Shadowed Paradise

by Blair Bancroft

  . . . Come on, Claire, Jim Langdon would never have left his family penniless. Give it up, girl, where’re those secret bank accounts . . .?

  “. . .Claire, Ms-s-s. Langdon, you must recognize this photo. Claire? . . . hey, Claire, pay attention . . .

  Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. She nearly hit a support beam as she eased the Toyota into its space beneath Ginny Bentley’s house. Dear God, would she ever be rid of the ghosts?

  Could she come to Brad a whole person?

  Would he settle for what he could get?

  It was two in the morning and all Claire could do was sit frozen on the edge of her bed. Listening to ghosts. The living as well as the dead.

  Chapter Eighteen

  He should have known Brad Blue would be trouble. Fucking government stooge. Charging off to save the world while better people stayed home, trapped in their miserable little jobs. Couldn’t keep him down on the farm. Not Brad Blue. No matter how loud Wade Whitlaw yelled, Brad Blue was his precious fair-haired boy. A Whitlaw, no matter what fake name his commie father gave him.

  Not that Whitlaws had all the influence. He’d heard about the cross almost as soon as the sheriff. If you knew the right people, it was a very small county. They said Blue’s little bitch tripped over it. Mom’s cross. It should have stayed there, right where it was. They’d moved Mom, the fucking bastards, but the cross should have stayed. They also said that dumb mutt Burt must have dragged it off. Burt. What kind of a name was that for a dog?

  They never should have found it. Now every poor bastard who couldn’t produce a living mother was a suspect. Well . . . maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. There were lots of men without mothers. Including himself.

  He was invincible. Untouchable. No one would dream . . .

  Not ever.

  Brad Blue might.

  Little bitch!

  The nostalgic high-pitched sounds of a calliope drifted through the central food court of the mall as Claire watched, fascinated by the sculptured beauty of the antique horses on the half-size carousel moving in lazy circles in front of her. A boy several years younger than Jamie clung to the sturdy black mane of his colorfully painted steed, his face split by a broad grin. Behind him stood a young man who scarcely looked old enough to have fathered two children, his beaming face directed toward a little girl of perhaps three. He was holding her in the saddle of a pink and white horse whose wooden legs were poised forever in mid-flight. The only word to describe the little girl’s wide eyes, her mouth fixed in an “oh” of surprise, was awe.

  Claire’s appreciative eye took in the superb carving of the carousel figures, the quality of the painted finish, which made the horses leap into life until it seemed their black eyes gleamed, a snort or a whuffle just a breath away. At any moment they might spring down from their wooden base and charge into the crowd, scattering the mall’s Sunday afternoon patrons like dust before a whirlwind. She must bring Jamie here.

  The young man lifted his little girl down, softly urging both children to thank the tall white-haired senior who acted as the carousel’s guardian, operator, and general ambassador of goodwill for the mall. Tears stung Claire’s eyes as she moved abruptly away, suddenly finding herself standing at the ice cream bar. An hour earlier, her grandmother had ordered her out of the house. Told her she needed to lose herself among the noticeably younger, livelier working age people who came to the mall on Sunday.

  And Ginny had been right. Even if Claire hadn’t appreciated her parting shot: “The mall is crawling with people your age, and you can be sure everyone you see probably has a problem worse than yours. They’re bound to, for how anyone could be foolish enough to think an offer of marriage from Brad Blue is a problem, I cannot imagine! Go. Shoo! You’ve overcompensated with Jamie so much this past week he’s suffocating.”

  So, feeling a total failure as a mother, a granddaughter and a potential wife, Claire had done as she was told. Now here she was, licking a sugar cone of Mocha Almond Fudge and wondering what to do with herself. The one thing the government had not confiscated was her clothing. She had enough to last a lifetime. So what else could she find at the mall?

  A new Celtic CD? A paperback or two? A lottery ticket? Claire considered the colorful posters advertising the latest films at the mall’s eight theaters. No, she didn’t want to be away from home that long. She paused to look in the window of an elegant men’s clothing store. A black silk shirt, artistically displayed, positively screamed its designer label, every stitch proclaiming its superiority. Claire’s feet moved toward the open storefront . . . stopped. Brad was who he was. He would admire the shirt, thank her, then fold the black silk into a drawer where it would never be seen again. Perhaps after they were married . . .

