With Every Breath (3 page)

looked down at the lease, glancing over it as fast as she could. They needed to get out of there. Josh needed to get out of there. The tension was all under the surface, but he clearly felt it, and he did not handle tension well these days at all.

"Three months, right? And if I need it longer ..." "It’s been empty for eons," Cassie Diehl assured her. "No problem. I’m sure the owner will continue your lease."

"At the same price?"

"That I can’t guarantee you."

As though she had even a modicum of a choice, Maddie thought, signing. "What about utilities?"

"Electric’s hooked up, and I called to have it turned on in your name like you asked. No phone, though. You’ll have to go all the way back to the mainland to get that." She sounded pleased.

Why couldn’t she just have told me that on the phone last week, Maddie wondered angrily, before we ferried all the way over here? But arguing the point didn’t seem as important as leaving.

Cassie slid a set of keys across toward her. "It’s number one hundred and ten on The Wick Road," she went on, and her voice changed again, going a little breathless. Maddie looked up at her, scowling.

"I don’t know where that is."

The woman was dumbfounded, then eager. "Really? Are you serious?"

Maddie didn’t have to worry about stuttering anymore. Anger spurted through her sweetly and suddenly. "Why wouldn’t I be?"

Cassie blinked. "I just—I didn’t—·"

"What
is
the problem here?" Maddie demanded.

"I—nothing. That’s everything."

"Good. Then I need directions. As quickly and as

concisely as you can give them to me, please, because my little boy has had a long day."

The woman’s eyes flickered again at her tone. "Just go back to the boulevard and keep going straight north. It’ll take you to the bridge. When you get over onto The Wick, there’s only one road. It sort of loops all the way around the little island. Take it to the right, to the east side. The road goes up onto a bunch of rocks. When it dives again, you’ll see a house right there on your left. That’s one hundred and ten."

Maddie stooped to pick Josh up, feeling a protective urge to hold him. She took the keys from Cassie’s desk and dropped them into her coat pocket. She threw a last wary look at Cassie.

"Thanks," she said shortly, then she looked at the man, who was still blocking the door. "Excuse me."

The man—Joe, she remembered—stepped away to give her room to pass. The little bell jingled behind her as she wrenched the door open with her free hand and hurried outside.

Not a particularly welcoming bunch, Maddie thought. She could almost understand why her parents had flown the coop all those years ago. It just might have been nice if they had considered taking me with them.

Chapter 2

Joe Gallen watched Maddie run to her car, clutching the boy, the wind snatching at her coat. Then he looked back at Cassie.

"Now what," he asked wearily, "did you want to go and do that for?"

"Do what?" Cassie asked innocently.

Joe watched her take a seat behind the reception desk with slow, practiced movements. The effort didn’t soften her up any. She was brittle and sharp-edged, and it went beyond the bony elbows and knees that seemed to draw the eye and stick out every which way. He crossed to her slowly, refusing to wince at the scurrying pain in his right knee.

"A hundred rental units on the big island, and you put her up on the goddamned
Wick
?"

Cassie examined her long, bloodred nails. "Well, she belongs up there. She’s one of them."

Joe planted his palms on her desk. "That attitude went out with love beads and flower power." In fact, he thought, there were just as many half-million-dollar

homes up there now as there were run-down cottages. Granted, the big houses were all on the side facing the distant mainland. The sea views were kinder there. High tide was less likely to send waves crashing into real estate, and the northeasterly gales were less likely to shatter glass. The ocean side—where Cassie had put the Brogan woman—was like another country. But a fair handful of the wealthy and the reclusive had found the western Wick to their liking in recent years.

"Mama doesn’t think so," Cassie was saying. "She about fell off her chair when I told her who called me to rent a place a few weeks ago."

Mildred would, he thought.

"She said I ought to put her in that old house, just to see what comes of it."

"You put her in that
house?" He hadn’t realized it, hadn’t equated the number with the weathered old bungalow where it had all happened twenty-five years ago. "Jesus, are you nuts?"

"Just helping you do your job, Joe."

He muttered a curse and backed away from her desk. "So what did you want?" Cassie asked. "I bet you just wanted to get a look at her yourself."

He had wanted to check the woman out, but not for the same intrusive reasons that would take Cassie to the telephone as soon as he left there. At least, not entirely.

"Damn you, Cassie," he muttered, going to the door again.

"You got here pretty quick, Joe!" she called out, laughing shrilly. "Don’t act like you’re so much better than the rest of us!"

He ignored her, going outside, closing the door carefully behind him because the urge to slam it was strong. His job, he thought, would be a lot easier if both she and her mother would pack their bags and leave the island.

Joe had taken over for Dave Bramnick in 1991 as chief of police, after six years of working under him. At the old man’s retirement party down at the Sandbar, Dave had gotten reasonably soused and had talked about the Brogan thing for the first and only time, at least in Joe’s hearing. Dave was touchy about it, considering it his only real failure. Dave was also of the firm opinion that the case would never be closed.

Beacher had gotten drunk, he’d said, done Annabel in, and taken off, but they’d never prove it. Annabel’s body had never turned up, despite the efforts of a fairsized search party. Beacher himself had vanished into thin air, too. There was only one person in the world who could tell anyone what had happened up there that day, and the last time Dave Bramnick had seen her, little Madeline Brogan wasn’t saying a word.

Well, she was talking now, Joe thought, although he thought he had noticed a quick stutter-step there with some of her words. Oh, yeah, he had noticed, that she talked and she walked and she smelled just fine, like summer wildflowers.

