Remember When edahr-20 Read online

  "Cell phone—nothing programmed in the phone book for us to contact. Looks like there's a couple of voice messages. We'll see if we can track those."

  They'd be from her father, she imagined, but only nodded.

  "Watch is engraved," he added when Laine turned it over in her hand. "'One for every minute.' I don't get it."

  She gave McCoy a baffled smile. "Neither do I. Maybe it was something romantic, from a woman he loved once. That would be nice. I'd like to think that. This was all?"

  "Well, he was traveling." He took the watch from her. "Man doesn't take a lot of personal items with him when he's traveling. Vince'll be tracking down his home address. Don't worry about that. We haven't found any next of kin so far, and if we don't, seems like they'll release him to you. It's nice of you to want to bury an old friend of your father's."

  "It's the least I can do. Thank you very much, Sergeant. You've been very kind and patient. If you or Vince would let me know if and when I can make the funeral arrangements, I'd appreciate it."

  "We'll be in touch."

  She took Max's hand as they walked out, and he felt the key press his palm. "That was slick," he commented. "I barely caught it."

  "If I wasn't a little rusty, you wouldn't have caught it. It looks like a locker key. One of those rental lockers. You can't rent lockers at airports or train stations, bus stations, that sort of thing anymore, can you?"

  "No. Too small for one of those garage-type storage lockers, and most of those are combination locks or key cards anyway. It might be from one of those mailbox places."

  "We should be able to track it down. No dog though."

  "No, no dog. We'll check the motel room, but I don't think it's there, either."

  She stepped outside with him, took a fond look at the town she'd made her own. From this vantage point, high on the sloped street, she could see a slice of the river, and the houses carved into the rising hill on the other bank. The mountains climbed up behind, ringing their way around the sprawl of streets and buildings, the parks and bridges. They formed a scenic wall covered with the green haze of trees beginning to leaf, and the white flash of blooming wild dogwoods.

  The everydayers, as her father had dubbed normal people with normal lives, were about their business. Selling cars, buying groceries, vacuuming the rug, teaching history.

  Gardens were planted, or being prepared for planting. She could see a couple of houses where the Easter decorations had yet to be dispatched, though it was nearly three weeks past. Colorful plastic eggs danced in low tree limbs, and inflatable rabbits squatted on spring-green grass.

  She had rugs to vacuum and groceries to buy, a garden to tend. Despite the key in her hand, she supposed that made her an everydayer, too.

  "I'm not going to pretend some of that didn't stir the juices. But when this is over, I'll be happy to retire again. Willy never could, my father never will."

  She smiled as they walked to Max's car. "My father gave him that watch. The key ring was just a ploy, but my dad gave Willy that watch for his birthday one year. I think he might have actually bought it, but I can't be sure. But I was with him when he had it engraved. 'One for every minute.'"

  "Meaning?"

  "There's a sucker born every minute," she said, and slipped into the car.

  11.

  It was the same clerk at the desk of the Red Roof, but Max could see the lack of recognition in his eyes. The simplest, quickest way into Willy's last room was to pay the standard freight.

  "We want one-fifteen," Max told him.

  The clerk studied the display of his computer, checked availability and shrugged. "No problem."

  "We're sentimental." Laine added a sappy smile and snuggled next to Max.

  Max handed over cash. "I need a receipt. We're not that sentimental."

  With the key in hand, they drove around to Willy's section.

  "He must've known where I live. My father did, so Willy did. I wish he'd just come to see me there. I can only think he knew somebody was right behind him—or was afraid someone was—and figured the shop was safer."

  "He was only here one night. Hadn't unpacked." Max led the way to the door. "Looked like enough clothes for about a week. Suitcase was open, but he hadn't taken anything out but his bathroom kit. Could be he wanted to be ready to move again, fast."

  "We were always ready to move again, fast. My mother could pack up our lives in twenty minutes flat, and lay it out again in a new place just as quick."

  "She must be an interesting woman. Takes mine longer than that to decide what shoes to wear in the morning."

