A Woman with a Mystery

by B. J Daniels

  “How did you know I drink Glenlivet?” he asked when she handed him his drink.

  She seemed startled by the question. “I’m sorry, I should have asked. I just assumed—”

  “—that all private eyes drink that brand?”

  She dropped into one of the wingback chairs, the glass in her hand shaking. She looked scared. He knew the feeling.

  “I don’t know why I do half the things I do, if you want to know the truth.” Her voice broke as she glanced up at him, tears in her eyes. “I’m sure you wonder why I married a man twenty-three years my senior. I wish I could tell you.” She dropped her gaze, took a drink and licked her lips before looking at him again.

  “I wish I could tell you a lot of things.” This time she met his gaze unflinchingly, reminding him of the woman he’d known a year ago, making him remember the feel of her lips on his mouth, on his skin. Holly had been scared last year, convinced someone was trying to kill her. But there had been a strength of will about her that he’d admired. She’d had no intention of giving up without a fight.

  This was the first time he’d seen it in this Holly. It stirred all the old feelings and some new ones. This was the kind of woman he could fall in love with. Had fallen in love with.

  “I have blank spaces in my memory,” she said, even her voice sounded stronger, more determined. “Some are only for a few hours. Others…are for…longer. I married Allan after one of those blanks. To answer your question, my husband left me well off financially. But that wasn’t the reason I married him.”

  “Inez said you and Allan were trying to have a baby, an heir.”

  She jerked back, startled, her gaze nothing short of shocked. “She told you that?”

  “Was it a secret?” he asked.

  “No, it’s just…not…true. Allan and I never—” She waved a hand through the air. “—consummated the marriage. Allan had no interest in…any of that.”

  Slade stared at her, more than a little confused. “Then why did he marry you? I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. To be truthful, I have no idea how we got together or why.” She smiled ruefully. “I’ve never admitted that before. At least not aloud. I can’t explain why I’ve done a lot of things I’ve done in the last year.”

  He held her gaze, debating whether to tell her he was one of the “things” she’d done.

  “I didn’t marry him for his money, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “How long have you had these…lapses in memory?” he asked, not about to touch the other.

  She looked as if she wasn’t quite ready to drop the other subject, but then sighed and said, “They started a little over a year ago.”

  “About the time you met Allan?” he guessed.

  “Yes,” she said, frowning. “I guess it was.”

  He could think of a variety of causes for memory loss. Epilepsy. Alcohol blackouts. Multiple personality disorder. Head trauma. Psychosomatic amnesia.

  But he’d always been suspicious of coincidence. And it was one hell of a coincidence that Holly’s memory loss had started about the time she’d met Allan and his sister Inez.

  “Have you seen a doctor about it?”

  She nodded. “Dozens of specialists, including Dr. Parris at Evergreen Institute. They all say the same thing. There is nothing physically wrong with me. That leaves Inez’s theory that I make up the memory losses to cover things I’ve done that I’m ashamed of.”

  He wondered if she was ashamed of what she’d done with him. “Evergreen Institute?” Where the upset Dr. O’Brien visiting Inez earlier had been from. “Is that the sanitarium you were committed to?”

  “Yes, Inez talked me into it.” She let out a humorless laugh. “My so-called breakdown was nothing more than relief. And regret that I’d ever married Allan in the first place. And, of course, confusion because of the memory loss.”

  “Did you ever see a Dr. O’Brien at Evergreen?”

  “No,” she said. “He must be new.”

  Slade had hoped for a tie-in. No such luck. Other than the one common denominator: Evergreen.

  Holly seemed upset. “Inez believed Allan and I were trying to have an heir?”

  He nodded, watching her closely.

  “Well, he got his heir, didn’t he?” she said.

  “But it’s not his baby.”

  “No. But it also doesn’t seem to make any difference to her. Does that make any sense at all?”

  “No.” He was glad she’d noticed. If she’d been crazy, she wouldn’t have noticed, right? He studied her, wondering if she didn’t seem a little less blank this evening. “You told Dr. Parris at Evergreen Institute about your memory loss?”

  “Of course. It had only just begun then, and Dr. Parris assured me it was probably caused by the trauma of losing my husband so soon after the marriage.” She looked up at Slade. “I knew it wasn’t that. But I had lost my mother just six months before that. My father died when I was nineteen, so my mother was the only family I had.”

  “I know what it’s like to lose your parents,” he said. “I lost my mother when I was twelve, and my father not quite a year later.”

  “I’m sorry.” She looked down at her hands clutched in her lap.

  “Did the stay at Evergreen help?” he asked, suspecting he’d met her last year about the time she’d left the place—and according to Inez, without properly signing herself out. Interesting.

  “Not really.”

  “Why did you leave without checking out of the place?” Slade asked.

  She frowned. “I don’t know. It’s odd that I would run away from there. Evergreen Institute is really more like a fancy spa than a sanitarium. I mostly just slept and read and rested.”

  He was glad to hear that. He’d been imagining an asylum with padded cells and straitjackets and screams in the night. He worried that when Holly found out about their past, it might send her back there.

