“I got sick because I didn’t get my shot. Mommy and Daddy were arguing and they forgot about my shot. I guess I forgot, too. I went into my room and turned on the TV. I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was in the hospital.”
“That’s all you remember?” Sheppard prodded. “Waking up in the hospital?”
“I’ve already been through this with him, Detective Sheppard.” Dr. Baylor had folded her arms across her chest and positioned herself at the side of the bed, a paragon of protection. “He doesn’t remember anything else.”
“Not,” Carl said.
Sheppard’s brows lifted. “Not?”
Dr. Baylor smiled. “That means I’m wrong. Tell us what you remember, Carl.”
“When ‘Legends of the Hidden Temple’ was on, I heard Mommy’s car leave. When ‘Salute Your Shorts’ started, Daddy came into my room and asked if I want to go to McDonald’s. I can eat some stuff there if the carbs are right.”
Four years old and he knew about carbohydrates. “And then what happened?”
“Daddy and I went to McDonald’s and I was at the playground there for a long time. Then we came home and I went to bed because I wasn’t feeling good. Daddy forgot to give me my shot. I forgot to remind him. I got up when it was dark and real quiet outside. I heard arguing in the hall. I thought it was Mommy and Daddy at first. But I didn’t hear her voice and I opened my door a little and peeked out. I was scared.”
“What did you see when you opened the door?” Young asked.
“Daddy in his pajamas and another man. They couldn’t see me because I was behind them. I got scared and hid under my bed.”
“Can you tell me what this man looks like, Carl?” Young asked.
“I didn’t see his face.”
“Did you see his shoes?” Sheppard asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you remember anything about them?”
“The shoelaces. They were green, like sherbert.”
Goddamn. There it is. He felt like throwing his arms around the kid. “We really appreciate your help, Carl.” He looked at Dr. Baylor. “Where’re you staying?”
“I haven’t checked in anywhere yet. I drove here from the airport.”
“There’s a motel just down the street, about two blocks from the hospital,” Young said. “It’d be better if you didn’t go into the house until forensics is finished.”
Forensics had long since finished their job, Sheppard thought. Young simply didn’t want complications from the grandmother.
“I … I want my mommy,” Carl said softly, his voice trembling.
“We’re trying to find her,” Young replied gently. “But we need your help, Carl. Do you have any idea where she might have gone after she and your dad argued?”
“Daddy was saying that she probably went to the cabin.”
“What cabin?” Sheppard asked.
“I don’t know. I was there only a couple of times. Daddy says it’s where Mommy goes to think.”
“You have any idea where this cabin is, Dr. Baylor?”
“No. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Terrific, Sheppard thought. “Do you have any idea what your dad and this man were arguing about, Carl?”
“I didn’t hear them too good. But they were angry and it scared me. That’s why I hid under my bed.”
“Mrs. Lee found you in the kitchen,” Sheppard said. “Do you remember going out there?”
“Uh-uh.” He pushed the moveable table out of the way and laid back against the pillows. “I want to go back to sleep now, is that okay?”
His grandmother fussed over him, pulling the covers up over him, smoothing the hair off his forehead. “Of course it’s all right, Carl. I’m going to talk to the policemen, then I’ll be right back.”
She walked out into the hall with them and as soon as the door shut, Young said, “If you’d rather not tell him about his father, one of us can do it.”
The mere suggestion offended her. “I’ll do it. Carl is my responsibility. His doctor would like to keep him under observation for a couple more days, then we’ll stay at a hotel on the beach until my daughter is found.”
“We hope to have some leads on her whereabouts very soon,” Sheppard said.
“I can tell you this much, Detective Sheppard. My daughter would not voluntarily leave her son.”
“Did she discuss the marriage with you?” Young asked.
Baylor combed her fingers through her salt and pepper hair. “Yes, she did. She hasn’t been happy for some time. She’d been considering divorce, but she was afraid that Andrew would fight for custody and she would lose.”
“And she never mentioned this cabin to you?” Young asked.
“No. But some of the teachers she worked with might know. Mrs. Lee gave me several names you can check.”
Young jotted down the names. He apparently had every intention of following through on his end of things, Sheppard thought. But even so, a clock ticked loudly in his head, marking off minutes, hours, the days between now and Halloween.
“Have you ever seen The Postman Always Rings Twice?” Hal asked.
“No.”
“I was going to show you the original version first, but maybe you’d like the remake better.”
“It doesn’t matter. You decide.”
Rae, seated in a rocker in the den, watched him as he plucked two videotapes from the shelves on the wall. She didn’t want to be in here, but when he’d asked if she would like to watch a movie, she said sure. A large ceiling fan whined softly to her left, cooling the air that drifted through the open shutters. She hoped that by being involved in a movie, he would leave her alone.
“The remake,” Hal said, and popped the tape into the VCR. He turned it on, fine-tuned the picture. Light from the window glinted against the TV screen, so he hurried to the rear of the room and closed the shutter. She was relieved when he sat near the coffee table instead of in the chair next to her. He propped his bare feet on the edge.
