by Parker Riggs
“Hey,” he found himself sitting in the passenger’s seat, breathing hard.
She kept staring straight ahead. “Hey, Big.” Her voice was rough, not the way he remembered, but when she turned to look at him, her eyes were still as blue as the Mediterranean Sea. All at once he thought of that trip to Crete and how she’d wanted to stay, make a life there away from it all. They’d had an argument on the sea wall where the fishing boats moored at night. How dare she ask him to leave it all behind, he’d told her, when he was just getting his name recognized in New York.
“Hey, Jess,” he managed to say. His hands were shaking so badly, he thought he might hurt himself. “I’ve been looking for you.”
She didn’t answer but faced forward, not looking at him. She still had those fantastic eyelashes and those Native American cheekbones, but otherwise she was unrecognizable, older and harder looking. He’d lost the buzz he’d gained at the bar, that hazy happy glow, and he sat there shaking, wondering where the other Jess was, that ethereal girl with flowery dresses and beautiful hair. He wasn’t even sure if those memories were true or if he’d constructed them out of loneliness.
They sat there for a long time in the Hangar’s parking lot, not speaking, watching the kids come in and out of the bar. She didn’t move ahead. She didn’t back up either. She wouldn’t look at him. Finally she said, “I heard you’ve been looking for me. Guess you found me.” She turned to face him as though challenging him.
Barrington looked down at his hands. They seemed gigantic to him. When she spoke again it was with a coarseness he’d never heard before. “If you came here to apologize, you’ve wasted a trip. In case you haven’t figured it out, I didn’t want to be found.” Her blue eyes had once been warm, but now they were sharp as glass, cold. “I don’t know why you came looking for me after all these years.”
“I had cancer,” he said as if that explained everything.
“Oh.” She looked surprised, and he thought he saw a glimmer of softness appear. “That’s too bad.”
He realized he was clutching her Table Talk sweatshirt in his hands. “I’m sorry I let you go.”
She looked out the front window again. The poetry of her face had been dismissed by the years. She’d smoked it away, perhaps, or maybe it was grief or loneliness. Barrington wondered how someone so feminine had become so tough. “I ran into Delores Keen,” he managed. His throat had shrunk to the diameter of a pea. From the bar he could hear Green Day singing “Basket Case.” How appropriate. “And Rose Chandler found out you’d worked for Beach at Swan’s Song, and that …”
She turned on him so quickly he quit talking. “I’m going to give you some friendly advice,” she hissed. “Stay away from Rose Chandler. Don’t get tangled in her web. I wouldn’t want her to strangle you in her sheets.”
He stared at her. “What the hell … you think I’m sleeping with her?”
She gave a quick laugh that sounded like a bark. “Doesn’t everyone sleep with her?”
“Look,” he said, “without Rose I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. She’s the one who got Delores to talk, and she found out Beach got you the job at Artsy Phartsy. I also know you stole a lot of money from him and ran off with my painting.”
“And you just couldn’t leave things alone, could you?” Suddenly she shifted the Cadillac’s gearshift and began to peel out of the parking lot. “I was so in love with you I would have died for you, and all you cared about was your agent and your openings and your goddamn Soho studio. We could have been something together, made a life, but you wouldn’t.”
“Listen.” Barrington felt like a child on an out of control carnival ride. “I was young and stupid. You’re right, and I’m sorry.” She turned left on Airplane Road, away from town. “I just want to know, was Delores telling the truth, were you pregnant when you left?”
“Delores sure knows how to run her mouth.” Barrington saw her grab a cigarette from a pack of them on the seat. This was not turning out like he thought it would.
“Was the baby mine?” He couldn’t believe he’d asked it, but once the words were out he felt a huge sense of relief.
She stared at him so long he thought she was going to wreck the car. “Of course it was yours,” she said slowly, as if he were dense or crazy. “How can you even ask me that? I was always loyal to you. You were my life.”
