One Hot Target

by Diane Pershing

  Carmen nodded and said, “Okay, thanks,” because, of course, that thought had entered her mind the minute Grace had spoken of it. “Go on.”

  “This young woman, she was estranged from her family, didn’t speak to them, wanted nothing to do with them. The hospital had contacted your father, told him she’d requested that if anything happened to her, he should look after the child, to take the child. The child—you—were at that moment in foster care back in Tempe, waiting for your father to come get you. He didn’t know what to do. He had no idea what to do.”

  Carmen found her eyes filling with tears. She could picture it, the pain Grace must have been feeling, the anguish her father—the most honest, trustworthy man she’d ever known—must have gone through. As Grace told the story, her own part in it, a small, almost incidental part, became less important.

  Grace took another sip of her wine then cradled the glass between her palms. “I have never seen your father so helpless. You remember him—” she transferred her gaze from Carmen to JR and back to Carmen again “—he was so competent, so reliable. The kind of man you could always turn to in emergencies. Kind of like you, JR. Always there. Loyal. And solid. And strong. And he didn’t know what to do. Except that he had a responsibility to the child, that much he did know, and he wouldn’t shirk it. But he was terrified of my reaction and for our future together. We had one child, Shannon, who was nearly two. He was afraid he was going to lose me, lose her, lose everything.

  “I told him I was going to leave, that I needed a few days to think about this. I took Shannon and went home to visit my parents in Boston. I talked to my mother.” Grace allowed herself a small, fond smile. “Remember her?”

  Nana had died when she was about ten, but Carmen’s memories of her were sharp and filled with affection. “Nana was great.”

  Grace nodded. “So wise. The most down-to-earth woman on the planet, filled with common sense. I hadn’t planned on telling her about this, but she saw I was unhappy and it all just poured out of me. She listened. She didn’t tell me what to do, just said that no one is perfect, that I needed to find out if I believed your father’s story or if I thought he was a man who lied, and then make my decision based on that.

  “I wasn’t sure how I felt about the marriage itself, not right away. But I knew some decisions couldn’t be put off. There was an innocent, motherless child involved, one who had not asked to be born. I called your father and told him to go get you and bring you home. I figured, whatever happened, you would be better off with us than in a crowded foster home. If the marriage broke up, he would raise you himself. We both agreed on that.”

  Grace gazed at Carmen and smiled mistily. “And then the minute I saw you, I don’t know, I didn’t hate you or resent you. You were so sweet. So plump and adorable and lovely. The truth is, I fell in love with you.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. I knew you would be part of the family. If the family survived, of course. We told people that you were the child of old friends who had died in a car accident.

  “Your father and I had separate bedrooms for months while we went into counseling. And at the end of that time I knew I had married a man who had had one slip, and that to punish him for the rest of his life for that one slip was not a reasonable option. So I adopted you formally. As I said, I was absolutely crazy about you from the moment I saw you so it wasn’t difficult.” Her smile was filled with sweet affection. “You are, you know, the most loveable person, always have been.”

  Carmen felt embarrassed, as she always did when hearing too much praise. But she said nothing, because all she cared about was the matter at hand. “Go on, please.”

  “Your father and I had reconciled, but he was still ashamed. He wanted the whole thing hushed up. As it happened, he got a job offer to teach at UCLA, and I was able to transfer my credits there, and so we moved to Southern California, where we simply presented ourselves as a family with two children. Shannon was too young to remember much, especially the fact that her mother’s tummy had stayed flat but there was a new baby in the house.”

  Grace locked gazes with Carmen, her expression serious and troubled. “Your father asked that you never know. He was afraid of your judgment, of your scorn, I think. Of all the kids’ anger and scorn. He came from a pretty puritanical background, remember, and tended to be quite hard on himself. We fought about it, but he was immovable on the subject. In any marriage, you have to know when there’s no chance of compromise and this was one. And so I agreed. I’ve honored his wishes. And I see now that when he died I should have told you, but I didn’t want to dishonor his memory—it had been so important to him.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “And so you found out yourself. And I’m sorry. No one knew but your father and I, my parents and one or two trusted friends back in Wisconsin. Not Shannon, not Shane, only us.” She spread her hands wide. “And that’s the whole story.”

  The last gesture seemed to sap all the strength she had left. Shoulders slumped, Grace gazed down at her lap, as though waiting for a verdict she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.

  It was such a sad little story, JR thought. There were no villains, just human beings doing foolish things, but trying to make up for them later on. Still, there were some missing pieces, and he was curious to see where Carmen went next.

  “Was Dad definitely my father?”

  “Yes. We had tests done.”

  “My mother,” Carmen said. “I mean, the woman who gave birth to me. What do you know about her?”

  “Very little,” Grace said. “Only her name.”

  “Phoebe Kurtz.”

  “Yes.” She raised her head. “But we can find out more. They have all these services now that search out the parents of adopted children. I’ll help as much as I can, pay for it if you like. I owe you that.” In the look she gave her daughter, JR could see anguish and fear. She was wondering if she’d lost the love of that daughter.

