Текст книги "In Close"
Автор книги: Brenda Novak
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 13 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 5 страниц]
“David was one of my closest friends.”
“And that gives you first dibs on his widow?”
“He’d rather it was me than you!”
“How do you know? Did he come to you in a dream?”
“You bastard!”
“I’ve never liked you much, either,” he said and hung up.
Claire watched him set down the phone. “What was that all about?”
“You have a not-so-secret admirer.”
“Rusty knows I’m here?”
“I think he’s been over to your place a number of times tonight and realized you’re not there.”
She covered her face with the hand that wasn’t clutching the towel.
“Would you like me to take you home?” he asked.
“No, definitely not.” Dropping her hand, she looked up at him. “Especially if he’s going to be hanging around my house to see if and when I return.”
“I could tell him to leave you alone.”
“But I wouldn’t want to see what you might have to do to enforce it. And he’ll have to leave me alone if I stay here. So will Leanne. I just… I need some sleep.”
“Dry your hair,” he said. “You can have the bed.”
When she came back into the room she was wearing the T-shirt he’d given her when he provided the towels. He had no idea what she had on underneath, but he spent the next two hours on the couch wondering about it.
10
Claire woke to the smell of bacon and knew that Isaac was planning to force-feed her another meal. “Don’t make any for me,” she yelled. “I’m not hungry!”
He opened the door and stood there, freshly showered and holding a spatula. “In case you haven’t heard, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
He was being a smart-ass. She covered a yawn. “It hasn’t been that long since you fed me a steak.”
One dark eyebrow arched. “Don’t be rude to your host.”
“I have hair clients. I have to go.”
“The food will be done by the time you finish getting ready.”
“I don’t have anything to get ready with. I’m just going to pull on my clothes.”
“And then you’ll eat.”
“No, then I’ll leave.” She gave a cocky laugh as if she’d do exactly as she pleased and started to get out of bed, but she’d underestimated his determination. Hauling her over one shoulder, he carried her out of the bedroom.
“So you are wearing panties,” he muttered when the T-shirt floated up and he inadvertently touched her bottom.
“What does that have to do with anything?” she gasped.
“Everything.”
He was flirting with her, which was something she needed to ignore. He deposited her on a chair at the kitchen table. Then he pointed his spatula at her and ordered her to remain where she was.
“Here you go,” he said, delivering her plate.
She glared at the eggs, bacon and toast. “I should’ve gone home last night.”
“You had a choice.”
“I didn’t know giving me a place to hide came with mandatory calorie consumption.”
“I’m looking out for you. We’re friends now, remember?”
She rolled her eyes. “I liked you better as a lover.”
“That’s not what you said before.” His grin grew more meaningful. “But I sort of liked that program myself. Let me know if you ever want to go back to it.”
She felt she’d probably have more of him this way. If they were merely friends he’d have no reason to throw up his defenses or block her out. If they were merely friends she wouldn’t expect more of him than he was willing to give. She’d solved their dilemma…at last. All—friends and lovers—was more than he could handle. None was less than she wanted. So they were meeting in the middle. Perfect. Except for the physical craving that seemed to grow sharper with each passing moment.
She lowered her eyes before he could read what she was feeling. “I’m not that stupid.”
“Then you can be strong for both of us,” he said, and cracked another egg into his frying pan.
“Do you always cook a big breakfast—one with so much…animal fat?”
“Only when I have someone I need to fatten up.”
She crossed her legs as she toyed with her fork. “And how often is that?”
“Actually, this a first for me.”
“And if I eat like a good little girl?” she quipped.
“I’ll give you a ride home so you don’t miss all your appointments.”
“Generous of you,” she said sarcastically.
“Do I have something else you want?”
He had a lot to offer a woman, but marriage and family wasn’t on the list, and she wanted both. After David, she’d never be satisfied with a casual relationship. “I’d like a copy of that hippo picture.” She indicated the photograph she admired.
His eyes moved to it. “I could arrange that. Since we’re friends and all.” He brought his own plate to the table. “But there is one catch.”
“What’s that?”
“I need something from you in return.”
“And that is…”
She was expecting him to tease her some more, but he sobered. “Les Weaver’s contact information.”
Nearly dropping her fork, she cleared her throat. “You’re going to call him?”
“I have some questions for him, yes.”
Could the man who’d sent her that money have shot David on purpose? “The only thing I remember is that he’s from Coeur d’Alene.”
“Do you have his phone number?”
“At home somewhere. I kept a copy of the check he sent just in case I ever get audited by the IRS.”
“Great.”
She managed to choke down a few bites of scrambled egg while he made quick work of his own breakfast. “Isaac?”
