Pulse (23 page)

She followed him to South Beach where skateboarders and in-line skaters flashed through the neon glitz of early twilight. The streets were jammed, the curbs lined with cars awaiting valet parking at eight dollars a pop. He pulled into a tow-away zone, stepped out and locked the car.

“You can’t leave it there!” Rory said, when he opened her car door. “They’ll tow it in twenty minutes. You know how they are here. There’s a tow truck around every corner.”

“Right. If it’s impounded, I know where it is.” He slid in beside her. He had heard the horror stories from people whose cars had been towed after joyriders stole, then abandoned them. They had not been notified for weeks, even months, until storage charges had mounted to astronomical heights.

“If by some quirk of fate the system works and Kathleen is notified that they’ve got the car, so what? It leads them to South Beach, not the airport, or your neighborhood. I wantthem to think I’m still here. One more stop,” he said, “and we’re on our way.”

Parked at a meter, outside the big art deco post office on Washington Avenue, he scrawled a quick note on a piece of letterhead stationery from the office.

Shandi, darling. I know this will be painful, it always is when someone you care for is a disappointment and not all you expect him to be. I wish I knew how to make this easier. But in time you will learn, as I did, that the human heart is a tough and resilient organ. I will always love you. Dad.

He folded the note around the Bowden tape, sealed it into a stamped eight-by-ten manila envelope addressed to Shandi, marked it “Personal” and dropped it into a box at the curb.

Instead of the airport, where a persistent investigator could cruise the garages and spot Rory’s car, they left the Sable in a nearby park-and-lock lot and rode the shuttle bus into the terminal.

Rory helped him recomb his hair, the way Daniel wore it in his driver’s license picture.

The man who checked their bags and ID at the curb barely glanced at the picture.

“Concourse D, Gate Five.” He pocketed the ten-dollar tip. “Have a nice flight, Mister Alexander. You too, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” Frank replied. One hand on Rory’s arm, his briefcase in the other, he had become Daniel Alexander.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
he roar of the jet engines matched the roar inside him as they streaked through the night to the great Northwest.

They half watched the movie, snacked, and she dozed, her head on his shoulder. Rory called him Daniel in front of the flight attendants as he had instructed. Both still wore their wedding bands. They shared the same last name. No one would have guessed that they were married, but not to each other.

He tried to put Miami behind him, but wondered what Kathleen and his daughters were doing and thinking. This was the first night since they met that Kathleen did not know exactly where he was. Could she imagine that he would be two thousand miles away, sharing a strange bed with another woman? He could not have imagined it himself a few short weeks ago.

Arrival time was just after eleven p.m., but their bodies were still on Miami time, and Rory was exhausted. He felt energized, alert, already scanning faces, searching the crowd.

The weather was cool, but not as cold as he had expected. He bought a sweatshirt, lined windbreaker and a woolen scarf in an airport shop. Rory wore a leather jacket she had brought with her.

The cab ride into the city was long, the highway dark. He would use Daniel Alexander’s credit card to rent a car in the morning after studying maps and forming a plan.

The hotel suggested by the airport shopkeeper was exquisite. Four-star, turn-of-the-century, tucked away downtown, its bar a former bookstore, volumes still lining the shelves, a wood-burning fireplace in the lobby. The bellman brought complimentary glasses of evening sherry to their door.

The colors and fabrics were rich and textured, the furniture polished cherry wood. The ambiance, the room and the double bed were warm. She called him Daniel. It seemed natural even to him now.

His thoughts were only of what lay ahead, but when she touched him and opened her arms, soft and sweet, to him in their bed, it, too, seemed natural. Unlike the first time, their wordless lovemaking was oddly enhanced by their feelings of isolation, as though each had come to the other without a past, together at the end of the world.

“We belong together,” she whispered in a moment of passion.

“Yes,” he murmured. “Yes.”

But afterward, spent, heart pounding retroactively, he wondered about the distant coast left behind them, the southern end of that flat peninsula. Miami. Whatever chaos reigned at this home, his stately home on Rivo Alto island, must havequieted for the night. They all would be in bed by now. Were they dreaming of him? What had they told Casey?

Despite her exhaustion, Rory also seemed restless.

“What are you thinking?” The unfamiliar darkness echoed around them.

“ ‘Bout Billy. Wonderin’ if he’s all right.” She sighed, turned to him, and stroked his hair. He rested his hand on the curve of her hip, stared into the darkness and knew there was no way to put Miami behind them.

He had dressed and ordered room service by the time Rory yawned awake, hair tumbled down all around the soft curves of her shoulders, beautiful au naturel, sans clothes, sans cosmetics, without artifice. Or was she? She had done nothing to arouse his suspicions, he believed in her, but his heart was wary.

