A breath gusted through her like a freshening wind off the ocean, chilling her, but at the same time filling her with what could only be described as joy. She tried to believe the cause was the thought that he must have found some information on her mother’s memories, but she knew it wasn’t only that. She wasn’t in the habit of kidding herself. This thing she was feeling, this junior high school excitement, or whatever it was, was because she was going to see Alan again.
Demoralizing, she thought, for a forty-year-old businesswoman who should certainly know better. She was being ridiculous and in grave danger of making a fool of herself. She had to get a grip, now.
The silence on the phone had lasted no more than a moment. “Tell you what,” she said, and was pleased and a little surprised at how calm and adult her voice sounded. “I’m about to go for a run. Why don’t you meet me at Sunset Cliffs Park? By the time you get there I should be about finished.” There, she thought. That should demonstrate that she wasn’t falling all over herself to accommodate him.
And, she thought, a brisk run along the cliffs should give her a chance to expend some nervous energy and get her head on straight. A good dose of endorphins was just what she needed.
Her heart lurched into her throat as she realized he’d said something that hadn’t registered. “What?” she asked, feeling rattled again.
“Where, exactly? That’s a mile and a half of cliffs.”
“Uh, okay, how about the little parking lot just north of the rock where the peace sign used to be. Do you know the one-”
“I know it well,” Alan said. “I’m on my way.”
The sun was setting when Alan pulled into the postage stamp of a parking lot wedged between Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and the cliff’s edge. After parking and turning off the motor, for a few moments he just sat in his car, taking in the spectacle of the sun setting into the Pacific Ocean, missing the dark silhouette of the peace sign that had once-briefly-graced the top of the forty-foot rock formation, before mysteriously disappearing one January night. Too bad, he thought. Somehow, maybe, that universal symbol of peace and brotherhood would have helped to cancel out some of the ugliness of his weekend.
He got out of his car, then realized the ocean breeze had grown chilly with the going of the sun and took his jacket out of the backseat and put it on. Leaning against the car with his back to the fading sunset, he watched joggers chugging past on the dirt pathway that wound along the cliffs. Anticipation raced under his skin, ebbing and flowing like the waves beating against the rocks far below as each runner hove into view, then drew close enough for him to see it wasn’t the one he was waiting for. When he did finally see the lone figure bobbing toward him, coming from the south, he knew her instantly, even in silhouette against the lavender sky.
She was wearing sweats and a tank top, and had a warmup jacket tied around her waist by its arms. She was also wearing a sun visor, which she took off as she veered into the parking lot, leaving a sweatband in place, stark white against her dark hair.
She slowed to a walk and her face broke into a smile. “Hi-been waiting long?”
The smile had accomplished, it seemed, what the sunset and the missing peace sign hadn’t been able to, because he found himself wearing a smile, too, and there was a lightness in his heart for no particular reason he could think of.
He shook his head, then nodded toward the two other cars in the lot. “Which one’s yours?”
“Neither.” She wiped sweat from her face with a dangling sleeve of the warm-up jacket, seemingly only a little winded from her run. “I live about half a mile north of here. I usually run down to the stairs at the southern end of the park and back, which is about three miles. If I want a longer run, I go to Pacific Beach or Mission Bay.”
“Lucky you,” Alan said. He nodded toward the darkening cliffs, and the sea still gilded with the remains of the sunset. “This is one of my favorite places. I bring Chelse here sometimes. You know-to explore the caves and tidepools.”
She untied the warm-up jacket, then gave him a startled look when he took it from her and held it for her so she could slip her arms into the sleeves. So close to her he could feel the moist heat rising from her body, he felt her shiver suddenly.
“Why don’t we sit in the car out of the wind,” he said. “You don’t want to get chilled.”
She nodded, and he opened the passenger-side door, waited for her to settle into the seat, then closed the door and went around and got behind the wheel. He closed the door and the dusk and the quiet and an unexpected sense of intimacy enveloped them. And for a moment, for some reason, he couldn’t think what he’d come to say.
