Fire and Rain (45 page)

A few seconds later, Delores Harvey returned, blotting her own eyes. She pressed a tissue into Carmen’s hand.

“What caused the explosion?” Carmen asked, when she could speak.

Delores seemed reluctant to answer. With a sigh, she sat down on the sofa. “You know about Rob’s work?” she asked.

Carmen nodded, not quite certain what Delores was referring to.

“Well, they were getting ready to take a vacation, Rob and Leslie and the kids. They were going to the mountains to see the fall colors. They hadn’t gotten away since they moved here, and they were really looking forward to it. As usual, though”— Delores shook her head, a small smile on her lips—”Rob had some work he wanted to finish up first—some project he was working on down in the basement. So Leslie was going to take the kids up to the cabin they’d rented, and then Rob would join them in a few days. But the day Leslie was to leave, Rob told her his work was going faster than he expected, why didn’t she and the kids wait one more day and then they could all go together? So that’s what they decided to do. Leslie came over here that afternoon with the baby.” Delores suddenly pressed her hand to her lips, turning her head away. “That beautiful baby.” She shook her head. “I’d sometimes sit for him. He had a smile that could light up the world.” Drawing in a tremulous breath, she looked at Carmen once again. “Anyhow, Leslie was helping me design invitations for my oldest daughter’s wedding—Leslie was an artist. Well, I’m sure you knew that.”

Carmen nodded blankly. She hadn’t known, of course, but what did it matter? What did anything matter any more?

“All her paintings were lost in the fire, too. Even the watercolor that won the award in New York. You know it?”

“I don’t recall. Go on, please. What happened?”

“Well, Leslie was so happy, so glad she was getting Rob away for a few days. I think he was a good husband, and I know he was a terrific father, but she said that he’d been absolutely driven lately by whatever it was he was working on. He hardly ever slept, she said. He was always in that basement. I asked her how she stood it, but she said it was a really exciting project and she didn’t blame him for being preoccupied with it. She couldn’t tell me what he was doing—I guess Rob had sworn her to secrecy—but she said it was spectacular, something that had never been done before, something no one even thought was possible. You know how proud she always was of Rob.” The woman dabbed at her eyes again.

Carmen’s stomach was in knots. She remembered the allusions others had made to Jeff’s recklessness. “The explosion,” she said. “What caused the explosion?”

“Well, I guess Rob was working that night, rushing to finish up so they could take off the next day. Holly was sick. She’d come down with a cold, and Rob must have gone to the store to get her cough syrup, because they found the bag with the syrup in it on the sidewalk. Anyhow, the explosion occurred while he was out of the house, and it was related in some way to the work he’d been doing in the basement.”

Carmen closed her eyes. “How horrible,” she said.

It was a moment before Delores continued. “Rob was in shock after the fire. They took him to the hospital. Frank and I went with him—I didn’t want him to feel as though he was completely alone in the world. He didn’t cry or rant and rave, or anything along those lines. He was like a zombie, sitting there in the emergency room, saying over and over again, ‘I killed my family, I killed my children.’”

“He blamed himself?”

“Yes.” Delores nodded. “And he wasn’t the only one. The police were suspicious to begin with because he was out of the house at the time of the explosion, and having him sit there saying he killed them wasn’t helping his case very much.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Carmen scowled. “He was in shock.”

“Of course it’s ridiculous. It still infuriates me that anyone could have thought it was anything but an accident. All they’d have to do is talk to people who knew him to know what a good man he was.”

“Yes.” Carmen nodded. “Yes.”

“The fire investigation people said they couldn’t figure out what he’d been working on down there, but they were certain it was something he shouldn’t have been doing in a residential neighborhood. They were going to charge him with criminal negligence.”

“And did they?”

“They didn’t get the chance. We took Rob home with us that night. He had no place else to go, and I wasn’t going to leave him alone. He simply wasn’t himself. Who would be?”

Carmen shook her head.

“Well, he disappeared sometime during the night.” Delores raised her chin and smiled. “God love him. Of course, that made him look even guiltier in the eyes of the police. They said he was afraid to face their questioning, but I know he was really afraid of facing the emptiness where his life had been.”

