Whispers

by Lisa Jackson

  “But I didn’t kill Harley. Neither did you or Tessa. Can’t we just tell the truth?”

  “Not this time,” Miranda said with a heart-rending sigh. “This time the truth will damn at least one of us and, believe me, the Taggerts won’t stop at anything to see us hang.”

  Claire blinked against the rain. “I don’t see how . . .” she started to argue, but stopped herself short. Miranda was involved to her eyeteeth. Whatever had happened looked bad for her . . . She needed an alibi. Swallowing with difficulty, Claire nodded. “Okay.”

  “Good.” Miranda helped her to her feet, then opened the door of the car, where Tessa sat, unmoving, staring sightlessly out of the window. “Sit on the gearshift. I don’t want you to be trapped in the back.” As Claire squeezed against Tessa, Miranda started the car and drove toward the far side of the lake. “None of us is ever going to tell anyone, not each other, not Mom and Dad, not our best friends, no one, what really happened tonight. From now on our story is and always will be that we were at the drive-in. Claire—you’re going to have to help me with Tessa when we drive into the lake.”

  “You’re not really going to do it!” Claire said, suddenly terrified. “You’re just going to say that—”

  “I have to! This has got to look authentic, okay? The lake’s not that deep at the north end. We’ll be fine.” She turned onto the county road.

  “This is crazy. People drown in bathtubs. And Tessa—she’s not really conscious.” The car picked up speed as Miranda shifted. “Randa—”

  “Just promise that you’ll stick to the story.”

  “You’ve lost your mind—”

  The road turned and Lake Arrowhead came into view through the trees. The water was dark and turbulent, the wind creating whitecaps on the surface.

  “Randa—no!”

  Faster and faster the Camaro tore over the road, windshield wipers slapping away the rain, tires singing on the pavement.

  “Come on, Claire, you’re with me on this, aren’t you?” Miranda trod hard on the accelerator as the trees gave way to a grassy stretch of beach.

  “What about Tessa?” Claire asked, panicking.

  “She’s agreed.”

  “She hasn’t said a damned word.”

  “She’s in!”

  “Okay, okay!”

  “Hang on!” Miranda cranked on the wheel.

  The Camaro jerked. Tires slid as they hit the gravel of the shoulder.

  “For the love of God—”

  The car bounced over stones, grass and boulders, driving faster and faster as the lake, a yawning black hole rushed at them.

  “God help me.” Miranda stood on the brakes, causing deep ruts in the sand where the tires tried to grab hold. The car hit the water. Hard. Claire hit her head on the roof. Her scream nearly shattered her eardrums as water swirled up to the windows and the engine died.

  “Okay, now! Help Tessa!”

  Miranda pried her door open and Claire, reaching over her sister, managed the same. Water poured inside. Claire scrambled, coughing, dragging Tessa to the surface, then realized she could stand. She sank past her ankles in the muddy bottom, but her head was still above water.

  Harley. Oh, God, Harley, I’m sorry. Heartache pounded through her soul.

  “Come on, come on.” Miranda placed a shoulder under Tessa’s limp arm and started back toward the road, trudging through the dark water. “Now what movies did we see?”

  “Hang ’Em High.”

  “And?”

  “Play Misty For Me. Come on, Randa, how’s Tessa going to do this?”

  “Tess?” Miranda prodded. No response as they waded knee deep. “Tessa?”

  “Dirty Harry,” she whispered.

  “But we didn’t see that one, left before it came onto the screen. Remember that. And stick with me; don’t let them split us up.”

  Voices seemed to come from nowhere and a pickup, the beams of its headlights glowing in the rain, was idling on the shoulder of the road. A man in a yellow slicker was running toward them.

  “Hey!” he yelled, his voice rough and frightened. “Are you all right? For the love of Christ, what the hell happened here? First the Taggert kid and now this!”

  So it was true. Claire’s legs felt like lead.

  Other cars stopped as the first man reached them and gathered Tessa into his strong arms. “You girls okay? Is there anybody else in the car?”

  “Just us,” Randa said. “We . . . we’re all right.”

