For All of Her Life (8 page)

He’d avoided New York, though, for the past ten years. Because Kathy had run away from him and come here.

Staring out at the park, it was too easy to remember the first time they had come here together. She’d never been out of the far South, had never seen fall before. When they’d walked in the park, she’d worn her first pair of gloves, along with a friend’s old lambskin jacket. “It’s autumn, Jordan!” she’d told him, completely exuberant as she scooped up a pile of red and yellow leaves—along with some hardened carriage-horse droppings.

“Kathy, some of it is autumn. Some of it is horse manure!” He could still remember the face she had made at him, and the way they had laughed, and rolled in the leaves.

So long ago. Strange, he’d been the serious one then, the down-to-earth one. She’d been so quick to explore, to laugh. Blue Heron had already existed at a much smaller level—just Keith on drums, Derrick Flanaghan on bass, Kathy as backup, and himself on lead guitar. But he’d wanted to study music. He’d wanted all the background he could take in—not just to play and hope for a fleeting popularity, but to create with all his life. His father, who’d spent much of his young life playing bars on Miami Beach and cruise ships, had taught him, encouraged him—and warned him. “Get the education, too, my boy. Life plays funny games. Suppose you do get rich and famous, eh, son? You’ll want to handle that money properly, you’ll want to know where to travel. You’ll want to know about the world, maybe—where you can give a hand, where you can’t.” So he had been serious in school, and Kathy—though she’d had an incredible flair for learning from the early cradle, he was certain—had taken the world much more lightly then. They’d been students, in their senior year at Florida State, but they’d married the year before and come up to stay with one of Kathy’s aunts, an artist living a wonderfully Bohemian life in Soho.

The first snows had fallen while they had been in the city. They had both smoked in those days and Kathy had set the finger of her glove on fire when she had tried to light his Marlboro for him. They’d both ripped the glove off her hand, had crashed into one another while stomping on it and had laughed and rolled in the snow and made love in her aunt’s little rooftop garret.

Sometimes it was surprising that she had run to New York to get away from him. But then, he had kept his main residence on Star Island, and there memories had never left him alone. She had remained in every room. She had decorated the place, and she had done so beautifully. Certain rooms had an Oriental flair, others were completely Early American. The patio area was done in Art Deco, with fascinating lamps, furniture, and ashtrays. The paintings on the walls reflected the period furnishings. She had made the home a show-place when they’d barely had the money to keep it, and later, when they’d hit big—she’d been able to really indulge her taste for art.

But Kathy had left behind everything that had been hers, everything she had loved. He didn’t know just what his feelings had been at first, but shock had been a part of them; his pride had been severely wounded, and he’d been bitter. So much so that he’d assured his lawyers he wanted no waiting time since reconciliation was out of the question, she could have had almost anything she wanted as long as they got it all settled as quickly as possible. She hadn’t wanted anything. So fifteen years of marriage had ended in a matter of weeks. Amazing. He’d been even more shocked. And bitter. He’d always known he could be difficult, but she’d managed to cope with that before. He’d known there had been times when she hadn’t felt secure anymore, but he hadn’t been able to assure her.

He’d never gotten past the night of the fire...

Because he hadn’t known what she had known. He hadn’t known whether she had been with Keith the night he had died, whether she had kept silent because they’d been arguing so fiercely... and because Keith had actually been the subject of a few of those arguments. He just hadn’t known if she had...

Killed Keith? He taunted himself. He didn’t believe that, not for a second. In fact, he didn’t know that anyone had killed Keith. Keith had taken barbiturates. They had rendered him unconscious. The doctor had said the smoke had killed him before he’d burned, that the drugs hadn’t brought about his demise. Still, the scandal had rocked them all. Hurt, betrayed, they were anguished by the loss.

All of them. So it had appeared. Stunned. In pain. Even the figure Jordan had seen running to the guest house just moments before the fire had consumed it? The figure no one else believed existed.

Or admitted to being...

The figure he had thought at first to be his wife.

