The Edge

by Catherine Coulter

  I’d been surprised when six months before, Jilly had called to tell me that she and Paul were moving back to Edgerton, leaving Philadelphia and the pharmaceutical firm—VioTech—where both of them had spent the past six years of their professional lives. “Paul isn’t happy here,” she’d said. “They won’t let him continue with his research. He’s really into it, Mac.” But what about you? I’d asked her. There’d been a brief pause, then she’d said, “My clock is running out, Mac. We want a child. I’m going to lie low for a while and we’re going to try to get me pregnant. We’ve discussed this thoroughly and we’re sure. We’re going back to The Edge.” I smiled a bit, thinking of that name. She’d told me a long time ago, before she and Paul were married, that Edgerton had been discovered by an English naval lieutenant, Davies Edgerton, way back toward the end of the eighteenth century. The name had been corrupted over the years by the locals to the point that most of its denizens now just called it The Edge.

  I was nearly there. The four-mile drive to the ocean was rough, and that was why the engineers had swung the highway to the east. There were deep ravines and hillocks, a wide gully with a bridge over it, some stunted pine and oak trees, and at least a dozen potholes that looked like they hadn’t seen maintenance since World War II. There was little greenery yet, too early in the spring. A sign said EDGERTON—FIFTY FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL AND 602 RESIDENTS. My favorite resident was in the Tallshon Community Hospital, some ten miles north of Edgerton, in a coma.

  Jilly, I thought, my fingers tightening on the steering wheel, did you go off that damned road on purpose? If you did, why?

  CHAPTER THREE

  I was deep inside myself and it was comforting. When I first realized I wasn’t dead, I was shocked. How could I have survived? I’d whipped the Porsche right off the cliff, hanging, hanging, before it plunged clean as a stabbing knife through that black, still water.

  Then I didn’t remember anything at all.

  I couldn’t feel my body and perhaps that was a good thing. I knew there were people around me, whispering as people do around those badly hurt, but I couldn’t make out their words. It was odd, but they weren’t really there, just hovering, insubstantial shadows. Like the shadows, I was here too, but not really. If only I could have heard and understood what they were saying. Now that would have been delicious.

  At last I was alone. Completely alone. Laura wasn’t here with me. Laura, I prayed, had gotten her revenge when I’d screamed like a madwoman and driven off the cliff. If she had come back with me, I thought I’d simply make myself stop breathing.

  People came and went. I had no particular interest in any of them. I suppose they examined me and did things to me, but nothing really mattered at all.

  Then suddenly everything changed. My brother Ford walked through the door and I saw him clearly. He was real, he had substance and an expression that was so filled with fear that I would have given quite a lot to be able to reassure him, but of course I couldn’t. He was big and good-looking, my little brother, better-looking even than our father, who’d been a lady killer, our mother had always said fondly. Mother and Father were dead, weren’t they?

  Ford didn’t look quite himself. Perhaps not as buff, not as commanding, not as massive. Hadn’t he been hurt or something? I didn’t know, couldn’t grasp much of anything. But Ford was here, I was sure of that. I also knew that I was the only one who called him Ford and not Mac. He’d never been Mac to me.

  How was this possible? He was here and I could see him, but I couldn’t make out any of the others.

  If I could have shouted to him, I would have. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t really feel anything at all except this quiet joy that my brother had come when I needed him.

  I was shocked again when I heard him say close to my face, “Jilly, my God, Jilly, I can’t bear this. What happened?”

  I clearly heard his words, understood them. I was even more shocked when I felt—actually felt—his big hands covering one of mine; I’m not sure which one. I felt a shot of warmth from him, and the warmth stayed with me. It was remarkable. I didn’t know what to think. How had Ford come so clearly to me when none of the others had? Why Ford and no one else?

  “I know you can’t answer me, Jilly, but perhaps somewhere deep inside, you can hear me.”

