SUMMER of FEAR (7 page)

While Marty got dressed, I checked
the shower and tub. No one had used them in the last few hours, unless they'd
wipe them out. Amber's peach-colored towels were dry. The sink was dry, too, no
moisture under the plug. I went back into the bedroom, pulled a few threads
from one tassled end of the new throw rug, and slipped them between two bills
in my wallet. I got up close to the walls and saw the fresh paint covering the
old writing. Amber's suitcases were still near the walk-in. I looked through
them at the unremarkable travel provisions. Where had she been going? Marty,
tucking in his shirt, watched me. Overwhelmed by curiosity, I knelt down and
looked under the bed. I saw nothing but a small, flat rectangular object just a
few inches from my nose. I picked it up by one corner, stood, and took it into
the bathroom. It turned out to be just what it felt like: three pull-apart
plastic ties, like you get with trash or lawn bags. I put them in my wallet,
too. A considerable chill blew through me. Running my hands over the carpet
near where Amber had lain, I found by touch something I could never have
spotted with my eyes. It was a tiny screw, the kind used by jewelers and
watchmakers, half buried in the Berber mesh. I extracted it with my
fingernails, examined its copperish color, and dropped it into the casing of
the pen I always carry. There was a collection of them in there be cause my own
glasses are always falling apart and I need spares.

I got us down
from the hills and into a bar on the beach. The place was right on the sand and
you could look out at the white water, the dark horizon, the clear,
star-shimmering sky. The white water wasn't white at all, but a faint,
luminescent violet.

I'd been drinking, and I'd sobered up the second I parked my car near
Amber's. But Marty had been
drinking,
and he didn't want to stop. He
ordered a double brandy. I got coffee.

"You first," I said. "How come you
were there last night?"

Marty drank half the snifter in one gulp. "I couldn't stop thinking
about her," he said. "I think maybe I didn't quite get her out of my
system." He looked at me, raising his glass again. He had a Band-Aid on
his thumb. The shaving cut was still there, a lateral scab on the tip of his
Adam's apple. "So I called her and got nothing, just the machine. Then I
drove by just for the hell of it. JoAnn and I aren't real good now. I used to
love her, but I don't know anymore. I'm fuckin' sick of worrying about
us."

It was good that Marty was drunk, I thought. "Fifteen years since
you and Amber," I said.

"Yeah. Twenty for you. I got to admit, I hated you back then,
Monroe."

"I know. But she married you, not me."

"One great year, that was. Then she left."

"That was Amber."

Marty drank down the rest of his brandy and pointed to the waitress for
more. He waited until she brought it. "So last night, I parked down from
her house and sat in my car. There was another car, right in front of the
house, a Porsche convertible. Red."

"Get the plate numbers?"

"Don't need plate numbers. It was Grace's."

Grace, I thought.
Lovely, uncontrollable, unrepentant Grace—her mother's daughter, from her
perfect olive skin to her errant spirit.

"She came out of the house at about eleven-thirty. Got in her car
and drove away."

"Jesus, Marty—then she saw what we saw."

Martin drank again, fumbled for a smoke. I lighted it for him. "She
must have. She was in a hurry. She tossed her head back when she came through
the gate—that way she always did—then walked straight to the car. She stood
there beside for a second, getting out her keys. I don't want to believe Grace
could kill her, but she was there. And she didn't report it."

"So were you, and you didn't."

"And so were you. Maybe you ought to tell
me
why."

So I told him. It paralleled Marty's story in a way that made me sound
as if I was mocking him. When I explained myself, the whole thing with Amber
seemed so puerile, so sentimental, so treacherous. I was suddenly ashamed of
myself, of submitting to my own self-created temptations. For a moment, I saw
us from the outside—Marty Parish and me—two former lovers of a beautiful woman,
nurturing their little hurts, nursing along their little hopes, fueling the
ancient torches, dragging around every lost moment of an idealized time so we
could remember how good it felt to be heartbroken by Amber Mae. It was
disgusting. In that moment, I hated myself.

"Maybe Amber picked us because she knew we'd miss her like
this," said Marty.

"Maybe Amber was just a selfish cunt we should have steered clear
of."

Marty nodded drunkenly. "Funny you'd mention that now that she's
dead."

"What in hell is going on here, Marty? Someone
move

her."

"Cleaned the carpet and brought in a throw rug."

"Painted the walls."

"Cleaned the mirror."

"Closed the sliding door and the screen."

"Took her away."

In trash bags, I thought. "Made the bed."

"Gad, Russ—and she was all packed up to leave. What am I gonna do?
I've got a marriage I'd like to save. I got a job I'd like to keep. I find my
ex-wife dead and I can't say a word or the shit's gonna hit every fan there is.
I'm not going to lose everything I've worked for because of Amber Mae. She took
it all once already. I paid my dues. Christ, do I need a drink."

"Think I'll join you."

Marty ordered up a couple more doubles. I've known only one man who
could drink as much as Martin Parish and still function. I saw Marty make a bet
once at a party that he could drink a fifth of Black Label in one sitting, do a
hundred push-ups, and not puke. He did all those things but still lost the bet,
because I drank a bottle, did 150 push-ups, and held. I also went home that
night, after Marty had fallen asleep, with the date that he had brought to the
party—Amber Mae Wilson, of course. We were young and stupid then.

Now we're just older. "Marty, can you explain... uh... why you
weren't fully
clothed
when I barged in on you?"

Marty drank more. "I still couldn't believe what I saw last night.
It was like if I closed my eyes and got under those covers... then I heard
someone coming up the stairs."

"It was like if you got under the covers,
what?"

"That she'd be there."

