Winter's Edge (2 page)

“Are you certain you just don’t want to go home to your husband?” he asked shrewdly.

“Of course I don’t want to go home to a husband I can’t even remember,” she said, the anger building inside her oddly familiar. She must have spent a lot of time being angry.

“Do you think that’s enough to frighten me into remembering again? Maybe I’m just looking for an excuse not to have to identify the dead man in the car I wrecked.”

“You remember that?”

“No. The nurse told me. I remember absolutely nothing.” Her voice quavered slightly—another sign of weakness that she fought back with fierce determination. She couldn’t afford to show any sign of vulnerability. That certainty stayed with her. Dr. Hobson looked at her curiously.

“What happened to that fiendish temper of yours?” he asked mildly.

“You’ve already terrified two of the toughest professionals on this floor.”

“I’m frightened,” she said in a tight little voice.

“I can’t be strong all the time.”

“Of course you can’t,” he said soothingly.

“No one expects you to be but yourself.”

“Well, I expect too much,” she said in a muffled voice.

He patted her hand.

“You do, indeed. Do you think you’re ready to go home? I’m worried about this recent blank spot. Chances are it will pass as swiftly as the others, but still, it concerns me.”

“If I put it off I may never be able to go back,” she said in a quiet voice, steeling herself.

“The sooner I face up to it the better off I’ll be. The nurse says these blank spells don’t last long. I’ll probably remember everything by the time I reach home. Wherever that is,” she added with an attempt at humor that sounded just a bit bitter.

“Out in the country, in a small horse-farming community. Bucks County, I gather. We’re just on the other side of the river in New Jersey—it shouldn’t take you more than an hour to get home. Depending on the traffic.” He took a step back, surveying her.

“It’s probably a wise decision,” he added.

“Despite the memory lapse, you’re perfectly well, and we try to get people out of the hospital as soon as we can. The insurance companies don’t like paying bills any more than the rest of us.”

She tried to smile at his attempt at humor, but it fell flat.

“A wise decision,” she repeated doubtfully, half to herself.

He was already moving toward the door.

“I’ve given your husband instructions, but I’ll repeat them to you.

Don’t drink alcohol, don’t take drugs, don’t do anything too strenuous for a while. Try not to start smoking again if you can help it—it’ll kill you sooner or later. “

“I smoke?”

“Not for the past two weeks. Fortunately you’ve gone cold turkey already, so you shouldn’t even miss them. Just take it easy and give yourself time to mend.”

“There … there wasn’t any brain damage, was there?” she questioned nervously.

“None,” he said, his voice firm.

“We’ll give it about a week. If the amnesia continues, or you have dizzy spells, anything at all after that, I want you to come straight back here. All right?”

She summoned up her coolest smile.

“Of course,”

she lied.

He hesitated.

“You might as well get dressed, then.

I’ll send the nurse in to help you. Your clothes should be in the locker behind the door. “

She dressed quickly, surprised by the clothing they insisted was hers. The raw silk suit, the ridiculously high-heeled shoes, the leather

purse. They were her sand yet she had no sense of recognition. They felt both familiar and alien to her, as if they belonged to a different sort of person. To that stranger who bore a distant resemblance to the woman in the mirror.

She tied the silk scarf around her neck with the ease of long practice, just as the nurse returned.

“Is it cold outside?” she asked in a deliberately nonchalant voice. The nurse shrugged.

“About usual for the end of March.” She eyed her curiously.

“You did know it was the end of March, didn’t you?”

She smiled at her.

“I do now.” She glanced back at her reflection.

She was Mrs. Winters, tall and leggy and well dressed, suspected of God knows what, on her way to meet her handsome husband whom she apparently hated, on a day in late winter. And she was leaving behind the only people she knew in the world.

“You know, things could be a lot worse,” the nurse broke into her troubled thoughts.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve got money. You’ve got your health, even if your memory’s a bit patchy. Even though he’s a bit older than you, your husband has to be one of the most gorgeous creatures I’ve seen in centuries. A few nights with him should put the color back in your cheeks.”