He closed his eyes in the darkness of the room, hoping to lock out a sudden onslaught of pain that should have died over ten years ago with his friend. Nothing had been clear; everyone had been fighting. At the inquest, he had stated that he was certain he had seen someone running to the guest house from the main house. No one had supported him; no one had believed him. Because the only people staying at the main house had been members of Blue Heron, their spouses and children, or employees Jordan would have trusted with his own life and the lives of his family members.

Everyone had talked of last seeing Keith alive. Then Jordan had to come out with what he’d seen. Because Keith had died that night. Because he had to know if Kathy had been running to Keith—and why. He’d asked her pointblank if it had been her, and she’d denied it, reminding him that she had been there when he’d been about to burst into the fire. He’d believed her. He’d claimed to believe her. But no one else had come forward. And so the doubts had haunted him, and to this day...

...He didn’t know.

The attorneys had told him he was overwrought. He had doubted his own sanity. Indeed, he had backed Kathy into a wall, though she had never understood just quite what it was he meant to shake from her—he hadn’t known himself. He’d been afraid to voice his worst suspicion—that his best friend had been murdered. Not that he wouldn’t have made a prime suspect himself. He’d argued constantly with Keith. Theirs had been a truly strange friendship, because he had loved his talented friend like a brother, and because, most of the time, they had been almost as close as blood kin.

But Jordan had also been irritated by Keith at times. Jealous, maybe, because Keith and Kathy had also shared a special relationship. Sometimes, he’d been afraid it had been more. At the end, he hadn’t known. His doubts were what had destroyed the friendship. But there had been more, of course. One of their major arguments had been over drugs. They’d nearly gone to jail in France because cocaine had been found in one of Keith’s drums. Jordan had hit the roof, but Keith had adamantly denied that he’d tried to smuggle cocaine through customs. Hard to believe, when he didn’t argue the fact that he found nothing wrong with a high now and then, but their lawyers had somehow managed to get the charges dropped. Shelley and Kathy had stood up for Keith, Judy had said flat-out that he should be thrown out of the group, Derrick hadn’t been given much of a chance to express an opinion. Larry Haley had turned thumbs down on his friend, while Miles had been supportive. Miles always went along with Shelley. Strange, Jordan had always thought Miles was in love with Shelley, but in all the years the group had been together, and in all the years they had been apart, the two hadn’t become a pair.

It had been amazing. Keith’s death had first made them all incredibly close. Then they had split apart, as if unable to bear one another any longer.

Because something hadn’t been right that night.

He’d quit trying to talk to the police because he hadn’t known for sure if there had been anything to prove. All he knew now for certain was that he
thought
he’d seen a figure running to the guest house just a few minutes before flames had enveloped it. No remains other than Keith’s had been found in the ashes. After the inquest, he’d kept his silence because he hadn’t been certain—and because he hadn’t been able to bring himself to believe that any of those present would have done anything to hurt Keith.

Much less kill him.

But now he knew. The first time talk of a screenplay being written on Blue Heron had appeared in print, he’d gotten a call at the Miami Beach studio, like something out of a thirties movie. A voice, muffled by some kind of thick material, coming through as neither male nor female, had given him warning. “Don’t let a movie be made; don’t let the group come back together.”

“Who the hell is this?” he’d inquired, annoyed rather than frightened.

He’d been met by silence, then the voice had informed him, “Just do as I say!”

He’d never liked being threatened, and he was far more irritated than frightened by the call. He’d started to tell the caller just what to do with himself when a loud click in his ear let him know that whoever it was had gone.

Though he’d remained more annoyed than anything else, he’d been a little disturbed. That evening he’d called the phone company and arranged to have caller identification added to his home phones. It had been a hoax, he was sure, but it didn’t hurt to know who was playing games.

He’d been at a local restaurant when the next call had come. It had been even stranger. “Let the dead stay buried.”

“Who the hell is this?” he’d demanded.

“Let the dead stay buried. Do you know what happens when the dead come back to life? They take others with them.”

