“But there’s more to the story. I have a feeling, because of the way everyone reacts whenever his name is brought up, that people are keeping something from me.”
Nick’s lips folded over his teeth. He knew. She could read it in his eyes.
“What is it?” she prodded. “Damn it, Nick . . . I think I deserve to know.”
Walking to the window, he hesitated, raked his fingers through his hair and stared outside. “I suppose you have that right.”
“Damned straight.”
He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes serious, and Marla braced herself as he sat on the arm of an overstuffed chair. “There was an accident years ago. You were around four, I guess, Rory under two. Your mother had you both in the car, ready to go somewhere and I have no idea where it was, but she had you both buckled and strapped in when she had to run back into the house. Rory pitched a fit, you unbuckled him, and he got out of the car. You must’ve closed the door and when Victoria hurried back, she didn’t notice that her son wasn’t in his car seat but was outside the car, squatting near the rear wheel, probably looking at an insect or something on the driveway. She threw the car into reverse and ran over him.”
“No.” Marla’s hand flew to her mouth. Her insides twisted painfully.
“He wasn’t killed, of course, but the brain damage was severe. Irreversible. The doctors were able to save his life, but that’s about all.”
Marla’s stomach turned over. She felt as cold as if a blue Norther had knifed through her bones. “I had no idea,” she whispered, expecting something—some spark of a memory to flash behind her eyes. None came. Nothing at all and she decided that this time it might be a blessing.
“You were barely more than a toddler yourself at the time.”
“But they . . . my parents . . . did they blame me?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “You’re the only one who knows that.”
“No. There are two of us. Me and my father.” She stood and walked to the foyer. “Maybe it’s time I found out just where I stand with dear old Dad,” she suggested. “I think I should visit him.” The idea gained strength and she thought of the keys in her pocket. Surely some of them would fit into the ignitions of the cars in the garage whether Eugenia drove or not. But Marla didn’t dare let on that she had her mother-in-law’s keyring. Not until she’d let herself into the office again.
Nick walked into the foyer. “Do you want me to take you?”
“Yes.” Suddenly she was certain. Not only did she want to see her father, but she wanted Nick with her. She handed him the pictures of Pam Delacroix. “The sooner the better.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Just let me grab a coat, and a purse and . . .” It occurred to her then she had no wallet, no driver’s license, no credit cards, not even an insurance card. It was as if she had no identity, none whatsoever. “I’ll be down in a minute.” She hurried upstairs, found a leather purse with a shoulder strap, a pair of sunglasses in the top drawer and a tube of lipstick. She thought of the keys in her pocket and decided it would be best to hide them . . . but where? Somewhere where they couldn’t be found. She glanced around the room and frowned. There were too many servants and relatives who had access to her private quarters. Nowhere was safe, especially since Eugenia was on a search for the keys. Marla started to put them in her handbag, thought better of it and slid the keyring back into her jeans pocket where she could feel their presence.
She’d have to use them and soon or have duplicates made, but then she didn’t have so much as a dime on her and no checkbook or debit card . . . or anything. “Damn it all anyway,” she muttered, hurrying down the stairs.
No ID. No money. No car. No damned memory.
It was as if she really didn’t exist.
Chapter Fourteen
“They fished Santiago’s lab coat out of the bay,” Janet Quinn said as she stuck her head into Paterno’s office. Behind her the click of fingers on keyboards, whir of fax machines and buzz of conversation drowned out some piped-in music that no one listened to anyway. “The ID tag was still intact, but it was a little hard to read. Someone had crushed a cigarette into it, marred up the picture pretty good. Then, of course, the water took its toll.” She eased into the room and slid a couple pieces of typewritten paper across his desk. “Here’s the report. Everything’s down in Evidence if you want to take a look at it.”
“Don’t suppose there were any prints on the tag?” Paterno asked without much hope. He picked up the sheets of paper and gave them a cursory once-over. Whoever was behind this Cahill mess was too smart to be caught making so basic a mistake.
