44 Cranberry Point (23 page)

M
aryellen stepped out of the shower, hair still wet. It was the afternoon of Charlotte and Ben’s wedding. She’d mentioned the ceremony to Jon, but they weren’t exactly on good terms. The one time she’d asked, he refused to attend the wedding with her.

He also refused to discuss his parents. He remained civil, but distant and guarded. Every night they slept side by side without touching, without talking. Her beautiful home felt like a prison and Maryellen couldn’t bear it.

Being pregnant didn’t help. She hadn’t told Jon yet. She’d planned to, knowing she should, but as time went on and his attitude didn’t change, she realized it was a hopeless situation.

After dressing and blow-drying her hair, she got out an overnight bag and packed as much as it would hold. She added several extra pieces of clothing to Katie’s diaper bag, as well. When she was finished, she carried both to the car.

Maryellen was on the verge of tears. She loved Jon and hoped they would be able to resolve their problems, but she’d begun to fear that wasn’t possible. Her husband no longer trusted her. He felt she’d betrayed him. He couldn’t
understand or accept that she’d only been trying to help him reconcile with his family-for his own sake and his daughter’s.

With a sleeping Katie over her shoulder, Maryellen gently tapped on the door of the darkroom where Jon was developing film. Whenever he was in the house at the same time as she was, he found a way to avoid her. If she was upstairs, he had some reason to linger downstairs. Meals were a painful experience. They sat across from each other and made polite conversation, but Maryellen simply couldn’t connect with him.

“What is it?” Jon called impatiently.

“I’m leaving for Charlotte’s wedding now.”

“All right.”

Maryellen hesitated. “Are you sure you can’t come with us?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” Disappointment settled heavily on her shoulders.

“Give the newlyweds my best.”

“I will.” Maryellen swallowed painfully. “Listen, Jon, I’m thinking I won’t come back after the wedding.”

“What?”

“I talked to Mom earlier, and Katie and I are going to spend the night with her.”

“Hold on a minute,” he said and opened the door.

Maryellen stepped back nervously as Jon’s gaze held hers. “You’re going to your mother’s place for the night?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

Maryellen shrugged. “I need time to think.”

“About what?” he challenged.

“I can’t live like this,” she whispered, breaking eye contact.

He didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry, Jon, sorrier than you know.” Her voice cracked, and she turned away and left the house.

To her surprise, he followed her to the car. When she’d placed Katie in the car seat, she straightened. Jon stood with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the ground.

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” he asked as she walked around to the driver’s seat.

“Do you want me to?”

He didn’t answer.

“That says it all, doesn’t it?” She climbed in the car, started the engine and drove to the end of the driveway. Her heart was about to break. Hands clenching the steering wheel hard, she lowered her forehead and drew in a deep breath.

The minute Maryellen arrived at her mother’s house, Grace knew something was wrong. “You’d better tell me,” her mother said as Maryellen carried in her bags.

“We’ll discuss everything after the wedding,” Maryellen insisted, managing a smile. “It’s all right, Mom. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Her mother looked as if she didn’t believe her, and rightly so. Maryellen didn’t believe it herself.

The wedding was lovely. Standing beside her mother, Maryellen battled tears. Only five months earlier, she’d stood before Pastor Flemming and vowed to love Jon for the rest of her life. It had only taken her five months to screw up her second marriage. Five months. That had to be some kind of record outside of Hollywood.

The church was nearly full. Charlotte’s dearest friends crowded the front pews, wearing red hats and purple boas. Olivia and her family took up two pews. So many people had wanted to share in the couple’s happiness. Unfortunately, neither of Ben’s sons had been able to come; both he and Charlotte must have been disappointed.

Despite the jubilant mood, Maryellen felt a sense of hopelessness and inner turmoil. The church seemed to get hot
and stuffy and the room began to sway. Maryellen sat down, taking several deep breaths, fearing she was about to faint.

“Maryellen?” Grace sat down beside her.

She offered her mother a feeble smile. “I’m pregnant.”

Her mother smiled from ear to ear and squeezed her hand.

“Jon doesn’t know.”

“I think it’s time for you to tell him, don’t you?”

Maryellen couldn’t answer.

The music started then, and Pastor Flemming came to the front of the church. Charlotte and Ben joined him and gazed up at each other with such adoration that Maryellen had to blink back tears.

She heard footsteps behind her and hope leapt into her heart. She turned around, thinking, hoping, desperately wanting the late arrival to be Jon. Instead, Cliff Harding slipped into the pew beside her mother. She watched as they looked tenderly at each other and then Cliff tucked her mother’s arm in the crook of his elbow and smiled over at Maryellen and Katie.

Somehow Maryellen made it through the rest of the day. The reception at The Lighthouse was elegant, with vintage wines and the best champagne-neither of which she touched-and a selection of delicious hors d’oeuvres. Several people asked about Jon, and Maryellen invented a convenient excuse. He was busy with a photographic commission and couldn’t come; he sent his best wishes. He had, in fact, given the newlyweds a framed photograph of the lighthouse, one that Charlotte had long admired.

