For All of Her Life (17 page)

“Because I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of what might happen.”

“To whom?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “To you.”

She sank down onto the sofa beside him. “Jordan—”

“Damn it, Kathryn, you said I didn’t believe you. Well, you didn’t believe me. Believe now. Keith didn’t just die. He wasn’t a tragic rock-suicide; his death
was not an accident.”

“Jordan, damn you, I’m telling you again that I didn’t run to the guest house to see him that night!”

“I believe you.”

“Then—”

“Kathryn, it wasn’t you. It
was
someone.”

“But—”

“That someone killed Keith, Kathryn. And I’m damned afraid that someone may be ready to kill again.”

K
ATHY STARED AT JORDAN
blankly, aware that he was serious. She shook her head, trying to grasp the reason he could be so certain Keith had been murdered.

“I don’t understand...”

“Kathy—”

“I’m trying to.”

“Think back. You know as well as I do that Keith wasn’t in the least suicidal.”

“But he did do drugs,” Kathy reminded him painfully. “Jordan, that was the main reason we fought over him all the time.”

“Yeah, I used to say he’d have to quit or he was out. And you used to tell me that was no way to help someone with a serious problem.”

“In retrospect, you were probably right. He’d have become a shoe salesman or the like and be alive now.”

Jordan shook his head, smiling slightly. “Not Keith. He wouldn’t have lived without music.”

“He might have shaped up. But it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong Jordan, the drugs killed him.”

“The smoke killed him.”

“He wouldn’t have been out flat while he burned to a cinder if it hadn’t been for the drugs.”

Jordan nodded, running his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, he took drugs. He came late to practice, he screwed up like crazy. But he never overdosed, he had a talent for getting high, for being out of it without causing serious injury to himself.”

“Usually. That night he took too much. And he’d been smoking that ridiculous Oriental pipe of his at the same time, the bed caught fire, and he died.”

“I don’t believe it. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. And,” he added quietly, “someone out there
knows
Keith was murdered. Someone who’s afraid of Blue Heron getting back together, someone who’s afraid of the truth.”

“You’re saying this because of that phone call?” Kathy queried, more concerned about Jordan at the moment than the possibility that he might be right. This was very strange and frightening. He had closed off from her after Keith’s death. Immediately after the funeral, when everyone had been in shock, they couldn’t have been closer. Perhaps because they’d clung to life. But then they had begun to fight. And she knew he had been suspicious of her; she had really hated him for it, and she still did.

Amazing, she taunted herself. That hadn’t stopped her from leaping into bed with him just now. She really should have gotten around more over the past decade.

It would have been no help now, she admitted to herself.

She’d never before realized just how serious the issue of Keith’s death was with him, that there had been more than the suspicion she might have been closer to Keith than she had ever let Jordan know.

“I’ve had a number of phone calls,” he told her.

“Threatening phone calls?”

“Some. It’s strange. There are two callers. One threatens that someone else might die if Blue Heron comes together. Another says I’m the only one who can make things right.”

“Pranksters make phone calls. People make phone calls for kicks. Nine hundred numbers are making small fortunes for entrepreneurs aware of the fact that some people get off on things they can say and hear on the phone!”

He shook his head with exasperation. “Kathy, I don’t know what to do with you, how to knock sense into you!”

“Jordan, let’s look at this clearly. Ten years ago we had really achieved success. We weren’t a flash in the pan. We had proven ourselves as talented musicians with staying power. We were recognized, we were making money. Too much money, too much fame, maybe. Enough money for Keith to buy whatever drugs he wanted. And we’d been together so long we were like a family, a family of growing children. We had been together too long perhaps; we fought, we squabbled, we grew apart. We wanted different things. We were too close. You and I argued, our friends who wanted different things often used that, used us. Judy and Derrick argued, Miles lusted after Shelley. Shelley, I think, lusted after Keith. Judy wanted to see us all beaten with burning sticks for veering from career and money at any time.” She inhaled and exhaled on a deep breath. “Keith finally took it all a step too far. He lived recklessly, he was a genius, he loved you, he used you, and he did the same with me. Then he died, and we fell apart. It was as if Humpty Dumpty had fallen off his wall. Groups split for lesser reasons. People are involved—personalities, egos. The Beatles split over artistic differences—”

“And other problems,” Jordan added.