  Oh, yes, I wanted to tell him, I can hear you, yes I can. I loved his voice: deep, resonant, and mesmerizing. I think I’d told him once how much his voice warmed me to my toes. He’d told me it was his FBI interviewing voice, but that wasn’t right. He’d always had that intimate, soothing voice.

  He sat down beside me, always talking, deeply and slowly, never letting go of my hand, and the warmth of his hand was dizzying. How I wished that I could at least squeeze his fingers.

  “I was with you, Jilly,” he said, and I nearly stopped breathing.

  What did he mean?

  With me where?

  “I was with you that night. Scared the shit out of me. I woke up in the hospital sweating my toenails off, so scared I thought I’d die. I went over the cliff with you, Jilly. I believed at first that I died with you, but neither of us died. That highway patrolman saved you. Now I’ve got to find out how this could have happened. Damnation, I wish I knew if you could hear me.”

  Ford paused, still staring down at me, and I wished with everything in me that I could give him some sort of sign, but I couldn’t. I was just a lump lying there in that hospital bed that was probably very uncomfortable, if I could have felt it. I wasn’t anything really but my brain and one of my hands that he was holding.

  What did he mean that he’d been there with me going over the cliff? That didn’t make any sense, not that anything happening right now made any sense.

  A white shadowy figure came into my line of vision. Ford patted my hand, pressed it down against the bed. He walked to the figure and said, “Paul, I just arrived. I was talking to Jilly.”

  Paul. He was here in my room. I couldn’t understand what he was saying to Ford, but from Ford’s long silence, he must have been saying quite a lot. He and Ford moved away from me and I couldn’t even hear Ford speaking anymore. I wanted more than anything for Paul to leave, but he didn’t. What was he saying to Ford? I wanted my brother back. He was my only connection to what was real, what was out there beyond myself.

  After a while I gave up and went to sleep. Before I slept I prayed that Ford wouldn’t leave me here alone, that he would come back to me. I felt great sorrow for my Porsche, lying there at the bottom of the ocean, fish swimming through it.

  I pulled the Ford into one of the six empty parking spaces in front of the Buttercup Bed and Breakfast, a whimsical name for the ugly, gothic Victorian house that was hanging nearly off the edge of the cliff. There couldn’t have been more than twenty feet between the house and a thick stone wall that you could jump off of directly down to a narrow strip of rocky beach a good forty feet below.

  Just as whimsical was the name of the main street in Edgerton—Fifth Avenue. The one time I’d been here before, I’d laughed my head off. Fifth Avenue, with four parallel streets running on either side of it, dead-ending at the cliffs, bisecting streets running north and south a good distance each way.

  Nothing much had changed as far as I could see.

  There were small cottages dating from the 1920s lined up like pastel boxes along Fifth Avenue. Ranch-style homes from the sixties sprawled, with larger plots of land, along the back streets. Wood and glass contemporary homes, the immigrant style from California, perched on higher ground lining the cliffs, while others dotted the shallow valleys that dipped away from the water. There were still a few odd shacks and cottages tucked in among the thick stand
s of spruce, cedar, and western hemlock.

  I went into the Buttercup B&B and was told by a thin woman who sported a line of black hair above her upper lip that they had no vacancies. I thought about all the empty parking spaces out front, saw absolutely no one at all in the house, and said to the woman who was standing behind a stretch of shiny mahogany, looking wary and stubborn, “Busy time of year, hmm?”

  “There’s a convention in town,” she said, turned pink, and studied the wall behind my left shoulder, papered with huge Victorian cabbage roses.

  “A convention in Edgerton? Maybe they moved the Rose Bowl up here?”

  “Oh, no, these aren’t florists, they’re, well, most of them are dentists, orthodontists, I believe, from all over the country. Sorry, sir.”

  I wondered what was considered the low season in Edgerton as I walked back to my car. Why hadn’t the woman wanted me to stay there? Had it gotten around already that an FBI guy was in town? Nobody wanted a cop hanging around? It seemed to me that I was the safest customer to have sleeping in your house.