  “But I don’t remember leaving Evergreen—or how or why.”

  “Inez made it pretty clear how she felt about your pregnancy,” he said, still wondering what hold the older woman had over Holly.

  “My pregnancy was none of her business,” Holly replied hotly. “I’m not ashamed of anything. Least of all that. I should never have told her that I didn’t think that baby at the hospital was mine. Or about the memory loss. She’s afraid people will think I’m crazy. But maybe I am crazy.”

  “Do you think you’re crazy?”

  She hesitated, but only for a second. “No. I think…. I don’t know what to think.”

  He doubted that. She had a theory, she just wasn’t ready to voice it, probably because it was so off-the-wall. Nor was he sure he was ready to hear it.

  “Has your memory ever come back after one of these blanks before?”

  She shook her head. “Only the birth of my baby. If it’s really a memory.”

  But she had remembered something else. She’d remembered that he drank Glenlivet Scotch straight. It was a small thing, but it made him wonder if her memory wasn’t coming back and that was why she’d come to him. Again. He hoped to hell he was right.

  But the question was, what had caused her memory loss in the first place?

  “How long do these memory lapses last?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “They vary. Usually I just sense holes in my memory. Time has passed but I can’t remember what happened during that time—obviously something when you realize you’re pregnant and yet can’t remember even meeting a man, let alone….” She looked away, seeming embarrassed. “That’s why it’s so hard for me to believe that the memories of the birth were real. I’d never remembered anything, not even vaguely.”

  “Maybe it was the trauma that caused you to remember,” he suggested, wanting to believe something was spurring the return of her memory.

  “Or maybe it was love? I wanted this baby more than anything. I’m sure that seems odd to you, considering that I don’t know who the baby’s father is. But
while I can remember nothing of those missing months, I have a good feeling about the man who—” She broke off and took a drink of her cola.

  She had a good feeling about him? Is that why subconsciously she’d known to hire him to find the baby? Their baby?

  Or was she pulling his string? The thought had crossed his mind, especially in light of the day he’d had. He didn’t trust anyone. He was even beginning to question his own instincts.

  “I don’t know what is real anymore,” she said, sounding close to tears as she got up to refill his glass. He hadn’t even realized he’d drained it. “Just that I have to find my baby. And save her.”

  He watched her go to the bar again, wondering what she had to save her baby from. And knew she had to be wondering the same thing. He started. “Her?”

  Holly didn’t respond.

  He watched her turn. Her eyes were vacant, her face ashen. “Holly?”

  He’d known a boy in school who was epileptic. Rather than seizures, he had lapses where he would just zone out for short periods of time. Looking at Holly now, he was reminded of that boy.

  “Holly?”

  She blinked, her eyes luminous and filled with fear as her gaze came back into focus. “I said her,” she whispered, sounding scared. “Oh, I remember her.”

  He waited, almost afraid of what she’d say.

  “During the delivery, something was wrong. They were rushing around, frantic. I tried to see what was going on. I thought something was wrong with my baby.” Tears welled in her eyes. “One of them left the room. When the door opened, I heard another woman, another patient. She sounded as if she was in labor.”

  She looked down at the glass of Glenlivet in her hand as if she couldn’t remember how it got there, then handed it to him. But instead of returning to her chair and her cola, she walked into the studio.

  He sat for a moment, not sure if he should follow her. To his surprise, she returned a moment later, carrying a large canvas. He knew without seeing the painted side what it was. He could tell by the way she held it, the way she frowned down at the work in her hands.

  “That’s why I believed the room was soundproofed,” she said more to herself than to him as she propped the painting against the wall and moved back to stare at it.

  The light cast an eerie glow over the acrylic monsters huddled around the delivery-room scene. He was filled with even more dread each time he saw the work. There was something so raw about the paint slashes, so chilling. He felt a cold draft move through the room.

  The three monsters were huddled together, hunched over, waiting with obvious anticipation, making it hard to distinguish their shapes beneath the garb they wore. They could have been men. Or women. Or just figments of Holly Barrows’s nightmarish imagination.

  “I remember being scared,” she continued in a hushed voice as if the walls might be listening, her gaze on that damned painting. “Something was wrong with my delivery. Or my baby.” She glanced back at him, no doubt knowing what he was thinking. That all of these images could amount to nothing more than what Inez Wellington believed they did.

  “I must have blanked out again. I woke to the sound of a baby crying,” she said slowly as if the memory was playing out in her head. “I opened my eyes. My baby was lying on a small table near my bed. She was kicking her legs.” Holly turned back to him. If she was putting all of this on, she was one damned good actress. She must have seen his skepticism though.

  “I saw her,” she whispered fiercely. “She was close enough I could see her birthmark.”

  He felt a chill. “A birthmark?”

  She nodded, her gaze still glazed as if focusing inward. “It was heart-shaped and on the calf of her right leg and…she had this little dimple in her cheek.” She blinked. “How could I remember something like that if it wasn’t real?” There was a pleading in her tone. “How is that possible to see something so clearly, if it never happened? My baby was a little girl—not a boy—and she was alive. I saw her!”

