I’m on a boat. It’s very lonely out there on the water, nobody around on the flat blue sea. Then I see another boat and a man with his line in the water, fishing. I come alongside. There is suddenly a weapon in my hand, and I point it at him. For a split second he looks at me, his expression curious, innocent of what I’m about to do. Then I see it in his eyes. He knows. He looks very sad. For no reason at all, I kill him. One shot, that’s all it takes. He falls to the deck, dropping the fishing pole. His boat drifts silently away, out to sea, and is gone.
Tabitha nodded slowly. “I remember it. Peter came to me about it a month or so ago. I saw the dream very vividly, but—” Something itched the back of her brain. “What time of day was your friend killed?”
“Evening. He was heading back after spending the day fishing.”
“Well, something’s wrong, then. The dream took place in broad daylight, while the victim was fishing.”
“The diary doesn’t actually say anything about the time of day,” Nate murmured, taking the page from her hand. Addressing his brother, he said, “What kind of weapon was used?”
“Shotgun. Both barrels.”
“But that’s not right, either,” Tabitha rushed. “In the dream, it was a handgun of some kind. I saw it clearly.”
Nate’s mouth curved down on one side. “Tabby, I’m sure you think—”
“You don’t believe me, do you?” She turned to face him. “You don’t believe I saw Peter’s dream. In fact, you don’t believe I’m psychic at all.”
He lifted a shoulder, pursed his lips, but refused to meet her gaze.
After what they had shared together, and he still didn’t understand? He still had no idea who she was, what she was all about, what was important to her?
“The killings have taken place in various, seemingly unrelated locations, but it doesn’t change the fact that three of them are described…in…that…diary.” She punctuated her words by stabbing the paper in Nate’s hand with her index finger.
Well, that sure proved the point. Men would have sex with anybody, anytime, anywhere, even a woman they didn’t understand and maybe even thought were unbalanced.
The betrayal she felt made her chest squeeze and her throat tighten.
“Did you write down everything you remembered about the woman who visited you? Lucy Anderson?” Nate kept his eyes on the page in his hands.
From her jeans pocket, Tabitha withdrew a piece of paper and slapped it against Nate’s chest. “There, Inspector. Knock yourself out. If you need my help, you know where to find me.” Turning to Ethan, she said, “Would you please give me a ride home?”
Ethan looked like a shark cruising shallow water for an easy kill, but she didn’t care. He shot a quick look at his brother, then his eyes narrowed on her. “Sure.”
Nate grabbed for Tabitha’s shoulders, but she pushed at him and stepped away.
“Tabby, listen,” he said. “I can’t just sacrifice evidence and logic for…What in the hell is that?”
While he’d been defending his stupidity, she’d reached into her right pocket and drew out a yellow kerchief, flinging it into the air right in front of Nate’s nose. It dropped to the floor between them.
Ethan raised a brow. “A penalty flag?”
“Yes,” she hissed. “My friend Rajani got it for me. For some strange reason, while men are not born with any comprehension of the female of their own species, all men everywhere get a penalty flag.” Taking a much-needed breath, she said, “You’ve just been flagged, Inspector. Eight-billion-yard penalty for pigheadedness!”
Nate bent and picked up the cloth, crumpling it in his large hand—the hand that had delivered such pleasure to her body only an hour ago.
Blowing out a sigh, he said, “Look. You need to calm down. When you think about this rationally, you’ll come to see that all your silly paranormal—”
She snatched the flag from his hand and tossed it into the air again. It hit its apex, then dropped to the floor, landing on Nate’s big toe.
“Ow!” he yelped, bending to retrieve the flag once more. “Goddammit, Tabby. These things are weighted. Cut it out!”
“Not weighted enough, if you ask me,” she choked, grabbing the cloth from his hand and stuffing it back into her pocket. “Ten-billion-yard penalty for being a snake.”
“So far you’ve compared me to a mule, a goose, a pig, and now a reptile. At least I’m not a frigging free-range escargot!”
