Public Secrets (24 page)

“It was like a dream. And now, I don’t really remember at all. It all faded away.”

“Maybe it was supposed to.”

“He was beautiful.” It hurt too much to face the room. “He was absolutely beautiful. I loved him more than anything or anyone. Everyone did.” Tears were blurring her vision. “I need to get out of here.”

“Come on.” He led her down the hall, down the stairs where she had tumbled that night years before. He sent a quick, apologetic glance to Gloria Steinbrenner as she hurried in from the kitchen. “I’m sorry, my wife’s not feeling well.”

“Oh.” Annoyance and disappointment came first. Then hope. “Make sure she gets some rest. As you can see, this house was just made for children. You wouldn’t want to raise a baby in the Valley.”

“No.” He didn’t bother to correct her, and steered Emma out. “We’ll be in touch,” he called, and took the driver’s seat himself. If he hadn’t been concerned with Emma’s pale face, and the prospect of driving a thirty-thousand-dollar car, he would have noticed the dark blue sedan that trailed after them.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured after they started down the winding roads.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“No, I am. I didn’t handle that well.”

“You did fine.” He reached over to give her hand an awkward pat. “Look, I’ve never lost anybody close to me, but you
only have to be human to imagine what it would be like. Don’t beat yourself up, Emma.”

“Put it behind me?” She drummed up a weak smile. “I hope I can. I thought if I could stand there, right there, and think about what had happened, it would all come back to me. Since it didn’t …” She shrugged, then pushed her sunglasses back on. “You’ve been a good friend.”

“That’s me,” he muttered. “Always a pal. Hungry?”

She started to shake her head, then stopped. “Yes,” she realized. “I’m starved.”

“I can spring for a burger. I think,” he added, struggling to remember just what was in his wallet.

“I’d love a burger. And since you’ve been a pal, my treat.”

He pulled into a McDonald’s, and since he discovered the contents of his wallet included three singles and the phone number of a redhead he barely remembered, he put aside what he told himself was dumb macho pride. Emma didn’t argue with his suggestion that they make it to go, or with his casual assumption that he would continue in the driver’s seat.

“Thought we’d take it to the beach.”

“I’d like that.” She shut her eyes again and leaned back. She was glad she’d come. Glad she had climbed those stairs. Glad she was here, with the warm wind in her hair and Michael beside her. “It was sleeting in New York when I left.”

“There are colleges in sunny California, too.”

She smiled, enjoying the breeze on her face. “I like New York,” she said absently. “I always have. My roommate and I bought a loft. It’s nearly livable now.”

“Roommate?”

“Yes. Marianne and I went to Saint Catherine’s together.” Since her eyes were still closed, she didn’t notice his look of pleased relief. “We always swore we’d live in New York one day. Now we do. She’s taking art classes.”

He decided he was kindly disposed toward Marianne. “She any good?”

“Yes, very. One day galleries are going to be cutting their throats to get her paintings. She used to do the most incredible caricatures of the nuns.” She glanced over, noting his frown.

“What is it?”

“Probably just rookie-cop instincts on overtime. See that sedan, just behind us?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Yes. So?”

“It’s been behind us since we picked up the burgers.” He switched lanes. The sedan followed suit. “I’d say he was tailing us, if he wasn’t so stupid about it.”

She let out a long, tired sigh. “It’s probably Sweeney.”

“Sweeney?”

“Bodyguard. He always finds me. Sometimes I think Da planted a homing device under my skin.”

“Yeah, it could be. I guess it makes sense.” But he didn’t care to be shadowed, so amaturely shadowed, on what he considered his first date with a longtime crush. “I could lose him.”

Emma tilted down her glasses. Behind them her eyes glinted with the first real laughter he’d seen in her. “Really?”

“I could give it my best shot. This little baby’s bound to leave him in the dust.”

“Do it,” she said, and grinned.

Delighted, Michael punched the gas, cut off a station wagon, and peeled up to eighty. “We used to race on the freeway—in my callow and misspent youth.” He swerved again, dodging between a pickup and a BMW, then with a twist of the wrist shot in front of a Caddy and let the Mercedes cruise at ninety.

“You’re good.” Laughing, Emma twisted in her seat and peered at the traffic. “I can’t see him.”

