MacNamara's Woman

by Lisa Gardner

  This afternoon, on the other hand, she’d had no focus or concentration to speak of. She’d sat at her desk, trying to edit the senator’s announcement speech and thinking about C. J. MacNamara instead. She thought of his blue eyes, his wavy blond hair, the way he leaned against her desk as if he had all the time in the world. The way he smiled as if he was very pleased to see her. The way he gazed at her, as if he wanted to turn her inside out and learn every last nuance of her thoughts. The way his fingers thrummed on the edge of her desk, long, blunt and callused.

  Oh, for God’s sake! She shook her head hard, trying to erase the images from her mind. She did not get angry. She did not get frustrated. And she did not lose sight of her goals and objectives merely because a nice-looking man with way too much testosterone stopped by for a chat.

  “C. J. MacNamara?”

  Tamara leaned forward, recognizing the shock stamped on her friend’s face. After all these years, Patty was still beautiful. She wore her bright red hair down in a mass of springy curls. Her loose, flowing silk dress in deep purple fit her image as an art gallery proprietor. They had first become friends in grade school. Then, when they were twelve, Patty’s mother had died of breast cancer. For a while, her father had been too overwhelmed with his grief to handle his daughter. Patty had adopted Tamara’s family instead, becoming the sister Tamara had never had. When Tamara had decided to return to Sedona, Patty had been the first and only person she’d called.

  “How did you meet C.J.?” Patty quizzed sharply. Her green eyes appeared anxious.

  “He was the one who assisted me last night when I had trouble with my car.” Tamara hadn’t told Patty all the evening’s details; she didn’t want to worry her too much. “Then he showed up today at campaign headquarters.”

  “He’s following you?”

  “Yes . . . well . . .” Tamara didn’t know quite what to make of it herself. “He . . . uh, he asked me out.”

  Patty sat back abruptly, looking even more startled and slightly appraising. In spite of her best intentions, Tamara felt herself blushing. There was nothing to blush about, dammit. He’d expressed interest. She’d said no. He’d persisted. Some men really liked a challenge. Obviously, C. J. MacNamara was one of them.

  “He’s quite the ladies’ man,” Patty said softly.

  “I got that impression.”

  “Do you want to go out with him?”

  Tamara vehemently shook her head. “I committed myself when I returned to Arizona. I’m here to learn the truth about what happened to my family. For God’s sake, Patty, I just saw the list of preliminary donations coming in for the senator’s campaign. Several Fortune 500 companies have given hundreds of thousands for TV commercials, you name it. The senator’s announcement won’t be halfhearted. He’s committed to running for president. If he learns what I’m up to . . .”

  Patty’s expression was becoming more anxious. When they had been kids, Patty had been the high-spirited rebel, always getting them into trouble, while Tamara had been the good girl bailing them out. After her mother’s death, Patty had really gone off the deep end. She’d started smoking, drinking, breaking curfew. Now, however, the tables had turned, and the adult version of Patty seemed intent on subdued caution.

  When Tamara had called about coming to Sedona, Patty had been against it. It was too dangerous, she’d said. Tamara had managed to talk her into it, but it was obvious Patty’s doubts remained.

  “Go back to New York,” Patty said abruptly. “Really, if you return now, the senator will never suspect a thing and everything will be all right.”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  Patty shook her head. “Tammy, please . . . You live in Manhattan. You make all this money and drive a fancy car. You’re this incredibly successful public relations person. You were even dating some big-name doctor—”

  “Donald. It . . . it didn’t work out.”

  “But you’ll meet others. The point is, you have this great life. So what are you doing, Tamara? You’re sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. And if the senator was the one who hit your family’s car, and he does find out what you’re doing . . .”

  “I’m being very careful.”

  Patty threw up her arms, her red hair crackling. “Tammy, what about me? I live here. I’m trying to run an art gallery, and frankly, I am not driving a Lexus. We’re telling everyone you’re my cousin. He starts looking at you and he’s going to find me!” Patty’s lips trembled, then she pressed them into a thin, angry line. “I want to help you, Tammy. Your family was like my family too. I do want to know what happened that night. But not if it risks everything. I’ve lost enough in my life, and what can either of us really change?”

