You Don't Know Me (33 page)

“I’ll take you to dinner,” he said by way of invitation, “and we’ll talk.”

 

John took Dinah to his apartment, which was just as masculinely designed as his bedroom at the Malibu house. Prints by unknown artists in shades of taupe and black and peach accented a cool room with off-white carpet, rust brown leather couches, and wrought-iron floor lamps. She liked it, but it only served to make her feel more like an interloper.

“So where’s the food?” she asked.

He opened the refrigerator where someone had left an array of cold salads. “I asked my housekeeper to make us up something.”

“You knew I’d say yes. How disappointing.”

He set several bowls of pasta salad and salad greens on the counter, then eyed her in a way that made her heart lurch. “I planned to do my damnedest to persuade you,” he said, motioning her to a black leather barstool.

They ate in silence, the minutes stretching out.

She sipped red wine and stared straight ahead, hating herself for the simple fact that she wanted him to sweep her into his arms and make hot, passionate love to her all night long.

Ratwoman,
she berated herself. Ratwomen let men walk all over them and kept coming back for more.

Except that, she reminded herself sternly, he didn’t want her.

“Something’s wrong with Hayley,” he said in his slow-talking drawl.

“Wrong?”

“She’s completely changed.”

“Like you know her so well.”

“I know that she was selfishly determined and brilliantly focused and now she’s neither.”

“What does that mean?”

John’s gaze swept reflectively down her face, focusing on her throat where her heart beat, strong and even. “Something happened to her, and I think it happened during that whole Lambert Wallace mess. Either that did it, or something related to it. She just can’t keep it together and this damn film is going to collapse around us all if she doesn’t find a way out.”

Dinah inwardly snorted. So that was it. His precious film. “You want me to talk to her?”

He shook his head. “She’s gone to Oregon. Jackley’s still working on your stepfather’s murder—”

“—case,” he finished, frowning.

“Hayley went to Oregon?” Dinah cut in. “To
Wagon Wheel
?”

“Jackley thinks she can help. So we’re filming the scenes with Denise that don’t—”

“Why did he take her?” Dinah broke in again. “Why
only
her?”

“Beats me,” John replied. She knew she was acting like a maniac but she couldn’t help it. “Hey, if it brings her around, more power to him.”

“He should be talking to me.” Dinah’s face set in hard lines of concentration.

John gave her a long look. “Why? Do you know something?”

Dinah regarded him coolly. She hadn’t kept secrets this long to suddenly spurt them out like a fountain. “When did they leave?”

“Couple days ago.”

“I’m going, too.”

“Whoa.” He grabbed her as she slid off the stool. “You know what really happened, don’t you?” he said, the truth dawning.

“It isn’t what you think.”

“This all has to do with Daniels, doesn’t it? That’s why Hayley’s been like walking death. You
know
who killed him, and so does she.” A beat. “Denise,” he whispered.

“No.” She shook her head vehemently.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Oh, John.” Dinah swallowed hard. It was over. All over. And she was suddenly glad. “I’m the one who stuck his body in the culvert, not Denise.”

 

Springtime was still frigid winter in central Oregon. Cold, arctic, blasting air rushed off the mountains, sometimes forming into snow, sometimes turning to needles of rain that took your breath away.

Hayley stood at the edge of the field, her hands tucked inside the insulated navy blue parka. Connor’s. He’d wrapped her in the oversized coat, his gaze warm and concerned.

She wanted to reach out and stroke his beard-shadowed face. She couldn’t make herself do it, and the moment had ended.

Now, the whistling wind filled her ears, so cold it gave her an instant earache. Her eyes squinted and she gazed at the soggy stalks of field grass, feeling slightly sick.

The culvert where Thomas’s body had been found was about fifty feet away. The field was in back of the house where they’d all once lived, but no one had ever looked in the culvert. The place had gone into foreclosure after Daniels’s disappearance, and the subsequent owners had leased the property to a middle-aged, retired couple that never set a foot out of the tiny crabgrass-infested backyard. The fence that had once surrounded the periphery had long ago fallen into disrepair, and ignoring its gray, weathered, broken slats, two boys had ridden on horseback into the open area and come across Daniels’s body.

She’d told Connor a little bit about her past, how she’d shied away from her lecherous stepfather, how she’d squirmed when girls at school had whispered about his numerous affairs.

But she hadn’t told him about Denise.

Now, however, the accusing silence of the place coupled with the angry whine of the wind preyed on her soul. She had little resistance. None, really.

He’d taken her to meet the players in this dark farce. His nephew, Matt, and his close friend, Mikey. His own sister, Mary, who spent half the time regarding Hayley with pity and understanding, half the time haranguing her brother into rejoining the force. His laconic brother-in-law and the sheriff, Gus Dempsey, who clearly thought Denise was guilty, and who was eager to close the book on the whole damn thing and forget it.

