She's Not There

by P J Parrish

  “Yes, sir. Just down that hall there,” the young man said with a smile.

  “Thanks.”

  “Enjoy your game, sir,” he said.

  “I intend to.”

  Jizz. All you had to do was have the right jizz.

  There were two old guys in the locker room, sitting in towels on benches, and neither looked up as Buchanan made his way through the rows of beige metal lockers. There weren’t that many and for a moment Buchanan was beginning to doubt his hunch. And then, there it was.

  Locker 328.

  Buchanan stared at the number for a long time and then pulled his wallet from the pocket of his shorts. The locker was small, one of those half-length ones. He inserted the little brass key into the small padlock and turned.

  The lock clicked open. Buchanan swung the door wide.

  The blue vinyl Adidas gym bag was wedged in sideways. Buchanan eased it out, testing its weight. Heavy, maybe forty pounds.

  He sat down on the bench, the gym bag on his knees. He took a deep breath and unzipped the bag.

  Neat white-gray bundles of paper. Lots of them.

  Buchanan glanced around, saw no one, and pulled out one of the bundles. There was a crisp hundred-dollar bill on top, with a gold band over it that said $10,000.

  How many bundles? His brain was buzzing too loud to do the math. He didn’t want to. He just wanted to get out of here as fast as he could. He slipped the bundle back in the Adidas bag and zipped it shut.

  Back in the lobby, the young man in the blue blazer gave Buchanan an odd look as he headed to the entrance.

  “Quick game,” Buchanan said. “I won.”

  The cabbie who had waited for him got a hundred-dollar tip. The kid who carried his bag up to the suite at the W Hotel got a fifty, the last of McCall’s dirty advance money.

  Buchanan put the Adidas bag in the room safe, flung the sliding glass doors wide open, poured a Maker’s Mark from the minibar and laid down on the king-sized bed.

  But he didn’t take a drink. He just lay there, eyes closed, feeling the warm ocean breeze wash over him. He was thinking about what he was going to do with the money, about how he could buy a good lawyer to help him with the indictment and getting Gillian back, how he could go back to Nashville and get back to his life. He was thinking about . . .

  Turtles.

  Those poor damn baby turtles down there on the beach who lost their way and followed the wrong lights to their death. He was thinking about turtles and birds and unicorns and his head was getting really fucked up, and he hadn’t even had one drink. He was thinking that what he had been doing since he had lost her was not really what he wanted to do anymore.

  Then what are you?

  It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Rayna talking to him. It was Amelia.

  And it took him another moment to realize he didn’t know the answer.

  He sat up slowly in the bed. He didn’t know the answer, but he knew where he had to go to find it.

  But first, he had to go find one last runner.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Alex had to wait until the fishing boat made its way through the inlet. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t in any hurry now. The low drawbridge eased back down into place, and Alex put the car in gear and drove on, past the old lighthouse and down a narrow road.

  The car window was down, and the air flowed over him sweet with the smell of the sea and something in bloom. The sky was starting to turn pink and gold as the car entered a thick tunnel of trees, the twisting banyans and sea grapes swaying in the stiff breeze. The road was lined by huge lush ferns, magenta bougainvillea, and scarlet hibiscus bushes.

  Alex slowed, looking for the sign, and finally spotted it almost hidden in the row of date palms—BHG BUILDERS. The chain-link fence was open. He swung his car down the rutted dirt road, parked behind a yellow Caterpillar backhoe and got out.

  It rose up before him, huge and gray, a concrete shell of a building. Three floors, the windows covered in protective blue film, the balconies rimmed with scaffolding, the unfinished staircases leading nowhere.

  He spotted a black Bentley half-hidden behind a bunker of cement bags and started toward it.

  “Alex!”

  He looked up. McCall was standing on a second-floor balcony, leaning over a makeshift wood railing.

  “Come on up,” McCall said. He disappeared into the concrete shell.

  Alex picked his way across the construction debris and through a yawning gap in the front of the house into a cave of rebar and dangling conduit. He spotted a bare concrete staircase and went up to the second floor.

  The breeze was brisker here, snaking in through open archways that led to a trio of balconies overlooking the ocean. Alex glanced around as he walked, at the cathedral ceilings and the rainbow marble slabs that framed a hole in the wall for a future giant aquarium.

  “You’re late,” McCall said.

  He was a large silhouette in an archway, the sky behind him a gradient splash of orange and blue.

  “I got caught in traffic.”

  “How was your trip to California?” McCall asked.

  Alex was quiet, not surprised McCall knew where he had been. Megan had probably told him.

  “It was a failure,” Alex said. “As you would say, I couldn’t close the deal.”

  McCall nodded. “You used to be the best closer I ever met.”

  “I can be again.”

  McCall’s brow lifted. “Is that why you wanted to meet me? You wanted to ask if you could come back?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  McCall walked out to the balcony and stood at the railing. Alex followed him, hands in his pockets. Out in the fading light, Alex could see the lingering bruises on McCall’s cheek, where he had hit him the night they argued.

