Chapter 5
Jack mentally kicked himself up one side and down the other as he walked to his Jeep. He’d blown it with Cissy, no doubt about it, and she was making life hell for him. He decided he deserved it. Not that he’d slept with Larissa. But he’d come damned close. Too close. “Stupid,” he muttered, unlocking the Jeep and sliding behind the wheel. He backed out of the driveway and started heading toward his apartment, but he didn’t like the feeling that he was abandoning her.
Driving around the block, Jack found an empty space on the street, just so she wouldn’t have a fit about his car being in the drive. Then, using the seat-adjustment lever, he pushed the seat of his Jeep back as far as it would go. He figured if the cops could stake the place out, so could he. He always kept a sleeping bag in the back, and he had a couple of bottles of water in the console, so he was good for hours.
He had an apartment, of course, one he’d rented just this month when Cissy had given him the boot, but he hated it. Cold. Lifeless. Sterile. Even with rental furniture, a fake plant, and a plasma TV that stretched across one wall, the place wasn’t home. It was ironic, really, because he’d always considered himself a bachelor for life. Then he’d met Cissy, and everything had changed. His whole damned attitude on the institution. He’d seen enough bad marriages in his lifetime, witnessed firsthand the battlefield wedded “bliss” could be from his parents, then watched as several of his more idealistic friends had taken the plunge into matrimonial waters, only to have nearly drowned.
Still, his relationship with Cissy, as fast and hot as it had been, had changed his mind about settling down. When he’d married her, he’d gladly given up the bachelor basics of recliner, remote control, microwave, and minifridge. And he hadn’t missed them.
But he was a realist.
Cissy was still mad.
Really mad.
It would take a lot of smooth talking, crow swallowing, redundant apologizing, and dozens of good deeds before she’d ever trust him again. He wasn’t even sure it was possible. The truth from Larissa’s pouty and lying lips wouldn’t hurt either, but so far, Larissa refused to tell Cissy what really happened. There was a part of her that reveled in his predicament, as she insisted that if Cissy were a truly trusting wife, she would never doubt Jack. Larissa wasn’t even going to acknowledge or honor the argument. Cissy had been her friend too, as they all worked together at the magazine, and Larissa proclaimed loud and long that it was up to Cissy to trust them both.
Which was bullshit, and they all knew it. Hurt feelings didn’t work that way, didn’t answer to what should be in a perfect world.
Now, even if Larissa did come around, it was already too late. Cissy had made up her mind, and she’d seen Larissa’s silence as testament to the fact that Larissa and Jack had slept together. Even if Larissa were to come clean—which was a big if—Cissy wouldn’t believe her and would, no doubt, come to the conclusion that Jack had put Larissa up to it.
So they were at an impasse.
Damn, what a mess.
Your own fault, Holt. You blew it.
Now he stared out at the street where rain was washing down the hillside, past the rooftops of the Victorian houses to the city below. Thousands of lights winked in the night, warm windows glowing in the high-rise apartment buildings, hotels, and office buildings of the financial district.
Back at their house, a light went on in the baby’s room, and Jack visualized Cissy going through the evening routine of bathing the baby, dressing him in pj’s, then sitting in the big overstuffed chair to read him a story before laying him in his crib. Gazing up at the window, Jack felt a loneliness he’d never experienced in his life. He cracked open a bottle of water, wished it were a beer, then noticed another car pull into a spot in front of the house.
Great.
He had company.
The cops were back.
He remembered seeing the classic Caddy parked at Eugenia’s house. Paterno’s old car. He watched as Paterno climbed out of the driver’s side then opened the car’s rear door. The detective retrieved a plastic carrier of some kind from the backseat, then headed for the house.
A pet crate?
Jack heard another approaching engine. As Paterno started for the door, a news van turned the corner and pulled up on the far side of the street, its nose blocking Cissy’s driveway.
Great.
Jack screwed the cap back on his water bottle and left it on the passenger seat.