And then there’d been the curiosity seekers, the ones who came to see
her.
Ex-schoolmates, ex-friends, ex-everything. Hayley Scott, Denise Scott’s little sister, an aspiring actress who may, or may not, have knocked off her mother’s vile husband.

And wonder of wonders, a balding thirtyish man with flashy taste and more money than sense had introduced himself to her as Jimmy Fargo, Denise’s long-ago love. He’d driven down from Seattle at Connor’s request, she’d learned, and he was eager to be a part of the investigation.

“Yeah, she was pregnant,” Jimmy told them, settling back in a squeaking chair in Dempsey’s office for a big, long yarn. “I gave her money for an abortion, and she did it. I regret it now, though. We shoulda had that baby and been a family.” He smiled in a way he undoubtedly thought was full of regret but managed to look merely slimy. “I’m doing all right now in Seattle. Sold my parents’ place here, got quite a pretty penny for it, then invested in real estate in Seattle. Made a fortune!”

“Then why did you sell your story to a tabloid?” Hayley had asked, feeling dirty just being near him.

“Well, sure, there’ve been a few lean times. And besides, I think the public has a right to know the truth. After all, she’s down there making tons of money and acting like she’s so good and all. I thought people should know, that’s all.”

Throughout this exchange, Connor said nothing, but Hayley could feel the waves of disgust emanating from him. Jimmy Fargo was a weasel. He’d been cute and kind of cool in high school, but he’d turned into an ogre of mega-magnitude.

“You’re certain the child was yours,” Connor finally asked.

Fargo’s face turned a dull, ugly red. “You bet it was!”

“I was just wondering if there was any other man in—”

“I
was her man, okay? Me. Nobody else. She killed
my
baby!”

Hayley had turned away. She couldn’t look at him. He was another part of the problem that had led to the killing, and she couldn’t bear to look at him.

Jimmy then went on about Denise and how nobody believed him that she was Denise Scott, the movie star. It was clear he was upset that some of her fame and notoriety hadn’t rubbed off on him and he meant to set things right. Finally, Connor held the door for him and Jimmy reluctantly got to his feet.

“I remember you had that concussion,” he added at the door, wagging a finger at Hayley in recollection. “Couldn’t make it to class and all. Denise said you fell, but Mr. Saunderson called county services and went to see if you were all right. I remember ’cause it was right before she left. Before you all left.”

Fuzziness. Hayley almost recalled that same memory but it eluded her somehow. She was afraid to chase it. Afraid it might reveal even more memories she didn’t want to see.

Connor managed to hustle Jimmy outside. He paid him for his time, hoping he’d head back to Seattle, but Jimmy was having none of it. He was determined to hang around like a bad smell and stink up everything.

Hayley shivered and pulled the parka closer. So now she was at the scene of the crime and Connor, apparently, was waiting for miracles.

“How’re you doing?” he asked as he tramped across the dead stubble toward her.

“Okay.”

“Let’s go back to the motel.”

She nodded. They walked across the field side by side. Hayley’s eyes had a will of their own. They glanced at the spot—
the
spot—where it had happened. She knew exactly where it was.

Instantly, she felt the familiar increase of her heartbeat, the flood of warmth and then its quick disappearance, like the turn of the tide. Anxiety attack. She hadn’t had them in years. Had buried them under layers of forced sanity. She was
not
like Denise.

His gloved hand suddenly encircled her arm. She stumbled anyway, gazing in horror at a circle of ground behind the house, just outside the yard, in a thicket of overgrown blackberry vines and jack pines.

“What is it?” Connor asked from far away.

A woman shrieking and screaming. An arm swinging downward, bludgeoning an inert body. The body bouncing and twitching with each blow. Blood, blood . . . so much blood. Denise, rocking to and fro, her hands covering her face, her clothes splattered red. A piece of granite sticky with blood and hair.

“Hayley?” he asked, grabbing her shoulders, shaking her, his breath white gusts against the gray sky.

“He deserved to die,” she said.

Connor gazed at her, feeling her anguish as his own. Her brittle shell had broken so completely and left the unformed woman. Knowing she would resist, he reacted to his feelings anyway, dragging her to his chest, cradling her close.

He didn’t expect anything more. Not now. Not today. It was all unraveling anyway. She would tell him in time because he’d ripped the scab off this wound and she was writhing with pain. He felt for her, but, like Denise, Hayley had to come to grips with the past if she ever expected to be whole.

So he was surprised when she swept in a shaking breath and spoke again, and her words turned his veins to ice. “It was me,” she said quietly. “Because he kept trying to . . . because he followed me and Denise, and came into our rooms . . . and he . . . and he . . .” A shudder ran through her small frame. “And he touched me. And hurt me.” He felt her swallow. “I killed him. I had to.”

