But then, as they waited beneath the porte cochere for Michael’s car to be brought around, a couple arrived and hurried past them as the valet took luggage from the trunk of their car. Amanda had all but forgotten that the place really was an inn, and that the rooms were supposed to be lavishly romantic.
She allowed herself to drift for a moment in a sea of fantasies before Michael’s car arrived and the fantasies were dashed against the hard rocks of reality. It could never work for them. She knew that—and so did he.
HEADS SWIVELED in her direction as Amanda made her way through the truck stop toward her brother-in-law, who had managed to get a booth in the rear. They had agreed to meet here for lunch because it wasn’t likely that they would be recognized. The restaurant served almost exclusively as a rest stop for long-distance truckers from the nearby interstate.
Steve, ever the southern gentleman, rose as she approached the booth, but his smile of greeting was tinged with sadness and she thought he looked tired. Briefly, she wondered what it was about him that had kept her from making the commitment he’d so clearly wanted when they’d dated nearly four years ago. Whatever it was, she had dithered until he’d lost interest and then turned to Jesse.
Was it Michael? she wondered, even though he’d been nothing more than a peripheral figure in her life then—and a memory. Had she unconsciously been making comparisons and finding Steve lacking? She hadn’t considered that possibility at the time, but now...
The waitress appeared, and Amanda barely skimmed the menu before ordering. Steve ordered, as well, and after the waitress had departed, they both sat there uncomfortably, neither of them quite willing to initiate the discussion even though they both knew why they were here.
“Do you know what I realized while I was sitting here thinking about her?” Steve said, finally breaking the silence. “I know it’s going to sound crazy, but I just realized that ever since I’ve known her, she’s started to drink again at this time of year.”
Amanda just stared at him as a chill slithered through her.
“I’m sure about it,” Steve went on, “because of other things that were happening at that time. Last spring, for example, I was in the midst of expanding the business. And the spring before was when my partner decided to leave.”
“Perhaps it was because you were preoccupied and not giving Jesse the attention she needs,” Amanda suggested, trying not to sound desperate.
“I suppose that’s possible, but I don’t think so. Even when I’ve been really busy, I’ve always been careful to keep my work and my personal life separate. Besides, she started to drink before those things happened. I just meant that that’s how I knew about the time of year.”
“I hadn’t known about those other times,” Amanda confessed. “In fact, I thought she hadn’t had a drink in years—since before she met you.”
Steve shook his head. “It didn’t get bad before and it didn’t last very long.”
Amanda was silent for a moment. She hadn’t known quite how to approach this, but in light of what Steve was saying, the matter was clearly becoming more urgent.
“There could be a reason why she gets upset at this time of year, and if I’m right, it would explain why it’s worse this time. I think she knows something about that murder that happened on the island.”
Steve’s blue eyes widened. “What? Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure about anything, Steve. But it’s possible.”
She went on to tell him about Jesse’s drunken remarks to her and to Michael, then told him, as well, about Jesse’s behavior at the time of her accident, which might or might not have been the very spring that the murder had occurred.
When she had finished, Steve frowned. “That’s a real stretch, Amanda.”
“I know, but it would explain why she seems to have problems at this time of year—and why it’s so bad this year. Steve, she’s seemed almost obsessed with that murder, and she’s never been interested in such things before.
“Besides, I thought of something else, too. After the accident, when I was still recovering and feeling so frustrated that I couldn’t remember anything, Jesse kept suggesting that I should be hypnotized, even though the psychologist didn’t think it was a good idea. In fact, she kept at it to the point where I went myself years later to a hypnotherapist. But there were no memories to be recovered.
“I thought at the time that she was just trying to help me and to help clear Trish’s name, but now 1 can’t help wondering if she had another reason.”
“You can’t think she had anything to do with it?” Steve asked incredulously.
“Her personally? No, of course not. But as I told you, she was running with a wild crowd that spring, and someone she knew might have said something.”
Then she went on to tell him about the phone calls she’d received and the possibility that the dead girl might have been a teenage prostitute, part of a ring that existed at that time.
“What I’m thinking is that Jesse might have heard something—some scraps of information that bothered her at the time, but that she might not have understood until the body was found.”
“But if you’re right, then that doesn’t explain why she gets like this every year,” Steve protested. “She would have had to be more directly involved than that.”
“You’re right,” Amanda admitted. “I hadn’t thought about that because I didn’t know until you told me that this was happening every year.”
“What does Michael think?” Steve asked.
“He suspects that Jesse knows something, but he has to be kept out of this, Steve—at least until I’ve got it sorted out. I know he’s your friend, but first, last and always, Michael’s a cop—and a very persistent one. Besides, he’d like nothing better than to pin this on one of the families from the island.”
“Why?” Steve frowned.
“Because he resents who we are, and he always has. I can’t really blame him, given his own background, but the truth is that he just isn’t very objective in this case.”
