Strangers She Knows

by Christina Dodd

  Max pointed. “Rae. Look there.”

  Rae fought her seat belt to half rise off her seat. “Daddy! Is that a SkinnySail?”

  “Might be,” Max acknowledged.

  “What’s a skinny sale?” Then light dawned for Kellen. “Wait—you didn’t buy one of those boats Rae’s been asking for?”

  He looked sideways out of the corner of his eye. “Might have.”

  Exasperated, Kellen said, “Max, you spoil that child!”

  “Mommy, you sound like Grandma.”

  Kellen snapped around and glared.

  Rae subsided in her seat. But she couldn’t stop the grin on her face. “A SkinnySail. Mommy, don’t be mad. Daddy and I will take you sailing on the ocean.”

  “Be still, my heart,” Kellen muttered.

  “You can’t be afraid of boating and of biking!” Rae protested. Once upon a time, a couple of years ago, she had thought her mother was a superhero.

  The kid was over that now.

  “I’m not afraid. But if I wanted to boat, I’d have joined the US Navy, and if I wanted to bike, I’d have joined the…” Kellen racked her brain for an apt analogy.

  “The Wicked Wheelies?” Rae suggested.

  “The Out Spoken?” Max offered.

  “Wheels…of…Fortune!” Rae was having fun now.

  “We don’t have bikes on the island,” Kellen said loftily.

  “Yes, we do.” Max sounded surprised. “I ordered them and had them sent here. How else are we going to get around?”

  It’s a mostly deserted island. Why do we have to get around? But even Kellen knew that was a foolish question; they couldn’t stay in cooped up and wait for the moment Mara Philippi was apprehended—or, as Kellen feared, descended on them. She said, “Riding bikes on this island won’t be like biking in the mountains. Right?”

  From her first moment on a bike, Rae had craved speed and loved the abrupt descents and jumps involved with mountain biking, and she wasn’t even teasing when she said, “From what I’ve seen of the island, starting at the house and cycling downhill to the other end will probably involve speeds up to—”

  This time Max whipped around and glared.

  “Probably not more than thirty miles per hour.” Rae obviously thought she was offering encouragement to her mother.

  Kellen couldn’t imagine traveling the rugged, bumpy paths of the island on a bike at thirty miles an hour. Or rather—she could. And it scared her to death.

  Max faced forward. “We’ll take you out on the boat. Kellen, you’ll love it!”

  “Isn’t that a two-man boat?” Kellen was almost sure it was.

  “If we leave off the motor, it’s a three-man boat,” Max answered.

  “Three very small men,” Kellen said.

  “I’m the only man.” He puffed out his chest. “You two are itty-bitty feminine bits of fluff.”

  “Daddy, you’re a misogynist.” Rae sounded disgusted.

  “Maybe so. But I bought the boat.” Max changed course and headed west, toward the peak of the island.

  There a tall house rose. Built in the 1920s, ornate, painted in firm tones of blue and brown with scarlet accents, it was the epitome of a rich man’s ostentatious home, a sprawling French chateau with a mansard roof, iron lace trim and a madness of windows and doors and shrubs. A widow’s walk, surrounded by all that black iron trim, rose at the highest point.

  The land around the house was an emerald blanket of shorn lawn and well-watered shrubs. A dozen massive live oaks spread their protective branches over the property. Abruptly, where the irrigation stopped, green ended and native yellow grasses took over the land. A few outbuildings, garages or sheds, stood off to one side with their foundations straddling the green/gold line. An incongruous bank of solar panels covered the roof of the largest building.

  “I like it.” Rae’s voice sounded bemused. “It’s so…lonely.”

  “It’s not too bad,” Max said. “Not too lonely. We’ve got each other.”

  The size of the place floored Kellen. “I wasn’t expecting a mansion. Not out here. Who lived there?”

  “The house is named Morgade Hall after the family who lived in it,” Max told them. “Gerard Morgade was a newspaperman in the early part of the twentieth century. He made a fortune in the business—”

  “As a writer?” Kellen could hardly believe that.

