In a Heartbeat (12 page)

28

The purr of a phone penetrated Mel’s subconscious. Eyes still tight shut, she groped for it. It wasn’t where it usually was, and, bewildered, she forced her eyes open, shading them with her hand from the subdued glow of the bedside lamp that seemed like a glare in her semiawake state.

But this wasn’t her lamp. It wasn’t her bed. It wasn’t her phone. . . .

It came to her in a rush:
Oh, God, it must be
the hospital calling. . . . Oh, God, Ed, wait for
me, wait for me. . . .

Adrenaline catapulted her from the bed. She stared wildly around, looking for the phone. There wasn’t one. But she could still hear it ringing.
Oh God, oh God, Ed, my darling, honey,
sweetheart. . . .

Now she remembered, Ed hated telephones in the bedroom. He’d refused to have one, said there was no need for anyone to call him in the middle of the night, business could wait. . . .
But not the
hospital.
She was already racing through the lofty living room, grabbing up the telephone. . . .

It stopped ringing.

Jesus!
She sank into the sofa. Her hands shook and she bit her bottom lip hard to stop it from trembling. She couldn’t fall apart, not now. This was urgent, mortal . . . she needed to keep her wits about her, needed to call the hospital. Right now.

It rang again. She picked it up on the first bleat.

“Mel? Are you there?”

Her stopped breath came out in a quick gasp. “Oh, God, it’s you, Camelia. What is it, what’s wrong? . . . Is it . . . ?”

He finished her thought for her. “Ed’s still the same. It’s you I’m worried about. Nobody has heard from you in twenty-four hours.”

Twenty-four hours. . . . She had been away
from Ed all that time. Anything might have happened . . . anything.
But it hadn’t. She put a hand to her fast-beating heart, willing it to calm down.

“I’ve been calling you for the past three hours. I was just about to come over there and break down the door.” Camelia’s voice dropped a notch. “Don’t scare me like that,” he said softly.

Mel clutched the phone tightly to her ear, her lifeline. “It’s okay. I mean I’m okay. I was just out of it, I guess. Completely out.”

“I’ll bet you feel like a new woman.”

There was a smile in his voice that made her grin. “I wish,” she said ruefully. “Maybe after a shower and a cup of coffee. . . .”

“Wanna have that cup of coffee with me? There’s some things I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Sure. Yes, of course.” She caught sight of herself in the mirror, grimaced, and added, “Just give me half an hour.”

“There’s a little diner on Forty-ninth, between Fifth and Madison. Meet you there.”

Mel swung through the door into the steamy little diner. The very same diner where she and Ed had eaten on that magical snowy night, the first night they had made love. Wild, raving, spectacular, funny, erotic love. She felt the memory of it in the smile on her face, the forever imprint of it on her body, the sensual images she would carry in her mind, always.

Camelia wasn’t the only man to turn and look at her. There was something about her, poised there in the doorway, her short blonde crop ruffled by the wind. Something about the way she stood, so tall, so erect, so lanky and yet so graceful. And so goddamn sexy it took Camelia’s breath away. Which also made him think twice about what he was going to say to her.

“There you are.” She smiled at him, a big smile that gave him a shock. The golden glow had returned and she was back to the Georgia peach again. All it took was sleep, he guessed. Just like with a kid.

He held the chair for her, sank back into his own, signaled the waiter for coffee.

The table was tiny, the place jammed. She leaned on her elbows, still smiling. Her face was so close, Camelia could have kissed it. But that’s not what he was supposed to be thinking about.

“You look better,” he said guardedly, instead.

She nodded, sending her long, freshly washed bangs bouncing. “Sleep and a shower will do it every time,” she agreed. “Not great, but anyhow, better.”

Camelia thought she looked great but he wasn’t about to argue the point. Besides, she smelled subtly of roses, or maybe it was jasmine. It certainly wasn’t Claudia’s familiar Arpège, he thought with a guilty pang, but whatever it was, he was loving it. He groaned again, inwardly. Maybe he should ask to be assigned to another case, ask them to put someone else on this Ed Vincent affair. He thought
affair
was definitely the wrong word to use.

He smoothed back his already sleek black hair, straightened his silver-gray tie, stirred sugar into his coffee, and ordered a ham and cheese on rye for himself and a bacon and egg sandwich on a kaiser roll for her. She laughed, said he looked after her like a father, and he grinned back and said, “Yeah, sure, everybody’s dad, that’s Marco Camelia.”

