Stay Close (19 page)

“No.”

“So I’m not sure I follow. What makes you think he’s in danger?”

“Nothing, I guess. The woman’s voice. I don’t know. It sounded so sickly sweet.”

“Oh,” Broome said, “well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

Megan frowned. “Could you be, I don’t know, a little more patronizing?”

“‘Sickly sweet’?”

“Okay, I get it.”

“No, Cassie or whatever your name is, I don’t think you do.” Broome moved a little closer. “May I be blunt?”

“Because so far you’ve been circumspect? Sure.”

“You look good. Really, really good.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Not that way. I mean you look like the years have been a friend to you. You look healthy and happy and, most important of all, you look like you have someplace to go. Do you know what I mean?”

She said nothing.

“That’s the definition of happiness, you know. Most of the girls down here, they’ll never have that. A place to go.”

“Detective Broome?” she said.

“Yes?”

“You’re deep.”

Broome smiled at that one. “Yeah, philosopher detective. Do yourself a favor anyway. Go to that place.”

“The, uh, place to go?”

“Yeah, home or whatever. The place where you have people waiting for you.”

“You’re not listening to me, Detective.”

“No, I am. Now you need to listen to me. What are you still doing down here?”

She stayed quiet for a moment. He waited, watched her. The truth was, despite her sarcasm, Broome was scoring points.

What was she still doing here?

She thought now about her home, her “place to go”—about Kaylie and Jordan, about poor Dave, probably pacing and running his hand through his hair the way he did when he was anxious, wondering what had suddenly happened to the woman he’d slept beside for the past sixteen years.

With a weak voice, Megan said, “I thought you wanted me to stick around in case something new developed.”

“I got what I need for now. If I need more, I’ll call Harry. I made you a promise about anonymity. I plan on keeping it.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome. Now get out of here before the chief sees you and starts asking questions.”

She wanted to protest. This felt somehow wrong, but either way there was nothing to gain staying here. Without uttering another word, Megan headed back outside. She had parked around the corner. She slipped into the front seat and thought about what to do. The answer was obvious.

Broome was right. But for some reason, as she sat in the car, tears started brimming in her eyes. What the hell was wrong with her? She started up the car and prepared to go straight home. Forget all this. Forget La Crème and Lorraine and Rudy and Stewart Green and Harry Sutton. They had been something she’d caught a glimpse of in her rearview mirror, that’s all.

But what about Ray?

She checked the car clock. Why had she suggested that they meet at Lucy of all places? Her keys hung from the ignition slot. In all the years she’d known him Dave had never asked about that bronze, slightly rusted key. She’d always kept it with her. She doubted it
would still open the door—it was close to twenty years old now—but that key was the only souvenir, the only remembrance, she had allowed herself to keep from her old life.

One key.

She touched it now and thought about the last time she’d used it. She wanted to see Ray. She didn’t want to see him.

It was one thing to play with fire—it was another thing to leap directly into the flames.

Go home, Cassie or Megan or whoever I really am. We appreciate this breaking bulletin to solve an old disappearance, but it is now time to return to our regularly scheduled life.

On the one hand, this whole crazy day still felt like a no-harm-no-foul situation. She could leave here unscathed. On the other, she kept looking over her shoulder, as though she were being followed. She felt that the world was closing in on her now, that Stewart Green was still there, smiling that horrible, awful smile, readying to pounce. Yes, her best chance, the smart move, was to go home, but now she wondered if even that would do any good, or if it was already too late.

Lucy. At eleven
P.M.

Lucy was in Margate, five miles from where Megan now was. No matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise, no matter how dangerous or volatile, she knew that there would be no peace or closure until she saw Ray. Besides, forgetting everything else, how could she come down all this way and not see Lucy?

She drove south on Atlantic Avenue until, up ahead, she saw Lucy, hovering in the dark, silhouetted by the moon. As always, no matter how many times she had seen her, Megan stared up at Lucy in childlike awe.

Lucy was a massive elephant—“massive” meaning six stories tall.

Built in 1882, Lucy the Elephant was one of the country’s greatest and oldest roadside attractions and an architectural wonder—a sixty-five-foot elephant-shaped structure that originally housed, of all things, a real-estate office. During her 130-year reign on the New Jersey shore, Lucy had also been a restaurant, a tavern (closed during Prohibition), a private beach cottage, and now a place for tourists to visit for four dollars a pop. The ninety-ton pachyderm was made up of a million pieces of wood with an outer sheath of hammered tin. You entered Lucy through either of her thick hind legs, climbed the spiral staircase into a main room of curving plaster the color of Pepto-Bismol or, so they say, of an elephant’s stomach. You could walk over to Lucy’s head and check out the ocean from her windows/eyes. There was another window in the ass area, known to those who take care of her as her “pane in the butt.” There were photographs and a video show and even a bathtub. Climb another set of stairs and you could step outside on the top of Lucy’s back for one of the great views of the Atlantic Ocean. On a clear day, boats out there could see Lucy from eight miles out.

Megan had always loved Lucy. She couldn’t say exactly why. Twenty years ago, she had taken to visiting on her day off, grabbing a burger and fries at Lucy’s outdoor café, sitting on the same bench not far from the old girl’s trunk. It was there she met and started seeing one of Lucy’s caretakers and tour guides, a sweet, though overly needy, guy named Bob Malins. The relationship didn’t last long, but before she broke up with him, Megan surreptitiously pocketed his key to Lucy, brought it to a local hardware store, and made a copy of it.