His mouth was full so he didn’t answer, but he raised his head to let her know he was listening.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” he said after he swallowed. “Helping me.”
His eyes met hers. “Maybe I don’t want you to think I’m all bad.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” she said uncertainly. He didn’t care what she or anyone else thought, and he’d done his best—for years—to make sure everyone knew it.
Taking his plate, he went to rinse it in the sink. “Yeah, I’m joking.”
It was eight o’clock, early enough that Claire hoped she’d be able to slip into her house without being seen by her sister. Leanne wasn’t an early riser, particularly if she’d been drinking the night before. But she was up and around today, and must’ve been watching through the window, because she came rolling toward Claire the minute Claire got out of Isaac’s truck.
“Where’ve you been?” she demanded as he drove off.
Claire smoothed her clothes. She didn’t want her sister to jump to any conclusions—as unavoidable as that seemed after having been out all night. “I ran into a bit of trouble.”
Eyes narrowed with suspicion and curiosity, her sister stared after Isaac’s truck. Claire hoped Leanne wouldn’t recognize it, but that wasn’t likely. Everyone knew Isaac. Thanks to the success of his work and his reputation for being enigmatic, he was a local celebrity. And since he took his vehicle off-road so often in order to reach the remote places where he filmed, it had a lift kit, a row bar with floodlights and a giant locking tool chest that made it distinctive.
“Trouble?” Leanne echoed. “What kind of trouble? Don’t tell me you’ve gone back to your old flame. Especially after what you said to me about stirring up gossip.”
Ducking her head, Claire searched her purse for her house key. “No, he just…put me up for the night.”
Leanne followed her to the door. “You’re telling me you stayed with Isaac Morgan but didn’t have sex with him, even for old times’ sake?”
Claire wished she’d never told Leanne about Isaac, but she had. Her whole family knew he’d broken her heart and the news had traveled from there.
“I didn’t sleep with him. Really.” For once… Her denial would be more convincing if she reminded her sister that she was still grieving over David, that she hadn’t even been willing to date anyone. But she’d been intimate with Isaac just the night before and felt too slimy using her love for her dead husband to support what was essentially a lie.
“That makes no sense.”
“What are you talking about?”
Claire stepped back and Leanne maneuvered herself into the living room, where she wheeled around to confront Claire. “What else would he want with you?”
“Maybe he likes me, Leanne,” she said evenly as she closed the door behind them. “Maybe he was being a nice, compassionate member of the community.”
“Right!” Leanne added a dramatic roll of her eyes. “If I remember correctly, he was never that compassionate to you before. You haven’t said much about him since you married David, but I’ve always gotten the impression that you don’t like him…after what happened.”
“It’s not like we’re enemies.” She explained about going out with Rusty and how she’d been walking on the side of the road when Isaac picked her up.
“So why didn’t he bring you here?”
“He said I needed to eat, but nothing was open.”
“You’re telling me Isaac wanted to make you dinner?”
It was true; he’d been set on it. But Claire wasn’t sure she’d believe it if she were Leanne. “He says I’m too thin.”
“Why does he care?”
Claire didn’t have an answer for that. If she had to guess, she’d say he felt guilty for the way their relationship had ended. But there was no telling what Isaac thought. For one thing, it could change from day to day depending on his mood. “Who knows?”
“What about after dinner?”
Grateful for the chance to turn her back, Claire put her purse on the kitchen counter. “I dozed off on the couch while he was cleaning up, so he threw a blanket over me and let me sleep.”
“That’s so unlike anything I’ve ever heard about him,” Leanne marveled. “He thinks he’s too good for the rest of us. He doesn’t mind using locals to get off—you learned that the hard way—but he’d never take anyone in Pineview seriously. We’re all hicks to the famous photographer.”
“Thanks for the reminder, but he loves this place.” He’d just told her so.
“He likes living in a remote location. That doesn’t mean he likes the people here.”
Claire had heard others charge Isaac with the same thing. He could seem arrogant. But some of that was simply a product of being so appealing. His good looks, his talent and keen mind intimidated people, made them search for some flaw in order to prove he wasn’t as perfect as he seemed. And he was more than willing to expose every weakness, just to show that he didn’t need their approval. “Let’s…give him the benefit of the doubt, okay?”
“He does you one kindness after how he treated you before and now you’re sticking up for him?”
Again she regretted ever letting her sister know how she’d felt about him. “I’m not sticking up for him. I’m trying to look at the whole picture. We were together a long time ago, and people change. He’s…guarded, but don’t forget he was abandoned as a little boy, then raised by Old Man Tippy, who scarcely said a word that wasn’t about his beloved photography. You remember how Tippy was. It’s understandable that Isaac might be unwilling—or unable—to get close to people.”
