"And the people you owe?" Gage said. "Was he right about that?"
Nora nodded. The skin around her eyes was so pink and puffy it looked like she'd been in a bar fight. "I didn't … I didn't know who they were at the time. They said they were venture capitalists who wanted to get into the entertainment industry. There's always— I mean, lots of the Silicon Valley people throw money around just so they can be around Hollywood types. I didn't know. Then, when I couldn't pay, they sent other people …"
"Did they hurt you?"
"No, but they made me sign other documents. I was too scared to say no. And it turned out later this gave them a lot more collateral—they'd own all my music if I didn't pay! This was all last month."
Gage said nothing. Nora must have seen the doubt on his face, because she grabbed both his hands. The sheet fell away, leaving her naked before him, but there was no feeling of arousal. There was just something burned out and hollow in the middle of his chest.
"Please believe me!" she said. "Please, I don't have anyone else. I don't even know who to trust! That's part of why I didn't tell anyone I came up here. I don't know who they got to, and I just wanted to get away from them. I was so … so embarrassed … Please, Garrison. I need you to believe me. I was never here for my father's money."
"I believe you," Gage said.
"Really?"
"Yes."
And he did. It may be stupid, and he wasn't so blind not to have some doubts, but he didn't sense any deception on Nora's part. Even if he did, it didn't matter. He wasn't abandoning her.
"We've got some decisions to make," Gage said.
"I don't want to leave."
"I'm not sure you have a choice."
"Another hotel—"
"You heard him, Nora. You don't leave, he's putting those pictures on the Internet."
She shook her head. "I don't care. Really, I don't. This is more important than that. I'm not ashamed to be with you. I don't care if the world sees us together. Does it bother you?"
"No."
She smiled. "You've got nothing to be ashamed of as far as your body is concerned, that's for sure."
"You're recovering pretty quickly for someone who just had a gun pointed at her."
"Am I? I'll be honest. I'm still terrified. But I've been scared my whole life, Garrison. Even before I was famous, I was scared all the time. Scared Mom would drink too much and not wake up. Scared I'd get so depressed and lonely one night I wouldn't be able to see a way past it. Scared I wouldn't amount to anything, scared the men I loved would leave me, scared some crazy fan would rush the stage during a concert and … At some point, I just decided that I was going to be scared and that was okay, because I was going to get on with things anyway."
"This isn't some crazed fan," Gage said. "This is a trained killer who thinks you're homing in on what's his."
"Well," she said wryly, "nobody can say my family's normal, at least."
"Nora—"
"Ed Boone is my father. I know it my bones. I still want proof, and I want to know everything about him, but I know he's my father. Elliott Younger knows it too, and maybe that's what really bothers him. If my father wanted his money to go to the library, then I want to make sure that happens. I'm not keeping it for myself, I'll tell you that right now. I don't care how broke I am. I'll figure that out. I always do. I'll sell everything. Downsize until I can get on top of things. Maybe I'll even move up here with you. You know, trade rent for … favors." She grinned.
Gage was bothered by how quickly she was bouncing back. Even he, who was almost never without a wisecrack at the ready, was having a hard time thinking clearly. The need to find the Younger brothers and inflict a little payback—it was nearly overpowering. Only his concern for Nora's safety kept him firmly in place, a concern that she didn't seem to share.
The truth. She wanted the truth about her father. But if she wanted the truth, how could Gage withhold any part of it? The funny business with the typewriter. The unlikelihood that Ed would have jumped headfirst off the lighthouse. The dog not being mentioned in the letter or the will. After everything that had just happened, he hated to dump all this new information on her. Yet she needed to clearly see the danger. He also wanted to read her reaction. He may not want to believe she was involved, but he was still a detective, and no good detective would rule out any possibility without evidence to the contrary.
"What is it?" she asked.
"There's some things you need to know," he said.
He told her everything. She didn't cry or get angry, mostly just sat in grim silence. He studied her face carefully as he laid it all out for her, but if she knew any of it beforehand, he couldn't tell. Lady cozied up to her and Nora idly stroked her fur. With the earlier excitement fading, his body was cooling, and he felt the chill air on his bare chest. The rain outside had completely stopped.
"I should have told you before," he said, when he was all done.
"Why didn't you?"
"I don't know."
"I think you do. I think maybe you thought I might have been involved somehow."
"No."
"It's okay, Garrison. Really. You just weren't closing any doors. It's what makes you good at what you do."
"You're not mad?"
She laughed and cupped his face with both hands, kissing him hard on the lips. "Does that prove I'm not mad?"
"Okay. But you see why you need to leave? Elliott Younger may have murdered his father."
"If anything," she said, "it makes me more determined to stay."
"What?"
"If he killed my father, I want to prove it and make him pay."
"Nora, you can't stay here. It's too dangerous."
They argued, each of them getting increasingly heated. She saw leaving as giving up. He saw her staying as foolish and unnecessary. It took some time, but he eventually got her to see his point of view.
