Remember Murder

by Linda Ladd

  Nicholas Black waited for a while, swimming a few circles in front of the dock, but he was anxious to get inside and see how Claire was reacting to the sight of her own place, one that she loved so much. He had pushed her too hard earlier, and as badly as he wanted to touch her, he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She was right. She needed time to heal. He had been thinking of himself and not of her. He couldn’t do that and expect her to respond to him.

  Despite his good intentions, after about half an hour, he got out again, dried off, and headed up to the house, the black towel still hanging around his neck. He opened the screen door and found her standing alone in the living room, just staring into the kitchen.

  “Any good news?” he asked her, startling her more than he intended to.

  “I feel good in here. This is home. This is where I belong.”

  Now that reaction he did not particularly care for. However, he was careful to keep his expression neutral. “That’s good. It’s your home. You take turns living here and out at Cedar Bend with me.”

  A brand-new and great big problem was looming up between them now, almost tangible in its importance. So tangible, in fact, Black felt he could reach out and grab the tension. She heaved in a deep breath and appeared reluctant to throw his hospitality back in his face, but she did, anyway. “I think I want to stay out here from now on.”

  More ideas to dislike, but he was careful not to show concern. His training helped with that, a knack he had developed years ago. But separate living quarters was not a good or a safe idea right now. “Fine. We can live here, if it helps you.”

  Claire hesitated and looked annoyed. He knew her so well, her expressions, her desires, her feelings. What she meant was that she wanted to live there alone, but she didn’t have the heart to just haul off and boot him out the door. So she said nothing. They would have to hash that out, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to let her live in such an isolated area alone. Not yet.

  “How long have I lived in this place?” she suddenly asked him.

  “Ever since you moved here from Los Angeles. At least, that’s what Harve told me.”

  “It’s very peaceful, isn’t it, Black? No people around. No boats or commotion going on around the clock. Just the sound of the water lapping the bank and the birds singing in the trees.”

  “That’s exactly why you chose to live way out here in the woods. Along with the fact that your best friend lives just down the road.”

  Claire stared at him, at the towel around his neck, not saying anything, but he needed to know what she was thinking and feeling. She was doing extremely well. He never would have dreamed that she would be back to work so soon. But she had always been strong of body, and even stronger of mind and will.

  “What?” he asked when she kept staring at him. She was so watchful, so distrustful, just like she’d been in the beginning. It was going to be a long, arduous road to get her back, but he would do it.

  “You’re a crack psychiatrist, aren’t you, Black?”

  “I do okay.”

  “You do know that I admire that and appreciate what you’ve done for me, right?”

  Oh, God, that sounded like the beginning of a Dear John letter, if he’d ever heard one. “Yeah. And?”

  “Nothing. I just think you’re a good guy to help me out like this, spend all this time taking care of me, you know, all that. So, thank you.”

  Well, that pleased him, but he still was worried that she was in the process of letting him down easy all the way to the curb. “You’re pretty special yourself, Claire. And I’m in love with you. That ought to explain a lot.”

  They stared at each other some more, dancing around the great big elephant in the room. But Black stayed true to his word. He didn’t try to touch her; he got down to business. “I think you’re strong enough now to start some therapy sessions. See if I can’t ease you back into letting go of some of the memories that your mind is apparently blocking out.”

  Her face lit up, and she nodded. “It’s getting back to work, I think. It takes my mind off other things. Relaxes me.”

  “Apparently. But then again, you’ve always loved your job.” But he was wondering how much he should reveal to her. What might throw her back into a terrified state, her mind unable to accept all the terrible tragedies experienced in her past? He was beginning now to think that she was exhibiting a selective memory loss. She was disassociating herself from anything that her brain knew she couldn’t handle yet. He had to think long and hard which way to go, without making her worse and/or causing her to take off on her own and hide out somewhere safe. She had done that once. Gone into hiding and left everything behind for an entire year. She might do it again. He did not want that to happen. He was tiptoeing around inside her head, making decisions, and that made him nervous as hell.

