passed. I was no longer fit to battle myself. I had won and I had lost. I released my grip on Amber Mae and worked my nose into the aromatic crook behind her ear. I gently drove myself into her, to lessening effect. Very deeply, I sighed.
'Don't speak,' she said. I did not.
'That was a gift,' she whispered.
'It certainly was. Thank you.'
'It wasn't from me. I just delivered it.'
'Who do I send the thank-you note to?'
'Isabella. We talked.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Driving back down Coast Highway toward my home was a journey of silence and bad conscience. Yes, I owned my secret life now, the very one I was hoping to begin on that awful night of July 3. But what a price to pay. I felt as if I had overdrawn my emotional accounts, that there was no way to finance this latest, wildest of expenditures. It was a perfect correlative to my actual financial quandry, the thought of which sent me further into a dismal spiral. What would I do when the bills came due? I became sullen and remorseful. And surprisingly- perhaps not-I found myself longing for the bed I used to share with Isabella, for the proximity of even her absence, for the darkness of the room in which we had loved each other and would, with some helpful nudge from the fates, love each other again.
Worst of all was my knowledge that Grace had almost certainly been in Amber's room on that night. Martin Parish had not been lying, after all. A thought came to me: What if Martin and Grace had planned this together? What if Martin had cajoled and helped to terrify Grace, perhaps even hired the men to burn her, used all his considerable influence as Grace's former stepfather to widen the already-gaping chasm between mother and daughter? He could certainly have done so. But to what end? Vengeance for Amber throwing him over? Doubtful. The money due him in Amber's will? Possible. A chill fingered through me as another scenario presented itself: What if Martin and Grace were secret lovers, planning to marry each other's fortunes when Amber was gone? Could this explain Grace's many absence, her frequent phone conversations, her evasiveness? Yes, but so, then why had Martin sworn to seeing Grace on the July 3? Was it as simple as self-protection, having been surprised by a unforeseen factor-myself? A simpler explanation might have been this: Grace's arrival at Amber's was every bit as coincident as my own, and Parish, latching onto an opportunity to throw my curiosities a monstrous curve ball, admitted Grace's untimely entrance to me for the sake of pure confusion. But the overriding question was this: If Martin and Grace had been there together planned the murder together, and killed the wrong woman together, why was Parish building a case against his own accomplice and turning it over to the DA? It made little sense. Had I heard Karen correctly?
I picked up the car phone and dialed Karen's home number, even though it was close to 2:00 a.m. She answered groggily. I hit a low spot in the canyon and the line went fuzzy for moment, then snapped back into clarity. I asked her simply whether Martin's complaint to DA Peter Haight named Russell Monroe as the killer of Alice Fultz, or Russell Monroe and Grace Wilson.
'You promised,' she said.
'I know, and I'm sorry. My ass is very much on the line here, Karen.'
'You know how easy these cellular things are to tap?'
'I'm looking at death row. Tell me, Karen-is Haight going to indict me, or Grace and me?'
A long silence ensued, then another patch of static as we dipped behind a hillside, then the voiceless clarity again.
'Grace won't be named,' she said finally. 'Just you. They're banking she'll work with them and testify.'
Whatever will was driving my body at that moment seemed to diminish to almost nothing. I was floating, as if in the horse latitudes, bereft of power.
Amber took my hand. 'Martin plans to have Grace testify against you?'
I nodded.
'She was in on it. It's pure Grace. Damn, Russell, if you could only see her as I have.'
'We'll both be seeing her in about five minutes.'
She was asleep in the guest room when we walked in. My father sat beside her, shotgun across his lap, drinking coffee and reading a magazine. In the limited light, Grace looked more like a child than a woman, her wavy dark hair hid her face and, in spite of the heat, she lay bundled to the neck in the blanket. The ceiling fan whirred above. Theodore examined us, and I sensed his understanding of what had just happened, then realized I hadn't bothered to so much as dust off my clothes or run a brush through my hair.
'Looks like you three have some business here,' he said, rising. 'I'll get lost for a while.'
With this, I turned on the light. Grace stirred, whimpered, then opened one dark eye on me.
'What?' she whispered without moving.
'Get up,' I said. 'We need to talk.'
I took her robe from the foot of the bed and handed it to her, turned my back for a moment, and closed my eyes. Let me find her innocent, I thought. Let there be an explanation for this. I heard the rustling of terry cloth on skin, then Grace's perturbed sigh. When I turned, she was sitting up, wrapped in the robe, both eyes trained, rather malignantly, upon Amber. The color had fallen from her face and her mouth was slightly open-half astonishment, half anger.
'I'm in hell,' she said.
'Wonderful to see you, too, Grace.'
Grace's eyes seemed to lose their focus for a moment and I sensed in her the desire to run. For a moment, I thought she would.
But when she sprang from the bed, it was not to escape but to charge Amber. I intercepted her, caught her strong wrists in my hands, and threw her back onto the bed. I beat her to the pillow and removed the. 32.
'You hateful thing,' said Amber.
'Russell,' Grace said, training her fearful eyes on m 'Can you please make her go away?'
'No. But you can listen.'
I came right out with what we had discovered: the ripped nail at Amber's, the nine matching it in Grace's wastebasket. I saved Brent Sides's recanted testimony, should it be needed later.
'Explain,' I said.
Grace moved her disdainful eyes from her mother to me 'Twin horrors,' she said. 'It's like being raised by wolves.'
'We were talking about July the third,' I said.
'If you're accusing me of murder because you think nails in my bathroom match one found at her house- you're even dumber than I thought, Russ.'
'Funny,' I said. 'No one mentioned murder at all. I was just wondering what you were doing at Amber's that night.'
'I was not at Amber's that night. I was with Brent.'
'We just came from his apartment. He said you didn't show up until real late. You were frightened. You smelled bad. He was afraid to ask where you'd been. So, now I'm asking- where were you?'
Grace colored deeply but not with shame. It was anger that showed through her skin and fueled a tiny fire in each eye. 'I hate you both.'
'That's nice,' I said. 'Where were you? And if you weren't at Amber's, how did your fingernail manage to get there without you? Grace-I'm tired of your crap.'
The anger in Grace's eyes looked, for a moment, almost flamelike. I had never seen this in her, and yet it didn't surprise me. My own temper was a fierce, though temporary, thing. Amber's was, too. And as I looked at my daughter then, I saw that she was, both literally and figuratively, up against a wall.
Amber, silent throughout until now, turned to look at me. 'Welcome to your girl,' she said.
'You're the thing from hell,' said Grace.
