Читать книгу House Of Secrets - Tracy Montoya - Страница 11

“Look.” Emma yanked open the door of the flashy red sports car with such force, a few locks of her hair flipped forward into her face. With one no-nonsense flick of her neck, she sent them all flying back out of harm’s way. “I don’t know what you’re doing here—again—but you have exactly one minute to explain yourself.” As if barely escaping a violent attack and turning thirty-five-which-is-almost-forty, weren’t enough, now she apparently had a stalker on her hands. Or her house had a stalker. Either way, it was bloody uncomfortable finding some unforthcoming stranger in her personal space every time she stepped outside, and she was determined to find out what on earth it was he wanted, even if she had to keep him from driving off by taking a screwdriver to that flashy car of his. Which probably got terrible gas mileage and had a poor emissions record.

The man she knew only as “Joe” scrubbed a hand across the side of his face, pushing his glossy black hair briefly off his temple. Wearing what appeared to be his trademark dazed and confused expression, he rooted his attention firmly on the house. Even when she stepped directly into his line of vision, he gave the impression that he hadn’t noticed and was looking right through her. She wasn’t sure what was more unforgivable—his lack of manners or his lack of fear in the face of her anger. She scared the St. X football team into doing their homework, for heaven’s sake. Without Cliff’s Notes.

But still he refused to even look at her. His mouth had dropped open slightly, and for a moment he reminded her vaguely of that young guy Diane Lane had had an affair with in that Unfaithful DVD Celia had made her rent a while back.

Narrowing her eyes, Emma rattled the house keys she held in one hand. Just because he looked like a hedonistic foreign guy with a thing for older women stuck in ruts didn’t make him any less of a potential threat, but she was determined to get to the bottom of his behavior.

“Sir,” she said, “I am speaking to you. What are you doing here?”

He unfolded his tall, lean frame from the front seat of the sports car. She stepped back instinctively. “I don’t think I have an answer for you,” he said slowly, his gaze remaining on her mango-and-burnt-orange Victorian home.

Emma’s keys jangled as she looped the key ring around her forefinger. “Then perhaps you’d best concentrate until you come up with one.” She raised her hand until a small canister attached to the key chain dangled before his whiskey-colored eyes. “This is pepper spray—the kind with UV dye in it, which will brand you as a marauding psychotic while the police track you down,” she continued. “And if you don’t answer my question soon, I will spray the whole canister on your head, and then I will beat you with its empty metal shell.”

He blinked, then finally turned to look at her. For the second time that afternoon, his shuttered, cool facade snapped back into place, leaching the warmth and vulnerability out of his light eyes. “Look, lady,” he said. “There is no marauding. Do you see any marauding going on?”

Emma’s teeth clenched tightly with an audible click. She was just dying for an excuse to spray him.

“And furthermore—” He cut himself off, narrowing his eyes at the can of pepper spray she held. “You know, that’s not a good brand.”

She felt her anger slip a bit. “What?”

“That pepper spray. Sure, they say it doesn’t wash off for three days, but in field tests, they found that a little peroxide will do the trick in about five minutes.”

“But—”

“You want the good stuff, you really ought to order through the Spies-R-Us catalog.” He closed the car door behind him and leaned back against it. “That stuff lasts for a week. At least. Can’t even sandpaper it off.”

Feeling out of sorts, Emma double-checked the safety lock on the pepper spray to keep from shooting herself in the eye and stuffed it in the cargo pocket of her beige silk pants. What kind of stalker gave you self-defense tips? Maybe she should have been more patient. Maybe she should stop behaving like a paranoid jerk and figure out whether the man needed help. After all, if he’d wanted to harm her, he certainly could have done so last night, after he’d gone all Bruce Lee on her would-be attacker.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “I apologize for threatening you with this inferior brand of pepper spray. Despite your penchant for skulking in my yard, you saved my life in that alley last night, for which I never got a chance to properly thank you. So. Thank you.”

“I don’t skulk,” he muttered under his breath.

“What are you looking for, Joe?” she asked quietly. He looked up then, and something vulnerable and hurting flashed across his face. Maybe her asking was a reckless move, but he looked like he so desperately needed…something.

“You!” a deep voice boomed behind them.

Both of them turned their heads simultaneously toward the sound. A few feet away stood her neighbor, Louis Bernard, known to the neighborhood kids as Crazy Louie.

“Louis.” Emma padded across the lush grass toward where Louis was half-hidden behind a spray of night-blooming jasmine. “Is everything okay?”

But he wouldn’t even look at her. His entire being was focused on Joe. Jeez, no one paid any attention to her anymore.