  And wasn’t that the scary thought she’d come to the mall to escape?

  A New Age shop beckoned. By the time Claire left the store, her weekly paycheck had taken a severe hit. In addition to the newest Enya and a Loreena McKennitt, she had succumbed to a rocks and mineral collection and a 3-D puzzle for Jamie, plus the Taj Mahal of handmade birdhouses for her grandmother. Time to go home before her week’s supply of cash disappeared in a single afternoon.

  A trip to the ladies’ room seemed a good idea before she started the half hour’s drive back to Golden Beach. Spotting the restroom sign just off the food court, Claire pushed open the door and walked through. The moment the steel gray double door clanged shut behind her, she was in another world. Instead of the outer lobby of a busy ladies’ room, she was in a bleak, deserted corridor, the mall version of a back alley. Nothing but institutional cream walls, functional gray tile floor and a long series of matching steel fire doors set into the walls to the left and right. Unnerved, Claire moved forward, certain the comforting sight of the word RESTROOM would appear at any moment.

  After perhaps forty feet the corridor took a sharp turn to the left. Still no sign of a restroom, not a single sound to indicate that she was in a shopping mall full of Sunday afternoon shoppers. Only the hollow echo of her low heels clicking on the battleship gray tile. Finally, confronted by a second set of double steel doors, Claire pushed on the bar. Brilliant August sunshine flooded the deserted corridor, revealing a glimpse of a green dumpster beyond.

  Claire’s hands were far from steady as she quickly stepped back, allowing the heavy door to swing shut. With a determined, somewhat annoyed shake of her shoulders, she turned back the way she had come. Okay, so she’d missed the ladies’ room. Obviously, she’d been blinded by her inexplicable attack of nerves.

  She was about twenty feet from the right angle bend in the broad hallway when she heard the metallic swish of a door opening. Ahead of her. Surely the sound meant that someone else had entered the corridor in search of the restroom. Or perhaps someone had just left?

  Claire’s feet came to a stop, seemingly of their own accord. There were no echoing footfalls. Nothing moved. If anyone had been in the hallway a moment earlier, the person had had better luck finding the restroom than she had.

  Idiot! Just because this corridor is empty doesn’t make it evil. Creepy, maybe . . .

  Creepy she could handle. She’d survived Pine Grove, hadn’t she? Claire firmed her shoulders, ordered her feet to move, turn the corner. An empty corridor stretched in front of her all the way to the double fire doors she had originally entered. This time she read each sign carefully. Every fire door was marked with the name of business, obviously the workers’ back entrance to their establishments. She was most certainly not alone—behind each door live human beings could immediately be found. She only had to open one . . . but of course she wouldn’t. She’d keep on looking until . . . and there it was.

  An obscure ill-marked indentation in the corridor wall, ladies to the left, men to the right. Neither door sign was easily visible to someone walking down the hall. Nonetheless, Claire felt like a fool as she pushed open the door marked Ladies and entered the brightly lit room with its long line of gray stalls, a gray countertop inset with
classic white sinks topped by a spotless mirror and flanked by silver towel dispensers. All so ridiculously normal.

  And absolutely empty.

  Maybe. Claire walked the full length of the stalls, looking for the telltale sign of shoes under the stall doors before finally selecting a stall where the bolt actually worked and there was a hook on which to hang her purse and shopping bag full of packages.

  She was zipping up her slacks when she heard the door open. And no sound to follow. Merely the feeling of a presence. Someone was in the room. Someone who was not quite . . . right. Fear swamped common sense. Sensible or not, Claire scrambled onto the rim of the toilet seat, balancing her hands against the sides of the stall. The faintest of footfalls, moving along in front of the stalls, coming back, pausing before her closed door. The feet moved closer. She could see the tips of sneakers. Large sneakers. Male-type sneakers. She froze, holding her breath.

  The stall door rattled.

