Obsession Falls (27 page)
Margaret reassured her with a pleasant, “We’ll make sure you do.”
Waiters swarmed the table, providing water and wine and menus.
Margaret said, “Today I heard from Tony Parnham.”
Kateri picked up the conversational ball. “The movie director? Cool. What does he want?”
“He wants to host a Halloween party at the resort. He’ll invite friends, colleagues, and guests from town.”
“Guests from
this
town?” Garik pulled a disbelieving face. “Who does he know in Virtue Falls?”
“He is building that home on Eagle Road.” Summer seemed not at all surprised at Margaret’s news. “He hopes to join the community. One might think he is a hard man, but he’s an artist, interested in the story, not the cash box.”
“On the phone, he seems very agreeable; he told me to bring in the Virtue Falls folks I thought would add to the festivities. He wants everything to be top drawer. He’s sending in a party designer.” Margaret’s eyes sparkled. “We’ll have a good time.”
After that, the conversation flowed comfortably.
The resort manager, Harold Ridley, came by to ask about their comfort. The waiters were attentive, the food was excellent, and as they moved from appetizers to the main course, Kateri’s tension began to ease.
Then Garik muttered, “Heads up.”
At her right shoulder, Adams’s hateful voice drawled, “I’m glad to see you here, Kateri. I didn’t know you got out much anymore.”
She looked up slowly.
Adams was like the quintessential preppie on the planet. Pale, fair, blond, with capped teeth and hands calloused from lifting weights in the gym. His upper-crust Boston accent and attitude had set her teeth on edge the first time she saw him. But back then, it hadn’t mattered what she thought of him, because she was in charge. She outranked him, outsmarted him, and knew she would outlast him.
Conceit and vanity, ground into the dirt by cruel fate.
Adams was flushed, his eyes vicious; he must already have received the bad news about his assignment.
So Kateri said, “This is an occasion, indeed, when we have a U.S. senator in town. Did he come to deliver good news?”
“Only that I’m going to receive a promotion to lieutenant commander.” Adams puffed up his chest.
“So you’ll be leaving us for a new command?” Kateri smiled, all teeth.
“Not at all! I am promised that I will be here for a very long time.” He smiled back at her, pissed and at the same time grimly triumphant.
All Kateri’s pleasure in taunting him vanished; she had been secretly hoping Luis was wrong, that Adams would go somewhere else. She wanted him to become some admiral’s aide, and fetch and carry, take messages, go to formal dinners, and never do harm to another Coastie as long as he lived.
She ought to know by now she couldn’t wish bad news away.
A big hand landed on her shoulder. “Kateri? Kateri Kwinault? I thought that was you. How good to see you looking so well!”
She looked up into the face of Thirteenth District Coast Guard Commander, Rear Admiral Richard Ritchie. “Thank you, sir, I am well.”
Her court martial had been a matter of naval custom, convened not because of any assumption of guilt, but to make the circumstances surrounding the loss of her clipper part of the official record. Then the government had listened to Landon Adams’s testimony, she had been accused of incompetence, and Admiral Ritchie had had a mess on his hands. She was pretty sure he hadn’t believed her responsible, but she also knew that with the pressure from Adams’s uncle brought to bear, the admiral had been hard-pressed to keep her out of military prison.
Then witnesses had come forward to say Adams had obstructed her race out into the open ocean. She had been acquitted. Adams had never been charged of deliberate sabotage, of which he was most certainly guilty, or of falsifying his testimony … also guilty.
In Kateri’s next life, she intended to be born into a family with political power. From what she had seen, influence really made your life easier.
Now she faced the admiral, a man who had spent the evening with the U.S. senator who was Adams’s uncle, various dignitaries, and Adams himself. She supposed, if she was being fair, Admiral Ritchie deserved kudos for acknowledging her.
She prided herself on being fair. “Congratulations on your new grandson, sir. You must be thrilled.”
The conversation became emptily social, and when the senator’s party left, Kateri felt as if the whole dining room heaved a collective sigh of relief. Harold and the waiters rushed out with complementary chocolate truffles for every table.
