Whispers

  “Damn it all to hell.” What was it that Miranda had that Tessa didn’t? So she was taller, more sophisticated, older and . . . oh, what did it matter? Weston was a sicko—the way he had held that knife to her throat, the cool blade pressed against her skin, as if he’d wanted, really wanted to draw blood. She’d never been so scared in her life.

  “I hope you rot in hell,” she said, her fingers shaking a little at the horrid memory. She was glad to be done with him. Glad. Glad. Glad. Let him take out his perverted fantasies on someone else.

  Like Miranda?

  She hit the wrong chord. “Shit!” Tessa had never liked losing, especially not to one of her sisters, and for Randa not only to have been right about Weston, but to also be the object of his obsession, galled Tessa and fed the rage that burned deep in her gut.

  If she had the nerve, she should stick it to Weston, the way he did to her. Hold a knife or gun on him and make him sweat, watch while he stripped himself bare and was forced into some humiliation, maybe to jack off in front of her.

  “Forget it,” she told herself. “Forget him.” But the beast of fury within her continued to grow. She wasn’t satisfied letting things sit as they were. Weston would have to pay.

  She didn’t hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs and was surprised by a quiet tap on the door before it was pushed open, and Miranda stepped inside.

  Great! The last person she wanted to see.

  “I’m practicing,” she said, barely looking up.

  “I know. I heard you.”

  “I like to do it alone.”

  Randa didn’t take the hint, just walked barefooted and long-legged into the middle of the room. Beautiful as their mother, but more statuesque, Miranda had spent years down-playing her looks and avoiding boys, but, as Tessa so painfully knew, in Weston’s eyes she was a goddess.

  “I think we should talk.” Miranda folded her legs beneath her as she sat on the edge of an old ottoman.

  “What about?” She continued picking out a tune on her guitar, slowly plucking the strings, ignoring the fact that her oldest sister was obviously worried. Who cared? Miranda was a sanctimonious bitch most of the time and a worrywart the rest.

  “Weston.”

  Tessa hit the strings so hard, she felt the taut metal cut into her fingertips. “Jesus,” she swore. “Now look what you made me do.” Resentment burned bright in her heart. Compressing her lips, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and sucked on her bleeding fingers. “For the record, I don’t give a shit about Weston. Now, is there something else you wanted?”

  “Yeah. I’d like to know that you’re okay,” Randa shot back.

  “As you can see I’m just fine.”

  “As I can see you’re up here with these dusty relics hiding.”

  “Hiding? That’s a laugh.”

  “As well as probably licking your wounds—and I’m not talking about your fingers.”

  Tessa’s muscles coiled. It was all she could do not to lunge at Miranda’s throat and inform Her Highness that it was her fault that Tessa’s life was screwed up. “I don’t know where you get off.” She turned her attention back to the song she was attempting to write.

  “Weston’s face looks like someone took a steel rake to it.”

  Tessa hit a sour note. “You saw him?”

  “Yeah, today. He was at a stoplight in town and I had to walk across the street on my way to the library and . . . well, I know this sounds crazy, but the top of his car was down and, even though he was wearing sunglasses, I had a good look at his face. One side looks like a cat clawed it to ribbons. I thought he might have been in an accident . . . or maybe a fight.”

  “Bingo. The brilliant one deduces the truth yet again. You know, Miranda you should be on some game show—what’s the one where you figure out the clues?—‘Concentration’? That would be right up your alley.”

  “You scratched him?” Miranda asked.

  “Yeah, Sherlock, I scratched him,” Tessa admitted with a careless lift of her shoulder. “As hard as I could. And if I had the chance now, I’d do it again, only this time I’d scrape his friggin’ eyes out of their sockets.”

  “Why?”

  “I was mad, okay?”

  “Because—”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Miranda asked, and Tessa’s hard heart cracked a little at the concern in her sister’s voice. Yeah, she’d been wounded. She hadn’t slept all night, just stared out the window to the breathless darkness, plotting ways of winning him back only to spurn him, or thinking of satisfying ways to kill him.