  Tamara was silent. She wanted to be able to answer that question; she wasn’t sure she knew how. When she’d first awakened in the hospital and remembered the accident, an image had hovered at the edge of her mind, the blurred picture of a man’s face leaning over her. She couldn’t make it come into focus. Then, six months later, recovering from the bone graft operation on her lower left leg, she’d seen Senator George Brennan being interviewed on the news and she’d realized abruptly, that was the man. The man who’d leaned over her at the accident site.

  She’d followed up with police, but when they pressed her hard, she’d backed down. No, she wasn’t one hundred percent certain. No, she didn’t remember that well. The police weren’t going to pursue a state senator without solid evidence, they told her. They were looking for witnesses to the crash. They were trying to find a car matching the red paint they’d taken from her parents’ car. The skid marks helped them deduce the tires, suspension, and so forth, to discover the type of car the other person was driving. They’d find that car; they’d find the driver; they would solve the case. She didn’t need to worry about it. She needed to work on getting well.

  She had. Alone in Manhattan at one of the few hospitals in the nation capable of rebuilding shattered pelvises, she went through enough surgeries and physical therapy to last her a lifetime. Months turned into years. She got a degree. Got a job. Built a career. The police still searched for leads. She learned to live alone. She tried to tell herself she was happy. She used her success to buy the right clothes, the right co-op, the right car. And she woke up on Christmas mornings so weighted down she couldn’t get out of bed. She spent Thanksgiving and Easter and her birthdays and their birthdays in a black fog so thick she couldn’t cry, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t moan.

  She won major new PR accounts but never made close friends. She attended all the glitzy PR functions, but rarely with a date. Finally Donald had pursued her, and he’d seemed so patient, so kind, such the right kind of man for a successful PR executive, she’d given it a try. She should get on with her life. She should date. She was strong. She could do this.

  It had ended six months ago for reasons she couldn’t tell even Patty about. And Tamara had stayed up all night, feeling the dark mood roll over her again, and she’d realized for the first time that she had to go back. She simply had to go back. Maybe if she could determine the truth about her parents’ last night, then she would finally be able to go forward.

  She’d given herself two weeks. If she couldn’t find any new information on a ten-year-old accident in two weeks of focused search, then she probably just wouldn’t. Maybe it would be enough to know that she’d tried.

  “I have to do this,” she said at last, the closest she could come to expressing all the jumbled thoughts and emotions in her mind.

  “Tammy—”

  “Patty, I’ll be careful. I’m hardly running around town accusing anyone of anything. I researched articles on the accident in the library. I learned the senator was receiving an award from the American Legion that night, which would put him on the same road as my parents. I’ve been asking around campaign headquarters to learn more about him and his habits, just subtle things. Tomorrow, I’m going to talk to a woman who lives by the crash site. Maybe she saw something.

>   “I won’t do anything rash, I promise. I want to know the truth . . . but you’re right . . . I’m not prepared to sacrifice everything I’ve built in the last ten years for it.”

  “What if someone recognizes you?”

  “That was ten years ago, Patty. I was just a kid. Most people don’t even remember the Allistairs. There’s no reason to connect New York PR executive Tamara Thompson with little Tammy Allistair. It’ll be all right.”

  Patty looked away, her face still troubled. The silence grew long.

  “That night,” Patty said softly, “when my father woke me up to tell me that there had been an accident, that Mr. and Mrs. Allistair were dead, that Shawn was dead, that you were in critical condition and might not live—that was so horrible, Tammy. Like my mother, all over again. I don’t want to go through that again. That . . . that hurt in ways you don’t understand.”

  “I do understand.”

  “No, Tammy, you don’t. You lost your first family. I lost my second. I went through everything twice. I hate funerals!”

  “You and your father are close now. You have family.”