  “Owner. Probably insider trading. Blackmail. He had a reputation as a ruthless businessman, universally loathed. He bought the island, hired a contractor who built the house using a fleet of boats and scores of workers, and moved his family here. The lack of anchorage kept them isolated while he traveled between the island and the mainland on his yacht. In the fifties, he died here, the last of his family.”

  “His wife?”

  “Died in 1948.”

  “He had no children?”

  “Four or five kids. None survived the forties. I know the oldest daughter got murdered by her husband in, I think, 1949.”

  Kellen glared at him. Rae knew about Kellen’s first husband, about the abuse she’d suffered, and because of that, Rae worried about her mother and women in general.

  He must have realized what he’d said, for he quickly continued, “People died earlier in those days. There’s a cemetery not far from the house.” He flew them west and showed them the small fenced and overgrown graveyard. “Living on this island, they might not have gotten the medical attention they needed when they were hurt or ill. Or maybe it was the war.”

  “Why couldn’t they fly to the mainland?” Rae asked.

  “Helicopters came into their own in the 1950s, so if there was a storm and their yacht couldn’t put to sea, they had to stay put.” Max glanced back at Rae. “In fact, that’s still a problem. Northern California has its share of big storms, mostly in the winter, but we could get stuck here.”

  Rae confounded Kellen with her response. “In a storm? Cool.”

  “I know you’re not afraid of storms, but you want to be stuck here?” Kellen asked.

  “If I have to be stuck here anyway, I might as well have a good reason.” That sounded reasonable and only a little surly.

  “If you’ve seen everything you want, I’ll land now.” Max didn’t wait for an answer, but brought the helicopter down fast enough to make Rae squeal and Kellen put her hand on her stomach. At the last moment, he pulled up and gently set the helicopter on the edge of the yard. He turned to her and grinned. “Like a roller coaster, isn’t it?”

  Kellen grinned back. He hadn’t worried about whether the swift descent would cause her brain to hemorrhage or rattle in her skull or any of the things he had worried about and the doctors had assured him wouldn’t happen. He was like a mischievous man-boy, a husband who enjoyed teasing his wife, and she liked that. She liked it a lot. Maybe the run of Kellen’s Brain was almost over.

  “There we have it.” Max gestured across the well-tended lawn. “Morgade Hall.”

  6

  Seen from on the ground, the mansion was a madness of cupolas and patios and windows and painted wood and white stone and gray slate roof tiles.

  Max took off his headset and waited until they had removed theirs before he told them, “It’s anywhere from three to six stories, and is rumored to have over one hundred rooms.” He unbuckled and helped them get down and onto Mother Earth again.

  “Wait until I tell Chloe about this place!” Rae put her backpack on the ground and dug around for her phone.

  Kellen looked at Max, shook her head and gestured to him. This is your problem.

  He went on one knee beside his daughter and caught her hand. “Honey, you don’t have your phone with you.”

  Rae stilled, her hand in her backpack, her eyes wild and fixed on Max. “What? Of course I do. I put it in here. What do you mean? Why?”

  “There�
��s no way to connect here on the island,” Max said. “It’s an internet-free zone.”

  In an overly-cheerful tone, Kellen said, “Your dad and I thought it would be great for all of us to disconnect.”

  Actually, Max and Kellen thought it would be great to make sure Mara didn’t trace them using their phones’ GPS locators.

  On their travels, Max and Kellen had carried burn phones. After discussion, they’d allowed Rae to keep her phone—they thought it would make the trip less stressful for Rae—but Max had hired his teenage cousin, Wendy, to hack and disable the GPS. But Wendy had warned them there was always someone out there who was better, and that someone would be Mara. The woman had been illiterate. During her incarceration she had demanded, and received, specialized reading classes. That, added to her brilliance with technology and numbers, meant their burn phones, and Rae’s phone, ultimately had to go.