“He’s back there, trying to get around the Caddy. I pissed the Caddy off so he’s hogging the road. Hang on.” He swerved, spun, and jockeyed, then raced off an exit. One illegal U-turn, and the Mercedes’s powerful engine, and he was back on the freeway, heading in the opposite direction. They whizzed by the sedan, slowed to a decorous speed and sailed calmly down another ramp.

“Really good at it,” Emma said again. “Did they teach you that at the police academy?”

“Some skills you’re born with.” He stopped, then stroked the steering wheel. “What a honey.”

Emma leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thanks. Again.” Before he could respond, she had snatched up the bag of burgers and was racing toward the sand.

“I love this!” Still laughing, she spun in a circle. “I really love the water, the smell of it, the sound of it. If they could just plop an ocean down next to Broadway I’d be in heaven.”

He wanted to take hold of her then, to grab her in mid-spin
and find out if she tasted nearly as good as she looked. Then she dropped down on the sand and dug into the bag.

“These smell great, too.” She held one up before she realized he was staring at her. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” But his mouth was dry again. “I was, ah, remembering that I once wondered whether you ever got to go to McDonald’s. The first time I met you, at the rehearsal? Dad took me for a burger after and I wondered, with all the guards, if you ever got to go.”

“No, not really, but Da or Johnno or someone would sometimes bring takeout. Don’t feel sorry for me.” She groped in the bag again. “Not today.”

“Okay. Hand over the fries.”

They ate hungrily, leaving not even a crumb for the gulls. The breeze was up, carrying a mist of the sea. There were other people, a few families, young girls showing off tans and slender figures, the inevitable radios pumping out music, but for Emma it was one of the most peaceful and secluded interludes of her life.

“I could get used to this.” She sighed, stretched her arms up. “Sitting on the beach, listening to the water.” She shook her head so that her hair rained like gold dust down her back. “I wish I had more time.”

“So do I.” He had to touch her. He couldn’t remember not wanting to. When he stroked a finger down her cheek, she turned her head and smiled. What she saw in his eyes had her heart pounding in her throat, had her lips parting, not so much in surprise as in question.

She didn’t resist as he touched his mouth to hers. On a quiet moan she shifted toward him, inviting something she didn’t completely understand. A gentle nip of his teeth had her lips heating. When he entered her mouth, she heard the low sound of pleasure in his throat, felt his hands tense on her arms.

Without hesitation, she pressed her body to his and absorbed the sensation.

Would he have believed that it was the first time she’d been kissed, like this? The first time she felt like this? Warm, liquid, achingly sweet desire swam into her. Had she been waiting for this? Even as she wondered, her lashes lowered to help her seal the memory.

“You do,” he murmured, and kissed her again, gently, because it seemed the right way.

“Do what?”

“Taste as good as you look. I’ve wondered for a long time.”

She had to swallow, had to draw back. There were feelings growing inside her she didn’t know what to do with. They were too big, and came too fast. “It’s the salt.” Confused, she rose and stepped closer to the sea.

It was easy for a man to mistake confusion for casualness. He sat where he was, giving himself time. He had no casual feelings for her. Stupid as it might have sounded, he was in love. She was beautiful, elegant, and certainly accustomed to being wanted by men. Rich and important men. And he was a rookie cop from a middle-class family. He let out a long breath, rose, and tried to be as offhand as she.

“It’s getting late.”

“Yes.” Was she crazy? Emma wondered. She wanted to cry and laugh and dance and mourn all at once. She wanted to turn to him, but tomorrow she would be three thousand miles away. He was only being kind. She was the poor little rich girl, a tide she detested, and he—he was doing something with his life.

“I should be getting back.” She turned, smiled. “I’m really glad you went with me today, that we had some time.”

“I’ll be around.” He took her hand—a friendly gesture, he told himself. The hell with friendly. “I want to see you again, Emma. I need to.”

“I don’t know—”

“You can give me a call when you come back.”

The way he was looking at her had her skin going hot then cold. “I will. I’d like to—I don’t know when I’ll make it out here again.”

“I thought you might be coming out for the movie.”

“Movie?”

They had started walking to the car, but now he stopped. “Yeah. They’re going to start filming in a couple weeks in London, I think, then here. They’re putting on extra security. The movie,” he continued when she just looked blank.
“Devastated
, you know, based on your mother’s book. Angie’s starring in it. Angie Parks.” He could see by her face that he’d made a very
large and a very stupid mistake. “I’m sorry, Emma, I thought you knew.”