"I can keep working on this," he said. "Quietly, without Elliott really knowing. But it won't work if you're hanging around. The DNA tests will come in on their own. By then, maybe I'll have some solid proof that can put Elliott and his brother behind bars."
"And the will?" she said. "I'm supposed to just pretend it didn't exist?"
"No. We can honor his wishes. But without it being notarized, without witnesses—it would have been tough to prove it was real anyway, especially in Oregon. We always knew that. This thing was always going to go to probate. Which means—"
"But—"
"Which means, Nora, our best bet for getting the money to go where Ed wanted to go is back to what I said a minute ago. Put the Younger brothers behind bars. But come on, that's not the real reason you're up here. You're up here because you want to prove Ed Boone is your father, and you want to know more about his life."
"But you're saying he may not have even written the will or the letter. Maybe he's not even my father."
"I don't know. Nothing makes sense right now. That's why the DNA test will prove so useful. He either is or he isn't, right?"
She nodded slowly, with fading resistance. "I guess. Even if he's not, I don't want someone to get away with killing him."
"Me either. No matter what the DNA test says, I'm not letting this one go. I'm stubborn that way. But I can't do that if you're at risk. You have to give me some space to operate."
"Space," she said, nodding.
"Space."
"But you'll keep me totally in the loop? You won't hold anything else back?"
"Nope."
"Promise?"
He hesitated.
"If you don't promise," she said, "then I'm not going. No matter what you find out, you've got to tell me. Even if it's something I don't want to hear, you've got tell me, Garrison."
"All right, I promise."
"Good. But the probate thing—"
"It's a slow, slow process."
"But if I don't even make a claim—"
"Right now, you can't do anything without DNA proof. So we've got some
time, anyway."
"How much time?"
"I don't know. But if I can get enough evidence that there was a wrongful death together, I might be able to get the police involved. That'll slow the process even more. We might be able to do that in a way where Elliott doesn't know we were behind it. He might still release his pictures—"
"I don't care about that. Really, I don't."
"Okay, but it will get ugly anyway. The state of your finances, the kind of people you're in hock to, that will all come out, too."
"I don't—"
"I know you say you don't care, and fine, I accept that. If you can live with the worst he can throw at you, then he doesn't have any power over you. We just want to make sure this looks like it all came out on its own. Now, tell me something. Is it safe for you to go home? Do you have bodyguards you can trust?"
"Yeah. It's fine. I mean, the people I owe, they're not really going to hurt me. How are they going to get their money if I'm not around to earn it for them? Besides, mostly I think these people, they just like having a music star around as a sort of pet. It's a game to them."
"It's not a game, Nora. That kind of thinking will get you into all sorts of trouble."
"Okay, okay, poor choice of words."
"I mean it. You've got find a way to pay them back and extricate yourself from them."
"I know, I know."
"So we're in agreement, then? You'll go back to California?"
She chewed on her bottom lip. "Can't I just head south, find another hotel room in another city?"
"No."
"Why? You've convinced me I need to get out of town, and I get that. Fine. I won't stay in Barnacle Bluffs. But what if I just hole up in another hotel? I wouldn't even have to tell you which one—"
"Nora, we need you to go home. Don't you see? I want you to go back to your life. Go out in public. Eat at your favorite restaurant. Be seen by the paparazzi. Elliott will think you've done as he asked and given up. That's important."
She stared into his eyes, searching for something. Up close, he saw tiny flecks of green in her brown irises, like blades of summer grass on rich brown loam. It was silent in the room. He couldn't even hear the ocean. No traffic from Highway 101. It was just the two of them, alone in their own little world.
"What about us?" she asked.
"I thought we were going to just let this be whatever it is."
"I know. I guess I just wanted it to be a little longer." She smiled.
"Me too. But this doesn't have to be goodbye."
"No. But it feels like goodbye."
"So let's not say goodbye. If we don't say it, then it's not goodbye, right?"
"Okay."
Her eyes had a watery tint. Exposed from the waist up, the sheets wrapped around her waist, she made him think of a model in an artist's studio. All those luscious curves combined with the poignancy of the moment—he almost felt bad that she wasn't a model. She would have brought even the worst painter's canvas to life.
It wasn't until she gasped that he realized he'd traced his finger from her chin, down her neck, and across the slope of her breast. He never would have imagined, even thirty seconds earlier, feeling any kind of arousal after what had just happened, but there it was. He shouldn't have been surprised. He'd felt it before, immediately after the heat of a crisis faded: that need to be physically close to someone, that powerful urge to touch and be touched.
"I have an idea," he said. "How about I prove to you this isn't goodbye?"
He let his hand drift lower. He waited for her to stop him, to tell him that this wasn't the time, that she couldn't do that right now.
She didn't.
Chapter 17
There was no point in trying to sleep the rest of the night at the Starfish Motel. After they showered, they packed and hit the road, her in the Navigator, Gage following close behind in the van. The storm had completely passed. The moon, shining brightly, gave them easy driving on a highway they had almost to themselves.