An Asian woman in an orange parka with the station’s letters—KTAM—emblazoned over a pocket practically flew out of the van and popped open a fat umbrella. The reporter, glossy layered hair gleaming, zeroed in on Paterno and headed his way, cutting across the grass as if she hoped to reach him before he got to the front porch.
This didn’t look good.
Jack reached for the Jeep’s door handle.
“Detective,” the reporter called as she closed the distance. “Detective Paterno! Could I have a word with you?” A cameraman was following close behind, his mammoth camera propped on his shoulder as he ran after her. “We’ve met before. I’m Lani Saito with KTAM.”
Paterno turned just as Jack slid out of his rig.
“Can you tell me about Marla Cahill’s escape?”
Paterno stopped short as she blocked his way. Tersely, he answered, “I’m sure the prison authorities and state police have issued a statement.”
She wasn’t budging. “But you were the detective who arrested her, and now, just a few hours ago, her mother-in-law died from a fall. Was foul play involved in Eugenia Cahill’s death?”
“We don’t know.”
As he was behind the detective, Jack couldn’t see Paterno’s reaction, but there was no mistaking the irritation in his voice. “We’re still investigating.” He turned toward the house, and inside the pet carrier a dog started yapping.
“Detective, what’s in the carrier?” But the howling that came out of the plastic crate answered the question. “You’re delivering a dog?”
“It was missing.” He turned back toward the house.
“Whose dog?”
Paterno didn’t honor the question with so much as a turn of his head, but Lani, spying Jack, switched her attention to him. He suspected she knew who he was; he’d done a lot of promoting when he was getting the magazine off the ground and showed up at a lot of civic and charitable functions.
“Jack Holt?” she said, and he noticed the sharpened interest in her dark eyes. The wheels were turning in her mind. He didn’t wait for her to put two and two together. Jogging around her, he caught up with Paterno at the front door. “Don’t ring the bell,” he said as Paterno was just lifting his hand. Now Coco was having a fit, barking crazily, baying and whining in her little-dog voice. “Cissy just put the baby to bed. Let’s not wake him. Here.” He slid his key into the lock, and the door swung open. “I’ll get her,” he said, ushering the cop inside and pulling the door shut.
“Jack?” Cissy called from the top of the stairs. “I thought you understood—”
“We’ve got company, Ciss,” he said as Paterno set the crate on the floor.
“What? Who?” He heard her soft, familiar footsteps on the stairs as he opened the cage’s mesh door.
With an excited yip, a scrap of scruffy white fur bolted from inside the carrier and barked excitedly at Cissy’s feet as she reached the main floor. “Oh.” She had already pulled her hair into a ponytail, and the sleeves of her T-shirt had been pushed up her forearms, slightly wet, evidence of B.J.’s quick bath. She looked from Jack to the detective as she bent down to pick up the frantic, ecstatic dog, who was yipping and jumping up at her.
“I probably should have called,” Paterno said. “We found her”—he pointed at Coco—“locked in a cupboard in the library.”
“What?” she repeated.
“Would your grandmother ever put the dog in the—”
“Cupboard? No! Never!” Holding the wriggling terrier, Cissy was rewarded with a pink tongue that licked her all over her face. She couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, yeah, I’m glad to see you too,” she said dryly to the dog, then actually chuckled at Coco’s enthusiasm. Looking at Paterno, she said, “My grandmother adored Coco, and I’m not kidding you, she would have died before she would have locked…” She blinked and shook her head. “Sorry. It’s…still processing…. The thing is, Gran would have never locked Coco in anything, including that,” she said, hitching her chin toward the crate. “I mean, this dog, from the time she was a puppy, sat on Gran’s lap while she watched television or knitted or read. My grandmother was meticulous to a fault. She absolutely detested dirt of any kind, but she didn’t care a whit about the dog hair when it came from this one.” Cissy rubbed Coco behind her ears, and the dog grunted happily, beady black eyes still glaring distrustfully at Jack and Paterno. “Thanks for bringing her by.” She shot a look at her husband as if to say, So what are you doing here?
Paterno reached into his pocket and pulled out a little spiral-bound notepad. “Since I’m here already, would you mind if I ask you a few more questions? Some clarification on a few things.”
