You’ve never lost a child, you don’t know what it feels like!
Now, the memory of those words seared her soul. Oh, God, what if it was true, the story about the little boy named Jimmy? Eyes closed, she tried to see her mother’s face, the way it had been back then, tried to remember if there had been something there, some glimmer of the painful memories that were to come.
The sound of her name being called shivered the image of her mother’s face like a fresh breeze across the mirrored surface of a pond. Down below on the patio, her dad was waving, calling to her. She nodded and waved back, and Alan looked up and waved, too. He spoke to Chelsea, who looked up shyly from her place close by her father’s side, but didn’t wave.
Here goes, Lindsey thought. She took a deep breath, pasted on a smile, and turned and went back in the house and down the stairs to join them. Her stomach was a roiling mass of butterflies, and now the only thought in her mind was: I wonder if he’ll kiss me this time.
Chapter 5
She was prettier than I had expected, and younger.
Her hair was dark, and long. She wore it pulled back in a ponytail, like a young girl.
Excerpt from the confession of Alexi K.
FBI Files, Restricted Access,
Declassified 2010
I wonder if I should have kissed her.
There’d been a moment there, when she’d come through the doors, emerging into the sunlight like a diva onto her stage, when it had seemed almost as though she’d expected him to. And, Alan had to admit, when he’d wanted to. Very much wanted to. The kiss he’d planted on her several days ago in the car still haunted him, burning itself into his memory at the most unexpected times, the remembered sensation becoming more intense with each replay.
Today she was wearing a sweater in a color that was somewhere in the neighborhood of red and orange and pink and that made him think of ripe fruit, and her cheeks seemed to pick up some of that, making them more vivid than he remembered. Her eyes seemed brighter, too, shining bright blue out of that thicket of dark lashes. He didn’t know what it was about those eyes-he wasn’t the sort to think in literary imagery, and once again the only thing he could find to compare them to in his mind was Elizabeth Taylor. Movie-star eyes.
He didn’t kiss her. He stepped toward her almost reflexively, but something stopped him, some inner voice warning him that it wasn’t the right thing to do, at least not then. And the moment passed.
She came to him, smiling, one hand holding back her hair, although the breeze off the ocean seemed benign enough that it probably wasn’t necessary. A sign of the awkwardness she was feeling, he thought. The same uncertainty he was experiencing, and which wasn’t natural to him, at least not that he could recall.
“Hey, babe,” he said, then wanted to chomp on his tongue. It wasn’t that he’d never called a woman “babe” before, but it had never before felt so wrong. Lindsey Merrill was definitely not a “babe,” which got him to wondering what kind of endearment would feel right, if their pretended relationship had happened to be real. He’d called her “honey,” and “Linz,” if his memory served, and none of those had felt right either.
“My daughter, Chelsea…Chelse, say hello to Lindsey,” he said, more brusquely than he meant to.
Chelsea dutifully muttered, “H’lo.”
“Hi, Chelsea,” Lindsey said, holding out her hand. Which Chelsea didn’t seem to have a clue what to do with, and Alan made a mental note to speak to her mother about maybe it being time to teach the kid some basic social graces. Covering up the awkward moment with a light touch on Chelsea’s arm, Lindsey added, “I love your jacket-pink is definitely your color.”
“Thank you,” Chelsea said-he was glad at least for that. “My mom bought it for me.”
“I hope you brought your bathing suits,” Richard said, every inch the jovial host. “Hard to believe it’s November, isn’t it? Pool water’s warm, and if it does get chilly later on, the heater over there does a pretty good job. What do you say, young lady? Feel like going for a swim? Plenty of time before we eat.”
Chelsea glanced over at the pool, where several children of various ages were engaged in a game of Marco Polo, then turned a look on Alan he knew could be roughly translated as: I’d rather have my head shaved.
“Uh…maybe a little later?” he suggested, directing a look of appeal at Lindsey. The awkwardness of the whole thing was beginning to make his jaws ache. What had he been thinking of, to bring Chelse along on what was essentially police business?
