Speaking in Tongues (36 page)

“I’m sorry?” Tate asked him.

“I mean, the resemblance. The young lady takes after you.”

The man’s suspicions crept back when he saw the two guests exchange fast glances and struggle to suppress laughter. Tate thought about pulling out driver’s licenses and proving the relationship but then decided: it’s none of this guy’s business.

Besides, mystery has an appeal that documented fact will always lack.

They settled on the rooms and after Tate’s card was imprinted they followed the bellhop through a veranda.

“Josh said his new physical therapist is great,” Megan told him.

“Glad to hear it.”

“But the way he put it was he said ‘she’s’ great. Think she’s old and fat?”

“We’ll be back in six days. You can find out for yourself. When do you say
de nada
again?”

“After somebody thanks you. It means, ‘It’s nothing.’ ”

“They say
gracias
and then I say
de nada.”
Tate repeated the words several times as if he were a walking Berlitz tape.

“Then I called Bett,” Megan continued. “She’s glad we got in okay. She said to take lots of pictures.”

“I’ll call her later.”

“She, um, was going over to Brad’s tonight. But she said it in a funny way. Like there was something going on. Is anything going on?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

Megan shrugged. “She said she talked to Konnie and he’s coming to your office on Tuesday at nine to talk about the case.”

The previous week Tate had made his first appearance in a criminal court in nearly five years—Konnie’s arraignment. He’d answered the judge’s simple query with simpler words. “My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.”

He had a novel defense planned. It was called “induced intoxication,” and although he’d promised Megan that they would be spending the week doing nothing but seeing the sights and partying he’d hidden three law books in his suitcase and suspected the last day of the trip would find him with at least a rough draft of his opening statement to the jury—if not a set of deposition questions or two. He knew that as soon as Megan met a handsome young windsurfer—probably at the cocktail party that night—he would have at least a few hours free on most of the evenings.

He and Megan arrived at their rooms.

“Gracias de nada,”
Tate said, and slipped the confused bellhop an outrageously generous tip. A half hour later they’d showered and were in khaki shorts, T-shirts and wicker hats. Every inch
los turistas.
They walked down to the lobby and asked about how they might bicycle to the nearest Mayan ruin. The clerk arranged for the bike rental and gave them directions.
It was just past the afternoon siesta and most of the guests were headed for the white sand beach. But Tate and Megan snagged two battered bicycles from the rack in front of the inn and started away from town.

“Which way?” she called.

He pointed and they mounted up.

Despite the opposing foot traffic and the astonishing heat, they cycled fast along the cracked asphalt path straight into the dense, fragrant jungle, standing on the pedals, hollering and laughing, racing each other, as if every moment counted, as if they had many, many hours of missed exploration to make up for.

XO

Jeffery Deaver

Available in hardcover from Simon & Schuster

Turn the page for a preview of
XO
. . . .

Subject: Re: You’re the Best!!!

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

2 January 10:32 a.m.

Hey there,

Edwin—

Thanks for your email! I’m so glad you liked my latest album! Your support means the world to me. Be sure you go to my website and sign up to get my newsletter and learn about new releases and upcoming concerts, and don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

And keep an eye out for the mail. I sent you that autographed photo you requested!

XO,

Kayleigh

*   *   *

Subject: Unbelievable!!!!!

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

3 September 5:10 a.m.

Hi, Kayleigh:

I am totally blown away. I’m rendered speechless. And, you know me pretty
good by now—for me to be speechless, that’s something!! Anyway, here’s the story: I downloaded your new album last night and listened to “Your Shadow.” Whoahhh! It’s without doubt the best song I have ever heard. I mean of anything ever written. I even like it better than “It’s Going to Be Different This Time.” I’ve told you nobody’s ever expressed how I feel about loneliness and life and well everything better than you. And that song does that totally. But more important I can see what you’re saying, your plea for help. It’s all clear now. Don’t worry. You’re not alone, Kayleigh!!

I’ll be
your
shadow. Forever.

XO, Edwin

*   *   *

Subject: Fwd: Unbelievable!!!!!

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

3 September 10:34 a.m.

Mr. Sharp:

Ms. Alicia Sessions, personal assistant to our clients Kayleigh Towne and her father, Bishop Towne, forwarded us your email
of this morning. You have sent more than 50 emails and letters since we contacted you two months ago, urging you not to have any contact with Ms. Towne or any of her friends and family. We are extremely troubled that you have found her private email address (which has been changed, I should tell you), and are looking into possible violations of state and federal laws regarding how you obtained such address.

Once again, we must tell you that we feel your behavior is completely inappropriate and possibly actionable. We urge you in the strongest terms possible to heed this warning. As we’ve said repeatedly, Ms. Towne’s security staff and local law enforcement officials have been notified of your repeated, intrusive attempts to contact her and we are fully prepared to take whatever steps are necessary to put an end to this alarming behavior.

Samuel King, Esq.

Crowell, Smith & Wendall, Attorneys-atLaw

*   *   *

Subject: See you soon!!!

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

5 September 11:43 p.m.

Hi, Kayleigh—

Got your new email address. I know what they’re up to but DON’T worry, it’ll be all right.

I’m lying in bed, listening to you right now. I feel like I’m literally
your shadow
 . . . And you’re mine. You are so wonderful!