Cissy wanted to tell him to wait till morning. It was on the tip of her tongue, but what good would it do, really? Put off the inevitable for one more night? She inclined her head and asked, “When I pick up my car tomorrow, can I go inside Gran’s house?”
“I think it’ll be okay.”
“Then go ahead with your questions,” Cissy said as she carried the dog into the living room. “I don’t know what more I can tell you,” she said and motioned to the couch from which Jack so recently had been evicted. “Please, sit down.”
“Thanks. What I need from you are the names of your grandmother’s friends and associates, their phone numbers, or addresses, if you have them. I have the ones that were on your cell phone. I was also hoping you could tell me a little bit about your grandmother, her routine.” He dropped onto the couch while Jack walked to the fireplace and lit the gas jets, gold flames instantly flaring over ceramic logs.
“Deborah, Gran’s companion, could tell you better than I can about what she did every day. Give me just a minute to take care of the dog, and I’ll be right back.” To Coco, she said, “I’ll bet you’re thirsty and maybe hungry too, huh?” She and the dog disappeared into the kitchen, and a few seconds later the sounds of banging cupboard doors and water running were accompanied by a series of sharp, staccato yips. Soon, Cissy, barefoot, returned, while the dog, presumably, was digging into whatever it was she found to feed it.
Jack watched as his wife retrieved her laptop from an upper shelf of the built-in bookcase near the fireplace, a “baby-proof” spot well out of the reach of B.J.’s curious fingers, then clicked it on. “It’ll be just a minute,” she said as she sat on a side chair while Jack braced himself against the mantel. As the computer began its clicking and humming to life, Cissy pushed her wet sleeves down to her wrists and answered the questions she could about Eugenia, telling the detective as much about her grandmother’s days as she knew.
“She’s on the board of Cahill House, which is what would once have been called a ‘home for unwed mothers.’ In fact, I think that’s exactly what it was called once. Now everything’s more straightforward, isn’t strangled by all the secrecy and shame, thank God. Cahill House is now a place for pregnant teens or twenty-somethings who don’t have support from their families. They can stay there, go to school, and get counseling while they’re awaiting the birth of their child.” She managed a smile. “It’s one of the truly philanthropic things my family’s done. And Cahill House has always been one of Gran’s pet projects, along with being on the board at the hospital.”
“Which hospital?” Paterno asked.
“Bayside.”
Paterno made notes while Cissy added, “Gran plays mahjong and bridge with different women every week. Mahjong on Wednesdays, I think, and bridge on Thursdays…or maybe it’s the other way around. I can’t remember. She gets her hair done without fail by Helene on Friday mornings and has for years. Helene has a shop somewhere around Haight-Ashbury. Lars would know the address.” The computer made a series of clicks as it came to life just as Coco trotted back to the living room and made a beeline for Cissy. “Oops,” she said, then placed the laptop on a side table while the dog settled onto her lap.
“Okay, here we go.” As Paterno wrote in a notepad, Cissy, without any inflection, rattled off names and phone numbers, many of which Jack was hearing for the first time. Afterward, she added, “Of course, there’s Cahill International, the family business. It was in bad shape a few years back, but I think it’s doing well again. I don’t really pay that much attention, but Gran still sits on the board. I mean sat on it. God, it’s hard to believe she’s gone.”
“You were close?”
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” Cissy shook her head. “I wasn’t that crazy about her, growing up, and she thought I was just okay. Believe me, she was all about a male heir for the family. It was ridiculous, so antiquated, but because of it, I only tolerated her when I was a kid. As a teenager I would have rather been anywhere else, and we lived with her. It was the worst!” She looked away for an instant, her features tightening with emotion. “But over the years we got closer, and then B.J. came along and Gran went nuts. Another boy, I suppose.” Her lips twisted wryly, and Jack hated the pain he saw in her eyes. “You know, I sometimes wonder how she would have reacted if he’d been a girl.” She looked up at Paterno. “Probably not the same. How is that for unfair?”