“Just Santiago’s.” She plopped herself into a chair.
“And the lab coat?”
“Nope.”
“Figures.” He shifted a tasteless wad of gum from one side of his mouth to the other. “I talked to Crane Delacroix this morning,” Paterno said, remembering his short conversation with Pamela’s ex-husband.
“Enlightening?”
“He didn’t want to say too much. I think he’s got a lawsuit pending against the Cahill family, though nothing’s been filed as yet and the Cahills have a way of settling out of court. Anyway, he didn’t have many kind words to say about his ex-wife. Said she’d filled their daughter’s head with all sorts of nonsense and that was the reason the kid had quit school, also said that Pam had mentioned to him that she was about to come into a lot of money. When he asked her about it, she was evasive, said she was working on a book deal, but seemed to regret even bragging to him. The way he figured it, she was just blowing smoke.”
“What do you think?” Janet asked.
“I know she was working on a book.” When Janet seemed about to ask where he’d gotten the information, he said, “Don’t ask.”
“Damn, Paterno, what’d you do?”
He waved off the question. “Let’s get a search warrant for her house, have a look at her files, maybe catch a clue that’ll help us.”
Janet, who, to Tony Paterno’s knowledge, had never so much as bent the rules a hair in the name of justice, eyed him warily. “What did you do?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Hell, Paterno, if you aren’t careful, you’re gonna screw this up.”
“Not this one.”
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a small notebook and, taking a pen from the cup holder on his desk, scribbled a note to herself. “I’ll get on it right away. Did the ex-Mr. Pam have anything else to say?”
“Not a whole lot. When I asked him about his daughter, he said they weren’t speaking, that he’d seen her at Pam’s funeral but nothing since. She’s married and lives in the Valley somewhere—he thinks around Napa or Santa Rosa, but being the attentive father he is—he didn’t have an address or phone number. Just a name. Julie Johnson. The husband is Robert, but he and his father-in-law haven’t met.” Paterno impaled Janet with his gaze. “As I said, not exactly a hands-on kinda father. Anyway, I think we should track her down, see what she has to say.”
“Julie Johnson’s a pretty common name.”
“Yeah, but Julie Delacroix Johnson isn’t and I’ve already got her social security number. Check DMV, the Internet, marriage records.” Then he leaned back in his chair and dropped the bomb. “Julie Johnson was the name of the girl who made noises about filing charges against the Cahills.”
“What?” Janet said, a smile crawling from one side of her mouth to the other.
“That’s right. Same name. Now, at the time the girl went to Cahill House, she claimed she wasn’t married. It could be a coincidence.”
“My ass.”
Paterno sniggered. “My guess is the Delacroix girl got herself knocked up, ended up at Cahill House, and the preacher couldn’t keep his hands off her . . . or maybe she made up a story about the reverend. I want to know what happened to her next.”
“I’ll find out,” Janet promised. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. Marla Cahill called and cla
imed that her memory is coming back. Not all of it, mind you, just bits and pieces, but enough that she remembers being in the car with Pam Delacroix. She doesn’t know why or where they were going or even how close a friend she was with the other woman, but she says that she saw someone in the road, lit up like the Goddamned Fourth of July, the way she tells it. Both she and Biggs swerved to miss the bastard. She went to one side of the road, the trucker the other.”
“Jesus, do you believe that?”
“Not yet. She’s coming in later today to make a formal statement, then we’ll see.”
“What happened to the guy who ran into the road?”
“Since he wasn’t flattened into a pancake and there was no trace of a body anywhere in the woods, I assumed he got away, but I’m checking with the hospitals in the area, see if anyone was admitted that night or the next morning. Maybe when Mrs. Cahill gets here she can give us a better description, but I doubt it.”
His phone rang and he answered on the first ring with one hand while motioning Janet to stay seated with the other. The call was short, a report from the lab on a murder case he was working that had occurred off Lombard Street a couple of nights before. He hung up and leaned back so far his chair groaned in protest.