“Of course,” Lindsey was saying, and she slipped an arm around Chelsea’s shoulders and scooped up her backpack. “I’m sure you’d rather get your bearings first, wouldn’t you? In the meantime, how about if I show you where you can stash your stuff?”
Mutely, Chelsea nodded. Alan quelled another impulse to kiss Lindsey, this time out of sheer gratitude. He might have debated with himself whether it would be more productive to stay and chat with Richard Merrill rather than accompany the girls on their house tour, but his daughter’s death grip on his arm pretty much took the matter out of his hands. So, he found himself trailing after the two of them into the house, following Lindsey’s very nicely rounded bottom up a zigzagging flight of stairs.
If he’d been able to kid himself up to now about whether or not he was attracted to the lady for real, that would’ve put any remaining illusions to rest for good. No doubt about it, Lindsey Merrill had gotten under his skin. The only remaining question was, what was he going to do about it? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d met someone in the course of an investigation that made him regret the personal and professional code of ethics that put any such liaisons off-limits. Though it might be the first time he’d doubted his ability to stick to it.
“This was my room when I was growing up.” Lindsey had paused in an open doorway and turned to wait for Alan and Chelsea to join her. “Chelsea, if you like, you can leave your stuff in here. Then, if you feel like swimming, you can just come back up and change. Okay?”
“Oh, wow.” This, unexpectedly, from Chelsea, who was standing in the doorway, peering into the room.
A few steps behind her, Alan’s first general impression was of a whole lot of pink. Then he got close enough to get a good look. He looked at Lindsey and lifted his eyebrows.
“What can I say?” she said with a small shrug, amusement glittering in her eyes. “I’m a girl. I liked dolls.”
“I’d say so.” He’d moved past her, and his fascinated gaze was taking in what seemed to him like a museum of little-girlhood. Although he had to admit that, even with its very feminine pink, cream and pale green color scheme, it was in good taste, not too overwhelmingly frilly. The walls were pale green, the furniture painted cream, window curtains, bedspread and rugs all in various shades of pink. Dolls, along with a stuffed animal or two, sprawled on the bed amongst an assortment of pillows in those three colors, and filled most of the space in a rocking chair upholstered in pink, green and cream stripes. A low table in one corner of the room held a large Victorian-style dollhouse that looked both custom-made and expensive. A shelf ran all the way around the room, up high near the ceiling, and every inch of it was occupied by more dolls-most, he was pretty sure from being the father of a daughter, were Barbies. Bookshelves held books, but there were a few dolls and a couple of teddy bears tucked in here and there, as well. The only departure from the doll theme, as far as Alan could see, were the framed and matted black-and-white photographs of children playing on beaches hanging on the walls, and a collection of framed youth soccer team photos arranged above a small study desk.
“It didn’t look like this when I went away to college, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lindsey said dryly. She was leaning against the door frame, arms folded, watching him, and her smile was crooked and unreadable. “My decorating scheme at the time was probably best described as late Springsteen-casual. My mom did this after I got pregnant and she found out I was having a girl. I was kind of amazed to
discover she’d saved all this stuff.”
Alan nodded, but discovered he didn’t have anything to say in response. Because he knew, now, what that little bit of a smile on her face was trying to disguise. I was having a girl. Susan Merrill had created this room for her granddaughter, the baby who had died. Lindsey’s baby.
“Careful,” he said to Chelse, who was trying to peer into the open back of the dollhouse, and found his voice was filled with gravel.
Lindsey’s was firm and unemotional. “No, no-she’s welcome to play with anything in here. It’s time someone did.” To Chelsea she added with a smile, “Feel free, dear.”
“Cool,” said Chelsea, but she was moving on, pausing now to study the soccer team pictures. In each of them Alan noticed, a younger, slimmer, darker-haired Richard Merrill, obviously one of the coaches, stood behind or a little to one side of the double row of little girls in their team jerseys.