“You want anything to drink, Rae?”
Hal, gracious host. It was part of his everything-is-okay routine. Fine. She could play it, too. “No, thanks.”
“Is the fan on too high?”
“It feels great.”
A big smile from Hal, then he settled back to watch the movie.
She had her favorite films, with Body Heat and Siesta right up there at the top, but she had never been a fanatical moviegoer. Carl had changed that to some extent—Barney, Winnie the Pooh, Aladdin, Free Willy, Andre, movies he must have watched a hundred times each. She doubted that Hal had those in his collection.
Thinking about her son brought a lump of emotion into her throat. Rae swallowed it back and tried to pay attention to the movie. She suspected that movies were as integral to Hal’s life as children were to hers and sensed this might be some sort of test. Maybe he would quiz her on it later.
But her thoughts wandered. This was the longest period of time in which she had been conscious without that thick and terrible fear gnawing at her. Her fear hadn’t vanished, it had gone underground. But it existed within tolerable limits right now. As long as the movie rolled, she didn’t think he presented a threat to her. His absorption in the movie seemed to be a complete immersion in which just about everything else ceased to exist.
In her head, she replayed Thursday’s events up to the point where she had opened the door to Hal. Between then and waking up on the chickee, she could find only one other memory, a sensation of movement, a blur of green and blue. She wasn’t sure where it belonged.
He claimed that a ransom didn’t interest him, that she was all he wanted. She had begun to believe him and wondered now if she might be able to use it against him somehow. The most obvious way to do this would be to sleep with him, just like Jessica Lange in this movie, like Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. The idea repulsed her. And your life may depend on it.
Her fingers twitched against her
thigh and formed a small, tight fist.
When Postman finished, Hal’s eyes seemed larger and brighter than before. “So what’d you think?”
“The ending is a complete shock.”
“It’s a classic.” He hit REWIND, the tape whirred. “There are some things about the original that I like better, but Christ, Nicholson is so good.”
Actually, she felt that Nicholson had never gotten beyond the character he had played in The Shining, the psychotic weirdo with the peaked brows. But she wasn’t about to disagree with Hal. “He carries the picture,” she said.
He went on for a while about the story, the plot, the dialogue, the power of the acting. When he finally paused, she asked, “Do you have Body Heat?”
“Sure. It’s Kathleen Turner’s best role.” His eyes brightened even more. “You want to watch it?”
“Definitely.”
Woman seduces young man and then convinces him to kill her husband. The specific plot didn’t fit her situation, but the theme fit like a shoe. Woman uses sex to gain her freedom. It couldn’t get any closer than that: Hal touching her, kissing her, fucking her.
The thought didn’t just repulse her, it literally sickened her. A thick sourness rose in her throat, her head started to ache, nausea swept through her. But she had to move beyond it if she intended to escape this place alive.
Chapter 13
As Mira swung into the driveway of One World, she spotted a spiffy silver Porsche parked next to Nadine’s Taurus. Mira didn’t know anyone who drove a Porsche and since the bookstore was closed on Sundays, she figured Nadine had company.
She often had imagined that her grandmother had a secret life that included some debonair gentleman whom she saw when it suited her. She’d never asked, Nadine had never volunteered the information, and Mira had never attempted to find out psychically. Some boundaries you didn’t cross even with people you loved the most.
“Cool car,” Annie remarked as they got out. “Does Nadine have a boyfriend or something?”
“I don’t know.”
Laughter rang out. Mira and Annie looked at each other. “The garden,” Annie said, and they hurried around the side of the house.
Nadine and Sheppard sat on mats in the shaded part of the garden where she held her yoga classes. She was showing him how to do the lotus, but he couldn’t force his legs into the position. He looked like a man suffering extreme pain.
“Stiff hips,” Mira remarked, smiling.
“Exactly what I told him,” Nadine said.
Sheppard untwisted his legs, shook his head. “Not possible.” He stood, brushing his hands together, and slipped his sunglasses back on. “I’ll never be able to do the lotus.”
Nadine gestured at Annie. “Honey, you show him what’s possible.”
Annie kicked off her shoes and eagerly joined them on the mats. She sat down, folding her legs into a lotus position, then grabbed her right ankle and slowly brought her right foot behind her neck. “I still can’t do it with both feet at once,” she said.
“You’re way ahead of me, Annie,” Sheppard said with a laugh.
Annie released her leg and stood again. “You ready?” he asked Mira.
As ready as she would ever be for something like this. “Sure.” She gave Annie a quick hug. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Nadine replied. “We’ve got a full afternoon planned.”
Annie grinned like a kid with a secret.
“Nice car,” Mira remarked once they were inside the Porsche.
“And how’s a cop afford it, right?”
“It crossed my mind.”
He laughed with obvious enjoyment. “It belongs to Gabriel Jacinto. Mira, meet Angelita.”
“Little Angel. That fits Gabby, all right. I guess he told you he and my husband were good friends.”
“He also told me how your husband died.”
Good, then she didn’t have to explain it. “I thought the car belonged to Nadine’s secret lover.”
