THE FBI THRILLERS COLLECTION Books 1-5 (108 page)

“Sure, I’ll play level with you. Do you know anything I should know? Is there any reason to believe Jilly didn’t go over that cliff on purpose? You want to start sharing right now?”

She seemed to relax a bit. “When were you hurt and how?”

“How do you know I was hurt? Do I still look like week-old oatmeal?”

She cocked her head to one side, fully facing me, looking me over. I realized that she was younger than I’d first thought, probably late twenties. It was impossible to be really sure because she was wearing the dark glasses favored by highway patrol officers to intimidate the folk they stopped. I could see my reflection in the lenses. Her hair was thick, dark reddish-brown and curly, plaited into a thick French braid and pulled back up on top of her head, wound around itself and fastened with a clip carved as a totem pole. She was wearing pale coral lipstick, the shade my British girlfriend Caroline had favored. But Caroline, a clothing designer, had never looked as tough or self-reliant as this woman.

Of course she knew I was studying her, and she let me, saying finally, “I’ve always hated oatmeal. Fortunately, you don’t resemble that at all, but you don’t move all that easily, you know? You walk like you’re twenty years older than you are. There are faint bruises along the left side of your face. You favor your right arm and you’re a bit crabbed over, like you’re worried you’ll hurt your ribs. What happened to you?”

“I got in the way of a car bomb.”

“I didn’t hear about any federal guys being blown up.”

“I was over in Tunisia. Bad place. You get hot sand in your mouth when you talk. The people I had to deal with weren’t what you’d call very good-natured.” I’d just told this woman, a perfect stranger, all sorts of stuff that wasn’t any layperson’s business, a local cop’s least of all. Well, I was playing level, I was
sharing,
as politically correct folk would say. Even thinking that soppy word
made me wince. If she knew anything at all, my spurt of openness—something I hoped wouldn’t happen again—should help me worm it out of her.

“I’ll take you to The Edwardian for lunch. It sounds like an English gentlemen’s club, but it isn’t. The food isn’t great, but there’s a lot of it, and you look like you could use the calories. You dropped what, a good fifteen pounds?”

“Yeah, about that,” I said. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon and I wanted a soft bed, a dark room, and no interruptions for about three hours.

“Follow me. Fifteen minutes?”

“Thanks,” I said.

I watched her turn the key in the ignition and smoothly do a U-turn on Liverpool Street.

Some twenty minutes later, once I’d ordered meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans, and she’d ordered a huge chicken salad from Mr. Pete, a grizzled old varmint who was the only waiter for all ten patrons at The Edwardian at the moment, I leaned back against the hard wooden back of the booth and said, “I visited here about five years ago, as I said. I’d just gotten back from London, and Paul and Jilly invited me out here to meet his parents. I remember this place well. Nothing seems to have changed. How long have you been the sheriff?”

“Going on a year and a half now. The mayor of Edgerton is Miss Geraldine Tucker. Evidently she was going through a feminist phase, said she’d missed it when it first came around, and decided what the town needed was a female sheriff. I was a cop in Eugene at the time and had run into some bad trouble. I wanted out of there. This seemed a perfect opportunity.” She shrugged. “I have one deputy and a secretary and about a dozen volunteers whenever I put out the call, which hasn’t happened since
I’ve been on the job. There’s little crime, as you’d expect, just parking or speeding tickets, kids raising occasional hell, a couple of burglaries a month, probably by transients, normal stuff like that. There has been a rise in domestic cases recently, but nothing like it was in Eugene.” She gave me a look that clearly said,
How much more level can you get?

I smiled at her and said, “What happened in Eugene?”

Her lips were suddenly as thin as the soup an old guy was eating at the next table. “I think I’ll keep that to myself, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. Hey, I’m just hoping that the meat loaf will stick to my ribs. They need all the padding they can get right now. What did you want to talk to Paul about?”

Before she could answer, an old man sauntered up, holding an Oakland A’s baseball cap between his hands, big hands I saw, gnarly and veined but still strong. He had a full head of white curly hair, tobacco-stained teeth, and he was smiling at me. I put him in his seventies, a man who’d spent many years working hard.

