After Caroline

by Kay Hooper

  After a moment, Joanna couldn’t help but say, “You talk as if you were helpless in her toils.”

  He shook his head immediately. “No, I don’t claim the affair was all her fault. Hell, she didn’t rape me. Didn’t even seduce me. She just saw I wanted her and she offered, the way you’d offer somebody a ride in your car if you saw them with their thumb sticking up.”

  It was only then that Joanna understood the truth. Adam Harrison didn’t hate Caroline, or at least didn’t only hate her. He loved her. Even now, more than three months after her death and a year after their affair, he loved her. He was bitter because she hadn’t felt the same way about him, but the bitterness hadn’t destroyed his feelings for her, only twisted them into complex and obviously agonizing knots. He was torn with guilt about having betrayed Scott, but if Caroline hadn’t broken it off, Joanna had no doubt they’d still be using that “dingy” back room.

  It also made his willingness to talk to Joanna so immediately and frankly more understandable, she thought. Because she so resembled the woman he couldn’t forget, the information he offered so voluntarily was almost in the nature of a confession.

  Joanna wasn’t a priest, able or willing to offer him absolution—and she wasn’t Caroline. Her knowledge of his turbulent feelings for Caroline made her uncomfortable, made her look away from him as one would look away from something too naked to be seen by a stranger.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Roughly, he said, “Goddammit, don’t you pity me too!”

  She braced herself inwardly and looked at him again, relieved to see only his anger rather than his anguish. “I’m not Caroline,” she said very deliberately. “I’m just a woman who looks a bit like her, a woman who’s curious about her life.”

  “And her death?”

  Joanna’s inner debate lasted only a few seconds, and she couldn’t have said what it was that made her certain this man had not been involved in Caroline’s death. His aching misery, perhaps, or just her own instincts. All she knew was that her dream had brought her here, to him, and she had to get whatever information he had to give her.

  “Yes,” she said. “And her death.”

  “It was an accident,” Adam said. “Everybody says so.”

  “You don’t sound so sure.” Joanna studied him thoughtfully. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, I think it was an accident—in a manner of speaking. It seems clear she was driving that car, and that she was alone. But I think something was bad wrong the last couple weeks of Caroline’s life, that she was worried and she was scared.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “She came by here three or four days before the accident—and she never came by here, not since we stopped using that room behind the office. She had something on her mind, that was obvious. She couldn’t be still, kept wandering around the greenhouses like she was looking for something, smoking like a chimney. And she’d bitten her nails down to the quick, I saw that.”

  Almost unconsciously, Joanna slipped her hands into her pockets to hide her own ragged nails. “She didn’t tell you why she was upset?”

  A bit of his earlier misery crept back into Adam’s pale eyes, and he shook his head. “No. I didn’t give her the chance, to be honest. There were customers here when she arrived, and when they left, I … hell, I sort of let it rip, if you know what I mean. I said something sarcastic about royalty visiting the peons, and then I really got nasty. She could hardly get a word in, and I was sure as hell in no mood to listen.”

  “Was that the first time you’d seen her since…”

  “Since she stopped taking naps on my cot? Yeah, first time since then we’d been alone. Guess I’d bottled up a few things and had to let ’em out.”

  Joanna nodded. “So she left without telling you what was bothering her.”

  He nodded. “God knows why she came to me if it was help she needed. You’d think she would have realized I was still raw and pretty much hated her guts. I mean, wouldn’t any man after the way she’d treated me? She should have expected that. Why didn’t she expect that?”

  It was a rhetorical question, and one filled with guilt. Joanna had heard the same emotion in Griffin’s voice, and for much the same reason. She had to wonder if all the men in Caroline’s life had felt guilty because they hadn’t been there for her at the end. And wondered even more if that had been Caroline’s fault. Certainly Adam had loved her, and Griffin might well have for all his denials, yet neither of the men had gone out of their way to help her when she might have needed them most. The way Adam talked, there had been other affairs, other men; had there been? And had she gone to other past lovers in the last days of her life, seeking their help for some problem she dared not confide in her husband, only to find that she had used them up so completely that none of them had been able to find for her even enough caring to offer a shoulder or a willing ear?

  “You probably couldn’t have changed what happened,” she told Adam, not certain of that but knowing it was what he needed to hear.

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “I keep telling myself it was her own fault. You can’t treat people like dirt and then expect them to treat you better.”

  “Most of the people around here seemed to have liked Caroline,” Joanna noted neutrally. “Or, at least, had nothing bad to say about her.”

  “Oh, sure, she could be sweet as honey when she wanted to—it was her public face, as a matter of fact. What most people saw. But I’ll bet you haven’t found any close friends, especially women. Caroline didn’t like other women. She was polite enough, of course—raised that way. Very civic-minded, too, always working for the good of the town. And she worshiped that kid of hers, no doubt about that.”

  After a moment, Joanna said, “So, when you say she treated people like dirt, you mean she treated men that way?”

  For the first time, Adam seemed hesitant. “Some men. I know of at least one other man in Cliffside she turned inside out, and I’ll bet there are others. She was … too sure of herself and her power, too casual when it ended, for a woman who wasn’t used to dumping lovers.”