They reached Florence at dawn, a pallid gray light first in the east, then sweeping across the dunes they glimpsed to the west of the stores along the highway. The sand looked like ash to Gage's tired eyes.
They'd chosen Florence partly because it was big enough that it would be tough for someone to find them just by driving past all the hotels looking for their vehicles, but his eyes felt so heavy that he didn't think he could make it any farther. He knew the adrenaline would wear off eventually, but he hadn't expected to be so completely enervated, an energy crash that made it feel as if his veins were filled with lead.
They parked a few blocks away from the boardwalk in the Old Town district, behind a delicatessen that hadn't yet opened, then walked to the River Town Inn near the bridge. For the time being, they left Lady in the van. The sea lions were silent. A few tugs were already motoring their way out to sea. The air smelled of fish and baking bread—they saw a man and a woman inside a bakery hard at work.
At the hotel, the night clerk seemed surprised that anyone would want to book a room at such an early hour, but she happily did so. They even managed to get a room on the first floor near the back entrance, which made it easy for Gage to sneak Lady inside.
By the time he returned, Nora had already fallen asleep in her clothes on top of the bed. He wasn't far behind. He barely managed to put the chain on the door and retrieve a blanket from the closet, covering them both before he fell into a deep slumber. Lady joined them, squeezing herself between their spooning bodies.
They slept until late morning, made love, showered, made love again, each time more desperate and frenzied as if each of them suspected it might be the last time. Finally, after cleaning up for real, they ate breakfast downstairs—the eggs were cool, the pancakes doughy, but there was plenty of it, and they were hungry—then returned to the room. By this time, the sun was high enough that it cast rectangular bars on the bed from the slatted blinds in the window. He heard the distant horn of a ship. He thought about Heceta Head Lighthouse, not far away. He almost mentioned it, but he didn't want Nora to go there. For many reasons.
"So I'll head home now," she said, both of them sitting on the edge of the ruffled bed. She sounded like someone trying to make an argument she didn't believe.
"Call me along the way."
"How can I call you when you don't have a phone?"
"I mean, call Alex. Just let him know you're okay."
"Hmm. You know, there does come a point when not having a cell phone is a real liability."
"Uh huh. Somehow I struggle on, despite my liabilities." He pointed to his knee.
"That's something you can change, too, and you know it."
He smiled. Now he knew she was really part of his life, not just some fleeting dalliance. No matter what either of them told themselves, what they had here, even if it was never rekindled in quite the same way, would always be more than just two people finding momentary comfort in each other. He saw that as a good thing.
"But if I change everything that people want me to change," he said, "what would be left of me?"
"Cute," she said.
"You want to take Lady?"
They looked at her. She was curled up on the pillows like a big black pearl in a gift box lined with white silk. When she realized they were staring at her, she perked her ears and regarded them with her expressive eyes.
"You serious?" she said.
"I think it goes without saying that she likes you more than me."
"Does not."
"Okay, let's do a test. Lady, come here. Come here, girl."
The dog, instantly transforming from sleepy to eager, jumped to its feet and came to them. Yet, just as Gage expected, she crawled onto Nora's lap. Nora laughed and stroked Lady's fur.
"You made your point," she said.
"You don't have to, of course."
"No, no, I'll take her. I didn't want to admit it, because I didn't want you to give me her out of pity, but I've really bonded with her. But let's s
ay we have joint custody, with me as the primary and you with guaranteed visitation rights. That way you have a reason to visit me, and vice versa."
"I don't need another reason."
"Mmm. Careful, buddy. You're starting to get me in the mood again, and I have a long drive ahead of me."
"Then we better get going before temptation overcomes us."
They checked out of the hotel and walked to their cars. He told her he'd let her know as soon as the DNA test results came in, and that he'd call her daily with any developments. After a final kiss, he watched her drive away, heading up under the Siuslaw River Bridge to the highway.
He got a last glimpse of Lady, in the passenger seat, peering back at him.
* * *
By the time Gage returned to Barnacle Bluffs, it was nearly noon, so he picked up some turkey sandwiches from the local sub shop and headed to Books and Oddities. The gravel was still wet from the night's rain, puddles in some of the deeper ruts. Only a few cars were parked in front of the boardwalk, and by Gage's memory, all of them belonged to the store owners. Alex was about to dive into a Greek salad Eve had made him, but he happily swapped the little plastic bowl for the sub.
"Twice already," he said, when Gage asked whether Nora had called. "I think she was more checking in on you than checking in, if you know I'm saying. It doesn't take a great detective to know that things have, um, changed between you two."
"A gentleman never tells," Gage said.
"There are exactly two people in this store right now, and neither of them are gentlemen, I'm afraid to say. More like dirty old men."
"Speak for yourself. I'm neither dirty nor old."
"You're a bit old compared to the lovely Ms. West, at least."
A Lighthouse for the Lonely Heart: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series Book 5) Page 20