  “So it’s okay to stay here tonight?” she finally asked him.

  “Sure. I love it out here.”

  Black watched her glance upstairs at the bedroom in the loft. He knew what she was thinking, but she only said, “Don’t you need to go home and pack a few things?”

  Black tried not to smile. “I keep some clothes and shaving gear here, just in case. Like I told you, we move back and forth a lot. Whichever place is more convenient at the moment. I’ve wanted you to move in with me full-time for a long time now, but you don’t want to give up this house. Can’t say I blame you. It’s a great place.”

  “Now that I’ve seen it, I can understand why I didn’t want to let it go.”

  “Everything’s going to fall back in place soon, Claire.” And God, he hoped to hell it did. And when it did, all hell could break loose and he had to prepare her for that eventuality. Her life had been anything but easy, from childhood on, and there were lots of other bad things that she had apparently not told him. The fact that she could play the violin like a concert violinist, for one. He had to start somewhere with her, so he decided to use questions to delve into her subconscious.

  “Tell me about the place where you learned to play the violin like that, Claire.”

  Surprise, then a quick frown followed by another slight shoulder jerk. “Here and there, I guess. I got passed around to a lot of foster homes when I was a kid.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “You didn’t know about that, I take it.”

  “I knew about foster homes, but I didn’t know any specifics. You never mentioned particular ones.” And neither did John Booker, his private investigator, when Black had him dig up her past right after he first met her. He got plenty of scary stuff at that time, but nothing about the violin.

  “It’s no big deal. That’s probably why I didn’t mention it.”

  “Were you fond of any of your foster parents?”

  “I didn’t like that one. They used to slap a flyswatter down on top of my head when I missed a note. That’s why I play so well, I guess.”

  Black frowned. He couldn’t help it. “So you play the piano equally well?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Where were these people who mistreated you?”

  “In Louisiana. Some lived around Baton Rouge. Some closer to New Orleans. I finally ran away from the last one. I found a family who took me in, and that’s where I stayed until Family Services found me again. The LeFevres were cool, but the state took me away from them and put me in a home up in Lafayette.”

  Shocked at her casual revelations, ones that he’d never heard before, Black sat down on the couch. He was from New Orleans, and he and Claire once had been there together. At the time, she had acted as if she knew nothing about the area. Why? “Sit down, Claire. You’ll be more comfortable.”

  She didn’t take his advice. She paced around, touching things, looking at things, as she had done in his office that first day. She was uncomfortable or nervous. Or both. Probably both.

  “Did any of your foster parents live in the bayous?”

  “Yeah, that’s where the LeFevres lived. Not the ones who forced me to take music les
sons.”

  “So you play both piano and violin?” He just could not believe she was an accomplished musician.

  “I’m better on the fiddle.”

  Black thought about it for a moment. She was definitely comfortable now revealing background that he’d never heard before, and he’d made it a point since they’d met to know as much about her as he could. Had she been keeping this back for some reason? Or had her mind blocked out some unpleasant things that her head injury had brought out again?

  “You know, I liked it down there in the bayous. They lived in a big white house and they had a neat houseboat, too.” She frowned. “The best thing about it was that they had a couple of kids for me to play with. The boy, Gabe, he was really cool. I was a big tomboy back then. So it wasn’t so bad living there.”

  “So you hated leaving the LeFevres?”

  Claire frowned. “Yeah, they had to drag me out of there, with Gabe hanging on to the back of my T-shirt. It was pretty brutal.”

  Black watched her closely. Claire had acted uneasy in the bayou when they’d been there together, afraid of it, in fact. Something very strange was going on. He watched as she sat down and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I’m getting a headache,” she said. “But you know what? I think I’m just going to forget how strange all this is and accept it for what it is. You know? Embrace the unknown. Stop fighting it and trying to force things. Just veg out and let it be.”

