Whispers

  Break a,

  Break another . . .

  That’s it, she thought. Break another piece of my heart. Hadn’t all the men she’d ever trusted? Tessa slid the Virginia Slims between her lips and punched in the lighter. Images of her past drifted behind her eyes and her adolescence crept into her subconscious. Her foot eased down on the gas pedal and the speedometer needle crowded ninety, way over the legal limit, but she didn’t notice, didn’t care. She was swept away in the tormented current of the past, dammed so long in her subconscious that she wasn’t really sure what was real and what was fantasy.

  The lighter popped out and Tessa lit up, smoke curling from her nostrils to be sucked away by the racing wind as the Mustang roared up the freeway.

  Didn’t I make you feel . . .

  Janis was still wailing as Tessa drained her beer, chucked the bottle out of the car, and heard glass shatter over the thrum of the engine. Joplin’s voice faded. Jesus, if only she could find another station. One with music from the current century. Hip hop or rap or techo. Too bad her CD player was busted.

  Shoving her sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose with one finger, Tessa drove with her knee. Then she steeled herself. In less than six hours, she’d have to face her family for the first time in years. Her stomach knotted. Dutch, when he’d called her apartment, had sworn that both Tessa’s sisters would be waiting for her at Lake Arrowhead.

  “Prick,” she mumbled, flipping the butt of her cigarette onto the freeway. Claire and Miranda. The romantic and the ice princess. It had been years since Tessa had seen them together, since they’d huddled, shivering and dripping, as they’d sworn that they would never divulge what had happened in the murky waters of the lake that night.

  Shaking, she reached behind her, snapped open the lid of the cooler, her fingers surrounding the neck of another bottle of Coors standing at attention in the packed ice. Then she thought better of drinking any more alcohol. Soon she’d reach the border. It was time to sober up. And, she decided as another morbid song from the sixties cranked up, time to face the damned music of a song that was written long ago and just kept playing over and over in her head.

  “He was here again,” Louise announced as she stuck her head into Miranda’s tiny office.

  Miranda’s skin crawled. “Who?” But she knew the answer and it bothered her. A lot. Despite her outward bravado, she had her own fears, her own demons to deal with and the thought that she could possibly have a stalker struck to the very core of her terror. Though she appeared tough on the outside, Miranda knew that any psych student who took a peek at her relationships with men would note that she had “issues.” Make that “major issues.” Her back teeth gritted though she managed a smile.

  “The same creep who’s been dogging you for the past three days.” Miranda’s stomach tightened as Louise edged in, straightened Miranda’s framed law degree that forever tilted on the wall, then slouched against the single file cabinet jammed into the corner. A smooth-skinned black woman with almond eyes and a keen intelligence, Louise had been working as a secretary in the Multnomah County DA’s office for the past four years. Now, Louise’s eyes were dark with concern.

  Which only upped Miranda’s fear factor.

  She hadn’t set foot in her cubicle of an office all afternoon and had only stopped by to pick up some papers. For most of the day, she’d been talking with the medical examiner or briefing Denise Santiago on the Richmond murder case. It was funny how she could deal with crimes on a daily basis, brutal, horrible crimes against people and property with a fierce doggedness that didn’t expose any of her own personal fears, but the thought of one man following her brought images from her past, painful, severe images that she had buried for years, straight to the fore.

  “Who is this guy?” she wondered aloud and fought the dread that settled like lead in her stomach as she packed away a sheaf of handwritten notes in her briefcase. She caught a glimpse of a picture she kept on the corner of her desk—her favorite snapshot of her two sisters and herself. It had been taken long ago, when she had been an innocent fifteen. Three girls at the brink of adolescence, their arms linked together as they stood on a windswept boulder high above the angry gray waters of the Pacific Ocean. Their faces were ruddy, their smiles sincere, their spirits as free as the gales that had tugged at their hair, blowing the strands in front of their eyes. A lifetime ago. A naive age that could never be recaptured. She snapped her briefcase shut.

