Читать книгу Kill Me Again - Maggie Shayne - Страница 6

Today was the day Olivia Dupree was going to meet the only man on the planet who saw life the way she did—as one long series of disappointments, as a perilous journey best navigated entirely solo—for the very first time, and she didn’t have a thing to wear.

Not that what she wore really mattered. She wasn’t that sort of fan. Not only didn’t she think he would care what she looked like, but she would also be extremely disappointed if he did.

And yet she’d given in to the inner idiotic teenager that had never been her and stood on her bed, so she could gauge her appearance in the big mirror that was part of her dresser. She didn’t own a full-length mirror. She’d never thought she needed one and still held that opinion. Her ordinary style was pretty basic. For work she wore skinny, knee-length pencil skirts with matching blazers when it was cool, and sensible pumps with two-inch heels. She kept her dark hair in a tight bun and applied her makeup in the same minimalist fashion every weekday. College English students didn’t really care what their professor looked like, after all. And she wasn’t out to capture the attention of anyone who might.

On weekends, she traded the suits for jeans, the bun for a ponytail and the makeup for sunscreen.

Now she needed something in between. Something relaxed but attractive. Not seductive, just attractive. She was not a doe-eyed, adoring fan. But she’d never met Aaron Westhaven before, and she wanted to make a good impression.

Nothing more.

Freddy, her very best friend in the entire world—and the only specimen of the male gender, canine or otherwise, she trusted with her heart—tipped his massive head from one side to the other as he watched her standing somewhat unsteadily on the mattress. Standing was not what the bed was for, he seemed to be thinking.

She glanced down at him. “It’s okay, boy. I’ll get down momentarily. And standing on the bed is still verboten when it comes to you, okay?”

He heaved a giant sigh and lowered his two-hundred-pound, brindle-patterned bulk to the floor. He was only average size for an adult male English mastiff, but even she had trouble believing how big he was, and she’d had him for three years.

She hoped Mr. Westhaven didn’t have an aversion to dogs. He hadn’t written dogs into any of his novels, so she couldn’t be sure, but she suspected he would love Freddy. Because anyone with a heart would love Freddy, and Westhaven certainly had a heart.

She felt as if she knew him well. The reclusive author’s heartbreakingly tragic novels lined her shelves and spoke to her soul. They were her own guilty little secret. But they so reflected the way she felt about life and love. You really couldn’t depend on anyone but yourself. He seemed to understand that. God knew she did.

And now she was about to meet him—right here in Shadow Falls, Vermont.

She glanced at the combination she now wore, a pair of dressy black trousers and a lavender button-down blouse with a black blazer over it. Too stiff. She unbuttoned the blazer and thought she still looked too formal. Then she took it off and thought she looked too casual.

Frustrated, she threw the blazer down by her feet. Big mistake. Freddy saw that as an invitation, sprang upright and bounded onto the bed with a giant “woof” that reverberated through her chest. The mattress sank, the box springs squeaking in protest.

“I couldn’t see anything from the waist down,” she explained, as she tried to keep her balance. He bounced in response to her words, and the mattress tidal-waved beneath her. Laughing, she fell onto her butt among the rumpled covers, and Freddy moved over her, trying to lick her face as she laughed too hard to breathe. “You’re a lug. Get down!”

He obeyed immediately, then stood there waiting for her to join him. She got down, traded the trousers for a skirt, slid her feet into a pair of sandals and looked at the clock on the nightstand, then at her wristwatch. “Gee, Freddy. Mr. Westhaven is late.” She frowned as a little knot of worry tightened in her stomach.

“He’s really late.”

And she was concerned. Because though she admired him, she didn’t entirely trust him, simply because he was male. The fact that he’d agreed to be the surprise guest speaker at the English Department’s summer fundraiser had been nothing less than a stunner. She’d invited him with every expectation that he would decline, if he replied at all. The man never made public appearances. She’d been shocked—and a little bit suspicious—when he’d accepted the invitation.

But she’d chalked that up to her own man issues, and tried to count on him to show up as promised and not pull a no-show.

Maybe that had been a mistake.

Time would tell, she supposed. She brushed the dog hairs off her lavender blouse and exchanged it for a sleeveless silk shell in jade green. It would just have to do.