“She has a secret lover?”
“I don’t know.” And what about you, Shep? Do you have a secret lover?
The air between them suddenly felt charged, electric. When he shifted gears, their arms brushed and she felt it to her toes. Her skin burned with an unfocused heat, a heat that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere. She found it difficult to breathe. She finally lowered the window so the cool October breeze blew through the car. It helped, but the knot of longing remained in the center of her chest.
“Nadine picked up some impressions last night. You want to hear them?”
“She’s psychic?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“So is this psychic stuff genetic with you all?”
Wiccans claimed that psi ran in families. Some psychics she knew subscribed to the old wives’ tales about infants born with caul, a supposed sign of second sight. Mira figured everyone had the ability, but like any talent it needed nurturing to grow. Without that nurturing, it laid dormant and slowly atrophied.
She said as much and added, “I guess I chose a family where it could flourish.”
“Your parents are divorced?”
She definitely had missed something here. “No. What made you think that?”
He seemed embarrassed. “I, uh, figured you chose which parent to live with and that parent remarried or something.”
“I was talking about the soul’s choice. I think the soul, the higher self, whatever you want to call it, chooses the circumstances into which we’re born, the parents we’re born to, all of it.”
As soon as she saw the expression on his face, she realized they didn’t speak the same language.
“I chose my sister?” he exclaimed. “Why?”
Mira laughed. “She’s that bad?”
“Not bad. Just impossible. The eternal victim.”
“I have clients like that.”
“How do you deal with them?”
“I try to empower them and encourage them to take responsibility for their lives.”
“Does it work?”
“Not often enough.”
He nodded thoughtfully, absorbing what she’d said, then changed the subject to Nadine. “So tell me what your grandmother had to say.” Sheppard slipped a mini cassette recorder from his shirt pocket, handed it to her. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to record this. I’m keeping tapes of everything.”
She paged through her notes as she talked, then turned the recorder off. “We got interrupted before I could ask her to clarify this business about the trio of men. But does any of that fit in with anything else?”
“It might. Like the part about this person who will approach me with explosive information. I got a call from someone who wants to meet Thursday night at the Elbo Room. He supposedly has information about Steele’s murder. Also, we were over at the hospital this morning talking to Steele’s son and—
“Maybe you’d better not tell me until after I’ve walked through the house. The less I know right now, the clearer the information will be.”
“That’s the exact opposite of how I thought psychics worked. Don’t you look for cues that people offer unintentionally?”
“That’s how cops work,” she said. “Not psychics. At least not legitimate psychics.”
“What did you pick up on your husband’s murder?”
“I was too emotionally involved to pick up anything. Hotchkiss thought I was a phony.”
“Hotchkiss is an idiot.”
“Maybe so. But I think he would’ve been willing to listen to any information I could come up with. And since I came up dry, I can hardly blame him for the opinion he formed of me as a psychic.”
As soon as she said it, she started worrying that she might not be able to pick up anything in Steele’s house and then Sheppard would have the same opinion of her that Hotchkiss did. A dog with her tricks, she thought. Perform or else.
“Look, Mira, you don’t have to prove anything to me.” As though he sensed her concern. “I already know you’re psychic. I’m not judging you. I’m just looking for information.”
She wanted to give his arm a quick squeeze, but was afraid it would seem too forward. “I’ve never done this before, but I’ll do what I can.”
He turned north onto A-1-A and the Porsche slipped into the snarl of traffic. On her right stretched Lauderdale beach, four miles of open white sand. Sun worshippers crowded the beach—sweet young things in string bikinis; macho muscle men, sunburned tourists, Rollerbladers, men and women with fat thighs pitted with cellulite.
To her left loomed the evidence of big bucks poured into Lauderdale’s urban renewal, an attempt to remold paradise. A $47 million bond issue helped revamp the Strip from spring break mecca and its aftermath of pushers, prostitutes, and panhandlers, into a chichi hot spot of jazz clubs, upscale restaurants, and people who might be beautiful one day.
Madonna and Stallone didn’t figure into this scene; it wasn’t Miami’s South Beach. But Lauderdale had its own stars—Wayne Huizenga, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, burger baron Dave Thomas. In 1995, Money Magazine voted Fort Lauderdale as the second best city in the country in which to live, after Seattle.
Personally, she had mixed feelings about the hoopla. She liked the way the city had been when Tom was alive. But Lauderdale, like her own life, seemed to be in flux.
Mansions blurred past in her window, the driveways shrouded by vegetation—towering seagrapes, Florida pines, ficus hedges trimmed to geometric precision. Lauderdale’s wealthy elite. Although Sheppard had told her Steele was wealthy, she hadn’t picked up on it and wondered why. Maybe it didn’t matter in terms of who had killed him.
They turned into one of these driveways, a winding dark ribbon filled with shadows and dappled sunlight. She realized that with all the cops and forensics people who had been here since Steele’s death, she might have a difficult time picking up specific impressions.
“Besides the Steeles, is there anyone else who lived in the house? Or worked here regularly?”
The Hanged Man Page 13
