Kiss Mommy Goodbye (34 page)

Voices. She was aware of distant voices. Coming to rescue her. You’re all right, it’s just a dream.

She opened her eyes.

A large blue snake, coiled and ready for her, sprang at her from the beam just above her head, wrapping itself around her neck, slithering its constant pressure tighter across her throat.

“No!” she sat up, screaming, pulling at the snake.

“Donna! Donna!”

Once again, Donna opened her eyes. Mel’s face was in front of hers, his arms moving to control hers which were shooting furiously out into the air around her. “Oh God,” she sobbed. “What’s happening?”

She let Mel lean her back against the pillows, feeling her body soaking with sweat. She was in a bed in a strange but comfortable room; a television was on across from her.

“You’re okay now,” he said. “You were kind of sick for a few hours though.”

“A few hours? What time is it?” She took several deep breaths.

“A little after midnight.” Donna looked at the television. She recognized Johnny Carson. A young and pretty blond woman was stuffing a large boa constrictor into a box. Mel watched her as she watched the TV. “It’s been an interesting show,” he laughed. “Lady from the Zoo, some starlet who said she was baptized in Pat Boone’s swimming pool, claimed he held her head down too long under water—instead of being born again, she thought she was going to die.” He felt her head. “You had your eyes open every so often, but you kept drifting in and out. Fever’s broken.”

She suddenly felt her side.

“Careful. There’s a bandage there.”

“The tick!”

“Long gone.”

She ran a hand through her damp hair. “How much of my life have I missed?”

“Before or after you scared poor Mr. Sanders half to death by fainting into his begonias?”

“Oh, God. Tell me.”

“He was very nice about it, actually. He called an ambulance for me and we got you to the hospital.”

“Hospital? Is this a hospital?”

“No. This is a motel. The hospital only kept you long enough to remove the tick and give you suitable medication.”

“So, Mr. Sanders was—”

“Mr. Sanders was Mr. Sanders. Period. Wife died eighteen months ago, left him with two little girls to look after.”

“Both girls?”

“All two of them, as Janine Gauntley Cressy McCloud would say.”

“So much for Kathy Garratt’s wonderful memory—”

“And her dog!”

“Who was it that told us to go to that stupid gallery anyway? That lady from San Simeon—she was probably working for Victor!”

Mel laughed. “You feel better, I can tell.” He flipped off the television. “You want some tea or anything?”

She shook her head. “I’m just tired. Will I be all right to travel in the morning?”

“I think so. Something tells me I won’t be able to stop you anyway.” He paused dramatically. “I called Marfleet. He said they may have something definite in Carmel. A man with two children fitting the general descriptions of Victor and the kids bought a house there six months ago. He was going to drive up there tonight and check it out, meet us there tomorrow.”

“Oh, Mel—” Donna said, feeling her whole body starting to tingle.

“It might not be them, Donna—”

“I know. I know,” she repeated, sinking down under the covers, feeling Mel crawl in beside her. “I know.”

T
he minute U.S. Highway 1 wound its way into Carmel, Donna felt all her senses begin to come alive. Her nostrils flared with the omnipresent scent of the ocean, her eyes widened with the sight of the houses, some more like gingerbread cottages, doll houses rather than homes; her ears opened to the sounds of the surf and the contradictory nature of the bustling tranquility around her. Every tissue in her body seemed to tighten, to go on red alert. He was here. She could feel it. This was the place he had brought her children.

“Take it easy, Donna,” Mel warned.

“I know they’re here, Mel. My whole body tells me they’re here.”

“Your whole body, beautiful though it may be, has been wrong before. Remember, it told you to marry Victor in the first place.”

“They’re here, Mel,” she repeated, as they turned the car east onto Ocean Avenue, a street which actually ran
perpendicular to the ocean. Donna watched the street names pass them by—Carpenter, Guadalupe, Santa Rita, Sante Fe, Torres, Junipero—increasingly more and more certain of her conclusions. They passed the large Spanish-style structure the sign identified as Carmel Plaza, 67 shops, and continued down to Dolores Street, where they turned left.

“Where exactly are we meeting Marfleet?”

“A restaurant called A Little Pizza Heaven.”

“Pizza at this hour?”

“It’s lunch time,” Mel reminded her, checking his watch.

