busy while I fetch the reporter.”
Mariah walked into the room, made emptier by the knowledge Dad wasn’t down the hall or visiting a site. One of the ficus plants he insisted on caring for himself had dropped leaves since the cleaning crew had been in. On the windowsill, his collection of African violets sported a bottom row of wilting foliage he would have pinched off first thing this morning.
She stopped by the chessboard and noted her last move had not been countered.
With a sigh, she moved on reluctant feet and took John’s empty chair. Tall windows framed the building where DCI officed, centered in the view. Mariah had never given it a thought before, but when her father came back — she would not consider an alternative — she’d try and talk him into trading space with Tom on the other side of the floor. It couldn’t be good for him to be constantly reminded of his enemy.
The office door opened, catching her without the guise of working.
The thirty-something reporter who entered with April was pretty in a foreign sort of way. Her dark curly hair and skin reminded Mariah of the reddish gold of horehound candy. Her eyes were apple green. “Dee Carpentier.” With a butter-soft smile, she put out her hand.
Mariah stayed on guard. This woman might have her claws sheathed, but she suspected they were made of steel. Though Dee’s stories about Grant Plaza had been fair to date, under her by-line a lot of reputations had been ruined.
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