Rogue Wave (30 page)

Maureen shrugged. “Why should I hire someone else?”

“Because I doubt Garrett was having an affair with Robin Matucci. He knew her in Alaska. But nothing he said indicated he was physically involved with her.”

Maureen sank back against the window ledge.

Kiernan waited for some sign of relief. But none came. Behind Maureen, outside in the studio, the light came on. Garrett ambled past the window, a shadowy form making his way to nothing.

Her own anger dissipated. To Maureen, she said, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t the answer you wanted, was it? You needed a good reason to leave Garrett, a reason good enough to allow you to face his friends and family, a reason that would permit you to live with yourself.”

Maureen gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes closed, but it was no use. Tears ran down her cheeks. In the dusky light she looked small and abandoned. Kiernan put an arm around her shoulder. She said nothing. There was nothing to say.

She wouldn’t have been surprised if Maureen insisted the investigation continue so she could have the satisfaction of seeing Robin as imprisoned as she was. But Maureen seemed beaten. She pulled back, glancing nervously at the windows. Kiernan said, “When I was in the studio with Garrett he was distracted by some movement outside. I got a glimpse of something brown, I think, but I’m not certain.”

Maureen shrugged again. “It could have been a deer, or some smaller animal. We get then all the time.”

“You’re not worried about someone prowling around outside?” Kiernan said, aware of the edge to her voice. “Or was that part of the fiction?”

“Let’s just say it was an embellishment. I’ll bring Garrett in here when you leave. We’ll be okay.” She wiped the back of her hand hard across her eyes, as if to punish them for their betrayal. To Kiernan she said, “Do you want a cup of coffee or anything before you leave? Use the bathroom? It’s a long drive back to … well, wherever you’re going.”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll send you a report and have my office write you to settle accounts.”

“Thanks. I appreciate all you’ve done. I appreciate your coming today. When I called you and the call kept fading I wasn’t sure you’d really heard me.”

“The call didn’t fade.”

Maureen laughed thinly. “It must have been me fading, then. Whatever. Thanks.” She held out her hand.

Kiernan shook it and started across the living room toward the door. But even as she walked she knew she wouldn’t leave right then. It galled her to have made the point about betrayal so firmly, so damned well, and then to have to undercut it. But as things stood, the investigation had more of a hold on her than on Maureen. She turned around. “Maureen, what about Dwyer Cummings’s memo? Does Garrett still have it?”

“Memo?”

“Hasn’t he mentioned it to you?”

“No. Look, it’s getting dark. You’d better go.”

Just like Jessica Leporek had said, Maureen had no interest in the memo. “The memo he was going to give Jessica. He was going to the city to tell Robin he wouldn’t sell her the memo.”

“Not to set up a show, but to sell this memo?” Her voice was almost a whisper as she said, “He lied to me.”

“Why would he have lied about that? Or is dishonesty just the coin of the realm here?”

Maureen shrank back against the window. It was a moment before she said, “I guess I can’t put up much of an argument against that. You’re right, we’ve always had a pretty high level of falseness. We were apart so much that it was no problem to keep back what we wanted, to show what we chose; we only had to do it for a few weeks at a time. It was just easier that way: a little play-acting when he was there, and when he left I still had my picture of the ‘real’ Garrett undisturbed.” She laughed bitterly, “I guess that’s what trained me for living like this.” She walked to the front door. “It’s getting late, and with the fog like this, driving is going to be slow.”

“I’ll be okay. But I need a few answers before I can close this case in my mind.” Kiernan stopped by the couch. It seemed ages since she’d stood here watching Garrett Brant stare in horror at the three pictures of the mud flats. “You remember Jessica Leporek telling you how important the memo Garrett took from the oil companies was. Garrett was going to the city to break his agreement to sell it to Robin. Why do you think Garrett lied to you about that?”

“He would have been ashamed of ever making the deal, and I would have been disgusted with him. We may not always be honest, but we do have some principles.”

She turned to face Maureen. “But if Garrett didn’t sell the memo to Robin—”

“My God, that’s why she stopped after she hit him, isn’t it? She stopped to search for the memo? She stood over his body, and went through his pockets looking for it. Isn’t that right?”