Louis drew his silver caterpillar eyebrows together and rocked back and forth on bare, eggshell-white feet, which poked out from the hems of his brown knit pants. He’d missed a button on his shirt, so the right side of his collar stuck upward a little higher than the left, giving him a slightly hunchbacked look. His fingers were curled into the pages of the latest L.A. Times, which he crumpled against his chest.

“You go home!” he yelled at Joe with a childlike emphasis on each word.

“Louis, it’s all right.” Emma put a hand on one of Louis’s bony arms, rubbing his thin bicep in a manner she hoped was soothing. “This is just Joe. He’s my friend.”

Louis swayed back and forth in time to music only he could hear, tufted locks of his silver and brown hair bobbing up and down with the movement. “Joe needs to go home,” he said, a little more softly.

“He’ll go home soon,” Emma replied. Louis was the only son of her elderly neighbor, Jasmine Bernard, and although he was fifty-something, Jasmine had told her he had the emotional maturity of a child. He was also usually a gentle soul, not prone at all to screaming at her guests. Not that Joe was a guest or anything.

“I know Joe. I know Joe. I know Joe,” Louis chanted.

Louis rocked and crumpled his newspaper, breathing as if he’d just sprinted to the ocean and back. At a loss, Emma continued rubbing his arm, until he finally started to calm beneath her touch. She glanced up briefly to find Joe staring intently at the two of them, as if trying to recall whether Louis really did know him. Obviously, Joe wasn’t going home any time soon—he’d barely even blinked in response to Louis’s rant.

Perhaps sending Louis away was her best option, to keep the poor man from getting too upset. “Louis, do you think your mother might want her newspaper?” she asked gently.

“I know Joe. I know Joe. Joe’s newspaper,” he chanted in response.

“Maybe you can go give it to her, and then come back after dinner and have some juice with me.”

Louis grew quiet, though he continued to rock on his heels, then nodded.

“Come have some juice later, all right, Louis? After Joe goes home? You know I’m always happy to see you.” Jasmine was always diligent about not letting Louis stay at her house for more than half an hour, but Emma would have gladly welcomed him for longer visits. Through some miracle and despite his disability, he played the piano with a virtuoso’s touch, and she loved to hear him practice Mozart on the small antique upright in her sitting room. He’d been in a car accident as a child that had left him in his current mental state, but somehow the talent that was to be his had been left intact.

“Okay,” Louis said, staring at something on the ground only he could see.

“Great, I’ll see you later tonight.” She gave him an encouraging pat toward his house.

Louis dropped his newspaper and clutched at the buttons on his shirt. “Come to Joe’s house tonight,” he muttered as he shuffled home. “Play in the tower with Joe and Daniel.” And then he hopped up the steps to his house and disappeared inside with a slam of the screen door.

“Joe’s house?” Emma scooped the newspaper Louis had left behind off the ground and folded it carefully until it was the size of a small notebook. She turned to face the man leaning against the car behind her. The “tower” Louis had referred to was most likely the turret on the east side of her house, which left her with only one question: “Who’s Daniel?”

“No clue.” He shrugged, though she saw something flicker in his eyes. Obviously Louis’s words weren’t as meaningless to him as he’d have her think. “You were really good with him, you know?” he said.

It was her turn to shrug. “He’s sweet. I’ve never seen him yell like that. Does he know you from somewhere?”

He shook his head, his brow furrowing as the familiar confused look replaced the cocky one. “I don’t know.”

“Do you know anyone in this area?”

Pause. “I’m not sure.”

“Did you grow up here?” she persisted.

His mouth flattened, and he flipped a palm into the air. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t—”

Joe abruptly spun on his heel and walked a couple of paces away from her, his broad shoulders heaving as he inhaled deeply. A moment later, he turned back, his hands shoved into the pockets of his black, flat-front trousers. “I know I might have alarmed you coming here, and I’m only telling you this because I can’t promise I won’t do it again,” he began. “But something—” He took a deep breath, and then dove right in. “I don’t remember the first ten years of my life. Not school, not my parents, not anything.” He clenched his teeth and worked his jaw for a moment. “Something happened… It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

He leaned against the side of his car, crossing his arms as he stared blankly at her house. “All I know is that the minute I landed in this godforsaken city, something kept calling to me, bringing me to this house. And I wish for the life of me I knew what it was so I could go back to blocking it out.”

He pushed himself off the car in an explosive movement. “It’s right here,” he said, tapping his right temple with his fingers, “and I can’t see it. I can’t remember, but it’s right on the edge of my brain. That man—” he gestured in the direction of Louis’s house “—he knew me. I can feel it. But I have no idea who he is or whether I’ve seen him before.”