“Neither are you,” Steve said, though not unkindly. “And I think you might be overreacting, Amanda. Maybe Michael did feel that way when he was a kid, and maybe even a trace of that remains, but it wouldn’t affect his judgment.”
“Even if you’re right, we have to keep him away from Jesse until I can figure out some way of finding out what she knows. Don’t you see, Steve? If Jesse does know something, she doesn’t want to talk about it. And if Michael pressures her, it will only make her worse.”
Steve frowned for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, I see what you mean. I’ll talk to him and see if I can get him to back off. But maybe Jesse really needs to talk about it. Maybe that’s the only way she can get over whatever it is.”
“You could be right,” Amanda acknowledged. “But I know her well enough to know that the only way I’m going to be able to get her to talk is to confront her with irrefutable evidence that she was somehow involved. Then she’ll talk because she’ll have no choice.”
“And you’re going to try to get this evidence on your own?”
“I hope so.”
AMANDA FOUND IT among the Js: J for Jacobs. She’d been ready to give up her study of the old records in the public defender’s office. Even after reading the records of cases she’d handled, she still hadn’t been able to recall more than a tiny fraction of them because there were so many and their stories were so depressingly familiar and most of them, in any event, were guilty as charged.
But when the name David Jacobs appeared on the screen, she had an immediate, startlingly clear recollection of him, and she wondered how she could have forgotten, even after nearly ten years.
He wasn’t one of her very first clients, but his case had been assigned to her just at a time when she was beginning to despair of ever being able to defend someone who was actually innocent. And perhaps she was still smarting over Michael Quinn’s tauntings on the Joseph Wilson case.
She had believed Dav
id when he’d told her that he wasn’t responsible for sexually assaulting a twelve-year-old cousin. He was eighteen and clearly shaken by the charge, and he had come to see her with his mother and sister in tow.
The police clearly believed the victim, and at that time, the DNA evidence that would have cleared him hadn’t been available. It was his family, more than the silent, terrified David, who had convinced her that the likely rapist was a seventeen-year-old known to them: a distant relative, as she recalled now.
Working with the family, Amanda had managed to come up with enough evidence against the other boy to get David cleared, and ultimately, the victim had admitted that she’d lied about the identity of her assailant because he’d threatened to kill her. It was he who had suggested she point the finger at David because of some dispute between them.
As she sat there in the quiet office, Amanda could clearly remember the family’s gratitude—and especially the gratitude of David’s sister, Tina, who’d been in her early twenties at the time and working as a waitress somewhere.
Tina Jacobs had been the mainstay of the family through it all. David was a basket case, trying to survive in the county prison because they couldn’t raise bail. And the mother was a pale, fragile woman badly beaten down by life.
But Tina was bright and bold and determined to save her brother. Amanda remembered her clearly. She was tiny, with a tangle of badly bleached curls and too much makeup and a wardrobe that ran to very short skirts and very tight tops. And she had a lisp that gave her little-girl voice an even younger sound.
Amanda studied the record, but found no information about Tina. At the time, she must have known where she worked and where she lived, but that hadn’t been relevant to the case record.
How very strange that Tina should come back into her life, she thought, recalling how the young woman had said over and over how she wished she could do something for Amanda. And she recalled, too, how she had actually liked Tina. She’d admired her grit and determination and protectiveness toward her younger brother.
She found a telephone directory, but there was no listing for a Tina Jacobs. She hadn’t really expected one. Obviously, she’d married at some point. But there was no listing for David or for their mother, either, although there were eight Jacobses in the book.
She studied the addresses and was able to eliminate three of them. It was too late to be making phone calls now, but she jotted down the names and numbers of the remaining five, then left the office, elated at the prospect of finally getting somewhere.
That elation faded quickly, though. She might be getting somewhere, all right, but what exactly lay at the end of that road? She had a sudden vision of herself hurtling through darkness, and toward certain disaster.
Chapter Six
The address Amanda sought was a seven-story brick building, an ugly, squat-looking structure with no adornments except for the address etched into a concrete square over the sagging double doors. To the left of the entrance was a litter-strewed lot, where weeds grew up from the cracks in the pavement. A half-dozen old cars, at least two of them clearly incapable of movement, were parked haphazardly.
She drove slowly past the building, scanning the street for a parking space. A block farther along, she found a space in front of a small neighborhood convenience store. She parked, then reached over to grab her briefcase as she got out of the car.
She had struck out with the Jacobses listed in the directory. Either none of them were related to the family she sought, or they weren’t about to admit it. So she had decided that her only hope of finding Tina Jacobs lay in talking with her former neighbors and hopefully finding one who remembered the family.
She entered the building and studied the old mailboxes, only a few of which had names on them. She had hoped to find a super, but none was identified through the mailboxes. She did, however, notice a door back behind the stairs, just past the elevator, and when she approached it, she could just make out the word Superintendent in the grime and graffiti. She pressed the doorbell and waited, then pressed it again when she got no response. It seemed to her that she could hear the noise of a TV beyond the door, but she couldn’t be sure. It might be coming from elsewhere in the building.