  “I wish I had some idea who he is.”

  Louise lifted a shoulder. “Don’t have a clue. But my guess is he’s bad news.”

  “This is the district attorney’s office for crying out loud. We’re not that far from the police station. There are dozens of cops all around. How does he get in?”

  “Like everyone else—through the front door. That’s the trouble with a public building, you know. It’s bought and paid for with tax dollars and allows any idiot inside.” Louise crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Petrillo doesn’t like this guy nosing around any more than I do. He told me to contact him the next time the mystery man shows up.”

  Frank Petrillo was a detective who had been with the department for more years than Miranda. Recently divorced and the father of two kids, he didn’t see as much as he wanted to, he’d been asking Miranda out for the past three months. So far, they’d only shared a pizza after working late one night. That was as involved as Miranda wanted to be. She didn’t date anyone she worked with. It was her personal, unwritten but never-broken law.

  “I just don’t understand why he doesn’t leave his name or number—why he keeps missing me.” Her desk was still messy, a few files piled on one corner, reference books open near her computer monitor, a half-full cup of coffee gone cold where she’d left it near her calendar.

  “You ever thought he’s one of those stalkers?”

  Of course she had. “He’s too close. Taking too many risks.”

  “Fits a stalker’s M.O., if you ask me.”

  Miranda plucked her raincoat from a hook on the back of the door and slung the coat over one arm. “Tell me about him.”

  “This is the third time he’s been in.” Louise held up three slim fingers. “He was here yesterday and the day before. Won’t leave his name, and when I suggest he talk to someone else, he seems to disappear.”

  “What’s he look like?” She’d never asked before; hadn’t had the time or the interest, but the man was starting to get on her nerves—worry her a little.

  “That’s the kicker,” Louise said, showing off even white teeth in her first smile of the afternoon. “He looks like he could have stepped off the pages of a Marlboro ad. You know the kind. Rugged, not polished, black hair, gray eyes that don’t smile much. Intense. Six feet, maybe six-one or -two, lean and always dressed in jeans and a shirt—no tie, just some kind of leather jacket that’s seen better years.”

  “So he doesn’t scare you?”

  “Not really, but then I don’t scare easily,” Louise said, her smile fading. Miranda thought about Louise’s ex-husband, a man who had battered her, threatening her life for several years, before Louise had found the strength to get out and walk away from a violent marriage. “But there’s something about him I don’t trust. When he couldn’t get past me, he stopped by Debbie’s desk, leaned his hips against it, smiled, and turned on the charm.”

  “He had some?” Miranda asked.

  “Yeah—a little. If you like men who can turn it on at will—crooked smile, dimple, all at once Mr. Hard-As-Nails is the Boy Next Door. That’s what’s scary about him, if you ask me. Anyway, he started asking Debbie all sorts of questions. About you. Personal questions. She couldn’t answer ’em, of course, was practically tongue-tied around the man, and when I strolled over, he made a quick exit.”

  “Maybe he’s a reporter.” Slinging the strap of her purse over her shoulder, Miranda hauled her briefcase from the desk.

  “Then why not leave a card? A phone number? Make a damned appointment? H
uh? I’m telling you, girl, there’s something not right about this guy. He’s not on the up-and-up.”

  “We get a lot of those around here.”

  Louise shook her head. Black curls glistened under the harsh fluorescent lights. “No, we don’t, honey, not in the DA’s office, and even though the guy doesn’t look like a crazy with a gun, you can’t be too careful these days.”

  “Petrillo’s checking him out, though, right?”

  Louise lifted a shoulder. “Trying to.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Miranda said, pausing at the door. “I’ve got a few days off. Maybe whoever he is, he’ll give up and crawl back under the rock he calls home.”

  “Like Ronnie Klug did.”

  The muscles in the back of Miranda’s neck tightened, and she nearly missed a step. Inadvertently, she touched her throat, felt the tiny trace of a scar, then let her hand drop.