  He knew. Knew she was there. Claire considered screaming, but it was hopeless. When those outer fire doors shut behind her she had entered a soundproofed world. And the ladies’ room was yet another door removed from the teeming life in the heart of the mall.

  She prayed to keep her balance, prayed he’d go away, that it was all a mistake.

  Surely it was only a maintenance man, as embarrassed as she was terrified. Even so . . . she remained motionless.

  Abruptly, the sneakers disappeared. The outer door opened, groaned to a close. Silence. Still Claire didn’t move. He could still be there. Waiting.

  Quietly, cautiously she readjusted her feet and held on, palms flat against the walls. Oh, God, she’d tell this tale to Brad and they’d end up laughing about it. It was ridiculous. She was making Mount Everest out of molehill.

  The door opened. Laughter. “Out of my way,” called a young female voice. “I’ve had to pee since halfway through the movie.”

  “Don’t you just love Johnny Depp, even if he’s old?” declared a second voice, equally young.

  Claire’s legs wobbled, collapsed. Somehow she managed a creditable landing on both feet. Gathering her belongings, she moved out of the stall, slowly washing her hands until the two teenage girls came out of their stalls. When the girls left, Claire was dogging their heels.

  Jet-propelled imagination, Brad had said. But it wasn’t. Someone had been there. Someone with big feet. Someone who had not planned to use the ladies’ room for its intended purpose.

  She had been stalked.

  By whom?

  And why?

  Much as it hurt to admit it, this time he’d been the fool. He’d caught a glimpse of her, and temptation had overwhelmed him. There was Little Miss Bitch licking a fucking ice cream cone while Mom’s cross was sitting in a plastic bag on a shelf in the evidence room in the goddamned sheriff’s office. It was all her fault. The cross should have stayed out there under the pines. Mom liked pines. No one should have found it. Moved it.

  So he’d followed her. Watched while she bought out that artsy fartsy store. Nothing ordinary for lil’ Ms. Upper East Side. No way. Nothing but the best for the little whore who stole Mom’s cross. Blue’s whore, that’s what she was.

  He’d had time to think about it, and now he knew. Finding Mom’s cross was the beginning of the end. Fucking bitch. It was all her fault. He had sinned, and God was going to punish him. And he knew whose hand had been picked to smite him down.

  But first, he’d have his revenge. He wouldn’t go down alone.

  No way. He wanted company in hell.

  “Some women have big feet. And wear designer sneakers,” Brad pointed out later that night. Once again they were on the living room sofa at Palm Court, and he was holding Claire’s hand, the intensity of his piercing blue eyes demanding that she recall every detail of the incident at the mall.

  “They were men’s feet, men’s sneakers,” Claire insisted, lower lip protruding defiantly. “It wasn’t imagination. I know what I saw.”

  She hadn’t breathed a word of the incident at home. Ginny Bentley had no reason to suspect that her granddaughter’s dash to the car after tucking Jamie in bed was precipitated by anything other than romance.

  Brad, large, confident and totally male, gave Claire’s hand a comforting squeeze. And yet, there was something so damnably . . . superior about his cool assessment of the incident. As if she were one of those stupid little women in old fifties movies who were constantly being patronized by boyfriends, husbands, fathers. Of course the women were always shrieking, crying, or wringing their hands. Their pioneer ancestors must have been turning in their graves. Claire was not about to become one of them.

  Of course the incident was incredible. Fantastic. She could scarcely blame Brad for wondering if it were all a figment of her imagination. “I suppose,” she ventured, the words creeping out with reluctance, “it could have been someone coming in to clean.”

  “Did he clean?”

  “No.” Perhaps Brad wasn’t as skeptical as she’d thought.

  “You say the restroom sign was pretty obscure. What about the door logos—those cute little pictures? Could your stalker be some poor guy who got into the Ladies by mistake?”

  “Oh, my God,” Claire cried, relieved and horribly embarrassed. “I never thought of that. Of course! It’s entirely possible.”

  And yet, Brad reasoned, any man would have instantly spotted the lack of urinals and been out of there in a flash. He wouldn’t have walked up and down in front of the stalls. Or rattled the bolt of the only closed door.