Knowing her mother wanted to spend time with Cliff, Maryellen drove back to the house on Rosewood Lane. Katie was cranky and hungry by then, so Maryellen hurriedly heated her dinner. She was giving Katie a bath when she felt the first painful spasm. The sharpness of it caught her unawares and she nearly doubled over.

Kneeling on the floor in front of the bathtub, she watched as her daughter splashed joyfully, unconscious of the turmoil in Maryellen. No, please God, not the baby. Nothing else happened and she breathed easier.

After a few minutes, Maryellen lifted Katie from the tub. The pain shot through her and she gasped as the blood rushed between her legs. Holding Katie against her, Maryellen sank to the floor.

The front door opened a moment later and Maryellen sagged with relief. “Mom…help…oh, Mom.”

Grace was in the bathroom in an instant; Cliff was with her. Her mother’s eyes were wide with alarm.

Maryellen was weeping by then. Katie was screaming.

“I’ve lost the baby…I’ve lost the baby,” she wailed in grief and pain, sobbing openly now.

After that, everything happened so quickly, Maryellen had trouble making sense of it. The next thing she knew, she was at the hospital in Bremerton and a doctor was telling her she’d suffered a miscarriage. As if she hadn’t figured that out for herself. Maryellen barely heard a word he said, crying as hard as she was. He asked about her husband, but she shook her head. Jon didn’t even know she was pregnant.

It was decided she should spend the night in the hospital and after the D&C, she was wheeled into a private room. A lone figure stood in the shadows. Jon. Apparently her mother had called him. Or perhaps Cliff had; it didn’t matter. He was with her.

Maryellen looked at him and fresh tears coursed down her cheeks. She turned her head away.

“Maryellen,” he whispered, moving to the bedside. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She had no answer for him.

“I am so sorry.” Each word was carefully enunciated.

Deeply depressed, Maryellen could only shake her head. She was sorry, too. Sorry about everything.

Jon sat down beside her and after a moment, reached for her hand and kissed it. She realized then that his eyes were bright with tears.

She started to sob again and stretched out her arms. Jon wrapped her in his embrace and together, with their arms securely around each other, they wept.

R
oy McAfee always checked his answering machine when he arrived at the office. There’d been a number of hang-ups recently. In light of the mysterious postcard he’d received a few weeks back, these hang-ups troubled him. He expected a few occasionally-any business got its share of wrong numbers-but his office had received more disconnected calls than usual in the last six weeks.

Corrie was making coffee after collecting the day’s mail on her way into the office. Sitting down, Roy opened the drawer on the left-hand side of his desk and pulled out the cryptic postcard. He still didn’t know what to make of it.

He heard Corrie moving around the outer office and realized she was about to deliver his coffee and the mail. Not wanting her to fuss over the postcard, he slipped it back inside his desk drawer.

Sure enough, Corrie entered his office, handing him a fresh mug of coffee. “There wasn’t much mail this morning,” she said as she placed a stack on the corner of his desk.

Usually she was the one who stopped at the post office.
It was pure coincidence that Roy had collected the mail the day that postcard arrived.

Corrie remained standing on the other side of his desk; she seemed to be waiting for something.

Roy anticipated a comment that didn’t come. “Anything else?” he asked.

“Look it over,” she said, gesturing to the few pieces of mail.

Roy reached for them and leaned back in his chair while he shuffled through the usual flyers, bills and-he hesitated when he caught sight of the postcard. He stared at the picture of the Space Needle.

“Read it,” Corrie said.

Roy turned it over. The message was in the same block lettering as the first one. Only this time it read: THE PAST HAS A WAY OF CATCHING UP WITH THE PRESENT.

“What does it mean?”

Roy stared at the card, as perplexed by this message as he was by the first. “I haven’t got a clue.”

“There’s no signature.”

Roy set the card down on his desk. “People who send these kinds of messages generally don’t sign their names.”

Corrie walked over to the far side of the room and looked out the window. “This isn’t the first one, is it?”

At times Roy swore Corrie should be the private investigator. She had real instincts about people, and a reliable sense of what was true and what wasn’t.

“Is it?” she demanded, turning to face him.

Roy reluctantly shook his head. Slowly opening the drawer, he brought out the other postcard.

Corrie walked quickly to his desk and picked it up.

He watched her read the short, cryptic message and saw that she was as mystified as he was.

“When did this arrive?”

He couldn’t recall exactly. “A few weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she cried, throwing down the postcard. “I’m your wife. I have a right to know.”

Roy shrugged halfheartedly. “What was the point? Why should you worry because someone’s getting their kicks mailing me silly postcards?”

“You’re being threatened and you don’t feel it’s important to let me know?” She raised her voice. “I’m not only your wife, I’m your business partner!”

“Now, Corrie…”

“Don’t talk to me as if I’m a child.”

