“Why not?”
“According to Pierce, she was exhausted and disturbed and was to be kept in seclusion for the next few days until she recovered.”
“They wouldn’t let you see her?”
“They showed me a woman huddled in a bed, obviously drugged and out of it. They said to come back on Friday, and they’d see about letting me talk to her.” He paused. “But that wasn’t Beth Avery unless she’s changed beyond imagining. When I got back to the hotel, I called the records office of the private school she’d attended in Geneva and got them to send me a photo of her. I’ll forward it to you. Yes, she was younger and vibrant back then, but other than the dark hair, I couldn’t see any resemblance to the woman in that hospital bed. I’ve been calling that detective, Herman Dalker, but I haven’t been getting an answer. I’m trying to track him down.”
“And I’m going to call the school and see what I can find out about Beth. I want to talk to someone who knew her before she went into that hospital.” She added grimly, “And I want to know what happened that led her to run away from it.”
“I’m going to give you the answer that the hospital or a psychiatrist would give you: imaginary fears, schizophrenic delusions, or some other mental problem. And we couldn’t argue, Eve. We don’t have the facts.”
Heart pounding, sand beneath her shoes, rain on her face. Don’t let them catch me. Figure it out. Why …
“Speak for yourself. I can argue,” Eve said fiercely. She hadn’t even known the words were tumbling out until they were said. “You may have to have the facts because it’s your practical nature. I think she ran away because she was afraid. And not imaginary fear, Joe. She doesn’t know why, but she knows they want to kill her.”
He was silent. “Would you care to explain?”
“I don’t have an explanation. Not a reasonable one. I just think…” She drew a deep breath. “That dream the other night? I think it was Beth. It was the night she ran away from the hospital. I think I was running away with her. There was an ocean, a hospital … I was a part of her, feeling what she felt. I know it doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it does. I didn’t even know Beth existed when I had that dream. But perhaps she wasn’t meant to be alone any longer. Maybe God or fate or someone else decided that Beth deserved a break and needed a little help.”
“Someone else?” He paused. “Bonnie?”
“It’s possible.” Even probable. She could see the loving spirit of her Bonnie trying to arrange Eve’s life to suit herself. “Bonnie’s come to me in dreams before.”
“I know she has. From about a year after you lost her.”
Yes, Joe knew and accepted the fact that the ghost of Bonnie was still with Eve, which was a blessing beyond price. “It could be she just gave me a little push in Beth’s direction. Oh, I don’t know, dammit.” Her hand tightened on the phone. “But I was dreaming about Beth again when you called tonight. She was still running, but she was on the beach. There was a big house where she thought she’d be safe…”
“You’re sure it was Beth?”
“Yes, it was much clearer than the other dream. I know all this is weird as hell, Joe.”
“A little. But we’ve gone down that road before and survived. I trust you. If you believe it, then I’ll go along with you.”
“I believe it. Beth was thinking about someone named Billy. Billy had given her the security code to the house.” She was thinking. “So this Billy will know where we can find her. Someone at the hospital?”
“If I can get the password, I can check the personnel records on the computer without letting the staff know.”
“Which won’t be easy.”
“Not for us. But I know someone who might be able to get it for me.”
“If they can get into the personnel office.”
“That goes without saying. But if I can convince her to take the job, I’ll worry about access later. She can be stubborn as hell.”
“She?”
“Kendra Michaels.”
“A detective?”
“No. Yes. Sort of,” he said. “She kind of writes her own ticket.”
“But we need her?”
“We need her. She’s unique.”
“Then we’ll get her,” she said grimly. “I’m taking the next flight out.”
“I thought that would be your reaction. But take that flight to San Diego. That’s where she lives and works. I’ll meet you there.”
“San Diego,” she repeated. “I’ll let you know which flight. Bye, Joe.” She hung up and, a moment later, heard the ping as the photo Joe had promised her was transmitted. She accessed the photo of Beth Avery.
She felt a ripple of surprise.
“Vibrant,” Joe had called her. That was an understatement, the face of the girl in the photo was glowing and eager and so alive that it was like an electric shock. A thin, triangular face with full lips and brown eyes beneath winged dark brows. Her shoulder-length hair was also dark brown and wildly curly.
Like my Bonnie’s hair, she thought. Not red-brown, like her daughter’s tousled curls, but it looked to have the same shining texture and wild buoyancy. For some reason, she had not expected to see any family resemblance in Beth Avery. Eve still couldn’t think of Beth in that context. She saw no likeness to either Sandra or herself, but that cap of curly hair had given her a start.
And that vibrance and sheer love of life in Beth’s expression had touched … and angered her. No one who loved life that much should have it taken away from her.
Cool it. She was jumping to conclusions. She couldn’t be absolutely sure that Beth had been a victim of anything but a terrible accident. Because Eve had believed she’d shared the thoughts of that woman in those crazy dreams didn’t mean that those thoughts were sane and coherent.
Bullshit. Don’t back away now. There had to be some reason that she’d had that first dream of Beth. Some reason that Sandra had come to them with her confession about Beth at just this time. Life wasn’t always fair or kind, but she’d learned from Bonnie that there was an order to it that couldn’t be denied.