  “You sure?” He swiveled his head in Tessa’s direction, and Tessa smelled the stale odor of beer. “How ’bout you?”

  “Fine. I—I’m fine.”

  “What happened?” a woman asked, as cars pulled at odd angles around the pickup. “Christ A’mighty, did someone drive into the lake?”

  “I—I must’ve fallen asleep at the wheel,” Miranda said, her teeth chattering. The lie was just beginning. Claire shuddered. “One minute I was on the road, and the next—”

  “Dear God,” a woman said. “Well, let’s warm you up. George, George, get the blanket out of the trunk; these girls are going to catch their death.”

  Numb, Claire let herself be guided into the small group of vehicles scattered helter-skelter at the edge of the road.

  “Would you look at that?” an old man said.

  “They’re lucky to be alive.” A woman this time, a dark silhouette in a raincoat cast in sharp relief by the groups of headlights.

  “Not like the Taggert kid.”

  Claire’s knees buckled, but someone held her up, propped her on her feet, and kept her walking. Grief cut through her, as surely as any knife, and she began shaking violently.

  “Did anyone call an ambulance?”

  “Hang in there, girls,” a smooth male voice intoned. “You’re gonna be all right.”

  Claire recognized the voice—didn’t remember his name—but knew that he worked at the gas station where she filled up. “Are any of you hurt seriously?”

  She couldn’t find her voice.

  “I don’t think so.” Miranda again. In charge.

  Claire managed to nod to Tessa, who only whispered, “Dirty Harry.”

  This was wrong. So wrong.

  “What did she say?” a woman asked.

  “Sounded like dirty something or other.”

  “They’re probably all in shock.”

  Claire blinked in the rain, shuddered from the cold, felt her wet, dirty clothes cling to her just as pain wrapped over her heart.

  “George, for God’s sake, didn’t I tell you to give them the blanket that’s in the back of the car?”

  Somewhere nearby, probably from one of the vehicles scattered on the shoulder of the road, a baby cried so hard he was beginning to hiccup. From the back of a pickup a big dog barked wildly.

  “Shut up, Roscoe!”

  The dog was silent.

  “Say—” a woman whispered loud enough for everyone to hear. “Aren’t they Dutch Holland’s girls?”

  “Someone should call their parents.”

  “Deputies are on their way.”

  “How the hell did they end up in the lake? Jesus H. Christ, they’re lucky it was in this spot, anywhere else along this stretch, they would’ve crashed into a tree.”

  One of the women guided Claire toward her Oldsmobile sedan. “You girls get inside—don’t worry about getting the interior dirty; it’s plastic. Can always be washed. I haul my dogs around all the time. But you need to keep warm.”

  She opened the door, and Claire slid inside. Tessa and Miranda followed until they were huddled together, blankets wrapped around them. The owner of the car, a woman with a craggy face and gapped teeth, offered Claire a cup of coffee from a thermos. Other Good Samaritans gave Tessa and Miranda cups that they cradled, steam rising, in their cold hands.

  Flashlights cast long beams in the rain as the women huddled and men started to look for the car.

  “Did anyone call a tow truck?”

  “The cops will
.”

  From the coffee and their breath, the windows of the sedan misted up and Claire was grateful for the privacy it offered, a fragile, dripping screen that protected them from curious eyes.

  A siren screamed through the night. Red, white, and blue lights strobed the area. Claire jumped, sloshing her coffee on the Indian blanket that surrounded her.

  She glanced at Miranda, and Claire’s heart sank, because Miranda, for all her planning, was scared. Her face was the color of chalk and streaked with mud, her hair hung lankly and dripped and as she met her middle sister’s eyes, she swallowed hard. “Remember,” she said, as a cruiser from the sheriff’s department arrived.

  Two deputies emerged from the car. Shadowy figures through the foggy windows. One of the officers stayed near the road, using his flashlight to direct traffic and keep it moving as the other approached the car.

