Sound of Secrets (26 page)

"Of course, of course," the chief said. "A strange case, that one."

"Did you have any theories on why Skippy was alone when he died?" Cara leaned forward, her eyes intent. "It seems obvious he got away from the kidnapper. There has to be more to it than that, though."

Chief McKay crossed his arms over his chest and rocked back in his chair. "I'm afraid that's as far as I got, too."

"You must have had suspects,” Cara said.

Gray’s stomach muscles clenched in awful anticipation of hearing Curtis Rhett’s name. The old man merely stroked his chin, as though trying to remember who his suspects had been.

"I bet Sam Peckenbush was at the top of your list," Cara prodded.

"Sam Peckenbush?"

"The gas-station owner," Gray added to spark the chief's memory. "The guy driving the car that hit Skippy."

"I know who Sam is. I was surprised you mentioned his name, is all.” The chief sat up straighter. Once again, his blue eyes gleamed with intelligence. "We didn't consider Sam a suspect, not after he phoned in the accident."

"Then who?" Cara asked.

Gray braced himself again. The chief twisted his lips and tapped his index finger on his knee, lengthening Gray's agony.

"The nanny?" Cara suggested. "Was the nanny a suspect?"

"Come to think of it, she was," the chief said.

The air left Gray's lungs in a whoosh of relief. He sat forward in his chair. His knee bumped the glass coffee table, nearly spilling his glass of iced tea before he caught it and set it right again. "You thought Rosa Martinez did it?"

"Rosa Martinez?"

"That's the nanny's name," Gray said.

"Oh, yes. Rosa Martinez." The chief nodded, and the words tumbled from him. "She was in the park with the kids so she couldn’t have done the kidnapping. She was saving money to bring her twin sons to the States so I thought maybe she collaborated with somebody.”

"Did you have any evidence?" Cara asked.

Before the old man could answer, Ruth slipped into the room and hovered, like a bird watching over an egg in a nest.

"Mr. McKay needs his rest." Ruth nodded once for emphasis. "That's enough talking for one day."

The chief leaned back in his chair and smiled absently. Wind chimes hung above his head, and he reached up and touched the tingling strands.

"We’re not finished," Cara said.

Ruth set her already thin lips in a grim, nonsensical line. “You’re finished.”

"Don’t bully the guests, Ruth," the chief said. "Karen won’t come back if you do."

"It’s Cara," she corrected.

The chief smiled at her, shaking his head as though she were confused."You were such a pretty child, Karen. Tailing after your brother like he hung the moon."

"Excuse me?" Shock replaced the determination in Cara’s expression. Ruth bustled around them, gathering iced-tea glasses, preparing for them to leave.

"I'm sorry I didn’t find out what happened to your brother." Tears sprang to the chief's eyes. "I always felt bad about that."

"You need to leave," Ruth said in a much firmer tone.

Gray ignored her, rising from his chair and crossing to where the retired chief sat. Thick clouds hid the sun, casting the room entirely in shadows.

"Chief McKay." He gently put his hand on the older man’s arm. "Are you okay?"

The blue eyes that gazed up at Gray no longer seemed as clear as a cloudless, blue sky.
 

"Who," he asked, "are you?"

"I’m sorry about Chief McKay."

Cara finally broke the oppressive silence when they were ten miles outside Sunnyvale. She’d surrendered her car keys after they’d said their goodbyes to the chief, figuring driving might give Gray something to do besides think about the old man’s predicament. Judging by the silence and the stony set of his rugged profile, it hadn’t helped much.

"It’s hard when someone you love doesn’t recognize you." She leaned back against the seat, staring at the rain but seeing her mother’s vacant expression. She’d been lost to Cara long before she died. "My mother had Alzheimer’s, too. Most days she didn’t know she had a husband, much less a daughter."

Gray briefly turned his attention from the road to her, and his eyes were kind. "Do you miss your parents very much?"

"A part of me always will, but it gets a little easier as each day passes. I’m starting to let go of the bad times and remember how much they loved me. They were far too protective and far too strict, but I always knew they loved me." Cara paused. "I could tell, despite it all, how much Chief McKay loves you."

