Sapphire Nights

by Patricia Rice

  “Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Sit here, just take it in, and I’ll be back with food.” His voice was warm chocolate reassuring.

  Sam sensed an emptiness when he left, but she still experienced a connection with him, like a filament of invisible essence, as she had with Cass. Rather than examine that weirdness, she admired the brilliant blue shades of the ocean lapping beyond the wharf. The noise and colors of the people and shops lining the old pier fell into the background as she concentrated on the battering wind and the crying gulls. She let these new sensations wipe the slate clean, let her body relax, and began the blessed process of refilling her memory and becoming herself again.

  Walker returned with a bread bowl of chowder and bags of fried seafood and slaw. “It’s tourist food, but decent.”

  “I’ve never had fried food,” she said, and her heart felt lighter at the recollection. Samantha Moon had returned.

  He dropped down on the bench beside her, sprawling his long legs across the planks and digging into his soup before he halted in mid-bite to stare at her. “You remembered that? Of all the things to remember, it’s fried food?”

  “Lack thereof,” she corrected with a smile. “All organic, all the time, and lots of tofu. We had goats and chickens for milk and eggs. I never saw the inside of a Walmart until a friend took me when I was sixteen.”

  His eyes narrowed warily. His five o’clock shadow made him look tough, but at least he wasn’t wearing his damned shades.

  “I learned to curse at college,” she added, digging into the chowder.

  He all but inhaled half his soup before speaking again. “How much do you remember?”

  “You’re thinking this was all a hoax, aren’t you?” She opened a brown bag and pinched off a bite of fried fish. Remarkably, she didn’t resent his assumption. Knowing who she was made everything sane again. Joy ballooned inside her. One took moments of happiness and reveled in them as they happened, she’d been taught.

  She would get angry later, but her empty head required peace to fill it.

  “I’m thinking you’re as looney as the rest of the Lucys if you want me to believe that finding Cass magically returned your memory.” He reached into the bag, produced a fish sandwich, dumped slaw on it, and ripped off a huge bite, obviously not as happy as she.

  “That’s fair,” she acknowledged. “I have no idea how she did it. The night we met, Cass explained that Jade and Wolf had been paid to keep me away from her and her family and anything to do with Hillvale. It’s a complicated history. I’m not sure how much of it I buy either.”

  The fried fish melted on her tongue. She didn’t want to pollute it with cabbage. She poked around and found shrimp and sampled that next.

  He tugged his cell phone from his pocket, hit a number, and said, “Sofia, did you run the genealogy on Cassandra Tolliver?”

  Sam wriggled with happiness. She knew problems still existed in Hillvale, but for right now, she was a recent college graduate with a master’s degree and her whole life ahead of her, and she was about to find out about her birth family. And she was sitting next to a powerful man who could summon information with a phone call. She was pretty certain Sofia wasn’t in the sheriff’s office.

  “I’ll check my account, thanks.” He clicked off, hunted through his phone icons, pressed one, and opened up a list of files.

  “Cass took my backpack. That’s where all my valuables are.” Sam watched with interest as he opened what looked like a family tree. He had to scroll back and forth to follow the lines on the little screen.

  “We need my laptop to read this,” he said, as if reading her mind. “But if I start at the top, it looks like Cass is related to the Kennedys through her father. He was married twice, to her mother first when they were young, and to Geoff’s mother after his first wife’s death.”

  “Geoff?” For cheap thrills, she peered over his muscled shoulder while nibbling her way through fried shrimp.

  “Geoffrey Kennedy was Carmel’s husband, father of Kurt and Monty. I knew that much. He died from a sudden illness just before my father disappeared.”

  “Ah, I remember that. So that makes Cass their what? Half aunt? Do they know that?”

  “I didn’t know enough to ask.” He scrolled through some more, then hit a contact number. “I think we’d be better off asking Cass to explain in the morning, if she’s up to it. We need to find a place to stay for the night. I’m off duty at this point, but I’ll have to let the sheriff know I’ll be late coming in tomorrow.”