  “I’m ready to move on, get things back to normal,” Alex said. He tried a smile. “Get to work on the next million.”

  McCall was silent, just staring at him. “What made you change your mind?”

  Alex hesitated. “Mel. It’s over between us. I see that now.”

  McCall shook his head. “You know it’s not that simple. We’ve still got a problem out there. Both of us.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex asked.

  McCall took a step back, his gaze moving slowly over Alex’s body and back up to his face.

  “You wearing a wire, Alex?”

  “What?”

  “Did the Feds get to you? What did they offer you?”

  “Fuck, Owen . . .”

  “Take off your jacket,” McCall demanded.

  Alex slowly removed his coat and spread his arms. McCall stepped close and patted Alex down, from his shoulders to his ankles.

  “Empty your pockets,” McCall said.

  “I would never turn on you, Owen. I have as much—”

  “Prove it to me. Empty your pockets.”

  Alex stepped back inside the shell of the house and set his keys, cell phone, change, money clip, and his jacket on a worktable, leaving his pants pockets turned inside out. McCall motioned him back to the balcony, where he led him a good twenty feet away.

  “Want me to strip naked too?” Alex asked.

  McCall stared at him, his eyes dark with suspicion. “Trust is like a mirror, Alex. You can fix it, but you can always see the crack.”

  “Trust goes both ways,” Alex said. “You hired someone to kill my wife.”

  McCall reached into his pocket and withdrew a cigar. Alex watched him as he bit off the end and turned his back to the breeze to light it. The smoke disappeared quickly into the dusky light.

  “I only want one thing,” Alex said.

  “And what’s that?”

  “I want you to call off Buchanan.”

  McCall just stood there, sucking on the c
igar.

  “Mel doesn’t remember anything,” Alex said. “She doesn’t remember finding the flamingo. She doesn’t even remember why she was going to Marco Island or who was in the car with her.”

  “But she might.”

  “The doctor told me she’d probably never remember what happened. I’m telling you, that night is lost to her.”

  “But you still love her. And that makes you a liability to me.”

  Alex nodded slowly. “But I love something else more.”

  McCall glanced at him, as if he were bored. “What?”

  Alex gestured toward the view. “This. I want this. I want what you want. I want to be able to buy four houses on the beach, tear them down and build something better.” He paused. “You were right about me, Owen. You always were.”

  McCall laughed softly and blew out a stream of smoke.

  Alex drew a shallow breath, shivering in the cooling breeze.

  “All right,” McCall said. “I’ll call Buchanan off, but only temporarily. I’m going to be watching her.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “And I want you to give me that damn bird from Mary’s car.”

  “I’d like to hang on to it,” Alex said. “I need some insurance of my own. Like you said, our trust level is a little low right now.”

  McCall stepped closer to him. “Understand one thing, Alex. Nobody extorts me. Not you, not your crazy wife, not anyone.”

  “You killed an innocent woman.”

  “It had to be done. And I will not be held ransom with a damn plastic toy you picked up out of the mud. Are we clear?”

  Yes. Yes.

  “I said, are we clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bring it to me tomorrow at the office,” McCall said. “Once I have it, you can come back to work.”

  Alex nodded. McCall walked to a trash can, stubbed his cigar out on the side and tossed the butt inside.

  “We’re finished here,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Alex looked out at the horizon. The orange-blue had faded to a thin red line that hung over it like a streak of blood.

  “You coming?” McCall asked.

  “I think I’ll stay a few minutes and watch the sun go down. Do you mind?”

  McCall hesitated. “Suit yourself.”

  Alex stayed on the balcony until he heard McCall’s footsteps fade, and then slowly walked to the table and picked up his jacket. As he gathered up his things, he paused, staring down at the money clip.

  It was platinum, yet another gift from McCall when they had closed some big deal. He couldn’t remember which one now, but it didn’t matter. He pulled the bills from the clip, put them in his pocket, and set the clip on the worktable.

  Downstairs, he walked to the center of the sandy yard, but instead of heading toward his car, he followed a path up through the trees, into an adjacent empty lot. He could hear the rush of the ocean, taste salt in the air, feel the beat of his own heart.

  A man in a navy-blue windbreaker stepped out from behind a bush. The yellow letters stamped across the right side of his jacket said FBI. Behind him was another man, in a dark suit and white shirt.

  The FBI agent held out a hand. Alex took off his Patek Philippe watch and handed it to him. The agent turned it over, peeled off the small electronic bug, and looked back at Alex.

  “Well done, Mr. Tobias.”

  Alex didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything. The man in the suit stepped forward. “You got him to confess to the murder of your secretary but you didn’t get him to talk about the securities fraud.”

  Alex looked away, toward the dark ocean. “Just do a forensic audit of the books,” he said. “You’ll find everything you need.”

  The man in the suit walked away. The FBI agent held out a pair of cuffs.

  “It’s time, Mr. Tobias.”

  Alex turned around and put his hands in front of him. He closed his eyes as the agent snapped the steel cuffs around his wrists. He had managed to broker himself immunity from any SEC or fraud charges in exchange for getting a confession from McCall on Mary’s murder.