Samuel Overton wasn’t supposed to be driving at all without his mom in the car, much less driving a big Ford Expedition that wasn’t even theirs. But he was doing it anyway. He didn’t really know how she expected him not to. It was the Funkmaster Flex Edition, not just any SUV. And it was freakin’ sweet. Checkered flag design on the dashboard and console, unique black-and-red paint job, sound system to die for. Better yet, it had a 300 horsepower, 5.4-liter iron-block, 24-valve V-8 in it. Hell, this thing was a dream vehicle. Car-show worthy.

Besides, he didn’t have any reason to think his mom would find out.

Kyle Becker, Sam’s best friend, cranked up the music, and Sam shoved his hand away from the dial and turned it back down. “It’s distracting.”

“It’s Metallica. You don’t turn down Metallica.”

“Then turn it off.”

“No way. It’ll do you good to get used to distractions,” Kyle said, with the wisdom that came from being a licensed sixteen-year-old, and a whole six weeks older than Sam. “And while you’re at it, you might want to go faster than thirty-five.”

Sam pressed on the gas pedal, picked up speed and sent a cloud of dust up behind them. They’d taken a back road where there would be little traffic, so he could practice driving a car that had a little more guts than his mother’s minivan.

He felt a little ping and knew he was throwing up pebbles in addition to the dust cloud. Shaking his head, he hit the brakes and pulled over. “This is stupid. This dirt road’s no good for a cherry ride like this.”

“I told you, we’ll wash it before we take it back,” Kyle insisted. “No one will ever know.”

“Right, unless I end up dinging it or something. Professor Mallory will notice that when he comes back from Europe, even if Mom doesn’t.” Sam sighed, frustrated with himself as he slowly realized there was almost zero chance he was going to get away with this undetected. Mom always found out. “I must have been a moron to have let you talk me in to this.”

“No, you weren’t. You’ve got to practice on something, right? How are you going to pass your test next week if you don’t? And you can’t take your mother’s minivan when she has it parked outside the damn hospital all day every day.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t keep taking Mallory’s dream machine out, either. I mean, I shouldn’t. He left it with Mom for safekeeping while he’s away. I doubt this is what he had in mind.”

“Why the hell not? You’re not hurting it any. And he did ask your mom to drive it once in a while to keep it loose, right? You’re helping him, dude.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if it was your dream machine I was driving over a cow path,” Sam said. “If Mom finds out, she’ll have a freakin’ breakdown.”

“She’s not gonna find out.” Kyle said it as if he were offering his personal guarantee that it was true.

The dust was clearing, and Sam sighed. “Let’s just go. We still have to gas it up and wash it, and hope to hell nobody sees us driving it back.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “We probably better get on that. But we can take it straight back to your mom’s garage, bring the gas in a can and wash it right there, so we don’t draw notice. You want me to drive it back?”

Sam nodded. “Just in case we meet a cop or something,” he said. “Mom would be even more pissed if I got a ticket for driving on a learner’s permit without a licensed over-eighteen driver along.” He opened his door, getting out of the SUV to go around to the passenger side.

Kyle got out his own side, but then he just stood there, staring toward the side of the road a dozen or so yards ahead of them.

And then he went really tense all of a sudden, and his mouth opened.

“What?” Sam asked, trying to see what he was looking at.

Kyle lifted a finger and pointed. “Holy shit, is that a body?”

“No way!” Sam turned and spotted the lump that had caught his friend’s attention. Something that, he had to admit, looked like a person lay in the deep grass at the bottom of a patch of a slope.

The two boys headed for the human-shaped lump of clothing. When they got as close as they could without leaving the road, Kyle said, “Sure as shit, Sam, there’s a guy down there. And he isn’t moving.”

Elbowing his friend, Sam said, “Go see if he’s alive.” Then he tugged his cell phone out of his shirt pocket. “Screw you, you go see if he’s alive!”

“Fine.” Sam held out the phone. “You can call 911…and my mom at the hospital.”

Sighing, Kyle shook his head. “I’m not calling your mom. I’ll go see if he’s alive.”

When her telephone finally rang, Olivia had all but given up on her special guest. He was known to be rabid about his privacy. She should have trusted the instinct that told her to distrust his promise to appear. But at the time she’d been convinced that the director of special events would never agree to Aaron Westhaven’s terms anyway. No press, no announcement, no photographs, no hotel. But he had conceded to all of it. Westhaven had even accepted Olivia’s offer to let him stay in her guestroom, allowing him to forego any of the far more public local inns or B and Bs. The fundraiser was by invitation only, so the invited guests had been told only that it would feature a “secret guest speaker” guaranteed to be worth their donations. The tickets had sold out in record time.

