Burn (19 page)

Heather started with Travis Plum and ended with the unidentified intruder at the beach house a half hour ago.

By the time she'd finished, Doren Lomax's face had drawn in on itself. But the steely glint hadn't faded from his eyes. He turned the blade of it on Andrew for a long moment. Then he looked at Heather.

“What were you thinking?” he said quietly. “Heather.” He held up the note she'd handed him. “You should have given this to me the minute you … what on earth were you thinking?”

“Daddy.”

“And Benjy! Going along with
any
of this. What were you two
thinking?”

“Leave Benjy out. He's got nothing to do with it.”

“Like hell he doesn't. He's going to answer for himself, too.”

Heather folded her arms and waited. Andrew stood by. Doren Lomax glanced at him once. Briefly.

“Thank God, ” he finally murmured, as though exhaling two days of worry concentrated into one unexpected five-minute dose. “Sweetheart. Thank God you're okay.”

“I'm not okay, ” Heather told him. “I'm not okay at all.”

“You should have come to me.”

“Explain this, ” she said, pointing to the letter. “Explain this.”

Lomax just looked at the letter again. After a moment, he reached for his drink and finished it off. He glanced at the television. Folded the paper. Rose out of the chair.

“Excuse us, Mr. Kindler.”

Andrew assumed the man meant for him to leave. He didn't want to make this ugly, but he planned to stand
his ground until he had some answers. He meant to let Lomax know it.

But Doren Lomax just belted his robe and said, “Make yourself comfortable if you like.”

Without looking at Andrew, Heather followed her father out of the room.

Comfortable.

Andrew didn't go that far. But while he waited, alone in the low light of Doren Lomax's sanctuary, he did help himself to a look around.

The bookcase had books in it. Books and books. From floor to ceiling, Andrew found a lending library's worth of volumes shelved according to no particular system he could discern. Classic literature rubbed covers with business and finance, health and fitness, art and architecture. He came across a wide band of psychology texts in a row; heavy stuff, by the look of it, not the fluffy learn-to-love-yourself crap Caroline kept trying to get him to read. He spotted biographies of Winston Churchill, Raymond Chandler, Frank Zappa, and Sally Ride. He found a copy of Sun Tzu's
The Art of War
leaning against Betty Friedan's
The Feminine Mystique.
History, philosophy, law, science. Social this and cultural that, all over the map. The only things most of these books had in common were the creases in their spines.

Lomax was either a true lover of knowledge or a true lover of feeling like one. Either way, the guy must have been hell on wheels at a cocktail party.

But his books didn't interest Andrew nearly so much as his photographs, which he found all over the room— on the walls, the tables, the shelves, crowded at the corners of an enormous oak desk hulking in a windowed alcove.

A few of the photos depicted Doren Lomax standing or sitting or shaking hands with somebody who looked like they must have been important. One faded black-and-white print in a flimsy tin frame showed a group of five hard young men gathered in front of a pile of large knobby tires. Two of the men were shirtless; two held rifles; the last, Andrew recognized as a younger edition of the man who had just left the room. All wore dog tags and military fatigues.

But the greatest number of photos by far were simple, candid snapshots, often layers on layers of them tucked into a single frame. Days at the beach, graduations. Christmas mornings. Random moments that had no obvious context.

Family pictures.

Andrew paused over one in particular: a shot of Heather as a little girl, no more than nine or ten years old. She had freckles and a missing front tooth, and he could see where she'd gotten her eyes. The composition of the shot provided a telltale comparison; it could only have been Heather's mother there in soft focus in the background, smiling from a yellow blanket spread out over green grass.

The room was a walk-in scrapbook, and Andrew finally gave up browsing it. He went directly to one last frame: the one Lomax had left turned over by his chair.

