Lover's Lane (14 page)

20

THE NEXT MORNING, JAKE PUT ON A PAIR OF WRINKLED Hawaiian-print swim trunks and a faded navy T-shirt, crossed the cold tiles in the compact kitchen of his two-bedroom condo in the Marina Pacifica complex. He referred to it more often as the office than as home.

The counter held a microwave, blender, and toaster oven, all of which he rarely used. Crumpled sacks and garish plastic cups collected from nearly every fast food restaurant in town littered the rest of the counter space. A folded pizza box protruded from the wastebasket.

He finger-combed his hair, opened the refrigerator, pulled out the crisper drawer and started tossing oranges onto the counter. Rummaging through the cupboard, he finally found an old green glass juicer he bought one Sunday morning at the Vintage Swap Meet. Nearly everything in the apartment had been left behind by the previous owner, or he’d bought it at the Veterans Stadium parking lot swap meet.

He was alternately staring out the window at the waters of Marine Stadium and cutting oranges in half when the front door opened and Kat Vargas sailed in. She headed straight for the kitchen when she saw him.

Short, athletically fit, with hair so black it glistened, Kat leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, shaking her head as she checked out his state of undress.

“Late night?” he asked, taking in the pillow creases on her cheek.

“Not really.”

“I know what a wild woman you are.” He cleaved another orange in half. Kat had either been sleeping with a one-night stand or home alone.

“Yeah, right.”

“Let me guess, you rented two movies instead of one.” He grabbed up the last orange and whacked it in half.

“You’re right. And I had to see them both through to the end. You know I can’t sleep until Jackie Chan saves the world from destruction.” She was a sucker for martial arts movies, the cornier the better.

“You really need to get a life, Vargas.” He was only half kidding. If he wanted to spend more time at Twilight this summer, she was going to have to take on more work.

“I have a life,” she assured him. “And I like it just the way it is.” Her eyes told him differently.

“Beer, cold pizza, and rental movies on nights you aren’t doing surveillance?” Jake started smashing orange halves on the juicer and twisting them until they were dry. Then he poured the juice with pulp, ground seeds and all, into a tall plastic Slurpee cup.

A Boston whaler filled with weekend boaters motored by the window. Across the stadium, two jet ski riders looped each other in a dance of spray and ear pollution.

He held up the juice, turned to Kat. “Want some?”

“No, thanks. Did you get in late?”

Jake nodded. The Tyrannosaurus rex on the side of a mini-mart cup flashed horrendously sharp teeth. He took a long swig of juice and headed toward the door. Kat followed him to the rickety rattan dinette set that had come with the condo. The chair creaked as he sat down and shoved aside a box of plastic utensils.

Kat picked up a fork, stared at it a moment, set it down. “I have to give you credit, Montgomery. You might have been too lazy to buy silverware for eight years but you’re finally popping for the heavy plastic.”

Kat leaned back in her chair. “When
did
you get back?”

“Late last night. I stopped by to see my grandfather and then picked up dinner.”

“How’d things go up north? You ready to tell me what’s up yet?”

Kat lived for the job. He’d found that out the first week he’d agreed to take her on. Dedicated to her tae kwon do, convinced men weren’t worth her time, she had very little social life. Like him, she became devoted to the job, which made her the perfect partner.

Jake finished off the juice and set down the tall cup. “How much can you handle alone?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, can you run things for a while around here? I’ll do the paper chases, employee theft, high-dollar fraud that I can trace through accounts. Handwriting analysis. I’ll have a phone and computer hookup.”

He named the things he was best at, things she found tedious. Kat’s taste ran more to surveillance, debugging rooms, find-and-serve jobs. Things that kept her out of the office and on the move.

She blinked twice, her eyes intent on his face.

“Why?”

“I rented a house in Twilight Cove for the summer. I’d like to try and spend a few days every week up there.”

“Wow. This is kinda sudden, especially for you.”

He tried to shrug it off. “Hey, shit happens.”

All of a sudden, Kat slapped the table. “You found your mystery girl! I can’t
believe
it.” Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open. Her voice came out in a whisper. “You not only found her, you’ve
fallen
for her!”