Carmen looked out the window in the direction of 780 Meridian. “Do you have any idea where he went?” she asked.

“No, and I’m glad I don’t. They found his car in Pennsylvania, and since he’d crossed state lines, the FBI got involved. Why they want to waste their time going after someone like Rob is beyond me. A man loses everything he cares about. Isn’t that punishment enough?”

Again, Carmen nodded.

“They still haven’t found him, and you know what I hope?” Delores asked. “I hope they never find him. I hope that somehow he’s able to find happiness somewhere else.”

CARMEN MANAGED TO MAKE
the 4:30 flight back to San Diego. She had a copy of the videotape in her purse. She’d asked Delores if she could borrow the original to have a duplicate made, and although the woman looked a bit taken aback by the request, she produced a copy she already had. Carmen wasn’t certain what she would do with the tape. Right now, she wasn’t certain how she would handle any of the information she’d just learned. She only knew that, for the time being, she would tell no one, not even Chris, the truth about Jeff Cabrio.

They’d been in the air only a few minutes when she pulled out her notepad and began writing down everything she remembered of the information Delores Harvey had given her. She wrote for two hours, knowing that she now had the ability to put a lock on
Sunrise
. If she wanted it, the show was most certainly hers.

When she finished writing, she closed her notepad, covered herself with a blanket and tried to sleep. But each time she shut her eyes, all she could see was Rob Blackwell kneeling in front of his burning house, clutching the lifeless body of his daughter in his arms. She wondered if she would ever be able to safely close her eyes again.

IT WAS TEN O’CLOCK
when she pulled into the driveway at Sugarbush. After two rainless days, the air was dry and filled with the scent of eucalyptus, and the glow of an enormous round moon lit up the adobe. She had retrieved her suitcase from the trunk and was headed toward the door when Jeff’s black Saab pulled up next to her car. She stopped and waited until he got out.

He closed the door to the driver’s side and met her gaze over the roof of the car. He looked tired. There was a question in his eyes, a question he didn’t need to put into words.

And she needed to say nothing in return for him to know the answer.

AT FIRST, MIA COULDN’T
get her bearings. Was it the moonlight that awakened her? It poured through her bedroom window in a silver-white pool, so bright that she had to turn her head away when she opened her eyes.

It took her a moment to realize that Jeff was beside her. He’d still been at the warehouse when she went to bed, but he was here with her now. He had pushed her nightshirt up to her hips, and his thigh was planted firmly between hers.

“Jeff?”

“Shh.” He quieted her with his lips and his tongue, his kiss so deep and long and breathless that she felt herself rising up, floating above the bed, still half in sleep. Was she dreaming? Or maybe it was actually morning. Maybe the moon was the sun.

She could see the clock on her dresser. Ten-twenty-eight. He kissed her again, and when she closed her eyes, the green digits of the clock still floated in front of her. When he drew back, she ran her fingers over his face—over his chin, his cheekbones, his temples, as if he were clay—and there was the satisfaction that what she felt beneath her fingers was identical to what she had created in miniature.

His hands slipped under her nightshirt. There was an impatience in him; his usual gentleness was missing. If she hadn’t known him, if she hadn’t trusted him, she might have been afraid. The heat and the moonlight and his hunger made her restless herself. She threw the covers off, not even thinking of how her chest would look in the bright pool of light from the window. When he began nuzzling her breast, she arched her back, straining against his thigh where it pinned her to the bed, struggling to move, to bring him closer.

“Please,” she said.

He shifted on the bed until he could slip inside her, thrusting into her with a groan. She moved with him, running her hands over his shoulders, the small of his back, his hips. She couldn’t lose the ethereal feeling of this lovemaking, as though they were touching each other in their sleep, as though when she woke up she would be alone, with just a hazy, not-quite-real memory of his closeness.

Afterward, she shut her eyes and saw the white disc of the moon behind her eyelids. Jeff started to lift himself from her, but she closed her arms around him to keep him there. Against her ribs, she felt both their heartbeats; she couldn’t separate his from hers, and she was nearly lulled back to sleep by their rhythm. It was only when the coyotes began to howl that she sprang fully awake, the world outside her bed suddenly real and intrusive. She felt the entire length of Jeff’s body stiffen above her, and she knew then. She understood the reason for his rushed and wordless lovemaking, for the urgency in his kisses and the desperation in his touch.