The picture beneath the glass was obviously of a more recent vintage than most of the others. Not taken yesterday, but not more than a handful of years past. It was yet another photo of what Andrew could now identify as the Lomax nuclear family: Doren, Barbara, Heather … and none other than the fugitive son himself, giving his sister a set of bunny ears. They were dressed for evening, all sitting together around a table in a restaurant, everybody
smiling for the lens. David Lomax had his dad's square chin and shoulders, but he shared the same eyes as Heather.

One more person sat at this family table, in the chair to David's left. Andrew only recognized this face because he'd seen it going through the newspapers yesterday. The head shot in the paper hadn't quite caught whatever it was that made this guy such big news, but you could see a little of it here.

This snapshot captured Barbara and Heather's uncomplicated beauty, Doren Lomax's character, David's confidence. But you could have charged your camera's flash pack with the charisma in Gregor Tavlin's grin. Studying the photo by the light of the television, Andrew thought,
pal, you were bound to get killed by somebody.

“A moment from a happier time.”

Andrew looked up to find that Doren Lomax had returned. He hadn't heard so much as a whisper of movement. He placed the frame back the way he'd found it.

“Nice-looking family, ” he said. “Cedric must be one proud uncle.”

Lomax stood with his hands in the pockets of his robe. He regarded Andrew thoughtfully. He looked older than when he'd left the room.

“I wouldn't pretend to have any idea what a person does to earn a vendetta from Cedric Zaganos, ” he finally said. “I wouldn't pretend I was interested to know. But I don't suppose I'd want to be wearing that person's skin.”

“If I were you, ” Andrew said, “I wouldn't want that person's skin in my den. Not unless it was tacked to the wall.”

“I'm not sure if that's supposed to sound threatening, ” Lomax said. “If it is, don't bother. I don't know you, and I make no assumptions. But whoever you are,
from what my daughter has told me, you must have some sense of nobility.”

“My shining armor is at the cleaners, ” Andrew said.

“Well. Another man might have behaved differently, under the circumstances. You have my gratitude.”

“You might want to save it until we're finished.”

“As far as I'm concerned, we are.”

Lomax walked to a keypad on the wall. At the touch of a button, the television went dead, and the lights in the room came up to a slightly less romantic level. Andrew tensed, suddenly considering the fact that Heather hadn't returned to the room.

Larry was right, he thought. He really could be dumb when he tried.

But when Lomax's right hand came out of its pocket, it held only a small slip of paper, folded in half. Lomax seemed to ponder the paper a moment before handing it to Andrew.

“Cedric has his own sense of nobility, I suppose. But his contribution to the conversation you and I find ourselves having now was unsolicited. I won't insult you with an apology, but I'm not sure what else to say.” He put the hand back into the pocket at his waist again. “I'm sorry to have made each other's acquaintance, Mr. Kindler.”

On the slip of paper, Lomax had written a name and an address. Andrew recognized neither. He assumed by the name—Digman Self Storage—that the address belonged to some kind of rental facility somewhere in town. At the bottom of the paper, Lomax had printed:
60 ID.
Below that, a six-digit number.

“What is this?”

“I wouldn't know. I only made a long-distance phone call and wrote down what you see there.” Lomax paused,
then added, “For what it's worth, the man I called didn't hang up happy. When I described the person my daughter brought home to meet me tonight, I got the impression the information … well. I got the impression the information contradicted Cedric's expectations.”

“I'll bet it did.”

Andrew thought about Larry Tomiczek. A sick, cold feeling settled in his gut. He wondered where Larry was at this moment. He wondered what he was doing. He hoped he was packing to go somewhere else.

“He wasn't very happy with my request, either, ” Lo-max said. “But the prerogative here isn't his, it's mine. So that piece of paper is yours.”

“Sounds like quite an understanding you and Uncle Cedric have.”

“I don't ask Ced to understand my choices in life, and he returns the favor. That's the only way it can be sometimes with very old friends.”

Andrew said nothing to that.