“Exactly my point. Think about this. We were kids, not even playing ourselves, when Hendrix died. We were discovering how deeply we wanted to be working musicians when Woodstock happened, and remember, Jordan, just about anything went back then. Think about the world since. Vietnam and the peace movement, Afros, and bell-bottoms. The tragedy of Kennedy’s death, the fights that finally gave us the beginnings of desegregation. Free sex, free love—those hideous neon guru jackets we wore at one time. What I’m trying to say is, we were a product of our time. Drugs were in before drugs were out. We fought for good things sometimes while doing bad.”

“Kathryn, I’m actually enjoying this. You’ve always been so passionate in your beliefs and ideas, and you haven’t changed a bit, but I admit I am completely lost.”

She shook her head. “Jordan, my point is that the hippies of years gone by became the yuppies of today. Men and women who slept in parks extolling the virtues of the stars became the ones who drove the BMWs to work in their three-piece designer suits. Keith got lost in the transition. Everyone learned that drugs were dangerous, that life was precious. Keith just didn’t give a damn.”

“You’re still defending him.”

“Jordan, he’s dead! I can’t help but defend him. Look how many bands have existed, and how many bands exist today, how many artists have been a part of how many different bands! Remember the ones who started out before us. Look at the drug deaths—Janice Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison. Fame and fortune could be had, but there were traps to fall into. Keith fell into one. In a way, the rest of us did exactly the same thing.”

Jordan shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Damn it, the rest of us were not perfect!”

“No, but we had some sense of responsibility.”

“He was your best friend.”

“Yeah, oh, yeah. And I dug him out of trouble time and time again.”

“You sound so bitter!”

“I am. He taunted me about everything; yet when he really needed help, he didn’t come to me.”

“Jordan, he was always asking me to pave the way for him to come to you—”

“Yeah, he liked to use you, all right. I never really knew the truth of what was going on between the two of you.”

Again, that very bitter edge was in his voice. Kathy gritted her teeth, angered, but she determined to remain calm and cool. “You didn’t want to talk about it ten years ago. What the hell kind of an accusation is that now.”

“It’s not an accusation,” he said quietly, his eyes lowering. He looked at her again, lifted a hand awkwardly. Shrugged. “I wonder why, Kath. I was confident, even as a kid. Assured. I knew where I wanted to go, knew I wanted to go with you. Keith had the ability to make me strangely insecure.”

“And you’re still wondering if I slept with him?” she demanded flatly.

“Kathy—”

“I’m telling you now, Jordan, with nothing to gain and nothing to lose. There was never anything between us.”

“That might be true—”

“Might?
You idiot, you’re dating Shirley Temple and my life has been my own for a decade, so why the hell would I be lying to you? And you have your nerve! You were the one who practically wore women as if they were scarves dangling off your shoulders!”

“The hell I did!”

“The hell you didn’t. And you dare say something to me like that ‘might be true.’ I—”

Kathy broke off abruptly, hearing a car coming around the curving driveway.

“They’re home!” she gasped, forgetting the argument as a strange sensation of panic seized her. There stood Jordan, his robe barely tied, and here she was, hair a tangled mane and the oddest sensation of guilt descending on her. Thank God she had bought tailored-type nightshirts. But the little buttons at the top of this one were half-open, and it wasn’t exactly the outfit one would sit around in with an ex-husband, especially when the ex-husband was wearing nothing but a terry. Not only that, she felt as she might have when they had been teenagers, madly in love, dating for two years already, and fooling around but still doing so very secretly since their parents would have been shocked at that point. At first she’d feared that someone could just look at her and
know
she’d been having sex. Wild, wanton, undeniable sex, of sex, because they’d been young, discovering, and certain then that they were as destined for one another as Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, Anthony and Cleopatra—which mightn’t have been such a misconception since those pairings had ended badly.

She leapt up, staring at Jordan.

“What do we do?” she gasped.