“That’s not what it said in this morning’s
Post
,” she said, suddenly serious. “I read it in the cab on the way here. It said you were one of New York’s finest, and also one of its toughest. They said if anybody could get Ed Vincent’s shooter, it would be you.”

He contemplated his coffee, still swirling slowly in the thick white mug. “I hope they are right,” he said finally.

So far, there were no clues, nothing to indicate who was involved. Or why. The wall safe at Ed’s beach house had contained only money—a couple of hundred thou’, to be exact. He guessed that Ed was right, that once you had been dirt poor, you needed that security blanket of green-backs.

Mel’s heart skipped a beat. She had felt so full of confidence in Camelia, and now here he was, talking like something was wrong. She reached across, grabbed his arm, stared anxiously into his eyes. “What d’you mean? Are you saying you won’t be able to find the shooter? Why? Surely somebody must know him, know who did it?”

“It’s
why
they did it,” he said quietly. “We’ve got the cart before the horse, Mel. And my feeling is we have to get it the other way around before we can find the truth. We have to go in search of Ed Vincent’s past before we can find our killer.”

The word
killer
struck a knell in her heart. “Ed’s not dead yet,” she retorted fiercely.

“No, and the doctor reported to me this morning that he was in a more stable condition. Not out of the coma and certainly not out of the woods, but he’s holding his own.”

Mel had gotten the same report over the telephone half an hour earlier. “Is that good news?” she asked doubtfully, because she had been expecting more, to hear that he was awake, asking for her.

“It’s better news” was all Camelia could think of to say. “And it gives us time.”

“A breathing space,” she said, helpfully.

The waiter put the two orders on the table, asked if there was anything else, refilled their coffee cups, and departed.

“Twenty-four hours is a long time to sleep, you must be starving,” Camelia said, though he was suddenly not hungry himself. Still, he enjoyed the way she wolfed down that sandwich, and the way that, with every bite, she seemed to come back to life. This was a far cry from the gray, shadowy woman he had dined with in the deli around the corner from the hospital.

“I take you to all the best places,” he said, taking a bite of his ham and cheese.

“Story of my life,” she said with a mischievous grin. “I guess I’m just not the type that guys take to Le Cirque 2000. Maybe it’s something to do with the way I dress, the boots and all.”

She stuck out a foot for him to see the little black suede ankle boots with the teetering heels that added four inches to her already considerable height. Her bare legs were still faintly tanned from the California sun, and she was wearing a black leather jacket over a tight white stretch tank top, and a California–short skirt.

“Looks fine to me.” He dragged away his eyes and took another bite.

“Tasteful, huh?” She gave him that wide ear-to-ear grin, the one that defied you not to smile along with her. “With my southern background, my friend Harriet says I should know better.”

“Talking of southern backgrounds, I found out where Hainsville is. And it is Hains
ville
, you were right the second time. And you were right again, it is a pin dot on the map, though from what I hear it’s surely a prosperous pin dot nowadays. Golf courses, subdevelopments, quite the little resort, so they say.”

Mel’s brows lifted. “You think Ed had something to do with that?”

Camelia shrugged, took another bite. “That’s what he does, so I assumed he did have something to do with it. But I got in touch with the local police and they told me the place was developed by a man called Hains.”

“Huh. That figures.” Mel had finished her bacon and egg sandwich and now helped herself to a bite of his ham and cheese.

Like they had known each other forever,
Camelia thought, watching her. “The cops knew nothing about Ed Vincent, never heard of him down there.”

“That figures too, out there in the boonies,” she agreed. “Fame is where you find it.”

He thought about that for a minute, smiling, then he said, “Okay, but Ed told you he came from Hainsville, was brought up there in a two-room shack. He must have gone to school there. So why, I ask myself, is there no record of him?”

Mel looked doubtfully back at him. Could the story Ed had told her have been a lie? Her heart sank. Then, no, she told herself, he would never lie to her. But Ed’s life had suddenly assumed many more complications.

“Maybe he was the rich-guy heir after all,” Camelia said mildly. He pushed his plate across to her, but Mel had suddenly lost interest in food. “Perhaps he just didn’t want you to think of him that way.”

