I tried to open my mouth. I couldn’t find my voice.
She said, “Lake and I came as soon as we heard from Dartagnan that you were missing.”
From the other side of my bed, a male voice said, “Dru, can you hear me?”
I could hear them. I just couldn’t speak. And I didn’t know who they were.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said.
The woman calling herself Portia said, “Of course she’ll be all right.” She laid a hand on my forehead. “Neither concussion, coyotes, nor snakes can defeat her.”
Snakes?
The woman had backed away, and the man’s face was close. “Dru,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
I grunted. I just wanted water. And to get out of the bindings. I squirmed, and pain raged in my body. “Ma yarm.”
“You arm will be fine,” the man said. “The swelling is already going down.”
“Wha—hap?”
The woman said, “You have to tell us.”
The man said, “A tourist family found you lying in the desert. The doc says you got a concussion going over the waterfall. And you had some weird poison in you.” Waterfall? Poison? He continued, “It was a different kind of poison than that of the sidewinder—how he knows the breed of the snake is more than I know.”
The woman said, “He’s guessing because they aren’t as venomous as other rattlers, otherwise she’d be dead.”
Don’t say more.
“Wa’er,” I managed. “Pleee. . .”
* * * * *
Time passed; I don’t know how many hours, or days, or weeks. Nausea was a constant companion. When no one was with me, I passed the time counting the dots on the ceiling and hating the rich smell of roses and lilacs and magnolias that surrounded me as if I were in a coffin. They told me a man named Arlo sent me flowers every day. Arlo, they promised, would come to see me when he got back from Los Angeles.
Often I drifted into never-never land where a man went with me. We laughed, and kissed, and he promised a life of infinite passion. An engagement ring circled the third finger of my left hand. When I woke, the ring wasn’t there, and I knew that he was dead. My fiancé was dead. Why was I alive?
As time passed, the pain in my body lessened, but not in my heart. I spent endless hours thinking of my lost love.
They told me that I had been bitten by a snake, that coyotes gnawed my toes, and that I’d been caught in a monsoon and cracked my head going over a waterfall called Ripple Rock. It was a true-blue miracle, they said, because nobody had ever survived a fall over Ripple Rock. They told me this with joy in their voices.
But I cursed a lot.
They told me that I was an investigator from Atlanta. That I’d come to Palm Springs to find a child. They said that the child and her mother had not been found. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I cried and tried to bring my mind back.
“Crying’s okay,” the man named Lake said.
His solicitude grated.
He also asked unfathomable questions like: “Remember telling me that Bradley Whitney had performed in a strip club?”
“What . . . ?”
“Well, I checked with Sass Shay. Lucky for us, the bartender was a longtime employee. He remembered Bradley Whitney. He stripped, all right. In a mask. He was billed as the Masked Mystique.”
I looked at him, thinking, So?
He made a noise of frustration. “Darling, you must try harder.
Apparently, I’d known this man in another life, but not as good as he knew me. He called me Dru, and darling, and my love. He’d kiss me when he came into the room and wipe the sweat from my face. I felt a twinge of guilt that he irked me most of the time.
As time went by, I recalled more about Portia. She was a school mate and a judge. She gave me a car. Once she asked bluntly, “What the hell were you doing in the desert in a monsoon?”
I shook my head that I didn’t know.
Lake said soothingly, “Don’t force it.”
Try harder, don’t force it? A contradiction from him, but, in fact, traces of my life were returning. He was a policeman, and I used to be a policewoman. I liked my uniform. See, I am trying, and forcing.
23
Another day passed and another stranger came into my room. “Hey, brave girl!” he hailed. “How’s our survivor?” His heartiness was strident, and I just stared at him.
“Oh, I forget,” he said, his dark eyes and white teeth sparkling like he was in a low-budget pirate movie. “You don’t remember a thing. Well, you survived one of the worst monsoons August has seen in a century. Over the dry waterfall in Lost Coyote Canyon. You’re the talk of The Springs.”