Chelsea leaned closer, then touched one of the photos, pointing to a slender, long-legged girl with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Is this you?”
Lindsey nodded. “That’s me. We were the Red Devils. We won the championship that year.”
“You were pretty.” Chelsea’s voice had a wistful note, and Alan felt his stomach clench.
“Geez, Chelse,” he said with an uneasy laugh. “Were?”
Then he felt like a real jerk when he saw both Lindsey’s and his daughter’s cheeks turn pink. The latter threw him a look, a little grimace of embarrassment. “Dad, I didn’t mean…”
Lindsey laughed and said, “It’s okay, I know what you meant.”
But Chelsea stumbled on, frowning and earnest. “I mean, you were pretty when you were a kid. Now, I think you’re beautiful.”
Oh, boy. Nice save, Chelse. Alan couldn’t think of a thing to say to that, either. Then Lindsey threw him a look, and he thought the shine in her eyes might be tears. Just keeps getting better and better, he thought.
“Why,” she said softly, touching Chelsea’s shoulder, “what a sweet thing to say.”
And while Alan watched in agonized silence, his daughter got even pinker, then said, “I really like your hair.”
“Thank you,” Lindsey said, looking genuinely touched.
“I want to get mine cut,” Chelsea went on, “but my mom won’t let me. She says not until I’m older. And my dad says I have to do what she says.” She cut her eyes at Alan, who could only lift his hands in mute wonderment. He was thinking he hadn’t heard that many words come out of his daughter’s mouth all at once in months.
Lindsey gave him a quick, uncertain look, as if she realized the path she now found herself on might be leading her into a place she had no business going. She cleared her throat, then said gently, “Oh, Chelsea. Your mom just doesn’t want you to grow up too fast.”
“But I’m already almost ten. I should be able to get my hair cut if I want to.”
This time, Lindsey didn’t even look at Alan. She reached out and touched Chelsea’s hair, then let the ponytail slither through her fingers. “Trust me, you’ll have lots and lots of chances to decide what you want to do with your hair. And you can also trust me when I tell you, you’re probably going to regret a lot of those decisions.”
“I know.” Chelsea moaned, clearly unconvinced.
Lindsey smiled. “I know how you feel-I do. When I was ten, I couldn’t wait to be a teenager. Then when I was thirteen, I couldn’t wait to be fifteen, so I could get my learner’s permit.” She threw a glance at Alan, who had been unable to stifle a groan, then went on, speaking only to Chelsea, and softly, now, as if the two of them were alone in the room. Her smile had changed in some subtle way he couldn’t name, but that made his throat ache anyway. “I always wanted to be…whatever was out there ahead of me. Now, I kind of wish I’d paid more attention to how much fun it was to be ten.”
Chelsea tilted her head quizzically, and didn’t reply.
“What the hell was that about?”
They were on their way down the stairs, having left Chelsea in the pink, green and cream room, now thoroughly engrossed in the dollhouse.
Lindsey glanced at him in surprise. “What was what about?”
“You…Chelsea.” He tried to make his voice light, casual. “What were you two doing, bonding?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just talking to her, that’s all.”
“Yeah, and she was talking to you, probably more words strung together in complete sentences than she’s spoken to me in a whole day, lately.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that was a bad thing.” She spoke quietly, but her voice sounded strained. Edgy.
Ashamed of himself, Alan tried to backpedal. “It’s not, just…unexpected.”
He’d begun to understand that he’d wandered into territory that was unfamiliar to him; these emotional, mother-child interactions weren’t something he encountered much in his line of work. He didn’t know why watching Lindsey communicate with his child had stirred him so. It had seemed to come so naturally to her, and he wondered if what he felt was as simple a thing as jealousy, because lately he’d been feeling his relationship with his daughter slipping and communication a challenge, at best. Fear clutched at his belly when he thought of losing his little girl, watching her turn into an uncommunicative stranger, and after that, what next? Drugs? Everything that went with that? He’d seen too much not to know the dangers that lurked outside his protective embrace.