Leanne maneuvered her chair past the couch. “Oh, come on. He gets close to people all the time. He was close to you once. And there’ve certainly been others who’ve visited his place after dark and gone home so well-ridden they can hardly walk.”
The crudeness of that statement made Claire cringe. She didn’t like the image it created, or how foolish it implied she’d been. But Leanne wasn’t feeling the contempt she pretended to feel, at least not exclusively. Claire sensed envy, too—and the last thing she needed was for Leanne to come on to Isaac.
“He’s made some mistakes, but I don’t think he’s as…bad as he once was.” After she’d stopped sleeping with him, Isaac had gone from one girl to the next. Word of his “sexcapades” had spread all over town. There’d even been rumors that he was having an affair with Claudia Hampton, a rich older woman whose husband, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, stayed in Houston most of the time she’d lived in Pineview and rarely bothered to visit.
“You’re convinced he isn’t a womanizer anymore? Just because he made you dinner without taking you to bed?”
Leanne didn’t believe a man like Isaac was likely to change, and she was probably right. But Claire refused to concede the point. “I’m saying we don’t really know, so why judge?”
“He makes his true self impossible to miss!”
“Maybe he uses his hard-ass image to hide who he really is.”
“And why would he do that?”
“It’s a defense mechanism. If everyone thinks the worst of him he has no expectations to meet and no disappointment to face.”
“Where did you learn that psychobabble bullshit?” she said with a laugh.
It was just something she’d been thinking about now that she was older and could look at the situation from a perspective less affected by her own unfulfilled desires. But even if she was right, understanding the reason for his sharp angles didn’t make them any less capable of cutting anyone who ventured too close, and she wasn’t about to forget that. “Could you lay off? What he does isn’t any of our business.”
“Whatever you say, as long as you realize that it doesn’t matter whether or not he helped you out last night. Isaac Morgan hasn’t changed as much as you want to believe. He’s done everything he can to earn his reputation.”
And Leanne was earning hers, which made it ironic that she was the one pointing a finger. But Claire wasn’t going to make an issue of it. Her sister had reasons for her behavior, too. “I’ve got to shower. My first appointment will be here in forty minutes.”
“Wait a second. I came over because…I want to explain something before you…jump to the wrong conclusion.”
Her halting words alerted Claire that Isaac was no longer the subject of their conversation. “I’m listening.”
“What you asked me yesterday about…about being out of school on the day Mom went missing.”
Claire stiffened. Thanks to what Tug had told her, she didn’t want to discuss this. She was surprised Leanne had even brought it up. “Yes?”
“I know you’ve been told.”
Their stepfather must’ve felt too guilty to keep his indiscretion to himself. Claire kneaded her forehead so she wouldn’t have to look at her sister. “Is it true?”
“I had a crush on Joe, thought I was in love with him.”
“That’s a yes.”
Silence.
Claire had to look at Leanne now. “He was married. And two and a half times your age. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking. I was thirteen, okay?”
“But…how did you even get hold of a video camera?”
“I borrowed Mom’s. Dad had just given it to her for Christmas, remember, and I was using it for a school project at the time. I’m embarrassed, and I have been for years, but…there’s more to what happened than my stupid mistake. That’s the part you need to hear if you want to find Mom.”
A chill ran up Claire’s spine. “Tell me.”
“Mom was having an affair with Joe.”
Claire curved her fingernails into her palms. “No.”
“Yes!”
“What makes you so sure?”
“That’s why she freaked out. She considered him her man, her guilty pleasure, and was afraid he’d been messing around with both of us. So the confrontation at his place involved as much accusation as anything else. That’s why he showed her the tape. So he could blame it all on me.”
Claire grappled to understand how such a situation might have played out. “She thought he acted on your…overtures?”
“Worse. He exposed himself to me first.”
Remembering how charitable she’d been feeling toward Joe at the bar, Claire stepped back. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No. We’d been flirting for weeks. A thirteen-year-old girl doesn’t do something that bold out of the blue, without some expectation that it’ll be welcomed.”
That made sense, but… “Mom wouldn’t believe it?”
“Of course not. Not after that tape.”
Claire shook her head. “I can’t believe what you’re saying, either.”
Leanne’s jaw dropped. “What part of it?”
“All of it. That he came on to you. That you and he had a relationship. That Mom was jealous instead of hurt and sickened by what you’d done.”
“You don’t trust me? Just because I didn’t want to tell you I masturbated on video for a man I thought I loved?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Claire pressed cold hands to her hot face. “I’m saying you’ve been keeping secrets about that day for a long time. How do I know even this is the full truth?”
