by Lisa Jackson
The clock downstairs ticked off the seconds and Marla felt miserable, wondered how far from her husband she’d drifted, how much further she would continue to drift.
“Look, honey, you’re right. We did fight,” he admitted. “More often than I like to remember. But I don’t lock my doors or my files because of it.” He shook his head. “No way, and . . . and I . . . was hoping . . . oh, Christ, Marla, you could have died in that accident, left me and the kids all alone and I was hoping, shit, I even prayed that you and I, we could find our way past all this.” He spewed out a long stream of smoke. “We have two children. They didn’t ask for any of this mess we created.”
“No, no, they didn’t.” She felt miserable about the kids and yet she wouldn’t let this man or any man for that matter tramp all over. “You can’t expect me to just . . . sit here in this house, to not try to find out who I am, to not try and remember.” Hot tears burned her eyes and she looked down, her fingers laced as her hands hung between her knees. What was wrong with her? Why did she feel the need to fight with him, to assert her independence? She remembered her response to Nick in the garden and closed her eyes for a second. What kind of woman was she, lusting after her brother-in-law, while she felt nothing for this man she’d vowed to love, honor and obey. Well, she was having one helluva time with the obeying part. It just wasn’t her nature. She knew in her gut that it never had been. “I’m sorry for starting the argument,” she said, lifting her eyes and fighting the tears that were determined to slide down her cheeks. “But I . . .” She lifted a hand. “I’m frustrated.”
“I know, I know.” He flicked ashes into the fire. “This is going to take some getting used to. For all of us. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. The police seem to think that Charles Biggs was murdered. They’re certain of it. Someone posed as an intern and suffocated him and walked out of the hospital. Got away clean.”
Marla felt cold inside. “Why?”
“Who knows? Probably some nutcase.” Alex was tense. Worried. “It probably has nothing to do with you, or the accident, but I think we should err on the side of caution. I want to beef up security around the house.”
“You think someone’s going to try and do us harm?” she asked, rubbing her arms as if suddenly cold as she thought of Charles Biggs, a man she’d never met, a man she’d unwittingly helped to his grave.
“Frankly, I don’t know what to think,” Alex admitted and she thought of the figure she’d thought she’d seen lurking in the window.
“I thought I saw someone in the house today.”
Alex’s head snapped up. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I convinced myself it was my imagination or one of the servants. I was in the garden and felt someone watching me, when I looked up, there was someone in the window, but I couldn’t recognize him . . . or her.”
“Jesus, Marla,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I wasn’t sure. It could have been one of the staff.”
“But it freaked you out.”
“A little,” she admitted. “I blinked and he was gone.”
“That does it. I’d rather err on the side of safety, okay? I’ll tighten security and we’ll try it with the nurse, okay? In a few days, or weeks, when you’re stronger, when things calm down, I’ll give him a paying job at Cahill House or pull some strings at the hospital to get him a job.”
“You can do that?”
“Oh, yeah.” He drew hard on his Marlboro, then jettisoned the butt into the fire. “One thing Dad taught me was that money can buy just about anything. Take Nick for example. If our old man hadn’t bailed him out way back when he’d probably still be behind bars.”
“He was in jail?” This surprised her.
“For eight hours. Assault charges. Someone got fresh when he was dating you. Nick didn’t take kindly to it.”
She sat still, stunned.
“He had a temper back then,” Alex added. “And he’s damned lucky he didn’t end up pulling five to fifteen.” Alex lifted a shoulder. “Water under the bridge now. He’s cleaned up his act.” He walked to her, placed his hands on her shoulders once again and this time the pressure was urgent but not painful as he drew her to her feet. His breath was smoky, his expression unbending. “Now . . . come on . . . Tom stays. For a while. Just for a while. Until you’re better. Okay?”