And now it looked as if he wasn’t even going to show up.

She never should have believed he would keep his word. People seldom did. Especially men.

When the phone rang, her hopes climbed in spite of her doom-and-gloom realism, though she scolded them back into place even as she snatched the receiver up so fast that she didn’t even look at the caller ID first.

“Professor Dupree,” she answered.

A female voice came from the other end. “Hi, Olivia. It’s Carrie Overton. How are you?”

“Carrie?” It took her a moment to process the name, since she had been expecting her errant guest speaker to be calling with a huge apology and a fistful of excuses. Frowning, she held the phone away and looked at the ID screen. Shadow Falls General Hosp, it said, before it ran out of room. She lifted her brows and brought the phone back to her ear. “I’m fine, a little frustrated right now, but—is everything all right?”

Carrie was one of the few women she’d built something of a friendship with over the past sixteen years—and even then, only a casual one. Olivia knew it didn’t pay to let too many people get too close when you had as many secrets in your past as she did.

“I’m calling from—”

“The hospital, I know,” Olivia said, a tiny kernel of concern beginning to form in her chest. Carrie had no earthly reason to be calling her today—especially not from her job, which she took very seriously. “What’s going on?”

Carrie drew a breath. “Okay, it’s—I have a patient here. Male, mid-thirties maybe. Dark hair and eyes. Six feet or so, pretty buff. No ID.”

“Sounds like you’re looking for a home for a stray, Carrie.”

“Sort of. He had your business card in his pocket, so I thought you might be able to help us identify him.”

Olivia closed her eyes slowly as her mind fit Tab A into Slot B. God, was it Aaron Westhaven? Was that why he was so late? “Is there anything written on the back of the card?” she asked.

“Yeah. Your home phone number. Address, too. Do you know who he is?”

“I think so,” Olivia whispered. It was him. It had to be. She didn’t give anyone her home address. Ever. But she’d made an exception for the semifamous recluse with the direct line into her brain. “Is he all right? I mean how bad—”

“I really can’t discuss that—”

“Right, right.” Rules, regs, confidentiality. Carrie wasn’t going to breech protocol and risk her medical license. Not over the phone, anyway.

“Can you come over here?” Carrie asked.

Olivia nodded hard, just as if Carrie could see the motion. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said, then hung up the phone without another word. She headed for the door, the issue of what to wear entirely forgotten, and grabbed her handbag on the way.

Freddy ran ahead of her and waited by the door, tail wagging.

She crouched, but only a little, and cupped his great big, flappy jowled face between her palms. “You have to stay here, Fred. I’m going to the hospital, and they don’t allow dogs there, so you have to stay here. But I promise I won’t be long.”

He sighed heavily and lowered his big head, just as if he understood every word.

She kept hold of him, though, and kissed him right on the snout. “Don’t be sad. I’ll be back.”

He got up and plodded away, sinking onto his super-size doggy bed as if his heart was breaking.

Olivia took momentary pity on her best friend, and snapped on the TV, tuning it to Animal Planet. Freddy seemed marginally placated. Then she tossed the remote onto the highest shelf in the room to keep him from eating it and headed for her hybrid SUV.

Fifteen minutes later she was standing in front of the nurses’ desk at Shadow Falls General, asking for Dr. Carrie Overton. A hand on her shoulder made her stop in midquestion, and she turned to see a face she knew, though not the one she’d been expecting. She stared up at the tall cop. “Bryan. I almost didn’t recognize you in your uniform. Must seem good to have it back, hmm?”

“Better than you’d believe,” Bryan Kendall said. “How have you been?”

“Good. Good.”

“And that horse you call a dog?”

“Moping that he didn’t get to ride along, but otherwise good. You and Dawn should stop by and visit him.” Then she frowned and asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are,” he said.

That reply made her brows go up. “The police are involved in this?”

Bryan nodded, his face serious. “Yeah. I’ll explain what I can while we wait for Dr. Overton. Right now she’s busy reaming out her kid for taking the car without permission.” He nodded to the left, and Olivia saw the stunning redhead, wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope, apparently in midlecture. Her audience consisted of two teenage boys with their heads hanging low.

Carrie glanced up, and Bryan beckoned her over. She pointed sternly, directing the boys to a pair of chairs, then called over her shoulder as she came through the glass door, “Do not leave that spot until I come back.”

