Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  “I lied then, too,” Emma murmured. “I didn’t keep my promise. I didn’t take care of Darren. We lost him. Da and Bev lost each other. I’d sworn to them that I would always look after him. That I’d keep him safe. But I broke my promise. No one ever punished me. No one ever blamed me.”

  “But you did. Haven’t you blamed yourself? Punished yourself?”

  “If I hadn’t run away—he called to me.” For an instant it flashed into her mind. The way his voice had raced after her as she’d fled down the dark hall. “He was so scared, but I didn’t go back to him. I knew they were going to hurt him, but I ran. And he died. I should have stayed. I was supposed to stay.”

  “Could you have helped him?”

  “I ran because I was afraid for myself.”

  “You were a child, Emma.”

  “What difference does that make? I made a promise. You don’t break promises to people you love, no matter how difficult they are to keep. I made one to Drew, and I stayed because…”

  “Because?”

  “Because I deserved to be punished.” She dosed her eyes on a dull, dreary horror. “Oh God. Did I stay all those months because I wanted to be punished for losing Darren?”

  Katherine allowed herself only the briefest moment of satisfaction. This was exactly what she’d been hoping for. “I think that’s part of it. You’ve said before that Drew reminded you of Brian. You’ve blamed yourself for Darren’s death, and in a child’s mind, punishment follows guilt.”

  “I didn’t know Drew was violent when I married him.”

  “No. You were attracted to what you saw on the surface. A beautiful young man with a beautiful voice. Romantic, charming. You chose someone you thought was gentle and affectionate.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “Yes, you were wrong about Drew. He deceived you and many others. Because he was so attractive, so loving on the outside, you became convinced that you deserved what he did to you. He used your vulnerability, exploited it and compounded it. You didn’t ask to be battered, Emma. And you weren’t to blame for his sickness. Just as you weren’t to blame for your brother’s death.” She took Emma’s hand. “I believe when you accept that, completely, you’ll remember the rest. Once you remember, the nightmares will pass.”

  “I will remember,” Emma murmured. “And I won’t run this time.”

  THE LOFT HAD hardly changed. Marianne had added a few of her own bizarre touches. A full-sized blowup of Godzilla, an enormous plastic palm tree that was still decorated for Christmas though the January white sales were in full swing, and a stuffed minah bird that swung on a perch in front of the window. Her paintings dominated the walls, landscapes, seascapes, portraits, and still-lifes. The studio smelled of paint, turpentine, and Calvin Klein’s Obsession.

  Emma sat on a stool in a slash of sunlight wearing a sweatshirt that drooped off one shoulder and the sapphire and diamond earrings her father had given her for Christmas.

  “You’re not relaxed,” Marianne complained as she stroked a pencil over her pad.

  “You always say that when you sketch me.”

  “No, you’re really not relaxed.” Marianne stuck the pencil in her hair. It was a mass of curls now that just skimmed her shoulders. She sat back to drum her fingers on the pad and study Emma. “Is it being here, in New York?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” But she’d been tense the last couple of days in London as well, unable to shake the feeling she was being watched, followed. Stalked.

  Stupid. She took three deliberate breaths. In all likelihood the tension stemmed from finally acknowledging her guilt and shame, and her anger, which revolved around Darren and Drew. And yet, once she had, she felt relief.

  “You want to quit?” Even as she asked, Marianne took out the pencil and began to sketch again. She’d always wanted to capture that quiet, haunted look in Emma’s eyes. “We could run uptown, go to Bloomies, or go to Elizabeth Arden ’s for the works. I haven’t had a facial in weeks.”

  “I’ve been meaning to mention how haggard you look.” She smiled so that the dimple winked at the corner of her mouth. “What is it, vitamins, macrobiotics, sex? You look wonderful.”

  “I think it might be love.”

  “The dentist?”

  “Who? Oh, no. Talk of root canals destroyed our relationship. His name’s Ross. I met him about six months ago.”

  “Six months ago.” Emma arched a brow. “And you never mentioned him.”

  “I thought I might jinx it.” With a shrug, Marianne turned the pad and started a new sketch. “Shift a little, would you? Turn your head. Yeah.”

  “Serious.” Emma glanced out the window. Her stomach did a little loop so that she had to inhale slowly. People were hurrying along below, chased by a chill wind that threatened rain or sleet. There was a man standing in the doorway of the deli, smoking. She would have sworn he looked right at her. “What?” she said when she heard Marianne’s voice.

  “I said it could be. I’d like it to be. The problem is, he’s a senator.”

  “As in U.S.?”