“Then stop overreacting. It’s just a postcard and if you read it again you’ll see it isn’t threatening.”

Corrie picked up the card they’d received that day and read it aloud. “The past has a way of catching up with the present.” She leveled her gaze on Roy. “That sounds ominous to me.”

Roy shook his head. “Not necessarily.”

“I hope you’re taking this seriously.” Restless now, Corrie started to pace.

Roy didn’t want to upset her any more than she already was-but, in fact, he hadn’t taken the threat seriously. Not really. Until this morning. One postcard he could dismiss, but two? The earlier message had been something vague about regrets. Sure he had regrets. Every police officer did. It came with the territory.

“Think!” Corrie insisted. “This must have to do with one of your old cases. So you should review your old cases and narrow it down to someone capable of…this.”

Roy shook his head again. “I was on the force for more than twenty years and handled thousands of cases. Do I have regrets about any of them? Damn straight I do, but I always did what I believed to be right.”

Corrie refused to let it go. “Could it be someone who was released from prison recently?”

“I don’t have a clue.” Over time he’d helped put quite a few men behind bars. A whole lot of suspects weren’t particularly grateful for his detection skills.

“What about threats? Did anyone threaten you while you were on the force?”

There’d been some; convicted felons often looked for someone else to blame for their bad luck. He was a convenient target, but no one case stood out in his mind.

“Forget it,” Roy urged, snatching up a pen, pretending to get to work.

“I can’t,” Corrie murmured, but she returned to the outer office.

Roy could tell how shaken she was. He wanted to reassure her but didn’t know how. He’d wasted time mulling over the first postcard and hadn’t come up with anything. If some nutcase wanted to mail him a message on the back of a postcard every few weeks, what could he do about it? Apparently, whoever was doing this derived a bizarre sense of satisfaction from it. In Roy’s opinion, his mystery correspondent didn’t seem intent on causing him harm.

After a few minutes, he went to check on Corrie, using the excuse of refreshing his coffee. He found her kneeling in front of the filing cabinet, sorting through old police files. He’d always kept a personal notebook about every major case he’d worked, as well as newspaper articles and other information. Corrie, an inveterate organizer, had made files for each year. She had two or three on the floor beside her.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he poured coffee into his mug.

“Checking out our old Cedar Cove cases, plus some of your notes from the Seattle PD.”

Roy sipped his coffee and turned to take a look at one of the names. “Parker,” he read slowly.

“Harry Parker,” Corrie reminded him. “Three years ago. He befriended a neighbor, and was supposedly helping the old man with yardwork and such.”

It sounded familiar.

“The old man’s daughter, who lived back east, said she suspected Harry of stealing her father blind and asked us to look into it. The woman had good instincts.”

“I remember.” Roy said. Harry was currently serving time at the men’s prison in Shelton for forging checks and theft.

“As I recall, Harry swore you tricked him into a confession.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with his statement to the sheriff,” Roy countered.

“Nevertheless, Harry blamed you.”

Roy doubted it was Harry who’d mailed him those two postcards. He suspected this went back to his days in the Seattle Police Department.

“It’s none of our Cedar Cove cases,” he said.

“What makes you so sure?” his wife demanded.

“I just am. Whoever this is, whatever it’s about, it goes way back.” The tone of this latest card said as much. Something from his past was about to hit him square between the eyes.

They spent the morning looking through old files and journals, some cases going as far back as twenty years. He ended up with a short list of people to check out, but didn’t feel hopeful. This afternoon he planned to make a few phone calls.

Corrie went out to lunch with Peggy Beldon and came back in lighter spirits. While they were at the mall they’d run into a sale of some sort. Roy had stopped counting all the money she’d supposedly saved them by shopping at sales. Interestingly, she found it logical to spend money in order to save it.

“Peggy said something interesting at lunch,” Corrie said
as she stepped into Roy’s office. “Bob thought someone was following him again a little while ago.”

This was news to Roy. “He never mentioned it to me.”

“That’s because after a few blocks, the car went past him. Bob turned around and followed the other car for a short distance, but in retrospect he doesn’t think he was being followed, after all.”

“I guess that’s why he didn’t tell me about it.”

“Do you remember the night Bob phoned you in a panic because he was convinced he was being followed?” Corrie asked casually.

“Sure. He drove over to the sheriff’s office.”

“While we were at lunch, I realized something else. Something I’d completely forgotten until Peggy mentioned it.”

“What’s that?”

Corrie leaned against the doorjamb. “Bob’s car was in the repair shop that week.”

“That’s right,” Roy whispered slowly. He was beginning to connect the dots.

“In other words, Bob was driving our car that night and not his own.”

Roy nodded. That possibility had never occurred to him and he suddenly felt a little foolish. Once again, Corrie had proved herself a natural detective. “In other words, whoever was following Bob might’ve been looking for me.”

“Do you still think those postcards don’t mean anything?” Corrie whispered.