Emma rolled the newspaper in her hands, feeling an almost irresistible urge to touch him, to comfort him somehow. But he was a stranger, and though her gut told her she wasn’t in any danger, she didn’t want to invite trouble. In the awkward silence that followed, she unfurled the newspaper, which was dated a couple days ago, and glanced at the front page. To her surprise, the bottom right photo was a clear shot of Joe’s face scowling back at her, with a caption identifying him as one José Javier Lopez, a private detective who was receiving the National Association of Private Investigator’s P.I. of the Year award for his work on several cases about which she didn’t have time to read right now. Emma rolled the paper back up again, figuring now wasn’t the time to bring up his fifteen minutes of fame in L.A. “Do you have any family?” she asked. “Someone who can help you put together the pieces?”

“There’s no one,” he said abruptly in a tone that told her he wasn’t going to discuss that topic any further.

Darn it. First, she’d nearly gotten herself violently assaulted last night, and now she was standing here, in front of a total stranger who had been making unscheduled appearances in her front yard for the past two days, and instead of calling the police, all she wanted to do was help him. But before she could do or say anything more, Joe reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a business card, which he held out for her to take.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I didn’t mean to scare you any more than I already have. My name is Joe Lopez, and I’m a private investigator. I work mostly missing persons cases up in the Salinas Valley.”

“Emma Jensen Reese,” she responded automatically as she took the card from him. Like the newspaper caption, the card also identified him as José Javier Lopez, but he obviously preferred the more Anglicized “Joe.” “Mr. Lopez—” she began, and then stopped.

He was standing at the top of the stairs directly in front of her door—her unlocked door—and he’d gotten there so quickly and quietly she hadn’t even noticed. Before Emma could ask him what he was doing, Joe pushed the heavy wood and beveled glass door inward, stepping inside without so much as a “May I?”

She really was going to have to do something about these annual cravings for adventure before they got her killed.

THE DOOR SWUNG SHUT behind him with an audible click, bringing Joe back to reality. Somehow, he’d ended up inside Emma Jensen Reese’s house, and Emma Jensen Reese was apparently still outside. And for all he knew, he’d teleported there, because he definitely couldn’t remember letting himself in. One thing he did know—Emma Jensen Reese was probably calling the police at that very moment.

Knowing he should go back outside, Joe backed up until his body bumped gently against the door—but as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t make himself leave. His eyes took in the muted burgundies and golds of the antique runners lining the hardwood hallway stretching out in front of him, the fluffy white furniture and the rich red walls, the rows of gold-framed photos and artwork. He noted with passing interest that his homeboy Diego Rivera’s art was prominently displayed in more than one frame. It was a pretty house, an obviously much-loved house. It definitely wasn’t a house that should make his hands feel clammy or his body want to lose its lunch.

But it did.

He focused on the rounded shapes and brilliant colors of Rivera’s “Flower Carrier,” knowing somehow that by doing so he was trying to avoid looking at the staircase.

Staircase. Now why would an innocuous little staircase frighten a big bad P.I. from San Francisco? Just to prove his masculinity—to himself if not to anyone else—Joe turned his head and scowled at the staircase. It was just your basic grand Victorian stairway—wide, wooden, flanked by two ornately carved newel posts.

And somehow, he knew that just behind it lay the doorway to a room he didn’t want to see.

And then the world tilted on its axis. Really not wanting Emma Jensen Reese to find him doing a face-plant in the middle of her sitting room, he focused his entire being on the newel post nearest him. The air around it clouded, blurred, until all he could see was the smooth, round contours of the carved horse’s head. He reached out with a swift, jerky motion and closed his now shaking fingers around the post. It felt familiar.

Turn your head, baby.

Snatching his hand away, Joe whirled around, searching blindly for the door.

Close your eyes.

Out. He had to get out. But his body wouldn’t cooperate, and he felt himself being sucked backward into the darkness. He widened his eyes and hurled his weight to the right until he felt the solid connection of the wall against his shoulder. Glass-covered pictures of women holding bunches of calla lilies rattled in their frames from the impact.

Just get out. Just don’t remember. Don’t ever remember.

And then the front door swung open, and Emma stood before him, haloed by the golden light of a California Indian summer afternoon. “What are you—?” she began, her voice sharper than he’d remembered, but then she took two steps forward with those impossibly long legs of hers and caught him around the arms “Are you okay?”

Before he could stop himself, Joe let his forehead drop down to rest on her thin shoulder. A minute. He just needed a minute and then he could talk to her and pretend everything was perfectly normal. He breathed in the warm, peaceful scent of the shampoo she used, and, just for a moment, he was himself again. Don’t ever remember.

