Closer Home (10 page)

Kelvin has forgotten to breathe. His face turns a dark reddish purple, and I think for a minute that the prayer warriors are going to have a real emergency on their hands.

“I can’t talk right now,” he says, finding his voice. His eyes skitter away from Ariel to the crowd building behind us and then back again. “We’re in the middle of service.”

“This will only take a minute,” Ariel says. “Could you just swab the inside of your cheek for me?” She’s got the Identi-Match swab in her hands, which are no longer shaking.

“I don’t understand.” He looks from Ariel to the swab, eyebrows raised in a question.

“DNA,” Ariel says. “To see whether you’re my father or not.”

His shoulders stiffen, and his voice drops into that mellifluous preacher range. “I can’t imagine where you got your information, child, but you’re far from the right track if you think that I—”

“Callie kept a diary. Rather detailed notes, as it turns out.” My voice cuts across his. Several people nearby turn to look. “Not hard to believe, given your way with the girls.”

He swallows, hard, his eyes darting to the camera and back again. “Please. Not here. Not now.”

“Where then? When?” Ariel demands.

Kelvin reaches into a pocket for a handkerchief and blots his forehead. “I’m asking you politely to leave.”

“And if I don’t?”

He leans down closer, keeping his voice low enough that nobody else will hear it over the music.

“I won’t let you do this. I’ve worked too hard—”

“I could come by your house.” Ariel smiles at him. “Maybe I can meet your wife. And your kids. Do I have brothers or sisters?”

“Do you really want to destroy the faith of thousands of people?”

“Oh, please. Like it’s built on anything real.”

Kelvin turns to me, blind panic and fury contorting his features. “Lise, make her stop.”

I laugh at him. “Give me one good reason why I would want to do anything for you.”

Shadow grabs Ariel’s hand and tugs. “Come on, Ari. You’re holding up the line.”

Two big guys are working their way through the crowd in our direction, both wearing dark suits. Holy bouncers, I figure. Our time is limited.

I put my hand on his arm. “You’re a goddamn hypocrite, Kelvin. All you had to do was talk to her for a few minutes, show a little kindness. But that’s not your way, is it? You haven’t changed a bit.”

He’s a good actor, I’ll give him that. Keeping a righteous expression on his face, he bends his head to speak directly into my ear.

“Get out of my church.”

“I thought it was God’s church.”

A camera flashes. I go cold, remembering that glimpse of red curls in the foyer. But before I can get a good look at the crowd, a meaty hand grasps my elbow. I look way up into a face that doesn’t even pretend to be spiritual. Ariel is still beside me, her arm firmly in the other goon’s possession. Shadow is nowhere.

“You’ll need to leave now,” my bouncer says.

Kelvin smiles, the mask of untarnished holiness firmly back in place. “Go in peace,” he says. “I will pray for you.”

That does it. I forget that Kelvin is supposedly a holy man of God. I forget about the cameras and Ariel and all sense of decorum. He’s just plain old Kelvin from school, taking advantage of me and mine.

“Asshole!” My fists are clenched and my free arm is moving, but it connects with empty air as my bouncer drags me out of range. Overbalancing, I trip over my own feet and begin a slow-motion tumble that is stopped by the inexorable force holding my arm. One of my shoes comes off, but he doesn’t miss a step and I have no choice but to scramble after him, bobbing up and down in an uneven one-shoed gait.

The crowd parts before us like magic, people staring and whispering to each other. I keep my head bent, partly to keep an eye on my precarious footsteps, but mostly to keep from being recognized. There’s no need to look where I’m going, anyway. All I have to do is keep my feet moving and my personal bouncer takes care of the rest.

A door opens in front of me, framing gray sky and rain. The rush of fresh air is more heavenly than anything about the service, and I step out of the church under my own steam. The bouncer blocks the doorway.

“Don’t come back.”

“No forgiveness at the Church of Kelvin?” I ask. He slams the door in my face. There is no outside handle.

An airless, choking sound from Ariel spins me around in alarm. She’s doubled over, both arms clasped around her belly.

“Oh my God, are you all right? Can you breathe? Are you choking?”

Ariel raises her head to look at me. Tears are pouring down both cheeks. She makes that whooping sound again, then manages to suck in a good breath.

“You—” she says, and then goes off into another fit.

“What?”

“Standing up to him like that. I thought you were going to kick him in the shins in front of God and everybody.”

“Balls, actually. Shins are too good for him.”