* * *
“I’M GLAD YOU LEARNED that much, Mama.”
Bonnie.
She was sitting in the rocking chair by the window, dressed, as usual, in her Bugs Bunny T-shirt, with her leg tucked beneath her. The moonbeams streaming through the window were touching her curly hair with light.
Eve felt a rush of pure love as she gazed at her. “Well, it’s about time you came around. I thought you’d abandoned me.”
“No, you didn’t. You know better.” Her smile lit her small face. “I told you that I wasn’t going to be around as often as I was before. You don’t need me as much now.”
“The hell I don’t. I always need you.”
“You love me, you don’t need me. You’re free of me now that you know where I am and who was to blame for my death. Now we can just enjoy the love.”
All that wisdom and maturity in one small spirit. Bonnie had told her a long time ago that she couldn’t remain the seven-year-old little girl she had been before she died. Souls matured and became what they were meant to be. But Eve wasn’t about to let Bonnie talk her into letting her drift away from Eve. “That doesn’t mean you can’t come around more often.”
Bonnie threw back her head and laughed. “Mama, you never give up. Admit that you didn’t miss me as much as you did before.”
“I will not.” She added grudgingly, “Okay, I didn’t feel as sad and hollow, but that didn’t mean I didn’t miss you. I was just thinking of you a minute ago.”
“I know. Me and Beth.”
She stiffened. “What do you know about Beth?”
“Not a lot. I know she’s afraid. I know she’s strong like you. So strong.”
“Even now? In her photo, she looked very strong, but that was when she was a teenager.”
“She’s stronger now. She’s had to fight, and that makes you develop all kinds of inner strength. You don’t know how hard it
was for her.”
“I can imagine.” She paused. “I’ve been dreaming about Beth. Was it—” Bonnie was shaking her head. “No?”
“I can’t do that kind of thing. Dreams aren’t easy. I have a hard enough time contacting anyone myself in a dream state. I sure can’t link anyone else up.”
“Then what happened?” Her lips tightened. “I didn’t imagine it, Bonnie.”
“Don’t be defensive. I’m not the only one around who cares about you … and Beth.”
“But that’s why you came, isn’t it? It’s Beth.”
“No, it’s you,” she said gently. “You need her. I want to build a wall around you of people you love and who love you. That way you won’t want to come to me too soon, Mama.”
“I don’t love Beth. I don’t even know her.”
“It will come. All the more reason to go help her.”
“I was going to do that anyway. I promised Sandra.”
Bonnie tilted her head and smiled.
“Okay, there’s something wrong going on,” Eve said. “It needs to be fixed. But I can’t promise I’ll love this woman just because she’s my sister. It doesn’t work that way.” She frowned. “And I don’t need any walls of people around me. I have Joe.” She had a sudden rush of panic at a sudden thought. “I do have Joe, don’t I? Nothing’s going to happen to Joe.”
“Shh, it’s okay. I can’t promise, but I think Joe is going to be fine.”
“What do you mean, you can’t promise? You scare me and tell me about surrounding me with people so I won’t try to come to you, then you won’t guarantee—” She stopped. “I know. I know. No guarantees.”
“That’s right.” Bonnie leaned back in the rocking chair. “All I can guarantee is that we have a little while together right now, and that feels very good to me. Do you really think that Beth has hair like mine?”
“Sort of. It’s darker, of course.” Eve slowly curled up against the headboard, her gaze fastened on Bonnie. Any time with Bonnie was good time. “I like yours better.”
“She’s my aunt, isn’t she? How strange…”
The words took Eve off guard. “Yes.” Yet the idea of Beth having a bond to her Bonnie was even more jarring than the knowledge of her own relationship.
Beth and Bonnie … together.
“Are you trying to make me more aware of the family connection?”
Bonnie smiled. “Yes, it worked, didn’t it?”
“Maybe.” She smiled back at her and shook her head. “We’ll have to see, won’t we? You’re not at all dumb, baby.”
“Neither is Beth, Mama. She’s just lost…”
* * *
EVE’S PLANE LANDED IN SAN DIEGO at 12:17 P.M. the next day, and Joe met her at baggage claim ten minutes later.
“You look rested.” His gaze was searching her face as he took her bag. “You managed to get some sleep?”
“Enough.” She followed him through the doors to the parking lot. “Where are we going?”
“To the studio of Dr. Kendra Michaels.”
“Studio? She’s an artist?”
“Definitely an artist at what she does. Though she doesn’t paint, she’s a musician. I understand during her wild days she traveled the country singing and playing her guitar to earn her living in coffeehouses, on street corners, wherever.”
“‘Wild days,’” she repeated as she got into the passenger seat of the rental car. “Okay, talk to me. Who is this Kendra and how can she help us find out what happened to Beth at that hospital? She sounds like a colorful character, but we don’t need color, we need efficiency.”
“I’ll let you judge whether she can produce after you meet her.” He drove out of the parking lot. “But I’ll fill you in on her background. And, yes, she’s definitely colorful. She was totally blind until she underwent an operation when she was twenty. She had a number of years after that operation in which she tried to make up for lost time in ways that were sometimes not socially accepted.”
