She's Not There

by P J Parrish

  “Talk,” Amelia said.

  “McCall and your husband killed Mary Carpenter by faking her car accident,” Buchanan said.

  “How do you know this?” Amelia asked.

  “Your husband kept a souvenir from that night that I found in—”

  Buchanan stopped talking and just looked at her. At first she didn’t understand why, but then she knew. He wanted her to remember. He needed her to remember this by herself so she would believe him. But she couldn’t remember.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “What kind of souvenir?”

  “You tell me,” Buchanan said.

  “Leave her alone!” Alex took a step toward her.

  “You found it in your husband’s study,” Buchanan prodded. “You hid it with your mementoes in that box from Iowa. The box your mother sent you.”

  Amelia stared at Buchanan. And then it came. First the memory of the cardboard box, with all the photographs, books, jewelry, ballet shoes. Her mother had sent the box to her before she died. It was where she had hidden the book Jimmy gave her. And Ben’s letters . . . she remembered those, too, now.

  “Mel, listen to me, please.”

  Her eyes shot to Alex but she was seeing herself in his study, going through his drawers looking for his hidden bottle of vodka so she could throw it away. But she had found something else.

  “It was a flamingo,” she whispered.

  It took a moment, but Alex managed a nervous smile. “He’s lying to you, baby. There’s nothing illegal going on at the firm. There was no murder and there was no souvenir or anything else. He’s just trying to plant fake memories in your head and confuse you.”

  Amelia started to back away, more memories coming that didn’t make much sense. “No, it’s true. It was a little plastic flamingo, just like the ones on Mary’s desk.”

  Alex shook his head. “Mel, you need to trust me. You’re still confused.”

  “Yes, yes, I am,” she said. “I’m not sure what it meant, but I know it bothered me. I know he’s telling me the truth.”

  She spun back to Buchanan. “That night in the Everglades. Was that McCall, too? Did he try to kill me?”

  “I don’t know. I can tell you someone was with you that night because you took the tan suitcase out of the Mercedes to make room for something. And someone closed the doors of the car after you were hurt.” Buchanan looked at Alex. “Ask your husband what happened out there.”

  Amelia turned to Alex. “Tell me.”

  Alex just stared at her, and in that long silent moment, she could see something in his eyes that made her feel uneasy. She had seen this look before. Had she confronted him before about this? Was that why things had gone so wrong?

  “Damn it, Alex, tell me!”

  “It was Joanna,” Alex said.

  “Joanna? Why would she . . . ?” Amelia stopped, desperate to bring up something from her memory of that night. The gun suddenly felt too heavy in her hands.

  “You and Joanna were going to a party on Marco Island,” Alex said, his voice a monotone. “On the way, you told her about these . . . concerns you had about the firm and Mary Carpenter. It was dark and raining hard. Joanna said you argued and that you lost control of the car.”

  “But why?” Amelia whispered.

  “Why what, baby?”

  “Why did she leave me out there?”

  Alex was quiet, lips pressed tight.

  “Finish the story or I’ll shoot you right here and now!” Amelia said.

  Buchanan raised his head. “She’ll do it, man. You better tell her,” he whispered.

  “All right, all right,” Alex said. “Joanna called her driver and he dragged you off into the weeds but he couldn’t finish the job. Then they drove home and left you out there to die.”

  The dark-haired man in her visions. Not her husband, but that chauffeur who drove Joanna’s car, the man whose name she didn’t even know, who probably didn’t even know hers.

  Amelia’s knees started to give, and all she wanted to do was sit down and try to process all of this, try to figure what was true and what was not.

  “Mel.”

  Alex’s voice brought her back, and with it came a vision of oranges on a windowsill and the blue sea beyond. And herself in a wedding dress and then a harem costume. A pink cell phone and a little black dog. Sighing Vivaldi violins and tinkling Nutcracker celestas. Burnt cookies and Tabu perfume. The hotness of her sick mother’s brow and the roughness of her father’s hands as he pushed her away. And that cold white mansion and that cool blue-green bubble, the two places where she had almost died.

  Little things will bring it back.

  That’s what the doctor had told her back at the hospital. But it was all too much and it was all too fast, a sensory avalanche from the past that was threatening to bury her now.

  “Enough,” Amelia said.

  Alex was staring at her. And then he nodded slowly. “Yes, enough. Now we can move on.”

  “Move on?” she asked. “To where, Alex?”

  “Anywhere we want,” he said. He reached into his jacket, pulled out two small dark blue things, and held them out to her.

  “Look, I have our passports,” he said. “We can go, right now. We can leave here and go anywhere we want. We can start over.”

  Amelia was stunned. “No. I can’t go anywhere with you.”

  Alex moved closer to her. “I promise you it will be different this time, Mel,” he said. “No more scams. No more drinking. I’m different now.”

  She shook her head slowly. “It’s too late.”

  Alex tossed the passports to the stage and was at her in three steps. He grabbed her wrist, wrenched the gun from her hand and tossed it to the back of the stage. She tried to pull away, but he caught her and yanked her back to him and locked an arm around her neck. He started to drag her toward the wings.