Wondering if she was making a mistake of epic proportions, she nodded slowly, allowing him to draw her to her feet and pull her into his embrace. Her cheek rubbed against the fine wool of his jacket and her eyes closed for a second. “All right. For a while,” she agreed, trying to dig deep and find some feelings of love for this man, her husband, the father of her children. All she needed was a little spark of passion, a kind memory, any damned sensation that there was something special between them. She fought tears and a tightness in her chest that told her this was all so very wrong.
She placed a chaste kiss upon his smooth cheek, hoped that she could somehow reconnect the frayed strands of their relationship. Alex’s arms surrounded her, held her tight against him and again she felt nothing. Not one damned thing. Her fists clenched in futility and slowly she opened her eyes.
Looking over Alex’s shoulder, she spied Nick standing in the archway, one leather encased shoulder propped against the wall, arms folded over his chest, his hair still wet and gleaming beneath the chandelier. Blue eyes regarded her with cold accusation and she remembered their meeting in the garden, the passion that had lurked just beneath the surface of his gaze. Now, his mouth twisted into a wry, self-deprecating line, as if he’d walked in on a scene he’d been expecting for quite a while.
“Marla,” he drawled with more than a touch of sarcasm, “welcome home.
Chapter Nine
If he had any brains at all, he’d leave now, get out of Dodge and reclaim his life, Nick thought as he grabbed a beer from the minibar, snapped on his laptop and checked his e-mail. There it was. Walt Haaga’s report, ready to be downloaded. Fine. Much as Nick hated the electronic age, how he’d sworn to never again be a part of the Internet community, he was, while here in San Francisco, a slave to it.
As he waited for the transfer of information to his disk, he popped open the cap of his beer and glowered through the window. What had he been thinking today when he’d found Marla in the garden seated in that child’s swing, swaying gently as the mist had seeped through the vegetation. He should never have let himself be alone with her, never have touched her, never have considered kissing her.
But he had. And while he’d fought the urge he’d remembered in vivid Technicolor the way her burnished hair had fallen over her naked shoulders, the soft rise of her breasts with their dark nipples, the way her long legs had come together beneath a perfect thatch of springy curls.
“Idiot,” he ground out and tossed back another long swallow. What was it about that woman that got to him? She’d changed over the years, matured, and her face was different, still scarred from the accident. The hot, sexy intensity in her gaze had been replaced by a different kind of passion. Deeper. Emotionally dangerous. But just as captivating.
“Shit.” He finished his beer as the file was complete, then he called up the images, scanning Haaga’s report page by page until he ended up staring at a picture of Pam Jaffe Delacroix.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered as he studied a woman who resembled Marla. She could have been Marla’s sister . . . not her twin, but certainly a close relative. The same mahogany-colored hair framed a beautiful face, but her forehead was wider than Marla’s, her eyes a bit rounder, her chin more pointed. There were other differences as well, of course. Was it just coincidence?
Or had Marla changed? Not just emotionally, but physically as well. Alex had mentioned that she’d had reconstructive surgery after the accident that had altered her looks so she was bound to look different from the woman he remembered. Were they the same person? Had they switched places? Identities? What?
H
e stared at the images. Pictures of Pam taken over the years—with her husband before the divorce, with a small child on a sailboat and then, later at the girl’s graduation from high school.
His blood turned to ice water. What the hell was going on here?
“Think, Cahill,” he told himself while dozens of questions assailed him. What had happened on Highway 17 that night? Who was this woman whom no one had met and yet was alone with Marla on the night she was killed? Why were the police still investigating if it was a simple accident?
He didn’t like where his thoughts were leading him. He touched the computer screen where Pam’s face stared back at him. She wasn’t nearly as beautiful as Marla, but she could hold her own.
“Damn,” he growled and snapped the disc from the computer. It was late, after midnight, but he’d seen an all-night copy center a few blocks away and wanted the reports and the images transferred to paper. He threw on his jacket, took the stairs and, with the disc tucked into a pocket, turned his collar against the wind blowing off the Bay. Traffic was slow and a fine mist caused the city lights to shimmer and blur. Stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, he thought about Marla; how she’d nearly died on that winding mountain road.