“Cover up,” he told her, “room service is on the way. Didn’t think you’d want bacon or sausage …”

She wrinkled her nose.

“… so I ordered you fruit and yogurt.”

“How do you always know exactly what I want? Come over here,” she invited, throwing back the sheet, smiling and patting the bed beside her.

A sound at the door spoiled the moment. Breakfast had arrived.

“Look.” She stood at the window. “What a beautiful day! The paper says the high will be sixty. Who said it always rains here? I wanna see the Seattle Aquarium and the Space Needle. The SuperSonics are playin’ tonight.” She’d been shuffling through the newspaper and the brochures on the coffee table.

“We’re not on vacation.”

She frowned. “I wish we were.” She sat cross-legged on the bed and gazed up at him, resigned. “Okay, where is Denise staying at out here?”

“I have no idea. I don’t even know that she’s here, or if she was, how long she stayed.”

Rory’s mouth opened in dismay.

“This is a perfect jumping-off place for Canada, Alaska, the Orient,” Frank said. “But if somebody wanted to put as many miles as possible between them and Miami, yet still stay in mainland U.S.A., this is the place.”

“But this is a big city, must be more than a million people. How do we ever find her?”

“Hopefully she’s a creature of habit. Her old neighbors said she worked out, did aerobics every day. She had her hair done and had fancy manicures, decorated nails.”

“Nail salons and hairdressers. That’s only a majority of the female population. What else?”

He shrugged.

“Shouldn’t we check with the local police departments, see if she got a job?”

“Doubt if she did, but it makes sense to go with the obvious.”

“What about the chamber of commerce? They might keep a listing of new residents. You know, like a welcome-wagon kinda thing.”

By early afternoon, after hours on the telephone, they knew that Denise Watson had not applied to any law enforcement agency, security agency or employment agency in the Seattle area.

“What did Daniel like to do? Where would he take someone in a town like this?”

“Daniel isn’t here,” she said quietly.

“You’ve trusted me this far, Rory. Indulge me.”

She sighed. “Daniel liked to dine in good restaurants, drink in intimate bars with good music. Liked jazz, good steak houses, Italian food. Liked a good piano player. Always requested ‘My Funny Valentine.’ ”

Frank got maps of the city and directions from the concierge and they walked to a photo mart to have the pictures of Daniel and Denise blown up to eight-by-ten size, two sets.

The weather was cool and crisp under blue sky. They were here somewhere, he knew it. Frank felt their presence like an electrical charge in the air. He watched faces on the street, in passing traffic. Rory, her long red hair loose, in jeans, boots and her leather jacket, turned heads.

“We have to stop and buy you some scarves.”

“Why? I never wear them, it’s not that cold.”

“They don’t know me. But they both know you. With that hair, they could spot you a block away. We don’t want them to see us first.”

She looked exasperated, but bought a cheap scarf in a five-and-dime and covered her hair.

The city felt strange, yet familiar to Frank. Miami and Seattle share musical three-syllable names and a distance from Middle America that is more than geographic. Both are cities on the edge, gateways to exotic capitals, watery outposts at far reaches of the map, natural destinations for wanderers, the restless and people on the run from the law, each other and the personal demons no one can ever escape.

But there was something else about Seattle, the older of the two. Though Frank saw as many young people with pierced noses and eyebrows and punk purple hair as on the streets of South Beach, there was a difference. The city exuded a discernible character, a stability and sense of history foreign to Miami’s wild, raw and ever-evolving atmospherewhere life lurches from crisis to crisis and nothing is ever remembered beyond next hurricane season.

They began the rounds that evening, starting with upscale steak houses and Italian restaurants. They would order a drink, small-talk the bartender or the maître d', and show the photos, saying they were in search of long-lost family members. Frank didn’t know if they bought the story, but all looked, then shook their heads.

When they were hungry enough, they ordered dinner. Rory seemed to be enjoying herself. Frank remained as alert as a cat, expecting one of the faces he sought to step unaware at any moment from around a corner, to emerge from a rest room, or ride in on a gust of wind off the street.

More bars, more nightspots, after dinner, ordering drinks, leaving them virtually untouched. He ordered Perrier, she white wine. They returned to the hotel, he frustrated, she tipsy and laughing.

The sky was gray, with a drizzling rain, when they awoke on the second day. He took his medication at seven a.m. and seven p.m. now, to stay on his Miami schedule. They tore out the Yellow Pages listing Beauty Salons and Services and began those rounds, salons by day, saloons at night. He would frequently pause, scan the street and turn to check behind them. Increasingly anxious, he feared that somehow they were just missing them.