Then she took a breath, smoothed her fiery curls and approached them. “Thanks for coming, Olivia. Did you fill her in yet, Officer Kendall?”

Olivia shook her head as Bryan said, “No, not yet.” Then, with a sympathetic look at the boys in the other room, he added, “You know Sam and Kyle probably saved the guy’s life by finding him, right?”

“That’s no excuse,” Carrie said. She looked at Olivia again. “The mystery patient is this way. Will you take a look at him for me?”

“I don’t know what good it will do,” Olivia began, following as Carrie walked briskly down the hall, stopping outside a door with the number 206 on it.

“Why not?” Carrie asked.

There was a window beside the door, the blind open just enough to reveal the man in the bed. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his head swathed in bandages. “Because I’ve never actually seen—Oh.” Olivia lost her words somehow, and her breath with them, as her gaze slid from the white bandages on the man’s head to his face. God, he was beautiful. She hadn’t expected that.

“Do you know him?” Bryan asked.

“Not by sight,” Olivia replied. She thought she ought to face Bryan while speaking to him, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the bed. His were open, and they were soft eyes. Their color was green or maybe brown. She couldn’t tell from this distance. But they were dark and striking, as was the way they turned down slightly at the outside corners, giving him an inherently sad expression. And while his age surprised her—as did her instant reaction to his good looks—the pain and stoic, steadfast endurance expressed by those eyes didn’t shock her in the least. She’d expected him to be strong, she realized.

“Olivia?” Bryan prompted.

She blinked and cleared her throat. “I’ve never actually met him before. But I’m fairly certain I know who he is, and that he was on his way to see me.”

Bryan tensed a little. He was one of the very few people who knew Olivia’s secrets. And inviting a stranger to her home wasn’t something he would expect her to do.

“It’s a long story,” she began.

“Just give us the digest version for now,” he said.

She nodded. “He’s a writer, an author, as well-known for being reclusive as for his work, which is, to put it mildly, brilliant. His name is Aaron Westhaven, although as closely as he guards his privacy, it’s probably a pseudonym. He doesn’t do public appearances, doesn’t even allow himself to be photographed, and doesn’t want anyone to know he’s in town.”

“Why was he coming to see you?” Bryan asked.

“I invited him to speak at a fundraiser at the university.”

“And he agreed?” Looking more coplike than ever, Bryan was frowning now.

“Yes, he did,” Olivia said. “I was stunned, really. But there were strict stipulations. We were doing this as a secret-guest, by-invitation-only thing. He insisted on no press, no publicity. Just a private lecture, with wine and cheese and him as the guest speaker. He was supposed to stay at my place—more private than a motel or an inn.”

“And you agreed to that?”

She met Bryan’s eyes, saw the disbelief in them. “It was my idea. And the university agreed to every condition. Getting him at all was a real coup, Bryan. He’s special. His work…it’s meant a lot to me. I even used to write to him. Not often. I mean, I’m not a drooling groupie or anything.”

“I would never mistake you for a drooling groupie, Olivia,” he said dryly.

She acknowledged that with a nod. “He never wrote back, probably never even saw my letters. But still, I felt—” She turned her gaze back to the man in the bed. “I felt as if I knew him in some small way, through his work. I felt we were on common ground about some things.”

“Uh-huh,” Bryan said, the way you say it when pretending you understand something you actually don’t.

Olivia read his face, then frowned, turning to Carrie as what should have been an obvious question occurred to her. “He’s conscious. Why aren’t you asking him all these questions?”

Carrie lowered her head. “We have asked him. But he can’t give us any answers. He, um…well, he says he doesn’t remember.”

Olivia felt her eyes widen. “You’re saying he has amnesia?”

Carrie bit her lower lip and nodded deeply.

“You think it’s for real?” Bryan asked. “I thought that kind of thing only happened in daytime dramas.”

“I don’t have any reason not to believe him,” Carrie said. “I’m sure it’s temporary. I hope so, at least. Amnesia is rare, and permanent amnesia, really unusual. Then again, with a head injury like this, it’s impossible to tell.”

Olivia looked at him with his head all wrapped, and more obvious questions came to her, the first of which was, “What happened to him? Car accident?”

Bryan said, “He was shot.”

Her head snapped to the side fast, and she searched Bryan’s face.

“He was shot in the back of the head from fairly close range.”

“Like…an execution?” Olivia whispered.