  “The gentleman from Virginia. Can you see me as one of those classy Washington wives?”

  “Yes,” Emma said and smiled. “I can.”

  “Teas and protocol.” Marianne wrinkled her nose. “I can’t imagine actually having to sit through a speech on the defense budget. What are you staring at?”

  “Oh. Nothing.” With a quick shake of her head, Emma shifted her gaze. “There’s just a man standing down on the street.”

  “Imagine that. In downtown New York. You’re tensing up again.”

  “Sorry.” Deliberately she looked away and tried to relax. “Paranoia,” she said, hoping for a light touch. “So, do I get to meet the politician?”

  “He’s in D.C.” In two strokes Marianne penciled in Emma’s brow. “If you weren’t in such a hurry to get back to L.A., you could go down with me next weekend.”

  “It is serious then.”

  “Semi. Emma, what is so fascinating out there?”

  “It’s just this man. It’s almost as if he’s looking right at me.”

  “Sounds more like vanity than paranoia.” Pushing herself up, Marianne walked to the window. “Probably waiting to make a drug deal,” she decided. She moved away again to pick up her long-neglected coffee cup. “In the serious vein, what about Michael? Are you going to give the man and his dog a break?”

  “I want to take my time.”

  “You’ve been taking your time with Michael since you were thirteen,” Marianne pointed out. “What’s it like to have a man carry a torch for you for over ten years?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s exactly like that. In fact, I’m surprised he managed to stay on the Coast when you told him you were going to visit here for a couple of days before flying back.”

  “He wants to get married.”

  “Well, you could knock me over with a twenty-foot crane. Who’d have guessed it?”

  “I suppose I haven’t wanted to think about what happens next.”

  “That’s only because you’ve blocked the M word out of your vocabulary for a while. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “It?”

  “The two Ms. Marriage and Michael.”

  “I don’t know.” She looked out the window again. He was still there, standing patiently. “I’m going to wait until I see him again. We both may feel differently now that things have settled down, and our lives are getting back to normal. Dammit.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. Da’s hired a bodyguard again.” She turned her head quickly, eyes narrowed. “Did you know about this?”

  “No.” Marianne stirred herself to go to the window and look out again. “Brian never said a word to me. Look, the guy’s just standing around. Why automatically assume he’s there for you?”

  “When you’ve lived with it most of your life, you know when you’re being watched.” Ann
oyed, she moved away from the window. On an oath, she whirled back and yanked the window open. “Hey!” Her sudden shout surprised her as much as the man on the street. “Go call your boss and tell him I can take care of myself. If I see you down there in five minutes, I’m calling the cops.”

  “Feel better?” Marianne murmured at her shoulder.

  “Lots.”

  “I’m not sure he could hear you all the way down there.”

  “He heard enough,” Emma said with a satisfied nod. “He’s leaving.” A little dizzy, she pulled her head in. “Let’s go get a facial.”

  MICHAEL PORED OVER the printout. It had taken him days to correlate lists and cross-check. In the past weeks he’d found himself just as caught up in Darren McAvoy’s murder as his father had been twenty years before. He had read every inch of every file, studied every photograph, checked and rechecked every interview that had been compiled during the original investigation. From his own memory he pulled out the visit to the house in the hills with Emma, making his own notes from her descriptions and recollections.

  From his father’s meticulous investigation and Emma’s recollections, he was able to re-create, in his mind, the night of Darren’s death.

  Music. He imagined Beatles, Stones, Joplin, the Doors.

  Drugs. Everything from grass to LSD cheerfully shared.

  Shop talk, party talk, gossip. Laughter and intense political discussions. Vietnam, Nixon, women’s liberation.

  People coming and going. Some invited, some just showing up. No one questioning unfamiliar faces. Formal invitations had been for the establishment. Peace, love, and communal living the order of the day. It sounded nice enough, but for a cop in the first year of the nineties, it was frustrating.

  He had the guest list his father had compiled. It was, of course, woefully inadequate, but a place to start. Playing a hunch, he. Spent days verifying the whereabouts on the night of Jane Palmer’s death of every name on the list. He’d turned up sixteen people who had been in London, including all four members of Devastation, their manager, and Bev McAvoy. Michael ignored his tendency to cross them off, and spent several more days checking alibis,

  His printout now had twelve names. He liked to think if there was indeed a connection between two murders, twenty years apart, it was on that list.

  “It gives us something to work with,” Michael said. He leaned over his father’s shoulder so that they could both study the printout. “I want to dig a little deeper, find any and all of the connections between these twelve people and Jane Palmer.”