Lindsey stared through the windshield at the darkening sky, listening to the thumping of her own heart. Other than that, the silence seemed profound, and she thought, This is weird. One of us has to say something. And felt herself on the edge of panic, unable to think of anything.
But then, miraculously, she heard herself say, in that blessedly calm and grown-up voice that came from she knew not where, “What was it you wanted to tell me? The reason you wanted to meet me.”
Instead of answering her question, he looked at her and said abruptly, “Tell me more about the snow.”
“There isn’t any more. Just that.” She shrugged. “Mom said Jimmy loved to play in the snow. That she would dress him in his snowsuit and he looked like a fat little penguin.” She looked at him expectantly, and her heart continued to beat too fast.
He let out a hissing breath and for a few long moments, just stared out at the ocean and sky. Finally, he glanced over at her, and in the remaining light she could see the frown on his face. “Before she got sick, did your mother ever talk about her childhood? When she was a girl? Did she have any photographs? Mementos? High school yearbooks?”
Her stomach gave a queer little lurch. She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head and looked away. “I used to ask about that. Mom would just laugh and make some general remarks about being a bookworm, not very popular-which I always thought hard to believe, since she was-” she caught a quick, painful breath “-so beautiful. If I pressed her for more details, she would get upset and sort of look to my dad for help. So…” She paused again, this time to clear her throat, to give a small laugh of apology. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t think this was going to be so hard.”
He nodded and murmured something encouraging, and after a moment she went on.
“Anyway, one day he took me aside and explained that there had been a house fire when my mother was still in her teens and that everything was lost, including both her parents. Mom was injured-she has a scar on one side of her head. The way she wears her hair, you can’t see it at all. Dad says there’s a lot she doesn’t remember about her childhood. So, naturally, it was upsetting for her to talk about. After that…” She shrugged.
After that, she’d never asked again. But she remembered still the feeling of walls going up and doors slamming shut. She almost told Alan about that, and about the nightmares she’d had for a long time after, of watching her mother slide away from her down a long, long corridor, growing smaller and smaller, until she could barely see her, and crying out to her to come back, and feeling bereft, like a small child abandoned in the woods. She’d never told anyone, not even her husband, about that dream, or the loneliness she’d felt then. What would make her think this man, a police detective with a hard face and sharp eyes, might understand?
“Why?” Her voice was harsh because of the ache in her throat.
Instead of answering, he muttered, “That could explain it.” He sounded distracted, distant, and the impulse to bare her soul to him vanished like smoke. “Maybe.”
He was silent for a moment, then abruptly shifted in his seat, turning so he almost faced her, left arm draped across the steering wheel. “You wanted to know what I’ve found out so far. The truth is, precious little. In fact, Lindsey, according to public records, your mother, Susan Merrill, didn’t exist before roughly forty
years ago when she appeared in San Diego as the wife of Richard Merrill.”
Chapter 4
The man…was very protective of her. He tried always to put his body between his wife and my gun. As if flesh could stop bullets.
Excerpt from the confession of Alexi K.
FBI Files, Restricted Access,
Declassified 2010
“I don’t understand,” Lindsey said. She felt sick. “What do you mean, she didn’t exist? How is that possible?”
“Not literally, of course, just according to public record.”
“But, I told you, there was a fire-”
“And that could explain it,” Alan said, cutting her off. But it was plain to her that it didn’t explain it, not to his satisfaction.
Anger filled her, although she didn’t know quite where to direct it; she’d asked for this herself, after all. “What about my dad?” she asked, keeping her voice under tight control. “I know there’s stuff about him. I’ve seen it.”
“Oh, sure there is. Birth certificate says he was born in a little town somewhere in Nebraska.”
She nodded, fidgety now with a nervous excitement she couldn’t account for. “Yes-that’s where he grew up. He played high school sports-mostly football, I think. He was even student body president, prom king-the whole thing. I’ve seen his yearbook,” she added with an emphasis that bordered on belligerent.