  “It’s taken us a long time.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Tamara insisted, her voice curt. She didn’t want to discuss it anymore. She just wanted to do it.

  After another awkward moment, Tamara gathered her things. “What do you think of C. J. MacNamara? Is it just coincidence?”

  Patty rolled her eyes. “Of course it’s coincidence!” she snapped, obviously still unhappy. “For God’s sake, Tamara, keep your grip on reality. The whole world is not out to get you.”

  “You’re right, you’re right.” Tamara held up her hands in apology. Suddenly self-conscious again, she said, “Call you in a bit.”

  Patty nodded but the mood still wasn’t right. At the doorway, Tamara paused one last time. She saw her childhood friend sitting on the edge of a funky chocolate leather sofa. She saw the bright coppery hair that filled so many of her childhood memories. She looked at the woman she’d once considered a sister.

  And there was a distance between them she didn’t know how to bridge. They were the girls they had been and the women they had become, and due to one event out of their control, those women had drifted too far apart. Patty had been the fiery rebel. Tamara the softhearted girl-next-door. And now?

  What did you expect, Tamara? And what is it that you want?

  She had no answers. She walked away.

  • • •

  Her hotel suite was large and luxurious. Patty had been right—she was very successful. Alone in Manhattan, she had become more than she probably would’ve been as Shawn’s wife in Sedona.

  She didn’t bother to turn on any lights. She stripped off her suit in the foyer and let bronze crepe de chine crumple to the floor. Her head was beginning to throb. Her left ankle and right wrist twinged even more than usual. She was in shape, she had a nice form, but she bypassed the mirror on her way to bed. On a night like tonight, she didn’t want to see the jagged white scars covering so much of her stomach. The operation to remove her spleen and stop internal bleeding. The surgery to rebuild her pelvis.

  She collapsed onto the king-size bed, curled into a ball and hugged a pillow close. She should take a long, hot bath to ease tight muscles and sore joints. She was too tired.

  She found herself thinking of C.J., the way his thumb had brushed her cheek, how gentle his touch had been. How it had sent an unexpected shiver down her spine. He was probably at his bar now. The Ancient Mariner, he’d said. She pictured it as a comfortable kind of place with a traditional brass bar and lots of beer on tap. She bet he had a jukebox and it played rock ’n’ roll or good country music. She imagined the people there laughed a lot and joked with one another good-naturedly. And C.J. grinned and flirted with the pretty waitresses and made everyone smile.

  You’ve seen too many episodes of Cheers.

  She lay on her bed and replayed every second of his pulling her out of her Lexus.

  What if he had been there ten years ago? What if he had arrived and held her and saved her family?

  It didn’t matter. What had happened, had happened. Her family and boyfriend had died. She had survived.

  And soon she would learn the truth. She would get justice for them. And maybe closure for herself?

  Her eyes drifted shut. Her fingers relaxed their grip on the pillow. She let sleep drift over her naked body like a blanket, and, as always, she tried to control the dreams.

  Shawn. The feel of his arms around her, the way he always made her feel so safe. The hushed reverence in his voice as he brushed her young cheek and whispered, “I love you, Tamara. More than anything. More than my own life.”

  Hold me, hold me, hold me. Never let me go.

  But then he was gone, and she was alone beneath the Arizona night, twisted and ruined on the roadside. Hearing only crickets, no moaning, no begging, just the crickets.

  She was unable to move, unable to speak, trapped in the silence. Waiting and waiting and waiting. For someone to find them. Someone to help them. Someone to hold her and whisper soothing lies, because she could feel the blood seeping from her body and she knew that soon she would join her family in the unknown.

  No one came. No noise but the crickets. The sky so vast, the silence so deep. She was lost in it, sinking down deeper and deeper inside herself. While Shawn’s hand, still clutched within her own, grew cold and stiff.

  Wake up, Tamara. Don’t dream these dreams. Go back to the better moments. Remember the family you had. Dream of the life you’ve built.