And Pam Delacroix had lost her life.
He skirted a puddle, then jaywalked across the street to CopyWrite and a pimply faced kid of about eighteen who was far more efficient than he looked.
It didn’t take long. Within the hour he had pictures, typed reports, financial statements, resumes, a list of traffic violations and enough information on Pam Delacroix and the members of his own family to keep him up all night.
At the hotel he spread the information on the bed, separating the piles and including the files he’d gotten from Alex about the business and Cahill House. Then he settled in.
Somewhere in this mess there might be a clue to what exactly he was being sucked into. He just had to look hard enough to find it.
Tony Paterno had hoped for a miracle.
He hadn’t gotten shit.
He eased his ’69 Cadillac, a wide-bodied convertible he’d inherited from his father, into heavy traffic and headed north toward the Golden Gate. Paterno usually played by the rules. Unless they got in his way. Then he’d been known to bend a few. Just as he planned to now. Even if it included breaking and entering.
Pamela Delacroix’s blood type was O positive, the same as listed on her death certificate. Marla Cahill’s was O negative, which agreed with Bayview Hospital’s charts. He’d talked to the officer in charge of the accident scene again and was satisfied that there hadn’t been a major fuck-up. Pam Delacroix was dead.
So much for his switcheroo theory.
He flipped on his blinker and changed lanes just before the approach to the bridge and wondered why nothing was breaking in this damned case.
The composite sketch of the man wearing Carlos Santiago’s ID tag on the night Charles Biggs had died could have been any white, six-foot male of about a hundred-seventy-five pounds who’d been in the San Francisco area that night. There had been nothing to distinguish the man from hundreds of thousands of others. The guy had brown hair, not long, not short, a moustache and glasses.
The suspect could have dyed his hair, shaved his moustache, found himself a pair of contacts and put thousands of miles between himself and the hospital by now.
So Paterno was back to square one.
Chewing on a wad of stale gum, Paterno watched the bumper of the Honda in front of him as the Caddy’s wipers slapped raindrops from the windshield. On the radio a phone-in psychologist was telling some poor woman whose husband was cheating on her to “wake up and smell the espresso.” Frowning, lost in his own thoughts, he saw the rust-colored cables flash by in his peripheral vision, and was only vaguely aware of crossing the neck of greenish water linking the Pacific Ocean with San Francisco Bay or of the fact that his old ragtop was leaking again.
He nosed his Cadillac toward Sausalito, and tried to ignore his sixth sense that swore to him that Marla Cahill wasn’t who everyone claimed she was. But if so, then surely Marla’s husband would see a difference in her.
Amnesia couldn’t cover up old physical scars, couldn’t change appearances, couldn’t alter a voice . . .
“Hell.” He nearly missed the turnoff on the north end of the bridge and had to gun the old car’s engine to cut in front of a U-Haul truck and make the exit. Pam Delacroix had lived alone in a floating home on Richardson’s Bay in an old artists and writers community in Sausalito. Her daughter was off on her own and her ex, Crane Delacroix, was an engineer of some kind who had worked for a software company that, when it had gone public, made everyone rich. Including Crane. From all accounts his ex-wife lived on her divorce settlement, never bothered practicing law again and dabbled at everything from glazing pottery to writing. She sold real estate part time, but hadn’t had a sale in over six months and worked mainly from her home, not even paying for desk space at the company she was associated with.
A lot of people knew of her, he’d decided, but not many people really knew her.
He parked the Caddy in a guest area, then found Pam’s floating home docked between a sailboat converted into a permanent abode and another platform home. It was quiet on the marina, the gray skies and soft rain offering some cover, which was just as well for what he had in mind. Paterno rapped hard on the door. Waited. No one answered, so he tried the door. Locked tight. But there wasn’t a deadbolt. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being observed, he let himself inside with his credit card. Next time he’d get the damned search warrant; right now he couldn’t be bothered.
