And if that was Dak’s plan, it was working.
She turned in at the immobile gate, and there was no Chevy Suburban and no dead dog. But there were two new cars up at the top of the hill, and one of them was Deputy Mundy’s cruiser. Beck flew up the steps and, lacking a key, leaned on the bell. But Pamela already had the door open. Pete Mundy had his hat in his hand. An older man in an ill-fitting suit was barking orders. Two unsmiling strangers, a man and a woman, sat talking to the family. The atmosphere was grim.
Audrey forced upon her an unwanted hug, and, holding Beck within all that motherly softness, tried to explain what was going on. Rebecca hardly heard. She was staring at the settee, where Jericho himself sat—in slacks, not pajamas—oxygen bottle on a little trolley in case it was needed, looking sad but somehow tough, momentarily fit.
Then she tuned in the news that had forced Jericho from his bed. The older man was the sheriff, Pete’s boss. The two suits were detectives from the state police. Jimmy Lobb’s truck had turned up at the bottom of a gorge on the far side of the mountain. Mr. Lobb’s remains were in the cab. There was only one set of skid marks, the detectives were explaining. Nobody was chasing him. Nobody had forced him over the side. He had simply lost control of the truck.
His dog was missing.
“Probably drunk as a skunk,” rumbled the sheriff, who in Colorado was elected. His name was Garvey.
“We’ll know when we get the lab reports,” said one of the detectives.
“Coordinate with my man,” Sheriff Garvey snapped, pointing to Pete. Heading for the door, the sheriff looked Rebecca up and down. “Where was this one?” he said to the air. “Take her statement.”
He left.
Beck went and sat next to Jericho, who was shaking his head, whispering to himself. She tried to listen.
“Bastards killed my friend,” he whispered, clutching her wrist. Tears ran freely down his face. He put his mouth close to her ear. “You just remember who fired the first shot.”
(ii)
Later.
Beck was dreaming fitfully, something about the old days, not her time at Stone Heights with Jericho but a year or so afterward, back when she was learning the secrets of life from middle-aged hippies in Thailand, working in an American bar, half the time stoned out of her mind, but always looking blearily over her shoulder, because she knew that they were after her, Jericho had said they would never let her go, that she would be in their files forever, and in her dream she could sense their wraithlike presence, feel their bone-cold fingers on her neck, but when she turned there was never anybody there, nobody except— except—
Except her cell phone was ringing.
Beck sat up, head pounding the way it used to when she was hung -over. But surely the beers she had consumed at Corinda’s—
Still ringing.
She told herself not to answer. She was sick of the weird high-pitched whine. She shut her eyes in the gray darkness, waiting for the voice mail to cut in, but it never did. The ringing continued. With an angry sweep, she grabbed the phone to shut it off, and that was when she saw the number on the screen.
Her mother’s condo in Sarasota.
In the middle of the night.
She fumbled twice before she was able to push the green button. “Mom?”
“Hi, Mommy,” said Nina.
“Sweetie-pie!”
“Mommy, I’ve been trying and trying to reach you, but you won’t call me back, and so—”
“I’m sorry, baby. Mommy’s phone hasn’t been working—”
But Nina was still talking, nonstop, the way she did.
“—and so Grandma said I should stop leaving messages, but I’m leaving one more, just in case, okay? Because I really wanna tell you about the surprise we have for you—”
Voice mail. Somehow she was listening to the voice mail.
“—because I love you and I’m so excited and I just want to tell you, okay? So, call me, okay? And—and—
I’ll be there in a minute!
—I have to go, because Grandma is calling me, and I didn’t tell her I’m calling you—
Just a minute!
—I’m in the bathroom and I guess I better go, but call me, Mommy, okay? Call me soon, so I can tell you about the d—”
The message stopped.
She stared at the screen. The call had been lost. She tried to call her voice mail, but she had no bars. She felt a wave of vertigo. Her brain was slushy, as if she had just opened her eyes, and she wondered if she had dreamed it all. Her hand was sweaty as she slipped out of bed. Not bothering with a bathrobe, she hurried through the bathroom to Jericho’s office and picked up the phone. She heard Pamela’s voice. She was doing business. Two in the morning, and she was doing business. Something about cutting out one of the chase scenes, at a savings of a million and a half.