He watched the black ribbon of road peel out before them. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was afraid you’d make me keep it.” She pressed the car lighter hard. “You know I hated my parents. I couldn’t even talk to them without getting sick to my stomach.” She ran a hand through her spiky hair. He remembered when it was long and brown, how she’d push it behind her shoulders so he could brush it for her. “Once I got pregnant, I realized there was no way in hell I could start a family like that.” Barrington remembered her parents hadn’t cared when he’d told them she had disappeared. “You barely paid attention to me, never mind a kid.” The lighter came out, and she touched the hot end to her cigarette and pushed a button so his window rolled down on the steamy air that smelled of barbecue and cut grass. He saw in the dim light of the moon that the smoke had formed leathery lines in her face. “I couldn’t stay with you, Big,” she said quietly, as though she’d traveled back to some time they both remembered. “I stole that money so I could get away. You would have left me for one of those studio models, and I would have been left all by myself to raise a kid.”
“What’d you do about the baby?”
She smoked furiously and didn’t answer. He’d offended her again. Sitting close enough to touch her, he wished he could tell her he’d loved her, but he couldn’t move his mouth to say the words now. “You think I got rid of the baby,” she finally said, “don’t you?” She was driving fast, way too fast. Barrington saw the needle on the speedometer hovering around seventy.
“I’m not judging you,” he said. “I just want to know.” He was tired of blaming himself for the failure of their relationship. Their love, while real enough at the time, had been youthful, full of promises and no resolve. They were both guilty of driving a stake through its heart, and now it was like the blank country road they were speeding down, empty and dark.
“I gave her up for adoption,” she said without emotion.
Her? Barrington could hardly believe it.
“When I worked at Swan’s Song,” she continued, letting the smoke out in one long stream, “I got to know one of Sandy’s customers who lived in Connecticut. She had some connections and helped me become Heidi Edelstein. I stayed with her until the baby was born. Then I came to Haven and started over.”
“Do you know who adopted her?”
“No idea,” she said, “and before you ask, I don’t remember the name of the agency.” Barrington wasn’t sure he believed her. He looked down at the red hoodie emblazoned with the Table Talk logo. “I wouldn’t have been a good mother, and you would’ve been a terrible father.”
“You never gave me a chance to be a good father.”
“Oh, please.” She waved the cigarette as if dismissing him. “All you thought about was your career. You would have gone for the next hot thing to walk down the street.” She coughed into her hand, a phlegmy, smoker’s cough that shook her body and left her short of breath. He realized now she must drive this road often to be able to do it without paying much attention.
“No, I wouldn’t have,” he said, and this was true. He hadn’t fallen in love, really in love, since Jess disappeared.
She turned and looked at him. “Did you come here to find me,” she asked, “or the kid?”
Barrington studied her sad, empty eyes. He wondered when she’d lost her joy of living. “Maybe I wanted to find both of you.” His voice was shaking. If ever he needed a drink, it was now. Before she could answer, his phone gave out two long beeps. He took it out of his pocket.
“Who’s that?” Heidi glanced over at his phone.
Barrington was surprised she
cared. “Rose,” he said, looking down at the text. “She’s over at Solitude, trying to find out who killed Hal Cappodecci.”
Did you give Jess a locket, the text asked, with your initials engraved in it?
I found her, he typed. He looked over at Heidi, who was chewing her bottom lip like she used to when they went to openings and she got shy and tongue-tied. Heidi Edelstein is Jess. I’m in her car! He remembered that locket. She’d said it was her good luck charm, her protection. Her grandmother had given it to her before she died, and when he’d taken it off her to get it engraved, she’d had such a fit they’d gone to the jeweler’s, and she’d snatched it back as though it were food and she was starving. Yes, locket from Tiffany’s, did you find it? “She wants to know if I ever gave you a locket,” he said to Heidi. “Remember that Tiffany’s locket you always wore that I took off you while you were sleeping and got engraved?”