Connor closed his eyes, resting his chin on the top of her crown. Daniels did deserve to die. He did. With a wrench of his heart he heard the echo of his sister’s admonitions.
You’re going to put one of those girls in jail . . . you’re going to ruin her life for the sake of avenging Thomas Daniels . . .

He just hadn’t expected it to be Hayley.

 

 

It was later. Much later. He’d taken Hayley back to the Wheel Treat You Right Motel, Wagon Wheel’s only decent lodgings, regardless of the silly name, and now Connor was driving in his sister’s Ford Edge, footloose and bothered. His feelings were all tangled up. He was close to the truth; like a bloodhound he could scent it. But it hurt.

The Edge bounced up the rain-slogged ruts to a gray-shingled house with a trim lawn and a carport where an older-model wagon looked as if it had just wheezed to a stop.

Connor cut the engine, pocketed the keys, and made his way around the mud puddles to the front door. The sky was slate gray and close and when the door opened, letting out the aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg, Connor breathed deeply, an ache building inside him he couldn’t control.

“Yes?” a woman with tightly curled gray hair asked.

“Mrs. Saunderson? I have an appointment with your husband.”

“Oh, yes . . .” She held the door open wide and Connor stepped inside.

Saunderson sat by a tidy fire, glasses slipping down his nose, working his way through the paper’s daily crossword puzzle. He glanced up at Connor and waited while the younger man took a seat. Then he said simply, “I can’t tell you anything more than what I said on the phone. Hayley Scott was in my history class and she came in with bruises now and again. Her sister always said it was just accidents, but I didn’t believe it. Called the county, and went to her house, too. That last time she was concussed, but Daniels wasn’t around to question. He was already gone.”

Already dead,
Connor guessed, his gut tightening.

Saunderson sighed heavily. “There was talk of sending Hayley to a foster home, since no one but the twins were around, but nothing happened, and then they all left.”

“When you went to the house, what were your impressions?”

Reflectively, he pulled his glasses off his nose. “That something terrible had happened and they were all desperately trying to cover it up.”

 

Denise sprayed perfume liberally on her throat and wrists, inhaling deeply. The scent penetrated so deeply, it amazed her. She was awake. No perpetual sleepwalking. No fuzziness and lost hours and delusions. She was
awake.

Confession must be good for the soul, she decided wryly, gazing around her bedroom. Odd. It felt like a stranger’s room. Everything, in fact, gave her a creepy feeling that she was living out someone else’s life. She was entirely disconnected from her room, the house, the lifestyle, even John...

She had to remind herself almost hourly that yes, this was Denise Scott’s life, and that yes, she was Denise Scott.

New thoughts. Eerie feelings. Stone was chipping away at her, and for reasons she didn’t entirely understand, she was letting him. Maybe it was because her bipolar-crapola problem was under control. Or maybe it was no drugs. Or maybe she’d just reached that age when she could face what happened to her, dredge up the buried memories.

Or maybe it was Stoner himself.

Whatever the case, she was better. She could feel it inside. Like great ice floes breaking apart and floating away.

Denise closed her eyes and held out her fist, slowly opening her hand until her fingers splayed and stretched, mentally pushing—until all the baddies suddenly spurted from her fingers and shot away.

Opening one eye, she glanced at her straining hand. Silent laughter caught in her throat. The exercise that had saved the remnants of her sanity didn’t work anymore. She
was
better.

She’d worked today and the production crew had been warm and relaxed and so easy to be with that she could hardly believe it. With her history, she would expect them to hate her, or at the very least, distrust her. But they didn’t walk on eggshells around her, and they didn’t treat her with extra deference. No, they were all there to get the job done, and the job had got done remarkably quickly. John’s assistant director was a guy who knew how to make everyone feel comfortable, though she wished John would return from his sudden trip to parts unknown. She still worked best with him.

So now she was waiting for Stoner. She’d begged a dinner out of him, the Freudian cheapskate, and though he’d been loathe to agree, he’d finally caved in.

He hadn’t taken his belief that Dinah was Thomas’s killer to the police. Though unspoken between them, he clearly knew Denise would lie, cheat, and steal to protect her twin. And if Dinah truly bashed the bastard over the head—Denise was still unclear on the details, there—it was in self-defense. No question.

Except there
would
be questions. She’d always known there would be questions. She’d just spent a year of her life answering questions, and no self-respecting lawman could keep from asking more of the same.

Which was why Hayley’s involvement with Connor Jackley was such a problem. He had COP stamped all over him, regardless of how sexy he was, and that was bad news any way you read it.