I don’t know if you had a chance to think about it—you’re sooooo busy, I know!—but I’ll ask again—if you wanted to send me some of your hair that’d be so cool. I know you haven’t cut it for ten years and four months (it’s one of those things that makes you so beautiful!!!) but maybe there’s one from your brush. Or better yet your pillow. I’ll treasure it forever.

Can’t WAIT for the concert next Friday. C U soon.

Yours forever,

XO, Edwin

THE HEART OF
a concert hall is people.

And when the vast space is dim and empty, as this one was at the moment, a venue can bristle with impatience, indifference.

Even hostility.

Okay, rein in that imagination, Kayleigh Towne told herself. Stop acting like a kid. Standing on the wide, scuffed stage of the Fresno Conference Center’s main hall, she surveyed the place once more, bringing her typically hypercritical eye to the task of preparing for Friday’s concert, considering and reconsidering lighting and stage movements and where the members of the band should stand and sit. Where best to walk out near, though not into, the crowd and touch hands and blow kisses. Where best acoustically to place the foldback speakers—the monitors that were pointed toward the band so they could hear themselves without echoes or distortion. Many performers now used earbuds for this; Kayleigh liked the immediacy of traditional foldbacks.

There were a hundred other details to think about. She believed that every performance should be perfect,
more
than perfect. Every audience deserved the best. One hundred ten percent.

She had, after all, grown up in Bishop Towne’s shadow.

An unfortunate choice of word, Kayleigh now reflected.

I’ll be
your
shadow. Forever. . . .

Back to the planning. This show had to be different from the previous one here, about eight months ago. A retooled program was especially important since many of the fans would have regularly attended her hometown concerts and she wanted to make sure they got something unexpected. That was one thing about Kayleigh Towne’s music; her audiences weren’t as big as some but were loyal as golden retrievers. They knew her lyrics cold, knew her guitar licks, knew her moves onstage and laughed at her shtick before she finished the lines. They lived and breathed her performances, hung on her words, knew her bio and likes and dislikes.

And some wanted to know much more . . .

With that thought, her heart and gut clenched as if she’d stepped into Hensley Lake in January.

Thinking about
him,
of course.

Then she froze, gasping. Yes, someone was watching her from the far end of the hall! Where none of the crew would be.

Shadows were moving.

Or was it her imagination? Or maybe her eyesight? Kayleigh had been given perfect pitch and an angelic voice but God had decided enough was enough and skimped big-time on the vision. She squinted, adjusted her glasses. She was sure that someone was hiding, rocking back and forth in the doorway that led to the storage area for the concession stands.

Then the movement stopped.

She decided it wasn’t movement at all and never had been. Just a hint of light, a suggestion of shading.

Though still, she heard a series of troubling clicks and snaps and groans—from where, she couldn’t tell—and felt a chill of panic bubble up her spine.

Him . . .

The man who had written her hundreds of emails and letters, intimate, delusional, speaking of the life they could share together, asking for a strand of hair, a fingernail clipping. The man who had somehow gotten near enough at a dozen shows to take close-up pictures of Kayleigh, without anyone ever seeing him. The man who had possibly—though it had never been proven—slipped into the band buses or motor homes on the road and stolen articles of her clothing, underwear included.

The man who had sent her dozen of pictures of himself: shaggy hair, fat, in clothing that looked unwashed. Never obscene but, curiously, the images were all the more disturbing for their familiarity. They were the shots a boyfriend would text her from a trip.

Him . . .

Her father had recently hired a personal bodyguard, a huge man with a round, bullet-shaped head and an occasional curly wire sprouting from his ear to make clear what his job was. But Darthur Morgan was outside at the moment, making the rounds and checking cars. His security plan also included a nice touch: simply being visible so that potential stalkers would turn around and leave rather than risk a confrontation with a 250-pound man who looked like a rapper with an attitude (which, sure enough, he’d been in his teen years).

She scanned the recesses of the hall again—the best place
he
might stand and watch her. Then gritting her teeth in anger at her fear and mostly at her failure to tame the uneasiness and distraction, she thought, Get. Back. To. Work.

And what’re you worried about? You’re not alone. The band wasn’t in town yet—they were finishing some studio work in Nashville—but Bobby was at the huge Midas XL8 mixing console dominating the control deck in the back of the hall, two hundred feet away. Alicia was getting the rehearsal rooms in order. A couple of the beefy guys in Bobby’s road crew were unpacking the truck in the back, assembling and organizing the hundreds of cases and tools and props and plywood sheets and stands and wires and amps and instruments and computers and tuners—the tons of gear that even modest touring bands like Kayleigh’s needed.

She supposed one of them could get to her in a hurry if the source of the shadow had been
him.

Dammit, quit making
him
more than
he
is!
Him, him, him,
like you’re even afraid to say his name. As if to utter it would conjure up his presence.

She’d had other obsessed fans, plenty of them—what gorgeous singer-songwriter with a voice from heaven wouldn’t collect a few inappropriate admirers? She’d had twelve marriage proposals from men she’d never met, three from women. A dozen couples wanted to adopt her, thirty or so teen girls wanted to be her best friend, a thousand men wanted to buy her a drink or dinner at Bob Evans or the Mandarin Oriental . . . and there’d been plenty of invitations to enjoy a wedding
night without the inconvenience of a wedding.
Hey Kayleigh think on it cause Ill show you a good time better than you ever had and by the by heres a picture of what you can expect yah its really me not bad huh???