She was on her feet now, pacing the open living room. “I can’t believe it.
I
find an article in a magazine and recognize the detail in a painting—in a photograph of it yet—one like that weird little piece hanging over your desk.
You
drive up to find the gallery and check it out, and there’s Caroline Graham, sitting right there in Twilight Cove. What kind of luck is that?”

“Dumb luck.” He didn’t dare add that he was starting to think some things were simply meant to be. She’d laugh him out of the condo.

“It gets better,” he told her.

She sat on the back of the sofa. “Go on.”

“Anna Saunders called my grandfather and wants to talk to me. . . .”

“To find someone you’ve already found! You’re kidding, right?”

Jake shook his head. “I’m not sure, but she contacted my grandfather first, to see if I was still a P.I. and to tell him to have me call her.”

“She has no idea you’ve already found Caroline?”

“How could she?”

“Then you can name your price.”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated a second too long. Kat jumped on his silence.

“You’re not going to tell her you found Caroline, are you?”

“Let’s just say for now, I plan to stall Mrs. Saunders.”

“Why?”

“It’s complicated.”

“So The Obsession is real, and you’re in love with her.” Kat sniffed. “Or in lust anyway.”

Jake walked back into the kitchen, rinsed out the juice cup, and set it in the dish drainer beside the sink. Kat Vargas was only twenty-nine, but she’d had her heart badly broken a couple of times, and what was left of it was hard as cement.

He walked back into the other room and sat down across from her, found himself thinking about Carly and all the feelings he hadn’t wanted to come to grips with alone.

“There’re some sparks between us. I won’t deny that. She is pretty irresistible,” he admitted.
Sparks? Hell, with a little
bit of kindling, I’d have a wildfire on my hands.

“You just
met
her, Jake. You don’t even
know
her. Maybe you’re just attracted because you’ve been carrying that photo of her and the kid around for years. Same thing with that painting you bought off that old guy in the desert. You’ve spent hours staring at that weird landscape with the ghostly Indian and Spanish explorers. A painting
she
painted. It’s got to be
subliminal
.”

She looked at his crotch. One of her slender brows slowly rose. “Well, maybe it’s not
all
subliminal. Maybe it’s due to the fact that you live like a monk.”

“Oh, yeah. Next to you anyone looks celibate.” He shook his head. “She’s real, Kat, and she’s nothing like what I thought she’d be. She’s intelligent, caring, responsible. She’s a great mother to Rick’s son.”

“Jake, think about it. You believed you owed it to Rick Saunders to keep looking for them. Maybe you feel now that you found them, you’re responsible for them.”

“This started out about Rick, but it’s moved to a purely personal level.”

“I watch the Sci Fi channel. Next thing you know, you’ll be convinced Rick led you to them from beyond the grave for a reason.”

“You ever think about ending up all alone, Kat? I mean, when you’re all through playing Ms. Bond?”

She sobered. “I like myself. I like my life. I’m alone because I want to be. If I ever fall in love again, it’ll be against my will, believe me. I’m not naïve enough to think love lasts forever anymore. I learned that the hard way. You take what you can get when you can get it. Ride the highs and wait out the lows.”

She told him she had been engaged once, but she never mentioned it again.

“So, you really never plan on getting married?”

“Hey, Jake, you’re a perfect example of what happens when wedded bliss goes sour. Your one-and-only winds up screwing somebody else. Now you can’t even commit to unpacking your boxes after all these years. Why would I want to end up like you?”

She didn’t give him time to answer before she asked, “What’ll you do about Mrs. Saunders?”

“I’m going to talk to her later this morning. See what information she might already have. Something about this whole thing doesn’t click.”

“What do you mean?”

“If Anna Saunders’ only concern is with her grandchild, and if Caroline knows that, then why did Caroline feel she had to run in the first place? Why didn’t she just accept the Saunders’ help after Rick died?”

“Maybe it’s not really your friend’s kid, and she was afraid they’d find out. Maybe they wanted blood tests.”

“I thought of that.” He shook his head. “But he’s the spitting image of Rick. He has some of Rick’s mannerisms, too. I think there’s something else going on. I’ll stall Anna Saunders for a while until I can get some answers.”

“So you’re
definitely
not going to tell her that you found Caroline?”

“No. Not yet. Not if I can help it.”