“Because I don’t have anything to hide anymore! I’ve told you the worst of it!”
But she wasn’t as embarrassed as she should’ve been. She was almost…defiant or…or proud in some perverse way. As if she thought it was some kind of feather in her cap that she could interest a married man at such a young age—or compete with her own mother. “You’re reacting to the rumors, that’s all. Maybe you’re projecting. It’s easy to tell yourself you have no reason to feel bad for what you’ve done when someone else has misbehaved, too.”
At that, Leanne started to laugh. “I saw the way they were together that day, the way his eyes followed her around the room, the way he tried to touch her. It wasn’t how you’d expect an acquaintance to behave.”
“She was probably heartbroken to think her young daughter would make a pornographic video, and he was trying to comfort her.”
Leanne threw up her hands. “This is a waste of time. You see Mom through rose-colored glasses and no amount of reality will change your mind.”
“Where is the video?” Maybe there was something on that, something Leanne had said or done to preface her actions that would clarify the situation. It wasn’t what Claire wanted to view and yet she couldn’t judge what Leanne was thinking back then without seeing at least the beginning.
“Mom destroyed it. She ripped out the tape, then set fire to it in our fireplace.”
Claire was down to twenty minutes before her first haircut showed up, but she couldn’t pull herself away. “Why are you telling me now?”
“Because you need to understand that Mom left. Remember when they searched the house and discovered a suitcase was missing? Where do you suppose it went?”
Who could say? Claire had always feared it’d been used to dispose of her mother’s body. Alana hadn’t taken a damn thing. She hadn’t even packed. None of her clothes were missing, none of her toiletries. And her car had been sitting in the drive, the engine cold. “If she’d been carrying a suitcase, someone would’ve noticed her walking down the street. A woman toting luggage isn’t a sight you see every day, especially in a community as small as this one.”
“She could’ve had a friend pick her up at the house.”
“What friend, Leanne? If she was having an affair with Joe, why would she leave with someone else?”
“Because he wouldn’t sacrifice his marriage for their love—or whatever it was. Mom was as upset about that as she was about the video.”
The person Leanne described wasn’t the person Claire had known as her mother. “So how would she have met this other…friend?”
“Maybe it was an old boyfriend, a high school sweetheart from California.”
Where she was born and raised until her parents moved to Pineview her senior year to enjoy their retirement. “And how would they have kept in touch, become close enough to decide they’d run away together?”
“By email. How else?”
Claire shook her head. “No, not by email. The police checked our computer. Mom had written to some old friends, but there was nothing questionable in that correspondence.”
“Our sheriff’s department isn’t the most sophisticated in the world, in case you haven’t noticed. And that was fourteen years ago, before forensic science was as advanced as it is today. Who knows what they might’ve missed?”
“Still, she would’ve mentioned someone, and she didn’t.”
“We were kids! Do you think she’d tell us?”
Was that what she thought? Human beings were complex, often reacting differently depending on circumstances. And Claire was only sixteen at the time, caught up in all the typical teenage drama. Was it feasible that her mother had been far less happy than she’d assumed? Had Alana grown disenchanted with her marriage and begun to cast around for something more fulfilling? Did she get involved with Joe Kenyon and then realize, when everything came to a head because of Leanne’s shocking video, that she had no hope for happiness there, either? Had she kept in touch with someone from her past and thrown away everything she’d established in Montana to return to California?
Claire knew Alana had missed her home state. She’d liked to visit there, especially after her parents, tired of the cold winters, moved back, but…
“Dad would’ve known if there was someone else,” she said. “And he would’ve told the police. He never accused her. It was other people, with no proof. Some of them didn’t even know her well.”
“Maybe he didn’t reveal everything he could because he didn’t want to hurt us by tarnishing her memory.”
The way Leanne was doing now. “That would hardly help bring her back.”
“Maybe he didn’t want her to be found. Maybe he was relieved she left.”
That statement hit Claire like a splash of cold water in the face. She’d considered the possibility that her stepfather might not have been as upset as he’d seemed. She couldn’t question whether he might be culpable of Alana’s murder and not examine the likelihood of insincerity. But even if he wasn’t the person who’d harmed Alana, had he been glad to have her gone?
Tug had acted distraught, but Roni moved in with them less than six months later. And by then he and Roni were so far along in their relationship Claire sometimes wondered if they might’ve been involved before—not that she’d ever let herself fully embrace that suspicion.
“With Mom gone, he didn’t have to worry about losing us,” Leanne said.
