He stripped down to his shorts and crawled into the sleeping bag. The flannel felt good against his skin, comforting somehow, reminding him of all the camping trips he’d taken with Liz, of the fireside romance that had taken place once they zipped their bags together and made love beneath the stars.
He heard the creak of her bedsprings and wondered if she was as wide-awake as he. The wall was just too damn thin.
Getting dressed again, he abandoned the sleeping bag and retreated to the living room but found little comfort. Memories were everywhere he looked. As lonely as his cell had been, what had it been like for Liz to be caught here in an old house full of ghostly reminders?
What in the world was he going to do?
Find the killer, make him or her pay, that’s what he was going to do.
Over and over again, he recalled the night he and Liz had driven to her uncle’s house. Devon Hiller had been hosting a party celebrating the twentieth anniversary of his pride and joy, the Harbor Lights Mall. There had been scads of people present. He and Liz had told Devon about the baby in private, but the ensuing explosion had spilled out of the study and into the house. Everyone had heard everything that was said.
Sure, he’d wanted to strike Devon Hiller dead in his tracks. How could he not when Devon’s cruel tongue lashed out at the woman he loved? But as Liz fought back, probably for the first time in her life, Alex had stood there, rigid with fury, afraid that if he acted he wouldn’t be able to contain himself. When he’d finally looked at Liz he’d been stunned by the expression on her face. It was as though she saw the old man for who he really was, or at least finally understood it. He couldn’t wait to get her out of there.
And later, when he’d found Hiller’s body, he’d assumed this insight had given his gentle wife the courage to return for a final, private confrontation that had led ultimately to the need to protect herself and her baby.
Restless, Alex roamed the house. He looked at the Homer print of a breaching sailboat on the wall, at the books stacked two deep on the shelves, at the catnip mouse abandoned near Sinbad’s water bowl, and once again vowed never to return to prison.
Unless he had to protect Liz.
Who had hated Devon Hiller enough to kill him? Hell, who hadn’t? No, that wasn’t true. People often hated other people, but not to the point of killing them.
Okay, who kills a man so old and riddled with self-inflicted health problems that he was due to self-destruct within a year anyway? Why take the chance? Why not just wait until the old guy dies of natural causes? According to his will, the only one who stood to benefit from his death was Liz.
Alex watched the sky grow gradually lighter while standing out in back near the bluff. The cold wind of the night before had given way to a light rain which felt great. Cold, wet, great. Seagulls wheeled overhead and the wooden stairs leading down the hillside to the beach below disappeared in swirling mists. Waves crashed against the shore, retreating with a loud swish. A few hours from now, at high tide, there would be no beach, just the relentless surf beating against the huge rocks at the base of the cliff.
Liz had been orphaned days before her eighth birthday when a fire burned her family’s home to the ground. Only the fact that Liz was staying at a friend’s house had spared her. Her uncle had taken her in, but as soon as she turned twenty-one and inherited her parents’ money, she’d bought this place and moved out on her own. Alex imagined that streak of autonomy had irritated the hell out of her uncle but he shouldn’t have worried. Liz might have moved ten miles north, but for years after, she’d still worked hard to please the man who had raised her, managing his biggest mall, sweeping up after him when he alienated his employees.
Slowly, Liz was fixing the house up, making it into a home, and though he worried about her spending so much time out here alone, he couldn’t deny that there was something very life affirming about living in one of nature’s more spectacular pockets. Last spring, they’d talked about building a fenced backyard before the baby came. He made a mental note to start it now.
A movement in the house caught his eye. He turned to see that Liz had come to the glass door and was staring at him, a yellow towel in one hand.
He was still getting used to her ballooned figure. When last he’d seen her, she’d been angular on the outside and soft in the middle. Now she was just the opposite. It made him feel awful that he was responsible for the guarded edge he detected in her.
He had to find out what she remembered about her scarf. If she hadn’t left it in her uncle’s den, then someone else had taken it there and that someone must have wanted to implicate Liz.
As he crossed the wet ground, he saw her move away from the door, leaving the towel draped over the back of a kitchen chair. He left his wet shoes and the raincoat under the overhang, went inside and dried his short hair as she took a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator. Sinbad, twining his way around her legs, meowed in that strident Siamese cry that always reminded Alex of a small baby.
“Did you sleep okay?” she asked, turning to look at him.
“Fine. You?”
“Fine.”
“You look great,” he said.
She glanced down at her maternity clothes and protruding belly and smiled wistfully. “Oh, yeah, I’m a real treat. That isn’t your shirt, is it? Or your jacket?”
“Dave brought me some of his brother’s stuff. Liz, what do you remember about your green scarf?”
She popped slices of bread in the toaster. “Move, Sinbad,” she scolded the cat who squeezed his eyes at her and stood his ground. She faced Alex with a troubled expression. “I don’t know. I thought about that last night after I went to bed. When had I worn it last, where had I last seen it? But I can’t remember. It just seems that I had it and then I didn’t have it.”
He picked up the cat and rubbed his sable ears. “What about at the party?”
“I don’t know. It’s been so long ago and so much has happened, I don’t remember what I was wearing that night. I do recall that we hadn’t changed clothes after work or dressed up or anything. It’s important, isn’t it?”
“Very. And you were wearing a greenish-blue dress.”
She looked thoughtful, then shook her head again. “I know the dress, I used to wear it with your scarf, but I don’t remember if I did that night or not. It’s no use.”
“It’ll come to you,” he said with confidence, desperate to ease the strain on her face. He put Sinbad down on an empty chair and added, “I notice you have a big old computer in the guest room now. You know how hopeless I am on those things. But maybe you can use it to help us figure out who really killed your uncle.”
She bit her lip. “I was thinking. Maybe you should go to Sheriff Kapp or the D.A. and explain this…misunderstanding.”
“No.”
She was dressed in a pale-blue cotton blouse and loose white sweater, clothes that did nothing to add color to her washed-out complexion. Was she beautiful? Of course, but her beauty was accidental now. With an incredulous tone to her voice, she said, “What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“Think about it. A brand-new story,