Mel shook her head, lips compressed, brow furrowed. “Not true. I believe Ed.”

“Then somebody else down there in Hainsville has to be lying.” Camelia’s dark brown eyes met her single malts across the narrow table. Hers grew suddenly fierce.

She slammed a fist onto the table, sending the mugs reeling, spilling coffee onto his immaculate dark gray pants. “Then, darn it, let’s get down there and find out,” she yelled.

29

Mel was back at the hospital, holding Ed’s hand. She stared hard at him, willing him to open his eyes, but the miracle did not happen and her heart felt as weighted as her heavy sigh.

“I slept in your bed last night, honey,” she said, rubbing her fingers lightly up and down his arm, praying that he would respond to her touch. “I slept there without you. Without our magic. Without our love to keep me warm. I fell into a bottomless pit of sleep and as I did so, I thought, This is what Ed feels like. This is where he is too. Maybe I will meet him there, in both our dreams.” She shook her head sadly. “But there were no dreams, just . . . oblivion. Is that what it’s like for you, Ed? Just . . . nothing?”

No,
he wanted to yell out.
No, no, no . . . I
know you’re here, I want to say I love you but
somehow I can’t. . . . Just don’t leave me, baby,
don’t give up on me. Don’t let them pull the plug
on me. I’m still here, still alive. . . .

“They showed me your brain scan this morning,” she whispered. “They showed me how the blood supply was still working, that there is brain activity, that somehow you are still here with me. I’ll never give up on you, honey. I’m yours forever, I know that now. And Riley misses you. Did I tell you she said she loved you, that she wants you to share her Sundays? Oh, God”—she gave a choked little laugh—“I must be losing my mind, I can’t remember from one day to the next. Maybe I need some of that ginkgo biloba to perk up the old memory cells. . . .”

Just remember me, honey . . . remember us,
that’s all I ask. . . .

“Ed,” she said, serious again. “The detective who’s looking for the shooter. His name is Marco Camelia. He checked into your hometown—you told me about Hainsville, remember?” She bit her lip, of course he didn’t remember, how could he?

I remember Hainsville . . . oh I remember all
right.
Hot panic flared in his head, sent his heart thunking again. . . .

“Ed, the police there say they don’t know any Ed Vincent. They say you never lived there. Somebody is lying, Ed, and I know it’s not you. Detective Camelia thinks it’s someone connected with the shooting. I need to go with him, to Tennessee, to your hometown. I’m going to find your roots, Ed, honey, and then we’ll find the truth.”

Don’t go!
he wanted to scream.
Don’t go
there. . . . Oh, Mel, please don’t go. . . .

The monitor bleeped. Mel eyed it, alarmed, as the nurse came running.

It was a different nurse, they changed all the time depending on the shift, and this one was gentler, with a softer heart.

“He’s okay,” she reassured Mel. “Just a little agitated. At least he’s showing some response.”

“Then it’s good?” Mel was scared.

“It’s good. He’ll be okay, nothing to worry about.”

“Then I’ll just sit here quietly with him, until he calms down.” She took his hand again, stroking his arm gently, but now Ed lay still as death.

He could not push away the memories—his
past was crowding out the present, taking away
his future. Life had seemed so simple once . . .
when he was just a hick little kid with big
dreams. . . .

Don’t go, Zelda,
he begged silently,
please . . .
don’t go there. . . .

It had been on his fourteenth birthday that he had his first brush with death. In that single year it seemed he had grown from a boy into a man. Already touching six feet in height, he had broadened through the chest and neck and gained extra poundage on his lean frame. New muscles rippled on his arms from hard work in the fields and from felling trees for winter logs, and he was as swift and light on his feet as a boxer from hiking up and down the mountains.

His mother, Ellin, knew, though, that agricultural work was not for him. His nose was always in a book, his mind on things far from her and from their tiny farm. She had bought him a birthday gift, a new shirt from Hains Haberdashery in Hainsville, in a deep blue-checked flannel that matched his eyes, and a pair of denims that were too long now but in two months would be reaching up around his ankles. And she knew that on his next birthday, when his schooling was finished, he would leave her. He would set out for that wider world he had always longed for.

“Happy birthday, son.” His pa, Farrar, punched Ed’s shoulder lightly.