  Brad’s silence gave him away. “You don’t think that was it, do you?” Claire inquired in a very small voice.

  “Afraid not.”

  “Do you . . . do you think it was . . . ?” Claire shook her head, ducking away from Brad’s thumb, which had begun to trace the fullness of her lips. “No, it couldn’t be. It wouldn’t make sense.”

  “It might be helpful if you made a little sense,” Brad suggested dryly.

  “I know this is silly,” Claire mused, her brain off and running in high gear. “I’m not a Realtor, but I am in real estate. You don’t suppose . . . not in a mall full of people . . . I mean, surely it couldn’t be . . . him?”

  “You know, you’re cute when you’re incoherent,” Brad said, ruffling her hair, then tucking an errant strand behind her ear. “What’s happened to my sharp-as-a-tack city slicker?” And yet Claire was absolutely right. If the killer was from Golden Beach . . . if he was someone they knew, he could have recognized her.

  Or the faceless man in sneakers could have been some totally different nut case out for a fast fuck in the exciting danger of a Sunday afternoon crowd.

  No way. Nobody was that crazy. Someone could have walked into the ladies’ room at any moment. Someone had walked in. (And surely there was a God). Supposing worst case, what had been so urgent that the killer made a move in a place as public as a shopping mall? What could have set him off?

  The bastard recognized her. Knew her.

  Knew she worked in real estate? Wanted her in the same way he had wanted the others? But the others had all been isolated. The s.o.b. had taken great care to stay away from witnesses. So why this? Why now?

  It had to be someone else. Not a killer or a rapist, but some random perv, probably harmless, getting his jollies out of scaring a woman witless. Unless . . .

  Unless—there it was again—unless the killer wanted Claire. Personally.

  Shit!

  Brad wanted to reassure her, tell all the right lies, but the words stuck to his tongue. No matter how slim the facts, his gut said she was in danger. He gathered Claire into his arms and hung on, cupping her head into his shoulder.

  It was a long time before Brad rose to his feet, pulling Claire up with him. She was still tucked into his side, his arm tightly around her shoulders as they mounted the stairs.

  “South Bridge, South Bridge, this is the Lori, southbound, requesting bridge opening. Over.” Garrett Whitlaw spoke into the small rou
nd microphone he was holding in the palm of one hand while he steered with the other. Keeping his face averted from his companion, he grimaced as he heard his own words. Only a damned old fool like himself would use a boat named after his wife to take out another woman. What the hell was a man to do? Short of the vulgarity of dragging Phil to some obscure motel, he hadn’t been able to think of a way to be alone with her. And thought of an intimate evening interrupted by one of his children pounding on the condo door was enough to curdle his blood.

  “Lori, this is South Bridge,” the speaker crackled. “Hold for traffic.”

  Garrett swiftly powered down the twin diesels to idling speed and waited. “I can’t believe it,” Phil Tierney mocked from the tall swivel stool beside him. “I thought you fat cat boater types always got the right of way.”

  The wail of a siren echoed through the early evening air. In a flurry of flashing red lights, an ambulance streaked across the bridge and disappeared in the direction of the hospital. “That explains it,” Phil said. “I’m delighted to know that some poor soul is going to make it to the emergency room without being held up so we wealthy types can cruise on without interruption.”

  “You know,” Garrett drawled, “I always wondered about the Blue family. Maybe they were commies after all and some of it rubbed off on you.”

  Except for a pained groan, Phil ignored the bait. She knew, perhaps better than anyone, just how fond Garrett Whitlaw was of his colorful nephew.

  A siren sounded on a different note—the warning that the drawbridge was about to open. On each side of the bridge stoplights turned red, steel gates swung down. Disgruntled drivers prepared to endure the long wait. Garrett powered up while the bridge was still making its slow ascent and headed the forty-five-foot cruiser straight at the center of the channel. In a matter of minutes they were past the bridge and the rocky revetments along the man-made portion of the waterway and into the serene and scenic beauty of the nearly landlocked bay south of Golden Beach.