Authors: Bill Pronzini
F I V E
T
HE STORM BLEW ITSELF
out sometime during the night. The wind was still yammering but there was no rain when Macklin got up and looked out through the bedroom window blinds. Heavy overcast, and a light fog swirling in among the pines and other trees that separated the cottage from the big estate to the south. Shelby was still asleep. He put on his new robe—her Christmas present to him this year—and went into the bathroom to use the toilet and splash his face with cold water. He hadn’t slept well; he felt logy and tight all over, as if his skin had somehow shrunk during the night. At least what sleep he’d had had been dreamless.
He padded into the kitchen to see if the power had come back on. It had—a relief. He found coffee, set the pot brewing, then turned on the baseboard heater and raised the blinds over the mullioned windows that faced seaward. The ocean’s surface was strewn with deer-tail whitecaps and huge fans of kelp. Below the unkempt lawn that sloped down to the bluff edge, part of the cove below was visible—spume geysering over a collection of offshore rocks each time one of the incoming waves broke. Ben had told him there was a rock-and-sand beach that ran the full length of the inlet, flanked by rocky headlands, accessible only to the three cliffside homes. Maybe later, if the weather held, he and Shelby would go down there and check it out. One thing they had in common was the beachcomber gene.
In the kitchen again, he took out the breakfast fixings they’d brought with them, put together a Florentine omelette, readied six strips of bacon for broiling in the oven, sliced English muffins. Cooking was a source of pleasure for him, always had been, and he was good at it. For a time, after college, he’d thought about enrolling in one of the better culinary academies, learning how to be a quality chef, but he’d never followed through. Maybe if he had …
No, hell, he’d known back then that he wasn’t cut out to be a chef. Restaurant owner was more suited to his abilities, or so he’d believed. He understood well-prepared food, he had managerial skills, all he’d lacked was the capital. Five years of dull work in the restaurant supply business, with every extra penny of his and Shelby’s incomes saved, plus the cash from an affordable mortgage on the house Shel had inherited from her mother, and they’d taken the plunge.
Macklin’s Grotto. Fine Seafood Specialties. A prime location in Morgan Hill, small but with an intimate atmosphere; a well-regarded chef trained in one of the better Manhattan restaurants, a menu that featured fresh fish and shellfish dishes, and the best cioppino he’d ever tasted. How could it miss being successful?
Except that it had. Oh, not in the beginning; business had been good the first year, with plenty of repeat customers and new ones brought in by word-of-mouth recommendation. But then the economy had begun to sag and people were less inclined to spend their money eating out. Arturo, the chef, had quit to take a better-paying job in San Francisco, and the best replacement Macklin could find for him hadn’t been nearly as accomplished or creative. Empty tables even on the weekends, cash reserves running out and bills piling up. And then the death kiss—the woman customer who’d slipped on a piece of salmon in cream sauce dropped by a careless waiter and cracked a bone in her wrist. Their insurance company had paid the medical and settlement bills, dropped them cold immediately afterward. And there was no way he could get another policy without paying an unaffordable high-risk premium.
Three years of living his dream, only one of them really good. Then back into the restaurant supply business as a glorified office manager at Conray Foods—a mediocre job, but one that paid reasonably well. And then after a year and a half, with no warning, out on his ass and into line at the unemployment office.
And once the unemployment insurance maxed out at seventy-nine weeks, or more likely, was suspended sometime after the first of the year? It wouldn’t make much difference in the short haul. But in the long haul … then what? Wasn’t likely to be any kind of decent job for a man his age, with his limited skills and experience and health issues. He’d be lucky to get minimum-wage dregs: busboy at Burger King, grocery bagger at Safeway, newspaper deliveryman if there were still newspapers to be delivered. Some future. Some hope to offer Shelby.
What was that line from
Body Heat
? Something about the shit coming down so heavy sometimes you feel like wearing a hat. Right. Only with him, it’d have to be a ten-gallon Texas Stetson—
Feeling sorry for himself again. Knock it off, Macklin. Your life is what it is—period. Nobody to blame but the gods or whoever runs the universe, if anybody or anything does. Accept it. Be a man.
Grow up, be a man.