  Well, Black could embrace that. Her problems went deeper than even he knew, and he thought he knew everything about her. God, he knew enough about her tortured childhood. She said she liked that set of foster parents. Perhaps her mind was just letting out mostly good things and not much else. Even some experiences that she hadn’t discussed with him in the past. Right now, she was tired and had a headache, time to let her rest.

  “You hungry?” he asked her. Food seemed to be a safe subject between them, and she needed to eat. She was rail thin.

  “I happen to be starving.”

  “That probably has something to do with your headache.” He looked around. “I brought fried chicken and biscuits, if that sounds good to you. It’s down in the boat. My guess is that you don’t have much here to eat. You usually don’t. You hate to cook.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Just now came to me. But I can do it in a pinch and it tastes just fine. I just don’t like anything about doing it, is all.”

  “How about us just relaxing tonight? Watch a movie, maybe. We’ve got some DVDs we haven’t seen over there in that drawer. We can just lay back and enjoy each other’s company. No more questions, no demands from me, no trying to remember. Just a nice quiet night together, doing nothing. You and Jules Verne and me.”

  To his surprise, tears welled up in Claire’s eyes. Claire Morgan was not a crier, not even close. But now she had raw emotions and sharp edges. “Sorry, that just sounds so good, so regular, so normal, and I haven’t felt normal lately.”

  “Okay, we will sit here tonight, and not do a damn thing. Look, I’m going down and get the food. After that, we’ll just sit around and do anything we want to do. No pressure. No worries. No pushing at you.”

  And that’s exactly what they did. And it did work out very nicely. They ate, watched a movie called The Blind Side, which made her laugh a couple of times, and then Black offered against every nerve and desire in his body to sleep on the downstairs couch instead of upstairs with her. Claire climbed to the loft with Jules on her heels to the giant king-sized bed that he’d bought her not long after they met. He lay there awake and miserable and listened to her cuddle and stroke the dog, and wished it were him. He tossed and turned and muttered a few choice curses to himself, but he didn’t go upstairs. Hell no, he didn’t go upstairs, goddamn it, but he wanted to, about as much as he’d ever wanted anything in his entire life.

  Chapter Twelve

  Upstairs in the loft, Claire tried to concentrate on her case, which was what she should be doing, instead of badgering her erased mind into submission. It just might be a nice break from the mental crowbar she’d been wedging on her cerebrum. Let things rest, lay fallow, get comfortable, and feel all safe and relaxed, and then some memories would spring up and enlighten her like a message from Buddha.

  Try as she might, Claire could not come up with anything helpful or eye-opening about their bludgeoned victim, and probably wouldn’t until they nailed down the woman’s identity and interviewed her family and friends. She and Bud were going to start on that first thing tomorrow morning. Around midnight, she got up and peeked over the balcony railing and saw where Black was sprawled out on the sofa, looking too big and very uncomfortable. Next time, she would take the sofa and he could have the bed.

  She finally fell into a sleep as restless as Black’s, and when she awoke next, it was daylight, and Black was in the shower off the bedroom. She sat up and picked up the alarm clock on the bedside table. It said six o’clock. When he walked out of the bathroom, he had on a pair of khaki shorts and a black T-shirt with a gold foil New Orleans Saints logo on the front.

  “I’ve got to get back. One of my patients is freaking out about a bad dream. I’ve got to go in right now and calm him down.”

  “Okay.”

  Then she waited for him to order her to get up and go with him and was mentally rebelling and formulating reasons not to, but as it turned out, she didn’t need them.

  “I guess you’re going in to work again today, right?”

  Relieved, she nodded. “Bud’s coming by and we’re gonna check out the missing woman and talk to the deputy who investigated the call. See if anybody can identify the clothing the victim was wearing.”

  “Well, be careful. Duck and weave, you know the drill.”

  Black smiled as if she would react to the boxing analogy. “Oookay,” she said. “You, too. You never know what your other head cases like me are going to do.”

