THE HUSBAND SHE COULDN'T REMEMBER

by Maggie Shayne

  "And you don't know where she's gone?" one Ranger asked.

  "No. She left sometime last night, but she didn't check out. I'm sure she'll be back."

  "Yeah," the other cop muttered. "People who use stolen credit cards are real sticklers about details like checking out before leaving."

  "Some of her things are still in her room."

  Right, she thought. What few things she had. A change of clothes, a hairbrush and a bag of slightly stale nachos, half of which had been last night's dinner.

  "Can you describe her?"

  The clerk nodded and then went into excruciating detail about her appearance, making her wish she'd worn the dark glasses and ridiculously large hat she'd swiped from her nurse during her getaway. His description was quite complimentary, though, culminating in the statement that she looked a lot like Terri Hatcher. She didn't have a clue who Terri Hatcher was, but the cops seemed to get the idea.

  "And did you notice what she was driving?"

  "Tough not to," the man said. "It was a beater. A rusted-out Datsun hatchback—blue, I think. In places, anyway. Sounded like the muffler was missing."

  "Gee, Luke, isn't there a rusty blue Datsun on the hot list?" one cop asked the other.

  She moaned under her breath.

  "Looks like the credit card isn't the only thing she stole."

  She'd heard enough. With a hungry stab of longing for that bag of stale nachos, she let the door close and slipped back toward the car only to hear the clerk shout, "There she is!" followed quickly by the sounds of Texas boot steps pounding toward her.

  She leaped into the car, locked the doors, turned the key hard.

  A sickly grunt was the only response from the starter. "Great timing, you junker," she whispered.

  A beefy hand tapped on her window. "Step out of the car, ma'am."

  She set her jaw, shook her head and turned the key again. It growled with a bit more enthusiasm.

  The Ranger tapped the window again—with the barrel of his handgun this time. "C'mon, ma'am, nobody wants you to get hurt over this, now."

  Still wrenching on the key, she rolled the window down just a crack. "I didn't steal this damned car," she told him. Pumped the gas pedal, turned the key again. It coughed.

  "Now, ma'am, we have an auto dealer in Horizon City who says otherwise. Claims you took it for a test drive and never brought it back."

  "He was going to sucker some poor slob out of eight hundred bucks for this wreck!" she told him. "I did Horizon City a favor by borrowing it. And I swear, I have every intention of returning it and paying that sleaze a fair rental fee, just as soon as I can."

  "An' how 'bout that credit card belonging to one Miz Michele Kudrow of London, England, ma'am? You gonna return that, too?"

  She dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the card. "Here," she said, sticking it through the window. "I only used it once. I had no choice, and she knows it. You tell her I'll pay her back."

  "Well, now, that's gonna be kinda hard to do, ma'am, seeing as how she disappeared right after she reported it stolen yesterday."

  She froze, and a cold chill raced down her spine.

  "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" the Ranger asked as he took the card from her and looked it over with a keen eye.

  Swallowing hard, she said, "I've been here for three days, Officer. You can ask the hotel clerk."

  "I'm afraid you're still gonna have to step outta the car, ma'am. Now, come on. Don't make this harder on yourself than it has to be."

  She twisted hard on the key, and the motor wheezed and snorted and hiccuped. God almighty, she should have borrowed a newer one. But her conscience had pricked her enough just taking this piece of garbage.

  "What's your name, ma'am? At least tell me your name, so we can talk about this."

  She met the Ranger's eyes and felt her own get wet. "I'd be glad to tell you," she said as the engine finally choked to life, "if I knew it myself."

  He frowned at her. She prayed she was guessing right when she guessed these two wouldn't shoot at her over one airline ticket and a junk car, crossed her fingers and popped the clutch. The car lurched forward and she gunned the gas, glancing in her rearview. She saw one Ranger lift his gun, look at the other, then shake his head and lower the weapon again. The two of them jogged to their own car, around the front hotel lot she guessed since she hadn't spotted it in the back lot. She wouldn't have much time once they got on their radio.