“The wild years?”
He nodded. “When she got tired of sowing wild oats, she settled down and completed two advanced degrees. She has a doctorate in psychology and a master’s in music theory. From what I understand, she’s done a lot of important research in the field of music therapy. She also sees clients, mostly special kids, at her studio.”
“Well, that’s a switch. I can’t see any connection between a wild-ass street entertainer and the educator she’s become.”
“Evidently, Kendra made one.” He shrugged. “Sometimes, you can’t tell what drives her. You have to go along for the ride.”
“And how far is that ride going to take us to finding Beth?” She frowned. “I still don’t see her value, Joe. And how did you come across her?”
“Do you remember I was out here a couple years ago trying to track that serial killer, Tim Vick? The local police were cooperating, but we were coming up with zilch. One of the detectives had used Kendra on another case the previous year and suggested I try to get her to help.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, she’s not a psychic or something?”
“No.” He chuckled. “Though your horror is a little misplaced, don’t you think? It’s not as if you don’t believe that there are legitimate psychics.”
“But they’re very rare, and phonies abound. If Kendra wasn’t a psychic, why did the police call on her for help?”
“She has a rare talent. She was born blind due to a degenerative corneal disease in the womb. She’s totally brilliant and developed all of her other senses to a phenomenal degree. She compensated by using her hearing, smell, touch, every sense she had. Then, when she was twenty, a stem-cell procedure gave her sight. She applied that same discipline she had learned when blind to everything that crossed her field of vision. Now, nothing gets past her. She can walk into a crime scene or indeed any other scene and pick up on things no one else can see. Often, she can put together those impressions and come up with answers. An agent at the FBI San Diego field office told me that she once cracked a case by walking into a room and hearing that its echo had a different quality than the rooms next to it.”
“It sounds kind of spooky.” She grimaced. “Shades of Sherlock Holmes.”
“Exactly.” He grinned. “I knew you’d be skeptical. I was, too. You have to meet her.”
“Which we’re obviously going to do. I’ll have to decide if I think we should use her after I talk to her.”
“Use her?” His smile widened. “That may not be the way it works out. We’ll have to ask her nicely, then try to persuade her when she tells us to go to hell.”
“What?”
“Kendra doesn’t like being taken away from teaching her kids. Or her research. Every now and then, she’ll do a job for the police or FBI, but it’s rare. She turns them away all the time.”
“But you said she took the Tim Vick case?”
“Not at first. She turned down the local police when they asked her.”
“But she didn’t turn you down?”
“I was more persistent. After I decided that maybe she could help, I analyzed her refusal and went back to see her and attacked her weakness.”
“And what was her weakness?”
“The kids. She was devoted to teaching special kids. She’s one tough lady, and I don’t think she lets many people under her guard. But Tim Vick killed six children during his rampage in Atlanta. I just brought it to her attention that if we didn’t catch him, he might kill more in San Diego.”
Clever, Eve thought. Joe was always thinking, always searching for the answers, and he usually found them. “She gave in?”
“Grudgingly. She likes her own way and doesn’t like to be involved in police work. She wasn’t pleased that I’d found a way to manipulate her against her will.”
“Was it worth your trouble?” She was trying to remember the details of the case. “Did you get Vick?”
He nodded. “And, yes, Kendra was definitely worth the trouble. She’s fairly incredible
. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I hadn’t thought she could get us the information we need.”
“Then we’ll find a way to get her to go along with us.” She wrinkled her nose. “But this time, we have no children in danger to dangle before her to get her to help us at that hospital. Is she really that difficult?”
He pulled into a strip mall. “In a few minutes, you’ll be able to judge for yourself. I called her from the airport, and she said she didn’t want to see me, but she’d give me thirty minutes so that I wouldn’t keep bothering her.”
“Did you tell her I was coming with you?”
“No, she knows nothing about you. She saw to it that we didn’t get chummy enough for confidences while we were working on the Vick case. She did her job, but she definitely resented my pulling her into it.”
“That doesn’t sound promising.”
He shrugged. “She’s tough.” He checked his watch. “She’s probably still busy with an appointment. She told me that I’d have to wait in the viewing room until she was finished.”
“Viewing room?”
“Some of Kendra’s students are autistic or have big-time emotional problems, and she likes to work with them alone and without interference. But she gives the parents the opportunity to watch the lessons from an observation room with one-way glass if they prefer.” He nodded at a small brick building. “Her office is right over there on the left.”
CHAPTER
5
JOE MUST BE WRONG, Eve thought as she studied Kendra Michaels’s expression through the one-way window. She was sitting beside a little six-year-old boy while he played the xylophone. Joe had called her a tough lady, but this woman’s face was alight with eagerness, intelligence, and understanding as she focused all her attention on the child’s complete intentness as he played the instrument. She was of medium height and slim but far from fragile-looking. Pale brown hair was shoulder-length and sun-streaked and framed a strong face that reflected control and discipline. Large hazel eyes set far apart shone with intelligence and humor as she watched the boy. Kendra wasn’t a beautiful woman, but her smile was beautiful.
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