  Rae’s mouth hung open. She looked from Max to Kellen to Max to Kellen, as if trying to comprehend people who had sprouted antennae from their foreheads. Then her mouth snapped shut, and she said, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

  Ah. Verona’s granddaughter. Plainspoken and impatient. “Your dad and I are stupid people.”

  Rae didn’t care whether Kellen smiled and at the same time, stared with pointed intensity. As far as Rae was concerned, she had been robbed. “When did you seize my phone?”

  “We put it on a train to Russia,” Kellen confessed. “Mine went to South America. Dad’s went to Newfoundland.”

  “We have no phones?” Rae’s voice rose, not even questioning the strangeness of what Kellen had said.

  In the distance, they heard a bark.

  Her shout had summoned a friend.

  From the direction of the house, they saw a blondish-red streak bounding toward them.

  Rae forgot her grievance, dropped to her knees and extended her arms. “Luna! Bella Luna, my darling doggie!”

  Luna leaped and slammed into Rae, and they rolled in the grass, child and dog ecstatic with joy.

  Kellen and Max watched affectionately. Then Kellen moved closer to Max and said quietly, “We do have one form of communication, right?” She nodded at the helicopter, with its powerful radio.

  “Yes, I’ve got a special frequency for my law enforcement contact. I’ll be checking in once a week and hoping to hell the first report states they have Mara in custody.”

  “What do you think the chances of that is?”

  “They’ve had three weeks to narrow the lead.”

  Which was a non-answer, but what could he say?

  “I don’t think Rae will think of the helicopter when she thinks of communications, and if she does—well, I’ll lock the door.”

  A green golf cart, slightly battered, careened across the lawn toward them.

  “Dylan Conkle,” Max said in Kellen’s ear, and when Dylan stopped and got out, Max strode forward to shake his hand.

  Kellen observed and cataloged.

  DYLAN CONKLE:

  MALE, 30YO, CAUCASIAN ANCESTRY, 6'2", 150LBS, HAIR THE SAME BLONDISH-RED AS LUNA, PALE SKIN, RED FRECKLES ON FACE, NECK, HANDS. BLACK-RIMMED GLASSES. GENUINE SMILE AT DOG AND CHILD. PLEASANT SMILE TOWARD KELLEN AND MAX.

  “Welcome to Isla Paraíso,” Dylan said to the general area. He didn’t meet Kellen’s eyes. He pretended he hadn’t seen her outstretched hand. Because he didn’t shake hands with women? Or he didn’t want her to notice the low-level tremor in his fingers?

  More surprising to Kellen was how he reacted to Rae’s sunny smile and cheerful, “Hi!”

  He startled as if Luna herself had spoken, then grinned sheepishly and touched his forehead, like an English peasant to his lady.

  Even Rae looked at him as if she didn’t know how to react to such weirdness.

  Max climbed into the helicopter and handed their luggage down to Dylan.

  While Dylan stashed it in the golf cart he said to Kellen, “My wife is sorry she couldn’t be here to greet you.”

  “I’d love to meet her,” Kellen told him.

  Dylan’s pale blue eyes grew wide behind the thick lens of his glasses, and he stood very still as if to avoid detection. “I’ll let Jamie know.”

  Translation: I said the proper thing, but the truth is, she doesn’t want to meet you.

  So Max was right—Jamie Conkle really didn’t want anybody intruding on her privacy. Interesting.

  “If you’d like to walk,” Dylan said, “I’ll transport your bags to the house.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” Max inclined his head, but his gaze never left Dylan.

  Dylan headed across the lawn at full speed.

  Kellen waited until they had walked a little way before asking, “What’s wrong with him?”

  Max glanced at Rae and Luna, romping along beside them, apparently oblivious. “Coming to the island was Jamie’s idea, I’m sure of it, and Dylan hasn’t managed the isolation nearly as well as she has.”

  Kellen did not like the sound of that. “What do you mean? About him?”

  “He drinks too much—makes his own moonshine. He grows his own weed—Jamie won’t do it for him—and he spends entire weeks bombed out of his mind.”

  “Marijuana is a drug. So is alcohol,” Rae said indignantly. “He shouldn’t do that to himself and his family!”