  “It’s just a thing we used to say.” Black grinned. “You’re more yourself, every day. The old Claire is making herself known, slowly but surely. If you need anything, just call me. I’m minutes away. I’m gonna call for a Cobalt to pick me up, so I can leave the one at the dock out here for you, in case you want to come over to Cedar Bend for the night.”

  So he was letting her go, giving her freedom to spread her wings, but now she wasn’t so sure that’s what she wanted him to do. “Would you want to come back here tonight?”

  Black gave her a quick smile and looked pretty pleased. “If you want me to, wild horses couldn’t drag me away. Just let me know what time you’ll be home. I’ll meet you here.”

  While he made the call, Claire pulled on a robe, went downstairs, and fixed them both a cup of coffee. She knew where everything was, knew exactly what to do. They sat across from each other at the bar while they waited for his ride and talked about what a beautiful morning it was, how hot it was going to get. In other words, it was meaningless small talk. Neither of them mentioned the sexual tension still crackling like a white-hot wire between them, nor what they were going to do about it. They just pretended it wasn’t there, shooting off all those glowing red sparks and titillating possibilities.

  In time, they heard the roar of a powerful boat and one of the Cedar Bend Cobalt 360s flew across the calm water of the cove throwing chevron wakes onto both shores. As it maneuvered in at her little dock, Black got up and gave Claire a quick peck on the cheek.

  “Take care of yourself. Call me if you get a breakthrough.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

  Black stopped at the door, his hand on the doorknob. “Sweetheart, this is the best I’ve felt about you since I pulled you out of that damn river. Just stick close to Bud, that’s all I ask. See you tonight.”

  Claire picked up Jules Verne and stroked his fur while she watched Black until he was out of sight, the boat disappearing out of the cove. Then she showered and dressed, anxious for Bud to come by so they could get to work. She was
feeling better about her personal problems, but they still had an unknown corpse lying beaten and lifeless on one of Buckeye Boyd’s stainless-steel tables inside the medical examiner’s office.

  Around eight o’clock, Bud’s Bronco pulled up into her driveway. Claire gave the little poodle a hug and then ran out and got inside. As they backed out and headed up the road, she turned to look at him.

  “So, Bud, what’s the missing woman’s name again?”

  “Miriam Long. The deputy who got the call is meeting us at her house.”

  They drove for a while, fighting morning traffic as everybody went off to work or to have some fun out on the lake or at one of the many shopping malls and arcades they passed along the way. About fifteen minutes later, they reached Bagnell Dam.

  “Our turn is across the dam and on the left,” Bud told her.

  They drove the length of the dam, and Bud hung a left on a lake road that led down a steep hill to a faded blacktop street where several houses sat on flat, shady lakefront properties. A Canton County deputy’s car was sitting in the driveway of a low and sprawling, flat-roofed yellow house. They pulled up beside their colleague’s car underneath a huge pecan tree with low-slung and spreading branches. A lush grassy lawn surrounded Miriam Long’s house, and a deputy in Canton County departmental brown stood beside his driver’s door. He didn’t look familiar.

  “That’s Ben Welch,” Bud told her, turning off the engine and shoving the gearshift into park. “He’s been with us for a couple of months now. You didn’t know him all that well. He’s a good cop, though.”

  Bud had gotten into the habit of a running commentary that inserted missing pieces into her life’s half-finished puzzle. But surprise, surprise, Claire liked that. Gave her a heads-up on what she was facing. Since she already seemed to be a primo topic of some amazement and curiosity around the department, Bud made it easy for her to act like she knew who she didn’t know.

  “Howdy, Bud.” Welch looked to be in his early twenties, right out of the academy, in fact. He was clean shaven, his hair shaved over the ears but longer on top with gel holding it in place. His eyes were big and brown and watchful. Sharp and inquisitive. At about five ten, he stood just a little bit taller than Claire. He looked at her, as if tiptoeing his way across a carpet of eggshells. “Hi, Claire. How you doin’?”