“Why would anyone be in the middle of the road up there in the mountains?” Janet asked.
“And why would he seem to glow?” Paterno’s mind sifted through the possibilities.
“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe Marla Cahill was blinded by the truck’s headlights.”
“She claims that this was different, that the light came from the guy in the road, that she saw the truck’s beams a second or so later and by then it was too late.”
Behind her glasses, Janet Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t think this has anything to do with the pieces of that mirror we found up there, do you?”
“Don’t know.” Paterno scratched his chin.
“What if the guy held up a mirror—like a hand mirror of some kind—so that it threw the beams of the Mercedes’ headlights back into the driver’s eyes?”
“Why not just take a huge flashlight? Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“Too heavy and bulky, hard to dispose of if he was caught.”
Paterno tented his hands under his chin. “Why would anyone jump in front of a car like that?”
“To make sure she saw him long enough to duck out of the way. It gives him more distance, right? Because the glass is so reflective. Otherwise he’d have to wait until she caught him in her beams. This gives him a couple more seconds and every second would have counted. He knew that she’d slam on her brakes and swerve to avoid him. The road was wet, she’d probably crank hard on the wheel, slam on her brakes, try to avoid hitting whatever was in the middle of the road, then smash into the guardrail,” Janet said, thinking aloud, speaking faster and faster as she visualized the scene in her mind. “The guardrail was weak there, where she went through, remember, as if the metal had been welded? But the Highway Department had no records of any repair work.”
“So you’re thinking the weld was made to weaken the rail rather than patch it up or strengthen it.”
“Precisely!” She thumped her fingers on the corner of his desk and grinned widely.
“I think we’d better slow down a minute here,” Paterno said, refusing to be caught up in her enthusiasm. There were too many other possibilities to consider. “Don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions? Who would want Marla Cahill dead? And why not kill her outright—push her down a flight of stairs, or slit her throat? Why all this trouble? Just to make it look like an accident? I’m not buying it. The plan’s too risky. It would be too easy to get the wrong car.”
“Like the semi driven by Biggs.”
“Unless we’ve got all this wrong and Biggs was the intended victim,” Paterno thought aloud. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to see that he never woke up, while Marla Cahill went home to her private estate. Maybe Biggs was the target all along.”
“Except that he’s clean as a whistle, remember? The Boy Scout.”
“Unlike anyone related to the Cahill family.” Paterno gnawed on his stale gum. Shit, this case was driving him nuts. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what Mrs. Cahill has to say.”
In Nick’s opinion, Conrad Amhurst may as well have been dead. Lying flat on his back, tubes running in and out of his body, a morphine patch keeping his pain at bay, the old man rolled one eye toward the doorway of his private room as Marla tapped on the doorjamb. “Dad?” she said, approaching the bed while Nick lagged behind. He didn’t want to mess up the reunion, if that’s what the hell it was, and this place, for all its modern conveniences and view of the bay, made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like rest homes any better than he did hospitals.
A leather recliner occupied one corner of the private room, a door opened to a bath with one of those showers that were flush with the floor so that a wheelchair could be rolled under the spray, and the wheelchair itself was pushed into a corner. The room had industrial grade carpet, cheery wall paper and a view of Sausalito across this stretch of the Bay. But it still felt and smelled like an institution. Hot. Stuffy. And the man on the bed was as near death’s door as any mortal could be.
Marla touched the back of one of Conrad’s bony hands. “It’s Marla.”
Conrad lolled his head to one side and stared up at her through pain clouded eyes. “Marla?” he repeated, confusion evident in his features. Once a robust man who had carried himself with pride, he’d been ravaged by age and disease, reduced to a skeleton. His skin was pale and spotted, his gray hair so thin his scalp was visible, but deep in the sunken holes that held his eyes, there was a flare of distrust. “No.” He jerked his hand from hers, reached to the bedside table and fumbled for his glasses. With some effort he managed to slide them up his nose, to stare at her through owlish lenses.