“So now you’re blaming Dad? Are you suggesting he killed her?”
“Of course not!”
“But why would he want us? We aren’t even his children.”
It was Leanne’s turn to be shocked. “You know how much he loves us. He’s always loved us. We were part of the reason he wanted to marry Mom. He tells that to everyone. And it wasn’t as if he had any competition from our real dad, who didn’t even put up a fight when he adopted us.”
Was it all about love? Or was it more about making do because he couldn’t have children of his own? Claire wasn’t positive he was infertile. He’d never spoken of it. But he’d never fathered a child, either, even with his first wife. And Claire was pretty sure her mother had once mentioned, on the phone with Grandma Pierce, that she thought he was sterile. Claire had walked in on the middle of the conversation and been curious about it, but her mother had changed the subject and shushed her when she tried to confirm what she’d heard.
“Mom was gone, so not only could he keep us, he was free to be with whoever he wanted without a nasty divorce,” Leanne said. “And he’d inherit everything Mom had just received from Grandma and Grandpa Pierce. It was the perfect setup for a man who loved us but no longer loved her.”
Leanne had never approached the subject from this angle before. Claire had no idea why she was doing it now. Was it revenge for what Tug had finally revealed about that tape? “We can’t know how Dad feels. Only he knows that. But we can look at the facts. A suitcase was missing but nothing else. Where would Mom go with an empty suitcase?”
“She could’ve filled it with brand-new clothes for her brand-new life.”
“She didn’t use her debit card, or any credit cards, after she went missing.”
“Of course not. They’d be too easy to trace. But she might’ve had cash. She and her sister had just split four and a half million dollars. Who knows how much she hid away?”
The money had changed a lot of things in their lives—or promised to. They didn’t have it for very long before Alana went missing. For nearly twenty years, Tug had worked at Walt Goodman’s gun store and Alana had clerked part-time at the Stop ’n’ Shop. She sold some of her artwork, which helped, too, but not for much money. She hadn’t yet fulfilled her dream of making her mark on the art world. They’d lived hand to mouth—until Grandma and Grandpa Pierce died.
Maybe some of what Leanne said was plausible, but Claire couldn’t accept that Alana had left them. She couldn’t accept that Alana had left her only sister, either. Claire would never forget standing at the grave of her cousin, Aunt Jodi’s son, who’d drowned while surfing off the coast of Maui. She’d repeatedly scanned the cemetery for anyone who might look like her mother. That was the day she’d known without a doubt that Alana hadn’t left voluntarily. She wouldn’t have missed Chris’s funeral.
“What do you have to hide, Lee?” Claire whispered. “There’s more than you’re saying, despite everything you’ve told me about that pornographic video. I can’t figure out what it is, but…it’s not that Mom was having an affair with the married man you were trying to tempt. There’s something else.”
The blood drained from her sister’s face. “You’re crazy. I’m not hiding anything. I just don’t want you to accuse someone and realize later that you were wrong.”
“Why? Because you think I might accuse you? Is that where you’re afraid my search will lead me?”
“No!” she cried, but she’d already turned to the door. “I was thirteen, Claire. I don’t know how you can even ask me that.”
Neither did Claire. But she’d never guessed her younger sister would set her sights on a married man while she was still in junior high. Or be aggressive enough to make a sex tape for him. Or entertain all the eligible men in town now that she was an adult. Was the one person she believed she knew best actually someone she didn’t know at all?
“Did you hurt her, Lee?” she called.
Did she even want an answer? What if Leanne said yes? Wasn’t a life spent in a wheelchair punishment enough for anything? If it was Leanne who’d hurt Alana, she must’ve acted in anger, and Tug must’ve helped hide the evidence. Claire couldn’t imagine any other interpretation. Leanne wouldn’t, couldn’t, harm those who were closest to her in a calculated way. She wasn’t like the psychopaths Claire had studied in her quest for answers, wasn’t so narcissistic as to be completely indifferent to the pain of others.
Or was she? She was certainly smart enough to mimic true emotion. Was there a killer behind the mask of her pretty face?
The very idea made Claire shudder. No. That would mean she’d faked other things, as well—such as the love she professed to feel for Tug, Roni, even Claire.
Leanne stopped when she reached the porch. “Quit being ridiculous,” she said, and it was a comfort to hear her state it so emphatically. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t be able to see the truth. It doesn’t matter how much time goes by, you’re as stubbornly ignorant as ever.”
Stubbornly ignorant, or doggedly determined to reveal facts Leanne desperately wanted to keep hidden? “I’m going to find out, Lee,” Claire said softly. “Whatever it is, I’m going to find out.”
The slam of the screen door was her only answer.