  “You’ve got the McAvoys on the list. You don’t think they killed their own son?”

  “No. It’s the connection.” He pulled over a file and opened it. He had a list of names connected with broken lines. It resembled a family tree, headed by Bev, Brian, and Jane. Below were Emma’s and Darren’s names. “I’ve been hooking them up, using interviews and file information. Take Johnno.” Michael slid his finger down. “He’s Brian’s oldest friend, his writing partner. They formed the group together. He remained friends with Bev during her long estrangement from Brian. He also knew Jane the longest.”

  “Motive?”

  “Money or revenge is all we’ve got,” Michael went on. “We can easily apply both of those to Jane Palmer, but it’s a stretch for anyone else on the list. Blackpool.” Michael moved his finger down. “He was more of a hanger-on at the time Darren was killed. His big break came several months later when he recorded a song Brian and Johnno had written. And Pete Page became his manager.” He ran his finger over the lines connecting Blackpool with Brian, Johnno, Pete, and Emma.

  “No connection with Palmer?” Lou asked.

  “I haven’t found one yet.”

  With a nod, Lou leaned back. “There are several names on your list that even I recognize.”

  “A rock-and-roll countdown.” Sitting on the edge of the desk, Michael lit a cigarette. “I know when you figure the main motive for kidnapping is money, most of these names don’t fit. That’s where Jane comes in. If she planted the idea, she could have used blackmail, sex, drugs, or any other kind of hook to pressure someone into getting to Brian through Darren. She tried to get to him once through Emma, and all she got out of it was money. She wanted more. What better way than through his son?”

  He pushed away from the desk to pace the office and try to figure it out. “If she could have gotten into the house, she would have done it herself. But she was the one person who wouldn’t have been welcome that night. So she found someone else, used whatever lever worked best, and got what she wanted.”

  “You sound like you understand her very well.”

  Michael thought of his brief, destructive affair with Angie Parks. “I think I do. If we take her at her word that the kidnapping was her idea, then we have to find the connection. She used someone on this list.”

  “There were two people in the nursery that night.”

  “And one of them had to know their way around the house. He had to know the layout of the rooms upstairs, the McAvoys’ private space. He had to know the kids, the routine. So we look for someone connected to both Jane and Brian.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Michael.” Lou leaned back to study his son. “If you penciled your name on this page, how many lines would connect you? Nothing clouds an investigation quicker than personal involvement.”

  “And nothing motivates more.” Michael tapped out his cigarette. “I’m not sure I would be a cop today if it hadn’t been for Emma. She came to the house that time. You remember, it was around Christmas. She came to see you.”

  “I remember.”

  “She was looking for help. There wasn’t a lot anyone could give her, but she came to you. It started me thinking. It wasn’t all filling out forms, making lists. It wasn’t all shoot-outs and collars. It was having people come to you because they knew you’d know what to do. We went to the house in the hills, and I walked through it with her. I understood that there have to be people who know what to do. Who care enough about one small boy they’ve never met to keep trying.”

  Touched, Lou looked down at the papers on his desk. “It’s going on twenty years, and I haven’t figured out what to do about this one.”

  “What color were Darren McAvoy’s eyes?”

  “Green,” Lou answered. “Like his mother’s.”

  Smiling a little, Michael rose. “You’ve never stopped trying. I’ve got to pick Emma up at the airport. Can I leave this stuff with you? I don’t want her to see it.”

  “Yeah.” He fully intended to go over every word in his son’s report. “Michael.” He glanced up as Michael paused at the door. “You’ve turned out to be a pretty good cop.”

  “So have you.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  EMMA HAD CONVINCED herself to ease back. Her relationship with Michael was moving too quickly. She would gently pull their relationship back a few notches. Her book was about to be published. It was time to open her own studio, perhaps have another showing.

  How did she know her own feelings in any case? Her life had been in too much upheaval. It was easy to mistake love for gratitude and friendship. And she was grateful to him. Always would be. He had been her friend, a constant if distant one for most of her life. Her decision to back off was best for both of them.

  She took a firm grip on her camera case as she walked through the gate.

  There he was. He saw her the same instant she saw him. All of the practical decisions she’d made over the last three thousand miles vanished. Before she could say his name, he had swooped her off her feet. To the amusement and annoyance of other passengers, he greeted her in silence, blocking most of the gateway.

  When she could breathe again, she touched a hand to his cheek. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” He kissed her again. “It’s good to see you.”

  “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  “I think it’s over eleven years now.” He turned and started toward the terminal.


  “Aren’t you going to put me down?”

  “I don’t think so. How was your flight?”