  Sam munched her way through the food while he called both his offices. She tried recalling meeting police officers or even businessmen, but the gallery owners her adopted parents occasionally entertained were the best she could summon. Her university professors occasionally wore suits, but there was nothing particularly authoritative about scientists and teachers. Even in his uniform, Walker exuded command—the kind that got things done.

  Which was why she was surprised at his frustration in arguing with what she had assumed to be his secretary.

  “Then take the f. . . frigging suite,” he all but shouted, obviously substituting a mild swear word as if talking to his mother. “I’m not driving back up the highway at this hour.” He grimaced, ran his hand through his short hair, and listened to the voice on the other end. “Fine then, call it my case and bill it to me. It’s not as if the d. . . darned suite will break us.”

  He waited a moment, nodded, muttered, “Good, got it, thanks,” and clicked off.

  Taking a deep breath, he visibly calmed his temper and reached for a fry. “I inherited my secretary from my father. She thinks we’re still building the business and counting every penny. She runs a tight ship and I can’t complain, but sometimes. . .”

  She hid her smile at his frustration. She liked that this powerful man treated his elderly secretary with respect.

  He munched the fry, checked that the bags were empty, and stood up. “There’s some kind of festival in town. All the hotels are booked solid. The only opening is a suite at the resort back up the road. I hope you don’t mind.”

  He didn’t sound as if he cared if she did. He was already stalking toward the car. Taking her time, Sam strolled after him. Powerful men needed people who reminded them they didn’t rule the world.

  Her parents had raised her to be independent, although the extremely narrow environment they’d raised her in hadn’t fostered independence. Interesting.

  Walker turned around and realized she lagged behind. He waited for her at the end of the pier. “Did you want to see more of the coast? We can walk toward the cannery.”

  She brightened. “Is there a place where we can have wine and watch the sunset?”

  “It will be packed at this hour,” he warned, but he took her hand and led her down the street.

  She’d tell him later that she knew where her backpack was and what was in it.

  Chapter 14

  Evening, June 19

  * * *

  Edgy, Walker drank only one beer while Sam sipped white wine and admired the sunset. In jeans and jacket, she wasn’t dressed provocatively, but he was so aware of her that it was all he could do to keep from grabbing her hair and hauling her off to his cave.

  Memories were tumbling out of her, and the story was fascinating, like a giant puzzle he needed to piece together. He ordered her another chardonnay.

  “I was so sheltered,” she admitted with a gesture of self-deprecation. “It never occurred to me to wonder where the money came from. I knew my parents were established artists and assumed the income was theirs. When I turned sixteen, Wolf bought me the Subaru, nothing fancy. He said he didn’t want me driving icy roads in anything less than a four-wheel drive, and I just accepted that we had money for new cars. When it came time for college, I received a full scholarship at Brigham, so I never asked about the other costs of school.”

  “Why environmental science?” He wanted another beer, but one thing led to another, and he was keeping h
is head on tight this time around. He wouldn’t let his caretaker neurosis mess with his head again, especially with a woman who was a mystery even to herself.

  Sam shrugged. She’d removed her jacket and her slim shoulders lifted her breasts against her loose shirt in a way that had him sucking an empty bottle.

  “I’ve always grown plants. I took care of the vegetable gardens and the flowers and it was just something I did. It kept me grounded, as you said earlier.” She paused, as if considering how much to tell him. “I knew agriculture wasn’t for me. I didn’t want a farm. But science. . . that offered possibilities. My parents were all for it.”

  He waited while she gathered her thoughts. She had long, slender fingers and despite the work she’d been doing these past days, her nails were neat and well-shaped. His mind drifted to how they would feel. . .

  “And then they were dead,” she said flatly, even though grief shadowed her eyes. “One day I was planning on going home for Thanksgiving, and the next, I had no one to go home to. They had filled my life so completely that I hadn’t realized I had no life without them.”