“Yeah, the only problem with that is,” Alan said, reaching to turn on the ignition, “the Nebraska town where Richard Merrill supposedly did all those things was wiped off the map by a tornado in the nineteen-fifties.”
He didn’t look at her, and in the dashboard light his profile appeared grim, even menacing. She told herself it was only the way the shadows played across his rather sharp features, but she was shaking again, hugging herself inside the warm-up jacket to try to make herself stop it. “So?”
He swept her with a glance as he backed out of the parking space. “So, there’s no way to verify any of it, except maybe to try to track down some of the town’s former residents and see if any of them remember Richard Merrill and his family. I’m thinking there’s a pretty slim chance of that, after more than half a century.”
“I don’t believe this,” Lindsey muttered, staring out at the palm trees and pricey ocean-view houses slipping past the car window. It was beginning to seem to her like a bad dream. Her mother’s delusions, the Alzheimer’s-that had been hard to take. But this didn’t even seem real. “Look-I know my dad didn’t do this thing-whatever it is my mother thinks he did. He’s just not-he couldn’t have. You’d have to know him. If you did, then maybe you’d understand-he did…not…do…this.”
He nodded. “I am going to need to talk to him.” He heard the sharp intake of breath and glanced over at her. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Just…please not yet. Okay? Not…yet.”
He swore silently to himself. Wished he wasn’t driving. Wished for better light. Wanted-needed to see her face, to see if the fear he was hearing in her voice was reflected there, too. Was it just the fear of a daddy’s girl afraid of hurting or disappointing the parent she adored, or something else? Being a cop, he knew he was programmed by experience to expect the darkest. The ugliest. The worst.
“Why not?” he asked gently.
She exhaled again, slowly this time. “It’s just that…I haven’t told him about…um, that I’ve talked to the police about this. And I don’t want to, not until I have something I can tell him, some kind of explanation for my mother’s dreams, some reason for the way she’s been behaving. I don’t want him to think I-” She stopped there and half turned in her seat to look at him. “Do you understand?”
Alan put one hand over his mouth and shook his head. But he knew better than to press her; she already felt bad enough, he could tell. She was a people-pleaser by nature. Even without looking directly at her he could feel her eyes on his face, begging him to understand. He did, of course-probably better than she knew.
“Oh-this is my street. Left here…” And her voice sounded diffident, as if she knew she’d disappointed him and was unsure where she stood with him now.
The turn took him into the entry driveway of a gated town-house complex-although the low picket fence appeared to be more for decoration than security. Lindsey pulled a key attached to a chain around her neck out of the front of her tank top. Also on the chain was a small remote control. She aimed it at the gate, which promptly swung inward to admit them. He drove through into a park-like area landscaped with eucalyptus and other evergreen shrubs and trees he couldn’t identify in the dark. The buildings, lit by sidewalk lamps and sconces mounted on the walls, were two-story and modern in style, with stuccoed chimneys and fake-wood shingle roofs made of something no doubt impervious to fire.
He gave a low whistle of appreciation. “Ocean view. Must be nice.”
She seemed to take that as a criticism of some kind, and replied with an edge of defensiveness, “I bought it after my divorce. I had no husband, no children, nobody to please but myself. Since I love the ocean, why not live close to it?” She threw him a look and a wry smile. “My dad helped me finance it, naturally. And of course this was before the big real estate boom. Right now, after the crash, I figure it’s probably worth fairly close to what I originally paid for it. That’s mine right there. You can pull into the driveway, if you-” She gave a sharp gasp, having just noticed, as Alan had, that the driveway in question was already occupied by a light-colored luxury sedan.