Ethan opened his mouth, and Nate growled, “Say one word, just one word, and I’ll rip out your tongue.”
“Not a problem,” Ethan said. “I was just going to ask whether Tabitha is ready to go.”
“No, she’s not,” Nate barked at the same time Tabitha said, “Yes, I am.”
When she got to the door, she turned to face Nate, hating the words she was about to say, but knowing she had to say them.
“This is for the best, Nate. You and I live in different worlds, and while I’m willing to give yours a try, you can’t even see mine. And apparently you don’t want to.”
Silently, she and Ethan walked down the stairs and out to the street. He opened his car door for her, and she slid in. As soon as she fastened her seat belt, she pulled the yellow kerchief from her pocket, buried her face in the coarse fabric, and burst into tears.
“How long have you been in love with my brother?”
“I’m not.” Tabitha sniffed into the water-repellent, rip-stop nylon; as hankies went, penalty flags were useless.
“C’mon,” Ethan cajoled as he turned the key in the ignition and pulled out into traffic. “You don’t do bullshit, and neither do I. How long?”
Dabbing her eyes with the crumpled fabric, she sighed, “I was falling for him, in a sick sort of way. But I went into remission before it became inoperable.”
Laying her aching head against the headrest, she let the purr of the expensive engine lull her mind. When she felt her eyes fill with tears again, she cursed, then wiped them away and blew her nose.
Ethan shifted gears and headed up Powell. “Nate said something about a woman coming to see you. A woman who knows Peter.”
“Yes,” she sniffled, then coughed, then blew again. Taking a fortifying breath, she said, “She claimed to be a close friend of Peter’s. She also said something about him being powerful, and that becoming involved in a scandal would ruin him.”
“Anything else?”
“She said his father had died recently and that he, Peter, was under a lot of stress. Then she said she had to head back north because she had a long way to drive.”
He seemed to mull this over for a moment. “What did she look like?”
Tabitha described Lucy Anderson, what little of her she’d seen that hadn’t been obscured by her outfit. “I got her license number, um, sort of.”
She watched as they drove by house after house. This early in the morning, everybody was still asleep. She wanted to be asleep, too. Longed to be—with Nate. Wrapped in his arms. She fought off another round of tears. How ridiculous it was to cry over Nate Darling. After all, she’d only been in love with him for a few minutes before she’d come to her senses.
Oh! Her bouquet of sweet peas. She’d left them in his car.
Burying her face in the penalty flag, she burst into tears again and sobbed until she thought her heart would break.
Next to her, Ethan growled some sort of profanity and slammed the wheel with the palm of his hand. “Hey. No man is worth it, okay?”
He sounded like he meant it, so she lifted her head and wiped her nose. Looking over at him, she said, “I thought Nate might be worth it, but I was wrong. He’s a dunderhead.”
Checking his rearview mirror, Ethan changed lanes, then turned left. “Are you really psychic?”
“Yes, but only when I touch people, and occasionally when I touch an object. But that’s rare for me to do.”
Pulling up in front of her house, he put the car in neutral, then leaned over and opened the glove compartmen
t. “Here’s a pen and paper. Write down the license number and a description of Lucy Anderson’s car for me.”
As she scribbled it all down, she said, “I’ve already given this to Nate, but he told me…”
She let her words drift off as she lifted her eyes to Ethan. He had a curious expression on his face.
When he took the pen from her hand, their fingers touched, and for an instant, an image blasted its way into her head.
“Ethan?” she whispered. “You live in Marin. You don’t happen to know anyone who drives an expensive white convertible and who is close to a wealthy and powerful man named Peter whose father has died recently…do you?”
Chapter 17
If a groom falls asleep first on his wedding night, he will be the first in the marriage to die; if it is the bride who falls asleep first, it will be she who dies first.
FOLKLORE
“Peter?”
At the sound of his name, Peter stumbled around to face his sister. Rubbing his tired eyes, he tried to focus on Zoey, but his vision just wouldn’t cooperate.