  He remembered the day his dad disappeared, but at the time, he had hope he’d turn up. It wasn’t the same finality she’d suffered. “Painful memories. I can see where you might want to shut them out.”

  “Cass was responsible for shutting down my memory,” she said without equivocation. “I loved my parents, and I know they loved me, even if I was adopted and didn’t think or look like them. I never tried to shut out their memory, even after I learned that they didn’t tell me the whole truth.”

  “Which is?” He could listen to her all evening, which was probably safer than going back to the suite.

  “It took me a while.” She sipped her wine as she worked through her thoughts. “After they died, a lawyer called to say he was the executor of their estate and that he’d keep providing for my student housing and allowance as always. He suggested I sell the farm, though, because the artwork had a finite inventory and the income from it would eventually dry up.

  “I was too grief-stricken to ask more.” She looked regretfully at the almost empty glass. “Are you sure you want to hear all this?”

  “It’s the best bedtime story I’ve ever heard. What did you do with the farm?”

  “I couldn’t bear to give it up, at first, but then I realized I couldn’t bear to live out there all alone either. So I had the lawyer sell it to an elderly neighbor who had adult children who wanted to live nearby. I thought my parents would approve of that. It was only at that point that I started questioning where my allowance came from.”

  “You said it was in a trust?”

  She nodded. “The Samantha Moon Trust and it had been established shortly after my birth, which finally made me wonder about my birth parents. I knew I was adopted and had never cared to know more.”

  “But you were suddenly without family and started looking around.” Everything she was saying was sensible. But somewhere, the crazy came in. “How did you do that and still keep up your studies?”

  “Not well,” she admitted. “The Mormons have one of the biggest genealogy databases in the world, and I simply didn’t have time to sort through it. After I realized Jade and Wolf had been born in San Francisco, I wondered if maybe I had been too, so I checked California adoption records and discovered I was born to Zachary and Susannah Tolliver. But I couldn’t find anything in the database for either of them. That’s when I gave up and hired a professional.”

  “A professional genealogy researcher? I wish I’d known you’d done that. I could have saved Sofia the trouble of digging.” Although would he have taken Sam’s word? He ran his hand up and down his empty bottle—until she abruptly stood up and almost fell.

  “We need to read your laptop to see what your secretary found out about Cass.” She steadied herself on the table. “I know Cass raised my birth father as her own, because she told me so, but she didn’t give me the whole story.”

  Standing, Walker laid down cash for the bill and grasped her elbow to lead her out. “You’re not used to alcohol.”

  She laughed. “Mormons, remember? Only one of my friends drank, and we didn’t have money for anything except cheap beer. No matter how I tried, I never fit with the crowd anyway. By the time I graduated, I desperately missed my parents and their more liberal views. I hoped to find others like them.”

  Others? As in other artists? People with brown skin? Walker wanted to know more, but he had to stick to the case. “So you somehow found Cass in California?”

  “The genealogist did. She traced census reports and addresses and thought Cass might be a relation because of the Tolliver name and her location. She could only find a mail-drop for her in San Francisco. I was prepared to start knocking on doors if necessary, but Cass finally responded to my letter.”

  “And she agreed to meet you in the restaurant in Monterey?” Walker helped her into the Explorer and hurried around to the driver’s side to hear the rest of the story.

  “I told her I’d never seen the ocean. I don’t know why she didn’t suggest San Francisco. Maybe it’s too big a city for me to drive in?”

  “Probably, or too big for Cass to handle anymore. She pretty much lives in Hillvale these days, although I guess her occasional disappearances are to whatever she has going in San Francisco.”

  “Anyway, she sent me the GPS as a graduation gift when I told her I would be driving out. I was so terrified of leaving all I knew that the GPS was like someone holding my hand.”

  “And it never occurred to you that Cass might be a fraud trying to con you out of your trust fund?”