He wanted to say something to her, to Lindsey, to make it right, but everything he thought of seemed to bump up against the fact that she was a woman who had lost a child. He didn’t know what to say to a woman under those circumstances, outside the standard phrases he was trained to use in his job, the phrases that came from habit, from a barricaded place where emotions could not encroach on the job he had to do.
I’m sorry for your loss.
He suddenly flashed on the mother of one of the victims of the weekend gang war, on her knees in the parking lot of the Whataburger, clutching her hair as if she would tear it out, and wailing at the sky. Then, on the mother of the wounded flower girl as he’d seen her in the hospital that day, still wearing her wedding clothes stained with her child’s blood, her face bleached with fear, a young woman suddenly turned haggard and old.
He glanced at Lindsey, who evidently felt the look and returned it, lips set, eyes hurt and accusing. He drew breath to power an apology, but before he could deliver it, she said tightly, “You were the one who started this whole thing, pretending to be a dating couple. You were the one who wanted to come here today. Maybe you should have gone over the rules of engagement with me first.”
“You’re right,” he said on a gusty exhalation. There was more he wanted to say but couldn’t think how, there in the middle of a flight of stairs with his daughter above and her father below, and a job he’d come there to do waiting for him to get to it. “You’re right. So, do you think I could have a look at those albums and yearbooks now?”
A look of vulnerability flitted across her face, and then she tightened her lips again. “Sure. They’re in the den, I think-or Dad’s office, maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Let’s see the office first.”
She felt like a traitor. Guilt and nerves made her stomach churn and her legs wobbly as she led the way down the carpeted downstairs hallway to her father’s office. His private, personal space. Not that she hadn’t always been welcome there; her dad had had no secrets from her, or anyone else, she was sure of that. But, she reminded herself, Alan couldn’t know him as she did; he would have to find out for himself.
“In here,” she said, then caught a breath and waited with pounding heart for Alan to slip past her before following him into the room.
It looked the same, smelled the same, seemed exactly as it had always been, except for the computer that now took up space on his desk, and the all-in-one printer-copier on a smaller desk set at right angles to the big one. She watched Alan take it a
ll in from his position just inside the doorway, with his cool cop’s eyes that didn’t miss a thing: the desk with its rather ostentatious green leather executive’s chair with brass studs the glass-front cabinet that held her dad’s collection of Oriental art-an exquisite ivory Confucius he’d found at a yard sale, a jade temple jar, cloisonné bottles, a hand-painted Chinese fan, an old Chinese coin almost as big as a computer disk sitting upright on a carved rosewood stand. She’d played with them all as a child-except for the fan, which was too fragile, her dad said. Bookcases filled with an eclectic selection of books, and magazines neatly contained in wooden sleeves. The antique reproduction globe that sat on the floor beside the recliner chair where her dad sometimes napped, the pictures on the walls, signed prints of watercolors by a well-known artist who specialized in painting children and the play of sunlight and shadow. One, her favorite, of a mother sitting in a rocking chair holding a sleeping baby, he had taken down after Isabella died, and she’d known then how deeply he, too, had felt the loss of his only grandchild.
Tears stung her eyes-tears of anger and resentment rather than sadness. Anger at the circumstances that had made her bring this intruder into her father’s private space, resentment of him, this cop, this detective, who would sniff and snoop and prod and pry, and who could never ever know her father as she knew him.
But after all, she reminded herself, she’d started this. He was only doing what she’d asked him to do.
She blinked the tears away and said abruptly, “The yearbooks are over here,” as she moved past him to cross the room.
But she saw that, instead of following, Alan had paused at the desk and was opening drawers, one after the other, rifling through, then closing them again. “Doesn’t lock up his desk,” he commented, more to himself than to her.
Memory of Murder Page 7