Ariel giggles. “He’s like two feet taller than you . . .” She breaks up again.

The rain has switched from drizzle to downpour, and both of us are already soaking wet. My shoeless foot is in a puddle. I don’t know where the car is from here. And yet her laughter sparks something deep inside me.

“This isn’t funny,” I start to say, but my voice cracks, and before I can help it, I’m overtaken by laughter that I can’t control.

This sends Ariel off again, and the two of us stand there, whooping insanely, soaked to the skin and staggering like drunks. Shadow shows up from somewhere. Unable to get any sense out of either of us, he takes us each by an arm and tows us around the edge of the church and out to the street, where we parked the car.

“We need to go before the service lets out,” he says, digging in my purse for the keys and unlocking the doors. That thought sobers me enough to let me drive, although the occasional giggle from Ariel sets me off again.

My sense of direction has been turned completely upside down, and I’m actually grateful to Shadow when he starts spouting directions. He’s got some sort of app on his phone, which seems to take us on a far more roundabout journey than is necessary. On the off chance that somebody is following us, this is no bad thing, though his continual fiddling with the phone rubs my fur the wrong way.

I’ve just made a right turn onto a major thoroughfare when he says, “Uh-oh. That’s not good.”

“What?”

“You’re on Twitter.” His thumbs move ninety miles an hour. “And Facebook.”

“This is news?”

“Let me see.” Ariel grabs the phone from him. “Oh my God. Somebody snapped you in the church.”

“Show me that.”

I reach for the phone, but Ariel holds it out of reach.

“You’re driving.”

A car behind me honks, and I realize the light is green. I put my foot on the gas, paying attention to the traffic but all the while trying fruitlessly to get a peek at Shadow’s phone.

More clicking. “Oh dear,” Ariel says. “This is definitely not good.”

“Just me?” I ask, trying to allay my panic. “Nothing about you trying to swab his DNA in the middle of a church service?”

“Nope. Just you.”

“Let me see.”

I stop at a red light and snatch for the phone. Ariel relents, and I find myself staring at a shot of me with my hand on Kelvin’s arm, his head bent over mine. We look intimate and wholly absorbed in each other, as though he’s telling me secrets.

Fabulous. My whole body is shaking by the time the light changes.

“They’re spinning it as an old romance rekindled,” Shadow says, snatching back his phone. “Including some speculation about a love triangle with that other guy. Dale. Some of Callie’s fans are tweeting that all three of you are part of a scheme to extort Ariel’s money. Oh, yeah. Here’s an interesting twist: ‘What if this Annelise person isn’t really Callie’s sister? She looks fakey to me.’ Oh, and better yet: ‘Maybe she’s an alien or something. Just saying.’” He laughs uproariously, as if this is the funniest thing ever.

I am not amused. Exhaustion seeps through every cell in my body. I just want to wrap myself in a blanket, lie down, close my eyes, and wish the world away.

“Are we done?” I ask Ariel. “Can we go home now?” The words leave an aftertaste of bitterness in my mouth. I’m not sure that home is possible anymore.

“Are you kidding me? We’re just getting started. Kelvin makes top of the dick list. Besides, I really doubt he’s the one. He doesn’t look like me at all. So, we do process of elimination. If all of the other possibles get ruled out, then we come back and harass him.”

“You’re not the one they’re turning into an alien,” I mutter.

She counters with heavy artillery. “I have five text messages from Ricken. Three of them are messages for you, reminding you that all business is at a halt until you sign contracts.”

I’d almost forgotten about Ricken. Maybe being a scheming alien impostor isn’t so bad after all. I’ll settle for the relative serenity of a hotel room, pizza delivery, and two moody teenage kids watching mindless TV.

CHAPTER SIX

Dale washes his plate and fork, rinses them, and sets both in the drainer to dry. The leftover meatloaf is reaching its end date, and he scrapes it into a bowl for his old bulldog Spike, who shuffles over, drooling, to eat with a whole lot more enthusiasm than Dale was able to muster.

He finds himself pacing, sink to table to couch to window. Over and over again. Can’t seem to settle to anything, although there’s plenty to be done. That new deck for Bob Sanders, for one thing. He needs to draw up the plans, make a list of the building materials he’ll pick up in the morning. There’s also that bid to put together for the Cooper house, although he’s not sure he wants to take that project on. Cooper has a reputation for being difficult: changing his mind about plans already under construction, micromanaging builds. He pays well, though, and Dale isn’t sure he can afford to pass up the opportunity. Time to crunch some numbers and make some decisions.