  “Stop it!” she cried. “Let me go!”

  “You’re coming with me,” Alex said.

  “No, she’s not,” Buchanan said.

  Alex spun her around, pinning her back against his chest, so she was a shield between himself and Buchanan.

  Oh God.

  Buchanan had a gun, pointed at Alex—not her. But she knew Buchanan didn’t have a clear shot at him.

  “Let her go,” Buchanan said.

  Alex tightened his arm around Amelia’s neck and wedged his gun under her chin. “Stay out of this.”

  “You have nowhere to run,” Buchanan said. “McCall won’t give up. He will hunt you down—both of you—and kill you.”

  Alex clumsily shifted her to the side. “I have money, lots of money,” he said. “Millions, I have millions. We can go anywhere in the world.”

  “And there will always be a man like me one step behind you.”

  Alex thrust his gun toward Buchanan. “I said stay out of this! Let us go or I’ll shoot her. I swear I will.”

  “No you won’t,” Buchanan said. “You came all this way to get her back and now you’re going to leave her dead on this stage? Is that how you want this to end?”

  “No!” Alex yelled.

  “Then what do you want?” Buchanan asked.

  “I want it to be like it was.” Alex lowered his head so he was speaking into Amelia’s ear. “You understand that, don’t you, Mel? Don’t you want us to be like we were?”

  Amelia stayed silent. She was afraid to say anything because Alex had a choke hold around her neck and she didn’t know what he would do, didn’t know who he was anymore. She locked eyes with Buchanan.

  “I thought you were a different man now,” Buchanan said.

  Amelia felt Alex’s arm tighten around her neck.

  “I am,” he whispered.

  Buchanan slowly lowered his gun down to his side. Then he took several steps back and nodded towar
d the wings. “Go ahead,” he said. “I won’t try to stop you. Go ahead and drag your wife off to Timbuktu.”

  For several long moments, no one moved.

  “Alex,” Amelia said.

  His breath was hot against her neck and he was making strange little mewing sounds.

  “Alex, let me go,” she said.

  And then he did. His arm dropped slowly from her neck and she eased away from him. She knew she should run, but she didn’t. She turned to face him.

  His hair was damp with sweat, his cheeks cut with tears. When he brought his hands up to cover his face, the gun gleamed in the light. For one awful second, Amelia was afraid he was going to shoot himself.

  “Alex,” she said softly.

  His hands came down and he stared at her, but his eyes were unfocused and flat, like she wasn’t there. Like he wasn’t there. Alex drew in a hard breath, stuffed the gun in his waistband and reached for something in his breast pocket. When he uncurled his palm, Amelia saw a silver ring.

  “You remember this, baby?” Alex whispered.

  She looked down at the ring and then up into his eyes.

  “I bought it for you in Menton,” Alex said, his voice growing more earnest. “Don’t you remember how much you loved it there?”

  “Alex . . .”

  “Don’t you remember how much you loved me?” Alex asked.

  Amelia stared at the ring. She didn’t remember it, though she did remember that she had loved him once. But she didn’t love him now, and that truth was not what he needed to hear. Amelia took a step back, away from him.

  Alex closed his fist over the ring.

  “I’m sorry, Alex.”

  He bent and picked up the passports. He opened one, looked inside, and then held the other out to her. She took it. He turned and started away.

  “Where are you going?” Amelia asked.

  He stopped. “I don’t know.”

  “But—”

  Alex hesitated and then came back. He leaned into her, and when he kissed her gently on the lips, she closed her eyes because it hurt. It hurt because they had been so good together, but for so brief a time. It hurt because they had both lost themselves somewhere in us.

  “Good-bye, Mel,” he said softly.

  He backed away a few steps, took a long look at Buchanan, and then disappeared into the wings.

  Amelia stared into the darkness. She didn’t move until she heard the faint echo of a door slamming shut. She looked back at Buchanan. His gun was stuck in his belt. Her revolver was a few feet away and she went to it and picked it up.

  “You won’t need that for me,” Buchanan said.

  “How can I be sure?” she asked.

  “I told you. Because I’m not a murderer.”

  Amelia lowered her gun. “Then what are you?”

  He held her eyes, as if he were unsure how to answer. “I could’ve answered that a few weeks ago. But now I can’t.”

  She looked toward the wings, then down at the revolver in her hands.

  “You should keep that handy,” Buchanan said.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Owen McCall still needs you dead.”

  “I’m no threat to him.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  Amelia hesitated and then went to her duffel. She slipped the gun inside and stood up, looking Buchanan straight in the eye. She was tired and still confused about Alex, what had happened to her, and the motives of this strange man Clay Buchanan. But there was one thing now she knew for sure.

  “I’ll take my chances,” she said. “I’m not running anymore.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Traffic was light as Buchanan steered the Toyota south on Interstate 280. He had the window down, breathing in the cool night air, which smelled of the bay and something vaguely medicinal. He could hear the whine of jets heading to San Francisco Airport. There was no need to hurry. In fact, he was looking for the right place to stop.

  Finally, he saw it off in the distance to his left, a gleam of dark water. He took the Islais Creek exit and headed down a dark empty road past warehouses and trash-heaped lots until he stopped at the dead end of Indiana and Tulare Streets.