“Caroline’s all right with you being a P.I.? What did she say when you told her you knew Rick?”

He turned, stared out at the boaters in the marina. When he didn’t answer right away, she jumped on it.

“You haven’t
told
her?”

“Not yet. I was afraid she’d disappear again.”

“Damn, Montgomery. When you dig a hole, you dig it deep.” Kat got up again, stretched, rolled her head around on her neck and took a deep breath. “Well, one of us ought to get to work around here. I’ll check the answering machine and do callbacks.”

“Don’t take on any more clients than you can handle alone for a while,” he warned.

She paused on her way to the office they shared in what would have been a master bedroom, the one where he had hung the painting Wilt Walton sold him years ago.

He’d driven out to Borrego after Rick’s death to interview Walton and find out if Caroline’s former roommate knew of her whereabouts. Jake had still been an agent of Alexander and Perry then, but, as a former friend of Rick’s, he’d hoped to appeal to Walton.

Walton claimed he had no idea where Caroline had gone. The guy had been a character, but instinct had Jake believing him.

Kat was watching him from the doorway. “You’re serious enough about this woman to keep it from Anna Saunders, aren’t you? And at the same time, you haven’t told Caroline that you’re on to her.”

He nodded.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I.”

21

ANNA FORCED HERSELF TO STAY CALM WHEN HER HOUSEKEEPER announced that Jake Montgomery was on his way up. When she heard Estelle open the door, her heartbeat accelerated. Smoothing her hand over her hair, Anna walked into the foyer, greeted him, and dismissed the maid.

An intense ache of sorrow uncoiled in her the moment she saw Jake again and intensified when she reached for the solid warmth of the strong hand he offered. Rick would have been the same age as this tall, handsome man. Looking at Jake was like running a knife through her heart as she was forced to recall the two boys together, sunburned teens, summer friends.

She imagined her son would have matured in much the same way, maybe without such broad shoulders or hard sculpted jaw, but Rick surely would have been as tall and just as attractive, as fair as Jake Montgomery was dark.

But there was a seriousness lurking in this young man’s eyes, a gravity Rick had never shown. Her son had grown up without a worry in the world, always carefree, always joking. There wasn’t much he took seriously—which totally frustrated focused, structured Charles.

As she quickly assessed Jake Montgomery, Anna found herself wishing she could look into her son’s laughing eyes once more and take back every last thing she had ever said about how he ought to grow up and take on some responsibility, act like an adult.

But it was too late to say all the things she longed to say, needed to say to her boy, too late to tell him she had always loved him just the way he was.

“Come in, Jake. Please.” She led the private investigator through the wide, formal foyer to the living room. Indicating the sofa with a wave of her hand, she invited, “Have a seat.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Saunders.”

“Please, call me Anna.”

As she chose a chair opposite him, his gaze swept the wide bank of windows twice before he looked back at her again.

If he wanted the place, she’d hand him the damn key. All he had to do was find Rick’s son.

“Would you like something to drink?” she offered.

“No, thank you.” He pulled the hem of his tweed sport coat out from under his hip.

“I won’t beat around the bush and take up too much of your valuable time, Jake,” she began. “I want to hire you to search for my grandson and the woman who stole him.”

He leaned forward. “What about Alexander and Perry? I have to admit I’m more than a little surprised you called me after all this time.” His voice was deep and not unpleasant. Very serious.

“I know that when you left them to start your own firm, Charles opted to stay with Alexander and Perry because of their reputation.”

“I completely understood. I was just getting started. The other agency had better connections and resources, but what most investigators don’t often admit is that even an amateur with a computer can find almost anyone if he knows where to look.”

“
Almost
anyone but the woman who has my grandson. They might have the best reputation, but that firm still has nothing but dead ends.” She reached for a file folder on the glass-topped coffee table and handed it over. “This is everything they’ve come up with.”

She watched him carefully scan the contents. He could have made a fortune playing poker for high stakes, his expression giving away nothing until he came to an eight-by-ten photo at the back of the file.

He studied it carefully, then extended it toward her.

“Who is this?”

“That’s Caroline Graham.”

He stared at the black-and-white head shot again.

“This isn’t the same woman in the picture that Rick gave me. I’ve never seen this photo.”

