“Daniel is alive,” Frank said, “and I’m sure she’s the key.”
She caught his hand as he replaced the photos in his briefcase. “You are so wrong about Daniel. If you were right, you wouldn’t be here right now. He’s dead,” she said sadly. “He’s gone. You may have some cockamamie theory, but you are no mental case. You’re the sanest, most levelheaded member of the opposite sex that I know.” Her voice sounded wistful.
She got to her feet and leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. Her hair tangled in his fingers. It was soft and fragrant, her body warm.
“What do we do now?” she murmured.
Her use of the word we made him weak with relief, despite his suspicions.
“I have to go find Denise, prove to you and everyone else that he’s alive, then come back and straighten out my own life. But I’ve only got about two hundred and seventy-five dollars cash.” He stepped back to watch her face. “I need a loan.”
“So you can find Denise?”
He nodded.
“Where is she?”
He tensed. “In another city.”
“How did you find that out?”
“It wasn’t easy.”
He could see her react to his evasive answers.
“How long will it take?”
“It could be just a few days, maybe a lot longer depending on my luck.”
She went to the phone and punched in a number. What was she doing? He edged closer. Would he have to yank the cord from the wall?
“Mother Alexander? Hi, it’s me. Sorry to bother you. But I’m running like crazy here ‘cuz I’m gonna have to be out of town for”—her eyes darted back to Frank—“two weeks or so.”
He frowned and shook his head. “No, no,” he mouthed. She ignored him.
“You’ve been wantin’ to spend some time with Billy. Would you take him? It’s …” She turned to Frank, who signaled for her to hang up. “It’s family business. I’ll explain it all later. Right away, this afternoon. Okay, I’m sorry you can’t. He’ll be so disappointed, but I can send him up to his other grandma. Oh, then you can? Wonderful. I’ll bring him over right after school.”
“What are you doing?” he demanded when she hung up.
“You said you didn’t know how long it would take us.”
“I never said ‘us.’ You can’t come with me.”
“I say we follow the yellow brick road, find the wizard and ask for answers. I know it isn’t true, Daniel’s not alive, but I have to go, to see it through just like you do. If nothin’ else, just to be there when you see what an ass you’ve made of yourself.”
“I have to go alone.”
“You don’t trust me? After everythin', why?”
“I have a reason.”
“Such as?”
“A witness who puts you here, who says you were here in the house that day at noon, when the shot was fired.”
“That’s a lie!” she said furiously. “Who told you such a thing?”
He shook his head.
“If that was true,” she demanded, “why would I beg the police, you, everybody, to keep investigatin'?”
“Double indemnity?”
She looked stunned for an instant, then slapped his face.a sudden, stinging blow that brought tears to his eyes. “How can you say that?”
He knew she would never give him the money now. “Where were you,” he asked calmly, “when Harrington was murdered?”
“You think I had something to do with that?” Her face reddened and her voice broke. “The police came here, to ask me about you. You were the suspect, not me.”
“A woman may be involved.”
“If you knew Ron,” she said, her voice cold, “you’d know a woman was always involved. He even made moves on me when Daniel’s back was turned.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. Did you?”
“No.” They stared each other down. “I wish I could trust you, Rory.” The hell of it was, he thought, that he believed her. Was it because he wanted to, because his gut instinct told him she was truthful or because she was so good? If she was lying, this was an Academy Award-winning performance.
“You can.” A tear skidded down her cheek.
The man who spied on her could be the liar, or mistaken.
“You must know I wouldn’t lie to you.” Her lips parted slightly, her eyes locked on his. She had backed him into a corner, literally.
He waited nervously outside the bank and watched her emerge carrying the briefcase, her graceful long-legged stride, bright hair lifting in the breeze. She slipped into the car and kissed his cheek. “I got fifty instead of twenty-five,” she said. “Just in case. And we have my credit cards, too.”
“No cards,” he said, pulling out of the parking lot into traffic. “When I disappear, Kathleen and her lawyer willprobably report me missing, deranged and dangerous. The police may really start to look for me. Either way, she’ll hire an expensive private detective to track me down. Your place will be their first stop,” he said, thinking aloud. “If you’re with me, you can’t leave a trail either. We probably have only a couple of hours to work with here. I don’t know how long it will take when we get to … where we’re going. Damn! They’ll check the airport, and I can’t buy a ticket under a phony name because of the security procedures. They want picture ID before you board.” He sighed in exasperation. “We can slow them down temporarily by leaving from Fort Lauderdale Airport. They’ll check Miami first.”
“No need,” she said coolly. “They’ll look for your name on a manifest, not Daniel’s. You can use his driver’s license.” She studied his profile. “Wear your shades, comb your hair over to the left and you can pass for him. The check-in guys at the curb are too busy to check IDs that close.”
Using Daniel’s identification had never occurred to him. “Good! Then we leave from Miami. Bring some pictures of Daniel, and his passport, just in case.”
“His passport?”
“Just in case.”
“Daniel had an American Express card. We can use it for the tickets,” she said. “It hasn’t been used since … but it hasn’t expired. We can’t pay cash.”