“Charlie,” Maggie said, leaning forward to take his hand. “How’s tricks? You seen anything interesting I should know about?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice all scratchy and thin as old drapes. “But it can wait. Is this the young feller from Washington?”

Maggie introduced us. He was Charlie Duck, a local who’d been here fifteen years. He nodded, never taking my hand, just twirling that Oakland A’s baseball cap around and around in his hands. “You’re all tied up now, Mac, but later, when you’ve got some time, I wouldn’t mind having a talk with you.”

“Sure,” I said, and wondered what kind of tall tales I’d be hearing.

He nodded, all solemn, and sauntered back to a booth where he sat down, alone.

“You see, not everybody doesn’t like me.”

“Charlie’s a real neat old guy. You’ll enjoy him if you two get together.”

I said again, “What did you want to talk to Paul about?”

Maggie picked up her fork and began to weave it through her fingers, just like the old man had done with that baseball cap. She’d pulled off her driving gloves. She had elegant white hands, short nails, calluses on her thumb pads. “Just talk,” she said. “I still can’t believe how lucky Jilly was. Rob Morrison, the highway patrolman who saved her life, came in third in the Iron Man Triathlon over in Kona last year. That means a two-mile swim, a hundred miles on a bike, then twenty-six point two miles of running. He’s in awesome shape. Anyone else, and they’d probably still be trying to get her out of the Porsche. The luck involved, it still boggles the mind.”

I felt both grateful and envious. “The Iron Man. I had a friend who tried that. He made it to Kona, but he got cramps in the marathon leg. I want to meet this guy. I wish I had something more to give him than just my heartfelt thanks.”

“After lunch.” She picked up her glass of iced tea, just delivered by Mr. Pete, now wearing a bright red apron and chewing on a toothpick. He called her Ms. Sheriff. “Rob is working nights right now, sleeping during the day. He should be awake soon. I want to hear him go through what happened again so I’ll take you with me. You very slickly asked me why I wanted to talk to Paul.” She shrugged a bit. “I want to know who or what sent Jilly over that cliff. If anyone should know, it’s Paul.”

I couldn’t face that, not just yet. “They’ve only been
here about five and a half months. Paul grew up here, you know.”

“Yes, but he has no more relatives here. His parents died about three years ago in a private plane crash over the Sierras near Tahoe. They were big-time skiers. Their bodies were never recovered, which is odd since most of the time planes that go down are found pretty quick. But not this time.

“Paul’s uncle died of cancer about two years ago, and his cousins are all scattered across the country.

“Why’d he come back here? No offense, but it’s the middle of nowhere and there isn’t, frankly, much of anything here to interest two big-time researchers, which Jilly told me they both were.”

My salad was delivered, a huge bowl filled with lettuce, red peppers, boiled potato chunks, and green beans, all topped with a heap of ranch dressing. I thought it looked wonderful. “Go ahead, get started,” she said, and I forked down a big bite. “It isn’t bad,” I said, closed my eyes, and shoveled down six more bites. “Much better. When Jilly called me six months or so ago, she told me that VioTech—the pharmaceutical company where both of them worked—didn’t want Paul to continue with the project he was involved in. Jilly said he was pissed and wanted to come back here and continue his work.”

“What about Jilly? What were her plans?”

“She said her clock was running out. She wanted to have a kid.”

“Jilly said that?” Maggie Sheffield was just swiping butter on a dinner roll. She stopped cold and stared at me, shaking her head even as she said, “Oh, no, that’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“If she told me once, she told me half a dozen times,
that neither she nor Paul had ever wanted rugrats. She said they were too selfish for too long a time now to think about changing to accommodate a child.”

Well then, she’d obviously changed her mind since she’d spoken to me about it.

“Meatloaf’s all gone,” Mr. Pete announced, as if he was pleased as punch about it. “Pierre didn’t make enough. It got eaten mostly by the breakfast crowd. How about some nice fish ’n’ chips smothered in onion rings?”