  A heart-shaped birthmark and dimples. He stared at her, his pulse pounding in his ears. The dimples were genetic; he knew that well enough. But a birthmark?

  Shivering, he reached up to rub the back of his neck, suddenly anxious to leave. But he couldn’t leave without Holly. He wasn’t sure what was going on. And he had no proof that anyone was after her. No more than he’d had this time last year. All he knew was that he didn’t feel safe. And neither should she.

  “I don’t think you should stay here alone,” he said, wondering how he could convince her.

  She looked at him in surprise. “You’re starting to believe me, aren’t you?”

  What did he believe? That she’d given birth to their baby? That monsters had stolen the baby? That the baby had dimples and a birthmark just like his twin sister Shelley’s? And that Holly Barrows was starting to remember, not only the delivery but—him?

  “Yeah,” he said as he got to his feet and walked to the window. Parting the curtains, he looked out into the empty street. He believed that the Santa on the street below his office on Christmas Eve had reported to someone that Holly Barrows’s memory was returning. That meant he also believed that someone had tried to get Holly to forget.

  Not that what he believed mattered in the least. Because what the hell did he know? But he wanted to help her. How much assistance she needed was still debatable. All he knew was that he’d have a better chance of helping her if the monsters in the painting were real than if they were in her head. And if the monsters were real, then he had to find their baby—and fast. Too much time had already been lost.

  He tried not to think about it. The whole thing scared the hell out of him. Because it was so far out there. And because it didn’t make any sense. If the specialists couldn’t find any physical reason for her memory lapses, then that left psychological causes.

  And that opened up a whole can of worms. The woman he’d met a year ago certainly had been different from this one. But a whole different personality? He didn’t buy it.

  “Look, let’s say you’re right and these…monsters stole your baby,” he said carefully. “If they find out you’re starting to remember the delivery—and them—well, I’d just feel better if you weren’t alone right now.”

  She seemed to study him. “You think I should go stay with my sister-in-law?”

  God, no. That couldn’t be good for anyone. He didn’t like the fact that Inez had talked her into committing herself. Holly seemed too smart for that. He wondered again what hold Inez had over her. “No. I think you should come stay with me.”

  He had so many questions, but he figured she didn’t have any more answers than he did. And the questions could wait until he got her to Shelley’s. He parted the curtains again, taking one last look out the window. The street was still empty, the sky clear and cold, making the fallen snow glow.

  As he turned from the window, he heard a sound. “What are you doing?” he demanded, surprised by the intensity in his voice.

  She jumped and almost dropped the glass of cola in her hand, the small plastic container in the other. “I was just going to take my pill.”

  He stepped to her and took the container. “Where did you get these?”

  “It’s an old prescription that Allan wrote for me. Inez had it refilled….”

  He read the label. Xanax. The name of the drug meant nothing to him. No big surprise considering he never took anything stronger than aspirin and was unfamiliar with prescription drugs. “What are they for?”

  “They relax me and make me feel better.”

  “What happens if you don’t take them?”

  She stared at him in obvious surprise. “I don’t know. I—” She looked at the pill she’d spilled into her hand just before he’d stopped her. “Yesterday, I forgot the pills here at the house. Obviously they don’t help my memory.” She tried to laugh at her joke but instead tears welled up in her eyes.

  He removed the baby-blue oblong pill from her hand, putting it back into the
container and snapping the lid shut again. “I’d like to have a pharmacist take a look at these before you take any more.”

  She nodded, her eyes large and scared. “You don’t think the pills—?” She picked up her cola and took a drink, her hands trembling.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being paranoid but I’d feel better if you didn’t take them until I can have someone check them out—” He stopped. She was crying softly. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “No,” she said, hurriedly wiping at her tears. “You haven’t upset me. Just the opposite. I can’t tell you what it means to have someone believe me.” She forced a smile. “Your paranoia is such a comfort, since for so long all I’ve had is my own.”

  He started to reach for her, to drag her from her chair and into his arms to hold her and comfort her as he would have a year ago. But he stopped himself, reminded that she didn’t know him. Didn’t remember the intimacies they’d shared. He was a stranger to her. A stranger who knew every curve, every hollow, every inch of her.

  But she didn’t know that either.

  And it was that secret between them that made him walk to the window instead and look out again, rather than try to comfort her. He could more easily have comforted a total stranger than he could have Holly Barrows at that moment.

  “Your gallery is closed for the holiday, right?” he asked, his back to her.

  “Yes?”

  “We’ll go to my sister’s. She has a large house with lots of room. She’s going to be out of town until after the New Year.” He wouldn’t be putting Shelley in danger. The house had a good security system, unlike his apartment. And Shelley kept the freezer stocked.

  He turned when she didn’t answer and saw her look around her home, her studio, as if assessing how she could leave it, let alone go with a man she had only met a night before. A man she had little reason to trust.

  He followed her gaze to the painting again. If anything, it was more frightening—and convincing—than when he’d first seen it.