Death in Paradise (53 page)

She stood still and looked around. It was so quiet out here in the woods she might have been the only person in the world. Sometimes she wished she was. It wasn't as if she got along with many of the stupid girls in her stupid dorm. In the moonlight, the snow-covered pond was a serene white oval surrounded by the black trunks of the trees leaning out over it.

She looked back at the dark figure who hovered behind her, who was angry at her, and not acting much like a friend. "You were right. It's beautiful," she said, trying to hide her annoyance. She wasn't particularly interested in scenery and couldn't see why they'd had to come all the way out here just to conduct a business transaction. Adults could be so ridiculous sometimes. Kids were always being accused of being unrealistic but it sure wasn't her idea to turn this into a moonlight walk. She wanted to get the money and find Merri before her friend got disgusted and left without her. Maybe she already had. If so, she'd catch up with her at the movie.

"You have to get farther out. Right into the middle. Then you can really appreciate it," her companion urged.

"The ice is too thin. It keeps cracking. You can risk your life if you want. I'm going back."

"Just a few more steps. Even if the ice breaks, it's very shallow there. There's no sense in bothering if you aren't going to do it right." Her companion put a hand under her arm and urged her forward. "I never thought you were such a scaredy cat."

That was another thing. Grown-ups were always teasing and saying dumb stuff when they were nervous, yet they always accused kids of being silly. She didn't want to take another step but her natural caution warred with Laney's desire to please. She needed to be braver. She knew that. She was going to have to be brave to face what she had to face. No one else was going to be on her side. Sure, Merri would be there, she'd promised Laney that, but Merri wasn't being supportive, not really. She was just doing this because Laney had begged. She disapproved and she was very open about it. She'd been totally unsympathetic when Laney told her that she was scared of doctors and nurses and blood. It just wasn't fair anyway. Why should she have to go through with this? She answered her own question. Because the alternative was worse.

"I have to be getting back. I'm meeting someone," she said, irritated that her voice sounded so small and shaky. "Can I please have that money now?" She turned back but her companion grabbed her arm and held on. "Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Laney tried to jerk her arm away but the other's grip was firm. "Let me go!" Suddenly she felt herself being shoved forward. She staggered a few steps, slipped, and fell.

The ice snapped and groaned and suddenly gave way beneath her. She expected to hit bottom immediately but she went down and down and her feet touched nothing. She flailed about with her arms, grabbing the edges of the ice to stop her plunge. The ice just crumbled under her fingers. She gasped as the water closed over her chest.

Frantically she turned toward shore for help, waving her arms and calling, "Wait! Come back. You can't just leave me here." The retreating figure neither wavered nor looked back before disappearing into the trees. "Hey," she called, her fingers scrabbling for a purchase on the ice. "This isn't just my fault, you know. I didn't mean to hurt you.... You can't do this to me!" There was no one there. Nothing on the silent shore but the trees. "Help!" she screamed. "Help! I've fallen through the ice." Her sodden flannel skirt kept tangling around her legs, making it hard to tread water. She flailed at the edges of the crumbling ice, trying to find something to grip, until her fingertips were numb. She panicked, thrashing wildly around and screaming for help, still expecting her companion to come back and rescue her.

"Okay, okay, you've made your point. I was stupid and I hurt you and I'm sorry!"

No one came. She was getting tired. It was getting harder and harder to keep her head above water. She went under while she was trying to scream, swallowing a mouthful of water.

She tried to make herself be calm. Her chest hurt from the cold and coughing and her arms and legs were getting heavy and unresponsive. She sited on the shore and tried to swim toward it. It seemed very far away and she was tired. Terribly tired. Her arms and legs were stiff and awkward and didn't want to do what she told them. She'd swallowed so much water it felt as though she were going to be sick. She tried not to think about what that water looked like. Dark brown, muddy, and smelly. She couldn't keep her head up so she held her breath and bobbed. She'd breathe whenever she came up. It was confusing. She kept mistiming it. Gasped for air and took in water instead. Kept struggling for air and kept getting water. The stupid jacket that she'd borrowed was so heavy it was pulling her down. She tried to struggle out of it and got hopelessly tangled.

She was suffocating. She fought frantically to get to the surface. Her burning lungs demanded air and every time she tried to breathe she got water. Despite the commands from her brain, her arms and legs had stopped responding. "I'm drowning," she thought. "My mother isn't going to be able to handle this. Not on top of everything else."

She saw her mother's face bending over her. "Don't worry, Delaney," her mother was saying, "everything is going to be fine." For once, Marta Taggert was smiling reassuringly, the way mothers are supposed to. For once, there was no stream of criticism coming out of her mouth. Laney began to feel better. She gave up fighting and relaxed. It was going to be okay. She could let her mother take care of her. It was what she'd been wishing for anyway, these past few weeks. She'd so badly wanted someone to take care of her, to help her out. Someone she could talk to who didn't make her feel bad and dirty and wrong. The operation scared her. Now she'd have her mother there to comfort her, tuck her into bed afterward, bring her soup and ginger ale and magazines. Laney didn't want to be a mother. She wanted to be mothered. Too bad it took such a dramatic event to get her mother to pay attention. She smiled up into her mother's face. "I'm glad you're here."

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

Andre was silhouetted against the night, his big body a dark bulk against the enormous window. Behind him the lights of the city fell away toward the ferry terminal. Beyond it, sparkling like a jeweled tiara, the Bay Bridge carried late-night traffic to Oakland. I couldn't see his face because we'd turned out all the lights but I knew just how it looked. One whole side was a patchwork of scabs and the vulnerable pink of new skin. It was the kind of thing people stared at, but they didn't stare long at Andre. Underneath the scabs his face was hard and unwelcoming. His dark brown eyes, which, when he let his feelings show, truly were a mirror of his soul, were dull. He looked like a man who'd suffered one too many bad things. He looked like exactly who he was. A cop. The man I loved. A man who'd been beaten, dragged behind a car, and lost his best friend.