“Joe? You know, the only reason I’m not calling the police is that picture of you in the paper. I figure the P.I. of the Year isn’t highly likely to be a psychopath,” she said, though her smoky, Marlene Dietrich voice had softened and her hands circled around his back in a soothing motion, much like she’d used with good old Louis earlier. “Let me take you into the living room, and you can sit—”

The mere mention of the living room was enough to make him lose it, and he pulled out of her arms to lurch toward the door. Just a few steps and he’d be outside, in his car, away from that house, this city, and the questioning eyes of Emma Jensen Reese.

Bursting through the sun-filled opening, he raced down the steps two at a time, feeling a trickle of clammy sweat slither down the side of his face to trail inside the collar of his shirt. He tried to get back to the Honda, but he only made it as far as the fat little palm tree near the edge of the walkway.

Joe fell against the tree, and he wrapped one arm around the thick trunk to steady himself, his stomach heaving as his body tried to purge the fragments of memory buried so deep inside, they burned.

EMMA FOLLOWED Joe through the doorway, pausing at the top of the stairs while he stumbled through her yard to get sick in the white sage she’d just planted around her baby palms a few weeks ago. He might be NAPI’s Investigator of the Year, but he sure was odd.

She hovered over the top step, wondering whether she should go to him or not. He might be odd, but he was also obviously in pain, and not the physical kind. Maybe she could help.

And maybe it was none of her business. Number one, he had emotional baggage. Number two, he kept appearing on her doorstep and then running away again. Number three, he had emotional baggage. Number four, she couldn’t help but think that he was good-looking, even while he got sick in her flower bed, and there was no way that would end well. Plus, she quite simply didn’t have time for this, for him.

With that, she turned and went back inside, although sheer guilt allowed her exactly half a second to ignore Joe before it propelled her to the downstairs linen closet. Reaching inside, she took out a fluffy beige washcloth, went to the front bathroom to dampen it with cold water and headed back outdoors.

Joe was still there.

As she walked toward him, she noticed a black SUV with half-tinted windows sitting across the street and a few car lengths away from Joe’s Honda. Someone was sitting inside it, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching her.

Ignoring the prickle of uneasiness she felt at the thought, Emma looked away. Better to deal first with the regurgitating evil you know than the potential spying evil you didn’t.

Squaring her shoulders, Emma marched toward Joe’s bent form, folding the cool washcloth and, when she reached him, placing it on the tanned skin at the back of his neck. She kept her hand over the cloth until his dry heaves stopped.

Swiping a hand across his mouth, Joe reached behind his head to touch the washcloth she was holding against his skin. She let her fingers slide away, and he pulled the cloth around his neck and let it rest in his hand. “Thank you,” he said simply.

“Mmm.” She took the now lukewarm cloth from him.

“I’m really sorry, Ms. Reese,” he began.

“It’s Emma,” she interjected, not bothering to correct the “Ms.” “And it’s all right. Really.”

In the awkward silence that followed, Joe reached into his jacket pocket and rattled his keys. “Well, I—”

“Look,” she said, unable to shake the feeling that he shouldn’t go. Not yet. “Whether you remember or not, there’s obviously something about you and this house. Is there anything I can do to—?”

“No!” Joe snapped, then winced. “I’m sorry. I mean, no, thank you. I just need to get back to San Francisco.”

So he’d go away, out of her yard and out of her life. Just like that.

She licked her lips, her tongue sliding across the smooth layer of beeswax lip balm she’d applied earlier. “Well. Good luck to you, then.” She tucked the newspaper under her arm and held out the hand not holding the clammy washcloth for him to shake.

He took it, her slender fingers almost disappearing inside his large, brown hand. “Same to you,” he said.

Just for a moment, Emma let herself look, really look, at the man. She inhaled, breathing in the same air, standing in the same space, feeling the warmth of his fingers. He was a stranger. He was leaving. She’d never see him again, and, as had been the case with countless strangers whose lives had intersected hers for small moments in time, that should have been perfectly fine. But it wasn’t. Something felt wrong. He wasn’t supposed to leave. There was something unfinished here, and somehow she knew it was important that he tie up the giant loose end in his life.

She had to tell him.

Emma exhaled. Her fingers slipped out of his. “Okay, then. Take care.”

He nodded. “You, too.”

He gave her a small half smile, his light eyes crinkling slightly at the corners, and then turned away.

Just like that.

Okay. Back to the house we go.

As she was about to turn away from him, she noticed him jerk around suddenly to face her once more. Her eyes followed his line of sight, and she noticed a small hole in the wooden siding of her house. Had that been there before? She stepped forward and reached up to touch it, when another appeared right next to her hand, splintering the wood with its impact. What—?

“Get down!” she heard him shout behind her. And then something hit her in the small of her back with the force of a rock avalanche.