  He paused and talked with some of the crowd for just a few seconds, asking questions that Claire could only partially hear, then he opened the door of the backseat and the interior light flickered on. Tall and bulky, he wore some kind of waterproof gear and rain dripped from the broad brim of his hat. “Hi, girls, I’m Deputy Hancock. First I want to find out if any of you are hurt and how seriously. Paramedics are on their way to help out. Next, we’ll have to sort out what happened for my report.” He offered a reassuring smile that scared Claire to her bones. She braced herself for her first confrontation with the law.

  “It’s my fault,” Miranda said, meeting Hancock’s eyes. “I—I lost control of my car. I guess I must’ve fallen asleep at the wheel.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  Claire shook her head.

  “I don’t think so,” Miranda said.

  “What about you, honey?” The deputy stared at Tessa. She lifted her eyes and shuddered.

  “Dirty Harry.”

  “Pardon?” he asked, his eyebrows pulling together.

  “We were at the drive-in,” Miranda cut in. “Dirty Harry, that’s the movie we missed because we decided to come home early once the storm broke.”

  “Oh.” He rubbed his jaw and eyed the sky. “Bad night for a drive-in.”

  “Yes . . . it . . . it was a mistake.”

  He tapped his flashlight on the side of the car. “Well, you can tell me all about it once we find out that you don’t need medical attention. I’ve called for an ambulance and a tow truck.”

  “We don’t need to go to the hospital,” Miranda protested. “We’re fine.”

  “We’ll let the paramedics determine that.” Another siren cut through the night, and the cup of coffee Claire had been holding slipped through her fingers. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. Harley was dead, and she was sitting in a pool of lake water in the back of a stranger’s car. She was too tired to think, too sick to her stomach to try and figure out the truth—why Miranda had insisted they lie, but as she looked at the fear etched on her older sister’s face and the shock registered on Tessa’s features, Claire told herself that she’d lie through her teeth for them. Her sisters were all she had left in the world.

  What about Kane?

  He was leaving.

  Joining the army tomorrow.

  She heard the sound of booted feet approach. The footsteps crunching on gravel echoed through her brain. If only she could see Kane right now, talk to him, hold him . . . Tears began to flow from her eyes as she and her sisters were helped from the car, while a dozen pair of eyes stared at them. Shepherded through the crowd, they were examined by paramedics as more deputies arrived.

  Claire was vaguely aware of someone stretching yellow tape around the area, saw, as if from a distance, a huge tow truck appear, but above the noise, she heard the steady drone of a motorcycle.

  She turned toward the road, but the solitary rider sped by, the huge machine barely slowing as a deputy waved him on.

  Was it Kane? Claire’s hands twisted in the wet blanket.

  “What a night,” one of the deputies said to the other. “First the Taggert kid, and now this!”

  Claire jolted inwardly as she was jerked back to the here and now, away from her fantasies about Kane Moran.

  Harley was dead and, somehow, she was responsible. Whatever had happened after she’d left the sailboat was because she broke up with him. She knew it. Harley, sweet, sweet Harley, might not have been the love of her life she’d once thought him to be, but he certainly didn’t deserve to die.

  Twenty-two

  Claire couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned in her bed, while images of Harley and Kane blazed through her mind. Alternately crying to herself or lying dry-eyed and numb, she watched the clock and listened to the house creak in the storm. Somewhere a limb battered a window, and rain splashed noisily in the gutters until, right before dawn, the rain stopped suddenly.

  Still she couldn’t sleep. The past few hours replayed themselves in her mind, like a record that skips to the same few notes over and over again.

  After being examined by a physician and questioned by several deputies and detectives, the Holland girls had been released to their parents, who had been called back to Chinook from Portland. Dominique, in tears, had fussed over her daughters and Dutch had promised them the best legal counsel on the West Coast. No one, not even Neal Goddamned Taggert, was going to win this one. He told the girls that he believed them, that of course none of them had killed the Taggert boy, but his words lacked conviction or empathy. Harley’s death was just one more obstacle in Dutch’s cluttered life.