Heidi looked at him. “What does the locket have to do with anything?” Then she lunged at him. “Give me that phone.” But Barrington held it out of her reach.
“Watch out,” he told her as the car started off the road. Heidi turned the steering wheel, and Barrington looked down at his lit-up phone. Come home immediately, Rose had written. We think Jess killed Hal.
“Rose doesn’t know shit,” Heidi was saying, moving the car back onto the road. “She’s not worth whatever you’re paying her.” Her voice had a tight, frantic quality to it that sounded a little crazy, Barrington realized as they screeched around a corner. What did Rose mean that Jess killed Hal? Barrington looked down at his phone and was about to text back when he saw that he’d lost the signal. A thin line of sweat broke out on his lip. “Look,” he said, “I’ve got to get back. Do you think we could turn around?”
She pressed the accelerator down again. “Oh, now you’ve heard from Rose about some locket, and you want to turn around?”
Barrington remembered now that Jess had sometimes been impulsive, unreasonable. She’d cut his hair once when he was sleeping after some girl at a party had put her hand through it. And when he’d been too tired to drink a glass of champagne after she’d bought him a bottle as celebration for an opening, she’d stood on the fire escape and dropped the bottle down five stories to the sidewalk. Back then it had seemed almost cool to have that kind of passion, mysterious and wild, but he wondered if that was a precursor to something far worse. He tried desperately to remember what turned her around, but all he could think of was that he would sometimes touch her softly, make love to her, and she would completely change. There was no way he could ever touch her now. “Why don’t we go back to town?” he said gently, throwing his hand between them like an offering. “I could buy you a drink. We can talk about old times.”
But Heidi turned her fierce blue eyes on him. “I think it’s too late for that, Barrington Bigelow.” When he looked up at her, the hatred he saw in her face made him sick to his stomach.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“We’ve got to find Barrington,” Rose told Rocky, pulling her shoes out of the closet. “His car’s not anywhere, and the last thing we knew he was with Jessica, Heidi, whatever the hell her name is.”
“Deputies Carlisle and Bunker are on it, and they’re the best on the squad.” Rocky had been awake all night, and his voice sounded weary. “Anyway, that locket doesn’t prove she killed Hal,” he pointed out. “We’ve only got Chad’s word he found it at the crime scene. He could have picked it up off the sidewalk, for all we know, and now he’s using it to blame someone else for the murder.”
“Well, did you find the locket?” Rose grabbed her purse.
She heard Rocky sigh. “Rose, it’s six o’clock in the morning. I’ve barely had time for coffee, never mind a search warrant,” he said, “and before you tell me to break down the door, let me remind you that without a warrant Chad could argue he wasn’t free to deny access to his home. I don’t want my case thrown out.”
“But you don’t need a warrant or the locket to get into Heidi’s apartment, right? So call Harry Graves and get permission to search her place.”
“Right, I’ll see if he’s awake at this ungodly hour.”
“He probably never went to sleep,” Rose said, pulling her keys off the front hall hook, “just like you.” Harry Graves was a playboy who lived in Portsmouth, the only child of former Mayor Ford, and when his father died, he’d inherited half the town’s real estate, including Table Talk and the apartment above the diner. “Anyway,” Rose said, pulling the door shut behind her, “she killed Hal, and she might have done it for Beach.”
“Let’s find out the facts before we convict her or anybody else,” Rocky said. “It’s possible Beach blackmailed her into helping him.”
“Or she volunteered,” Rose said stubbornly, jumping into her car and slamming the door.
The staircase to Heidi’s apartment above Table Talk creaked and smelled like stale cigarette smoke. Rose was curious to see where she lived. As far as she knew no one in town had ever been there. She and Heidi had something in common: they both kept Haven at a long arm’s reach. She used to joke with Cameron that maybe Heidi was a hoarder with a hundred cats and years of accumulated junk piled up to the ceiling; but opening the door to the light-filled apartment, she was surprised to see a room tastefully furnished in Danish Modern teak, glass-topped tables and colorful throw rugs. Not a cat in sight. She was about to cross the threshold when she stopped short. The artwork on the walls was so familiar, she felt like she was in some kind of odd dream. It was Cameron’s art. He was everywhere.