“Whoopee,” I said.
My sarcasm didn’t phase him. “They found you at the bottom where the mine is. The water volume must have cushioned you.”
“What’s your name?”
“You kiddin’ me?”
“I don’t know you. I don’t know a lot of people who apparently know me.”
“Damn. I didn’t know you were that bad. The head bang and the jimsonweed done a number on you.”
“Jimsonweed? Is that the same thing as datura?”
“Yep. Got a lotta names. Same ol’ nasty stuff. Makes you wonder why folks get a kick out of smoking it.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“How’d you get hold of it?”
“What’s your name?”
“Dartagnan.”
A trio of costumed men with swords flashed into my brain. “The Three Musketeers,” I said. Another flash occurred, and I recalled a visit from the man who sent me fresh flowers twice a day. His name was Arlo. He was in the movies and told me his wife was the mother of the child I sought. I asked Dartagnan, “You an actor?”
“Nope. Cop. PSPD.”
Lake came in and stared down at Dartagnan. “Anything new?”
“Nope,” Dartagnan said. “Nothing on the woman and the girl. Nothing on why your lady friend here went missing in the desert.”
Lady friend?
* * * * *
A woman came to see me. Her name, she said, was Tess Rosovo. An explosion went off in my head, I saw fire and my arm went numb. She said, “I know you don’t know me now, but you and I became friends on our ride into the desert.” She’s an Indian princess.
She told me that she’d taken me to the desert—to her family’s home on the reservation—because I suspected the woman named Eileen had taken her child to a woman’s shelter. Together we would ask the residents where these places might be. Then she said I started feeling bad and went to sleep in a bedroom in her aunt’s home. A couple of hours later she went to look in on me and saw that I had disappeared. She said the back door was never locked and neither was the gate. Her family concluded I had wandered away and began a search for me. She speculated that at some point in my wanderings, I fell into jimsonweed and got the toxin under my skin. And then along came a snake.
Later, Lake and Portia came to say they’d contacted a hypnotist who would help me remember. I sighed and asked if they thought I should remember. They exchanged glances—again. It appeared I said a lot of odd things.
Another day came to a close, and when everyone left, I turned on the television. News programs bored me. I flicked past inane sitcoms and awful reality shows. PBS had on a charity auction; I was about to flick it off when I saw a basket sitting on a table. The camera closed in. I found myself sitting up suddenly. The auctioneer described the basket.
“. . . The boojum tree is unique to the Sonora Desert and is named after a mythical creature in Lewis Carroll’s book The Hunting of the Snark. Our gifted local artist, Contessa Rosovo, frequently weaves the strange plant into her designs. Let’s start the bidding at fifteen hundred dollars.”
I didn’t breathe as the image of the basket sitting on a blanket in an oasis popped into my head. And guacamole. And disgusting tea.
I broke into a cold sweat as memories tumbled over each other. A cabin. Windla. P
erspiration dripping down my neck. Chanting. A barrel stove with a fat pipe going through the ceiling. Words from Tess about girls getting their first moon. An older woman passing her hands over a young girl lying on dirt. A pale face that didn’t belong. Dancing. My hand. A ring. Tess. Orange images. Black.
I fell back on the pillow, exhausted. Sleep came inside a blazing Jeep and over a waterfall and into a gold mine and down onto the belly of a snake. Then the Indian princess came and threw water on me.
I sat up shivering. It was all so clear now.
Then a nurse came in with a needle.
“No!”
24
I woke to familiar dawn shadows, sat up, and said aloud, “I remember. Everything.” My clothes were in drawers, in a metal locker. My sluggish and weakened body wanted to rest, but the hell with that. I pulled out slacks and a shirt and was standing in my underwear when Portia and Lake came in together.
They stopped, drop-jawed.
I pumped my fist. “I remember.”
Portia shot toward me like a black bullet. “What?”
“All of it,” I said.
