Forget to Remember (17 page)

“Was Beard extremely mad at me?”

“I take it you’re not mixed up with him. He
was using you for his own shady purposes. After I found out you’d
bolted but hadn’t taken anything, I managed to keep Beard in the
dark long enough so he wouldn’t be able to find you. He was pissed,
but what could he do about it? My advice is, stay away from him.
He’s bad people.”

“Thank you. I will.”

So, Kyle had abetted her escape. He was also
part bodyguard. At medium height and build, he wasn’t in Beard’s
class as far as size was concerned, but underneath his suit he must
have a muscular body. She could tell by the way it flowed when he
moved, almost like a dancer’s. He probably had a gun under his
jacket. He was, perhaps, in his late thirties, with short,
sandy-colored hair and a smooth face.

Instead of leading her to Mr. Ault, Kyle
looked at her with a quizzical expression and then spoke again.
“There are very few people who wouldn’t have taken Mr. Ault for
everything they could.” He paused as if waiting for a response, but
Carol couldn’t think of a suitable one. “I Googled you. The only
reference to a Carol Golden I found with a picture that looks
remotely like you is of a woman who has amnesia.”

He paused again. Carol avoided telling
people she had amnesia. It felt like what she imagined telling
someone she had AIDS would feel like. She wasn’t often tongue-tied,
but she was now.

When she didn’t say anything, Kyle
continued. “I haven’t told Mr. Ault. However, I have no doubt he’d
do everything in his power to help you.”

“Thank you.” That wasn’t a suitable
response, but Carol couldn’t think of anything else to say. She
didn’t want Mr. Ault to know. He might be repelled; he might think
of her as unclean, or at the very least less than a woman. For some
reason, it was important that he be entranced by her.

“Come into the living room. Mr. Ault will
meet you there.”

Carol followed him into the room with the
high ceiling and wall-to-wall windows looking out at city lights.
She felt as if she were in the home of a giant in some fairy tale,
overseeing his realm. In contrast, Mr. Ault looked diminutive when
he wheeled himself through an archway in his wheelchair. He was
dressed impeccably and had a smile on his withered face.

Carol leaned over and placed her cheek
against his with her arms loosely on his shoulders, afraid of
hurting him. He returned her embrace, running his hands lovingly
over the new red sweater Tina had insisted on buying her for this
event.

“It’s sweet of you to cater to the whims of
an old man. I love the feel of a woman’s sweater. It brings back
memories…”

Touched by more than just his hands, Carol
was prepared to let him explore all of her fuzzy red landscape, but
he stopped before reaching the hills.

He rang the bell he carried with him. “Kyle
wants me to communicate by cell phone, text message, all that shit,
even within the house, but I haven’t gotten used to those
new-fangled electronic gadgets.”

The woman who served them dinner during
Carol’s previous visit appeared in the doorway. Mr. Ault addressed
her as Hildy and asked for iced tea. Carol decided to match him,
tea for tea, instead of drinking the wine he offered. Hildy
disappeared and returned quickly with a tray containing a pitcher
of tea, a sugar bowl, and two glasses. She placed it on the table
where Carol had gambled with Mr. Ault. She obviously kept a pitcher
available.

Ault poured glasses of tea for each of them
while holding the pitcher with both hands. He drank his tea
straight. Carol put sugar in hers. He had been chatting about
inconsequential things. Now he proposed a toast. “To a beautiful
friendship.”

They clicked glasses. Carol wondered what he
meant. He looked at her directly with his green eyes. “Tell me
about yourself. You’re the mystery girl. All I know about you is
you’re a hustler who doesn’t hustle and are drop dead
gorgeous.”

Uh oh. She appreciated the compliment, even
knowing he probably said that to all the girls, but she didn’t want
to talk about herself. She said the first thing that came into her
head. “I was a majorette.”

Ault’s face lit up. “My first wife was a
majorette. We went through high school together.” His eyes had a
faraway look. “She was the love of my life.”

Carol wondered what had happened to her. How
many wives had he had?

He answered one unspoken question. “She died
of leukemia.” He looked pensive, then snapped back to the present.
“Can you still twirl a baton?”