“No,” she said, suddenly tired beyond belief. “I didn’t.”

H
E SNATCHED THE
phone up before it had completed its first ring he’d been waiting, and sweating, for hours. “yes?”

“I found her.” the voice, and he knew that voice very well, trembled.

“And?”

“She went to see the cop, Kesselring. She was with him for over an hour. Then she went to the house, she went to the goddamn house where it happened. We’ve got to do something, and do it fast. I told you then, and i’m telling you now, i won’t take the fall for this.”

“Pull yourself together.” the tone was brisk, but his hand shook slightly as he reached for a cigarette. “she went to the house. She went inside?”

“The fucking place is for sale. She and the guy she was with strolled right in.”

“What guy? Who was she with?”

“Some guy. The cop’s son, i think.”

“All right.” he noted it down on the pad beside the phone. “where did they go when they left the house?”

“They went to a goddamn hamburger joint.”

The tip of the pencil snapped off. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said they went for burgers, then joyriding on the freeway. I lost them. I know where she’s staying tonight. I can get somebody to take care of it, quick, easy.”

“Don’t be an idiot. There’s no need.”

“I told you she saw the cop, she went to the house.”

“Yes, I understood you.” his hand was rock-steady again. He poured a drink, but not for his nerves. For his pleasure. “Think, for christ’s sake. If she had remembered something, anything, would she have calmly ridden off to buy a hamburger?”

“I don’t think—”

“That’s your problem, and has been from the beginning. She didn’t remember then, she doesn’t remember now. Perhaps this impulsive little trip of hers was a last-ditch effort to bring it all back, or more likely, it was just a sentimental journey. There’s no need to do Emma any harm, any harm at all.”

“And if she does remember?”

“It’s unlikely. Listen to me now, and listen carefully. The first time was an accident, a tragic and unforeseen accident. One that you committed.”

“It was your idea, the whole thing was your idea.”

“Exactly, since of the two of us I’m the only one who’s capable of an original thought. But it was an accident. I have no intention of committing premeditated murder.” he thought of a session musician who’d wanted pizza, but didn’t remember his name. “unless it’s unavoidable. Understood?”

“You’re a cold sonofabitch.”

“Yes.” he smiled. “I’d advise you to remember that.”

I
T WAS SNOWING
in London, wet, thick flakes that slid down collars and melted cold on the skin. It was pretty, postcard snow, unless one was fighting the clogged traffic along King’s Road.

Emma preferred to walk. She imagined Sweeney was annoyed with her choice, but she couldn’t worry about him now. She had the address on a slip of paper in the pocket of her thick, quilted coat. But she didn’t need that for a reminder. She’d memorized it.

It was odd to be in Chelsea, as an adult, free to walk where she chose. She didn’t remember it. Indeed, she felt a tourist in London, and Chelsea, the grand stage for punks and Sloane Rangers, was as foreign to her as a Venetian canal.

The streets were dotted with boutiques and antique shops where last-minute shoppers hurried in their fashionable coats and boots to search out that perfect gift among the horde of offerings. Young girls laughing, their pearls and sweatshirts tucked under their jackets. Young boys trying to look tough and bored and worldly.

Despite the snow, there had been a flower seller in Sloane Square. Even in December spring could be bought for a reasonable price. She’d been tempted by the color and the scent, but had walked on without digging in her purse for pounds and shillings. How odd it would have been to have walked up to the door, and offered a bouquet to her mother.

Her mother. She could neither deny nor accept Jane Palmer
as her mother. Even the name seemed distant to her—like something she had read in a book. But the face lingered, the face that came in odd, sporadic flashes in dreams, the face that flushed dark with annoyance before a slap or a shove was administered. The face from articles in
People
and the
Enquirer
and the
Post
.

A face from the past, Emma thought. And what did the past have to do with today?

Then why had she come? The question drummed in her head as she walked along the narrow, well-kept street. To resolve something that should have been resolved years before.

Emma wondered if Jane thought it a fine joke to have moved into the posh and prosperous area where Oscar Wilde, Whistler, and Turner had lived. Writers and artists had always flocked to Chelsea. And musicians, Emma mused. Mick Jagger had a home here. Or he’d had one. It hardly mattered to Emma whether he and the Stones were still in residence. There was only one person she’d come to see.

Perhaps it was the contrasts that appealed to Jane. Chelsea was punk, and domestic. It was relaxed and frenetic. And it cost the earth to live in one of the stylish homes. Or perhaps Jane’s reason had something to do with the fact that Bev had established herself in the same district.