“If he didn’t have a steel plate in the back of his skull, he’d be a dead man,” Carrie explained. “As it is, there was remarkably little damage. It’s amazing, really, how lucky he was.”

“You can say that again,” Bryan agreed. “And if your son hadn’t been practicing his driving skills on that deserted back road, we might not have found him in time.”

He was, Olivia thought, obviously trying to help the kid out. Not knowing Carrie Overton as well as she did, he wouldn’t know how much she adored her son. He probably feared she would be too hard on him—which was, to Olivia, kind of funny. Or would have been under other circumstances. If anything, Carrie tended to let Sam off too easily.

Carrie rolled her blue, blue eyes. “He insists Kyle was driving.”

“Well, he’s not stupid, and he doesn’t want a ticket,” Bryan said. “Being that he’s taking his driving test in—what did you tell me—a week? Yeah, I’m sure he was trying to get some practice in. But since I can’t prove it, I’m not going to ticket him.”

“That’s quite all right, Officer,” Carrie said. “Because I intend to murder him.”

Or at least ground him for a weekend, Olivia thought.

“The question remains,” Bryan said. “Is this man the reclusive author Olivia believes he is?”

“May I see the card you found on him?” Olivia asked.

Carrie pulled the business card from her breast pocket and handed it over. It was smudged with black.

“What’s all over it?” Olivia asked, wrinkling her nose.

“I had to dust it,” Bryan said. “No usable prints. It’s useless to us.”

Olivia flipped the smudged card over, saw her own handwriting on the back and nodded. “Well, this is the card I sent to Aaron Westhaven. I have no doubt about that.” She looked into the room again, and this time found the man staring back at her, his expression curious now that he’d noticed the three of them looking at him as if he were a specimen in a zoo.

“Maybe he knew this could happen,” Olivia said, very softly, almost speaking to herself. “Maybe that’s why he’s always been so private, because he knew someone might come after him if he were out in the open.”

Bryan met her eyes, and they shared a silent exchange. He knew that was how she felt. He knew there was someone who would probably kill her if he ever found out she was still alive. He knew she wasn’t even using her own name, and hadn’t been for the past sixteen years. And he probably thought she was projecting.

She shook her head. “So what do I do but convince him to come out into the open, and the minute he does, he gets shot. God, I feel terrible.”

“You didn’t convince him. You invited him. You didn’t even expect him to accept. And he was free to say no,” Bryan said.

Carrie nodded her agreement. “Will you talk to him, Olivia?” she asked. “He’s completely in the dark here, and none too friendly—though I don’t blame him, given his situation. Even if you’ve never met him, you know more about him than any of the rest of us do. It has to help a little.”

“Of course I’ll talk to him.” Olivia held the man’s steady gaze through the glass. “I’ve been waiting years for the chance to talk to him.” His eyes were fixed on hers, and they were intense. A little chill whispered up her spine. She should have known he would be beautiful. Anyone who could write the way he did had to be beautiful inside and out.

“All right, you go talk to him, then,” Bryan said. “Call me if anything comes up. Meanwhile, I’m going to get back to the station, make some calls, figure out who his publisher is, or his editor, or his whatever. There must be someone, somewhere, who knows this guy.”

“Wait.” Olivia turned to Bryan. “Am I right in assuming you didn’t catch the person who did this to him?”

Lowering his head, Bryan pushed a hand through his hair. “We don’t have a clue. Not even a bullet casing. The bastard took it with him.”

Olivia was worried by that. “Mr. Westhaven doesn’t want publicity about his visit here. And I can’t help but think it’s pretty obvious now that he has good reason for that. Can we keep this quiet, at least for now?”

Bryan nodded. “I think that’s probably best. I’ll talk to the chief, but I expect he’ll agree. Dr. Overton?”

“Confidentiality is what we do best around here, Officer Kendall. As far as I’m concerned, he’s still Patient John Doe.”

“Can I keep this?” Olivia asked, holding up the business card.

“Yeah. Go on in. I’ll call you later,” Bryan said.

“I’d like a word with you, Olivia, on your way out,” Carrie said.

Olivia nodded and turned to the patient-room door. Her heart was lodged in her throat—because how was she supposed to anticipate her first conversation with someone she’d admired so much for so long, especially under these conditions? She was nervous, not wanting to make things worse for him. But she supposed any information would be welcome, so she opened the door and walked into his room, then crossed to his bedside.

“Hi,” she said. “My name is Olivia. And I’m pretty sure yours is Aaron.”