The d—
The dog?
No, no, no, Beck, no, your imagination is working overtime—
I dreamed it.
It was real.
She picked up the phone again. Pamela chattered away. She stepped into the hallway, peered around the corner toward the master suite. Dak wanted her to talk to Jericho, she remembered. To reason with him. But whatever part of Jericho’s mind remained was readying for war.
Beck tiptoed down the back stairs to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She heard a faint rumble, possibly her friends in the helicopter, but when she peered out the window, the night sky was innocent. Still breathing hard, she went to the fridge, got a beer. Pamela strode in the door, still in her jeans, eyeing Rebecca’s nightie with disapproval.
“What are you doing up?” Now eyeing the beer bottle.
“Are you done?”
Pamela looked at the phone in her hand. “With this?”
“Yes. I need it.”
“Why?”
Beck was ready to fight somebody, and Pamela would do fine. “I just do.”
“I’m waiting for a call—”
“I’ll only be a minute,” said Rebecca, and took the handset without waiting to be told she couldn’t. Pamela gave her a foul look, muttered something about letting her know when she was done, and stomped from the room.
Rebecca, relieved, at once tapped out her mother’s number. Busy. At this time of night. She tried again. Busy. She tried Nina’s cell phone. Voice mail. Her mother’s phone again. Still busy.
She was about to give up when the busy signal stopped. A wave of static washed over the line, just like the one she kept hearing on her cell. Then, distant and fuzzy, what might have been laughter. Yes. A man, laughing, on a phone line not at that moment connected to a call.
“Hello?” she said.
More laughter, louder. Then, surrounded by static, a familiar voice. Jericho’s voice, on the line. The Former Everything. Scratchy but intelligible. “Bought us a place in Colorado, Becky-Bear. Lots of privacy. Just for the two of us. You’ll love it.”
“That’s not funny!” she shouted. “You bastard!”
“Eight hundred acres, great views, the middle of nowhere.”
“You fucking—”
“The middle of nowhere,” Jericho repeated. “The middle of
nowhere.” The static rose. His voice seemed to fade. “The middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere.”
“What are you—”
“The middle of nowhere. Of nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere.”
The static drowned the words.
Beck slammed down the phone and charged up to the master suite. Audrey, in pajamas and robe, was just about to go in.
“Hey, honey, what’s wrong?”
“He’s a monster,” Beck snarled.
“I know that, but what’s wrong right now?”
Quaking too much to explain, Rebecca smashed the door open and rushed the bed, Audrey on her heels. All the old insults were pouring out of her mouth, some of them not only obscene but tongue-twistingly long, while the nun tried frantically to quiet her.
Beck stopped.
Jericho was fast asleep. The nose tube was in.
“He’s had a rough couple of hours,” said Audrey, brushing past her, lifting the arm to check the pulse. “I gave him an extra pain pill.”
“I just—I just talked to him—”
Audrey’s eyes were gentle. “No, honey. You didn’t.”
There was no telephone in the room. Beck had forgotten. Audrey unplugged it at night, so that her father could rest.
CHAPTER 10
The Nun
(i)
“That’s very”—Audrey searched for the word—“unusual,” she finally said, busying herself with the kettle. Tea seemed to be her solution to everything.
“You don’t believe me,” said Beck, still trembling.
“I didn’t say that,” said Audrey, too quickly, and Rebecca remembered that she used to be a psychologist. The heavy shoulders moved. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“The house phone works fine,” said Pamela, as though this was the point. “I tried it twice. No ghosts.”
“I didn’t say it was a ghost.”
“Excuse me.” Pamela leaned against the aging counter, arms folded, malice in her eyes as she smiled down at her father’s ex-lover. “No inexplicable recordings of Dad’s voice from fifteen years ago.”
“I know it sounds crazy.”
“That’s exactly how it sounds.”
Audrey was serving the tea. “Leave her alone,” she said tiredly “She’s had a fright.” One of her father’s phrases.
Pamela’s face was hard. She was wearing the same faded jeans. She never seemed to sleep. “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t.”