  I turned left off Fifth Avenue and drove north up Liverpool Street, a steep winding road that ran parallel to 101 for a good ten miles before swerving eastward to join up once again with the highway. There were new houses along this stretch, spread far apart, most tucked discreetly out of sight from the chance runner or driver. At a particularly lovely spot, I saw a small hill that rose up some fifty yards back from the cliff. The hill was covered with spruce and cedar. At its base there sat a large dark red brick house. Except for a narrow driveway, the house was surrounded by dozens of trees, the outer perimeter trees partially stunted, leaning inward, battered by storms off the sea.

  It was 12 Liverpool, Paul and Jilly’s house. It couldn’t have been built more than three or four years before. If I hadn’t been looking for it I wouldn’t have seen it.

  I was surprised how much it looked like their home back in Philadelphia. It was then I saw a police car parked across the street from the house.

  I pulled into the empty driveway, wondering how much longer Paul would be at the hospital. I walked to the cop car, a white four-door Chrysler with green lettering on the side: SHERIFF .

  I stuck my head in the open passenger window. “What’s up? You here to see Paul?”

  She was a woman in her early thirties, wearing a beautifully pressed tan uniform, a wide black leather belt at her waist, a 9mm SIG Sauer Model 220, a sweet automatic pistol I knew very well, holstered to the belt. She said, “Yes. And just who might you be?”

  “I’m Ford MacDougal, Jilly’s brother, from Washington, D.C. I’m here to see her, and find out what happened to her.”

  “You’re the FBI agent?”

  There was deep suspicion in her voice. “Word gets around fast,” I said. I stuck my hand through the open window. “Just call me Mac.”

  She was wearing black leather driving gloves that felt very cool and soft to the touch when she clasped my hand. “I’m Maggie Sheffield, sheriff here in Edgerton. I want to find out what happened to Jilly as well. Did you just come from the hospital?” At my nod, she said, “No change?”

  “No. I left Paul there with her. He’s pretty upset.”

  “No wonder. It’s got to be hell for him. It’s not every day that a man’s wife drives off a cliff, ends up in the hospital rather than the morgue, and leaves her Porsche twenty feet underwater.”

  She sounded like she wanted to cry. About Jilly or about the Porsche?

  “You’ve driven Jilly’s car?”

  “Yeah, once. Funny thing is that I never speed unless I have to, which isn’t often. But I got behind the wheel, looked out the windshield, and my foot just hit the gas pedal. I was doing eighty before I even realized it. I was grateful there were no cops around.” She smiled and looked away from me for a moment. “Jilly was so excited about that car. She’d drive it down Fifth Avenue, hooting and shouting and honking the horn. She’d swerve it from one side of the street to the other. People would come out of the grocery store, their houses, laughing, betting with her that she’d wreck the car with her shenanigans.”

  “She did.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t because of her having fun like a crazy teenager. It was something else entirely.” Her voice had lightened up just a bit, but now it was low and suspicious again. To my surprise, she suddenly smacked the steering wheel with her gloved fist. “It’s just plain nuts. Rob Morrison, the state cop who pulled her out, said she speeded up as she went toward the cliff. It’s a pretty sharp incline at that particular spot, so that means she had to push down on the gas, like she wanted to go over. But that doesn’t make any sense at all. Jilly wouldn’t have tried to kill herself.” She paused a moment, frowning over the steering wheel into the forest across the street. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any ideas about this?”

  I should have just said no, because I didn’t want this sheriff to think I was crazy, but what came out of my mouth was “Yes, I do. It’s just that I don’t understand my ideas either.”

  She laughed. It was an honest laugh that filled the car. “I think you’ll need to explain that. Listen, you’re a Fed when all’s said and done. Sure you’re Jilly’s brother, but you’re a Fed first. What’s going on here?”