Elizabeth picked one up, took a single bite, spit it back into her hand, and sighed gustily. “I must be sick. I’m tired, the chocolate tastes funny, and every time I try to drink wine, I want to throw up.”
Silence fell over the table. Every head swiveled to face her.
She looked around. “What?”
“Dear,” Margaret asked in even tones, “have you thought that you might be pregnant?”
Elizabeth’s expression went from disbelief, to indignation, to nausea, to disbelief again, to anger, and back to disbelief. “That’s impossible!”
Garik shook his head. “Elizabeth …
think.
”
“Theoretically, it’s possible, sure. But … but I’ve been taking … pills…” Elizabeth looked around at the way everyone was trying to keep a straight face. “This is not funny!”
“I’m sorry, but it sort of is,” Kateri said. “You had strep throat. You took antibiotics. You’re a scientist. You know what antibiotics do to the effectiveness of oral contraceptives.”
“Yes. But I didn’t think…” Elizabeth seemed honestly indignant. “It was only once!”
This time, no one could quite smother his or her laughter.
Margaret leaned across and squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “Don’t you want children?”
Elizabeth thought as if the idea had never occurred to her. “I suppose. Yes, we could have children.” She turned to Garik. “Don’t you think we could?”
He laughed softly. “I think perhaps we
are.
”
“But this would be badly timed,” she said. “I’ll be pregnant when the dig is at a standstill for the winter, and have an infant in the summer when it’s busy!”
“In my experience,” Margaret said, “children are the definition of inconvenient.”
Garik stood up and took Elizabeth’s arm. “Let’s go talk about it.”
Margaret watched them leave the restaurant, then looked at Summer and Kateri. “
Talking about it
is how they got in this situation to start with.”
Summer laughed, and stood. “Thank you, and please thank Sheriff Jacobsen and Elizabeth for me. The food, the surroundings, and most of all, the company made this an incomparable evening.”
“Come back, then. You, too, Kateri.” Margaret put her hand on Harold’s arm, and he helped her out of her chair and escorted her out of the room.
“So are you glad you came?” Kateri asked.
“I guess. Looks like your ride got distracted by the news he is going to be a father. You want me to take you home?”
“Thanks, that would be great.”
But when Summer came back into the dining room with their jackets and Kateri’s cane, Kateri was nowhere in sight.
One of the waiters nodded toward the deck. “She’s out there.”
Summer slid out into the night. The fresh, salty wind blew in her face, tossed her hair around, raised goose bumps on her arms. “It’s chilly,” she said as she joined Kateri at the railing.
Kateri stared steadfastly, silently into the night.
Summer pulled her jacket on, then, unbidden, tossed Kateri’s over her shoulders. She faced the invisible horizon, tucked her arms tightly around her middle, and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Listening.”
Summer listened, too. She heard the seagulls cawing, the snap of the American flag on the roof, and the raw, constant roar of the waves crashing against the cliff.
“What do you hear?” Kateri asked.
“I can hear the first autumn storm far to the north, taking form. I can hear the power of the ocean. It’s awe-inspiring. And terrifying.”
Kateri turned her head and looked at Summer, and in the light from the resort, her pupils were distended, her eyes like holes drilled into an old, weary soul. “Most people look at the mountains and think they’re pretty. They hear the ocean and talk about sandy beaches and date palms. They don’t understand that nature carries its own death sentence.”
“I didn’t understand. Before.”
“Nor did I. Before.” Kateri hooked her hand through Summer’s arm. In a voice fraught with humor and pathos, she said, “I occasionally come out to the sea to ask the Frog God what the hell he plans to do with me. Surely he had a reason for destroying and transforming me. These trials could not possibly be purely the capricious whim of a god. Could they?”
Summer closed her hand into a fist, and felt the smooth, scarred end of her little finger. “I like to think there’s a meaning for all this.”
The two women turned away from the Pacific, massive and relentless, and headed through the resort and the parking lot toward the car. Summer unlocked the doors and the two women climbed in. She started the Judge and put it in gear, turned onto the coastal highway between the resort and Virtue Falls, and drove carefully, watching for cars, for headlights moving too fast, for anything out of place. Nothing illuminated the way except the patches of dense white fog.