  She shrugged, and her loose pullover slid off one shoulder, revealing skin pale as moonlight. “I’m sheltered but not stupid. The trust fund was well invested, and my parents didn’t draw on it often. It isn’t enormous, just enough so that I can survive if I don’t live luxuriously. I was trying to get up the nerve to travel on my own—I even got my TSA pre-check card—so I took care not to overspend. I never carry anything but my credit card with a small limit.”

  “What did Cass tell you when you showed up?” He steered the SUV up a narrow road to the hilltop resort.

  “She told me that she’d raised my father since he was an infant and gave him her husband’s name, so Zachary Tolliver was his legal name, and I could look at her as my grandmother.” In the moonlight, her pale features wrinkled with concern. “She said my real grandmother was part of the psychedelic drugs era, became a heroin addict, and my father was born with fetal drug addiction, which made him a difficult and sickly child.”

  “And Zachary’s real father?” Walker parked the Explorer in an obscure part of the luxury hotel’s lot, away from the Jags and BMWs. No sense in disturbing the clientele with an official vehicle.

  “My grandfather didn’t marry the heroin addict. According to Cass, my grandmother died of an overdose within a year of her son’s birth, and my grandfather didn’t want anything to do with his sickly child. But he provided a trust fund for Zachary’s support.”

  “This isn’t going to end well, is it?” He got out his case with the laptop and punched his reservation into his phone, gaining the code for their room. By the time they reached the front door, he had their e-key and steered her toward the elevators.

  She halted at the elaborate bouquet in the main lobby. “Some of those are from Australia,” she said in wonder, reaching out to touch what looked like a prickly purple thorn. “Do they grow them here?”

  “Clueless. The only plant I’ve ever grown is weed, and I don’t mean the garden variety. And it died.” Walker finally dragged her away, but now he realized she’d never been in a fancy hotel. He was dealing with a virtual newborn.

  “Were you experimenting with smoking or growing?” she asked as they entered the elevators.

  Not totally a newborn then, if she knew what pot was. Of course she did, she took botany classes and lived with artists. “Both. That was back in college when I was young and stup
id.”

  “And now you’re thinking I’m just out of college and equally young and stupid.” She yanked her elbow from his grip.

  Shame that, he’d been enjoying the flesh-to-flesh contact. “No, a little naïve, perhaps, but not stupid by a long shot.”

  She pondered that as the elevator opened directly into the suite. Even he was a little impressed by the grandeur. Sofia had warned him that this would suck his pocket dry.

  Sam gawked in silence.

  Walker removed his holster, then perused the sleeping situation. Two equally grandiose bedrooms joined by an enormous sitting/dining area. If he were really lucky, it had a well-stocked bar. He found the refrigerator and the bar and poured himself another beer. It was going to be a long night if he had to stay up and watch Sam sway around the room, caressing flower arrangements and tinkling the keys on the grand piano. He wanted to yank the combs out of her hair and let it fall down her back.

  “More wine?” he asked, offering up a full-size bottle. “Or champagne?”

  “Champagne? I’ve never had champagne.” She sauntered over to examine the bottle. “I can’t drink all that. Maybe some other time.”

  He unwrapped the cork and popped it. “It’s not every day you find long-lost family and your memory. How much more did Cass tell you?” He must be as insane as the Lucys to believe this crap, but it all fit with what he already knew. He found a glass in the bar and poured the bubbly under a bright light so she could admire the fizz. She was a cute drunk, and he needed her to continue the story to keep from pouncing on her.

  Sam gave him another of those devastating smiles that went straight to his groin. Taking the glass, she sipped cautiously. “It tickles.”

  “It’s really dry, so it may be an acquired taste. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t like it.” It was the hundred-dollar a bottle stuff, but as he’d said, it was worth celebrating this temporary reprieve from real life. Tomorrow, they’d head back up the mountain to lunacy.