Pop’s voice, echoing in his memory. Harold P. Macklin—always Harold, never Harry or Hal. Sporting goods salesman and habitual gambler who’d lost far more than he won at poker, horse races, blackjack, and the sports books in Tahoe and Reno. Cold, distant, domineering. Lousy husband, lousy father. Ruled Ma and his two sons with an iron fist and an acid tongue.
Stop acting like a goddamn baby, Jayson. Grow up, be a man.
I’m sick and tired of answering your stupid questions. What do I look like, an encyclopedia?
Cooking? That’s woman’s work. What are you, a faggot?
Sometimes you make me wish to Christ I’d had a vasectomy the year before you were born.
He remembered the October day when he was fifteen, the school principal taking him out of his English class to tell him that both his parents were dead in a highway accident. On their way home from one of their frequent trips to Reno, Tom and him left in the care of Aunt Carolyn or to fend for themselves as they grew older; Pop driving too fast and losing control on an icy stretch near Donner Summit, both of them killed outright. He’d cried for Ma, but not for the old man. Never shed a tear for him, never missed him. Seldom even thought of him, except for a teenage vow to be a damn sight better man. And yet here he was, his father’s son in the only way that really counted.
Harold P. Macklin, Jayson L. Macklin—a couple of losers.
The coffee was ready. He could hear Shelby stirring around in the bedroom, awakened by the aroma. He turned on the broiler, started an omelette large enough for two. He wasn’t hungry, but maybe she was.
Her mood this morning seemed better than yesterday’s: She had a smile for him when she came out. Quiet at the table, but when she did say something it had an upbeat ring. At least she was making an effort.
“I should go into Seacrest,” he said after they finished eating, “pick up a few things at the grocery, fill the gas tank. Want to come along?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Won’t take long.”
“I’ll find something to do here,” she said. Meaning she preferred her own company to his. “See if you can get a new wiper blade while you’re there. The one on the passenger side started sticking last night.”
“Yeah, I noticed. I’ll take care of it.”
Macklin waited until ten thirty before leaving, figuring that the grocery store and garage would be open by then—if they were open at all this time of year. He didn’t relish the prospect of having to hunt down groceries and a new wiper blade somewhere other than Seacrest; the nearest town in either direction was fifteen miles.
He was backing out of the carport onto the lane when the angry blare of a horn sounded close behind him. He jammed on the brakes just as a car whipped past, coming too fast from the direction of the Lomax property and narrowly missing the Prius’s rear end. Dark blue four-door sedan with a woman at the wheel—Claire Lomax or Paula Decker, he couldn’t tell which in the brief look he had before the car disappeared.
The storm had done minor damage in places: a bishop pine splintered in the woods that bordered Ocean Point Lane; a small rockslide along Highway 1 halfway to Seacrest; a small chunk of cliffside eroded away where the highway ran close to the edge, leaving a long scar down to the sea. He remembered reading somewhere that problems like this were common on this part of the coast during El Niño winters. Not a place you’d want to live year-round unless you craved isolation or were born with a pioneer spirit.
By daylight, Seacrest didn’t seem nearly so cheerless. Attractive little wide spot in the highway, with sweeping ocean views and forested mountain slopes for an inland backdrop. Signs of activity here and there, and both the grocery store and the service station/garage open for business. Get the shopping out of the way first, he thought, and pulled into the grocery parking lot.
One other car was parked there—the dark blue sedan. He knew it was the same one because when he brought up next to it, Paula Decker came walking out of the store wrapped in a black coat with a fur collar. She had a package of cigarettes in one hand and was tearing at the cellophane wrapping with the other.
There was no way he could avoid contact with her, short of hiding by lying down across the seat. The hell with it, he thought, and got out as she approached. She didn’t see him at first, intent on the cigarettes; her mouth was compressed into a tight, angry line. He sidestepped, thinking maybe he could get past her after all, but then her head came up and she stopped and looked at him, at the Prius, at him again. Whatever she was upset about, it wasn’t the near miss back on Ocean Point Lane. Her gaze held neither anger nor animosity.
“Oh,” she said, “hello. Mackson, isn’t it?”
“Macklin. Jay Macklin.”
