by Jean Martino
“Are you still working on it?” asked Scott.
“We still are trying,” said Stamford. “The latest is the house the Brampton’s were living in. It is totally owned free and clear by Roger McLean and the FBI are trying to link in the missing tenants with the money laundering scheme, and certain small time crime lords who might have had accounts at McLean’s.”
“I had a feeling they’d try that,” said Scott. “Well thanks for the information. I’ll check back with you Monday.”
He hung up and then dialed Dan. “Did you see this morning’s paper yet?” he asked when Dan answered.
“Wow, Dad. I sure did. How does this tie in with Linda’s son-in-law?”
“I don’t think Michael was involved in it,” he said. “But I’m concerned some investigative reporters will find Linda here and start harassing her. So I’m taking the shuttle flight back to Sacramento and taking her with me. Get her away from this area for a couple days.”
“Good idea. Maggie will be thrilled to see you again and meet Linda. When are you leaving?”
“There’s a flight in two hours,” said Scott. “I’ll call you from home when we get there.”
Back in the unit Linda had struggled out of the thick cloud of sleep and showered and was preparing coffee when he walked in.
“Good morning,” she said, tired but cheerful. “Hope you slept as good as I did.”
“I did,” he said, putting his arms around her and kissing her on her forehead. “And now I have a surprise for you.”
“What?” she asked laughing.
“I’m taking you fishing.”
CHAPTER 15
Saturday afternoon June 21, 2003:
When the plane touched down at Sacramento airport, Linda felt her heart beating rapidly with excitement. She was finally going to see where Scott lived, and, after that, he was driving them to the lake for a couple days camping and fishing. “What’ll I bring?” she had asked when he told her where he was taking her.
“Shorts, slacks, tee shirts, a hat and some UV lotion,” he answered.
She had tossed them all, plus more, excitedly in her case, and then added a dress and high heels in case they went out on the town while there. It was all she could do to stop from singing she felt so excited and happy. Michael and Cindy were safe now, she was sure of it, and eventually she would find out where and they would be together again.
Scott picked up his gray colored Cadillac from the parking garage at the Sacramento Airport and soon they were driving through the leafy tree streets of Sacramento. He drove past the government buildings, pointing them out to her, and the police station where he had worked for over 30 years, and the shopping mall he shopped at, and where he went to the movies he always told her about, and finally he turned down a tree lined street and pulled into the driveway of a single level house.
“Oh Scott, its beautiful,” she said, getting out of the car and looking at the brown clapboard house with its lawns and shrubs and trees she had only seen before in photos.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling as he carried their cases to the front door.
When he opened the door and walked around opening the windows to air the place out, Linda stood in the middle of the living room admiring the way he had made it so comfortable. There was a semi-circular tan couch, wide and deep and comfortable looking, and two matching lounge chairs, and a brown leather recliner with a floor lamp and table next to it facing a wide screen television set. Tall brass lamps sat on end tables, and on the coffee table were glossy covered books on fishing and artwork. She walked across the gold carpet to look at the books jamming the oak bookcase and studied their titles for a while, before turning to look at the paintings on the off white walls he had told her he collected. They were as beautiful as he had described them, all of women in the twenties era; mysterious, beautiful and sophisticated women. Fishing and artwork were two of Scott’s passions, she knew, as she walked over to the stereo system and glanced at his collection of CD’s. He loved music as much as she did, the wonderful old style singers including Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett among his favorites.
When they first walked inside his home, Scott had opened the beige floor to ceiling drapes to reveal sliding glass doors looking out over a patio, where she saw a barbecue pit, chaise lounges and chairs, and a vegetable garden on the far side of the flower bordered lawn.
He came back into the room as she was staring out the back and took her hand. “Give you the grand tour,” he said, “even if we’ll only be here an hour at most.”
He held her hand as he led her through the other rooms; three bedrooms, including his master bedroom with a king size bed covered with a beautiful hand made quilt, that he told her his mother had made, and which made her feel a bit awkward for being in that room for some reason she didn’t understand; a guest room set up, by the looks of it, for his grandchildren with bunk beds and its own television set, and a den with his desk top computer on the desk, that gave her goose bumps remembering the hours they had spent online talking to each other through that machine. She felt all kinds of strange feelings running through her as he led her down the hallway and showed her the family room and kitchen. It didn’t seem possible that she was actually walking through the house that Scott lived in, the house that she had visualized him living in for the last year but never expected to be actually in it.
“OK,” he said, with a smile. “That ends the tour. I have to call for a taxi now to take me to pick up my truck and RV. Make yourself at home. I’ll only be a half hour at most.”