Paterno lifted a shoulder. “From what I see, not many families are perfect.”
She snorted, glanced through the window to the dark night beyond. Absently she rubbed her arms, as if a sudden chill had swept over her.
“Where are the rest of the family now?” Paterno asked.
“Around here it’s just me,” she said a little defensively, the way she always did when anyone pried too deeply about her family. She was prickly where they were concerned, and Jack didn’t blame her. “There’s my aunt and uncle, who are raising my brother in Oregon. You remember them.”
Paterno nodded. “You got a number?”
Absently petting the dog, she rattled off the phone number from memory. “Of course, there’s my mother too.” She looked through the window to the dark night beyond, almost as if she expected Marla’s visage to appear in the rain-drizzled glass.
Paterno quit scribbling long enough to click the top of his pen as he thought. “Don’t you have some cousins, or half cousins?”
“My father’s cousins.” Her jaw hardened at the mention of the man who had sired her. Though Alex Cahill had been dead for years, Cissy had never forgiven him for neglecting her while he’d been alive. “Gran always called them the black sheep.” Cissy scratched the little dog behind her ears. “Monty, er, Montgomery, is still in prison, but his sister, Cherise, is around. I think her last name is still Favier. It’s hard to keep up. She’s been married a few times.”
The policeman nodded, as if he actually knew who she was talking about. Jack didn’t. Sometimes it seemed the longer he knew Cissy, the less he knew about her.
“They never got along with the rest of the family. I think they thought my grandfather did something underhanded and cut their grandfather out of the family fortune. Monty and Cherise never got over it.”
“Did your grandfather? Cut them out?”
She lifted a shoulder, and Jack realized she was trying to hold on to her patience. He saw the tension in her body, the slight narrowing of her eyes. She didn’t like Paterno and didn’t like his questions. “I don’t know. Gran would remember….” Her voice trailed off, and she cleared her throat. “Look, I really don’t know what more I can tell you.”
Paterno nodded and acted like he’d heard it all before, but it was news to Jack. The detective asked a few more questions, asking Cissy to check and see if any valuables were missing when she returned to Eugenia’s, then finally left. Jack walked him to the door and noticed that the KTAM van wasn’t blocking the driveway any longer.
Good news, at least for now. But it wouldn’t last long. Sooner or later, Lani Saito, or someone else who smelled a story, would be back.
He closed the door behind Paterno and watched as the policeman walked to his Caddy. Once satisfied that the detective wasn’t coming back, Jack returned to the living room, where the fire hissed in the grate and Cissy sat in the chair, petting the dog, still staring out the window. “So,” he said, picking up a framed picture of B.J. on his first birthday, one candle burning on a cake placed on the tray of his high chair. His eyes seemed twice their size as he stared at the cake in awe and amazement.
“So what?” she asked, not even looking at him.
He replaced the five-by-seven on the table. “Are you going to throw me out again?”
“Am I going to have to?”
“You don’t have to.”
She hesitated, as if there were just the tiniest chink in her armor. She slid her gaze to one side, and he had the good sense not to walk close to her, try to touch her, offer unwanted consolation and sympathy. “You keep pushing me.”
“No, Ciss, you’re the one pushing. You’re pushing me away.”
“And you know why,” she declared, throwing her arms up in defeat. “I am so tired of fighting. You can stay, Jack, on the couch—on one condition. No…make that two…on second thought, three conditions!”
Before he could argue, she held up a finger. “First, you leave early in the morning. You do not pass ‘go,’ you do not ‘get out of jail free,’ you do not expect to move in, and you just get the hell out before I get up.”
“Okay.”
A second finger shot skyward. “You walk the dog tonight.”
“The dog hates me.”
“Tough!” The third finger joined the others. “Before you leave, you find a way to fix the damned furnace.”
“You’re not calling a repairman?”
“It’s Sunday. The thermometer in here says the temperature is hovering below sixty-two, and the thermostat is set to seventy.”
“I’ll look at it.”
“Okay.” Cissy gazed at him uncertainly, as if unsure whether she’d won or lost. “Then, good. Good night, Jack.”