“Probably. But the point is that she didn’t find it. If Garrett had taken it with him, she would have found it. She didn’t. So, we can surmise that it’s still here.”

“Surmise, yes, but—”

“And, Maureen, anyone else who knows about it can surmise the same thing.” Kiernan watched as her words sunk in, and Maureen’s whole body quivered. “I can stay—”

“No!” she snapped. She shut her eyes as if to calm herself. When she walked to the door she was shaking. “No, I’m used to it here. We’ll be okay.”

“Maureen, don’t take the threat of intruders too lightly. I could hear a car coming along the road after me when I drove in.”

“Other people live along here. I—” Her voice cracked. She swallowed.
“We will be all right.”
She reached for the doorknob.

Kiernan braced her arm against the door. “You said you have a gun?”

She nodded. “Garrett’s got a big old revolver. He has to hold it with two hands now, but he can still shoot. And I have a rifle.”

“Have you shot it?”

Again, she nodded. “Target. A lot. One of the things I can do here. I’m good, very good for a woman with hands and arms this small.”

“Okay, but you realize that as long as you have this memo in your possession, as long as anyone
thinks
you do, you and Garrett are in danger.”

“That’s why Garrett was so insistent that no one know where we were.” She was shaking harder. “Even though he only expected to have his memo a week or so.”

“Maureen, where would he put it?”

“I have no idea. And there’s no point in asking him. He lives in the day before the accident, not the day of it. If he put it somewhere before he left, now he’d have no clue as to where.” She twisted the doorknob and this time Kiernan let her open it.

“Maureen, don’t be too cavalier. Take precautions. Get Garrett in here. Bolt the doors.”

Maureen put a hand on Kiernan’s arm. It was ice cold. Her voice was almost inaudible as she said, “Now go.”

Feeling uneasy, angry, and very frustrated, Kiernan walked through the fog to the Jeep.

M
AUREEN
B
RANT STARED OUT
the front window into the fog, listening to the Jeep driving away. She knew she should have. … Dammit, she should have planned better.

She forced her fingers to relax on the rifle barrel. She’d be okay. She was prepared, rifle loaded, the old Ruger revolver ready in Garrett’s studio. She wouldn’t be taken by surprise. Anyone would be a fool to come before it was completely dark. She smiled. Outsiders didn’t realize how acute your hearing becomes when you’ve got nothing to do day after day but listen for the meter reader or some tourist with a four-wheel drive and the urge to explore. Sound carries in darkness. No city person wants to walk miles in the strange woods at night. No, tonight, she would hear the engine die. Then she’d wait, ready.

She propped the rifle against the fireplace and walked across the living room, pausing to straighten a pile of magazines that was barely out of kilter. She glanced through the window at the studio. She had been cavalier. Why hadn’t she asked about the car following Kiernan? Did it pass the house?

Her heart beat in rapid little flutters, but her mind was slow, unfocused. To come to each decision, she had to think through the steps three times, silently, slowly pronouncing the words that described each step so she would remember them long enough to move on to the next.

But that couldn’t be helped. She thought about Garrett out in the studio. He had the revolver there. And as edgy as he was, he would shoot. There was nothing she could do now but prop the rifle next to the sofa and wait.

Fog hung from the branches of redwoods and pines and cypress trees like decade-old cobwebs holding Kiernan back. It clung doggedly to the Jeep’s windshield, and gave way only momentarily before the wiper blades. She squinted into the dark; she just wanted to get out of here, away from Maureen, and Garrett, and the bottomless pit of lies, and, she had to admit it, humiliation. She felt for Maureen, but God, she hated being taken in.

The fog moistened the redwood. The smell of them was so strong it was almost bitter, and the deep brown dirt of the road wafted up in musty waves. A steep curve came out of nowhere; she jammed on the brakes and the wheels skidded momentarily on the wet ground. The road dipped down into a valley. She wanted to call Tchernak, to hear Ezra’s low whine. She started to reach for the phone. No, the road was too bad. And this stretch was too low, too surrounded, she’d probably be out of range till she reached the coast road.

Out of range? She had worried about it, but the cellular phone had operated fine, even outside the Brants’ house. She hadn’t had one problem with it the whole trip.