  She sped through El Paso, found a multilevel parking garage and drove inside the blessed darkness of the cavelike place. She caught herself ducking her head as the car passed beneath the low beams in the ceiling, and almost smiled at the silliness of doing that. Driving up several levels, she parked the car in a crowded section. Then she got out, leaving the ticket on the dash and keys in the ignition, but taking Michele Kudrow's Mata Hari hat and sunglasses with her.

  She took the elevator to the ground floor, stepped out into the sunlight, hat and glasses in place, and watched the police cars go screaming past.

  "I don't know where I learned it," she muttered, "but damn, I'm good."

  Ben sat very still, legs crossed in the cool green grass beside Penny's headstone. Since he'd come back home, he sat this way, in this spot, every day. He'd thought … hell, he'd thought he might be able to feel her … connect to her again somehow. But he hadn't. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  A soft hand closed on his shoulder. "Folks around here never saw no Brand sitting like a yogi before, Ben. You're turning heads and causing tongues to wag. You know that, don't you?"

  He opened his eyes, his concentration broken. But he remained as he was, sitting with his hands resting lightly upon his crossed legs, thumb and middle finger touching. He didn't turn his head. "The tongues have been wagging ever since I came back and opened up the dojo, Jessi. Don't tell me you're worried about my reputation now."

  "No. I think teaching martial arts to the local kids is good for you. Next to marrying Penny, opening that place is the best thing you ever did. It's your broken heart I'm worried about."

  She circled around and sat down in front of him. Eyes round and concerned and spilling over with love. Married now, with a baby of her own, she was still his baby sister. He hated that he was the cause of her worrying.

  "You okay, Ben?"

  He pursed his lips, shook his head, changed the subject. "I'm going into El Paso this afternoon. Gonna pick out something nice for Garrett and Chelsea's anniversary. You want to come along?"

  "I have a clinic to run. Two dogs, four horses and a first-calf heifer to check out today. And I didn't ask you what your plans for the day were, Ben, I asked if you're okay. Tell me the truth. Are you?"

  Sighing deeply, he gave up. "Nope. You'd think I would be by now, wouldn't you?"

  "It's been over two years." She tilted her head. "But if I lost Lash like you lost Penny, I doubt I'd be over it in ten—or even twenty. Besides, it has to be even harder on you than usual today."

  Ben met his sister's eyes. "She'd like that you remembered, Jess."

  "How could I forget? She was always going on about her birthday being the same as Nancy Drew's, remember?"

  He smiled, but it hurt. "She thought she was Nancy Drew when she was a kid."

  Soft laughter, sad eyes. "Remember that time Mrs. Murphy went out of town for a few days? Penny was just sure Mr. Murphy had done away with her and buried her in the backyard somewhere. He was none too amused to find her peeking through his windows late one night. Surveillance, she called it." Jessi's smile faded slowly. "When he hollered at her, she ran right to you, Ben. She always ran right to you when she got into trouble. And you were always there for her."

  "Not always," he said. "Not at the end."

  Reaching out a delicate hand, Jessi pushed a long strand of his hair behind his ear, caressing his cheek as she did so. "You can talk to me, you know, I'm not a baby anymore. Besides, I loved her, too. We all did."

  Ben shrugged and said n
othing.

  "What's going on with you, Ben?"

  Sighing, he talked. Wouldn't do any good to try to hold out. Not with Jessi. She could talk blood from solid granite if she set her mind to it, and the whole family knew the granite would give up long before Jessi ever would. Nobody ever kept anything from her for long.

  "Bad dreams," he said. "That's all."

  "About the accident?"

  He nodded. "I found out some things after she died, Jess. Things that just won't let me alone."

  Jessi's brows crinkled. "Like what kinds of things?"

  "Like … she wouldn't have died easy. She never told me the prognosis. I mean, we both knew she was terminal even before we got married, but she never told me how—" Ben had to pause, swallow and clear his throat before he could go on "—how bad it was going to be."