  "Shoes aren't a decision to be made lightly." Understanding, she laid a hand on his arm. "You don't have to give me time to prepare myself, Max. I'm okay."

  He opened the door. She stepped into a standard motel double. She knew such rooms made some people sad, but she'd always found them one of life's small adventures for their very anonymity.

  In such rooms you could pretend you were anywhere. Going anywhere. That you were anyone.

  "As a kid we'd stop off in places like this, going from one point to another. I loved it. I'd pretend I was a spy chasing down some nefarious Dr. Doom, or a princess traveling incognito. My father always made it such a wonderful game.

  "He'd always get me candy and soft drinks from the vending machines, and my mother would pretend to disapprove. I guess, after a while, she wasn't pretending anymore."

  She fingered the inexpensive bedspread. "Well, that's a long enough walk down Memory Lane. I don't see any dog in here."

  Though he'd already done a search, and knew the police had been through the room, followed by housekeeping, Max went through the procedure again.

  "Don't miss much, do you?" she said when he'd finished.

  "Try not to. That key might be the best lead we've got. I'll check out the local storage facilities."

  "And what you're not saying is he could've stashed it in a million of those kind of places from here to New York."

  "I'll track it back. I'll find it."

  "Yes, I believe you will. While you're doing that, I'll go back to work. I don't like leaving Jenny there alone very long, under the circumstances."

  He tossed the room key on the bed. "I'll drop you off."

  Once they were back in the car, she smoothed a hand over her pants. "You'd have disapproved, too. Of the motel rooms, the game. The life."

  "I can see why it appealed to you when you were ten. And I can see why your mother got you out of it. She did what was right for you. One thing about your father . . ."

  She braced herself for the criticism and promised herself not to take offense. "Yes?"

  "A lot of men in . . . let's say, his line, they shake off wives and kids or anything that resembles responsibility. He didn't."

  Her shoulders loosened, her stomach unknotted, and she turned to send Max a luminous smile. "No, he didn't."

  "And not just because you were a really cute little redheaded beard with light fingers."

  "That didn't hurt, but no, not just because of that. He loved us, in his unique Jack O'Hara way. Thanks."

  "No problem. When we have kids, I'll buy them candy out of the vending machine, but we'll keep it to special occasions."

  Her throat closed down so that she had to clear it in order to speak. "You do jump ahead," she stated.

  "No point in dragging your feet once you've got your direction."

  "Seems to me there's a lot of road between here and there. And a lot of curves and angles in it."

  "So, we'll enjoy the ride. Let's round one of those curves now. I don't need to live in New York if that's something you're chewing on. I think this area's just fine for raising those three kids."

  She didn't choke, but it was close. "Three?"

  "Lucky number."

  She turned her head to stare out the side window. "Well, you sailed right around that curve. Have you considered slowing down until we've known each other, oh, I don't know, a full week?"

  "P
eople get to know each other faster in certain situations. This would be one of them."

  "Favorite childhood memory before the age of ten."

  "Tough one." He considered a moment. "Learning to ride a two-wheeler. My father running alongside—with this big grin, and a lot of fear in his eyes I didn't recognize as such at the time. How it felt, this windy, stomach-dropping rush when I realized I was pedaling on my own. Yours?"

  "Sitting on this big bed in the Ritz-Carlton in Seattle. It was a suite because we were really flush. Dad ordered this ridiculous room-service meal of shrimp cocktail and fried chicken because I liked them both, and caviar, which I hadn't yet acquired a taste for. There was pizza and hot fudge sundaes. An eight-year-old's fantasy meal. I was half sick from it, and sitting on the bed with probably a hundred in ones he'd given me to play with."

  She waited a beat. "Not exactly from the same world, Max."

  "We're in the same one now."

  She looked back at him. He looked confident and tough, his clever hands on the wheel of the powerful car, his sun-streaked hair unruly from the breeze, those dangerous cat's eyes hidden behind tinted lenses.