  Carmen angled her head to stare at the glowing logs in the fireplace. Both Grace and JR watched her as she seemed to go inside herself.

  “I’m so sorry,” Grace said, her eyes filling. “The other day when you were talking about how you always wondered if you were adopted, I wanted to tell you then. I almost did.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She raised and lowered a hand in a gesture of helplessness. “Because you seemed so lost, so sad all that day. You’d just witnessed a violent death and it shook you. I didn’t want to add one more thing for you to be sad about. Pure cowardice on my part. I can only say that all these years I’ve been acting contrary to a core belief of mine, which is to tell the truth at all times, no matter how painful. Not that I’m blaming your father,” she added hastily. “He believed strongly that what he’d asked of me was the right thing.

  “I didn’t agree, and I didn’t have to listen to him, could have argued more about his decision, I guess. I only know he acted responsibly toward you, at first, but everything after that was motivated by love, and his fear of losing that love.”

  Grace hesitated, then said, in that forthright way she had of speaking the truth no matter the consequences, “And as I sit here, I’m terrified that you’ll think less of me. That you’ll be angry. Which, of course, is your right,” she said stiffly, as though preparing herself for the worst. “I have no idea what I would do were I in your shoes.”

  JR looked at Carmen, wondering what she would say or do next. Fire crackled in the fireplace; for a while it was the only sound in the room.

  At last, Carmen emitted a huge, audible sigh. Then she rose, went over to her mother, got on her knees before her and rested her head on Grace’s lap. The older woman reached out a tentative hand and stroked her hair.

  “I’m not angry,” Carmen said, after a while. “I was earlier, when I found out. But not now.” She lifted her head and gazed at Grace. “I’m a little…unsettled. About Dad. About the fact that, basically, I’ve been lied to all my life. It’ll take some getting used to. But I do understand.
Everything was about being human, not about being cruel.” She offered her mother a smile. “And you know what? I think I lucked out. I could have gotten a wicked step-mother—instead I got the best mom in the world.”

  Grace put her hands over her face and sobbed quietly.

  “Mom?” Carmen said, but Grace shook her head, holding up one hand as though asking her to give her a moment. Carmen gazed at her mother with infinite sadness and affection, then laid her head down once again on the older woman’s lap, and closed her eyes. As it had before, Grace’s hand drifted down to stroke Carmen’s hair.

  The scene was so heart-wrenching, so intimate, JR felt the back of his throat constricting. He wondered if he ought to feel like an intruder, because he didn’t. The Coyles had been his second family for so much of his life that their story felt, to some extent, like it was his, too.

  Again, he pondered how one false move, one mistake, had reverberations and ramifications that lasted a lifetime, not only for Gerald Coyle, but for his entire family.

  Still, he had to wonder…. Did what he’d just heard have anything to do with the threat to Carmen? Or did they need to go back and start over, look at a different thread in the tapestry of her life?

  He sat and gazed at the beautiful picture Grace and Carmen made, a golden tableau of mother and child in the glow of firelight, and prayed that the danger to Carmen would soon be gone.

  And wondered what further secrets needed to be uncovered before that happened.

  Chapter 9

  At the sound of her voice, JR darted a quick glance at Carmen. It was Sunday night; Grace had insisted they stay over and he’d made himself scarce today, giving mother and daughter time alone. Now, he was the one driving them back from Santa Barbara, figuring that even with limited use of one arm, he was in better shape than she was. She hadn’t offered even token resistance and had been, for the past half hour, scrunched down in the passenger seat, eyes closed.

  “Hey, Carm. You okay?”

  “That would depend on your definition of okay.”

  He smiled, relieved, even if only slightly. Carmen had been uncharacteristically distant. In a kind of fugue state. Depressed, he imagined. Overwhelmed. And he couldn’t blame her.

  He turned the windshield wipers on low. A fine, coastal mist that was not quite rain was making it difficult to see.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  She angled her head around to look at him. The night was dark, the only illumination coming from the occasional overhead lamps along the road. A quick glance at her face revealed pale skin, tired eyes, downcast mouth.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked softly.

  “All of it.”

  She turned her head back to face front. “I keep trying to find a place inside my head where there is something, anything, restful.” She sighed. “And I can’t seem to find it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know how sometimes you stand outside yourself and observe your behavior? It doesn’t happen like that too often for me, but that’s what’s happening now. It’s like I’m watching myself. I see all these scenes in my head, like I’m switching channels with the clicker, you know? Peg Davis bleeding on the floor. You passed out, partway in the water. Mom’s face as she talks about Dad’s…infidelity. And—” She stopped, bit her lower lip as though not sure she should go on.

  “And what, Carm?”

  “Bodies. Nude bodies. Your body. My body. The dim lights in the room, you sitting on a chair looking at me like you want to devour me.”

  He hadn’t expected that one, and he felt his groin tighten as the memory of her body came to him. Rosy and luscious, all over. “Yeah,” he said quietly.

  “The thing is, JR, it’s all too much. My life…there are enough plot twists for an entire year on one of those afternoon soap operas. But it’s all happened in a week, not a year. It feels…unreal.”