Cops always live with the possibility that something will go wrong. So do their wives and lovers, their mothers and fathers and children. Andre is a detective with the Maine State Police. I met him when he was investigating my sister's death and it was the farthest thing from love at first sight. I thought he was a typical cop asshole and he thought I was a prissy obstructionist. It took a screaming match, an uncomfortable dinner, and hours of talking for us to realize we were wrong about each other. That was two years ago. Since then we've had our ups and downs but we've been pretty steadily together. One of the things I valued about him was that he'd always been open and willing to talk to me. If we could talk, we could always work things out. But he wouldn't talk about this. Since his buddy had been shot, he'd pulled himself into his shell like a turtle. The only way I even knew the details of what had happened was that some of his friends had talked to me, hoping I might be able to do something for him.

The situation had been filled with the usual volatility of the cop's life. Andre and the dead man, Ray Dolan, had gotten too close to a walking time bomb named Jed Wheeler and the bomb had gone off. An informer had told them Wheeler might be the guy to talk to about a murder they were investigating. In Maine, state cops handle almost all the murder cases. Their informant had told them Wheeler, a heavy drug user, was crazy and dangerous and they'd approached him cautiously, but there isn't enough caution in the world when you're dealing with someone as strung out on drugs as Wheeler was. They'd gone to ask some questions and met the angel of death. Ray Dolan, a good cop, a good father, and a good man, had bled to death despite Andre's efforts. The angel of death took five rounds and kept on coming, trying to run Andre down with his car. Andre had been dragged a couple hundred yards before Wheeler finally died. Ray Dolan had been Andre's mentor and close friend. Even though Andre knew he'd done everything he could, even though he knew none of it was his fault, he couldn't forgive himself for not dying, too.

The ironic part was that six months ago, the angel of death had brushed Andre with its wings and he'd bounced back from that in remarkably good spirits. Maybe part of his recovery was due to the fact that I'd finally agreed to live with him, but I think that gives me too much credit. Or too much responsibility.

After Andre had been shot in a hostage situation and I'd had time, sitting there in the waiting room, to reflect on all the opportunities I might be missing, I'd yielded to his pressure for us to live together.

Cautiously, I admit. It went against my fear of commitment and my reluctance, having already lost the husband I had loved so dearly, to take a chance at getting hurt again. After all, if Andre's getting shot proved anything, it was that he was in a risky business. It had also focused my heart and mind in a way no amount of talking ever could.

So I had sublet my beloved oceanfront condo to a coworker's friend; Andre had given up his bachelor pad complete with devoted landlady who worried about whether he was getting enough to eat, and we'd committed ourselves to an experiment in domestic bliss. The experiment had included two killer commutes, incompatible working hours, and a surprising amount of fun. Until recently.

Even before the Dolan thing, our domesticity had been fraying around the edges. I'm not the jealous type, but it had been hard to overlook how often Andre's work was throwing him into the company of a bouncy blond named Amanda. And Andre, who
is
the jealous type—ask him, he'll admit it—didn't appreciate all the calls I got from Denzel Ellis-Jackson. Denzel is a client and Amanda is a co-worker. They were just symbols of a larger problem—the fact that we were too busy to nurture our relationship or to even talk about it.

For the past two weeks, we hadn't been together. Andre the turtle had wanted to be alone, and I had had a bunch of work to do in Boston, so he'd stayed in Maine and I'd stayed with my partner, Suzanne, and we'd talked more, by phone, than we had when we were together. Talked all the way around things, but not connected. I'd finally begged him to take this trip with me to see if we could break through the barriers and find the partner we loved.

We were also in San Francisco, which is about as far as you can get from Maine, because Andre's boss had begged to me do something with him. I'm neither a Pollyanna type nor a Florence Nightingale—few people make the mistake of thinking me warm and fuzzy—but despite our ups and downs I loved the man and I was willing to try. So far it had been like going on vacation with a stone. He'd met me at the airport in Boston, greeted me with a kiss that would have disappointed a grandmother, and lapsed into brooding silence. The scrapes on his face were almost healed and he walked with only a slight limp but the internal injuries were all too apparent. His spirit was bruised and bleeding. He had a black-and-blue soul.

I'm not a type A personality, only a B+, but I have pretty frantic work habits. I'm a consultant to independent schools—a euphemism for private schools—and I'd just finished a big project culminating in an enormous report. When I'm meeting a deadline, I tend to forget minor things like eating and sleeping. As a result, I'd rushed to the airport directly from the printer, running a sleep and meal deficit big enough to rival the national debt. I wanted to put my head on his broad shoulder and sleep. Instead, I trotted out tricks from my traveling road show until my jaw ached from smiling. I tried light conversation, snuggling up to the man who usually can't keep his hands off my body, and an outright challenge, and met with so little response I might as well have been talking to my foot. He had three drinks, showed an avid interest in the airline magazine and then fell asleep.

He had looked out the window when we landed and murmured some responses when I pointed out the things I could recognize and he'd roused himself to comment on the display of hats in the airport, but once we were in the cab he became the stone man again. He jumped when I accidentally brushed against his thigh and acted as if he couldn't hear when I pointed out the Civic Center, the shop selling sexual paraphernalia, and the various parts of the city. Finally I got sick of it. "Are you awake, Lemieux?" I said.