  As Claire had huddled in the backseat of her father’s Lincoln, she’d caught his harsh, uncompromising gaze in the rearview mirror and suddenly realized that his concern wasn’t grief over the loss of a young man’s life but worry about a scandal surrounding his daughters. He was only worried what stockholders in Stone Illahee and his other holdings might think.

  Now, Harley’s handsome face slid through her mind, and his desperate pleas for her not to break the engagement rang in her ears.

  I can’t lose you. I’d give up everything for you. Everything. Please, Claire, don’t . . . don’t say it’s over.

  Tears rained from her eyes. “Harley,” she mouthed. She’d never intended to hurt him. And now he was dead, found, according to what she’d overheard at the sheriff’s office, facedown in the bay, maybe the victim of an accident, or suicide, or murder.

  Suicide? Dear Lord, she prayed not. Murder? Who would hate him enough to kill him?

  Miranda’s skirt was stained with blood; Tessa was nearly catatonic. They’d both been to the marina and needed alibis. Oh, Harley, what have I done?

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she willed his image away. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life feeling guilty because he’d died on the night she’d broken their engagement, but, deep in her heart, she knew that a cloud of dark uncertainty would follow her for the rest of her days.

  She pulled herself into a sitting position and buried her face in her hands. But it didn’t help. In her mind’s eye, she spied Kane, tall and rawboned, dressed in faded denim and black leather. His rugged face, intense gold eyes, and smoky voice commanded her attention.

  I’d like to do anything and everything I could with you. I’d like to kiss you and touch you and sleep with you in my arms until morning. I’d like to run my tongue over your bare skin until you quiver with want, and, more than anything in the world, I’d like to bury myself in you and make love to you for the rest of my life . . . And, believe me, I would never, never treat you like that bastard Taggert does.

  She couldn’t take it another minute. She threw off the covers and tossed off her nightgown. Silently she grabbed a pair of jeans she’d flung over the end of her bed and grabbed a sweatshirt that was lying wrinkled on the floor. She struggled into a clean pair of socks and carried her boots in sweaty hands as she passed by Tessa’s room with the door firmly closed and Miranda’s room where light from the bedside lamp sliced through the crack in the doorway to fall upon the worn rug in the hallway. Slowing, Claire peeked into the
room. Miranda sat on her window ledge, her knees tucked up inside her nightgown, her arms wrapped around her legs as she stared vacantly out at the lake. There was a soul-rending sadness in her eyes that Claire had never seen before.

  Quietly, she stepped into the room.

  Miranda slid a glance her way. “What are you doing?”

  “Going for a ride.”

  “It’s not light yet.”

  “I know, but it will be soon,” Claire whispered. “I can’t sleep. Can’t stand another minute in bed.” Suddenly she felt awkward and out of place in this sad, somber room with its pine-paneled walls and bookcases filled to overflowing. “What happened to you last night?” she finally blurted as she crossed the room and rested the edge of her rump on the other end of the window ledge.

  Miranda’s smile was brittle, her skin pale. Blue smudges made her eyes appear sunken. “I grew up.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You don’t want to know.” She looked out the window again. “And I don’t want to tell anyone.”

  “There . . . there was blood on your skirt.”

  Randa nodded and ran her fingers on the edge of the open window frame. “I know.”

  “Was it yours?”

  “Mine?” She shuddered. “Some of it.”

  “Oh, God, Randa. Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”

  Miranda’s eyes focused sharply on her middle sister and she looked older than she ever had. “No, Claire,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to tell anyone. I’m eighteen, remember. An adult. I can make my own decisions.”

  And you’re considered an adult in a court of Oregon law. Anything illegal you did, could send you to prison rather than juvenile hall. Claire didn’t say it. Didn’t have to.

  “Just remember our pact. Stick with our story. Everything will work out.”

  The words sounded hollow, but Claire didn’t argue as she passed her parents’ room, where the rumble of heavy snoring and the ticking of Dominique’s antique crystal clock could be heard.

  Stealthy as a cat sneaking up on an unwitting bird, Claire slipped down the stairs and through the kitchen. For the first time since Jack’s death she was grateful that Ruby, who sometimes had appeared at five in the morning, wasn’t around.