All that fat swimming around in my arteries didn’t sound like such a bad thing at that moment.

R
ob Morrison lived in a small wooden clapboard house tucked in among a good dozen spruce trees about two miles south of town. A narrow dirt road, posted as Penzance Street, snaked through the valleys and hills, and his house was at the end of the road. A wide gully lay just beyond. I turned when I got out of the car and stared over the western horizon. I felt a moment of deep envy. When Rob Morrison awoke in the morning, it was to an incredible view of the Pacific Ocean through the skinny spruce trees. It felt like being at the edge of the world.

Maggie knocked on the unpainted oak door. “Rob? Come on, wake up. You’ll be on duty again in another four hours. Wake up.”

I heard movement from within the house. Finally, a man’s deep voice called out, “Maggie, that you? What are you doing here? What’s going on? How’s Jilly?”

“Open up, Rob, and I’ll tell you everything.”

The door opened and a man about my age stood there, wearing only tight jeans with the top button open and a heavy morning beard. The sheriff had been right, this guy
was in awesome shape. Thank God he’d been there at exactly the right moment.

“Who are you?”

I stuck out my hand. “Name’s Ford MacDougal. I’m Jilly’s brother. I want to thank you for saving her life.”

“Rob Morrison,” the guy said and took my right hand in a very strong grip. “Yeah, hey, I’m sorry it ever happened. How is she?”

“Jilly’s still in a coma,” Maggie said.

“Can we talk?” I said. Rob stood back and waved us in. “Mr. Thorne was here just two days ago so the place is still as clean as a virgin’s memories.”

Maggie said to me, “That means there isn’t anything of interest anywhere, particularly dirt.”

“A blank slate,” I said.

“An unsoiled blank slate. Right. I’m making coffee. Any for either of you?” At my nod, he said, “Black and strong as tar?”

“That’s it.”

“Maggie, Earl Grey tea for you?”

She nodded. Both of us followed him through the painfully neat living room to the small kitchen just beyond.

“Nice place,” I said. “Who’s Mr. Thorne?”

Rob turned and smiled. “He’s my housekeeper. Comes twice a week, keeps me from living like a pig. A retired salmon fisherman from Alaska. He calls my place his petri dish.”

We sat on bar stools at the kitchen counter that separated the kitchen from the small rectangular dining area in front of two wide windows looking toward the ocean.

Soon the smell of coffee filled the air. I breathed in deeply. “The coffee at The Edwardian tasted like cheap watered-down instant.”

“It was,” Rob said. “Mr. Pete loves instant, makes it with lukewarm water, but only when Pierre Montrose, the owner, isn’t there. I wouldn’t be surprised if he stirred it with his finger.” He poured the coffee and gently shoved a cup over to me.

He poured a cup of hot water over a tea bag. He added a single bag of Equal, stirred it, and gave it to Maggie.

We drank. I sighed deeply. “The best ritual in the world.”

“Why don’t you go get a shirt on, Rob?” Maggie said. “Mac and I won’t move a muscle.”

Rob just shrugged his superbly muscled shoulder. “Nah, I’ve got to take a shower. Let’s talk. I can get dressed after you guys leave.”

I not only felt like a slab of cold oatmeal, I felt really pathetic. This guy could probably shove me over with one hand and walk away whistling. It was depressing as hell. At least the coffee was waking me up, aches and pains and all. I still wanted that nap, but with Rob Morrison sitting across from me, his legs crossed at the ankles, holding his coffee cup against his bare muscled belly, I wasn’t about to slouch or yawn.

At least the guy had to have a housekeeper to keep from living like a slob in a cave.

“Rob,” Maggie said, leaning forward, cupping the tea mug between her hands. “Tell us everything you can remember, every detail. I’m going to record it, okay?”

“Yeah, sure, but you already know everything.”