“My house, ” Lomax said, “is in disarray. I hold myself accountable for that. But my family carries its own burdens. From here on, whatever unsettled business you have with Cedric is yours again.”

My house is in disarray.
Somehow, the guy managed to talk like this without sounding like an asshole or a fool. Andrew wondered how long it had been since anybody had intimidated Doren Lomax.

“Swell, ” he said. “Think you can give me a note along those lines? Something I can give to your cop friends when I go home?”

“That's a regrettable situation. I'm not going to tell you I can undo what's already been done. I can tell you that tomorrow I'll be speaking to the police about a few things I should have volunteered when all of this
started. I don't know what the result of that will be. Hopefully you'll have your privacy back sooner rather than later.” Lomax seemed to consider his next statement before he made it. “In the meantime, if it eases your mind, you can use one of our guest rooms for the rest of tonight. I'll tell Rosa to have breakfast for you in the morning. You can leave here with a night's rest and a full stomach. And if we're both very fortunate, neither of us will see the other ever again.”

“Thanks, ” Andrew said. “But I'll just cut to the ‘ever again’ part.”

“Whatever you like.”

“Where's the birthday girl?”

Lomax looked at him. In a quick sharp flash, the steel returned to his eyes for the first time since he'd returned to the room.

“Heather, ” he said, “is accepting some news I wish I didn't have to give her. What concern is it of yours?”

“She drove my car here, ” Andrew told him. “She still has my keys.”

Lomax seemed to grow older by the moment. Or maybe just wearier. He exhaled.

“I'll tell her you're leaving, ” he said.

“That'd be fantastic.”

“Good night, Mr. Kindler.”

With that, Lomax left the room again.

When he was gone, Andrew looked at the slip of paper one more time. He put it in his pocket. The last of his energy seemed to run out of his body like water through an unplugged drain. He'd lost track of how long it had been now since he'd last slept. He tried to process everything that had happened this past hour, but he couldn't seem to get any traction. The gears in his brain had begun to slip and grind.

He took a step and dumped himself into Lomax's big leather chair to wait for Heather—or whoever—to show up with his keys.

Andrew couldn't remember ever sitting in a chair so comfortable.

He couldn't remember deciding to rest his head back, or closing his eyes.

HE
still sometimes woke up disoriented.

Andrew sat tight until he could get his bearings. He forced his eyes open wide, straining to collect the available light. Slowly, he regained a sense of his surroundings. Shapes emerged from the shadows. He remembered where he was and what he was doing there.

Somehow, his feet had found their way up to the footstool in front of Doren Lomax's reading chair. Somebody had taken off his shoes and draped an afghan over his legs.

Beautiful. One day, Andrew thought, people just might stop taking him seriously.

He looked at his watch, saw that it was almost four in the morning.
Long
past time to be out of here. Which was exactly where he planned to get, just as soon as he found his keys.

Andrew pulled on his shoes and set off on the dumbest
scavenger hunt he could imagine, feeling his way through the deep-night silence of the Lomax household.

He followed the hallway off the study into a larger room, which became a larger room still. The ceiling soared somewhere over his head, and silver light leaked in through clerestory windows all around. Thick carpet muffled his steps, and the darkness seemed to amplify the tidal rush of his own blood in his ears. He came upon a low glow somewhere near the end of another short hallway and headed toward the light.

Andrew found himself in a kitchen no larger than an airplane hangar. The glow he'd followed, he now discovered, emanated from within the open cavity of a Sub-Zero refrigerator large enough to hold other refrigerators. The door of the fridge stood open, propped that way by a rail-backed chair.

In the bright light, Andrew could see a collection of empty containers littering a central island surrounded by tall stools: a Chinese takeout carton, some empty Tupper-ware. A couple pint tubs of Ben and Jerry's, both down to runny remnants. He picked up an empty white sack with the words
Godiva Chocolatier
printed in gold. He recognized the sack at about the same time he recognized the sound he'd been hearing. Soft, but unmistakable.