She stood a few feet away, more of a ghost than a woman. Though he couldn’t see her face clearly in the darkness of the hallway, the disapproval was plain enough in her voice.
His vision cleared a little, and he realized he was standing just outside his bedroom door. Was he coming out, or going in? What time was it? Was it the middle of the night, or nearly dawn?
“Peter?” Zoey’s voice was softer now, curious, concerned. “It’s five-thirty in the morning. Are you ill?”
He shook his head, but that just made his vision worse. Blinking at her, trying desperately to see her clearly, he said, “I’m fine. Just restless I guess.”
“You, uh, you haven’t been…out, have you?”
Had he? Why was he so confused? He looked down at his T-shirt, pajama bottoms, and bare feet.
“No. I’ve been asleep. Something woke me, I think.”
“Was it…another nightmare?”
He searched his memory. Yes, he’d been asleep, very soundly, thanks to Zoey and her stocked-with-every-sleep-aid-under-the-sun medicine cabinet. But no dreams, no nightmares had come. Still, something had wakened him, he was sure of it.
Maybe a gull, or a ship’s horn, or the crash of a powerful wave had roused him to consciousness. His bedroom faced west and the sweeping grandeur of the Pacific Ocean. He always slept with his bedroom windows open, welcoming the sharp smell of the sea, along with the rhythmic sound of the surf crashing on the rocks at the foot of the bluff on which the mansion stood. The combination never failed to lull and soothe him to sleep—until the last few months, of course.
“Listen, Zoey,” he said. “I, uh, I have a ten o’clock in the city, so I’m going to try to get a few more hours of sleep.”
In the shadows of the hallway, Zoey nodded. She may have smiled, but Peter was still too out of it to tell.
“We can talk later, if you like,” she offered. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
Turning the knob on his bedroom door, he nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He closed the door behind him, then went into his bathroom to pee. No need to turn on the light. Above his head, the domed skylight allowed the full moon to bathe the room with a cool, silvery glow. Flushing the toilet, he turned to wash his hands, and tripped over something.
Crouching, he examined the bundle on the Spanish tile floor. He recognized his old athletic shoes, a crumpled pair of jeans, and his favorite black and red flannel shirt. Except the red from the shirt had somehow bled onto his pants and shoes.
He stared at the garments for a moment, not quite comprehending what he was seeing. Letting the shirt drop from his shaking fingers, he held his palm in front of his face. His hand was sticky, and…red. Blood. Fresh blood on his clothing.
Grabbing the nearest towel, he frantically wiped all traces from his hands. He choked like a drowning man going down for the third time, frantic to breathe, gasping for air, air that failed to fill his lungs and relieve his suffering.
Not knowing what to think, how to feel, where to turn, he fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands.
“No,” he sobbed. “No, not again. Please, God. Not again.”
He should go to the police, tell them everything, at least what he knew, what he remembered. Except he didn’t remember anything. They’d laugh their asses off, or lock him up in a high-security mental institution and freaking throw away the key.
Unless, of course, he really was a murderer. Then the penalty would be far greater.
He shook his head. No. NO. He was not a killer. It just didn’t fit with the man he knew himself to be. He’d never had psychotic dreams in the past. As a kid, he’d never torn the wings off butterflies or tortured puppies. Hell, he was as nice and as easygoing a guy as anyone could meet. A party animal. He rarely got angry and when he did, he was pretty reasonable in sorting things out.
Yet the nightmares…and the blood. If there just wasn’t any blood, he could write the whole damn situation off to some kind of bizarre cosmic coincidence. But as things stood, he just didn’t know what was real from what was in his screwed-up head. What other possible explanation could there be?
No. No police. Not yet. Not until he knew.
He forced himself to focus, to concentrate. Yes, there was a way. There was a way, but it would have to be a secret, and in the end, he would know the truth.