  Handsome, in control, sure of himself. And the butterfly bandage on his temple was a reminder he didn't always come out on top, but he didn't stay down.

  Man of my dreams, she thought, what am I going to do with you?

  "Hard to trip you up."

  "I already took the big stumble, sweetheart, when I fell for you."

  Laughing, she let her head fall back. "That's sappy, but somehow it works. I must still have a weakness for a guy with a quick line."

  He pulled up in front of her shop. "I'll pick you up at closing." Leaning over, he gave her a light kiss. "Don't work too hard."

  "This is all so strangely normal. A little pocket of ordinary in a big bunch of strange." She reached out, feathered her fingertips over his bandage. "Be careful, all right? Alex Crew knows who you are."

  "I hope we run into each other soon. I owe him one."

  ***

  The normal continued through most of the day. Laine waited on customers, packed merchandise to ship, unpacked shipments of items she'd ordered. It was the sort of day she usually loved, with plenty to do but none of it rushed. She was sending things off with people who enjoyed or admired them enough to pay for them, and finding things in the shipping boxes she'd enjoyed or admired enough to want in her shop.

  Despite it, the day dragged.

  She worried about her father and what reckless thing he might do while the grief was on him. She worried about Max and what could happen if Crew came after him.

  She worried about her relationship with Max. Mentally examined, evaluated and dissected it until she was sick of herself.

  "Looks like it's just you and me," Jenny said when a customer left the shop.

  "Why don't you take a break? Put your feet up for a few minutes."

  "Happy to. You do the same."

  "I'm not pregnant. And I have paperwork."

  "I am pregnant, and I won't sit until you sit. So if you don't sit down you're forcing a pregnant woman to stand on her feet and they're swollen."

  "Your feet are swollen? Oh, Jenny—"

  "Okay, not yet. But they could be. They probably will be, and it'll be your fault. So let's sit."

  She nudged Laine toward a small, heart-backed divan. "I love this piece. I've thought about buying it a dozen times, then remember I have absolutely no place to put it."

  "When you love a piece, you find a place."

  "So you always say, but your house doesn't look like an antique warehouse." She ran her fingers over the satiny rose-on-rose stripes of the cushions. "Still, if it hasn't sold in another week, I'm going to cave."

  "It'd look great in the little alcove off your living room."

  "It would, but then I'd have to change the curtains, and get a little table."

  "Naturally. And a nice little rug."

  "Vince is going to kill me." She sighed, plopped her joined hands on the shelf of her belly. "Okay, time for you to unload."

  "I've already unpacked the last shipment."

  "Emotionally unload. And you knew what I meant."

  "I wouldn't know where to start."

  "Start with what pops to the surface first. You've got a lot bobbing around under there, Laine. I know you well enough to see it."

  "You still think you know me after everything you've found out in the last couple of days?"

  "Yeah, I do. So uncork it. What comes first?"

  "Max thinks he's in love with me."

  "Really?" It wasn't as easy for her to come to alert as it once had been, but Jenny dug her elbows into the cushions and pushed her heavy body straighter. "Did you intuit that, or did he say it? Right out say it?"

  "Right out said it. You don't believe in love at first sight, do you?"

  "Sure I do. It's all chemicals and stuff. There was this whole program on it on PBS. I think it was PBS. Maybe it was The Learning Channel. Anyway." She waved that part aside. "They've done all these studies on attraction and sex and relationships. Mostly, it boils down to chemicals, instincts, pheromones, then building on that. Besides, you know Vince and I met when I was in first grade. I went right home from school and told my mom that I was going to marry Vince Burger. Took us a while to get there. State law's pretty firm about six-year-olds getting hitched. But it sure was the right mix of chemicals from day one."

  She never tired of picturing it—gregarious Jenny and slow-talking Vince. And she always saw them with their adult heads on sturdy little kids' bodies. "You've known each other all your lives."