“I thought you said we hated each other,” she protested faintly.

“Well, sometimes it’s awfully hard to tell the difference between hate and love,” the nurse said.

“Maybe you can spend the next few weeks finding out which one it is.”

“Maybe. I just hope it turns out to be the right one.” She was unable to make her voice sound overly optimistic.

“If it’s not, I’ll give you my address and you can send your husband to me,” the nurse said, straight faced

She finally found she could smile.

“I’ll be happy ” Oh, I nearly forgot. Lieutenant Ryker would like the pleasure of your company,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm, picking up the discarded hospital robe and heading for the door.

“Don’t let him scare you—he’s all bark and no bite. Dr. Hobson’s told him to go easy on you, but I wouldn’t count on it. Just don’t let him browbeat you.” She smiled.

“Good luck to you.”

And then she was alone once more, staring down at the shiny green vinyl floor and wondering what ghastly crimes she had committed.

None. She knew that with an instinct both sure and comforting.

Unfortunately she had no memory, no way to refute any accusations.

Maybe she wasn’t suspected of anything. Maybe she was just being paranoid. She looked down at her elegant clothes and considered her absent husband. Somehow she didn’t think paranoia was a major part of her difficulties.

Lieutenant Ryker was more than happy to inform her what her difficulties were. He was a middle-aged man, with sandy hair, sandy eyes, and a tense manner that was slightly intimidating. Not the ogre that the nurse but no either. She sat

across from him in the private lounge and crossed her ankles with a casual disdain that seemed to come naturally.

“Mrs. Winters, we’re releasing you into your husband’s custody today—against my better judgment, I might add. You must remember that you have given your oath that you’ll remain in his care until this matter is cleared up.” His eyes were faintly contemptuous.

“What matter?”

“Dr. Hobson told me you have a temporary memory loss.” He looked skeptical.

“How very convenient for you. To summarize briefly, Mrs. Winters, you were found in a wrecked car near the Jersey coast with a dead man beside you in the passenger seat. We finally got an ID on him, no thanks to you. George Andrews. You had a concussion that may or may not have been caused by the accident, and the autopsy showed that rather than dying from injuries sustained in the accident, your companion had been strangled.

Now obviously you haven’t the strength to strangle a man of Andrews’s height and weight. Obviously, also, you must have a good idea who did it. “

“Why do you say that?” she countered swiftly.

“How do you know that man didn’t knock me unconscious before someone showed up and strangled him?”

“Highly unlikely, Mrs. Winters. There were signs of a struggle—you had bloodied and broken fingernails, and there was no blood on Andrews’s body.”

“Blood? What about DNA testing…?” From somewhere in the recesses of her knowledge came the question.

“It was your blood, Mrs. Winters,” he said wearily.

“And the dead man isn’t your only problem.

There’s also the question of $350 thor sand found in the trunk of your car. Your fingerprints are all over that money, Mrs. Winters. Yours and Andrews’s. ” His voice was hard, implacable and furious.

“You have refused to cooperate with the police from the first moment you regained consciousness, telling us absolutely nothing, and you still refuse to do so. We know several of your companion’s aliases from a fingerprint check, but after that the trail gets cold. We know he was a criminal, Mrs. Winters. A petty, blackmailing criminal.” He shook his head angrily.

“Maybe your husband will be able to convince you to do the honorable thing.”

And maybe you can go to hell, she thought silently, maintaining an impassive countenance.

“What was I doing with this man? Where was my husband?”

“I think you can answer that far better than we can, if you wanted to. All we know of your movements is that you left your husband five weeks ago, two weeks before you turned up in that wrecked car. Perhaps you’ve changed your mind and feel like enlightening us?” He didn’t look hopeful.

She shook her head.

“I’m afraid I can’t.” Despite the man’s hostiliiy she wanted the same answers that he did, and she made an effort to smile politely.

