Book Of Days_ A Novel Part 16

She raised her eyebrows.

"Rock climbing," he finished.

The line to buy tickets was long, and Cameron didn't try to break the awkward silence till it had stretched past a minute. "Have you found anything more about your family?"

"I'm getting almost nowhere."

He could relate.

Ann stepped out of line and folded her arms, probably to see why the line was moving so slow. She wore faded Levi's and a dark blue Nike sweatshirt, her hair cascading over it like water.

Beautiful. He locked his hands behind his head and put his chin down. Stop it! Stop it! The feelings were wrong. This is the way to honor Jessie? To remember her? By letting possible emotions for Ann dance around in his head like a tango? He had to get a handle on it. The feelings were wrong. This is the way to honor Jessie? To remember her? By letting possible emotions for Ann dance around in his head like a tango? He had to get a handle on it.

"Do you want to help me investigate?" She stepped back into line beside him. "The way I see it, we have similar skills. Find the interesting angle to a story whether it's with words or with the lens of a camera. We know how to draw the deeper parts out of a subject or a scene. It's always easier to find the answers with two minds focused on the story. I help you with the book; you help me with my family history. So?"

Great. More time with her. That wouldn't help. But it was fair. "Fine. I'll help."

"Thanks."

Cameron gave Ann a thin-lipped smile and half a nod.

She stepped in line in front of him and whispered over her shoulder, "When can you start helping me?"

"You're up." He motioned toward the cashier window with his eyes.

Ann bought her ticket and eased over to the right as Cameron stepped up to the window. He glanced at her face as he bought a ticket to a different movie. It was blank. If she felt something either way she didn't show it.

He shoved his wallet into his coat and walked with her toward the ten-foot high gla.s.s doors leading into the theaters. "What have you uncovered so far?"

"I think my mom was born in Three Peaks and lived here till she was at least a teenager."

He raised both eyebrows, an invitation for her to elaborate.

Ann glanced at her watch. "My movie's starting. Next time I'll give you the gory details." She winked at him, not a flirtatious wink, but certainly playful.

All it took was a truce on the mountain for her to get a personality transfusion?

He watched her till she disappeared into theater number seven, then tapped himself hard on the forehead when she turned back and gave a little wave, as if she knew he'd be watching. He spun on his heel and strode toward theater number two.

Cameron left the theater two hours later. He glanced around the lobby looking for Ann. Why did he do that? Would he ask her to go for ice cream if he found her? Hardly. She was wrong for him, not even close to what he would want because no one could ever take Jessie's place.

He needed to get his mind back on the book. Tomorrow he would take another run at getting Taylor Stone to talk. A hard run.

CHAPTER 18.

Ann chose the wrong movie. A romantic comedy was the worst salve possible for a heart aching over a guy she couldn't have. She tried to keep from putting herself onscreen, but it was impossible when the male lead reminded her of the Cameron she knew before Jessie died.

When the lead started to throw away his collection of cla.s.sic baseball cards to prove his love-with a smile on his face-Ann laughed and cried at the same time. That scene was Cameron personified.

And she would have stopped him just like the scene played out onscreen.

After the closing credits, Ann strode out the theater with her head down. "Get out of my heart, Cameron!"

A couple walking out of the theater with her tried to hide their laughter.

She turned her head toward them. "I'm thinking about the cla.s.sic girl-loves-boy-but-there's-no-way-they-can-ever-be-together-but she wants-to-be-more-than-anything storyline."

"And you're the girl?" the woman asked.

She was the girl.

He took one more glance at Cameron's notes, then let out a chuckle as he lifted them from under his reading lamp and filed them away inside his oak cabinet. It was such good news. Cameron's late wife had a stone she gave to him. And it was the key to finding the book?

Fascinating.

But where was the stone? Cameron must have it with him. It certainly wasn't in the hotel room.

Didn't matter. The stone was another confirmation the book truly did exist in physical form. He would keep watching. And waiting. And learning. Young Cameron was doing his work for him.

Thank you very much.

He picked up his Glock and looked at it from all angles, the oil he'd used earlier allowing the gun to spin easily around his fingers.

"We haven't played together in a long time, have we?" He laid it on his desk and spun it counterclockwise. "Have patience. We will dance together again soon. I can feel it. Can't you?"

He leaned back, smiled, and gazed at a map of Three Peaks and the surrounding land. He picked up his knife by the point, let it settle into his callused fingers, then flung it at the map.

Thunk!

It pierced the center of the map and sunk into the wood paneling behind it. "Wherever you're hiding, I will find you. And you will be mine."

CHAPTER 19.

The Monday morning sun was bright as Cameron approached Taylor's house, the late model Ford truck out front throwing off little bursts of light like a dis...o...b..ll from the seventies. The guy must polish it every day.

When no one answered the doorbell, he walked around the back of the house and found Taylor sitting on his back deck, wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, khaki shorts, and nothing on his feet.

He didn't acknowledge Cameron but had to know he was there. The boards on the deck squealed as Cameron walked across them, announcing his arrival as loudly as the mermaid wind chime would have if a wind had been blowing.

Cameron grabbed one of the Adirondack chairs against the house and pulled it within a few feet of Taylor and sat. A few minutes later, Taylor broke the silence.

"My feet roast in anything but sandals, still. Till age five I don't remember wearing shoes at all from April through September, except in church. Maybe sitting on those church pews-hard as granite, mind you-shoved the memory right out of my mind."

Taylor reached in and pulled something metal from his pocket. "I hated church. Not just 'cause of having to wear shoes. Every Sunday morning Pastor Davis Darton ranted about G.o.d's love and G.o.d's forgiveness but with a red face that looked like an overripe tomato ready to burst. I couldn't figure out how G.o.d could forgive anyone if He was perpetually angry.