“Why’d you let me sleep so late?”

“I wanted you in fighting condition,” he winked.

She smiled. “I know they’re here, Mel. Can’t you feel it?”

“What you’re feeling—and yes, I feel it too—is a certain familiarity. This place isn’t all that different, in a sense, from Palm Beach. Pine trees instead of palm. But it has that same—rhythm.”

Donna nodded. It was the perfect word. “Only better,” she added. “And Victor was always looking for better.” She suddenly spotted A Little Pizza Heaven to her right. “There it is, Mel.”

Mel pulled the car into the parking area and he and Donna got out, Mel throwing Donna the car keys to keep in her purse. Keeper of the keys, he had said on the plane, and obviously meant.

“Don’t forget that Victor also lived in Connecticut for most of his life.”

“I know,” Donna said, putting her arm through Mel’s, “but it’s hard to go back to ice and snow when you’ve gotten spoiled by the sun and the ocean.”

They were about to walk in the front door of the restaurant when Mel spun around and stopped her. She looked at him questioningly. “Look, Donna,” Mel began, “if Marfleet has struck out, if we don’t find the kids, here, remember that I love you, and there’s still Monterey.”

She laughed. “Anything else you want to say?”

“Yes,” he said solemnly. “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?”

“How many?” she asked, her smile a crooked grin.

“Only one,” he answered, “but the light bulb has to really want to change.”

She was still chuckling when the waiter led them through the restaurant and out onto the wind-sheltered patio where Mr. Marfleet sat waiting.

“We missed them,” Mr. Marfleet said as soon as they sat down. Donna couldn’t believe her ears.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, they were here. But we lost them.”

“What do you mean, you lost them?” Donna could hear the shrillness creeping into her voice. No, please, no. She wasn’t hearing this.

“I had a man up here,” the detective explained, “asking questions. I guess Mr. Cressy, or Mr. Whitman, as he was calling himself, found out about it somehow and skipped. At any rate, he’s gone. I had someone watching the house, but Cressy must have skipped out in the middle of the night.”

Donna was shaking her head from side to side. She wouldn’t accept what her ears were telling her. To have come this far, come so close, to have missed him by one night, the night that she spent sleeping in some motel
room in Morro Bay because she had been bitten by a tick! No. It wasn’t fair.

“Can you trace his car?” Mel asked, assuming Victor had one.

“We already did. He dumped it at the L.A. airport sometime early this morning. He could be anywhere by now, but we’ll keep looking, I promise you. We found him once—we’ll find him again.”

His voice drifted off. Donna found herself looking at the detective closely for the first time since she had sat down. He was tall, though his height seemed all in his upper torso, and almost rectangular in shape, possessing a square jaw, square shoulders, and a prominent Adam’s apple that protruded from the top of his open neck shirt. His complexion was sallow, as if he rarely got much fresh air, and when he did, that it rarely agreed with him. He had looked much more comfortable amidst the stacks of files that filled his otherwise sparsely furnished office in downtown Los Angeles, where he had at least blended in with his setting.

“He changed the names of the kids,” he said abruptly.

“What?”

“The little girl—he called her Carol, not Shannon.”

“Sharon,” Donna said, correcting the detective.

“Yeah, Sharon. And the little boy, he called him—”

He glanced down at his notebeok. “Called him Tommy.”

“You’re sure it was them?” Mel asked.

The detective shrugged. “Fit the descriptions, dead on. Look, why would they skip if they’re not the ones we’re looking for?”

Donna nodded. “Where were they living?” she asked, her voice dull and distant. What did it matter where they
had lived? All that mattered was that they didn’t live there now. They had gone. Crept away in the night. Vanished. Again. For how long this time? Another eleven months? Eleven years?

“Not far from here.” Marfleet laughed the laugh of someone trying to fill some empty space. “Actually, nothing’s very far from here. The house was on Monte Verde,” he said, checking his notes again. “147 Monte Verde.”

Donna got up from the table. “I want to see it,” she said.

“It’s empty,” Marfleet said. “And locked.” He made no move to stand up.

Mel got to his feet. “I’ll drive Donna over. We’ll take a look around.”

“Oh sure,” the detective agreed, as his pizza—everything on it—was laid before him. “You don’t mind if I eat this first?”