“Why?”
“The profile. The airlines use it to identify terrorists, hijackers and drug smugglers. Cash raises a red flag. We don’t want airport cops pulling us aside for a closer look at your picture ID.”
Despite his reservations, sharing almost everything brought him immense relief and helped him think. Whatwould he have done, he wondered, if she, too, had thought him crazy?
Billy was due home soon.
“I don’t think I should be there,” he said, as they approached her street. “Billy might say something to the wrong person. It’s too risky.”
“You’re right,” she said, “he’s so talky. Don’t know where he gets it from. What—Hey, you missed the turn.”
“No, I didn’t.”
He’d glimpsed a green and white Metro patrol car parked on the swale at Twin Palms, a uniformed deputy halfway up the walk.
Kathleen and Grayson were thorough, and quicker than he thought.
He drove to a shopping center in the heart of the Grove, into a towering parking garage behind a multiplex theater, and found a slot near the elevator in the gloomy half darkness of the fifth level. There was a cab stand at street level. He scribbled his car phone number on a slip of paper.
“If the deputies are still there, have the cabbie make a U-turn like he’s looking for an address, get out around the block and walk up on foot. I don’t want them nosing around here after asking him where he picked you up. Call me with the credit card number and I’ll make the reservations. Meet me back here at the car in two hours.”
“That gives me barely enough time to pack a few things and get Billy to his grandma,” she complained.
He reached for the briefcase as she jerked it out of his reach.
“No way!” she said. “How do I know you’ll be here when I come back?
Enough a this Mission Impossible shit. The briefcase goes with me. I’m holdin’ the money. I never trustedcar phones anyhow, they’re not all that private. I’ll call the airline and book us on the next flight out.” She studied him in the shadowy interior of the car. “But to do that”—her voice dropped—“and to know what in God’s name to pack, you have to tell me where we’re going.”
He thought about snatching the briefcase and pushing her out of the car. “How do I know you’ll be back?”
“Because I’m tellin’ you so. You can bet your ass on it.”
“I am.” Was he making a huge mistake? “Don’t tell anybody, don’t even promise Billy a postcard from Seattle.”
“Seattle.” He couldn’t read her eyes in the dim light. “Make it two and a half hours,” she said.
She left the Mercedes and walked toward the elevator, swinging the briefcase. He could have stopped her, could have taken the money. What’s another felony when you are certifiably crazy? Instead, he clung to hope, that she was someone he could trust, that she was innocent. He sat frozen in place. The elevator opened, she stepped inside and turned to face him, holding the briefcase in front of her. She blew a kiss as the doors closed.
Fifteen minutes dragged like an hour. He walked into the adjoining mall, used the men’s room, bought a soft drink and sat on a bench in the shadow of a two-story escalator, eyeing the crowd, trying to think, hoping not to see anyone he knew. He considered buying a movie ticket, taking refuge in a darkened theater, but another story unreeling on the screen would be torture when he was so obsessed with his own. If she did not come back, he thought, he could pawn his watch. He had not been in a pawnshop since his father’s death, but he could find one. He didn’t have the papers on the Mercedes. Criminals ship hundreds of stolen cars out of the country through the Port of Miami every day. One of them might buyit, but how do you find people like that? His experience had all been in legitimate business. Why had he told Rory about Seattle? He pictured her calling Kathleen, Sue Ann or the cops so they could stop him, for “his own good.”
Could Rory betray him after the intimacy they had shared? Kathleen had, and he had loved her for half his life.
Not too late to find a phone and call a lawyer for help. But who would help when he had no proof? He tossed the empty drink can into a trash bin and checked his watch. She was not due back for more than thirty minutes. If she did not come, somebody would. Somebody he would not be happy to see. He walked briskly back to the parking garage to move the Mercedes. He would conceal it on a nearby street, then watch for her on foot. That way, if things went wrong, he could get lost in the crowded mall. As he stepped off the elevator, his car in sight, he saw Rory’s Sable cruising slowly. She appeared to be alone.
The station wagon disappeared, then circled back, as he watched. She leaned forward, searching the shadows, as the car moved at a crawl. He sprinted up beside it and rapped on her window.
She cried out, startled, then lowered the window.
“You scared the hell outa me! Where the blazes were you?”
“You said two and a half hours.”
“So shoot me, I’m early. Next flight leaves at eight-ten p.m. We’ve gotta be at the airport in an hour. I got Billy’s grandma to come stay at the house, so I didn’t have to drive him all the way out to her place.”
“Were the deputies there?”
“Had been, left a card stuck in the door with a number to call. I did. They wanted to know if I’d seen you. Said no, didn’t plan to, didn’t want to. When I asked what it wasabout, they said they had some papers to serve. I promised if I heard from you, I’d give ‘em a call.”
He loaded his bag into the Sable.
“Follow me,” he said. “I’m gonna get rid of my car.”
“Why not just leave it here?”
“Too close to your neighborhood. What did you tell your mother-in-law and Billy?”
“As little as possible. Told her there was trouble in the family, my favorite cousin up in Tallahassee. Said I was drivin’ up there. Said I’d ‘splain it all later. Promised Billy we’d go to Disney World when I git back.”
