“I don’t know how you ever came up with the idea.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that hard, really,” James explained. “One day, while I was trying to teach you how to walk on crutches, I remembered those two cases the detectives later told you about -- the singer and the waitress -- and I knew the police had never caught anyone. It seemed like the perfect way to get them involved, so they’d protect you. Even if they did end up doing a pretty lousy job of it.”
“Well, we can’t really blame them for what happened on Mercer Island,” Clare said in defense of Erin and Dusty. “Even we didn’t figure on that.”
“True,” he agreed, and wagged his head. “You’ve got more lives than a cat, you know.”
“Lucky for me,” she said.
“Until it almost backfired. Who knew Richard was going to leave that message for Stephanie Burdick, and that you’d end up having to stand trial for his murder?”
“When it should have been him standing trial for trying to kill me,” Clare agreed.
“And having some crackerjack attorney get him off?” James suggested.
“Now that would have been my death sentence,” Clare gasped. The alcohol was taking effect on her now, too. “You know, there were times during the last year when I really thought this was all just a horrible joke, and that Richard was going to rise up from under some rock, at the most inopportune moment, and expose us.”
“Not much chance of that happening,” James said, glancing at her with an odd little expression on his face. “I’m afraid the man is as dead as dead can be.”
“I know,” she said with a nod. “It’s just that sometimes, I don’t know, none of it seems quite real.”
They sat there, side by side on the soft leather sofa, not saying anything for a while, she contemplating the fire, he contemplating her.
“Do you think the real stalker is still out there?” she wondered finally. “Do you think he’s still in Seattle?”
“Hard to tell,” he said.
“What if he is, and he’s been following this story all along -- do you think he might be offended because he was being blamed for something he didn’t do?”
James thought about that for a moment, and then shook his head. “If he’s still here, and he’s been following the story, then he shouldn’t be offended, he should be flattered,” he said. “After all, we were emulating an expert.”
Unexpectedly, her eyes filled up. “I didn’t want to kill Richard, you know,” she whispered, her words beginning to thicken. “Really, I didn’t. I just didn’t want to die.”
James frowned. “But I don’t understand -- you knew there was no stalker coming for you that night,” he reminded her. “You knew it was only me playing the part. So somewhere, down deep, you must have wanted Richard dead.”
Clare shook her head. “All I really wanted was for him to love me,” she said, choking up. “For twenty years, that’s all I ever really wanted . . . only he never did. It was Nicolaidis Industries he loved . . . and then Stephanie Burdick.”
“I remember my mother used to say something like that,” James murmured. “She used to say all she ever wanted was a man to love her. I loved her. And all I ever wanted was for her to look at me, and love me as much as I loved her. But I was just a kid. I guess I couldn’t give her what she needed.” He reached over and gently touched Clare’s hair with the tips of his fingers. “You remind me of her, you know,” he said. “She had blonde hair and brown eyes, just like you.”
“Did she?”
“Yes, she did.”
“That’s nice,” Clare said, but it was clear that her mind was somewhere else, lost in thoughts of what could have been or should have been but never was, and she was not really paying attention.
Suddenly, James jumped up and held out his hand to her. “Come on, this isn’t a time to be gloomy, this is a time to celebrate,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go for a drive somewhere. You’ve been cooped up in this place for way too long. Let’s go find ourselves some nice fresh air to breathe.”
Clare hesitated. “I really don’t want to have to see people,” she told him. “I’m not in what you’d call a very social mood.”
“That’s okay, I understand,” he said with a shrug. “It’s all right. I know a place we can go. It’s one of my favorite spots. I go there all the time, and I promise you -- there won’t be another soul around.”
***
“How was your turkey day?” Dusty inquired of his partner on Friday morning.
“It was okay,” Erin said. “The family didn’t beat up on me too much.” Actually, it was only one of her brothers who had given her a hard time, and even that was done with affection.
“So then, are you ready to come back on the job?”
Erin sighed, wondering if doing her job would ever be the same again. “Sure,” she said, “why not?”
“In that case, I’ve got some news that should make you feel a whole lot better.”
“What’s that?”
“Apparently, the chief has been indulging in one of his semi-annual ‘it’s time to get organized’ spells, and you know what happens when that happens.”
“He starts making waves.”
“Precisely.”
“So?”
“So, the latest wave made its way all the way down to archives,” he told her, “which means that they’ve been doing a heap of cleaning up the past few weeks.”
“What is it -- a slow time at the police department?” Erin wanted to know.
“More like too many instances of evidence going missing, I suspect,” Dusty said.
“And?”
“And you’ll just never guess what they found.”
Erin scowled at him. “If I’ll never guess, then you’d