“About what?”

“About what... we did?”

He arched a brow to her and replied with an edge. “Worried about Jeremy? Kathy, he won’t know if you don’t choose to tell him.”

She wasn’t sure why she felt so hostile. “You won’t tell my sweet young thing if I don’t tell yours?”

His eyes narrowed. “Something like that.”

“I wasn’t worried about Jeremy, I was thinking about my daughters.”

“Do you mean
our
daughters?”

She ignored that. “I don’t want them to think—I don’t want them to begin to hope...”

“Kathy,” he said, and now there was a strange, almost gentle twist to his voice, “they will not know. Just sit. I’ll make coffee—”

“Yes, coffee. I’ll make coffee. Oh, sorry, it is your house now—”

“Kathy, please, by all means. You do make better coffee. Let’s get to the kitchen. That will be better than them seeing you flying up the stairs like the cat who ate the canary.”

She made a face at him, dashing for the kitchen behind him just as she heard a key twisting in the lock.

A second later, the foyer was filled with soft laughter as the foursome who had gone out partying on the beach returned. By the time the group reached the kitchen, however, following the light and the sounds coming from it, Kathy had an almond-flavored decaf brewing and Jordan had set bread, mayo, mustard, sandwich meat, and cheese out on the table.

“Hey!” Alex said delightedly, slipping up behind Kathy to give her mother a hug. “You guys have been talking, huh?”

“Actually,” Jordan said, staring at Kathy. “We’d both gone to bed.” He smiled pleasantly. “We seem to have gotten the urge to raid the kitchen at the same time. Jeremy, how did you like the wild side of South Beach.”

“Great, it was great,” Jeremy said, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I’ve never seen so many different people, not even in New York. Young people, old people, girls in short-shorts, women all wrapped up in serapes, people in suits, cut-offs. They moved liked a herd down the sidewalk. And the music was great. It was like a feast for the senses.”

“A feast for the senses,” Jordan repeated. Kathy, leaning against the kitchen counter, felt warm. She realized he was staring at her again, but she didn’t know whether he mocked her or meant the words in a nostalgic way.

Miss April wasn’t here tonight. But she was coming. And things were even more disturbing now. Kathy still couldn’t believe that Keith had been murdered. She could have argued Jordan on the point all night.

But if she paused to remember how her name had sounded, whispered over the phone...

She jumped as she suddenly heard a ringing.

“Just the phone,” Angel said lightly.

“At this time of night?” Bren murmured.

“Tara might be calling in,” Alex said, staring at her father.

“I’ll take it,” Jordan said, returning his daughter’s stare as he crossed the kitchen to answer the phone. “One way or the other,” he told her firmly, “it is probably for me.”

Alex made a face and moved out of the way.

“Coffee’s done, Mom.”

“So it is. Who’s having some?”

“Decaf?” Jeremy asked.

Kathy nodded and began to pour. Angel and Bren passed cups around, Alex dug into the refrigerator, determined on milk instead. Kathy was dying to walk over to Jordan herself with a cup to find out who was on the phone and what he was saying.

Probably Miss April.
If she listened in, she’d just be hurting herself. No denying that Miss April was coming and coming soon, still Kathy didn’t think she was on the phone right now. Whoever it was had something to do with the crank phone calls Jordan had been receiving.

She managed to casually bring a cup of coffee over to him, but even as she did so, he handed the phone to Bren. “I’ll take it in the living room. I can’t hear in here.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Bren said. “We can be quieter.”

“Don’t be silly. Just hang up after I pick up; will you?”

“Thanks,” he told Kathy, taking the cup from her and walking on out to the living room. A second later, Bren must have heard her father’s instructions to hang up because she did so.

She smiled at her mother, slipped an arm around her. “It’s so good to have you here, Mom,” she whispered to her. “Thanks for coming!”

Kathy nodded, hugging her daughter back, wondering what Bren would think if she were to snatch up the phone and listen in on Jordan’s conversation.

But Alex suddenly breezed by to give her a kiss and a whisper, “Thanks, Mom. See, you two can get along like old friends. This is so good.”