That too hardly mattered.

She stopped, clenching and unclenching her hand on the strap of her bag while the snow drifted and clung to her hair and shoulders. The house was a long way from the tiny walk-up flat where she had lived with Jane. It pretended to be old, but the fussy copy of a Victorian row house missed the mark by inches. Someone had decided to add cupolas and tall, narrow windows. It might have been charming, in its way, but curtains were drawn tight and the walk had yet to be shoveled or swept. No one had bothered to hang a wreath or a string of lights.

It made her think wistfully of the Kesselring home. There had been no seasonal snow in California, but the house had offered the warmth and cheer that meant Christmas. Then again, Emma thought, she wasn’t coming home for Christmas. She wasn’t coming home at all.

Taking a deep breath, Emma pushed through the gate and waded through the snow to the front door. There was a knocker against the ornately carved wood. She stared at it, half expecting the brass lion’s head to dissolve and re-form into the battered
countenance of Jacob Marley. Perhaps it was the season, or the ghosts of her childhood that made her fanciful.

With hands icy inside her fur-lined gloves, she lifted it, just an old brass lion’s head, and let it fall against the wood.

When there was no response, she knocked again, hoping there was no one to hear. If no one answered, could she tell herself she’d done her best to erase Jane and the need to see her from her mind and her heart? She desperately wanted to run away, from the house that pretended to be something it wasn’t, from the brass lion’s head, from the woman who never seemed to be completely out of her life. As she stood, ready to turn away in relief, the door swung open.

She couldn’t speak, could only stare at the woman in the red silk robe that dipped carelessly over one shoulder, strained over hips that had spread beyond lush. Her hair was a blond tangle around a wide, doughy face. A stranger’s face. It was the eyes Emma recognized and remembered. The narrowed, angry eyes, reddened now from drink or drugs or lack of sleep.

“Well?” In deference to the cold air, Jane hitched the robe up. There was the glitter of diamonds on her fingers, and to Emma’s horror, the stink of stale gin. “Look, lovey, I got better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than stand in the doorway.”

“Who the hell is it?” The annoyed male roar came from the second floor. Jane cast a bored glance over her shoulder.

“Hang on, will you?” she shouted back. “Well?” She turned back to Emma. “You can see I’m busy.”

Go, she thought frantically. Just turn around and walk away. “I’d like to speak with you.” Emma heard her own voice, but it sounded like a stranger’s. “I’m Emma.”

Jane didn’t move, but her eyes changed, narrowing further, struggling to focus. She saw a young woman, tall, slender, with a pale, delicate face and flowing blond hair. She saw Brian—then her daughter. For an instant she felt something almost like regret. Then her lips curved.

“Well, well, well. Little Emma come home to her mam. Want to talk to me?” She gave a quick, high laugh that caused Emma to jolt and brace for a slap. But Jane merely stepped back from the doorway. “Come right on in, dear. We’ll have ourselves a chat.”

Jane was already calculating as she led the way down the hall
into a cluttered parlor made dim by the thick curtains. There was a scent there—old liquor, stale smoke that wasn’t tobacco. It seemed they hadn’t come so far from the old flat after all.

Her annual check from Brian would soon stop, and no amount of threatening or wheedling would pry another pence from him. But there was the girl. Her own little Emma. A woman had to think ahead, Jane decided. When she had expensive tastes, and an expensive habit.

“How about a drink? To celebrate our reunion.”

“No, thank you.”

With a shrug, Jane poured a glass for herself. When she turned back, the red silk shifted over her plump hips. “To family ties?” she offered, raising her glass. Then she laughed when Emma looked down at her hands. “Imagine finding you at my door after all these years.” She drank deeply, then topped off the glass before sitting on a sofa of purple velvet. “Sit down, Emma luv, and tell me all about yourself.”

“There’s nothing to tell.” Stiffly, Emma sat on the edge of a chair. “I’m only in London for the holidays.”

“Holidays? Ah, Christmas.” She grinned, tapping a chipped nail against the glass. “Did you bring your mam a present?”

Emma shook her head. She felt like a child again. Terrified and lonely.

“The least you could have done after all these years was bring your mother a little gift.” With a wave of her hand, Jane settled back. “Never mind. You never were a considerate child. All grown-up now, aren’t you?” She eyed the quiet diamond studs in Emma’s ears. “And done well for yourself, too. Fancy schools, fancy clothes.”