“Let’s do it again. I want it on record this time. Mac needs to hear it too.” Maggie made preliminary comments into the recorder. After a couple of false starts, Rob sat forward and said slowly and very clearly, “It was nearly midnight on Tuesday, April twenty-second. I was cruising north along the coast road. I didn’t see anybody
or anything until I came around a deep curve and saw Jilly’s white Porsche in front of me. I saw the car go toward the railing. It didn’t slow, just kept going, right on through. Then the Porsche speeded up. I was right on its tail. When it went over the cliff I was there in just a couple of seconds. I saw the headlights through the water and dove in right at that spot. It went down about fifteen, sixteen feet, I’d estimate, before the car hit the sand and settled. The driver’s-side window was completely open. I managed to pull Jilly through the window with no loss of time since her seat belt wasn’t fastened. I kicked off the bottom and headed straight up. I estimate that she wasn’t underwater more than two minutes, tops.

“I towed her to shore, made sure she was breathing. I climbed back up the cliff and radioed for an ambulance from my patrol car. They arrived about twelve minutes later and took her to the Tallshon Community Hospital. At least it was close by.

“That’s it, Maggie. I can’t remember anything else.”

“Did you recognize Jilly when you realized it was a white Porsche?”

Rob nodded. “Oh, yeah, I’d know Jilly’s Porsche anywhere, just like everyone else in this town would.”

“What did you think she was doing?” I asked.

“I didn’t have a clue. I yelled and yelled at her but it didn’t do any good. It was like she didn’t even see me or hear me. Maybe she didn’t.”

“Did you see anything or anyone else?”

“No, no one.”

Maggie said, “In your opinion, was Jilly Bartlett willfully driving the Porsche over the cliff?”

“It looked that way to me,” Rob said.

“Is there any doubt in your mind,” I said, “that Jilly was attempting to kill herself?”

Rob Morrison raised weary eyes to my face. He rubbed his fist over the thick dark whiskers on his chin. “No,” he said finally, “I’m really sorry, but in my opinion, she was trying to kill herself.”

“What about a mechanical problem that caused her to lose control?”

“Her car’s still twenty feet under water, but I didn’t see any signs of mechanical problems. No exploding tires, no smoke coming from the hood, no skid marks, nothing like that. I’m sorry, Mac.”

Half an hour later, Maggie and I were sitting in her car outside Paul and Jilly’s house.

“You look ready to fold in on yourself,” she said. “Why don’t you rest for a while before Paul comes home?”

“I don’t have a key to the house,” I said. “If it weren’t for the big tooth convention in town I’d be at the Buttercup B and B. So I didn’t think I’d be staying here with Paul.”

“So no key?”

“No key. I figured I’d just curl up on one of those chairs on their front porch.”

“You’re too big to do much curling,” she said, and drummed her gloved fingers on her steering wheel. “Actually, since we’re sharing information, why don’t you just tell me your ideas about Jilly? You know, the ideas you told me you didn’t understand. Then you can head for that porch chair.”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“Yes. What ideas, Mac?”

“Even if I tell you, you’ll think I’m a nut case, or you’ll just dismiss it because I was in the hospital when it happened, and you’ll think it was a psychotic reaction to a drug.”

“Try me.”

I looked away from her, then inward, back to that night. “I was in the hospital. I dreamed about Jilly being in trouble that night. Somehow I was with her when she went over the cliff.” I wanted to laugh myself at what I’d just said, but I just shook my head. “You think I’m psychotic, right?”

She said slowly, staring at me, “I don’t know what to believe. What did you do?”

“The next morning I called Paul right away, found out that my dream had actually happened. I’ve got no clue as to why I hooked up to Jilly like that, none.”

“Jesus,” she said.

“I had to come here.”

“You shouldn’t have left the hospital.”

“There wasn’t a choice. As it was, I waited another two days. The longest two days of my life.”

She didn’t say anything for a very long time. She rubbed her palm on her thigh. The crease in her tan pants was still sharp. The pants looked as fresh as if she’d just put them on.

“And you and Jilly never had any sort of link before this?”

I shook my head. “There are just us four kids now. Our folks have been dead for some time. Jilly’s three years older than me. I’m the youngest. We weren’t all that close really, both of us busy over the past several years, but that’s normal I guess. Then this damned dream happened. The thing is, I feel like something made Jilly go over that cliff—or someone. She was alone in that car, but she wasn’t, not really.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.”