“Tell us,” she demanded, throwing me a blanket to cover my nearly nude body.
I sat on the bed and hit the highlights of what happened.
“A ring poisoned you?” Lake asked.
“Had to be,” I assured him. “Tess was wearing an onyx ring. It was turned around. A prong pricked me. I felt it just before I passed out.”
Lake rubbed his nose with a forefinger, a gesture I knew. It spoke of doubts. Portia’s eyes were kinder, less doubtful, but wondering.
I felt my face flush. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m sure of what happened.”
Lake said, “I hope you remember we have an appointment this morning with a hypnotist.”
“Not me.”
“Dru, I think it’d be best . . .”
“I don’t need a damned hypnotist.”
“You’re telling us that Tess Rosovo—the pride of the Mission Hills Indians—poisoned you and left you to die in the desert?”
“She poisoned me, but then she saved me.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Who did she save you from?”
“I don’t know, but the Jeep burned up.” If I sounded abrupt and disconnected, that’s the way I felt.
“Finish dressing, Dru. We’ll get some fresh air before we get to our appointment.”
“We? You can go. I’m not.”
Portia intervened. “Moriah, it couldn’t hurt.”
“Who found this hypnotist?”
They looked at each other, and I knew it had been Tess. “No.”
Portia gave in. “We can’t make you, of course.”
“No, you can’t. Now get out, Lake. I’m getting dressed. Then I’m leaving.”
“You can’t. The doctors . . .”
“I’m through with the doctors, the nurses, the meds, and the goddamned needles.”
My suitcases lined the window. I lifted one.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Check back into the hotel,” I said, heaving the suitcase onto the bed with the arm that wasn’t sore. “Find Eileen and Kinley.” The painful effort reminded me of a snake-in-the-desert. “Backtrack to the desert and find out who wanted me dead.”
“Let’s talk to Tess first,” Portia said. “And Dartagnan.”
“Forget it.” I turned to Lake. “Please—I’d like to get dressed without an audience.” He moved stiffly out the door. “Ass,” I said.
“There is one thing you don’t remember,” Portia said.
“What?”
“You and Lake—you were close friends—lovers.”
“I remember.” This morning, in that twilight time before fully awakening, the laughing man of my dreams died. I took a deep breath. Then I was with Lake.
“But you don’t feel the same now, do you?” Portia said.
I considered my answer. I didn’t feel the same, but I didn’t want to admit it to Portia. It would cast doubt on my recovery. “Sure I do. I just—he’s aggravating me.”
“Even when you didn’t remember shit, he aggravated you.”
“It’ll be all right,” I said and looked at my longtime friend. “I need some time, that’s all.”
“He wants the best for you, the very best. And so do I.”
“I know that.”
“I have to go back to Atlanta. My trial schedule is backing up. I can’t ask anyone else to fill in.”
“I understand,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Lake will be here to help.”
“I don’t need—”
“Moriah, you need his help. If you’re right and you have enemies, you don’t know who they are.”
I looked at Portia feeling like a chastised child. “Okay, but how long can Lake be away from his job?”
“He’s yours as long as you need him. The APD has a soft spot for one of their favorite ex-cops.”
It was silly, but I felt elated.
“Go easy on Lake,” Portia said, stepping close enough to hug me. “Let your heart remember, too.”
I couldn’t tell her that it was because my heart did remember and that it was sick because it had to forget once again the man I couldn’t marry because he was dead.
25
I’d just settled into Lake’s rental Jeep and plugged my cell phone into the jack when the cell played Mozart. I looked at the panel. “Whitney.”
“Welcome back to the real world,” Lake said.
Whitney said into my ear bud, “Judge Devon informed me of your—mishap. We’ve lost valuable time.”
“A simple, ‘How are you doing?’ would be a nice beginning,” I said, hearing Lake’s snigger as he drove us toward the Palkott Hotel.