“Good. Didn’t know you had a cousin in Tallahassee.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re good.”
“Yeah, I think I’m gettin’ the hang a this. Startin’ to like it. We’da made great fugitives.”
She followed him to South Beach where skateboarders and in-line skaters flashed through the neon glitz of early twilight. The streets were jammed, the curbs lined with cars awaiting valet parking at eight dollars a pop. He pulled into a tow-away zone, stepped out and locked the car.
“You can’t leave it there!” Rory said, when he opened her car door. “They’ll tow it in twenty minutes. You know how they are here. There’s a tow truck around every corner.”
“Right. If it’s impounded, I know where it is.” He slid in beside her. He had heard the horror stories from people whose cars had been towed after joyriders stole, then abandoned them. They had not been notified for weeks, even months, until storage charges had mounted to astronomical heights.
“If by some quirk of fate the system works and Kathleen is notified that they’ve got the car, so what? It leads them to South Beach, not the airport, or your neighborhood. I wantthem to think I’m still here. One more stop,” he said, “and we’re on our way.”
Parked at a meter, outside the big art deco post office on Washington Avenue, he scrawled a quick note on a piece of letterhead stationery from the office.
Shandi, darling. I know this will be painful, it always is when someone you care for is a disappointment and not all you expect him to be. I wish I knew how to make this easier. But in time you will learn, as I did, that the human heart is a tough and resilient organ. I will always love you. Dad.
He folded the note around the Bowden tape, sealed it into a stamped eight-by-ten manila envelope addressed to Shandi, marked it “Personal” and dropped it into a box at the curb.
Instead of the airport, where a persistent investigator could cruise the garages and spot Rory’s car, they left the Sable in a nearby park-and-lock lot and rode the shuttle bus into the terminal.
Rory helped him recomb his hair, the way Daniel wore it in his driver’s license picture.
The man who checked their bags and ID at the curb barely glanced at the picture.
“Concourse D, Gate Five.” He pocketed the ten-dollar tip. “Have a nice flight, Mister Alexander. You too, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” Frank replied. One hand on Rory’s arm, his briefcase in the other, he had become Daniel Alexander.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The roar of the jet engines matched the roar inside him as they streaked through the night to the great Northwest.
They half watched the movie, snacked, and she dozed, her head on his shoulder. Rory called him Daniel in front of the flight attendants as he had instructed. Both still wore their wedding bands. They shared the same last name. No one would have guessed that they were married, but not to each other.
He tried to put Miami behind him, but wondered what Kathleen and his daughters were doing and thinking. This was the first night since they met that Kathleen did not know exactly where he was. Could she imagine that he would be two thousand miles away, sharing a strange bed with another woman? He could not have imagined it himself a few short weeks ago.
Arrival time was just after eleven p.m., but their bodies were still on Miami time, and Rory was exhausted. He felt energized, alert, already scanning faces, searching the crowd.
The weather was cool, but not as cold as he had expected. He bought a sweatshirt, lined windbreaker and a woolen scarf in an airport shop. Rory wore a leather jacket she had brought with her.
The cab ride into the city was long, the highway dark. He would use Daniel Alexander’s credit card to rent a car in the morning after studying maps and forming a plan.
The hotel suggested by the airport shopkeeper was exquisite. Four-star, tur
n-of-the-century, tucked away downtown, its bar a former bookstore, volumes still lining the shelves, a wood-burning fireplace in the lobby. The bellman brought complimentary glasses of evening sherry to their door.
The colors and fabrics were rich and textured, the furniture polished cherry wood. The ambiance, the room and the double bed were warm. She called him Daniel. It seemed natural even to him now.
His thoughts were only of what lay ahead, but when she touched him and opened her arms, soft and sweet, to him in their bed, it, too, seemed natural. Unlike the first time, their wordless lovemaking was oddly enhanced by their feelings of isolation, as though each had come to the other without a past, together at the end of the world.
“We belong together,” she whispered in a moment of passion.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Yes.”
But afterward, spent, heart pounding retroactively, he wondered about the distant coast left behind them, the southern end of that flat peninsula. Miami. Whatever chaos reigned at this home, his stately home on Rivo Alto island, must havequieted for the night. They all would be in bed by now. Were they dreaming of him? What had they told Casey?
Despite her exhaustion, Rory also seemed restless.
“What are you thinking?” The unfamiliar darkness echoed around them.
“ ‘Bout Billy. Wonderin’ if he’s all right.” She sighed, turned to him, and stroked his hair. He rested his hand on the curve of her hip, stared into the darkness and knew there was no way to put Miami behind them.
He had dressed and ordered room service by the time Rory yawned awake, hair tumbled down all around the soft curves of her shoulders, beautiful au naturel, sans clothes, sans cosmetics, without artifice. Or was she? She had done nothing to arouse his suspicions, he believed in her, but his heart was wary.
“Cover up,” he told her, “room service is on the way. Didn’t think you’d want bacon or sausage …”
She wrinkled her nose.
“… so I ordered you fruit and yogurt.”
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