She’d looked right at him and hadn’t seemed to know him, though admittedly Joe had been some three grades ahead of her, and he didn’t remember much of her, either. But he was sure she hadn’t recognized Cassie, and they had been in the same grade. And she hadn’t batted an eye at having rented her old house.

So she didn’t remember.

Joe guessed that if something could rip the tongue right out of a kid’s mouth and render her mute, if she had seen something so God-rotten that day that it had done that to her, it was reasonable to assume that as an adult she would block it out. Consciously or unconsciously, it made sense that she would just lock the memories away in some place deep and distant inside.

Joe knew all about God-rotten experiences and the things a person might do to bear them. What bothered him was that she didn’t seem to think her lack of memory or recognition was off kilter at all, at least not so far as he could tell.

I don't
know where that is. I need directions.

There was that, and the fact that Joe had always had a hunch, a gut feeling, that Dave Bramnick was wrong.

Joe was of the opinion that both Beacher and Annabel had died that day. Which meant that
two
witnesses knew what had happened up there on The Wick. Their kid knew ... and so did their killer.

Twenty-five years, Joe reflected. Not so long that it wasn’t reasonable to assume that that killer was still alive. Alive and most probably sweating bullets. Wondering if little Maddie could finally talk. If she
would
talk. And even when and if it became apparent to the general populace that she didn’t remember, Cassie Diehl had fixed it that so that people would have to wonder if sooner or later she would.

He got into the city Pathfinder he’d left parked on the street and wheeled it around to head west on Ninth Street. Candle Island was a real quiet, boring place, and that was just the way Joe liked it. He didn’t need— didn’t
want
—Maddie Brogan’s memory erupting like snakes out of a pit, giving him trouble.

He took the radio mouthpiece off the dashboard and buzzed in at the station. Hector Marks picked up.

There was another thorn in Joe’s side, but at least with Hector there was a decisive and predictable end in sight. The weasel had six more months until mandatory retirement.

"Anything going on?" he asked to the man’s greeting, then he winced.

"That Brogan girl’s back," Hector said excitedly.

"Yeah."

"Jesus H. Christ, last time I saw her she was damned near buck naked and bloody from head to toe. I was with Dave that day, you know."

Everybody knew. "Yeah," Joe said again.

"Pete Caven saw her go into the market. He says she turned out to be a looker."

"Mmm." Joe had been born and raised on the island, had left only to attend Penn State and to play pro football with the Minnesota Vikings. He had been gone, altogether, maybe seven years. It had been just long enough for him realize that the rest of the world wasn’t like this. It had been just enough that it still amazed him how a small group of people could thrive on gossip to the exclusion of common decency and taste and everything else.

"You seen her yet yourself?" Hector persisted.

"Matter of fact, I did." And she was hardly the Brogan
girl
any longer. She was all grown-up, and she had some spunk to call her own. She hadn’t let Cassie dance all over her. And she had pushed past him out that door like a terrier, teeth bared, just waiting for some excuse to snap, no matter that she was snapping at a pit bull.

"Anything else?" he asked Hector, dragging his mind off her.

"Gina called."

Joe snarled.

"She’s says it’s the tenth of the month, so where’s the money?"

What he’d like to do, Joe thought, was cram every dollar of support down her throat. "I’ll take care of it later. I’m going to stop over at the diner for some lunch. See you in an hour."

He hung up the handset again and hit the accelerator

a little harder. Something like wildflowers lingered in his nostrils.

And he couldn’t help but wonder what in the hell had she come back for and why?

Cassie waited until the CIPD Pathfinder was out of sight, then she hurried back to the phone and called the diner. Mama still worked there, waiting tables, though less and less these days when her arthritis kicked up. Along with her social security, it was just barely enough to keep her going. Cassie paid her rent, too, for use of the attic bedroom that had been hers for as long as she could remember. She had always lived there, but suddenly, after thirty-four years, Mama decided that she should pay for the luxury.

Mildred Diehl picked up the phone on the first ring, which was bad news, too. It meant that her boss was making her sit on the register today. And that meant no tips, so Cassie would get stuck buying the groceries.

Still, the delicious gossip she had to impart wouldn’t let her scowl for long.

"She was here,
Mama," she blurted. "Not more than five minutes ago. And she doesn’t remember. She didn’t even remember her own house!"

"Yup," Mildred answered. "She was driving a gray foreign car. I saw her in the market before I came in to work. That kid seem all right to you?"

Cassie thought about it, nonplussed. "Well, I guess. He didn’t say much."

"She was a nervous wreck," Mildred went on. "Still don’t seem in possession of all her marbles, if you get my meaning. And I was wondering how come she’s got a kid when her name’s still Brogan." Women with kids

and without husbands were a source of particular interest and chagrin to Mama.

"Well, she’s famous or some such thing," Cassie said finally. "Maybe she kept her maiden name because of that." She’d heard of women doing that sort of thing, although Cassie had always figured that if she ever got herself a husband, she’d take everything she was entitled to, including his name.

Mildred harrumphed. "Don’t know what she’s famous for," she answered. "I never heard of her. Not for anything else but what happened up there on The Wick, anyways."

"She takes pictures, Mama." Cassie sighed. "I told you that. Remember, I showed you a long time ago when they were in that magazine."

"Yeah, well, I got to go."

Cassie slammed the phone down. It irritated her immensely that Mama had seen Madeline Brogan even before
she
had.

She pushed back from the desk and plucked her keys from the drawer. Her boss would be out to lunch for another half an hour yet. In the meantime, Cassie could think of at least one other person who would be interested in Maddie Brogan’s return, someone who would be very interested to know that Joe Gallen had gotten there almost before the woman had turned up.

Cassie flipped the closed sign on the office door and went to find his ex-wife.