  But as she tossed and turned on the king-size bed, she couldn’t find the better days anymore. Shawn was too distant, a sweetness she’d journeyed too far from, and now she couldn’t find her way back. His face was blocked from her, the memory of his touch barricaded away. She’d tried to recapture him, but found herself dreaming of Donald.

  His hand on her breast, his surgeon’s fingers fine and precise. His voice muffled and hoarse as he peeled down her blouse. “You’re beautiful. So beautiful.”

  She let him touch her. She lay passive and unmoving while his hands brushed over her body. And she waited to feel anything. Relax, Tamara. Let yourself live. It’s okay, it’s okay. But she still didn’t feel anything.

  His body labored over hers. She waited for it to end. And then he moaned and it was done and they both knew it wouldn’t work out.

  Afterward, they lay side by side, not touching. She listened to the sound of his breathing as it returned to normal. She tried to summon any emotion for this man she’d dated for more than a year. He was intelligent. He was successful. He was patient. He was kind. Nine years after the accident, she still couldn’t let anyone in. She still couldn’t let herself feel. She was successful. She was strong. She was frigid.

  She said in the hushed darkness of his bedroom, “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe our relationship should take a break for a while.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll call you. . . .”

  “Of course.”

  And then she knew the silence had won.

  Chapter 3

  “Mrs. Toketee? I’m Tamara Thompson. We spoke by phone, remember?”

  The old woman nodded her head. She looked at least seventy, and her features were weather-beaten and leathery from a lifetime beneath the harsh Arizona sun. An Indian, Mrs. Toketee had spent the last forty years living in this three-bedroom house with a yard filled with rusting automobile parts and a small menagerie of animals winding their ways underfoot. Her thick hair was the color of steel, and her figure had filled out generously. Around her neck, she wore a beautiful silver necklace bearing arrow-shaped pendants and red coral stones. Matching earrings and a bracelet completed the set. The silver was very shiny, giving Tamara the impression that this was nice jewelry brought out only for special occasions.

  Now Mrs. Toketee wiped her hands on the flour-covered apron tied around her waist and beckoned Tamara inside. Her house was old, and
it wasn’t large, but its expanse of bay windows captured the endless Arizona sky and gave the illusion of space. The sun would set in an hour, and the soaring red rocks were just beginning to deepen to a dark ruby. Through these windows, the winding road that had claimed Tamara’s family was nearly visible.

  Tamara forced her gaze from the view. Carved out of wood and painted with vibrant vegetable dyes, kachina dolls loomed in every corner. Some were ogres, ugly little demons with hideous animal faces and human bodies. As a child, Tamara had been warned that ogre kachinas ate disobedient kids. Certainly, she’d gone to bed every night right on time and never uttered a bad word.

  A gray tabby rubbed against Tamara’s leg, startling her.

  “Don’t mind Cecil.” Mrs. Toketee clicked her tongue disapprovingly at the cat. “You think you are the best cat, the king of animals.” She scratched the tabby’s ears with genuine affection. “Don’t you, don’t you?” she chastised.

  “It’s okay. I like cats.”

  “Cats are good. Keep away mice and rats. You want coffee?”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “I made bread.”

  Tamara was about to politely decline, but then she saw the hopeful look on Mrs. Toketee’s face. She smiled softly. “Bread would be nice.”

  Mrs. Toketee’s face crinkled into a toothless grin. “Zucchini bread, healthy stuff. My daughter sends me recipes. She worries about my health. I don’t get visitors often.”

  “You have a beautiful home.”

  “Too cluttered. Too many things. You never realize how old you are until you look around and see so many things. I keep meaning to clear it out.”

  “The dolls are gorgeous.”

  “Kachina dolls are good.”

  Mrs. Toketee disappeared into the kitchen, reemerging a few minutes later with a large tray piled high with slices of bread, a dish of butter and, despite Tamara’s refusal, two cups of coffee. Tamara tried to assist with the heavy tray, but Mrs. Toketee would have none of it. In the end, Tamara took her seat on an old wooden chair across from the woman and was promptly joined by the purring gray tabby.