“Take your time,” Donna said, hating this man for his callousness, but, most of all, for the hope he had held out to her, only to pull away again with such fierce abruptness.

No, she thought, walking out of the restaurant, Mel behind her, it wasn’t fault she had let herself get so worked up. She had done that little deed all by herself. Just as she had screwed up the timetable with a little help from a big German shepherd named Muffin. She threw the car keys over at Mel. She couldn’t go through much more of this. They were gone. She had let them get away. For whatever perversity of motives, she would visit the home her children—Carol and Tommy, he had renamed them, so strange, so foreign to her—had lived in for the past six months. Perhaps, like a psychic picks up vibrations when
fingering appropriate articles of clothing, she would tune in to some vague feeling—

She got into the car, thinking enough was enough. From now on, she would leave the detective work to the professionals—don’t call me until you have my family behind bars—and as soon as she had satisfied herself that Victor and her children were truly gone, so would she go. Back to Florida. Back to Annie. Back to pushing great boulders up an ever-increasing number of hills.

They decided to stay the night and then start back for Los Angeles the following morning after they got a good rest. Donna had said nothing for the rest of the afternoon, nodding silently in agreement to all of Mel’s suggestions. If it had been any other way, she kept thinking, if it hadn’t been them at all, even that would have been better, but to have come so close only to miss them by one day. She just couldn’t accept it. They could be anywhere by now, she thought. We’re back to square one. Farther back because now Victor was on the alert.

She and Mel had spent an hour at the house on Monte Verde. It was obviously empty—they had peered in all the windows, waited in vain for any neighbors to come home. Everything spoke of a hasty retreat. There was no ocean in the backyard, but it was close enough. What was it Marfleet had said? “Nothing’s very far from here.” Victor had called her from Carmel, of that she was absolutely certain. And now he was gone. He had stolen her children—again.

“Where are we?” she asked, looking out the car window for the first time in what felt like hours.

“We’re up in the Carmel Valley. I thought it might be pretty to see. We can get a nice little motel—the guidebook says there’s one along Carmel Valley Road, The Hacienda, that supplies little hibachis. I thought we could pick up some steaks, get ourselves a fine bottle of wine at this place called Yavor’s Deli and Wines, head back to the motel, eat and maybe yell and scream a bit.”

She smiled wearily. “Sounds good. What time is it?”

“Almost four,” he said, checking his watch. “Here we are.” He turned the car into the parking area of the Hacienda Motel. “You want to stay in the car?” She nodded. “Okay. I’ll see if they have a room.” She watched him walk inside the office and return minutes later, dangling a long room key. She realized that in those minutes her mind had remained a total blank. “Room 112,” he indicated, “around the corner there, small private patio, our very own hibachi.”

“Good.” It was the weakest
good
she had ever heard.

“You feel like lying down while I go get the wine and the steaks?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll go with you.”

“Okay. This wine place is right up the street a few miles. And there’s a shopping center there where we can pick up the steaks.” She put the room key inside her purse.

“Terrific.” Terrific sounded only marginally better than good.

“I love you,” Mel said quietly. “I’m very proud of you.”

“Why? Because I’m not acting like a blithering idiot?”

“Who said you aren’t?”

She smiled, feeling the tears she had been holding back start to cascade down her cheeks. “Damn,” she said, burying her head against Mel’s chest. “Goddamn.”

“That’s my girl,” he said soothingly. “Don’t keep it bottled in. Let it all out, honey.”

Mel found a parking spot in the already crowded parking area of the shopping plaza. He maneuvered the car into place, pulled the keys from the ignition, handed them to Donna and then got out of the car. “Coming?”

“Why don’t I go get the steaks while you get the wine?” she asked, joining him on his side of the car.

“Sure. You have money?”

Donna checked her wallet. “Plenty,” she said.

“Okay. I’ll meet you back here.” They kissed gently. “You all right?”

She nodded. “I’m okay.”

They walked in opposite directions. When Donna turned to see him, he was already gone, disappeared into the front doors of Yavor’s Deli and Wine. The thought crossed her mind that when she got out of the grocery store, he would not be there. Vanished—like everyone else she let become a part of her life. Dead—or simply gone. No, she reassured herself, tapping her purse, unless he intended to walk back to Florida. She was the keeper of the keys, after all. He would be there. He would always be there.