  "That's not the point. Minutes, days, years, sometimes it's just a click, click." Jenny snapped her fingers to emphasize. "Besides, why shouldn't he be in love with you? You're beautiful and smart and sexy. If I were a man I'd be all over you."

  "That's . . . really sweet."

  "And you've got this interesting and mysterious past on top of it. How do you feel about him?"

  "All sort of loose and itchy and feebleminded."

  "You know, I liked him right away."

  "Jenny, you liked his ass right away."

  "And your point would be?" She snickered, pleased when Laine laughed. "Okay, besides the ass, he's considerate. He bought his mother a gift. He's got that accent going for him, has a sexy job. Henry likes him, and Henry's a very good judge of character."

  "That's true. That's very true."

  "And he's not hung up with commitment phobia or he wouldn't have used the l word. Added to all that," she said softly, "he's on your side. That came across loud and clear. He's on your side, and that won him top points from the best-pal seats."

  "So I should stop worrying."

  "Depends. How is he in bed? Gladiator or poet?"

  "Hmm." Thinking back, Laine ran her tongue over her bottom lip. "A poetic gladiator."

  "Oh God!" With a little shudder, Jenny slumped back. "That's the best. Snap him up, girl."

  "I might. I just might. If we manage to get through all this without screwing it up."

  She glanced back as her door opened and the bells jingled. "I'll get this. Sit."

  The couple was fortyish, and Laine pegged them as affluent tourists. The woman's jacket was a thin butter-colored suede, and the shoes and bag were Prada. Good jewelry. A nice, square-cut diamond paired with a channel-set wedding band.

  The man wore a leather jacket that looked Italian in cut over nicely faded Levis. When he turned to close the door behind him, Laine spotted the Rolex on his wrist.

  They were both tanned and fit. Country club, she thought. Golf or tennis every Sunday.

  "Good afternoon. Can I help you with anything?"

  "We're just poking around," the woman answered with a smile, and a look in her eye that told Laine she didn't want to be guided or pressured.

  "Help yourself. Just let me know if you need anything." To give them space, she walked to the counter, opened one of her auction catalogues.

 
She let their conversation wash over her. Definitely country club types, Laine thought. And made one of her little bets with herself that they'd drop five hundred minimum before heading out again.

  If she was wrong, she had to put a dollar in the ginger jar in her office. As she was rarely wrong, the jar didn't see much action.

  "Miss?"

  Laine glanced over, then waved Jenny back before her friend could heft herself off the divan. She gave the female customer her merchant's smile and wandered over.

  "What can you tell me about this piece?"

  "Oh, that's a fun piece, isn't it? Chess table, circa 1850. British. It's penwork and ivory-inlaid ebony. Excellent condition."

  "It might work in our game room." She looked at her husband. "What do you think?"

  "A little steep for a novelty piece."

  All right, Laine thought. She was supposed to bargain with the husband while the wife looked around. No problem.

  "You'll note the double spiral pedestal. Perfect condition. It's really one of a kind. It came from an estate on Long Island."

  "What about this?"

  Laine walked over to join his wife. "Late nineteenth century. Mahogany," she said as she ran a fingertip over the edge of the display table. "The top's hinged, the glass beveled." She lifted it gently. "Don't you just love the heart shape?"

  "I really do."

  Laine noted the signal the wife sent her husband. I want both, it said. Make it work.

  She wandered off, and Laine gave Jenny the nod to answer any questions she might have over the collection of wineglasses she was eyeing.

  She spent the next fifteen minutes letting the husband think he was cutting her price to the bone. She made the sale, he felt accomplished and the wife got the pieces she wanted.

  Everybody wins, Laine thought as she wrote up the sale.

  "Wait! Michael, look what I found." The woman hurried to the counter, flushed and laughing. "My sister loves this sort of thing. The sillier the better." She held up a ceramic black-and-white dog. "There's no price."

  Laine stared at it, the practiced smile still curving her lips while her pulse pounded in her ears. Casually, very casually, she reached out and took the statue. An icy finger pressed at the base of her spine.