Outward displays of affection, hugs and kisses and such, were not part of mountain folks’ lives. They were a reserved people, and the punch on Ed’s shoulder from his father, and the shy birthday embrace from his mother and her smile as her rough hand sleeked back his thick dark hair, were enough to fill his heart.

As the youngest boy, he had always been the final recipient of hand-me-downs. Inevitably, by the time clothing descended from the eldest, Mitch, on through Jared and then Jesse, even hard-wearing denims were worn into pale ragged areas at the knees and seat, which his ma had to reinforce with patches. Not that that made Ed the scruffiest lad in school. There were others from even poorer hardscrabble families. At least his ma kept their clothing scrupulously clean, despite the fact that there was no running water in the house.

She would scrub away on a metal washboard perched over the galvanized tub out on the back porch. Her two daughters, Grace and Honor, helped her, one feeding the clothes into the heavy iron wringer while the other turned the handle. Then they would hang them on the line to dry in the wind, and later fold them carefully, ready for ironing.

Today, being a Monday, was meant to be a washday but Ellin had been stymied by the rain falling in torrents from a low, leaden sky. The wind had gotten up too, gusting through the tall pines, the mountain ash and poplars, rattling the branches and sending early cascades of leaves onto the rough ground. She was surprised, therefore, to hear the sound of a car coming up the hill. She wondered who would turn out on an evening like this, with the wind threatening to topple trees, it was that fierce, and the rain so hard the streams overspilled, turning the steep lane into thick mud that grabbed a vehicle’s tires and hung on to them, tight as kudzu.

His ma and pa and Ed turned as one, as the vehicle crowned the hill and jolted over the rutted yard. Ellin recognized the forest-green Jeep immediately. She threw an apprehensive glance at her husband. “What’ll Michael Hains be wanting now?”

“Guess,” Farrar replied laconically.

“But you already told him no.” There was a worried note in her voice, an uneasiness. Hains wanted to purchase their land. Her husband had told him no twice already, but Hains was not the kind of man who took no for an answer. He operated on the principle that what he wanted he got. It had worked all his life and he saw no reason why it should be different now.

Michael Hains owned the town of Hainsville, which he had renamed after himself. He owned the gas station, the hardware store, and the grain and feed, as well as Hains Haberdashery, where Ellin had purchased Ed’s birthday shirt and denims. Plus the grocery store, the pharmacy, the barbershop, Hains Auto Body Repairs, and the Dew Drop In Drive-in. He even owned the redbrick town hall, for which the town paid him an annual rental. But Hains’s influence extended much farther than his own personal town. He also owned all the land surrounding Hainsville, some two thousand acres of it, sharecropped by men who worked their lean bodies too hard in order to pay his annual dues. Only one person came out of Hainsville a winner, and that was Michael Hains.

Now he wanted their land. They had been mystified as to why until Farrar had heard the rumor, whispered in his ear by Mule Champlin, the blacksmith who also ran the hardware shop. Mule never got Farrar’s business in the blacksmith shop; most men around there shod their own horses—they couldn’t afford to pay Champlin’s prices. Anyhow, Mule had told him that Hains and a property development company were planning to build a new community, with a shopping mall and a golf course, as well as cheap, thrown-up-in-a-hurry housing. Mule also told Farrar why they needed his land. It was to be the center of the new golf course.

“Evenin’, Mr. Hains,” Farrar said now, hands thrust in his overall pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. A sure sign of nerves, Ed knew.

“I’ve come to you with my last offer.” Hains stood on the rickety porch out of the rain, arms folded over his barrel chest. He was a big man, bigger even than eighteen-year-old Mitch, who hovered in the background, ears wagging as he strained to catch the dialogue.

“Ah’m wonderin’ just why you want my land so bad, Mr. Hains.” Farrar shoved his hands even deeper into the pockets of his overalls.

“Simple.” Hains’s glance shifted to Mitch. “I want to increase my farm holdings. I’ve bought all the surrounding land. Your acres will complete my parcel. And I’m willing to give you a fair price for it.”

Ellin folded her arms across her chest, unconsciously mimicking Hains, only hers was a defensive gesture. The man made her uncomfortable, wary.

“And if Ah might consider your offer,” Farrar said, “and Ah’m not saying Ah will—exactly what would that offer amount to?”