“Right. I almost hit you back there on the lane.”
“My fault. I should’ve been paying closer attention.”
In the cold light of day, with an obvious hangover, Paula wasn’t half as attractive as she’d seemed the night before. Skin even blotchier and less healthy looking, bagged and bloodshot eyes, a network of fine lines etched across and alongside her upper lip. Her brown hair had a stringy, tangled look, as though she’d used her fingernails on it instead of a comb.
She ripped the package open, slid a filter-tip out and into one corner of her mouth. “Got a light?”
“No. I don’t smoke.”
“Yeah, well, my asshole husband doesn’t like me to smoke, either. Screw him.” She opened the purse slung over her shoulder, rummaged up a gold lighter and fired the weed. “Ahh,” she said through a spew of carcinogens. “I may just smoke this whole goddamn pack on the way to Santa Rosa.”
“You’re going home?”
“That’s right. Home not so sweet home, but at least it’s safe. There’s more than one wacko running around loose up here, by God.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. I don’t know why I came in the first place. I should’ve known better.”
“What about the others? Are they staying?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I wouldn’t care if they all jumped off the cliff drunk on New Year’s Eve. I used to think my big brother was a great guy, now I can’t stand the sight of him. Claire’s a nasty little bitch and Gene … he’d fuck a woodpile if he thought it had a snake in it.”
What could you say to that? Macklin didn’t even try.
“I’m not stupid, for Christ’s sake,” Paula said. “Not anymore, I’m not. Enough is enough. You wouldn’t happen to know a good divorce lawyer, would you?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Well, I’m going to need one. I can take a lot, I
have
taken a lot, but some things you just … Oh, shit, why am I telling you all this? You don’t care. Why should you? We’re just a bunch of strangers to you.”
Right, Macklin thought. A bunch of screwed-up strangers.
“Just getting myself more worked up, is all.” Paula exhaled another stream of smoke, dropped the butt and ground it under her heel. “Forget it—I’m outta here. Have a nice life, Ray.”
“Jay.”
“Whatever,” she said, and got into the sedan, and wheeled it around and out of the lot in a spray of gravel and a shriek of tires.
Good riddance, Macklin thought. He hoped her husband and the Lomaxes decided to leave, too. The more dealings he had with any of that bunch, the less he liked the idea of them being neighbors for the next three days.
S I X
A
FTER JAY LEFT FOR
Seacrest, Shelby rattled around the cottage trying to find something to do with herself. One of those loose-ends mornings when no activity seemed to appeal to her. They hadn’t brought the laptop with them; the only e-mail they were likely to get between Christmas and New Year’s was spam and neither of them was much for surfing the Net, though she wouldn’t have minded doing a little of that right now. Besides, Ben had told Jay that the only Internet service available from the cottage was dial-up.
She poked through the bookcase and the CDs. Aside from Kate’s historical romances, and a handful of Harry Potter titles that would belong to the Coulters’ twelve-year-old son, Derek, the hodgepodge assortment of paperbacks might have been indiscriminately swept off a thrift shop shelf; the only one of even mild interest was a bestselling suspense novel. There were quite a few classical CDs, her preference, but she wasn’t in the mood for music either. And it was too early in the day to watch a movie.
Well?
Well, maybe a few minutes on the phone with Mary Ellen would put her in a better mood. She’d always been able to talk to Mary Ellen, her best friend since high school in Aptos. They’d both attended UC Santa Cruz, too, only Mary Ellen had stayed the course and graduated with a degree in history, a subject she now taught at a private school in Los Gatos. It had been Mary Ellen who’d introduced her to Jay at an off-campus party in their sophomore year.
The only problem with the phone call idea was that her cellular didn’t work up here. She tried it inside and then outside on the patio—no signal, satellite dead zone. And didn’t that just figure? She could use the Coulters’ land line, if it was working, but she didn’t want to run up Ben’s phone bill with long-distance minutes. He probably wouldn’t mind or let her pay him back, but she didn’t believe in sponging off other people. Four days’ free use of the cottage was as far as she’d go, acceptable because it was a gesture of friendship that didn’t involve money.