  The first charge was just about stealing money from people, the agent had explained, something banks did legally every day. But Mary Carpenter’s murder, that was something different. Because Mary was a potential witness, killed to prevent her from testifying about a crime, her murder was considered a federal offense. The lowest charge the Feds would offer him was Accessory to Murder. Five to fifteen years in a federal prison.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Tobias,” the agent said, taking his arm.

  Alex walked with the agent, across the sand, toward a dark sedan sitting near the road. His breath started to quicken and his heart rate kicked into high.

  He was scared. Scared of what was going to happen to him in prison. Scared of what his life would be like for the next decade. Scared he would not survive it.

  But, Mel . . .

  She would be safe.

  And that thought, that one single thought trickling through the wash of almost paralyzing fear, gave him the strength to keep walking.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Jimmy insisted on getting a tree. He had dragged it into the apartment the night before, a scrawny four-foot blue spruce that he had found in a lot somewhere in the Mission District. Amelia chided him about being sentimental but secretly she was pleased.

  Her memories of past Christmases were still re-forming, the ones from Morning Sun and Fort Lauderdale, and they were all cold and white.

  She was sweeping up needles from the carpet when the doorbell rang.

  The intercom was broken, so she looked out the window. The man at the door below was big with blond hair, wearing a leather jacket.

  “Who is it?” Jimmy asked, coming in from the bedroom.

  The man looked up, and Amelia drew in a sharp breath.

  “Buchanan,” she said.

  Jimmy came to the window and looked down. “Don’t answer.”

  But Amelia pushed the buzzer.

  Buchanan was coming up the stairs when she opened the door. He was carrying a Vuitton tote. He stopped, midstair.

  “Permission to come aboard, Captain Kirk,” he said.

  She moved aside, and he came into the living room. She shut the door and leaned against it, watching him. He was looking around the room, his eyes lingering for a while on Jimmy and then focusing finally on the tree.

  “What are you doing here?” Amelia asked.

  He turned to her. “I brought you a Christmas present.” He unzipped the Vuitton tote.

  A small black head popped out.

  Amelia gasped. “Brody!”

  She came forward, grabbed the dog from the bag and spun away, holding Brody so tightly he gave a small yelp.

  Buchanan was a blur when she turned back, and she took off her purple glasses to wipe her eyes. “I called the spa and they said someone had picked him up, but they couldn’t tell me who it was. I thought the police had taken him to the pound or something. I called everywhere, but no one knew where he was.”

  “Your maid had him,” Buchanan said.

  Amelia looked up at him. “Esperanza?”

  Buchanan nodded. “She went and got him after the Feds came in.”

  Amelia stared at him for a moment and then nodded in understanding. After Alex had turned state’s witness against McCall, things had happened fast. FBI agents had shown up at Jimmy’s apartment to question her about Mary Carpenter’s murder. The SEC agents had followed, grilling her about the law firm’s finances. But with her faulty memory, neither agency had any use for her testimony.

  The story had made the West Coast papers briefly and then dropped off the main pages. But Amelia had followed it online and knew that McCall was facing capital murder charges and federal securities fraud charges. All o
f McCall’s assets—and Alex’s, too—had been seized. It was all gone. The big pink house, the yacht, the cars, her jewelry.

  Alex had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He hadn’t tried to contact her. She wanted to call him, but everything was still too raw, and what he had done for her was almost too much to fathom. She finally decided she would write to him after the new year. It would be an opening, at least.

  And Jimmy? Amelia looked to him. He was, she had come to realize in the past week, what she needed more than anything—someone who shared her history, someone who was there for her, someone who would always be a very good old friend.

  Buchanan was still standing by the door. There was an oddly expectant look on his face. His eyes were blue, she realized in that moment, a soft gray-blue.

  Black . . . she had been positive his eyes were black. Weren’t his eyes black that day at the lake when he had put his hands around her throat?

  “I guess I’ll be going,” Buchanan said.

  Amelia stepped forward. “Where?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said after a moment.

  There was a long awkward silence. Jimmy broke it. “Would anyone like some coffee? Or maybe some tea?”

  “You got any beer?” Buchanan asked.

  When Amelia looked up at the window, Jimmy was watching them as they started away down the street. Buchanan looked up, too, then down at Amelia.

  “He doesn’t trust me,” He said.

  “Neither do I,” Amelia said.

  “Well, I don’t trust a man who doesn’t keep beer in his house.”

  Amelia said nothing; she just kept walking. The day was cold and a heavy fog was rolling in from the ocean, softening the harsh edges of the Sutro Baths ruins and obscuring the outcroppings of Seal Rocks just off shore. The barks of unseen seals followed them as they made their way toward Louis’ Restaurant at the end of Point Lobos Avenue.

  Inside, the restaurant was deserted so they claimed the prime corner booth. The windows were wrapped in gray flannel fog.

  Buchanan ordered two Anchor Steams. Amelia was quiet, reaching into the Vuitton tote at her side to scratch Brody’s head.