“I’m in college now,” Emma said helplessly. “I have a job.”

“A job? What the hell do you want with a job? Your old man’s got nothing but money.”

“I like it.” She hated the fact that she couldn’t control the stutter. “I want to work.”

“You never was a bright kid.” Frowning, Jane tossed back more gin. “When I think of all the years I scrimped and saved and did without to put dresses on your back and food in your belly. Never a bit of gratitude from you.” She reached for the gin bottle and slopped more into her glass. “Just sniveling and crying, then going off with your father without a backward glance.
Been living high, haven’t you, my girl? Daddy’s little princess. Not a thought for me in all these years.”

“I’ve thought of you,” Emma murmured.

Jane tapped her fingers against the glass again. She wanted to get her stash, take a quick fix, but was afraid if she left the room Emma would disappear and her chance would be lost. “He poisoned you against me.” Self-pitying tears began to fall. “He wanted you all to himself when I was the one who went through the misery of childbirth, the misery of raising a kid on my own. I could’ve gotten rid of you, you know. Even then it was simple enough if you knew the right people.”

Emma lifted her eyes then. Dark and intense, they fixed on her mother’s face. “Why didn’t you?”

Jane gripped her hands on the glass. They were beginning to shake. She hadn’t had a hit in hours and gin was a poor substitute. But she was shrewd, too shrewd to admit that she’d been more frightened at the prospect of a back-alley abortion than of childbirth in a clean hospital ward.

“I loved him.” And because she believed it, it sounded true. “I always loved him. We grew up together, you know. And he loved me, was devoted to me. If it hadn’t been for his music, his stinking career, we would have been together. But he tossed me aside like it was nothing. He never cared about anyone or anything but his music. Do you think he cared about you?” She rose, lumbering a bit under the gin. “He never gave a damn. It was just his image. Wouldn’t want the bloody public to think Brian McAvoy was the kind of man to abandon his own child.”

The old doubts, the old fears sprang up so quickly, she had to force the words out. “He loves me. He’s done everything for me.

“He loves Brian.” Jane braced her hands on the arms of Emma’s chair and leaned close. There was a glitter in her eyes. Pure pleasure. She could do very little to hurt Brian now—God knew she’d tried whatever had come to mind to cause him pain. But she could hurt Emma, and that was the next-best thing.

“He would’ve walked right out on the pair of us if it hadn’t been for the scandal. That’s just what he started to do until I threatened to go to the papers.”

She didn’t mention the threat to kill herself, and Emma. In truth it had been so unimportant, she’d forgotten it.

“He knew, and that worthless piss of a manager knew, what
would have happened if the press had started whining about rock’s hottest flame leaving his bastard child in the slums. He knew, so he took you and he paid me a handsome sum to keep out of your life.”

She felt sick, sick from the words, sick from the smell that struck out at her when Jane spoke them. “He paid you?”

“I earned it.” Jane took Emma’s chin in her fingers and squeezed. “I earned every pound and more. He bought you, and his peace of mind. The price was cheap enough for him, but he never got it, did he? Never could buy that peace of mind.”

“Let go of me.” Emma gripped Jane’s wrist and shoved it away. “Don’t touch me again.”

“You’re as much mine as his.”

“No.” She pushed herself out of the chair, praying her legs would hold her. “No, you sold me, and any claims to motherhood you might have had. He may have bought me, Jane, but he doesn’t own me, either.” She fought back the tears. She wouldn’t cry here, not in front of this woman. “I came here today to ask you to stop the movie, the one they’re making from your book. I’d hoped that you might have some feelings for me, enough that you’d respect my wishes in this one thing. But I’ve wasted my time.”

From up the the stairs Jane’s current lover began to bellow curses.

“I’m still your mother!” Jane shouted. “You can’t change that.”

“No, I can’t. I just have to learn to live with it.” She turned, walking quickly to the door.

“You want me to stop the movie?” Jane snatched at Emma’s arm. “How badly do you want it stopped?”

Deadly calm, Emma turned back. She took one long last look. “Do you think I’d pay you? You’ve miscalculated this time, Jane. You’ll never get a penny out of me.”

“Bitch.” Jane’s hand cracked across her cheek. Emma didn’t bother to dodge it. She simply opened the door, and walked away.