Feeling a sense of control he hadn’t felt in months, Peter rose to his feet and looked at his reflection in the dark mirror. Was that the face, were those the eyes of a psychotic murderer? He didn’t used to think so, but if he was wrong, if it turned out he was a monster…
Slowly shuffling into his bedroom, he went to his nightstand and pulled open the drawer. With his thumb, he eased aside a notebook and some papers to reveal the revolver, its blue-black barrel glinting in the moonlight.
He took in a deep breath and let it trickle out of his lungs, then closed the drawer again.
If it turned out he was a monster, he may not know how it had begun, but he knew how it would end.
Nate sat on his bed. His cold, empty, disheveled bed—the bed that still held the scent of seduction and sex, and Tabitha. Though morning light filled the room, it did nothing to ease his unhappiness.
As long as he lived, he’d never forget the sight of her reaching for those iron bars, stretching out her body underneath him, offering herself to him with everything she had.
Gazing down at the pillow next to his, he let his eyes wander over the blue-striped sheets and tousled navy spread. Funny how his bed had never seemed so big and lonely before.
He’d wanted her there the whole night. He’d wanted her up one side and down the other. Under him, above him, bare-breasted and bare-bottomed over the arm of his favorite chair, on his lap, on his knees, every which way from Sunday—and Monday, and Tuesday, and April and August and December, and this year and next year and the year after that…
But she’d flown out the door the moment she’d gotten the chance, and it was his fault.
He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, wondering if she realized just how much she was asking of him. It’s not that he wasn’t willing to change the beliefs of a lifetime, but that kind of shift took time and a desire to change, and for him, the jury was still out. Were psychic abilities real, as Tabby claimed, or were they just so much hogwash based on finely tuned intuition and lucky guesses?
He used to think he knew the answer, but since meeting Tabby, he wasn’t so sure anymore. Yeah, he’d seen her do some interesting things, but seeing wasn’t necessarily believing, and he wasn’t as gullible as a lot of people were. Where was the proof that psychic abilities were real? Where was the scientific data backing it up? Just because lots of people believed it worked didn’t make it so. Lots of people used to believe the earth was flat, too, but enlightenment and physical evidence proved them wrong.
Ah, Tabby. His arms ached for her to be in them ag
ain, his body ached to lose himself in her. He hadn’t felt this way about a woman since Lorna, and that had been well over a year ago. Yet even as much as he’d cared for her, it didn’t come close to what he felt for Tabby.
He needed to work it out with her. Somehow. Get her to see reason. They’d be okay if she could just overcome her ridiculous attitude about being able to read people’s minds and admit it was simply that she was very good at reading people.
As he gripped the papers in his fist, a sense of urgency needled his brain. Not only did he need to change her thinking, he needed to find a way to protect her.
It had taken him two hours to decipher the wretched handwriting on most of the pages in the dream diary, but when he finally did, his skin prickled and his heart went numb.
She’s so pretty, with her silky hair and innocent eyes. She looks at me, and I can see the quality of her soul. She means well, wants to help me. How can she know what’s in my heart? How can she know her trust is dangerously misplaced?
It’s easy. She’s so surprised, she doesn’t even struggle. The knife slides between her ribs like an oar through water. Blood gushes from the wound. She makes a sound in her throat and blinks up at me, so sad. So terribly sad, and disappointed, too.
’Bye, nice lady. ’Bye, Tabitha. Truth be told, I think you were my only friend.
Nate rubbed the back of his neck. Worry and fear tensed his muscles. He glanced at the bedside clock—ten-thirty. It was Saturday, and he had the weekend ahead of him. Picking up his cell, he started to key in her number, then stopped. He had a better idea. Leaping out of bed, he set his plan into motion.
Just after three o’clock, he knocked on her front door, but instead of being greeted by the woman of his most passionate dreams—and several anxiety attacks—he was met by two identical white-haired ladies dressed in identical outfits. Behind two pairs of identical gold-rimmed glasses, two pairs of identical blue eyes twinkled, making the women look like twin fairy godmothers in pink pastel pantsuits.
Arousing Suspicions Page 17