  “We broke up,” she admitted, bending her head over the guitar again. “You were right about him and I was wrong. Satisfied?”

  “Only if you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine. I’m always fine,” Tessa said, hooking a thumb at her chest. “I’m a survivor.”

  “He’s not worth feeling bad about.”

  “Don’t start with a lecture. I’ve heard it all before, and I’ve already got a mother. Remember?”

  “But you’re only—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fifteen. I know.” She gave up on the song and slid the guitar onto a table cluttered with old palettes and a dead geranium. Anger pulsed through her blood and she wanted to strike back. This time she had ammunition. “So . . . did you say good-bye to Hunter last night?”

  “Good-bye?” Miranda’s eyes were suddenly in sharp focus. “Why?”

  “He didn’t tell you?” Tessa scowled, but felt an inward sense of satisfaction that she was finally giving a little heartache back to Miranda, who, whether she knew it or not, was always shoveling some in Tessa’s direction.”

  “Tell me what?” Miranda’s voice was low, as if she expected the worst. Well, good.

  “That he was leaving.” Tessa reached into her purse for her cigarettes.

  “Leaving? Hunter Riley? Going where?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “No, I don’t think he’s taking off—”

  “Dan said he’s already gone. Left sometime in the middle of the night.” She found a new pack and opened the cellophane with her teeth.

  “For where?” Even though she didn’t trust Tessa, Miranda felt as if the earth had buckled beneath the garage. No way would Hunter have left her—not alone and pregnant. This was all a mistake, malicious gossip or Tessa’s cruel idea of a joke.

  “I don’t know,” Tessa said, and seemed to enjoy giving Miranda the bad news. “I heard Dan tell Mom this morning that Hunter had taken off, without so much as a good-bye or a note. His car was left at the train station in Portland late last night or early morning. You—you didn’t know?” She finally managed to get the pack open and plucked out a long Virginia Slim.

  “I don’t believe you.” Miranda shook her head. This was just another one of Tessa’s fantasies, her lies. The girl was always making up stories, and for some reason Tessa was angry with her; she’d felt that tension, the unspoken accusations in Tessa’s eyes the minute she’d stepped into the old studio.

  “Fine, don’t believe me, but it’s true. He’s gone. At least for a little while. I couldn’t hear all of the discussion, but . . .” She paused as she jabbed the cigarette into her mouth and struck a match. “. . . he’s definitely out of here. I, um, thought you knew.” She lit up and waved out the match. “Don’t give me any lectures about lung cancer.”

  “It’s your body,” Miranda said, but her thoughts were a million miles away. Gone? Hunter was gone? Don’t believe her. She’s lying. She has to be. But why? Uncertainty, like a clenched fist, pummeled her. Trust Hunter. You love him. You can’t doubt him. There had to be some mistake. “Either you’re lying or your information is wrong.”

  “I don’t think so. What’s wrong, Miranda? Are you so perfect no man would ever dump you?”

  “No, but—”

  “If you don’t believe me, ask Dan,” Tessa said, though some of the snarl had left her words. She looked away, refusing to meet M
iranda’s eyes, and ran her fingers over a table, disturbing the thin layer of dust that had accumulated ever since their mother had given up her art a year before. “The reason I believe it, is that I just got the feeling that Dan was upset. Really upset. He tried to hide it, for Mom’s sake, but there’s something going on, Miranda, and whatever it is, it’s not good.”

  The baby. This was all about the baby. Hunter was probably going to look for work or something . . . maybe even sort things out in his mind. But he’d call, and he’d be back, and everything would work out. Unless he was running away. Oh, Lord, no. He wouldn’t leave her alone and pregnant. He couldn’t. And yet as she left Tessa sitting on the window ledge, Miranda noticed the storm clouds rolling in from the Pacific, and she felt a shiver of doom, as if the devil himself had taken his finger and run it down her spine.