She felt she should say something about the house but at that moment she was lost for words. It was a beautiful home, but it still didn’t feel real to her. Everything was so tastefully done and neat, she thought. It was Scott’s house through and through and, like him, organized and elegant, disclosing more about him to her than she had been aware of when talking to him on the internet.
When the taxi arrived and he left the house, she sat on the couch wondering what to do. She had not expected to feel so strange about it. After all, she had been sleeping with Scott at Cindy’s house and the beach unit, so why did this house make her feel like an intruder.
She tried to shrug off the feeling, getting up and walking around, then stopping to look at the framed photos placed on tables and the bookcase. For a long time she stared at the framed photo of his parents, both still living in Oregon where he visited them once or twice a year. She couldn’t make up her mind which one he looked more like; both of them she finally decided.
Perhaps that’s why she felt uncomfortable, she thought. In the other two places they had both been removed from their own personal lives to a point. But here she was reminded that this was actually where Scott lived, surrounded by photos of his family, his things, his life. Scott had never completely filled her in on his earlier life, he never seemed to want to go into it in detail, and all she knew about that part of his life was from the brief answers he had given her when she asked him questions.
She knew he had been born and raised in California, that his father had been an Engineer and moved around a lot because of his work. She knew too that Scott had a younger sister, a year older than she was, who lived in Oregon also, near their parents, with her airplane mechanic husband and two daughters. His mother, he had told her, had never worked outside the home, staying home to take care of her family in the tradition of that era. Well so did her mother, she reminded herself. And so, actually, had she.
He had told her he was a fourth generation American of German and English descent on his father’s side. She knew Americans, unlike Australians, were always proud of their ancestry. When she had first arrived in California and people had asked what her nationality was, she had always said Australian, but everyone always said, yes, but what is your ancestry, as though it mattered where her ancestors came from. After a while she would just tell everyone she was a third generation Australian of Prussian, English and Irish ancestry. It seemed to have satisfied e
veryone, she thought now, smiling, but in Australia rarely did anyone want or need to know that.
After graduating from high school, Scott had entered Berkeley College in San Francisco, at first majoring in Psychology, but then changing to social science courses.
She remembered him briefly telling her he had met and married another student from Berkeley when they were both still twenty, eloping to Reno, he had said. It was the age of rebellion in the sixties, Linda remembered now, and the sexual revolution had taken over the campuses across America. Scott had told her that he had quit college soon after his marriage when his wife got pregnant and had their first child, Maggie, a year later; followed two years later by Dan.
“I was working dead end jobs to support my family in those days,” he had told her. “So, I decided to join the police force; liked the sound of working at something to help others, and it had security. I didn’t want to be tied to a desk job.”
“What did your folks think about your getting married so young?” she had asked.
He had gone quiet for a few minutes before answering. “They didn’t like it of course. But they accepted it eventually. My folks moved soon after with my sister, Joanne, to Oregon. Joanne’s fifty one now and married to an airplane mechanic. She’s still living in Oregon near the folks.”
Turning to look at the other photos of Dan and Maggie and their families, she touched them curiously. This was Scott’s life, his children, his grandchildren, his parents and sister and her family. It was as though his house was telling her she didn’t belong here, that this was not her home, it was Scott’s. Oh wow, she thought, fighting off her discomfit. This is ridiculous. Of course Scott has a life and a home outside of our online relationship. He talked about it all the time didn’t he, his kids and grandkids? She just needed a bit of time to assimilate it all. After all, her life was filled with her family too wasn’t it?
Scott was back in a half hour, driving his blue and white one ton truck with two sets of tires on the back where the huge campervan that he called an RV was attached. So far he had managed to keep the news of Roger McLean’s murder from her but knew it was just a matter of time before she heard it and would start to panic thinking of Michael and Cindy. When they drove out of Sacramento, Scott put a CD in the player to stop her from turning on the radio.
The lake was only an hour’s drive into the Tahoe area and Linda seemed to be enjoying looking at the scenery and asking him questions about everything. He reached for her hand. “Come closer,” he said, “You’re too far away from me.”
She smiled and slid across the bench seat as close to him as she could get, putting her hand on his knee as he returned his hand to the steering wheel. She wanted to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, and that she was actually sitting in Scott’s truck with his RV hooked to the back of it, driving to his favorite place, his lake he had talked so much about to her on the internet.
After they parked as close to the lake as they could, Scott started the electric lifts to remove the RV from the truck and set it down on its own. Linda watched in amazement, having never seen anything as luxurious as Scott’s RV. No wonder he loved to go fishing, she thought, watching him hooking up the electricity and water with a smile. He had all the comforts of home with him, right there in the RV. As soon as he was finished he got out his fishing box and two poles.
“Ok,” he said, “let’s get this show on the road. We have to go down to the Marina to rent a boat. This time of the year we’ll have to go out to the middle of the lake to find the best trout.”