Beck’s temper boiled. “I didn’t make it up.”
“I don’t know. You were always the drama queen.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” She looked from one daughter to the other, the spooky phone call forgotten. “Is there something I should know?”
Pamela folded her arms. “You always seem to wind up the center of attention, don’t you, Rebecca? There’s always an emergency with you. You’d fit in nicely in Hollywood.”
“Now, look—”
“I’d love to stay and chat,” Pamela said, “but some of us have actual work to do.” She stalked out.
“You have to understand my sister,” said Audrey, mopping up the counter as Beck stared after her longtime adversary. Nothing had spilled. The granite gleamed. But cleaning was what Audrey did. “She’s not usually this way.”
“Only around me.”
A wan smile. “Pretty much.”
“She blames me because Jericho left your mother. Doesn’t she get that I was a kid?” Rubbing her temples. Sipping the tea. Herbal and calming. “And your father—he was the one who—”
Again she hesitated, the memories rosier than she wanted them to be, the brilliant and overpowering Dr. Ainsley charming the inexperienced sophomore in his office at the Institute for Advanced Study, teasing her, flattering her, one week after another, undressing her with his eyes, and Beck herself drifting out of the room in a fog, passing Mrs. Blumen, who glared as if Rebecca were Hester Prynne. And then, at last, the night he maneuvered her to his house, the party for his graduate students and a few selected undergraduates, lying through his teeth—but, then, she had guessed that he was—
Belatedly, she found her place. “He said the marriage was already over.”
Audrey grew thoughtful. “It was, in a way. My folks were pretty much living separately by then. Still, it was a shock when he actually left. A shock for the kids especially. Not so much for my mother. Dad had been enough trouble to Mom, and, frankly, Mom had been enough trouble to Dad, too.” She was cupping the cross on its chain
around her neck. “I’m supposed to believe that marriages are made in heaven. Believe it or not, the official position of the Episcopal Church remains that divorce is not a part of God’s plan. But some marriages, Beck—well, some of them are doomed from the start, despite the best intentions of the parties. And my folks didn’t always have the best intentions.”
“Then why does your sister hate me?”
“She doesn’t hate you. Not really. She hates the same thing I do, that the people who brought us into being weren’t willing to stick it out. You’re a symbol for her, Beck—sorry, this is the psychologist in me coming out—but you are. You’re a symbol for what she hates, the two-facedness of the Ainsley marriage. And of course you’re the only one he ever moved in with. She hates that, too.”
And that Jericho outlived his ex-wife. Beck was willing to bet that her father’s relative longevity was something else Pamela unknowingly hated.
“And what do you think?” she asked after a moment.
“I think life is complicated.”
“Meaning what?”
Scrubbing, scrubbing. “You know what my father says? People are like countries. They never really understand each other. Your enemies have virtues you might have to count on one day. And your best friends can let you down.”
While Beck turned this over in her mind, the cell phone rang.
(ii)
It had been sitting there on the granite countertop, the forgotten exhibit during the conversation. Beck stared at it in mute horror. Before she could force herself to answer, Audrey had swept it up.
“Don’t,” Rebecca said, making a futile grab.
Audrey shushed her, pressed green, listened.
“Is it Nina?”
“No.”
“Who is it?”
The nun made a face and pressed the disconnect button. “I see what you mean,” she said, turning the phone over and over in her hands.
“You heard her, didn’t you?”
“I heard the static. I heard the whine. I didn’t hear any voices.”
“But—”
“Sorry, honey.” She passed the phone back across the table. “It’s random scatter. Electronic noise. It happens up here with mobile phones sometimes.” She was at the sink again, washing cutlery. She picked up a fork, pointed at the window. “Especially in bad weather.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“It’s a mountain thing. Reflections of distant signals, distortions—”
“What about the static on the house phone?”
“Up here? Phone calls that travel over miles and miles of old copper wires? Happens all the time.”
Something in Audrey’s tone bothered her. “Why are you trying so hard?”
“Trying to do what?”
“To persuade me that there’s nothing to worry about.”
The angelic smile, the eyes as always withheld. “Because I don’t want you to worry.”
“Why not?” Tapping the phone. “I’d say I have plenty to worry about.”