  Nineteen

  “That’s right. He left. Without so much as sayin’ good-bye.” Dan Riley leaned on his rake and avoided Miranda’s gaze. A wiry man with thinning gray hair cropped into a crew cut and teeth yellowed by years of cigarettes and coffee, he lifted a baseball cap from his head and rubbed the back of his wrinkled neck in frustration. “Always knew the day would come when he’d move out. Didn’t expect it to come like it did.” His tired eyes found Miranda’s, then moved swiftly away, as if he was embarrassed, as if he knew or suspected something more. “I just wish I knew why. Why wouldn’t he talk it over with me first?”

  Because he was scared—afraid of the responsibility of becoming a father, Miranda thought uneasily, but managed a thin smile. It had been three days since Tessa had told her that Hunter had left, but she hadn’t believed her younger sister, waiting to hear from him, keeping faith that he hadn’t run out on her.

  Finally, this morning, she’d decided to speak with his father. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t talk to you,” she said, though it was a lie. Of course he wouldn’t confide in his father about this.

  “No trouble is that bad.”

  “Trouble?” Miranda repeated. “What trouble?”

  Dan considered his answer and squeezed air through his teeth as he stared at the inside rim of his grimy cap. “That boy found trouble like a hound finds a dead rabbit. For years he . . . well, he and the police got to know each other real well. I always blamed it on him losing his ma at such a tender age. Anyway, in the past half a year he straightened out, paid his debt to society so to speak, managed to get his equivalency degree for high school and started taking classes down at the community college. I had a mind that he’d finally started walkin’ the straight and narrow.”

  “He had,” she said, and Dan elevated a graying eyebrow, noiselessly challenging her defense of a boy that, to Dan’s knowledge, she barely knew.

  “Hunt had changed a mite lately, was sneakin’ around, doin’ God only knows what.” Frowning, he replaced his tattered Dodgers baseball cap and dragged the rake over the ground around a mossy oak tree that had grown near the north side of the house. “Things’ve been different around here.” He looked up sharply. “Your ma—she find anyone to replace Ruby?”

  Miranda shook her head. “Not yet; I think she’s still hoping Ruby will change her mind and come back to work for us.”

  “I doubt it; that woman’s stubborn as they come when she has a mind to be. Besides, losin’ a child, well, there’s just no gittin’ over it. She won’t be back. Too many memories here—memories of the time that Jack was alive.” He raked a clump of old twigs and leaves into a small, decaying pile. “Kee-rist A’mighty, I just hope I hear from Hunt soon.”

  Me too, Miranda thought, as a dark, foreboding sense of doom pounded in her heart. “You will.”

  Scowling, he scratched at the ground again. “If I do, I’ll let you know, and if you hear . . . well, why would you?” But his eyes had sharpened when he looked up from his task and Miranda suspected for the first time since the start of her relationship with Hunter, his father was beginning to get the picture.

  “I . . . I will,” she promised, crossing her fingers and silently praying that Hunter would call.

  “And if he don’t, well . . . maybe he’s not worth the bother.” Scratching his neck until his whiskers rustled, he said, “There’s a lot you don’t know about that kind, Miss Holland. A lot he wouldn’t want anyone to know. But he was his mama’s boy and good to me.”

  Miranda’s throat turned to cotton. “What don’t I know?”

  “Nothin’ good.” He swiped at the ground again. “He had a side to him that was . . .” He frowned slightly. “. . . well, the Reverend Thatcher once called him evil.”

  “Oh, no—”

  “The Reverend, he went too far, was too judgmental, but Hunt has a streak in him that’s wild and will never be tamed.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said, and turned, her feet feeling sluggish, her heart pounding. As she left she thought he whispered, “Be careful, Missy,” but she wasn’t sure, and it could have been the sound of the wind hissing through dry leaves as it moved ever inland.

  “The story I heard is that he was fooling around with a fourteen-year-old girl in Seaside.”

  “Fourteen?” Miranda repeated, staring at Crystal as if she were out of her mind. When she hadn’t heard from Hunter for nearly four days, Miranda had driven into town, circling the streets restlessly until she’d finally stopped for a Coke at the Dairy Freeze. She’d spotted Crystal, who had visibly started at the sight of her, but Miranda hadn’t been deterred by Crystal’s grief over her brother or her jealousy of a Holland for snagging Weston Taggert’s attention. Crystal and her mother both had ears for gossip, so with Dan’s mention of Hunter and trouble in mind, Miranda had slid onto the empty bench at Crystal’s table then asked about Hunter and any gossip surrounding him.