  Her voice a whole lot softer than before, Jessi asked, "How bad?"

  Ben shook his head. "Long, drawn out. You don't want to hear details, little sister. But trust me, from what Doc said, it was going to be hell for the both of us."

  "And you think…" She didn't finish the thought. Maybe she couldn't.

  "I keep going over it all, you know? She'd been taking turns for the worse almost daily for a month before that accident. And the day it happened … there was no reason in hell for her to have been driving the car."

  "Ben, tell me you're not thinking she drove into that gorge deliberately!"

  Ben met his sister's eyes. "How can I not wonder? And how can I not think that if she did, she did it for me? To save me going through the end with her."

  "No." Jessi shook her head firmly. "No, I won't believe it. She didn't kill herself, Ben. She wanted to squeeze every minute she could get out of life. She wouldn't just give up like that. Not Penny."

  She couldn't bear the thought; he could see it in Jessi's eyes. "Yeah," he said. "You're right, she did. But she changed, Jessi. Once Doc told her she was dying … she changed. Dropped out of that stupid PI 101 class she was taking. Quit reading Mickey Spillane novels … hell, she even stopped spying on the neighbors."

  "I know," Jessi said softly. "But I always hoped we'd get the old Penny back again. You know, once she got over the shock of it all. And I still think she was in there somewhere. Even with all the changes she went through, Ben, I can't believe Penny would take her own life. I won't believe it. And neither should you."

  Ben nodded. But he couldn't get the nightmarish memories to leave him alone. The charred, smoking wreckage.

  The blackened shape he'd glimpsed inside before his brothers had physically moved him away from the scene. Then later the cops showing him her wedding band, asking him to identify it as hers. They didn't need to tell him it was the only thing still recognizable about his wife.

  If she'd done that to herself deliberately—God, the thought tormented him. He'd isolated himself in the hills of Tennessee to grieve. He'd taken up meditation and martial arts to try to ease the pain. But it remained with him like some new organ he'd grown. He'd loved her. He'd loved the woman she'd been, and he'd loved the woman she had become. He would never love another. But even with that, he thought he might be able to find some kind of peace, some kind of acceptance—if only he knew the truth.

  The problem was, there was only one person who could answer the questions burning in Ben's mind. And she was dead. And today was her birthday. And he could have sworn he'd seen her again last night. Ben wondered how a man could hurt as much as he was hurting and still be alive.

  But he buried that hurt down deep, and managed to keep his voice from breaking as he reached for his gym bag, unzipped it and pulled out a bottle of root beer. Lifting the bottle, staring at Penny's headstone, he muttered, "Happy birthday, Nancy Drew." And in his mind, he could almost hear Penny, laughter in her voice as she said it with him. Her eyes always sparkled when they drank their annual root-beer toast to Nancy. Toward the end it was duller, that sparkle, and her smile was sad but there all the same.

  "Damn," he muttered. "Damn, I miss you, Penny." He had to avert his eyes when his little sister sniffled.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  "I know where she is, Dr. Barlow."

  Gregory Barlow turned sharply, startled out of the state he'd slipped into as he sat in the bedside chair in his patient's room at the Kathryn Barlow Memorial Hospice in London. He'd been staring at the empty bed, feeling everything he'd worked for these past ten years crumbling to dust. The clinic would have to be closed down now. He'd have to move the entire operation, use a new name. Again.

  He met the nurse's eyes. Michele Kudrow was his most trusted employee, but even she didn't know the whole truth. Even the bit she did know was too much.

  "Go on," he said softly.

  Nodding, Michele cleared her throat. "They found my credit card in the States. I called my apartment to check my messages and—"

  "I told you not to use the telephone." Michele went a bit pale. So he eased the anger from his voice before he went on. "For your own protection, Michele."

  "I still don't understand why," she whispered. She was scared. It was plain on her face. "Gregory, what have you done that's so wrong?"