  “All that’s true, but I’m on leave from the FBI. I’m here as Jilly’s brother, nothing more. I’m not going to throw my weight around, Sheriff.” My stomach growled. “Tell you what. Paul’s still at the hospital. Actually I’m going to stay here with him since the Buttercup B and B is filled up with the orthodontist convention. It’s time for lunch and I’m starving.”

  “Orthodontist convention, huh? That’s how Arlene got rid of you? The woman’s got no imagination.”

  “She tried. I think I frightened her. Is it because I’m an outsider? A Fed?”

  “Oh, yes. Arlene Hicks doesn’t want you anywhere around her fine establishment. She’s weird that way about cops.”

  “Word got around really fast.”

  “Yeah. Paul told Benny Pickle down at the gun shop that you were coming. That’s all it took. Benny’s got the biggest mouth west of the Cascades.”

  “But what’s wrong with being a Fed? I’m clean, I’m polite, I don’t spit. I wouldn’t run out without paying my bill.”

  “Arlene doesn’t even like me hanging around, and I’m a friendly face. You’re not. She probably believes you’re as bad as the IRS. You’re from Washington, right? Place of sin and corruption.”

  “You’ve got a good point there. Maybe Arlene’s on to something.”

  She waved that away. “Okay. You’re here, Mac, and you want to find out what happened to Jilly. I want the same thing. It makes sense that we join forces, at least a bit. The thing is, are you willing to play level with me?”

  I arched an eyebrow. “I hadn’t really thought about playing with anybody. But if I do play, it’s usually level. Any reason why it shouldn’t be?”

  “You’re a Fed. You’re a big footer. You’re used to taking over, used to making local cops your gofers. I’m not a gofer.”

  “I told you, I’m not here as a Fed. I’m here only as Jilly’s brother. Like you, I want to know what happened. Actually I’m pleased that as the local cop you haven’t just kissed the whole thing off—attempted suicide—and called in a shrink.

  “Sure, I’ll play level with you. Do you know anything I should know? Is there any reason to believe Jilly didn’t go over that cliff on purpose? You want to start sharing right now?”

  She seemed to relax a bit. “When were you hurt and how?”

  “How do you know I was hurt? Do I still look like week-old oatmeal?”

  She cocked her head to one side
, fully facing me, looking me over. I realized that she was younger than I’d first thought, probably late twenties. It was impossible to be really sure because she was wearing the dark glasses favored by highway patrol officers to intimidate the folk they stopped. I could see my reflection in the lenses. Her hair was thick, dark reddish-brown and curly, plaited into a thick French braid and pulled back up on top of her head, wound around itself and fastened with a clip carved as a totem pole. She was wearing pale coral lipstick, the shade my British girlfriend Caroline had favored. But Caroline, a clothing designer, had never looked as tough or self-reliant as this woman.

  Of course she knew I was studying her, and she let me, saying finally, “I’ve always hated oatmeal. Fortunately, you don’t resemble that at all, but you don’t move all that easily, you know? You walk like you’re twenty years older than you are. There are faint bruises along the left side of your face. You favor your right arm and you’re a bit crabbed over, like you’re worried you’ll hurt your ribs. What happened to you?”

  “I got in the way of a car bomb.”

  “I didn’t hear about any federal guys being blown up.”

  “I was over in Tunisia. Bad place. You get hot sand in your mouth when you talk. The people I had to deal with weren’t what you’d call very good-natured.” I’d just told this woman, a perfect stranger, all sorts of stuff that wasn’t any layperson’s business, a local cop’s least of all. Well, I was playing level, I was sharing, as politically correct folk would say. Even thinking that soppy word made me wince. If she knew anything at all, my spurt of openness—something I hoped wouldn’t happen again—should help me worm it out of her.

  “I’ll take you to The Edwardian for lunch. It sounds like an English gentlemen’s club, but it isn’t. The food isn’t great, but there’s a lot of it, and you look like you could use the calories. You dropped what, a good fifteen pounds?”

  “Yeah, about that,” I said. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon and I wanted a soft bed, a dark room, and no interruptions for about three hours.