"One Sunday after service, I snuck up to see if the spot where Pastor Darton pounded on his podium each week was dented. It wasn't, but the wood in the middle was a lighter color than the rest of it. To me, church wasn't a building; it was Annie singing one of the hymns we both loved or lying in the meadow with my eyes closed listening to her read from the Bible."

Interesting. Ann. Annie. "Who's Annie?"

Taylor sat without moving or speaking for at least two minutes. Finally he opened his hand and stared at the object resting on it. A window crank. He brought it up to his face and pressed it into his cheek until his skin turned bright red.

He sighed, dropped his hand, and began spinning the crank around his fingers. The sun flashed off it with each rotation, and with each rotation Taylor winced. After the seventh or eighth turn, Taylor squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head.

Cameron shifted in his chair and tried to find something in the yard to focus on. It felt like he was sitting in on a Catholic confessional. Whatever crime Taylor was in the midst of paying penance for was serious.

Taylor raised his head and looked at Cameron. "Would you like to see it?"

"The ... what?"

"This."

Cameron nodded and held out his hand.

Taylor held up the window crank for Cameron to look at but didn't hand it to him.

Cameron studied the crank and the blood rushed from his face. Why would Taylor have one of those?

"Do you know what this is, Cameron?"

He swallowed hard. "It's a window crank made sometime between 1965 and 1967. Standard on Ford Mustangs during those years."

"Not bad." Taylor squinted at him. "How'd you know that?"

He hesitated, then said, "I restored a '65 Mustang and gave it to my wife for a Christmas present one year." He didn't add that the only time Jessie drove it was to the airfield on the day she died.

A wave of what looked like surprise washed over Taylor's face, but he recovered a moment later. "That model was a great car." He sighed and laid the window crank on his knee.

They returned to silence and watched the wind blow through the pine trees bordering Taylor's property sixty yards away.

"Do you think G.o.d really forgives everything, Cameron? And if He forgives, does He forget? Or does He write everything down in that book of yours so it lasts forever?"

What was Taylor asking him about G.o.d for? Or was the question directed more toward Taylor himself?

"I don't know if He forgives, forgets, remembers, keeps track ... G.o.d and I have never done a lot of communicating."

"Annie said He forgives it all. Past. Present. Future. For everything we've done that we're ashamed of. And remembers it no more. Our part is accepting it."

"Nice thought."

"If it's true, He must have to take a big spiritual eraser to those parts of your amazing Book of Days."

"Industrial-strength eraser." Cameron smiled.

"Annie would have forgiven me for what I did to her. In an instant. My head says that. But my heart..."

It was the third time Taylor had mentioned Annie. Cameron couldn't help asking again, "Who is Annie?"

"I've said way too much. Waaay." Taylor took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he propped his elbow on his knee and spun the window crank again, faster this time. When he finished, they sat in silence for a long time.

Finally Taylor said "Here" and handed the crank to Cameron, as if it were a gem-encrusted dagger.

"Who did it be-?"

"Belonged to me. Off a car of mine." Tears threatened to spill onto Taylor's cheeks. Cameron couldn't be sure if Taylor's tears came from the pain of the sunlight flashing off the crank into his eyes or from remembering. Maybe both.

"When something you would die for is destroyed by the hand of another, you can almost learn to live with it. When you do the destroying yourself, it's impossible."

Exactly. Almost Almost learn to live with it. And the part that remained was brutal. "What was destroyed?" learn to live with it. And the part that remained was brutal. "What was destroyed?"

"Cameron ..." Taylor stood and offered his hand. Cameron took it and found himself yanked to his feet with a surprising strength. "Tricia asked me to talk to you about some things I know about. But I can't. It's nothing against you. You're a good man, and we have some things in common. More than I thought. But some things are meant to be sealed forever. Do you understand?"

Taylor strode into his house without waiting for an answer, without looking back. The screen door smacked shut with a sound like the blast from a .22.

Cameron stared at the door and took two steps backward. He had the sensation of being watched and looked toward the upstairs windows. Tricia Stone gazed down at him, her face expressionless. Then she slowly mouthed the words I'm sorry I'm sorry before turning away. before turning away.

As Cameron made his way back to his car, he ran his hands through his hair. The scene in Taylor's backyard was another confirmation that the man was in the thick of the Book of Days' mystery, but prying that door open would take a crowbar the size of Paul Bunyan's ax. So be it.

But Cameron hoped the crowbar wouldn't break before the door opened.

After leaving Taylor's house, Cameron headed for the mountains and did a climb rated a 4.5. It wasn't technically difficult, just a good workout. The air was absolute crystal, something Seattle's skies still aspired to, but they didn't reach this level of purity.

As he gazed out over the trees below, he pulled out the stone Susan Hillman had given him and watched the sun bounce off its surface.

He turned it over slowly in a continual motion, studying the intricate pattern the red sparkles made. It was like a map. A treasure map. Yeah, right. Wouldn't that be nice? When he was a kid-eleven, maybe twelve-he'd made a treasure map and hidden it in his fort, twenty feet up in the maple tree in his backyard. He looked at Susan's stone again. A map to the Book of Days? If only it were that easy.

Maybe it wasn't a map; maybe it was a road sign. On impulse he s.n.a.t.c.hed his cell phone out of his climbing pack.

"h.e.l.lo?" said a low, booming voice.

"Hey, Scotty, it's Cameron."

"Who?"

"Cameron Vaux. In college we-"

Laughter. "I'm just messing with you, man. I'd know your voice even after four and a half years of silence, which, by the way, it's almost been."