Anna swallowed, automatically reaching for the gold and diamond heart necklace at her throat. She fingered it as she spoke.

“I didn’t know that Rick had ever given
anyone
a photograph of Caroline. I certainly don’t have one, and there’s no other photo in the file.”

“He came by my place the morning of the accident on his way back to the desert and showed me a stack of photos he’d taken of Caroline and his son. Even gave me one of them. He came by that day to ask me to be his best man.”

Anna felt a swift blush of anger stain her cheeks. Jake Montgomery reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, flipped it open. He slipped out a small photo and handed it to her.

Anna looked down at the poorly cropped picture with frayed edges. She hadn’t seen it since the day Rick had showed a stack of similar photos to her and Charles—the day that he had announced he was getting married, that he had a son.

The same day he told them that it didn’t matter what they said, that his mind was made up. At first she’d been in shock and had done little more than glance at the young woman in the photo as Rick and Charles argued fiercely.

She’d tried to be the voice of reason and to convince Rick that he needn’t ruin his life marrying beneath him. He said he’d known that they would react this way, that they wouldn’t approve of his choice, but he didn’t care. He’d told them of his month-long fling in the desert with the waitress, of how he hadn’t even seen her in well over a year, but when he looked her up again, he discovered she’d given birth to his child while he was in Japan.

Charles doubted the child was Rick’s, certain Rick had been trapped. That’s what she had thought, too, until Rick showed her the photos of the baby. There was no doubt the boy was his. She had photos in Rick’s baby book that were nearly identical. The image of that bright-eyed boy had melted her heart.

But the mother, Caroline, was another matter. She looked tacky and coarse, barely twenty-three, if not younger.

Even now it made Anna heartsick to think it was altogether possible that Rick had never even known the girl’s real name.

She handed the tattered photograph back to Jake.

He pocketed it without looking at it again, then pointed to the eight-by-ten lying on top of the open file on the table.

“Obviously that’s not the same woman,” he reiterated.

“No. I can see that it’s not.”

He flipped through pages of information, some compiled since he worked for the firm. Caroline Graham’s Social Security and driver’s license numbers were listed along with proof that she was born in Albuquerque. The photograph was copied from her high school yearbook. She was in a foster home until she ran away a few months before her eighteenth birthday.

She had surfaced not long afterward in Borrego Springs and took a job as a waitress. She was eighteen by then and Child Services had no interest in dragging her back to New Mexico. She stayed in Borrego and met Rick almost five years later.

Jake picked up the larger photo. “When you saw this, did you have any idea that this wasn’t the same woman he proposed to? That this wasn’t the same woman as the one in the photos with his son?”

“I saw the stack of pictures Rick had taken only once and very quickly. He left behind the one of him holding the baby. She wasn’t in it. I . . . I told him I didn’t want one of the girl, so he kept all the rest. If he had them when you saw him on his way out of town, then they were all destroyed in the accident.”

She sighed. Fingered the jeweled heart again. “When Charles died two years ago, I swore to him I’d keep searching, but for a while, I hadn’t the heart to go on. I’ve contacted Alexander and Perry a few times, but they’ve put the case on the back burner, I’m sure. Jake, I’ll be honest. I’m not getting any younger. I want to see my grandson. I promised Charles I’d go on searching.”

“Why call me now?”

“Because they have no personal stake in this. You knew Rick. You were his friend. You tried to help us once. Will you take the case again or not?”

He hesitated so long she was afraid he’d turn her down.

“Look, Jake. My husband told me that a couple of years after Rick’s death, you paid Charles back some money that Rick had loaned you. We hadn’t even known about it, and if you’d never paid the debt, no one would be the wiser. You’re an honest man, Jake Montgomery. A man of your word. That’s why I want you to take this case again. For Rick’s sake. For his son’s. But most of all, for an old woman with a broken heart and a promise to keep.”

She thought she saw him blanch and knew she’d struck the right chord. “I don’t need someone who will give me false promises and take my money.”

She could tell that he was uncomfortable whenever he looked at the photo she had thought was Caroline Graham.

Finally he met her gaze. “Why did she run?”

Taken aback, Anna blinked. “What do you mean?”

“What was she so afraid of? Why run from you and your husband? I would think that anyone in her position, a young, unwed mother, a waitress, would welcome and gladly accept your help. So why did she disappear?”