"That's your answer?"

"That's it."

"You're
a sick dog, Martin."

"Yeah, I know."

"Let's take a walk."

I paid up and we walked out onto the beach. I guided us south, toward
the rocks. I picked my way around to a little cove that closed us off from the
rest of the strand. When Marty was almost beside me, I drove my elbow into him
as hard as I could, right below the sternum. He folded in half, head down, and
I sent my knee into his forehead, hard. Then I grabbed him the hair, pulled him
out to the water, and pushed him in. I got his hair again and leaned into his
backbone with my knee. He was taking big gulps of air when I let him; the rest
of the time he got ocean. "Truth time, Marty. You kill her?"

"No..."

"Come on, I'm a friend."

"No..."

So I jammed his face down again and gave him a good drink. For a while,
he didn't even struggle. He blew bubbles. When I pulled him up, he was just
starting to suck in a big breath. He swilled the air and I asked him again
whether he killed her.

"No..."

Back under for some more quiet time. The water eased in, lifted us in
unison, set us back down on the sand. I yanked up on his hair again. "Then
what the
fuck
were you doing her house last night—and don't tell me
because you had to see her."

"I had to see her---I swear to..."

I leaned harder on his back. "And you went back again tonight? For
what, Marty?
For what?"

"I couldn't figure out why... couldn't figure out why nobody called
it in... and maybe..."

"Maybe what, Marty?"

"And maybe I didn't really see what I thought I
did. I could hardly remember anything this morning. I was hoping maybe I was
blackout drunk and didn't really see her"

"So then you got naked and wanted to get into
her bed."

Martin Parish was groaning now, not a groan of physical pain but one of
terrible, terrible inner torment. "I just needed... needed five minutes of
what it used to feel like. I loved her. I don't know. It's always... worked. I
don't know...
see...
I'd done it
before."

"Gotten into her bed?"

"Only when she wasn't there."

"Oh, Christ."

The shore break rolled in harder now and knocked me off him. I stood,
balanced myself, and dragged up Marty by his belt. We staggered out, across a
few feet of beach, then he sagged down, coughing and breathing hard. I knelt in
front of him and yanked him by his shirt collar right up to me, face-to- face.

"We've got five bashings, Marty. Did this guy paint up the Ellison
and Fernandez places, too?"

Martin just shook his head. He was drunk enough to admit crawling naked
into bed with a murdered woman who wasn't there. But he wasn't drunk enough to
break procedure and leak to the press just exactly what their man had left for
them at two—and maybe three—crime scenes. Marty's divisions were more profound
than I had ever suspected.

"Maybe Amber just got up and walked away," he said, sobbing.
In the moonlight, his face looked like a child's, like a slobbering infant
who'd finally come to the end of a crying jag. "Maybe it was a makeup job.
She knows all those Hollywood types. It was all a trick."

I shook him hard. "She's dead, Marty. But nobody knows that except
you and me and Grace and whoever took that club to her. And nobody's going to
know, unless whoever moved Amber put her somewhere we can find her."

Marty was nodding along dutifully now. I let go of him. He
brought up his knees and arms and bowed his head against them. He was rocking
back and forth a little. He was pathetic.

"We need to talk to Grace," he said. "We need Grace.

" We sure as hell do, I thought. "I'll find her."

"You should do that, Russ."

"I'll do it."

"Since she's your daughter."

"Right, since she's my daughter."

Grace's red
Porsche was parked in my driveway when I came home, and Grace was leaning
against it. A quiet alarm went off inside me. I hadn't seen her in almost a
year—an occasional phone call was all she had offered. Even though the night
was humid and warm, she stood bundled inside a parka with fur around the
collar, her shoulders bunched, her head set down into the fur, her hands in the
pockets.

Amber had claimed Grace from the start—seized her, appropriated her,
removed her. From before the start, in fact: Amber was five months pregnant
before she told me. I had first seen Grace when she was two weeks old, then not
again until two years later. Amber had taken her to Paris. Amber had taken her
to Rome. To New York, Rio, London, St. Barts, Kitts, and Thomas. Grace said her
first words to me when she was four. She said, demurely offering her cheek for
a kiss, "How nice to meet you, Russell." It was one of the strangest,
strongest moments in my life, stooping to kiss that face so much like mine,
turned in profile while her long-lashed brown eyes contemplate the sky with
supreme control, supreme boredom. I believe that I felt a little part of my
heart die in that moment. She referred to me as Russell, never once as Father
or Dad or Pop ever since.

Later that same night—the night when Grace was four---Amber and I had
walked up into the hills behind Laguna and had the centerpiece battle of our
lives. It was the kind of wild escalating fight where both parties are truly
eager. My position was that Amber had stolen my daughter, and I demanded that
she be at least partially returned. How naive I was, at twenty six, to think
that such a return could come from anyone but Grace herself, if ever, if at
all. I had no instruments then to measure the distance she had gone. Amber said
that I had no more claim to Grace than a flower had to a bee, that I had only
supplied the pollen. She actually used those words: "supplied the pollen."
We each drew blood that night, though I will say that Amber struck first. The
moon was full and ice-bright over the rocky path, and I can still remember the
wet black shine of the stone she used.

I saw neither Amber nor Grace again for almost five
year:

"Grace," I said, getting out of my car.

"Russell," she said back. She came toward me across the
driveway, her heels resonant on the asphalt. She proferred her cheek as she had
done those fourteen years ago. Her skin was cold, and she smelled very
strongly—a woman's scent cut with nerves and perfume. Grace was a large woman,
nearly five fee ten, with an athletic strength to her body and a lovely face.
She had her mother's dark wavy hair.