Memory of Murder

why did you say we’d go to the barbecue? You realize, we’re going to have to keep up the charade of us being a couple all afternoon. And what about your daughter? What’s she going to think?”

“About what?”

“Well, me, obviously. The fact that we’re supposedly uh, dating…”

“She’s ten, Lindsey. Who I happen to be dating is no concern of hers.”

“Oh,” she said, arching her eyebrows at him, “so are you dating someone?” Before he could answer, she gave an elaborate shrug and added, “I just figured, you know, since we’re supposed to be dating, I ought to know what I’m getting into.”

He grinned to show his appreciation of the small gotcha, and she grinned back. And it occurred to him, as it did each time he was with her, that he was enjoying himself entirely too much, given the nature of their relationship.

He coughed and folded his arms and planted his feet, adopting a classic cop stance to remind himself again what that relationship was. “Look, it’s the perfect opportunity dumped right in my lap. You bet I’m going to take it. I need to talk to your father, you don’t want me to talk to him-not like a cop, and I understand that. So, this is my chance to talk to him without arousing his suspicions. Casual conversation-you know. I’m in a relationship with his daughter, what could be more natural than to want to know more about her family? I’m sure he’s going to want to know all about me, so, I tell him about growing up in Philly, and I ask him where he grew up. It’s tit for tat.” He smiled at her, not with amusement. “Plus, it’s a great opportunity for you to show me those high school yearbooks you were telling me about.”

She gazed at him, not saying anything, eyes fringed in darkness, reflecting the light. Then she nodded and murmured, “Okay, you’re right. Of course.” He could hear the faint plink of her swallow.

“Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking, see if I come up with anything. Are you going to be seeing your mother this week?”

“Of course. I go almost every day after work.”

“Okay, then you keep trying to get her to remember things about her dreams. Let me know immediately if you get anything. Anything-no matter how small or insignificant it might seem to you. Call me.”

She nodded, then gave a small laugh. “So, I guess the snow thing wasn’t much help, was it?”

“Don’t say that.” His voice had gone low and husky, entirely without his permission. “You never know.”

And then, because just saying good-night to her and walking away didn’t seem like enough, he reached out and brushed the bridge of her nose with his thumb.

He heard a soft intake of breath, and that moment in the car, when he’d leaned over and kissed her as part of a charade, came thundering back into his consciousness. A stampede of images, emotions, sensations, things he hadn’t had time then to process, hurtled through his mind and for a few seconds, trampled out reason. He was left with a churned-up mess of sensory impressions-soft lips and warm, damp skin and the scent of a clean woman’s sweat, and the hint-just the hint-of what it would be like to have those mingling, merging, melding with his own amid the thumping, pulsing rhythms of joined bodies and dueling heartbeats.

He shook his head, shaking off the images and a hint of dizziness. “So,” he said in a voice still raspy with the residue of the stampede, “I’ll call you. And see you on Saturday.” He left her standing there, walked to his car, got in and managed to get his car turned around and heading back through the automatic gate without clipping a shrub or running over the curb.

Entirely too much, he told himself as he bumped a right turn into the street. Considering the nature of our relationship.

Lindsey stood on a wooden deck that looked out across barrancas lush with tropical vegetation to the haze where the continent ended and the Pacific Ocean began. Laughter and bits of conversation drifted up from below, from the people gathered on the flagstone patio that surrounded the free-form swimming pool, and it occurred to her that this exact same scene had been played out in this exact same place how many dozens of times? Hundreds?

Her dad, wearing an apron her mom had bought for him during a trip to Las Vegas, the one printed to look like a tuxedo, stood next to the huge stainless steel gas grill, holding a barbecue fork in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. He was chatting with the next-door neighbors, Barbara and Evan Norwood. Lindsey had known the Norwoods forever, had babysat their kids. Mrs. Norwood had taught her piano lessons, until, mercifully, it had become obvious to all concerned that Lindsey possessed no musical talent whatsoever.

The view, the images, the people, the smells-so little had changed. Okay, no more smell of charcoal briquettes and lighter fluid since the acquisition of the fancy gas grill, and where the portable soccer net had once straddled the place where the pool deck met lawn, a tall patio heater now stood. On the deck itself, the litter of plastic pool toys had been replaced by the large pots of flowers Mom had planted last spring.

That was my life, my childhood-soccer and swimming and babysitting and piano lessons, and Dad cooking dinner on the grill. I know I was lucky to have such a happy childhood. And I know I’m not a child any longer, but what’s wrong with staying close to your parents as you get older? Isn’t that the way families should be?

Should be.

But no family is perfect. Is it? And if that’s true, and mine seemed to be perfect, how can that be real? What if it was all just…an illusion?

As if he’d heard her thoughts, felt her doubts, her father looked up just then and waved the beer bottle, then blew her a kiss.

She drew a shaky breath and blew him one back. That, at least, she knew was real. That her father loved her she had never doubted.

About her mother, she wasn’t so sure.

Mom…did you love me? Why was there always that distance between us? You never let me get really close to you. Now I wonder…was it because there has always been another child, the little boy of your dreams-Jimmy-standing between us?

She’d been aware, growing up, of the reserve that sometimes seemed like coldness on her mother’s part, but it hadn’t seemed all that important then. Maybe because her dad had always been there to make up for any lack of affection, and to explain her mom’s coldness in a way that had made her understand and forgive.

Now, my mother is leaving me forever, for real. And the last thing she ever does for me is to make me doubt the one thing I’ve always known I could count on-my dad.

A wave of resentment swept over her, but it receded quickly and when it did, it left behind the feeling she had so often these days. That awful stomach-churning feeling of a child abandoned, lost and alone.

How can I know who to trust now?

She realized, then, that she hadn’t been truthful with herself or with Alan when she’d told him she wasn’t doing this for herself. She did need to know. Or she doubted she would ever be able to believe or trust in anything again.

Down below on the patio, people were stirring, rearranging, the chatter of conversation rising with expectation and punctuated with jovial cries of greeting. Guests were arriving, the newcomers emerging through the open garage doors onto the patio, and her dad was moving to meet them, sweeping them with him into the center of the cluster of friends and neighbors already present.

Lindsey’s heart gave a peculiar kick when she saw Alan come into view. It was the first time she’d seen him dressed like this-in casual clothes, jeans and light blue short-sleeved polo shirt, a navy blue windbreaker hooked on one finger and slung carelessly over one shoulder, his dark hair hidden by a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap. But her mind insisted on flashing back to the last time she’d seen him, when he’d still been wearing his dress shirt and tie, and she felt again the smooth cotton fabric against her skin where he’d held her so closely, and smelled the scent of laundry detergent mixed with the other unknown things that made up his own particular scent. And his lips, when he’d kissed her, so unexpectedly gentle, his breath smelling faintly of coffee and peppermints. Those things- his hand so warm on the back of my neck-had been coming into her mind all week, and she wished to God they would stop.

Because of that, she told herself the hitch in her breathing and the quickening of her pulse wasn’t for him, but for the child beside him, the little girl clinging to his arm with both hands in the shy, awkward way of ten-year-old