Anna cleared her throat and continued to looked him straight in the eye. Her Grandpapa Riley’s advice came rushing back to her.

Never let it show when you’re bluffin’, my girl. Never let
’em know it.

“I . . . I have no idea.”

“Let me look into this before I make a firm commitment and see what I can dig up. We’re fairly busy right now.”

“I thought you ran a one-man firm.”

“I did when I first started, but I have a partner now. Her name is Kat Vargas.”

“Are you telling me you’re too
busy
to take my money?” She didn’t know where she would turn if he didn’t agree to help.

“I’m just saying I can’t make you any promises right now.” He picked up the photograph. “May I have this? I’ll have a copy made and get it back to you. Finding out who this really is might be a start.”

“Of course. Anything.”

He straightened his jacket, got to his feet.

“I’ll call you,” he promised.

“I can’t wait long, Jake. I’m sixty-five years old, and I’m not getting any younger.”

She walked with him to the edge of the thick champagne-colored carpet, watched him move across the marble floor of the foyer to the door where she bid him good-bye.

Afterward, Anna walked out onto the balcony. Her hands closed around the iron railing. She took long, deep breaths to calm herself, the way her personal yoga instructor had taught her.

She closed her eyes and replayed the entire interview. No matter how many times she went over it, she found it impossible to shake the feeling that Jake Montgomery had been holding something back.

Jake walked into the office, jerked off his tie, and hung it over the doorknob.

Kat was at her own desk working through a list of documents on the computer. She raised her hand to let him know she was aware of his entrance, but didn’t speak.

He went into his bedroom across the hall and tossed the photo on the unmade bed shoved up against one wall. A pile of books made a less-than-adequate bedside table big enough for a dusty clock radio. There was a lamp on the floor, a thirteen-inch television on a low stack of boxes on the opposite wall.

All temporary arrangements that had become permanent.

Jake opened a cardboard file box and rooted through it until he found one marked C. Graham. The mattress sagged as he sat down on the foot of the bed.

When he had first started hunting for her, he expected Caroline to turn up again as soon as she registered a car, opened a credit account or applied for a new driver’s license. Even if she had changed her name, experience told him that she would most likely choose the same birth date or place of birth, the same first name—something that would eventually show up in a search.

He’d tracked down a few missing persons through data entered on warranty cards sent into manufacturers, but there was nothing current on Caroline Graham anywhere.

Kat suddenly appeared in the doorway. She never walked, she bounced, and so did her straight shoulder-length hair.

“So, how’d the meeting go with Ms. Saunders?”

“I told her I’d think about it.”

“Stalling.”

“Yep.”

“Does she suspect anything?”

“No. How could she?”

“You could have slipped up. I’ve never seen you this way before.”

Jake stood up. The file slid off his lap, the pages fanned out across the floor. “What way?”

“Discombobulated.” She glanced down at the spilled file. “Maybe in love? You know
that’s
always dangerous.”

“Watch it, Vargas.”

“So, what next?”

“I want you to check on something. Call her high school in Albuquerque. Have them send a copy of Caroline Graham’s photograph from the yearbook.”

“One picture of her isn’t enough anymore?”

The photo Anna had just given him was lying facedown on the bed. He picked it up and handed it to Kat. She stared at it a second, then looked up.

“Who’s this?”

“
That’s
Caroline Graham. At least that’s a photo that Alexander and Perry came up with after I left. Everything else they’ve found was pretty much what I already knew, same driver’s license numbers, Social, Albuquerque record of birth, high school.”

She had a keen enough eye to remember the face of the girl in the photo in his wallet and knew that the young woman in the eight-by-ten wasn’t the same one. His photo had come directly from Rick. It had to be of the real Caroline.

“Not the right Caroline Graham, evidently. So what’s up?”

“I’ve got to go over to TC Motor Sports and pick up their books. While I do that, will you scan this photo and have the original sent back to Anna Saunders? And then see what you can find on a Carly Nolan.” He spelled the name for her. “Check Social Security, birth and death certificates in New Mexico. Check the DMV in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California. If you can’t find anything, widen the search.”

“If she’s not Caroline Graham, then who
is
Carly Nolan?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”