This time Jordan did tell the caller what he could do; then he hung up angrily.

But the calls had gotten to him.

He’d stayed up nights on end, trying to go back, trying to think, trying to remember. He’d thought maybe he should just drop everything. But then he’d gotten even angrier, when he’d realized that he’d lost his marriage because there had been something more to Keith’s death than they had known, and he’d decided, not to let his friend lie in the earth unavenged.

The third call had come to the studio. And it had been different. The voice had been very soft, almost certainly feminine, but then again, it was so hard to tell. A different voice? Or just the same voice camouflaged? He didn’t know.

The message was a different one, at the very least.

“The truth is what will set you free, right? The truth has to come out. Or someone else might be in danger. Remember the smell of the fire, of the burning... flesh? Jordan, you’re the only one who
can
do something.”

Again a click.

That night, he’d called Mickey Dean, a friend on the Metro-Dade police force. He and Mickey had sat in Jordan’s poolroom that night, reflecting on the entire affair over a few too many Buds. “Jordan, there’s not much anyone can do about phone threats like that. It might be a gag—”

“But, Mickey, something was wrong back then. I did see a figure enter the guest house before it went up in flames.”

“Anyone might have been with him. And whoever it was, was afraid to admit it after he died—obviously. Do you seriously think Keith was murdered? The coroner’s report stated that he’d taken enough barbiturates to knock him out cold, that he died of smoke inhalation before the fire ever touched him. And the fire was very definitely caused by that stinking pipe he was smoking.”

“Even if the pipe caused the fire, could it have made the flames grow so quickly?”

“There was no sign of arson. You and I went over all the reports at the time.”

“I knew something was wrong.”

“Jordan, Keith’s death was probably a tragic accident, just what the hearing determined it to be. And these calls might be hoaxes. Whoever is calling you now might be the worst kind of publicity hound.”

“And he—or she—might not be.”

“But, Jordan, the point is, there’s nothing anyone can do about a few phone calls. You know that. Christ! We get ex-husbands and boyfriends threatening ex-wives and lovers on a daily basis. Sometimes, when there has been a death threat, we can get a restraining order. Sometimes, there’s nothing we can do. And even with a restraining, sometimes the ex blows away the wife or lover. We all know we should have been able to stop it somehow. But the best I can do for you is report these calls. There’s no manpower to do anything about them. You’re in a county with one of the highest crime rates in the country, and you know a lot about the workings of a police force because you’ve been listening to me talk for years.”

Jordan was well aware that cops didn’t have time to worry about a few threatening phone calls—or his
own
suspicion that a case closed nearly ten years ago was no accident but a murder. All the right procedures had been followed at the time. No one had shirked his or her duty.

But that didn’t stop Jordan from wondering and worrying.
Someone else might be in danger:
Why? Ten years had passed, but now...

Now the past was haunting someone else. And others might be threatened. His wife—ex-wife—and daughters? Well, if things were going to happen, he was going to have some control over them. That was the reason for the reunion. Whatever had happened to Keith had come about because of someone associated with Blue Heron. Someone who had been there that night. Now things were going to explode again because the ashes of the past were being stirred. Jordan didn’t intend to be helpless. He would make things happen in the way he wanted them to occur. On his turf, his terms. His children—and Kathy—would be where he could watch over them. Where he’d have Mickey to help him, a good friend, even if nothing could be officially done about the calls.

Kathy...

He let out a long breath in the night.

It had been so damned strange, seeing her again. The years had almost instantly evaporated. Maybe because they’d known one another so long. So well. They were familiar with each other’s habits and tastes, expressions and moods. And none of these had changed. She hadn’t changed. She looked like a million bucks. A little older, yes. But she defied time. He’d always loved her eyes. Warm, amber. Like a fire glowing in the night. She was still as slim as a reed, maybe even more so. Except that she’d maintained a few curves. Well, that was what happened when a woman was dating a muscleman. What the hell was she doing with that guy; She’d said Jeremy Muscleman was
nice.
Nice! He was so damned much younger than she was.