“Good night,” he said, but she was already striding out of the living room, across the foyer, then hurrying up the stairs, her bare feet nearly noiseless on the hardwood steps. Above, as she walked, the floor creaked. He heard a door open and shut, then watched a pillow and a sleeping bag come hurtling down the stairs. The sleeping bag bounced against the door of the closet in the foyer; the pillow skidded across the floor and stopped when it hit the back of the couch.
“Thanks,” he called up the dark staircase toward the landing.
“Don’t mention it.” A second later he heard the distinctive creak of the master bedroom door as it opened, then shut with a soft thud and a click of the lock. Obviously Cissy was taking no chances that he’d try to sweet-talk his way into their king-sized bed.
He wasn’t that deluded.
He picked up the sleeping bag, unrolled it, and tossed it over the slick leather cushions of the damned couch. Throwing the pillow toward one end, he surveyed his work. Not that great, but at least it beat the car, he thought as he walked into the kitchen, found the last beer in the refrigerator, and uncapped the bottle. After taking a long, not-that-satisfying pull, he carried a growling and suspicious-looking Coco outside, deposited her on the turf just off the patio, and waited in the cold drizzle for the damned dog to sniff every damned bush before she finally got down to her damned business.
“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” he confided to Coco as he carried her inside and found a dishtowel to wipe her tiny wet paws. For all his efforts, he was rewarded with a warning growl. He thought for a minute that the feisty bit of fluff might actually bite him. “Don’t even think about it,” he advised, and when he set the dog onto the floor, she scrambled to get away from him, nearly skidding as she headed for the stairs and ran up them as if she were a dog half her age and was fleeing for her life.
“Good riddance,” Jack muttered.
With one look up the darkened stairs, he returned to the living room, flopped onto the couch, and picked up the remote. He thought of the irony of his earlier assessment of the single life. Even married and in his own house, it wasn’t much different.
He clicked on the local news, and there, filling up the flat screen, was the last picture his wife had of her mother: Marla Amhurst Cahill’s mug shot.
You’re a fool!
Cissy peeled off her clothes, let them drop to the bedroom floor, then stepped into pajamas that had gotten at least one size too big for her over the last month. Her appetite had been off; the stress over the separation from Jack had cost her ten pounds she could ill-afford to lose.
And now he was downstairs.
Great!
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Tonight on the couch. Tomorrow up here in the bedroom? And then what? Are you going to forgive him just like that? Set yourself up for more heartache? Put yourself and B.J. on an emotional roller coaster for the rest of your lives? You can’t do it, Cissy. No matter how much you want to. Jack Holt is a player, plain and simple. He might not ever intend to hurt you, but if you let him, he’ll break your heart over and over again.
She couldn’t let him.
It was that simple.
She walked into the small master bath that she and Jack had carved out of an existing attic space, brushed her teeth and stared at a face she barely recognized. Her eyes, whiskey gold, as Jack had referred to them, were rimmed in running mascara, the whites shot with red veins from all of the crying she’d done since finding her grandmother on the floor of the foyer. Her nose was pink, a couple of damned zits daring to erupt on her chin, and her cheekbones more defined than ever. She scrubbed off all remnants of her makeup, dug in the drawer for acne cream she was way too old to be using, then gave up the search when she heard Coco scratching at the door.
“Hang on for a sec,” she called, then walked through the bedroom.
She opened the door, half-expecting Jack to be on the other side, his shoulder propped against the doorjamb, an irrepressible grin tugging at his lips, devilment in his eyes.
But the dog was alone.
Insanely she felt a little bit of disappointment.
“Come here,” she whispered to the dog, “let’s go check on Beej.”
She heard the soft noise from the television in the living room filtering up the stairs and noticed the illumination of a flickering screen playing against the wall of the staircase. Sighing, she found it ridiculously comforting knowing that she wasn’t alone tonight. That Jack was downstairs. In their house.
Oh man, Cissy, you ARE a basket case!