  So much for her not paying attention to their conversation.

  “You’re right,” Max told her. “But he does, and he barely manages to do what little we ask of him—watch over the house, mow and water—and if it weren’t for Jamie, we’d get rid of him. But she wants to stay and when she needs to, she drives him to do the work.”

  “He’s a nice-enough-looking guy,” Kellen said.

  “She’s a beautiful woman. Tall, slender, short dark hair, dark eyes with sweeping lashes, long legs and a walk that from the back looks like dancing.”

  Kellen was amused. “Are you in love, Max?”

  “No, dear, I only love you. But when I look at her, I remember why I love all women so very, very much.”

  Kellen laughed, low and warm. “That’s one of the reasons you are so personable, Max Di Luca. You love women. You even like them.”

  “What’s not to like?”

  “Trust me. I was in the military. There are a lot of men who don’t like women, who consider them no more than cattle. Who make a woman want to come out punching.”

  “How many of those guys did you take down?”

  “Never enough. One falls, three more take his place.” Kellen wasn’t bitter, but man, it did grow old.

  “Dylan and Jamie—don’t they love each other?” Rae’s voice quavered. Her pal, Maverick, had this year lived through the horrors of her parents’ acrimonious divorce, and Rae had been scarred by the duties she had assumed as best friend.

  “I don’t know. Maybe they did once, but it’s a love that’s dissipated in the sunshine and solitude of Isla Paraíso. With only each other to talk to, their differences have rubbed each other raw. I don’t know how much longer that troubled marriage can go on.” Max shrugged, a man amazed at the vagaries of human nature. “But then, I was saying that three years ago.”

  Rae stood stock still in the lawn. “I want married people to love each other!”

  Kellen took advantage of the moment to put her arm around Max’s waist. “We love each other, Rae. Does that help?”

  “Yes. I suppose so.” Rae didn’t sound so much sulky as uncertain. “But if their love wasn’t forever, will yours be?”

  7

  Manlike, Max got a panicked expression, so Kellen answered, “I think so. I served in the military, a tough environment, for six years. I learned what I want from life. Your father’s been in charge of two different Di Luca wineries and our Yearning Sands Resort. He’s seen a lot, he’s got experience in lots of human relationships.
Plus, he raised you by himself, with Grandma’s help, for six years, and being a single parent is no easy deal. We’re both smart and competent. Plus, we have that special bond that drew us together in the first place.”

  “What’s that?” Rae asked.

  “I don’t know what it is for him, but for me, it was knowing from the first moment that he’s a strong man who would lay down his life for love and family. He’s the kind of guy a woman would be a fool not to love.”

  Max hooted and started for the house again, towing Kellen with his arm around her shoulder. “Then there have been a lot of foolish women.”

  “Daddy, that’s not true. I think you’re so involved with Mommy, you don’t notice how the women watch you.”

  Kellen smirked at Rae, at her smart, observant kid.

  Max, being Max, didn’t believe them, and chuckled.

  For an intelligent man with a great deal of understanding about himself, he was an idiot. Which was fine with Kellen. She didn’t need him to know how many women were willing to fling themselves at his feet.

  “You don’t touch each other very often,” Rae muttered.

  Kellen and Max froze midstep.

  It was true. They didn’t touch often. At the time of their wedding, they had been groping (ha) toward sexual familiarity. Then Kellen fell into a coma and went into surgery, and all their needs had been brushed aside. Touching each other had become something forbidden, a torture of desire, a thing to be avoided.

  Max turned them to face Rae, and Kellen figured he was going to hand Rae some acceptable excuse the child could swallow about obvious affection being ill-mannered.

  But he said, “That’s true. I don’t touch Mommy nearly enough. Why don’t I fix that right now?” Before Kellen could react, he bent her over his arm like a silent movie star and, while her head was whirling, he kissed her.

  Um, with their mouths open. His was open because he was making all the moves. Hers was open because she was gaping like a fish.

  Rae screamed with laughter and delight.