She noticed then that the wood box was mostly empty; they’d used up a lot of firewood last night. No need to wait for Jay to fill it up. She wasn’t feeble and she still had her coat and gloves on from the cell phone try.
There were a pair of sheds tucked away behind the carport, squat structures with slanted sheet metal roofs. One had a padlocked door, probably a utility or gardening shed; the other’s door was closed by a rusted metal bolt thrust through a hasp. Inside that one were rows of neatly stacked logs and kindling, and a canvas wood carrier to make transportation easier. She loaded and lugged the carrier inside three times—more than enough firewood to last the rest of the day.
When she finished rebolting the woodshed door, she thought she might as well do a little exploring and made her way down the slope. The sky was overcast and there were wisps of fog fingering among the trees to the north and south; the wind had died down and the day wasn’t as cold as she’d expected. Gopher holes pocked the weedy open space, some of them filled with rainwater. As she made her way down, she had a fairly clear whitewater view through the trees: waves breaking and creaming over the offshore and inshore rocks. The sea was the color of pewter, spotted with baby whitecaps.
Near the bottom there was a footworn path that wound through patches of manzanita and Scotch broom, past a couple of bare-branched trees that looked dead and probably were. The path ended at a short wooden platform clinging to the bluff’s edge, enclosed on three sides by waist-high railings, anchored to a rock ledge on concrete posts crosshatched with boards. It looked unstable, but when she ventured a few steps onto it, she found that it was solidly constructed.
Part of the cove was visible from there, south to where the land curved outward to the waterline, north to where tall jumbles of rock hid the inlet below the Lomax property; a piece of the perimeter headland was visible, but not the house itself. The beach, what Shelby could see of it, was about a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide at its widest point—mostly a jumble of small broken rocks strewn with driftwood and brown, bulbous kelp; tidepools, leftovers from last night’s high waves, glistened here and there. She could smell the kelp, a faintly rank, briny odor on the light wind.
A V-line of pelicans came into view from the south, skimming the ocean’s surface on their way to whatever fishing grounds they frequented. When they were gone, she found herself gazing straight out to sea—and remembering an exchange she’d had with Jay some years back, on a beach down near Pescadero. They’d been looking out to sea as she was doing now, and she’d said that what the vast expanse of water made her think of was what lay on the other side, all the different faraway lands and cultures that were touched and surrounded by it. And he’d responded that what it made him think of was how massive and empty it was, and how tiny you’d feel if you were out in the middle of it all alone in a small boat.
There in a nutshell was the fundamental difference between them, the disparity in how they thought and felt and looked at the world—the broad view versus the narrow view, the positive versus the negative.
Steps had been cut into the cliffside to the left of the platform, some carved out of bare rock and some made of wood, with a sectioned handrail following them down to the cove below—a winding, gradual descent through a natural declivity, a distance of maybe 150 feet. Rain puddles had collected on some of the steps, but the descent didn’t look too precarious … as long as that handrail was stable. Shelby went to the wooden landing at the top of the steps for a closer look. The railing seemed as solidly anchored as the platform.
She went down a few steps, experimentally. The footing wasn’t bad at all in her thick-soled running shoes. She kept on going.
At the bottom she picked her way over the rocky shingle to the south. Once she paused to peer into a tidepool, but there was a murkiness to the water and she couldn’t see much through it. The wind was little more than a medium-cool breeze down here, the beach sheltered by the high curving bluffs, the threads of fog drifting high overhead. The tide had started to ebb and as she neared the waterline she could see out to where exposed shelves of rock sloped off into deeper water. There’d be abalone out there, and in the early morning hours, divers off boats anchored offshore—legitimate abalone fishermen in season, poachers year-round.
The sea’s salt-heavy breath sharpened her thoughts, the same old ones replaying on a stuttery loop but now with even greater clarity. She felt a sense of … what? Not exactly urgency, but a prodding restlessness, a growing need to stop waffling and start making decisions.
Jay and the marriage.
Yes, and Douglas, too.