She uttered a sibilant swear word that both surprised and delighted him. Up to that point, she’d seemed almost too “good,” in the moralistic sense, to be true, little Miss Goody Two-shoes determined to be on her best behavior, minding all her p’s and q’s. That one word banished the illusion and made her more real to him, meaning the opposite of fake, not fantasy. Or, he thought, maybe human was the better word. Less reserved. More…touchable.
“It’s my dad,” she whispered, throwing him a look that was close to panic. “Quick-drive on! Drive on!”
“I think it’s too late,” Alan said. He was watching a man coming down the driveway, dressed in khakis, hands in the pockets of his unzipped windbreaker. He’d halted when he saw Alan’s car slow at the foot of the driveway; now he pulled a hand from a pocket to shade his eyes from the headlights, then broke into a smile. “I think he’s made you.”
As far as Alan was concerned, the chance meeting couldn’t have been better. Save him some time and trouble, it seemed to him. Obviously, Lindsey wasn’t of the same mind. The face she turned to him wore an expression of dread.
“What am I going to do? How am I going to explain this? How do I explain you?”
Part of him was getting tired of having to tiptoe around Daddy-dear in this investigation; as far as Alan was concerned, the guy was a possible suspect in a very old possible homicide, and the sooner he was able to get a fix on the man, the better. But there was another part of him-small, but developing an alarmingly loud voice-that seemed to want to protect this woman from pain and anguish if he possibly could.
The man in the driveway-Richard Merrill-had given them a friendly wave and was now standing with hands once more shoved into the pockets of his windbreaker, obviously waiting for them-or his daughter, at least-to get out of the car. Alan pulled past the driveway and parked, then produced a big smile and a friendly wave back.
“Follow my lead,” he said to Lindsey from behind the smile, without moving his lips. He put his hand on her shoulder and felt her flinch nervously at his touch. “Don’t freak out. I’m just going to kiss you.”
Her face jerked toward him. He saw her eyes widen, glistening in the light from the sidewalk lamps. He heard her sip in a breath as he leaned across the center console, and then her lips were warm and soft against his. He was prepared for that. What he wasn’t prepared for was the thump inside his chest, and the power surge that went zinging through all the nerves and muscles in his body.
It to
ok all the willpower he had not to slide his hand along her shoulder and up under her hair, then hold her head still and press into the kiss until she got over the shock of it and began to kiss him back. Instead, he pulled away just far enough to whisper, “You okay with this?”
She nodded-just barely. He could feel her body trembling under his hand. He could feel his own heart pounding as he murmured, “You get where I’m going?”
This time she managed a firmer nod, along with a shaky laugh.
“Okay, then.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze, then turned and opened the car door. He got out, calling a friendly, “Hello there!” to Richard Merrill.
He made his way around to the passenger side, where Lindsey was in the process of exiting the vehicle. As soon as she’d cleared the door and shut it behind her, he reached out and put his arm around her. “Busted,” he said to her with wry good humor, as he pulled her in close to his side. “Looks like I’m finally going to get to meet your dad.”
Lindsey angled a look at him, then gave an uneasy-sounding laugh. “Uh, Dad…this is Alan Cameron. Alan, meet Richard Merrill-my dad.”
Alan stepped forward, bringing Lindsey with him. Since she was snuggled in next to his body, he could feel she was still trembling-or vibrating with tension-as he leaned and held out his hand. Smiling with teeth showing, he said, “It’s good to finally meet you, sir. Lindsey’s told me so much about you.”
Richard Merrill shook his hand but his smile was more cautious than friendly, and his voice was not warm. “I wish I could say the same. Lindsey?”
“Dad, I’m sorry, I was going to tell you, I just…” She looked at Alan again, clearly unsure where she was supposed to go now. He gazed back at her, smiling reassuringly. “Uh…the thing is, you see…”
“The thing is, Mr. Merrill,” he said, taking the reins from her again, “I’m a police detective.”
“Really.” Merrill did a little startled pullback, which didn’t mean all that much to Alan; he got that sort of reaction a lot.
Memory of Murder Page 5