Pam Delacroix’s death was still considered nothing more than an accident, but Paterno was working from a different angle. Too many things didn’t add up in his mind and two people were dead. Charles Biggs and Pam Delacroix would never be able to tell their sides of what happened that night and Marla Cahill was claiming amnesia. Someone hadn’t been patient enough to let nature take its course with Biggs. Why?
There had to be a connection, a thread he could start pulling so that the entire tapestry of lies surrounding Pam’s death could be unraveled.
Careful to disturb nothing, he walked through the lower level, two bedrooms, a bath, and a family room turned into a den. Complete with a freestanding fireplace and surrounded by bookcases filled to overflowing with Pam Delacroix’s personal law library, the room was walled in dark paneling. A sliding door opened to a deck, beyond which was the bay.
Her computer sat on a corner desk and images of her daughter marched across the monitor.
Paterno didn’t hesitate and snapped on a pair of latex gloves, then, careful so as not to disturb anything, looked through Pamela Delacroix’s personal files. Neither Marla Cahill’s phone number nor address was listed. There were no notes about her. On the date of the accident, nothing was scribbled on the calendar.
“Great.”
There were books spread on the desk, legal references and manuals on police procedure and adoption, case histories of parental rights and, in the word processing programs, several chapters of a book that Pam had been working on. It looked like another legal thriller. So Pam Delacroix was hoping to cash in on the trend as so many other ex-lawyers before her.
The answering machine was blinking, so he hit the switch. Whoever had called had hung up without leaving a message.
Paterno made a mental note to check Pam’s phone records.
He left the den and climbed a spiral staircase to the second floor living area. Kitchen, living room and master bedroom and bath were as neat as her office was messy. Not a floral pillow out of place, not a crumb on the counter.
He glanced at the pictures in the bedroom, scattered along the bureau top. Sure enough there was the kid, Julie, in her graduation cap and gown, holding a white cat with black and orange patches.
Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. The closets were so neat as to have outfits arranged by color, the kitchen cup
boards and drawers looking as if Pam had been expecting a photographer from House Beautiful or her mother-in-law to make a surprise appearance.
But not so the den.
Returning to the work space, he did a little more digging, checked into the files that were listed as having been last used on the computer’s menu, but found only the roughed-in chapters of her book. Then he printed out the computer’s address book and calendar.
Pocketing the papers, he let himself out and locked the door behind him. The next time he showed up he would play by the rules.
He walked up the ramp to his Cadillac and glanced across the Bay to the Tiburon Peninsula, a posh, scenic jetty of land. Marla Cahill’s father, Conrad Amhurst, lived over there in a rest home. Paterno’s eyes narrowed and he slid into the Caddy, throwing it into gear and driving out of the parking lot. His kids called the car a boat and wanted him to trade it in on a newer model, but he loved the red leather interior and the spot on the dash where his father’s little statue of the Virgin had stood for nearly thirty years.
He didn’t think he’d sell the car. Not for a while.
“Mon dieu!” Helene, Eugenia’s personal hairdresser, took one look at Marla and nearly fainted right through the floor of the foyer. “But what happened?”
“I told you about the accident,” the older woman said.
“No. I mean . . . her hair.”
“Did it myself,” Marla said, somewhat amused at the tiny woman’s expression of sheer horror.
“Well, well, we will see . . . Oh, I will need to think on this.” Then, as if she realized how her words might affect her new client, she smiled. “It will be no trouble, though. I can do wonders. You have a beautiful face, one you should not hide, let me see . . . You are satisfied with the color?”
“I just need a trim,” Marla said, “something to even it up.”
Helene sent her a sly, if-you-only-knew look as they took the elevator to the suite and the hairdresser set about working her magic. She insisted upon shampooing, conditioning and cutting what was left of Marla’s hair. Her expression grim, as if her job was tantamount to sculpting a fifth face at Mount Rushmore, she worked, muttering under her breath, shaking her head and finally drying what, in Marla’s estimation, was a masterpiece. Soft wisps of mahogany locks nearly covered her scar then tapered in layers to her nape.