So far she had resisted sleeping with him. A casual affair was the last thing she wanted or needed. But the temptation was strong. He was an attractive man, easy to talk to, a good listener, and he seemed to understand her in ways Jay never had. She hadn’t had to tell him her marriage was in trouble; he’d picked up on all the signs—the bitterness, the loneliness, the faint undercurrent of tension that came from a love fading, maybe dying. He’d broached the subject himself the last time she’d seen him, over coffee after they’d both pulled all-nighters just before Christmas.
“Are you happy, Shelby?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“I think you know. You’re not, are you?”
“Does it matter that much to you?”
“Yes, it does. I care about you. If there’s anything I can do …”
“Such as what? Advice?”
“I’m not Dear Abby. Or an advice nurse.”
“What, then? Lend a sympathetic ear, offer a shoulder to cry on?”
“If that’s what you need.”
“Or a different bed to lie on, in case that’s what I need?”
“Don’t be cynical, okay? I’m not going to hit on you—I don’t operate that way. If all I wanted was a casual affair, I’d’ve made a pass long before this.”
“What do you want, Douglas?”
“For you not to be unhappy.”
He’d meant it. Meant everything he’d said, including not hitting on her. He hadn’t pressured her in any way, at least not overtly.
But quiet persistence was a kind of pressure. So was the way he’d looked at her that morning, with low-burning heat showing beneath his empathy. There was no question that he felt the same sexual attraction for her that she felt for him. He really wouldn’t be satisfied with a casual affair any more than she would; he wasn’t that type of man. If she slept with him, he’d want a commitment to a relationship that was at least semipermanent. Was she ready for that, after all the years with Jay? And with a man she’d only known for a few months?
Evidently not, or she’d already have done something about it.
What was it she did want? To be not unhappy, yes—but what would make her happy again? For the marriage to work the way it had in the beginning? Or to be free, not just of Jay but of Dr. Douglas Booth as well? No complications, no pressures, just time alone to rebuild a life on her own terms?
Maybe.
Maybe the solution was to make a quick, clean break. Walk away from Jay, and from Douglas, too. Walk away from the known into the unknown. Could she do that? Six months ago, even three months ago, the answer would have been no. Now … it wouldn’t be easy, but she was pretty sure she could.
The rocks close to the water’s edge were coated with lichen that looked slippery; she avoided them, poking among the storm detritus farther up. Shells, all broken by the pounding action of the surf. The remains of a dead seagull. A crushed beer can. Two plastic water bottles. A chunk of white Styrofoam that might have come from the lid of an ice chest. Large and small logs, splintered tree limbs, bits and pieces of driftwood sculpted by the elements into different shapes, some of which seemed almost artistically designed.
Just ahead was the land barrier that separated this section of beach from the part below the big estate. At low tide you could make your way around the outthrust of granite, but the footing looked precarious now. Better not risk it.
She went back past the cliffside steps and on up the beach to the north. The shoreline was sandy in places here, but there were also the large jumbled rocks she’d seen from the platform and a series of smooth, upswept limestone shelves. She climbed over one of the larger shelves, where a runnel from an underground freshwater stream poured out of an opening in the cliff wall. When she hopped down on the other side, she was facing a pair of high, rounded boulders like nippleless breasts with a narrow cleavage between them. She squeezed through the passage—and came to an abrupt standstill.
A woman was sitting hunched on another shelf a short distance ahead, staring out to sea.
Even in profile, Shelby recognized her immediately: Claire Lomax.
Either she made a noise or the woman sensed her presence. Claire turned, saw her, and twisted around onto one hip, her body hunched and one hand flat on the rock, like a startled cat about to run. Past her, in the distance, Shelby could see the seaward quarter of the Lomax house against the backdrop of the headland above. The beach in between was mostly open; there was nobody else in sight.
Claire held her startled-cat pose for three or four seconds, then she seemed to sag a little, as if with resignation. She slid her body around so that she was facing Shelby.
No choice then but to go ahead and approach her. Claire wore a sheepskin jacket with the collar pulled up and a tie-dyed scarf tied around her blonde hair, so that her face was a pale oval in between. Only not completely pale: there were discolored marks on it today—marks that took on definition as Shelby neared and that explained the woman’s apparent impulse to run away. Split upper lip. Inch-long abrasion on her right cheek, and above that a yellowing bruise that would soon darken and spread and blacken the eye.