“You’re making me jittery,” Rory said more than once. The routine and the rain continued for five days.

At a jazz concert in Pioneer Square, she listened to the music and held his hand. He insisted she wear her scarf and never stopped searching the crowd.

Then they hit the bars again, this night the watering holes at the poshest hotels, the Vintage Park, the Claremont and Cavanaugh’s.

At what would be their last stop that evening, Frank leaned over to better scrutinize a well-dressed man passing through the lobby. His height and build were correct, but he was not Daniel.

“He killed himself,” Rory said too loudly. “He committed suicide.” Tonight the wine did not make her laugh.

“He didn’t,” Frank said quietly.

The bartender lounged nearby reading a newspaper. He glanced up. “I’m with the lady,” he said. “Suicide.”

They stared.

He motioned to the front page of his newspaper. “Definitely suicide. Kurt Cobain killed himself. Totally messed up on drugs and couldn’t handle success. All these stories now, murder theories, speculation that it was this, that it was that, that it was something else.” He shook his head. “Some people want to make everything into a conspiracy. Some people just don’t wanna accept the simple truth.”

“Thank you very much. That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.” Rory sounded emotional, near tears. “You are absolutely right.”

“She was a big fan,” Frank explained, then caught her arm and got her out of there.

“Hope you find your cousin,” the barkeep called after them as they departed into the drizzle.

“Why did you insist on coming, if you’re not committed?” he asked bitterly as they walked through the rain.

“Maybe the search isn’t what I’m committed to.”

A man and a woman brushed by laughing, huddled together beneath an umbrella, illuminated for only an instant in the lamplight.

“You see.” He was annoyed. “I missed getting a good look at them. You’re distracting me. They could walk right by us. And you’re not wearing your scarf.”

She yanked the scarf from her neck and threw it down in the street. He stooped to retrieve it, sopping wet from a puddle.

Perhaps she was deliberately trying to sabotage the search, he thought bitterly.

They neither spoke nor touched for the rest of the night. She watched, quiet in the morning, as he mapped their itinerary for the day. He feared that she might announce plans to return to Miami alone. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better if she did.

No one recognized Denise’s photo in a swanky salon full of women in pale pink smocks. When he turned, Rory was seated in a chair in front of a slim, dark young man who wore five earrings in one ear. Frank thought of Shandi and his heart ached. She had seen the tape by now.

“This color is real.” The young man spoke in awe, trailing a wisp of Rory’s long hair between his fingers. “I know people who would kill for color like this.”

“Daniel,” she said, “you go on and come back for me in a couple of hours. I’m staying, Raymond can take me right now.”

He felt freer alone on the street, invisible and more powerful. Neither of those for whom he searched even knew that he existed and was hunting them. If their paths crossed now, he held the advantage, the element of surprise. He toured a large health club, telling the manager he might want to surprise his wife with a membership for her birthday. He scrutinized the participants in three aerobics classes in progress, beginners, advanced and a step class. He watched the men and women working out on the machines in the cardiovascular room and even stopped to peruse the candid snapshots of members posted on a bulletin board. He showed the pictures of Denise and Daniel to two employees at the front desk as he left. They shook their heads.

He visited two nail salons, then checked the time and returned for Rory. She wasn’t there.

The redhead with the dramatic long curly mane was gone. A brunette with bangs and a boyish haircut was wearing her clothes.

“No more scarves,” she announced. She jerked her head at the colorist, who looked nervous. “Tip the man.”

A young woman was sweeping mounds of red hair from the floor. “I couldn’t believe she wanted it brown,” the young man said, pocketing the twenty.

“It’s great,” Frank said, and handed him another twenty.

“What a difference,” he said, as they walked out onto the street. “You didn’t have to cut it all off.”

She shrugged. “You believe I’m committed now?”

“If we could just find enough putty to fill in the dimples, but there probably isn’t enough in this city.”

She punched his shoulder, her expression ferocious. “All I kept thinking in that chair, while he had at me with those scissors, was that if you came back and said you’d just found Denise, that it was all over and we could go home now, I was gonna snatch those scissors and cut your heart out.”

She took his arm. “Two more stops.” They bought a pair of dime-store glasses, wire frames. She knocked out the lenses and put them on. At Sears she bought a shapeless gray raincoat.

“Satisfied?” Posing in front of the mirror, she looked drab, like an old-maid schoolteacher.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said.

“What now?”

“How am I going to explain to the hotel clerk this strange woman I’m bringing back to our room?”

“Thank you,” he whispered later, in their rumpled, sweat-soaked bed. Their lovemaking had become all-consuming, theonly time he was free of the other woman and the constant pressure to find them.

“What more could I do to prove I love you?” she said.

Neither had mentioned love before.