  Joanna accepted that opinion with a grain of salt; he was nowhere near objective about Caroline, and a discarded lover was probably not the best person to judge whether she made it a habit to cheat on her husband. Still, the opinion and feelings of at least one other discarded lover might either confirm or contradict what Adam believed of Caroline. And that other lover might have been the one Caroline met in the old barn, possibly right up until her death.

  “Will you tell me who that other man is?” she asked him slowly. “I’d like to talk to him.”

  Adam was shaking his head. “I don’t think I should, Joanna. His reputation here in town is a lot more important to him than mine is to me.”

  Joanna felt a twinge of uneasiness, wondering if it was the sheriff’s reputation he didn’t want to harm. And wondering if she was ready to hear it if that was true. Oh God, why does it keep coming back to Griffin? Why can’t I believe he didn’t love her?

  In any case, she didn’t know if she could—or should—convince Adam she could be trusted not to talk about what she found out, so instead asked, “How did you find out about them?”

  “He told me. When she dumped him, he got a little drunk and needed somebody to talk to. We’re friends, so he came looking for me.” Adam’s mouth twisted bitterly. “It was months before I got involved with her, so I can’t say I wasn’t warned.”

  Months before. So this other lover wasn’t seeing Caroline when she died—unless it was a repeat performance. “How an affair would end, you mean?”

  “Yeah. She dumped him for no reason, or at least no reason she wanted to give him. Just said it was over and strolled away, avoiding a confrontation the way she always did. And he was in love with her, the poor bastard. He’s not over her yet.”

  Neither are you, Joanna thought. So there were at least two men who had been sexually and emotionally involved with Caroline; had there
been others? What about Scott? Had he known or suspected that his wife was unfaithful? And if he had, had he cared?

  Joanna had no way of knowing. “Adam, do you have any idea if she was involved with anyone just before the accident?”

  “No. She may have been—probably was—but I couldn’t say for sure. Only her lover would know.”

  “This is a town full of gossip,” Joanna said wonderingly. “How was Caroline able to hide an affair? Especially if she made it a habit.”

  Adam shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she never got caught because she wanted to be.”

  In a way, that made the most sense to Joanna—if it was true. People with nothing to lose often appeared to have unusual luck, as if fate had a fine sense of irony. If Caroline had indeed wanted—consciously or unconsciously—her husband to discover her infidelity, perhaps fate had determined that she would have to tell him herself.

  In any case, Joanna was left with a great deal to think about.

  “Thanks for talking to me,” she told Adam. “And you don’t have to worry. I won’t tell anyone about you and Caroline.”

  “Thanks,” he murmured, but not as if he really cared.

  Joanna hesitated, wanting to say something else but not knowing what. Finally, she turned and made her way down the aisle toward the door.

  “It was a closed-casket.”

  Startled, she stopped and turned back to look at Adam. He was staring at the rosebush, but then raised his haunted gaze to her. “The service. It was a closed-casket service.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “The accident was so bad, she looked … there was no way to … fix her. So they kept the casket closed. I never saw her again.”

  And never got to say you were sorry. It also helped to explain, Joanna realized, at least some of the reactions to her here in Cliffside. If only a handful of people had actually seen Caroline’s body, then the grieving process for many had no doubt been delayed or hindered. They hadn’t been able to see her before burial, hadn’t been able to say good-bye in the way so many needed to. Encountering a woman who so resembled Caroline relatively soon after her death must have given rise to even more speculation than Joanna was aware of.

  “Talk to Doc Becket, Joanna,” Adam said abruptly. “He knew her as well as anyone did.”

  Joanna wasn’t sure if Adam was telling her that Becket had been Caroline’s lover, but she didn’t want to ask; she accepted the advice without comment. “Thank you, I will. Good-bye, Adam,” she said, helpless because there was nothing else she could say.

  “Good-bye, Joanna.” He turned his head back and resumed staring at the rose named For Caroline, his pleasant face desolate.

  She left the greenhouse and got in her car, just sitting there for a few moments before starting the engine. She had to force herself to shake off Adam’s pain, to push it away from her, and when she had, what she felt most of all was confused uncertainty.

  Who was Caroline McKenna? A shy woman—a repressed woman. A serene woman—a woman who nervously bit her nails. A devoted mother—a habitually unfaithful wife. A woman who could bequeath millions so that the town clinic could be improved—yet apparently abandoned her lovers without warning or compunction.

  A woman whose marriage was made hollow by the indifference of her husband? Or a woman whose own behavior had caused his cold remoteness?

  … you assume I’m at fault. That I’m the ogre, the villain of the piece.

  And are you?

  Why, yes, Joanna. I am. Just because everybody says I’m a cold bastard doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

  But was it true? Joanna wondered now. Was Scott McKenna as remote and uncaring as he seemed? Or was he more sinned against than sinning? Was Scott another man Caroline had left in an emotional shambles, a secret he kept well hidden behind an inherently reserved, seemingly uncaring facade?