"I wondered how I lost contact with him," Gray said after a moment, his voice husky. "Now I know. Even if he got my letters, chances are he looked at the signature and didn’t know who they were from." He swallowed. "We can't trust anything he told us."

Cara nodded. "That was pretty clear the moment he called me Karen. Alzheimer’s is cruel. Fact and fiction get mixed up in the brain, and you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. He seemed pretty lucid about some things, though. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to check out the nanny."

"I agree,” Gray said. “Rosa Martinez will be hard to find, though. Her last name is extremely common.

"Could you ask Karen for a phone number where her parents can be reached? Maybe they’ll know. Or maybe there’s paperwork in the house with Rosa's forwarding address."

"I’ll ask her," he said, "but don’t count on her being too eager to help."

Gray didn’t say anything for long minutes, and to Cara it seemed as though he were debating something with himself. She closed her eyes to combat the headache gnawing at her skull.

"There’s something you should know,” he said. “Karen made the call telling you to leave town."

Cara’s eyes snapped open. She digested the knowledge and discovered she wasn’t surprised. Karen obviously believed Cara's presence hampered her in her pursuit of Gray. She wasn't the sort of woman who would take kindly to that.

"Has she admitted to any of the other things?" she asked.

"She didn’t even admit to that. I got it second-hand," Gray said. "As for the other things, she’s out of town on newspaper business so I haven’t gotten a chance to question her yet."

"What kind of car does she drive?"

He paused a beat before answering. "A Lincoln Continental. A black one. But that doesn’t prove she tried to hurt you."

Cara's momentary hope that Gray had trusted her enough to tell her who he was protecting faded, because she was suddenly quite sure that person wasn’t Karen.

"You don’t think Karen did anything more than make that phone call," she stated flatly.

He didn’t answer for a long time, and the atmosphere inside the car grew oppressive. It was raining again, and the wipers moved rhythmically against the windshield, cutting her and Gray off from everything but each other. When they’d made love, she had thought their minds had connected as surely as their hearts. Now she feared she had been mistaken.

"You’re right. I don’t think Karen is trying to hurt you," he confirmed. "I’ll talk to her. I’ll be surprised if anything comes out of it."

They drove another five miles before Cara spoke again. "You’re still not going to tell me who you think is doing these things."

It was a statement rather than a question. He’d denied her the knowledge so many times already she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t respond.

Cara turned her head to gaze sightlessly out the glass of the passenger window, letting the anger course through her and dissolve. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t force Gray to trust her. She couldn’t force him to love her.

She had an inkling of how Richard must have felt this past year, waiting for her to accept his proposal when all the while he must have known the love was one-sided.

She hadn’t realized her warm, fuzzy feeling for Richard was a dispassionate imitation of love until she’d experienced the real thing.
 

Love wasn’t gentle. It was hot, desperate need; exhilarating highs and frightening lows. It was wanting somebody so badly the very marrow inside your bones ached with it.

Love was what she felt for Gray.

Her breath caught. She choked back a sob, feeling as sorry for Richard as she did for herself. She could no more marry him than she could stop loving Gray.

She pressed her nose against the window, thinking it ironic that she had been courageous in love for the first time in her life and all it would get her was a busted heart.

Rays of sunlight sliced through the gray sky and dried the damp earth by the time they got back to Secret Sound. Relieved to be out of the car and away from Gray’s overwhelming presence, Cara hurried toward the stairs leading to the garage apartment.

"Cara." Gray’s voice stopped her before she could make a clean getaway, and she reluctantly turned around. He walked toward her with his rhythmic, athletic gait, stopping about six paces away. A dull ache squeezed her heart. How long would it be, she wondered, before she stopped wanting him? "What are you planning to do with the rest of your day?"

She crossed her arms protectively over her chest. "I haven’t decided yet."

"I should tell you that last night I contacted a buddy of mine who used to be on the police force. His name’s Miles Dunleavy. If I call him now, he could be here in a few minutes." His eyes met hers and held. "I can’t take more time away from my job so I asked him to make sure you stay safe."