Hains’s unreadable dark eyes met his. “I’m offering you more than one-hundred-percent profit on your land. Much more. Two thousand dollars.”

Ellin sucked in her breath. It was a lot of money. But Farrar was already doing quick calculations in his head. He had paid four hundred. Two thousand would take him years to earn, but most of that would be gone on just livin’. Meanwhile, he owned his own land, his family lived off it, there was a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Without the farm, he would be back to sharecropping, working for Hains for a pittance, and his sons with him. He’d be darned if he’d worked from being ten years old to end up back where he came from. Besides, if the rumor was true, his land was worth a lot more than two thousand.

“Ah thank you for your offer, Mr. Hains,” Farrar said. “But Ah reckon Ah’ll keep my farm.”

Hains’s fleshy face grew mottled with frustration and anger, but he kept his voice under control. “I’ll add a sweetener. I’ll take your boy, Mitch, into my firm. Apprentice him, y’might call it. He’ll learn the business, learn how to manage my land. I’ll pay him a fair wage and he’ll be off your hands. One less mouth to feed.”

“Aye, and one less son to work my own land.” Farrar shook his head, adamant.

Ed heard Mitch’s angry gasp and glanced sideways at him. His narrow eyes were slits of fury, his mouth turned down, his jaw clenched.

You knew about this, he thought, astonished. You’d discussed it all with Michael Hains, plotted how to get Dad’s land away from him. He felt an ache of betrayal in his heart. Traitor, he thought. You would have traded your family, your birthright, for a few thousand dollars and a chance to work with an immoral man like Michael Hains.

Hains unfolded his arms, stood, legs spread, hands on his hips. Arrogant, contemptuous. Powerful. “Is that your final word?”

“It’ll be my last word, Mr. Hains.” As always, Farrar was polite.

Hains turned on his heel. He stalked down the rickety porch steps, bulling his way through the mud and torrential rain.

Farrar swung around, confronting Mitch. “What d’you mean, going behind my back to Michael Hains, plotting how to get my land from me?
Our
land. Our
family’s
land. All Ah’ve worked for.
All Ah have to leave you.
What kind of son are you?”

Mitch took an angry step toward his father. He towered over him, his big hands clenched into fists. For a second, Ed thought he was going to punch his father, and he stepped quickly between the two.

Mitch’s anger exploded. “You just cost me the best job any man could have. Mah one chance at a different life. All for what?” Mitch flung his arms wide, staring furiously around at the dripping trees, the rutted yard, and the sodden land beyond. “So Ah can be like you? Live in the boondocks for the rest of my life? Break mah back to earn enough to do what? Put food on the table? Barely clothe us? Educate us? Bah!” He spat contemptuously at his father’s feet. “That’s what I think of you and your precious land. It was worthless before Hains offered you the money. Now it’s worth nothing.
Zero.
Get that into your head,
Father!
”

He stared murderously into his father’s eyes for a full minute before turning on his heel and, like Michael Hains, stalking out into the rain. Except unlike Hains, Mitch had no forest-green Jeep to drive into town, and his ma wondered where he could be going on such a night.

She looked at her husband. His shoulders stooped as though he had acquired a new and heavier burden, and she pitied him his son’s cruelty.

“It’s okay, Pa.” Ed badly wanted to hug his father, but the unspoken rules meant he could not. “Mitch didn’t mean nothin.’ He’s just disappointed about the job, is all.”

“Disappointed?” Farrar’s expression was weary as his eyes met Ed’s. “Somehow, I don’t reckon it’s just that. I reckon Mitch would sell his soul to hitch up with Michael Hains.”

By the time they all went to bed that night, Mitch had still not returned.

“He’ll be drinkin’ in Hainsville Saloon,” Ellin remarked sadly.

“It’s Mary Hannah James he’s interested in, not the liquor,” Ed said, trying to get his mother’s thoughts away from the saloon.

His sister Grace gave a snort of contempt. “He’ll be after both, the liquor
and
the girls.”

“More likely he’s with Michael Hains, plotting his next move.” Farrar’s voice grew weary at the thought of his son’s treachery. “He’ll not make it back tonight, to face me again.”

As the girls drifted off to the only bedroom to sleep, Ed glanced anxiously at the ceiling. Rain drummed on the tin roof and the wind wailed at the windows and doors, sending chilly gusts through the many cracks.