  Now, as oil sizzled in deep fryers behind the counter, the cash register dinged and the blender whirred before spitting out the next milk shake, Miranda sat across the yellow plastic table from Crystal and waited as she sipped her drink.

  “The way I heard it is that Hunter got this girl pregnant, then he wanted her to get an abortion, but she’s underage.”

  Miranda felt the color drain from her face and nearly dropped her soda.

  “Her mother’s some kind of religious nut—real right-wing, Born-Again Christian who doesn’t believe in abortion in any circumstance. Anyway, the girl, she spills the beans that she’s gonna have a baby, and the woman nearly has a heart attack.”

  “No way.” Miranda swirled the crushed ice in her cup of Coke and shook her head. But doubt, like an ever-faster flowing whirlpool, surrounded her, threatening to drown her last shred of faith in the boy she loved. “I—I can’t believe that he . . .” She swallowed hard to fight off a brutal attack of nausea.

  “Hey,” Crystal said, dunking a french fry into a pool of catsup. “I’m only telling you what’s going around. I don’t know if it’s true.”

  “Hunter wouldn’t . . .” Or would he? Her throat closed, and she fought a rising sense of panic. “Who’s the girl? What’s her name?”

  Crystal lifted a shoulder. “No one seems to know.”

  Miranda was determined to find out. “I think it’s a lie.”

  “Maybe.” Crystal frowned. “Who knows?”

  “Someone knows.”

  “Yeah, Hunt.”

  “And the girl. If she exists. Who told you this story?”

  “My mom. She heard it from some of the women she plays pinochle with, and that lady said her husband told her the story because it was going around the Westwind Bar late last night.”

  “But—” But she’d been with Hunter only a few nights ago. How would anyone have known? Miranda would make it her personal mission to find out. She finished her drink and stood. “Look, thanks. You know how bad I feel about Jack.”

  Crystal’s gaze slid past Miranda’s shoulder, to a middle distance only she could see. “He didn’t just slip off the ridge that day, you know,” she said, her voice flat. “He’d been on that path a million times.”
Shoving her fries aside, she chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “And he didn’t fall because he was drunk.”

  Miranda had heard the stories that Jack, after being fired from Taggert Industries, had drunk his fill of hard liquor, driven up the ridge, and then, while walking along an old Indian trail, fallen from the cliff to his death.

  “He was pushed.” Crystal sounded certain.

  Miranda’s stomach clutched. “Pushed?” Again, her queasy stomach revolted, and she had to swallow back the bile that rose in the back of her throat. “As in murdered?”

  Crystal brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. “There’s no doubt in my mind or my mother’s. We just can’t prove it yet. But we will.”

  “Good luck, I guess.” Miranda felt suddenly awkward. “We miss Ruby, you know.”

  “Do you?” Crystal gave out a heartless laugh and pinned Miranda with sharp, black eyes. “Or do you miss having an Indian squaw for a slave?”

  “You know that’s not true! We think of Ruby as one of the family,” Miranda said, rising. “We always have.”

  “Then why doesn’t your dad use some of his stinking money and hire a first-class private investigator to find out what happened to Jack?”

  “I thought the police ruled it was—”

  “An accident, right. And they thought they were saving us some embarrassment by not suggesting that it could have been a suicide. Suicide! Can you believe it? No one loved life more than Jack.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Then do something. Aren’t you planning to be some kind of hot shit lawyer?”

  “Someday.”

  Crystal’s lower lip quivered, and she buried her face in her hands. “Damn it all.” Too proud to cry in public, she scrambled out of the booth and hurried outside. Miranda, feeling worse than ever, followed her and walked, head bent against the wind, to her car. Crystal had been right about one thing; she was going to be a lawyer, the best damned attorney this town had ever seen, and she’d have to use her wits to outsmart opposing counsel. So trying to find out what really happened to Jack Songbird and Hunter shouldn’t be so hard.