  “I don’t think—”

  “This could be another guy you sent to prison, Randa. You’ve been at this job long enough that some of those boys are getting out now.”

  “The man who was here is an ex-con?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t look like it, but you can’t ever tell. Remember Ted Bundy? Good-looking. Charming. A real lady-killer.”

  Couldn’t argue with that kind of logic. “Point well taken.”

  “Okay. So Petrillo’s looking through mug shots of every guy or boyfriend of a woman you sent away. Trouble is, the list is pretty long.”

  “Besides, you can always reach me on my cell phone or e-mail.”

  “By then it might be too late.”

  “Look, Louise. Don’t lose any sleep over it, okay? Just because a guy comes snooping around—”

  “Is reason enough to be worried. This man looks determined, the kind of person who doesn’t give up without one helluva fight. I’m telling you, Miranda, watch that back of yours while you’re on vacation.”

  Vacation. If Louise only knew what Miranda was really doing—where she was going.

  Miranda wasn’t usually a woman prone to a case of nerves, but Louise’s worries, plus the mention of Ronnie Klug, had gotten to her. Ronnie Klug and his twelve-inch knife.

  The fact that she was leaving town for a meeting—no, make that command performance—with her father didn’t help ease the knots in her stomach as she made her way to her car. Dutch Holland was used to getting his way, from his ex-wife and children as well as his hundreds of employees. And now, for some unknown reason, he wanted to see his firstborn.

  Throwing her briefcase and coat into the trunk, she took one sweeping glance around the parking garage, then peered through the window and into the backseat of her Volvo. No one appeared to be lurking in the corners. No sinister figure in the shadows. Thank God.

  Miranda slid behind the wheel and tried to ignore a blistering headache that was beginning to pound at her temples.

  Within minutes she edged into traffic crawling steadfastly out of the city. The air-conditioning unit in the car was on the fritz, so she rolled down the window and studied the trunk of a Buick she was following. A gust of breathless summer air raced into the warm interior. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the rearview mirror. Not a pretty sight. Her lipstick had faded, her mascara rubbed off, and a network of tiny red lines was visible in her eyes. Her hair, pulled back into a tight knot at the base of her skull, was beginning to come loose. “Great,” she muttered, switching lanes as she yanked her hair free and tossed the thick rubber band onto the seat next to her. “Just great.”

  Who was the guy who’d been asking questions about her, and why was he nosing around now, when all hell seemed to be breaking loose? When her father, curse him, had decided to yank on his patriarchal strings again? When her life was falling apart?

  “Pull yourself together,” she told herself; she couldn’t afford to fall apart. Not now. She’d worked too hard to get where she was, climbed up the ladder in the DA’s office one hard-fought rung at a time and suffered her share of emotional as well as physical hardships in the process. One mysterious guy loitering around wasn’t going to get to her. She wouldn’t, couldn’t allow it. She’d spent too many years feeling victimized, spent too much money on shrinks to finally put her past behind her, kept her secrets far too long to lose it all now.

  Nor was the summons from dear old Dad—a curt phone message left on her answering machine going to be her undoing. Running the fingers of one hand through her hair, massaging her scalp and letting the wind unwind the tangled strands, she drove steadily west, into the setting sun.

  Dutch Holland had ordered her to meet him at the family home by the lake of all places. She had thought that the old lodge had been boarded up for years, hoped that the slipcovers and sheets that had been draped over the furniture would never be removed, prayed that the secrets hidden away in that monstrosity of a cabin would be buried forever.

  “Too bad,” she muttered under her breath as she braked for a road construction crew that was packing up for the day. She maneuvered around the orange cones as one of the crewmen tossed a shovel into the back of a tar-spattered truck. A flagger—a woman in a fluorescent orange vest—paused to light a cigarette before stepping into the vehicle.

  Miranda squinted against the sun. A bothersome thought bored its way into her mind. Was it possible that the mystery man who had shown up asking questions in her office was somehow connected to the summons from her father? Or was it just a coincidence that he appeared about the same time her estranged family began making demands again?