Then, after pounding a few times with her fist and still getting no response, she returned to the lobby. The Jacobs family had lived on the fourth floor, so it seemed logical to start there.
Amanda began to climb the stairs. Michael grew up in a place like this, she thought—or perhaps an even worse place. How did he emerge from this unscathed? Well, the answer to that was that he hadn’t emerged unscathed. If he had, she wouldn’t be here because she would be able to trust him.
Or would she? Even if she didn’t suspect Michael of wanting to pin the murder on one of the families on the Hill, she didn’t think she would have told him she’d learned who her anonymous caller was. So what did that say about her? Wasn’t she as much a victim of her own upbringing as he was? It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
She reached the fourth floor and found 4D, the former address of Tina Jacobs’s mother and brother. The bell didn’t work, so she pounded on the door. Faint sounds reached her ears, but again, she couldn’t be sure where they were coming from. Someone was listening to a rock station and someone was watching TV and somewhere a child was crying.
When she got no response to her second series of knocks, she moved to the apartment next door and pressed a bell that did work. By now, she was beginning to expect no response, so she was startled when the door opened a crack and someone peered out over a thick security chain.
“Hello,” she said to the face she could barely see. “I’m trying to find someone who can help me locate the Jacobs family. They lived here in 4D some years ago.”
The door slammed shut, then reopened as the safety chain was removed. A moon-faced woman of indeterminate age studied her in silence for a moment, her gaze traveling slowly over Amanda as though she were some alien creature who’d just stepped out of a flying saucer.
“Don’t know them,” the woman said. “How long ago’d they live here?”
“I’m not sure, but I know they were living here ten years ago.”
“Try 4A. She’s the only one I know who might have been living here then. But you’ll have to pound hard and yell. She’s hard of hearing.”
Amanda barely managed to thank the woman before the door slammed shut again. She hurried down the hall to 4A and rang the bell, then began to pound on the door. After a few moments, it opened and there were two security chains in front of the wizened face that peered out at her.
Amanda repeated her statement, this time in a much louder voice. The door slammed shut, then opened after the chains were removed.
“You don’t have to shout, young lady. I can hear you just fine.”
Amanda blushed. “I’m sorry, but your neighbor said you had difficulty hearing.”
The woman’s expressive, dark eyes shifted briefly down the hall. “I just tell her that so she won’t bother me. Come in, come in.”
Amanda stepped in to what might have been another time. An ancient, faded Oriental rug covered most of the floor. A big, Chippendale-style sofa with faded cushions shared the small space with two equally faded wing-back chairs, their arms and backs covered with lacy antimacassars. Amanda actually surprised herself by remembering what they were called: one of those useless bits of trivia that had somehow stuck in her mind.
“Would you like a cup of tea, dear?” the woman asked, clearly eager to play hostess.
When Amanda said she would, the woman disappeared and Amanda could hear her clattering about in the kitchen. She glanced at her watch. She didn’t want to stay too long, or it would be dark by the time she left. But despite her remark about not wanting to be bothered by her neighbor, Amanda suspected that the woman was in no hurry to see her leave.
She returned with an elaborate and highly polished silver tea set and two china cups. Amanda was beginning to understand why she had two
security chains on her door.
Her name was Estelle Johnson, and as it turned out, she’d lived in this apartment for nearly thirteen years. Her friends in the building were all gone now, but she planned to stay “until they drag me out feet first,” as she put it.
She remembered the Jacobs family, and even remembered the false accusation against Amanda’s former client, whom she described as a nice boy who would never have done such a thing. She remembered Tina, too, and said she was really a sweet girl beneath all that makeup and those flashy clothes.
Unfortunately, however, she had no idea where they might be now. She thought it had been at least eight years since they moved out and she recalled that Amanda’s former client had gone into the military after graduation and that his mother had moved out of Port Henry—to somewhere in Pennsylvania, where she had a sister.
“It’s really Tina that I’m trying to find,” Amanda told her. “I have reason to think she’s still here in Port Henry and I need her help with something. Can you think of anyone who might know where she is now?”
The woman frowned in thought. “No. I know she had a lot of friends, some of them nice and some not so nice. And she worked as a waitress somewhere. I remember seeing her in her uniform.”
“Could you describe the uniform?” Amanda asked in desperation, thinking that if Tina worked for one of the national chains, she might be able to identify it from the uniform.
“Let’s see. It wasn’t exactly a uniform. Black pants and a white T-shirt with the name on it.” She paused, and then her eyes brightened. “Now I remember. It was a Mexican place. She used to bring me those things, like Mexican sandwiches, you know?”
“Tacos,” Amanda said, and the woman nodded.
Amanda thought she knew the restaurant. It wasn’t a chain and she wasn’t sure if it was still in business. It was in the heart of the Bottom. She’d gone there once to see a client, perhaps six or seven years ago—not long before she left the public defender’s office.
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