“Sure.” The answer was more positive than
she felt. She hadn’t done that badly at the football game, but she
was rusty. At least she wouldn’t have to prove her prowess
here.

“I kept all her batons.”

Oops. Carol began to get apprehensive when
Ault rang his bell. Hildy appeared, and he asked for Kyle. When
Kyle entered the room, Ault asked if he knew where the batons were.
Kyle hid his surprise well and cast a glance at Carol. She tried to
telegraph Kyle to forget it, but he was too good an assistant to
pay attention to her silent plea.

He thought for a moment. “I believe they’re
in the storage area above the garage.”

Kyle ran off to look for the batons.
Fortunately, Ault didn’t ask her any more questions. Instead, he
told her all about his first wife. In great detail. From junior
high school until her death at age twenty-eight. She must have been
a wonderful woman. She certainly held a position of honor in Ault’s
memory.

He talked about her all through dinner while
guzzling iced tea. She tried to be a good listener. He was a lonely
old man who needed someone to talk to—someone to listen to his
story. Carol wondered why he hadn’t written his memoirs. By the end
of dinner, she’d forgotten about the batons. They got up and
returned to the living room.

That’s when Kyle marched in, triumphantly
holding a silver baton. His tie and coat were gone and his
immaculate pants had dirt on them. “They were where I thought, but
it took a little digging to unearth them.”

Ault was overjoyed. He took the baton and
held it gently, as though it were a precious jewel. He handed it to
Carol. “Would you like to give us a demonstration?”

The caffeine in the tea must have been
affecting her, because she had a what-the-hell attitude. She held
the baton and gave a few exploratory twirls. “Sure, why not?”

“Can Kyle make a video of you?”

She froze, momentarily, but then relaxed and
glared at Kyle. “All right, but if you laugh at me, I’ll throw this
at you. One more thing. If this video ends up on YouTube—or any
other tube—I’ll kill you.”

Kyle pushed the air between them away in a
no-problem gesture. “You have enough of a reputation here that I
believe you’d do it. Don’t worry.”

He went to get the camera. Carol kicked off
her shoes. The hardwood floor felt solid under her feet. Her skirt
was longer than the majorette skirts she was sure she’d worn, but
it gave her plenty of freedom of movement.

When Kyle came back, she asked if he could
provide some marching music. He fiddled with a sound system that
would have done credit to a rock band and somehow was able to play
“Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Carol felt pumped up when she heard the
inspiring music. Now she knew for sure she’d done this before. All
in all, she didn’t perform badly. She twirled using both hands and
even made throws as high as the domed ceiling would permit. She
hummed along at one point, smiling at the words she apparently
remembered from high school: “So be kind to your web-footed
friends, for a duck may be somebody’s mother…”

She only dropped the baton a couple of
times, including the time she fell while trying to catch it and her
skirt flew up to her waist. When she was done, Ault and Kyle
applauded.

She gave a comic bow. “I suppose you
recorded the whole thing, even when I fell on my ass.”

Kyle grinned. “That was the best part.”

“You were magnificent.” There was no sarcasm
in Ault’s voice. “Kyle, I wrote a poem once called ‘Majorette.’
Could you make a copy of it, please?”

Kyle disappeared again. Carol tried to think
of ways to amuse Ault without talking about herself. Remembering he
liked to play games, she asked if he played backgammon. He said he
did, and he produced a backgammon set from a wooden cabinet. She
declined to play for money. When he missed some fairly obvious
moves, she was sure his mental processes weren’t working the way
they had at one time.

After they’d played several games, Kyle
returned with the poem, and Carol read it.

She's coming! Strutting down Main
Street, USA;

Pulling the band behind, her toy
on a string.

Head high, back straight, legs
lifting, this is her day,

In the red and gold of fall or the
green of spring.

Her baton flashes silver bright in
the morning sun

As it soars and spins its way to
dizzying heights;

And when the arc's described, the
spin is spun,

She plucks it from the air as it
alights.

Boys watch, agog; they whistle and
walk beside,

Ogling bare legs, tight tights and
a fancy hat.