She pushed open the door that she always left just slightly ajar. Inside B.J.’s room, her son was sleeping in his crib, and her heart swelled at the sight of him in the one-piece pajamas that covered him head to toe in soft, powder blue cotton. His blond curls had dried from the bath, and his lips were parted as he slept on his back. A mobile of airplanes through the ages, biplanes to Lear jets, hung suspended from a ceiling where she and Jack had painted clouds.
“Don’t let his angelic demeanor fool you,” Cissy whispered into Coco’s ear as she stared at her son. “He’s been a holy terror all week.” With her free hand, she adjusted Beej’s blankets and watched his small chest rise and fall.
Satisfied that he was sleeping soundly, she slipped back into the hallway and then nearly screamed when she saw a dark figure near the stairs. Her hand flew to her heart the nanosecond before she recognized Jack. “Holy God, Jack, what’re you doing up here! We had a deal.”
“I was just going to do what you’ve been doing. Check on my son.”
“He’s fine!”
But Jack brushed by her and poked his head into the nursery anyway. She followed and peeked through the open door. Her heart squeezed as she saw Jack smile and place his big hand on B.J.’s tummy.
Her heart squeezed.
Don’t let him get to you, do not!
“You’re right,” Jack said, easing into the hallway again and brushing up against a picture she had yet to take down, an eight-by-ten of their wedding in the stupid little Las Vegas chapel. She was in a short white dress, he in a tux, and no one they knew had been there to witness the event.
Jack saw her quick glance and looked at the picture, righting it. “You don’t like Detective Paterno much, do you?”
“He’s not exactly been a champion of my family, but let’s discuss this some other time.”
She thought he might grab her right then and there, close as they were. But the little dog in her arms growled, causing Jack to curb whatever impulse he might have had. “That dog hates me,” he said, faintly amused.
“Maybe she has a reason.”
“Cheap shot, Ciss,” he said, but his amusement didn’t fall away. “You know, I’m getting damned tired of being your whipping boy.”
“You’re the one who lobbied hard and fast to get back into the house.”
“My house,” he reminded her. “At least half of it. But listen, I’m not going to argue with you tonight. I know you’ve been through enough today. So for now, good night, Ciss.” He walked the few feet to the stairs and descended, leaving her in the hallway. She glanced at the wedding picture, yanked it from its hook and, once inside the bedroom, tossed it into the trash with enough force that the glass splintered and the frame broke.
Telling herself she didn’t care two cents about the damned picture, she set the dog on the floor, but the terrier was having none of it. With surprising agility, Coco launched herself onto the bed and settled on Cissy’s pillow. “Oh, no. Not a prayer.” Cissy pushed the tiny beast onto Jack’s side, where Coco circled about a million times before settling into the spot formerly occupied by the man downstairs.
How pathetic was that? She and this little dog on a bed that suddenly seemed an acre across.
She slid between the sheets and picked up a book, then, after reading the same paragraph three times without remembering a word, tossed the paperback onto the nightstand and clicked off the light. Coco was already snoring contentedly, but Cissy stared up at the dark ceiling.
The police really thought her grandmother had been murdered.
During the very week her mother had escaped from prison.
She shuddered, drew the covers up around her neck, and glanced out the window, where the streetlight illuminated a spot on the sidewalk. No police car was outside, but the rain beat steadily, slashing downward, and for a second, just half a heartbeat, she thought she saw someone standing outside that watery pool of light, a dark, smudgy apparition that could have been a person in a dark coat, or a figment of her imagination.
A frisson of fear skated down Cissy’s spine, and her heart nearly stopped.
You’re imagining things.
But she slid out of the bed and, in the darkness, walked to the side of the window, obscured by the curtains, peering out into the damp night. Lights from neighboring houses should have made her feel more secure. Jack being downstairs should have made her feel safe.
Her fingers wound in the sheer curtains as she squinted into the night.
There’s no one there. Look…there’s nothing.
But she swallowed against a suddenly dry throat and resisted the urge to call out to Jack.
She thought about Marla as she stared at the spot where she felt she’d seen someone lurking.
Where was she?
Here?