That was the key she still kept on her chain.

Bob never knew, of course, but late at night, when Megan needed to get away from the club and the apartment she shared with four other girls, she would use the key and unroll a blanket and disappear inside Lucy. When she fell for Ray, this was the place they would meet up. She brought no other man here, not ever. Only Ray. They would use the key and climb that spiral staircase and make the sweetest, gentlest love.

She parked the car and slipped out. She closed her eyes and breathed in the salty ocean air. It all started coming back to her. Her eyes opened. She looked up at Lucy and shivered at the rush of memories.

From behind her, a voice—
the
voice, really—said, “Cassie?”

She couldn’t move.

“Oh my God,” he said with an ache that tore a hole in her heart. “Cassie.”

D
AVE
P
IERCE FELT AS THOUGH
a giant hand had picked up his life and started shaking it like a cheap snow globe.

He sat now in front of the computer in the spare bedroom Megan had converted last year into a home office. His stomach hurt. He hated turmoil. He didn’t handle pressure well. When he was feeling this way, when the walls seemed to be closing in on him, Megan was always there. She would rub his temples or massage his shoulders or whisper soft, soothing words in his ear.

Without her, he felt adrift and scared. Megan had never done anything like this before. She had never been out of touch for more than an hour or two. Her sudden erratic behavior should have surprised
him, shocked him even, but the worst part was, it hadn’t. Maybe that was the most troubling part—how easily every given perception, everything he had taken for granted, could shift.

His finger hovered over the mouse button. Dave looked at the screen. He didn’t want to make the final click, but really, what choice did he have anymore?

Jordan threw open the door, startling him. “Dad?”

“For crying out loud, what did I tell you about knocking?”

“I’m sorry—”

“I’ve told you a hundred times,” he said, louder than he intended. “Knock first. Is that so hard to remember?”

“I didn’t mean to…”

Jordan’s eyes filled with tears. He was a sensitive kid. Dave had been like that when he was little too. He quickly backed off.

“I’m sorry, sport. I just got a lot going on, that’s all.”

Jordan nodded, trying to keep the tears back.

“What’s up, pal?”

“Where’s Mom?”

Good question. He stared at the screen. One more click and he’d know the answer. To his son he said, “She’s doing something for Grandma. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Mom said she’d help me with math.”

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

Jordan frowned. “With math?”

It was a big family joke, how bad Dave was in math. “Point taken. Get in bed though. It’s late.”

“I didn’t finish my homework.”

“I’ll write your teacher a note. Get some sleep, okay?”

He came closer to his father. The boy still liked a good-night kiss.
His sister had stopped participating in that ritual years ago. When Jordan hugged him now, Dave felt the tears push into his eyes. He held on to his son for a second longer than usual. When they released each other, Jordan’s eyes naturally gravitated toward the computer monitor. Dave quickly minimized the screen, turning it into a tiny icon in the bottom corner.

“Good night, pal.”

“Good night, Dad.”

“Close the door, okay?”

He nodded, doing as he was asked. Dave wiped his eyes and hit the icon. The screen came back on. He moved the arrow back over the link. One more click would tell him exactly where his wife was.

When he had first gotten the cell phones and signed a contract that would have made his mortgage broker feel inadequate, the salesman had offered a bunch of mind-numbing smart-phone options, most of which Dave had ignored. But when the salesman raised the idea of activating the GPSs on the phones for only five dollars per month, Dave had accepted. At the time he had pretended to himself that it was for peace of mind—in case of an emergency. Suppose Jordan went missing? Suppose Kaylie didn’t call in for hours? Suppose Megan got carjacked?

But the truth was, a truth that Dave had never even whispered to himself, he had never fully trusted the woman he loved and fully trusted. Yes, that made no sense. She had a past. He knew that. So did he. Everyone did, he supposed. You come to a new relationship shedding the skin of the old ones. That was a good and healthy thing.

But with Megan, there was something more. Much of what she told him about her past didn’t really add up. He didn’t exactly ignore
it, but he let it go. Part of him didn’t want to threaten the good karma. Even now, after all these years, he still couldn’t believe that Megan had chosen him. She was so beautiful and smart and when she looked at him, when she smiled at him, even now, even after all these years, he still felt the pow. When you are lucky enough to experience that, when you get to have that pow as part of your daily life, you don’t look too hard at the whys and hows.

Dave had been happily passive, struck dumb by what he considered his blind luck, but today had shattered the calm. That giant hand kept shaking and shaking his world, and when it was put back on the shelf, it would never be the same. That was the part they tell you but you can’t ever really believe—how fragile it all is.

Night had long since fallen. The house was quiet. He wondered whether he had ever felt alone, and he guessed that the answer was no. So without thinking about it any longer, Dave clicked the icon.

A map came up. Then Dave Pierce hit the zoom button once, twice, three times, closing in slowly on exactly where his wife now was.

M
EGAN AND
R
AY FACED EACH OTHER
, maybe ten yards apart.

For the first time since that horrible night seventeen years ago, Megan was looking at the man she had loved and abandoned. Ray stared back, seemingly frozen, his still-handsome face a mask of anguish and confusion.

Emotions ricocheted through her. She didn’t move, didn’t think, didn’t try to sort through them. Not yet. She just let them overwhelm her, take her down, bring her up. Former lovers are always the ultimate what-if, the supreme road-not-taken, but with Ray, it was even deeper. Most couples move on for a variety of reasons. One outgrows the other, one or the other loses interest, loses that feeling, has different goals and wants, finds someone new.