  “Yeah,” he said again.

  “And see, I’m trying to understand why it’s all happening. Remember when I took that reincarnation workshop?”

  “How could I forget? You kept doing these channeling exercises no matter where we were—walking, at the movies, at dinner parties. You would sit down and assume some sort of yoga position and close your eyes and chant.”

  “Yeah, well, it was a phase. There’ve been so many, huh? Still, if I believed in that stuff—which you convinced me was probably not something I needed to pursue, and I agreed—I would have said I was being punished for several previous incarnations, all in one fell swoop.”

  “I was having similar thoughts a while ago. But I’m with you—it’s not about past lives or fate or anything remotely resembling any of that stuff. And none of this is your fault, Carm.”

  “No, not literally, I know. But it all centers on me. I mean, Peg Davis was murdered because the killer thought she was me. You took a bullet because the killer was aiming at me. Mom and Dad’s marriage practically fell apart because of me. I can’t help feeling responsible.”

  “That’s not logical. The killer is responsible for the first two acts, your father for the third.”

  “What I’m feeling isn’t about logic, JR,” she said softly.

  It was an old discussion, one they’d had many times. He nodded. “I know.”

  He waited to see if she had any more to say. Especially about that one other item on her list of the week from hell. Their lovemaking. She’d been the one to bring it up, so he figured it was okay to talk about it.

  “What about us, Carm?” He glanced over at her. “Do you feel responsible for what happened between us Saturday night?”

  She met his gaze head-on before he had to return his attention to the road. “Partly, sure,” she said. “We were both on edge, trying to keep one step ahead of a killer. We both had too much to drink and we shared a hotel suite and we had massages and who could have resisted making love under those conditions? Especially with someone you know really well and who, on top of all that, has a great body and is really well-endowed? That would be you I’m talking about, by the way.”

  That last part took him by surprise. He shot her a startled glance. She was smiling. “It’s a no-brainer, JR. No one could have resisted you.”

  She was going for lightness, he saw that. Keeping it on the surface.

  Not his first choice. But he needed Carmen operating on all cylinders, needed her to be able to give that conversation her entire attention. So he smiled back at her. “Thank you for the compliment. I want you to know that I’m a lot better at lovemaking when I have both shoulders.”

  “I might not survive JR with two shoulders.” She grinned now, her usual light-up-the-room Carmen grin. “Hey, that could be your Native American name. JR Two Shoulders. Catchy, don’t you think?”

  “Catchy,” he agreed, signaling so he could pass an extremely slow driver. He’d removed his sling; the muscles around the shoulder were tight but manageable.

  “Thanks, JR.”

  “For what?” He changed lanes and sped up, noting that three cars behind them, so did the unmarked police car.

  “Letting me spill all the stuff in my head. I needed to do that. Even though, again, all we’re doing is talking about me. It’s a pattern we have, JR.”

  “Carm, stop. As you said, this has been the week from hell for you. Next week, we can talk about me all you’d like, okay?”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. Now, how about doing some brainstorming.”

  She sat up straight in her seat. “Sure. Great. What about?”

  “Why someone is after you. The cops think it’s about Tio, but you don’t.”

  “Right. Do you think it has anything to do with that whole adoption thing?”

  “Offhand, I can’t see how. But we’ll pursue that avenue tomorrow.”

  “Good.”

  “For now, here are the questions we need to ask. What do you know? What do you have? What do you represent, that someone needs to silence you? We can start with the other names th
at Ben came up with.” He looked over at her. “You sure you’re all right to talk about this?”

  “Are you kidding? Anything to take my mind off my mind. Sure, let’s talk about Ben’s list.”

  “I was thinking of jealousy as a motive. The wives or girlfriends of some of your exes. Revenge. You took their man, that kind of thing.”

  “Really? Huh. I don’t know. I guess it’s possible.”

  “Have you hurt people, insulted them? Have you sued anyone? Filed a complaint, gotten anyone fired? Does anything come to mind? Something small that you didn’t realize was important to someone else at the time. You know, people with grudges, short fuses, schizophrenics—now, in the past, anyone like that in your life?”

  JR was firing questions at her like she was on the witness stand, but it was kind of fun, Carmen decided. She glanced over at him and shrugged. “No to all of the above. I think. I mean, no lawsuits or anything like that. How would I know if someone had a grudge against me?”

  “But nothing comes to mind.”

  “Sorry.”

  He nodded. “Okay, then, how about guys who got nasty when you turned them down?”

  “I usually try to do it with a joke, you know, because the male ego is pretty fragile.”

  One side of his mouth quirked up. “It is, at that. But you’ve been hit on quite a bit, right?”

  “My share. I mean, I’m a female, JR. Still young and attractive enough to get some offers.”

  “Aha! So you admit it.”

  “Admit what?”

  “That you’re attractive.”

  “Reasonably, yes.”

  “Then how come when I tell you how beautiful you are you always scoff at me?”

  “Of course I scoff. I’m not beautiful. It’s only because we’re such good friends that you think that.”