But all he can think about is Lise.

He can’t shake the way it tore up his insides to hear her cry like she did at the airport. Or the feel of her body in his arms, the scent of her hair. That kiss.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. That was a line best not crossed in any case, and now there are the tabloids. Five of them stare at him from the middle of his kitchen table, all with photos that make it look like Lise adores him. The airport photo makes it look like she is kissing him back.

For Dale, there are far worse things in life than the public declaration that he and Lise have feelings for each other. On his side, it’s true. The damnable part is that the story will likely drive her farther away from him. Even dead, Callie has a way of complicating things.

He shouldn’t feel anger at Callie, he knows. Or think of her as selfish and manipulative, though he knows full well that she was both. Now he’s supposed to somehow conjure up an image of a sweet and saintly human being. That mark is beyond him, and he gives it up and starts pacing again, pausing at the sliding glass doors that lead to his backyard. It’s full dark. The first star is out, hanging bright in the sky above the silhouette of the fir trees.

Belly tight with dread, he pulls out his phone and dials. Lise always answers by the third ring, if she’s going to answer at all. This time she doesn’t. Still, he waits, needing to hear her voice even if it’s just the message on her voice mail. But at the end of the sixth ring, another voice answers. Male. Clipped vowels, New York accent.

“Ricken.” Dale’s brain fumbles through all of the reasons the publicity guy is answering Lise’s phone and doesn’t like any of them.

“Who is this?”

“This is Dale, not that it’s any of your business. Put Lise on.”

“Oh, Dale! Of course. Awesome. I was going to call you. We’d like to get you back out here ASAP. How soon can you catch a flight?”

“What’s happened?”

“What? Oh, you mean why do we want you out here? It’s just so we can get you some interviews, a little more press time—”

“I’m not going anywhere. Where’s Annelise?”

“She’s not available—”

“How come you have her phone?”

Ricken’s brief hesitation chills him. For a talker like this douche bag, even an instant means something.

“Now, Dale—”

“Where the hell is she? Give her the fucking phone.”

“I can’t do that. She’s—not here—”

“Where is she? She doesn’t go anywhere without her phone.”

“Easy,” Ricken’s voice says. “We’ll find her. I don’t think she’s in any danger.”

“How can you possibly know that? Have you called the police? When was she seen last?” Dale knows Lise. She would never walk away, not from Ariel. And she takes that phone everywhere in case somebody calls from her mother’s nursing home.

“Well, Ariel’s gone, too. And before you start shouting, it looks like both of them went out Ariel’s bedroom window.”

“They could have been abducted.”

“Unlikely. Ariel took a suitcase. And used her debit card to purchase airline tickets to Portland. Three of them.”

Dale sinks into a chair as the world spins. “Portland?”

“I’m sure they’re fine. As soon as she uses the card again, I’ll let you know. Police won’t even look at this until she’s been missing for twenty-four hours. You sure you don’t want to come out?”

He’s not sure of anything anymore. If Lise is in Portland, what possible good would it do either of them for him to go to Vegas? But what if she’s not? Just because Ariel ran off, there’s no guarantee that Lise is with her.

“Three tickets?”

“Airline won’t release names at this point, but we’re guessing both Annelise and Ariel’s boyfriend are along for the ride.”

The goth kid’s involvement is not comforting. None of this makes any sense. Callie was the one to go running off on harebrained schemes without a thought for anybody other than herself. And all Dale has to go on that Lise isn’t tied up in the house somewhere is the word of a man who has worse morals than a rattlesnake. A snake will at least warn you before it bites.

“So, are you coming out?” Ricken asks.

“I’ll let you know.” Dale hangs up. He picks up the tabloid and reads the story again, trying to get into Lise’s head. And Ariel’s. Maybe they did cut and run. He’s not sure what he should do. Stay put, in case she calls? Go search Callie’s mansion and make sure there’s not a body?

She didn’t call.

Dale knows she doesn’t love him, not like that, but he’d thought there was more there, at least enough consideration that she would let him know before she took off somewhere. That rankles.

Spike waddles over and presses against his knee. Dale scratches behind the dog’s ears. “You think you know somebody,” he mutters. The dog snuffles and drools and Dale continues to sit, his hand smoothing the brindled fur while he waits for the phone that doesn’t ring.