“I sun ply don’t remember. Not right now, at least. I

should before long, or at least that’s what the doctor assures me. ” He snorted, his contempt obvious. He must have thought she was a spoiled, frivolous creature, and yet she didn’t feel very frivolous, except for this silk suit she was wearing. Had she got it from her handsome husband, she wondered, the one she’d run away from? Or from her dead lover?

“Is my husband here yet?” she asked, dreading the moment when she had to meet the stranger who would have so much control over her life, the stranger she had run from.

There seemed no way to avoid it much longer.

Apparently there was.

“He’s not coming,” Lieutenant Ryker said shortly.

“He’s gotten a friend of his to come and get you. I don’t imagine his feelings toward you are any too charitable right now.”

“I imagine not,” she agreed faintly, wondering desperately what, besides a husband she hated, would await her when she arrived at her forgotten home. The answers were there. The answers she needed, the reason she’d run.

But more than answers might await her. She couldn’t picture a place, or a person. But she recognized the familiar feelings that swept over her as she contemplated her return.

Longing.

And fear.

The car sped across the endless stretch of crowded, highway, the landscape brown, dead and dreary. What an awful time of year, she thought gloomily. Everything dead from winter, the spring teasingly out of sight. She wondered dismally where she was going. Bucks County, they’d told her. Somehow that didn’t sound promising.

“Excuse me, Officer Stroup.” She leaned forward and spoke to the thickset shoulders in front of her.

“Where is it exactly that we’re headed?” He permitted himself a stare of incredulity before returning his stolid gaze to the fog-shrouded highway.

“Come off it, Mrs. Winters. You know as well as I do where we’re going. To , your husband’s farm in Belltown, Pennsylvania. In Bucks County, where you’ve lived for the past seven years.” She leaned back with a languor that came easily to her, a languor she didn’t like. She sat back up stiffly.

“Do I know you?” she asked suddenly. She hadn’t registered any sense of familiarity when she’d been

introduced to the sullen hulk of her husband’s errand boy, one of the local policemen, apparently.

“Your husband and I have been friends for years,” he said, but there was an undercurrent in his voice she couldn’t quite define.

“We could have been friends too, if you know what I mean. If you weren’t so picky.”

She could guess what he meant, and she shuddered.

“Why didn’t he come and get me?” She finally voiced the question that had been eating away inside her. There was no reason it should bother her-she didn’t remember the man, so why should he have the ability to hurt her? But he did. Perhaps it was no wonder that she hated him.

“I don’t imagine he wants to have any more to do with you than he can help,” Stroup shot back, his thick red neck mottled with irritation.

“I owed him a favor or two, so I offered to take this little chore off his hands for him. Besides, I thought you might be feeling a little less uppity after getting involved in a murder.”

Her eyes met his in the rearview mirror, and there was no mistaking the meaning in them. Another shudder washed over her.

“I’m feeling as uppity as ever,” she said sharply, leaning back against the seat. Her head was throbbing again, and she longed for a room hidden away from everyone. Which was just what she’d get if they proved she had anything to do with the mysterious George Andrews’s murder.

“And you’re hardly acting like my husband’s friend,” she added helatedly.

He laughed, a fat, wheezy chuckle.

“You should realize by now that your husband doesn’t give a damn what you do and who you do it with. You made sure of that a long time ago.”

She turned away, trying to shut out the sight of him in the front seat, trying to shut out the sound of his voice. Anything to still the pain in her head. Obviously Stroup believed her capable of adultery as well as murder. She wondered what she could have possibly done to alienate everyone so completely. Particularly her handsome husband.

She tried to picture him. Older, the nurse had said. Very handsome.

She summoned up the image of someone gentle, smiling down at her, with faded eyes and a fatherly manner. Gray hair, slightly stooped. But the comforting image shifted, almost immediately, and the man in front of her had midnight black hair, winter blue eyes, and a cool, mocking smile that held no warmth whatsoever.

Suddenly her hands were cold and sweating, her heart was pounding beneath the silk suit, and the hairpins were digging into her scalp. Her eyes shot open, and she stared determinedly at the brown, blurred landscape. She wasn’t going to let them destroy her. She hadn’t before, and she wouldn’t this time.