The clear light of day had chased away some of Cara's fear. She didn't want a bodyguard. Not, she admitted wryly, if Gray weren't volunteering for the duty himself.

"How about if I promise to be home by dark?" she asked.

"I'm probably overreacting, but I don't want to take any chances." The seriousness of Gray's tone told her he didn't believe for a second that he was reacting excessively. "I'd feel better if somebody I trust has you in his sights."

Cara swallowed, fairly certain Gray would get Miles Dunleavy to tail her even if she refused to cooperate.

"Okay," she said, surrendering to the inevitable.

Trying not to let herself read too much into the relief that crossed his face, she pivoted and hurried up the stairs to her apartment.

Two hours later, her stomach full from the BLT and French fries that had made up her late lunch, she walked out of a Main Street deli with Miles Dunleavy. She'd thought it pointless and more than a little rude to leave him waiting in his car outside the restaurant while she ate.

"Where to now?" Miles asked.

Miles was a bear of a man in his sixties with a broad, serious face and shoulders that would make a linebacker proud. He hadn't had much to say until Cara got him to talk about his grandchildren. Then the verbal floodgates had opened.

"I want to see the sights of Secret Sound up close and personal," Cara said to explain why she planned to leave her car at the restaurant and explore the town's neighborhoods on foot. Miles was the no-nonsense type. She didn't add that she was on the lookout for a ghost.

"Where you go," Miles said, "I'll follow."

Her vague plan to comb Secret Sound for Skippy or anything else that looked familiar seemed silly an hour later. Sweat dampened her forehead, her feet hurt and the big, American-made car that Miles drove trailed her like a motorized watchdog.

If she didn't count Sam Peckenbush, who'd driven by about forty-five minutes ago in a rusted red pickup truck, she hadn't recognized a thing.

Despite the Peckenbush sighting, Cara wasn't frightened so much as she was discouraged. Nothing terrible would happen to her in broad daylight with Miles Dunleavy on the job, but her mission to find out what had happened to Skippy had stalled.

She didn’t understand what she searched for on the back streets of Secret Sound any more than she grasped why anything in the town looked familiar at all.

How long, she wondered, could she justify staying because the ghost of a little boy didn’t want her to leave? Even if she hadn’t been running low on funds, she was due back to work in a few days.

She came to a crossing street, realizing she'd reached the edge of town. The houses on the next block were spaced much farther apart than those on the streets she’d been walking. She hesitated, debating whether to ask Miles to drive her back to her car or to press on.

The screeching of tires cut through the late-afternoon quiet. Cara started, half expecting to see Skippy fly through the air again. Nothing happened, and she laughed nervously when it dawned on her that the sound had originated from a few blocks away. Taking it as a sign to proceed, she walked on.

The houses on this block, built with a premium on privacy, had obviously stood for a long time. Age had taken their toll, but the home owners were waging a successful battle to keep their property values high. Tall hedges and rows of date palms separated one yard from the next. Some houses stood so far back from the road that their driveways measured at least an eighth of a mile.

Miles pulled his car even with her and automatically lowered the passenger window. Cara bent at the waist to better hear what he had to say.

"I need to check on my grandkids,” he said, sounding almost frantic. “They live in the next block. They're supposed to be home from school but I didn't get an answer when I called. And their mother — that's my daughter Amy — doesn't get home until five."

"By all means, go," Cara said, and he reached across the seat to open the door. His meaning belatedly dawned on her. "You want me to come with you? Surely that's not necessary."

"Gray wouldn't agree."

For some reason, Cara was reluctant to leave the exclusive neighborhood just yet. She indicated the beauty surrounding them with a sweep of her hands. Miles must see what she did: A place where bad things didn't happen.

"You'll be gone for how long?" Cara said. "Five minutes? Ten? I can take care of myself for that long."

"I don't know about this," Miles said, shaking his head.

"Go and make sure your grandkids are okay," Cara ordered. "I'll be here when you get back."

With one last worried look, Miles shut the passenger door and drove off at a speed well above the twenty-five mile per hour limit. He'd probably break records getting back to her. Cara continued walking, wondering why she'd been so reluctant to leave the street.