“You know I’ve never fished before,” Linda reminded him, pulling on the floppy hat he gave her and following him out of the van. “I’ll probably not want to keep anything I catch you know. I’m a softie.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t throw them back,” he laughed. “Whatever we catch is our dinner tonight.”
At the end of the day, they both had caught six Rainbow trout between them, Linda feeling amazed at how much there was to fishing. She had thought you just dropped a line into the water and the fish grabbed the bait and you pulled it in. She didn’t understand about downriggers, and depth calculating and still wasn’t sure she did, but she had enjoyed it immensely and was proud of her catch, despite her two being the smallest in the lake at not quite a pound each, while Scott had caught four two pounders.
“Take my photo with my catch,” she said, knowing he had a camera in the RV. “I have to prove to everyone I really went fishing. Jessica and Bill will crack up.”
Photos taken, they returned inside the RV which Linda felt more comfortable in away from all the photos and Scott’s life at his house. This at least seemed more impersonal, like the beach unit had to her. But the size of it still amazed her; the full bathroom with a bath tub and shower in it, the kitchen with refrigerator, stove and double sinks and the dining area with the booth table and seat, and at the end, near where the tow bar was, the roof lifted up above a queen size bed with hanging lantern lamps each side, and an entertainment center at the foot of it alongside the wall complete with stereo equipment and television. It was like a small house, complete with everything, including air conditioning.
Scott cleaned the fish and scaled and de-boned two of them, and froze the others, then rubbed the ones they were having for dinner with melted butter and garlic and placed them under the broiler, while Linda sliced up potatoes and onions for a potato casserole. The onions were making her eyes water and she blinked furiously, watching him out of the corner of her teary eyes, as he tossed a salad together, then opened a bag of frozen peas and carrots and corn to toss into boiling water. As he worked efficiently at their meal, she had to remind herself that Scott had taken care of himself for many years now, refusing to become one of those bachelors who survived on take out food.
The sun was setting when they took the folding chairs outside with their plates and sat in front of the almond and walnut wood fire Scott had made in a large circular metal container, three and a half feet across and eighteen inches high with a grate in the bottom of it. “Camp fires are not allowed unless in a container,” he explained to her.
“What a great idea,” she said, thinking it was as intimate as any campfire as the glow of the fire reflected upwards and around them. “I know what terrible damage bush fires can do. In fact I like it. It’s cozy.” She reached forward and held her hands over the heat, loving the warmth of it in the evening’s cool air. Despite the heat of the day, she knew that when the sun went down in California it always took the temperature down with it.
“This is so wonderful,” she said, as they sipped their wine and enjoyed their meal. “I haven’t felt this relaxed for a week now. What a wonderful idea this was, Scott. I love it here, the oaks and pine trees and lake and the smells and the fresh air, and the fish I actually caught myself for dinner. It was so thoughtful of you to bring me here.”
“My pleasure,” he said.
“I mean to get me away from LA like that,” she said, placing her plate on the nearby camp table. “I saw the paper, Scott, while you were out this morning and the report on Roger McLean’s murder. I saw it behind the couch. You didn’t hide it too well.”
“Damn,” said Scott. “I wanted to spare you that. Knew you would worry about Michael and Cindy being involved somehow.”
“I did,” she said. “But after what we discovered about my account yesterday I have this feeling they are safe somewhere where no one can hurt them. I’m going to hold onto that thought for now.”
He put down his plate and reached for her hand. “You’re an incredible lady,” he said. “I apologize for doubting your ability to see above it. But it wasn’t the only reason I brought you here. I wanted you to see this place, to feel it as I do, to enjoy it and smell the trees like I do. I wanted to share it with you away from LA and all the smog and noise.”
“It reminds me in a way of my home in the Adelaide hills,” she said. “There are no pine trees there or a lake of course, but the trees around
the hills and the wild flowers and everything are as peaceful as it is here. I can’t wait to get up each morning and go walking around there. I feel so at peace there. Like I do here.”
The sun had set now, and the sky was darkening, and Scott kept the fire alive as they talked of their homes and favorite places and the things that made life so simple and wonderful. It was almost ten pm when they put the fire out and returned to the van, and, without any feelings of awkwardness, they made sweet, wonderful, sensual love on the queen size bed with the lovely strains of Nat King Cole’s singing floating around them. Linda had not felt this happy for many years and her thoughts were only on the here and the now, and not delving any further. Here and now was all they needed.
* *
Sunday morning June 22, 2003:
When Linda woke up she felt something scratching her cheek and pushed it away without opening her eyes. It kept on scratching at her and finally she opened her eyes and sat up, her face breaking into the biggest smile it could hold as she saw baskets of roses and flowers surrounding her on the bed.