Then, about halfway to town, she saw flashing red and blue lights in her rearview mirror. She pulled to the narrow shoulder of the road.
Sheriff Jacobsen’s patrol car whipped past her.
On her way home from cleaning the library, on a Virtue Falls side street, Mrs. Dvorkin had been hit by a speeding car.
The driver did not stop.
One golden day of autumn slipped by, then another, then a week, and Summer waited. Waited for the rain to start, waited for Kennedy McManus to appear … waited to be murdered. But a whole bunch of nothing happened, and that, paradoxically, made her tense enough to cause Rainbow to comment that some
person
needed to remember who had saved her ass. By which Summer understood she had been snappish. She reined in her frustration … and waited some more.
Now Summer drove the coastal highway to Eagle Road, then to the circle drive. She turned in and parked at the rear of the Hartmans’ house.
Over fifty years before, the broad, one-story ranch home had been built with wide windows that faced the ocean. At a mere four thousand square feet, it was puny for a wealthy family’s vacation home. The charm lay in the location. A lovely stand of cypress, twisted and gnarled by the constant winds, surrounded the home. A long, winding path led through water gardens to a narrow set of rickety stairs. Those wandered down and around to a wide, private beach where the family played, picnicked, and walked.
The Hartmans were Summer’s first clients; yesterday they had contacted her to let her know they had loaned out their vacation home and to ask her to get it ready. Which was odd, because one bad experience had taught the Hartmans to never allow strangers to stay. But perhaps this was a friend, coming to Tony Parnham’s Halloween party.
Virtue Falls was buzzing about the guest list: celebrities, movie stars, and Hollywood power brokers were converging for the event. The invitations had become the objects of envy and gossip. A catering service had been brought in from San Francisco; they were hiring extra waitstaff from town, and everyone under the age of twenty-five who had acting aspirations applied.
Summer was lucky; she held one of the coveted invitations. Tony Parnham’s Halloween masquerade would be the first social event she had attended as a guest in over a year, and she intended to enjoy herself.
At the Hartmans’ back door, Summer sorted through her keys, let herself into the laundry room, and punched in the security code. Once she was inside, she reactivated the alarm. She adjusted the whole house thermostat to seventy-two. The sheets and towels were stored in a dehumidifier, so necessary in the damp marine climate. The Hartmans had been unsure about the number of residents who would be staying, so Summer counted out five sets of sheets, one for each bed. After she had prepared the bedrooms, she would return for towels.
The house was quiet, and she missed Mrs. Dvorkin, not merely because she would have to do the cleaning Mrs. Dvorkin normally did, but for her company, too.
But Mrs. Dvorkin was barely out of the hospital, covered with abrasions and recovering from a concussion. If not for her own quick thinking, she would have been hurt much worse, but at the first sound of the accelerating car, she had run for the alley. The car had made a sharp left turn and followed, hitting the brick wall first, then knocking her off her feet and into the air. She had slammed into a plastic garbage can, then bounced off the pavement. People hurried out of their apartments. The car backed out of the alley and sped away. A description of the car, a brown Subaru Forester, and the first three Washington license plate numbers yielded nothing; the make of the car was common in Washington, and Sheriff Jacobsen believed the plates to be stolen.
So until Mrs. Dvorkin was back on her feet, Summer would prep the house. To fill the silence, she entered the living room and headed toward the stereo system. She reached toward the controls—and heard a sound behind her.
She dropped the sheets and turned, smoothly pulling the pistol from the holster under her jacket. She pointed it at the man who had risen from the easy chair beside the fireplace.
He raised his hands to show they were empty.
She took a long breath to slow the pounding of her heart, and lowered the pistol. “Kennedy McManus. You are here at last.”
Kennedy McManus. He had found her. He had come for her. And looking at him in the flesh, seeing him alive and breathing, his blue eyes steady and fixed on her as if he would absorb her, body, mind, and soul … well. Summer didn’t know if she was glad this moment had finally arrived, she only knew she would behave as if this moment was expected and normal. Not that it wasn’t expected—but nothing could ever make this meeting normal.