  To his left was a massive corrugated steel building, locked and abandoned. To his right was a lot filled with ruined and rusted MUNI buses.

  He killed the engine, got out and walked toward the water. There was a park of some sort—or at least the start of one—with concrete benches and saplings braced with wires. But the trees were dead and the benches were slashed with skateboard scars. One bench bore a neon-yellow graffiti tag—You thought you knew and now you do.

  The only sound was the whir of tires from the nearby freeway.

  Buchanan went to the edge of the walk and looked down. The water was dark and swirling, moving fast out to the bay. He pulled the nine-millimeter Nano from his pocket. He looked at it for a second and then flung it into the water.

  He went back to the Toyota, started it up, and drove it into the bus lot, parking it between two dead streetcars. He got a screwdriver from the trunk, took off the license plates and heaved them into the trash. Then he flung his canvas tote and duffel over his good right shoulder and started walking back up Indiana Street.

  It was near nine by the time the cab dropped him off at the airport. Inside the terminal, he paused in front of the departure board. There was a Delta flight leaving at eleven for Nashville. A quick layover in Atlanta and he would be home by eight tomorrow morning.

  But then his eyes drifted right.

  Auckland.

  Beijing.

  London Heathrow.

  Hong Kong.

  Manila.

  Sydney.

  He had about three thousand dollars in his wallet, all that was left of the last advance money McCall had given him. He couldn’t risk using his credit card—for the same reason he had taken the trouble to remove the plates from the Toyota. McCall was probably still going to come after him, so he had to make himself as hard to find as possible. That meant he was about to become a runner for the rest of his life.

  His eyes lingered on the international departure board. Then he went to the Delta desk. As he waited his turn, he pulled out his wallet to count his money. Wedged between the hundred-dollar bills was the photograph.

  He pulled it out and stared at Gillian’s face.

  “Sir?”

  He looked up at the clerk and stepped forward.

  “Where are you headed, sir?”

  “Nashville, please, your eleven o’clock flight.”

  “Yes, sir. Will that be economy?”

  “Yup. One way.”

  The young woman punched at her computer keyboard. “You’re in luck. One seat left. Row thirty-five, seat F.”

  Fuck. Right in the middle of the Airbus.

  “I’ll take it,” Buchanan said.

  He started to put Gillian’s photograph away, pushing it down as far as it would go in the wallet. It caught on something, and he pulled out the little brass key.

  Buchanan stared at it. He stared hard at the key in his big hands, but he was suddenly seeing it instead hanging around the slender wrist of someone else, a young blonde woman who was snapping the key’s plastic band impatiently because no one was paying attention to her.

  His eyes shot up to the departure board.

  “Wait,” he said.

  The clerk looked up.

  “You got any seats left on the eleven-fifteen flight to Fort Lauderdale?” he asked.

  The clerk tapped some computer buttons and then nodded. “Yes, we do. I can give you seat G in row twenty-one.”

  Buchanan started to hand over the money and then paused. “How much for business class?” he asked.

  “Two thousand seven hundred and fifty-five cents,” she s
aid.

  Buchanan pulled out the wad of money and counted out twenty-eight hundred-dollar bills. A few minutes later, the clerk handed him his ticket and pointed her pen to the left. “Gate eight, sir. Boarding is at ten thirty, but you’re welcome to wait in our Sky Club lounge.”

  “I think I’ll do that,” Buchanan said. And he started away.

  “Sir!”

  He turned back.

  “You forgot your change.”

  He looked down at the money on the counter. Ninety-nine dollars and forty-five cents. He scooped it up, thanked the clerk, and walked away.

  Do you like to gamble, Mr. Buchanan?

  I don’t like giving my money away.

  I love to gamble. It’s not about the money, it’s about winning.

  Megan McCall was right. It wasn’t about the money and this was probably a stupid thing he was about to do. But he had a hunch about this, and he was putting all of what was left from McCall’s last bundle of advance money on double zero.

  The red-eye flight got him into Fort Lauderdale at nine. He grabbed a coffee and bagel from the Dunkin’ Donuts kiosk at the airport, snarfed them down, and then headed outside. He got a cab and asked the guy to take him to the nearest mall.

  In Target, he bought a pair of white shorts, a white Mossimo polo shirt, white sneakers and crew socks, and a seventeen-dollar tennis racket. He changed clothes in the store’s restroom, stuffed his other clothes into his duffel and caught another taxi. The cabbie didn’t ask any questions when Buchanan asked the driver to leave him two blocks away from his destination and wait.

  The guy manning the parking lot booth at the Lauderdale Yacht Club didn’t ask any questions either as Buchanan walked right past the gate with a smile and salute of his tennis racket.

  Buchanan paused just inside the entrance, bouncing the racket lightly on his palm. The place was almost deserted; it was too early for the lunch crowd. But the same guy who had stopped him that day he had come to meet Joanna McCall was at his station outside the restaurant.

  Squaring his shoulders, Buchanan headed straight toward him.

  “Can you direct me to the locker rooms, please?”