  He shook his head. "Nothing. But if they should find you, question you… Just trust me, Michele. For the good of our work, you have to remain out of touch. You shouldn't even be here. Were you seen?"

  "No."

  He nodded. "You're safe at my place … just until things calm down." He touched her hand. "You do trust me, don't you, Michele?"

  She nodded slowly. She was in love with him, and dedicated to his work. She'd do as he said. For now. But if it looked as if things were becoming too dangerous, she'd have to be silenced. Permanently.

  "Good," he went on. He made his expression as warm as his voice, better to keep her trust. "Since you did make that call, why don't you tell me what you learned?"

  "The message was brief. Just that they'd found her, but that she'd got away."

  Good for her, Gregory thought. He needed her back here, but not by way of the authorities. "Where?" he asked.

  "Gregory … perhaps we ought to let her be. After all, she truly was well enough to leave the clinic. I don't blame her for feeling a bit stir-crazy, though I can't imagine why she'd go all the way to Texas."

  He couldn't either. The files were locked and hadn't been disturbed. And there was no way she could have remembered. He nearly smiled at her ingenuity, though it could cost him everything. Taking Michele's hat and sunglasses had been ingenious. Her purse and car keys, even more so. Leaving Michele alive, and conscious—though locked in a linen closet—had nearly been a disastrous mistake. If Gregory had been in her place, he'd have clubbed the pretty nurse over the head, at the very least, but he didn't suppose Jane Doe Ninety-eight was quite as ruthless as he was.

  Then again, he had to be.

  Ninety-eight was clever; he'd give her that. But he had to get her back here. Soon. Before she talked to anyone. Before she remembered anything—if she could still remember. He hadn't thought it possible, but now he wondered.

  He kept his thoughts to himself, though, and said only, "Where in Texas?"

  "El Paso," Michele told him.

  He nodded slowly. "Book me a flight, then. I'll leave as soon as possible."

  Lowering her head, Michele whispered, "You can't make her come back if she doesn't want to, you know."

  She was wrong, of course. He had no choice about that. But he knew with a sickening sense of dread that it might very well be too late. His life's work was in this patient's hands. She had no idea how easily she could destroy him.

  "She needs care, Michele. She's been so sick for so very long. I only want to make sure she's all right. Please, go and book the flight—but use my name, not your own. Get the first possible flight out, all right?"

  "All right," she said, and she backed out of the empty room, then paused in the hallway. "The police said I should call them back—"

  "Absolutely
not."

  She licked her lips, but nodded and closed the door. Gregory tipped his head skyward. "I'll find her, Mother. I promise you that. I won't give up now, not when we're so close. I swear it to you."

  From somewhere far beyond the room, he heard the soft, familiar voice. That's my good boy.

  No car. No money. Basically all she had right now were the big hat and huge sunglasses, and they'd probably saved her butt, so she should be grateful.

  She walked along the sidewalk, and smelled the tantalizing aroma of a deep fryer somewhere. The scent hung low in the oppressive heat. Her mouth watered. She couldn't remember when she'd last eaten, but if the pangs in her stomach were any indication, it had been awhile. But it didn't matter. Food, she could do without.

  There was a bigger emptiness than the one gnawing at her belly. She was lonely. Achingly lonely. She felt like crying, and she hated feeling like that. Melodramatic wimp! Good thing she wore the sunglasses. At least the strangers passing by—all of them walking with purpose and none wandering as she was—wouldn't see the weakness in her eyes.

  Hell, even back at the clinic she'd had Dr. Barlow, liar that he was, dancing attendance. And Michele, her favorite nurse, bending over backward to keep her happy. But there had been a wall between them. A boundary they never crossed. She couldn't have called them her friends even if they hadn't been involved in some secret conspiracy to keep her in their clutches. And of course, since they had been, and since she'd known it almost from the moment the coma-induced fog blew out of her brain, she hadn't even tried to think of those people as her friends.