“Well,” Whitney said, “I assume you’ve recovered your memory or we wouldn’t be talking. The judge said you were going to be hypnotized.”
“Don’t need hypnosis. Had an epiphany just in time.”
“Ah, a sudden manifestation of the essence, or meaning, of something.”
“Yeah, scholar, a sudden manifestation.”
“The essence is, can you still investigate my case?”
“I’ll find your child.”
“This epiphany tell you where Kinley is—where Eileen is?”
“Not existential enough.”
“Miss Dru, time is running out.”
“Not if Eileen’s got Kinley with her.”
“If? You think she doesn’t?”
“I didn’t say that. I said if.”
“What else could have happened?”
“Mr. Whitney, that’s obvious, but let’s not go there now.”
“Obvious? To whom?” He didn’t bother to control his fury. “My little girl is gone, my ex-wife is gone. This is adding up to be a big zero, and I’m paying for it.”
“Two and two don’t always add up to four if somebody’s fiddling with the numbers, Mr. Whitney.”
“Are you sure you’ve fully recovered?”
“Very sure. Let’s go with your assumption that Eileen kidnapped Kinley. No one here knows where she could have gone. She didn’t confide in her friends. A neighbor saw them Saturday afternoon. She hasn’t left a paper trail, so she hasn’t run out of money. She withdrew twenty-five thousand from her account on Thursday before she disappeared.”
“Twenty-five thousand? That’s an hour’s shopping for Eileen.”
“At one time in her life she probably learned thrift.”
“Arlo’s helping her. She’s likely hiding out in LA That’s Eileen’s style, not living in the desert with unkempt Indians. Did you check the airlines going to LA? Do I have to do that for you?”
My fist tightened, and my voice rattled like marbles stuck in my throat. “I checked. The cops checked. But you go ahead and check.” Lake reached over and touched me on the shoulder. “Look, Mr. Whitney, Eileen’s car’s gone. If she’s not hiding in Palm Springs, she had to take out across the des
ert. Native Americans own most of it. If she isn’t hiding with them, then she had to stop and get gas, and eat, and sleep. The word is out.”
“The word is out? You’ve been out there more than a week and all you can do is put the word out? You’ll have the media on my ass. The last thing I wanted—the very thing I paid you to avoid.”
“What are you saying, Mr. Whitney?”
His silence was loud enough to simmer through the ether. He finally said, “I’m sorry you got hurt, but I have certain goals . . . .”
I finally got it. “You’re firing me?”
He didn’t say anything for a while. “Don’t you think you’ve failed?” My body drew as tight as a bow string. He said, “Judge Devon talked to the policeman out there. He told her that Eileen’s definitely not in Palm Springs. I don’t think you need to be in Palm Springs, do you?”
I cut in, “I’ll tally up the totals for you, Mr. Whitney. Naturally, the time I spent recovering will not be included.”
* * * * *
I put on sunglasses and tucked the paper airline ticket in my purse. My work here wasn’t finished, but I was. Failure does not sit well on my soul. As Lake and I walked from the ticket counter at the airport, I saw a familiar man duck behind a group of women, obvious tourists. The buzzing ladies were excellent cover for him. And because of them, I lost sight of him. “Someone’s following us,” I said.
Lake’s shoulders slumped like he’d failed at something. “Who?”
Temper, I told myself. “If I knew, I’d have said his name.”
“How do you know he’s following us?”
“I’ve seen him before. He ducked behind those women.”
Lake looked at the gaggle of females. Then he nodded toward a small man with a laptop who was hurrying toward the ticket counter. “That man?”
“Don’t be an ass.”
26
We had a cup of coffee at Zing’s donut shop. Zing wasn’t there. He was on vacation. Our next stop was at Philippe’s Too Busy to Cook? I didn’-t see Philippe. Two men and a woman wearing floppy chef’s hats were busy with customers. No one manned the flower and candy section. “Is Monsieur Philippe in?” I called to the woman.
The Last Temptation Page 11