So what had Maureen been talking about when she said she was afraid Kiernan wouldn’t come, that the call had faded?
Her
phone hadn’t faded.

She turned right on the twisting two-lane road. The fog was thicker, backed up against the wall of trees. The Jeep’s headlights bounced off it. Though she would never have admitted it, not to anyone, Kiernan was relieved to be driving north, on the
inside
lane of Highway 1, where she might graze the rocks but wouldn’t bounce off the edge into that thick white abyss, ten feet down—or two hundred.

Maureen hadn’t even called her today, she’d called Olsen. So who had she been talking to? Whose phone had faded?

Irritably she followed the taillights of the car ahead, unable to pass in the fog. When she came abreast of Barrow’s Grocery she hurried inside the store, bought a Coke, used the bathroom. Then, unwilling to leave the relative normality of the store, she dialed Olsen’s number and stood watching two teenaged boys by the magazine rack.

Tchernak answered on the first ring.

“Hi. It’s Kiernan. Everything okay there?”

“No, it certainly is not.” His tone was piqued, not worried.

Before he could launch into a full complaint, she said, “No signs of anyone threatening Olsen?”

“Look, I have to get out of here. I’m—”

“Dangers other than you?”

“He’ll live, unless he coughs his brains out. But I may not.”

The teenagers slapped their magazines back in the rack and headed for the door. Kiernan turned toward the wall. Lowering her voice, she said, “Well, you’ll only have to hold out a few more hours. I’m off the case.”

“You’ve closed it?”

“Not really. Once Maureen found out that Garrett hadn’t been two-timing her, she couldn’t wait to get rid of me. Just about pushed me out the door.”

“A little indecisive? First she’s dying for you to get there, then she wants you to leave.”

“Yeah. If this is an example of her inconsistency it’s a good thing she’s living with Garrett. Only someone with no memory would put up with it.”

“Kiernan”—she could hear Tchernak drinking something —”you don’t sound like someone who’s done with a case. This is not the voice of a woman who’s closed the file.”

Kiernan sighed. She heard the grocery door open behind her. She glanced around in time to see a couple head for the cooler. Shivering in white shorts and sweaters, they had the look of tourists surprised by the fog. “The truth is I hated to leave Maureen in the state she is. And, well, the woman’s lied to me so much, I’m not sure what she’s told me now is the whole truth. With her, I feel as if I’m walking on quicksand, or on Garrett’s Alaskan mud flats. The whole thing bugs me.” She leaned against the wall.

“Don’t you want to speak to
Him?”

Kiernan hesitated, then said, “Tchernak, I’m in a public grocery.”

“Well, I’ll have
Him
call you on the car phone. If you don’t get out there fast enough I’ll have
Him
leave a lovely message for you.”

“Enough, Tchernak. I’ll see you soon.”

She hung up and strode out and was almost to the Jeep when she saw three teenaged boys leaning against the silver Alfa Romeo, the same boys who had been there when she had stopped earlier. Still thinking of the car phone, she walked over. “You guys see a red Porsche here late this afternoon? Driver, was a woman with red hair?”

“Yeah, great car. I mean, this lady, she must really take care of it. You know her?”

“She left going south, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, but why—”

Kiernan ran to the Jeep and headed back to the Brants’.

S
O DARK AND WHITE
. White cuts through the night. Men die in this kind of white, in the snow, the ice storms, when it’s fifty below and even the haze freezes. I have to get out of here, down to the lower forty-eight, home to San Francisco.
Standing inches from his studio window Garrett Brant stared at the thick fog that draped the outside.
Chugash Mountains in the distance. Could see them if it weren’t for the haze. Damn haze, and cold, and slaving over oil men’s garbage.
His eyes closed and he could see the polished wood desk, the brass-on-mahogany name sign: Dwyer Cummings; the risk analysis charts stacked on the left, the “to be signed” pile on the right. Garrett smiled as he pictured the memo there “Subj.: Blow-Out Preventers.” His smile stretched wide across his tan face and without realizing it his hand reached out toward the remembered pile to pocket the memo. “Gotcha, bastard!”

He was still smiling as he opened his eyes and recognized his own studio, his brown plaid jacket, and remembered he was going to the city the next day.