Rocky’s big feet clomped out of the kitchen. “Isn’t this crazy?” he asked. “She’s got Cameron’s paintings, floor to ceiling.”
“Crazy,” Rose agreed softly. She stood in front of a painting of Cosmo, running through a field of wildflowers. “I was helping Cameron at the gallery the day Heidi bought this one,” she said. “She told him she was buying it for a friend.” Cosmo’s ears were flying back in the wind, a happy grin on his face. Most of the paintings in Heidi’s living room had been done long before she met Cameron. She remembered him telling her Heidi was one of his biggest fans, that she bought a lot of paintings for friends and relatives. But as Rose walked slowly around the room’s perimeter, she realized that all along Heidi had been bringing them home, hanging them on every square inch of her walls. She shivered. “I feel like I’m in a stalker’s den.”
Rocky nodded. “It’s creepy as hell.”
Cameron had felt sorry for Heidi, had thought she was lonely. That was Cameron’s problem. He always felt sorry for lonely women, and they gravitated toward him as though he could fix it. A lonely heart, Rose thought now as she headed down a hallway covered with her deceased husband’s paintings, can do strange things.
“You sure got here fast,” she said to Rocky as he followed her into the kitchen. “I guess Harry was awake.”
“I woke him up when I called,” Rocky told her. “He wasn’t happy. It’s the middle of the night for him, but he gave me permission to enter. Veronica had an inkling about where Heidi kept her extra set of keys.” Rocky nodded to Veronica Montrose, sitting at a butcher block table beneath a rack of copper pots, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, a smudge of flour on her left cheek. Rocky must have interrupted her in the middle of baking for the breakfast shift. She gave Rose a half-smile.
“Hey, Veronica,” Rose said. “How’s the morning crowd?”
Veronica shrugged. “Hungry,” she said. “Monday’s are usually busy, but Ferg Larson took over, and I think it will be okay.” Her wispy voice matched her gigantic blue eyes.
Rose looked around. The kitchen was as modern as the living room, sans paintings, and outfitted with top of the line chef appliances. “Can’t tell if Heidi packed any clothes,” Rocky said, “but her car is gone. If she did leave, she’s traveling light.” He took a noisy sip from his to-go cup of Table Talk coffee. Rose noticed he’d already managed to spill some on his shirt. “I put that
APB out on her and the vehicle,” he said, “and told them that Barrington’s most likely in the car.”
Rose thought of Barrington. He was so big, a Wyoming boy who apparently used to herd cattle, but he seemed somehow vulnerable, and she didn’t think an all-points bulletin going out to law enforcement was going to help. Heidi was smart. She’d vanished before, and she wouldn’t keep her car too long if she meant to disappear. “I want to take a look around,” she said.
Rocky and Veronica followed her past a pink, time-warped bathroom. The door at the end of the hallway was closed and, Rose realized when she went to turn the knob, locked. Rocky raised his eyebrows, then leaned forward and rapped hard on the door with his fist.
“Any idea why this door would be locked?” Rose asked Veronica.
Veronica shook her head. She looked like a scared mouse caught in a house full of cats. “No,” she said in her tiny voice. “I’ve never even been up here before, but I’ve always sort of wanted to see …” She didn’t finish her sentence.
Slipping her pocketbook off her shoulder, Rose rummaged in her wallet for a credit card to jimmy the lock. It took a few tries before the door swung open. She clicked on the light switch. Heidi’s bed was so neatly made it looked like you could bounce a dime off the bedspread. The room appeared almost empty except for one lone painting hanging above the bed. A white silk curtain hung in front of it.
Rose walked over slowly. She leaned across the bed, and Veronica and Rocky watched her pull the curtain aside.
Rocky let out a low whistle. “Holy mother,” he said.