“
No, Jeff,
“ She’d planned to be strong for him. She had gone over and over in her mind how she would handle it when he told her he was leaving, and in her lucid, waking moments, she could see herself reacting bravely, supporting him wholly in what he needed to do. But she had expected him to tell her in words, not this way. Not in some dream-like rush that left her drained and defenseless. She swung her head from side to side on the pillow. “No, no, no.”

He raised himself to his hands and slipped out of her, then sat next to her on the bed, stroking her cheek with one warm hand.

“She knows, Mia. I have to go.”

She pressed his hand tightly to her cheek with her own fingers.

He gave her his old half-smile. “Have you finally figured out that you are a very desirable woman, and that there will be other men for you?”

“I don’t want other men,” she said, but she knew he was right. There could be others if she wanted them. For a moment she couldn’t even remember why she thought there wouldn’t be.

“And when you meet one you want, wear the damn chemise for him, okay? You’re alive
now
, Mia. You’ll look great in it.”

“Shh.” She pressed her fingertips to his lips.

“I brought the cat over.” He nodded toward the window where she could see the slender dark silhouette of his still nameless feline. “You’ll take care of him for me?”

“If you’ll stay till morning,” she bargained.

He shook his head. “If I leave now, I can be a few hundred miles away by daybreak.”

A few hundred miles! She clutched his arm, the reality of his leaving suddenly hitting her. “In which direction? Please, just give me an idea of where you’re headed. At least give me the comfort of being able to picture you someplace.”

He shook his head again. “No, Mia.”

She sighed and bit her lip.

“Do you know how strong you are?” he asked.

She shrugged. She didn’t feel strong at the moment.

“You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met,” he said.

“Then why do I feel like I’m five years old and I’ve gotten separated from my parents at the zoo and all the animals are about to be let out of their cages?”

“And they haven’t been fed in weeks?”

“Right.”

“It’s temporary,” he said. “A temporary setback. A normal reaction. In a day or two your resilience will take over, and you’ll be fine.” He lay down next to her. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep, all right?”

“Then I won’t sleep at all.”

“Yes,” he said. “You’ll sleep.”

And although she fought the lure of her dreams, when she next opened her eyes, the overcast light of a rainy day filled her room. She had wrapped her arms around Jeff in such a way that she thought he could never get free, but he was gone. She was alone. Only the cat keeping watch at the window let her know he had ever been there at all.

THE VIDEOTAPE RESTED ON
Carmen’s lap as she drove through the early morning rain to the station. Dennis had called her late the night before to tell her he wanted to see her this morning. He wanted to find out what she’d learned, he’d said, to figure out the “best way to use it.” He’d coughed toward the end of that sentence, and for a moment she thought he’d said “exploit it.”
So
, she thought to herself,
what’s the difference?

In her still-numb state the night before, she’d told him she had a tape that would explain everything.

“What’s on it?” he’d asked, clearly ecstatic.

“You’ll see.”

He’d laughed like a child enjoying a game she’d invented expressly for him. “Well, at least tell me if you have what you need to wrap up this story.”

“Yes.” At the very least. She could wrap up this story, solve an FBI case and ruin Jeff Cabrio’s life, all in one fell swoop.

“That’s what I like to hear,” he said, and she could picture him rubbing his hands together. “Tired from your flight?”

“A bit.”

“Get a good night’s sleep, then, Carmen, and I’ll see you early in the morning.”

Sleep, of course, had been impossible. As she lay in bed, she could see the videotape on her dresser, propped up against the mirror. When she closed her eyes, scenes from the tape ran through her mind—the terrified child in the window, Jeff’s panicky voice calling for Leslie, the hulking fire fighters huddled over the little girl. Three times she got out of bed and walked around the house, trying to free herself from the fiery, full-color images. She regretted ever having asked for the tape—it made it her responsibility. Worse, she regretted telling Dennis that she had it. That had been stupid, but she’d known how gleefully he’d respond to that news. She’d known how good it would make her look in his eyes, and she was easily—too easily—seduced by his professional respect for her these days, a respect that still felt new and fragile.