“Yes, yes, I know I look different, but it’s because I’ve been in an accident . . .” she hurried to explain, “but I’m okay now.”
His lips pulled into a scowl as he stared at her.
“I cut my hair, but—”
“You’re not Marla.” Conrad’s gaze moved beyond her to land on Nick. In a flash of lucidity he added, “And you’re not my son-in-law.” Suspicious eyes glared up through his thick lenses. “Marla . . . She . . . was here the other day. With her husband.”
“No, Dad, I wasn’t here. I can’t speak for Alex, but—”
“She was here, damn it. You weren’t,” he said thickly, his voice gruff and furious, his face turning red. “An imposter, that’s what you are. You’re both imposters.” He motioned toward the window ledge where pictures of Marla, Alex and Cissy were propped. Next to the portraits was a framed snapshot of James at birth. “That’s Marla and her family.”
“Yes, Dad, I know, I just came with Nick because he could drive me and—”
“And you thought because I’m about to meet my maker you could come in here and pull the wool over my eyes.” The look he sent her was filled with contempt and a shiver raced down her spine because she sensed he’d studied her with the same disdain in the past. “You never understood, did you?” he rasped, his old voice fading. “You’re not my daughter.”
“But—” she said, then stopped short, her skin paling, her lips trembling. For a second she clutched the rails of the hospital bed. Her eyes rounded as if she’d had an epiphany. “Oh, God—”
“Get out of here, Kylie,” Conrad whispered once again, the malice in his eyes magnified by his glasses. Pure, raw hatred flared his nostrils. “And don’t ever come back. You’re never getting a dime from me, do you understand?” With all the effort he could muster he flung a hand toward the railing and fumbled for a swtich. “Get out. Now!”
She backed up a step.
Footsteps hurried down the hallway and Marla turned as a big-bosomed nurse with a dour expression bustled through the doorway. “Mr. Amhurst called the nurse’s station,” she explained as she reached Conra
d’s bedside. “Is there something you wanted, Mr. Amhurst?”
“Yes,” Conrad hissed so hard, spittle sprayed from his thin, pale lips. “Get these people out of here and never let them back in!”
“But she’s your daughter,” the nurse said gently, trying to mollify her patient.
“Bah! She’s not mine. No matter what that whore of a mother of hers says.”
“Mr. Amhurst!” The nurse feigned shock, though, the way Nick figured it, she was probably used to the old man’s foul language and tirades. The nurse sent Marla a look that quietly told her Conrad Amhurst wasn’t completely in his right mind.
“Get them out and be quick about it,” he ordered, and the nurse ushered them out of the room.
“It’s the morphine,” she said. “Sometimes he’s completely lucid, others . . . well, he can’t distinguish reality from his dreams. Please understand, he’s very ill.”
“Was my husband here?” Marla asked, reeling from her father’s violent rejection. It was as if he hated her. “Alex Cahill, did he stop by . . . with someone?”
“Not on my shift, but you might check with the desk. Maybe someone there might remember. Guests are supposed to check in, to register, but not many do.”
“We didn’t,” Nick said as a bell dinged softly and the call light over the doorway of Conrad’s room blinked on again. “I see it’s one of those days,” the nurse apologized as she turned on her heel.
“We’re going.” Nick grabbed Marla by the elbow and halfpulled her down the long carpeted hallway. Smooth wooden rails were mounted along the walls of the corridor and wide windows opened to manicured lawns with neatly tended flower beds and an expansive view of the Bay. Every so often there was a sitting area, filled with couches and chairs, lamps and tables that, Nick suspected, were rarely used. The complex was plush. Elegant. But it was still a home. An institution. A place for rich people to come to die.
At the front desk, Nick checked the register. If Alex had appeared in the last few days, he hadn’t bothered to sign in. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Marla. A guard buzzed them through electronically locked French doors and Nick felt better. God, that place was a prison. No matter how it was dressed up.