  No way. Miranda Holland had been working for the law too long to believe in coincidence.

  Three

  “It’s now or never.” So why not never?

  Miranda turned off the Volvo’s engine and heard it tick as it cooled. Through the bug-spattered windshield, she saw the placid water of the lake and she bit her lip. In her mind’s eye she was eighteen, dripping wet, scared to death, and lying through her chattering teeth. “Oh, God,” she whispered, and dropped her head for a second, resting her forehead on the steering wheel. She hadn’t been back here since that summer.

  “Get a grip.” She couldn’t fall apart now. Not after all the years she’d spent making something of herself, proving to her father and the world that she was more than Dutch Holland’s daughter.

  Grabbing her purse and coat, she climbed out of the car, then walked along the path leading to the wide front porch that skirted the lodge. She rapped sharply on the front door, then didn’t wait for a response. She tried the knob and the latch gave way. Suddenly she was in the house where she’d grown up, and dozens of memories tripped through her mind. Innocent memories of a pampered childhood with her two sisters, absent father, and distracted mother. Darker images from her adolescent years when she alone knew that her parents’ marriage was disintegrating, that whatever love they’d shared had slipped through their fingers. And finally that dark, fateful night when all their lives had been altered forever.

  As she walked through the foyer, she was assailed by the scents of pine and solvent, wax and detergent. Hardwood floors gleamed to a soft patina as lamps, freshly dusted, cast pools of light on the newly waxed oak.

  “Dad?” she called, running her fingers along the railing of the stairs that climbed three floors. There had once been a graceful wooden salmon arching upon the final post, but the fish, and all the other creatures that were carved into the railing, had been hacked away years before. Now only the scarred post remained.

  “Back here.” Just the sound of his voice caused her throat to constrict a little. For the first eighteen years of her life it had been her mission to please him, to prove to him that she was just as good as any son he might have sired. He had never bothered to hide the fact that he’d wanted boys—strong, strapping sons to someday take over the business—and Miranda had attempted to fill the void caused by the lack of male heirs. Of course, all her attempts had been a futile waste of time.

  Fist clenched around the strap of her purse
, she marched through the wide front hallway toward the main room in the back of the lodge, a room with a ceiling that soared three stories and boasted a wall of glass that overlooked the smooth waters of the lake.

  Her father was seated in his favorite chair, a leather recliner placed strategically near the cold hearth of the fireplace. Dressed in a suit and tie, crisp white shirt, and shoes polished to a blinding gloss, he didn’t bother to rise, just cradled his drink as he leaned back and watched her enter. A newspaper lay open on the table next to his chair, and all the furniture, long draped, was uncovered. Even the grand piano on which she’d taken years of lessons was poised in the corner, as if ready for gifted hands to float over the keys and fill this old lodge with music again.

  “Miranda.” Dutch’s voice was rough and cracked a little. “You look just like—”

  “I know, I know.” She forced a smile. “More like Mom every day.”

  “She was—still is, I imagine—a beautiful woman.”

  “Should I take that as a compliment?” she asked, and wondered what it was he really wanted after all these years, when her contact with him had been sporadic at best.

  “Do.”

  His eyes were serious, but sparkled just a little as he waved her toward one of the high-backed chairs facing him. “You were always the prompt one. Pour yourself a drink and sit down.”

  She wasn’t so easily put at ease. “The prompt one?” Tossing her coat over the back of the couch, she asked, “What’s this all about?” Crossing her arms under her breasts, hoping to appear cool and professional, not a little lost child of twelve who had overheard the horrid arguments between her parents, she wondered why, when she wasn’t intimidated by harsh judges, oily defense attorneys, or hardened criminals, this one man could shake her confidence as no one else ever could. Most of her life Miranda had tried and failed to please her father. Only recently had she quit beating her head against the wall by seeking his approval. Only in the past few years had she finally come to terms with her relationship with him and become her own woman. She didn’t really give a damn if he approved of her or not.