“I know,” I said. “I know. At least it doesn’t yet. You want the kicker? At the end of the dream I heard a man
yelling.” I drew a deep breath. “It sounded like Rob Morrison. I recognized his voice just now.”

“Jesus.”

“There’s no way I can just accept this as a suicide attempt, not unless Jilly tells me it was.”

I sipped a rich Pinot Noir from the Gray Canyon vineyard in Napa Valley.

“You like the wine?” Paul asked.

“It’s darker than the deepest sin,” I said, gently swirling the wine in its crystal glass, watching it glide smoothly over the sides. “I met Rob Morrison today, the man who saved Jilly.”

“Yes,” Paul said. “I met Rob just after Jilly and I moved here. He gave me a speeding ticket. I hear you also spent time with Maggie Sheffield.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what to think of her just yet, but she seemed okay, once she got over her gut suspicions of me as an FBI agent.”

Paul sat forward, his hands clenching. “Watch out for her, Mac.”

“What does that mean?”

Paul shrugged his shoulders. “Please don’t think that I’m being harsh or a woman hater. I’ll just come out with it. She’s a bitch, a ball-buster.”

“I didn’t get that impression at all.” I cut another piece of the thick sirloin steak. It was even better than the lettuce and green bean salad at The Edwardian. “She wants to find out why Jilly went over that cliff. I appreciate that. You should too. What’d she do to you? Give you a speeding ticket like Morrison?”

“No, nothing like that. She wants to blame me for Jilly’s accident. She’s never liked me, believes I’m not good enough for Jilly. I don’t appreciate that at all.”

It was my turn to shrug. “She didn’t say a word about you, Paul. She was waiting here in her car when I drove up. She wanted to talk to you.”

“I’d have her fired if I could talk Geraldine into it. The woman’s a menace. She doesn’t like men in general, always giving them grief. Have you seen that damned gun she wears on her belt? It’s ridiculous. Edgerton is a small, peaceful little town. No one—man or woman—should be wearing a damned gun, but she does. Of course, I already spoke to her at the hospital after Jilly was admitted.”

“It’s not odd at all for a cop—male or female—to want to question someone more than once,” I said mildly, surprised that Paul would spew out that sexist crap. I’d gotten no hint at all that she didn’t like men. “In the excitement and stress of the moment, people tend to forget things. I’ll bet even you will be able to tell her more now than you did then.”

“About what, for God’s sake? Jilly went over that damned cliff and I don’t know why. She was a little depressed, but everyone’s down once in a while. That’s it, Mac. There’s nothing more.”

I took the last bite of my steak, sat back in my chair, rubbed my belly, and took another sip of my Pinot Noir. Paul looked pale, his skin drawn tight over his cheekbones. He looked ill, frightened. Or maybe I was just seeing myself in Paul. Lord knew I looked sick enough. “Are you certain there’s nothing else, Paul? What was Jilly depressed about? Was she taking any medication for the depression? Was she seeing anyone professionally?”

Paul laughed, a tight, constipated laugh. “Just listen to you. SuperCop with his load of questions. No, she wasn’t. I’m exhausted, Mac. I don’t want to talk
anymore. There’s nothing more to say. I’m going to bed.” He shoved back his chair and stood up. “Good night. I hope you don’t mind the double bed in the guest room. It’ll be a bit on the short side for you.”

“I’ll do just fine, Paul. I slept some this afternoon on that big front porch chair of yours. I think I’ll go to the hospital to see Jilly. Good night.”

Ford was here again, holding my hand like he had before. The warmth of his hand was indescribable, just like before. Thank God I hadn’t just imagined it that first time. I didn’t want to lose my brain the way I’d lost my body.

But when was before?

It could have been this morning or last year for all I knew. It was odd, but I had no sense of time at all. I knew what it was, but it had no meaning to me.

There were other shadowy creatures behind Ford, then finally they left, and we were alone.