  “Oh, damn, Caroline, who are you?” Joanna murmured, starting her car at last.

  “Are you sure?” Griffin asked, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and holding the phone to his ear with the other. “That isn’t what you told me yesterday, dammit.”

  Doctor Becket sighed. “Griff, you know as well as I do that the longer a body is out in the elements—especially during a wet and chilly night—the harder it is to pinpoint the time of death. You say the girl planned to sneak out of the hotel around eleven-thirty, and you ask if she could have been killed closer to midnight than we originally estimated. Yes, she could have. Anytime between ten P.M. and four A.M. would probably be a reasonable guess. I really can’t call it closer than that, not for the record.”

  “Guesses,” Griffin muttered. “Isn’t science wonderful.”

  “It has its limitations just like anything else,” Becket said. “Hey, call on the Portland M.E. if you want another opinion.”

  “No, don’t be an ass. Thanks, Doc.” Griffin cradled the receiver and sat staring down at the elegant, leather-bound diary lying open on his blotter. “Son of a bitch,” he said quietly to himself.

  “Having a bad day?”

  He looked up at the open doorway of his office, then leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “You might say that.”

  “I can come back later,” Joanna offered.

  Griffin shook his head. “No, it’s all right.”

  She came in rather cautiously and sat down in his visitor’s chair. “Um … about what I said yesterday—”

  “If you thought I was still pissed about that,” he said, “I’m not.”

  “Oh? Then how come it feels a few degrees cooler in here than it ought to be?”

  “Okay, I’m still pissed. I hate being wrong.”

  Joanna blinked, then smiled slightly. “Tough on the ego, huh?”

  Griffin thought about it, then shook his head. “Not so much that as my knowledge of myself. You showed me something I hadn’t seen in myself, and I didn’t like it much. You were right—it was easier for me to believe Caroline’s death was no more than a random accident. I didn’t feel quite so guilty when I thought my being there wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “We can’t know that it would have,” Joanna reminded him quietly.

  “No, but once we accept—once I accept—that something might have happened while she was waiting for me in the old barn, then it becomes a lot more likely that if I’d been there, the outcome might have been different.”

  “Maybe. But you can’t go back and relive that day, not now. So what’s the use of feeling guilty? It won’t change what happened to Caroline, and it sure won’t help you. Let it go, Griffin.”

  He wondered if he could, but smiled at her anyway. “Okay, I’ll work on that. But in the meantime, no matter how I feel about what happened that day, it hardly alters the evidence. She was alone, she was driving, and the car wasn’t tampered with or forced off the road. No crime was committed.”

  Joanna nodded. “Not a legal crime, I accept that. But what about a moral one? What if somebody did cause the accident by upsetting Caroline?”

  “Then I’d like to beat the hell out of him,” Griffin said unemotionally. “But I can’t arrest him.”

  Her unusual golden eyes searched his face intently, and he had the sudden feeling that whatever she found or didn’t find there was going to determine not only the rest of this conversation, but possibly something a lot more important. And the hell of it was, he had no idea what it was she was looking for.

  She smiled briefly, the searching look vanishing, and linked her fingers together over her flat middle. “Okay. What about Amber? Another accident? Suicide?”

  “What just happened?” Griffin asked slowly.

  She looked startled, then wary. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do. You came in here with something very definite on your mind and then decided not to talk to me about it.”

  “That’s my privilege, surely,” she murmured.

  “Agreed.” He heard tension in his voice and knew she heard it as well. “But I’d like to know why you changed
your mind.” Her face—very much her own now rather than a mere duplicate of Caroline’s, as far as he was concerned—was not one suited to bluff across a poker table; she didn’t like it that he was able to read her so accurately. Still, this time that expressive face told him no more than her words did when she answered slowly.

  “Look, I found out something today, something that surprised me. I was going to tell you, but decided not to because it really isn’t my story to tell. Besides, it has nothing to do with Amber or your investigation, so…”

  “It’s about Caroline, isn’t it?”

  Even more slowly, Joanna said, “Not about her death. So it hardly matters, does it?”

  “Maybe you should let me be the judge of that.”

  Her mouth curved in a faint, odd smile. “No, not this time. The story was confided to me, and as far as I can see, it wouldn’t help you in any way to know it. So it stays with me. Sorry.”

  Griffin didn’t like it, and he knew that was obvious in his voice. “Well, since thumbscrews and the rack have been outlawed, I can’t force you to tell me.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then she murmured, “So, once again I’ve messed things up and we aren’t pals anymore?”

  “Is that what we were?” he heard himself ask.

  “I thought so.” She looked at him, awareness in her eyes. “Was I wrong?”

  For one of the few times in his life, Griffin was unsure. His feelings were too complex to easily define, and a part of him wanted to shy away from examining them. She had secrets she wouldn’t share, questions she wouldn’t answer, and that bothered him. Who was Joanna Flynn really, and why had she come here?

  He had known her only a week—but she was due to leave in another week. That didn’t leave a man much time. “It’s an old argument,” he said finally, “but can a man and woman ever be just friends?”