She smiles within, but never
breaks her stride,

A vision, a Venus, the town's
aristocrat.

Carol was impressed. “I’m no literary
expert, but I really like this. I’ve read your other poem several
times.”

“Thank you.” Ault bowed his head. “That’s
high praise coming from a real majorette.”

“I’d better go. It’s a long drive home.
Thank you so much for a lovely evening.”

Ault reached into his jacket pocket and
pulled out a wallet. Carol saw a flash of hundred dollar bills.
Although this was the moment she thought she’d been waiting for,
when he started to extract some bills from the wallet a knife went
into her heart. “No.”

“I just want to pay you what you won the
other night—”

“No. I won’t take money from you. I’ll…be
your friend, but I won’t—I can’t take money from you.”

Carol gave Ault a quick hug and a kiss on
the cheek. She said again what a lovely evening she’d had and
walked briskly out of the living room. Kyle intercepted her in the
hall. In spite of Ault’s insistence on low technology, it occurred
to Carol that Kyle had the house bugged and heard everything they
were saying.

Kyle opened the front door for her. “Don’t
be too hard on him. He’s not trying to buy you. You brighten up his
life.”

Carol considered a retort, but what came out
of her mouth was completely different. “Is somebody making sure he
isn’t taken advantage of?”

“I am. There are others, also. Beard isn’t
welcome here again.” Kyle hesitated. “I don’t often feel I have to
justify myself, but somehow with you…I have an MBA from the
Anderson School at UCLA. I’ve been with Mr. Ault for ten years. I
do more than just open doors.”

“Right. You make movies.” She was beginning
to like Kyle. She smiled at him. “Don’t enjoy the one you made
tonight too much.”

“It’s on my top-ten list for the year.” As
she descended the steps, Kyle called after her. “Let me know if you
need any help with your quest—need any strings pulled…”

Carol waved and slid into the car. Could he
find a DNA match for her? As she drove home, it occurred to her
she’d learned two things from her association with Sebastian Ault:
She wasn’t a scam artist and she valued her freedom more than
money. If the fact that everything she did was illegal equated to
freedom. But she now had a higher opinion of herself.

CHAPTER 22

The driveway was quite long since it went
between two other houses, back to the Ramirez lot at the edge of
the cliff—the location that gave it such an extraordinary view. The
garage door opened to Carol’s touch of a remote attached to the car
visor, and she drove inside. The two-car garage was detached from
the house. She had to exit from the garage and go in the front
door.

Outside lights guided her. She was about to
climb the two steps to the door when she saw movement in the bushes
that grew next to the house out of the corner of her eye. She
glanced in that direction, wondering whether it was a raccoon,
possum, or skunk and realized it was too large to be an animal.

She instinctively jumped away from the
shadow just as a loud noise like a firecracker sounded. She felt a
burning sensation in her arm as she ran back toward the garage. She
had been shot. A second shot went wild. The garage door was still
open. Carol had the car remote in her hand. She clicked it to
unlock the driver’s door as she approached, then opened the door,
reached inside, and ripped the garage remote from the visor in a
single motion.

She slammed the door shut and dove over the
front of the car in her haste to get out of the line of fire. She
slid down the slope of the hood and hit the concrete floor hard,
rolling on her shoulder, managing to keep hold of both remotes. She
clicked the garage remote, and the door started rumbling downward.
Then it stopped and headed back up. The person who had shot at her
had tripped the laser beam that kept the door from coming down on
someone. He was in the garage.

She frantically pressed the button again.
The door started down. She looked under the car and could see the
man’s feet by the light that automatically turned on when the door
opener was activated. He had stopped near the entrance, probably
scanning the interior of the garage, wondering where she was.
Ernie’s car was also in the garage, so there were multiple places
to hide.

Carol found the panic button on the car
remote by feel and pressed it. A loud beeping started. Rigo’s car
was parked in the driveway; he was home. Hopefully, the horn would
get his attention and bring him out here. The man broke the laser
beam again with his foot, and the garage door headed up. He was
afraid of getting trapped inside.