Waking the Dead Part 12

Once in the vehicle, she checked her cell phone and was chagrined to discover she'd missed a call about one of the missing persons cases. When she returned the call there was no answer, so she left a short message for the man to call her back, regardless of the hour. Playing phone tag with the various detectives a.s.signed to the missing persons cases she'd inquired about was beginning to be a full-time job.

After driving the short distance to the motel, she parked and locked the vehicle before wondering if she'd perhaps missed Barnes's call, too. But there was no record of it in her phone log, and she frowned a little as she unlocked the door to her room. It wasn't like the man to be out of communication for this long. She put another call in to him, but he didn't answer this time, either, so she left another message. Cait set the phone down on the dresser before securing the door, wondering what had kept the man busy all day. And whether it had to do with their case.

She'd changed into a camisole and shorts to sleep in and was scrubbing her face when her cell rang. The deputy still on her mind, she walked in to pick the phone up and answered, "You're working late."

"Well, I certainly hope you aren't, darling. You know what it does to your skin when you don't get your ten hours sleep."

Cait's eyelids slid shut in chagrin. She almost always screened her calls, for precisely this reason. There was nothing worse than being ambushed by a phone call from Lydia Fleming Smythe Regatta.

"Mother." Because she needed the support, she turned away from the dresser so she could prop her hips against it. "How are you?" Her voice was stilted. Formal. They'd never have a close relationship, but she was trying, dammit. Shouldn't she get points for that?

"Absolutely exhausted. Every time we fly I swear it will be the last time. When did travel become this excruciating?"

The words struck a familiar chord. Kristy had had a similar complaint upon arriving in Eugene, although she'd voiced it a bit more colorfully. Cait had never heard Lydia utter a four-letter word in her life. She didn't need to. She was capable of using words the way a surgeon wielded a scalpel, performing tiny dissections of the ego in a perfectly modulated voice.

"So you're on a trip?"

"Oh, heavens no. Henri and I have just gotten back to the penthouse this minute."

Henri. Cait's mind went totally blank. Had Lydia gotten married again? Frantically she searched her mental files, came up with the name. Not husband number four, thank G.o.d-at least not yet. Her mother's gentleman friend. One Cait hadn't met and, if her luck continued to hold, never would.

"Where'd you go?" The question elicited a ten-minute monologue from Lydia on the trials of Paris in the summertime, and Cait closed her eyes and let the words roll off her. The conversation would require very little of her, for which she was grateful. Ten minutes of filler meant only five more to parry the subtle digs and thrusts regarding Cait's chosen career.

A fifteen-minute phone call was long enough for politeness and, on a good day, not long enough to shred her nerves.

"Oh, and you'll never guess who called me. Cee Cee Walker! Of course she asked about you when we caught up over drinks at The Ritz-Carlton."

The name had trepidation pooling in her stomach. Cait straightened, craning her neck to see the clock in the next room. Only ten and a half minutes had pa.s.sed. d.a.m.n. "How is she?" she asked without enthusiasm.

"Well, she looks marvelous. Of course she's had work done, that's a given, but the surgeon was very discreet." Lydia spoke from experience, having had her share of work done over the years, as well. Every time Cait saw her, she'd had something new tucked or lifted. In the war against gravity, Lydia was the crowned champion.

"She told me something I found intriguing." Her mother's voice lowered conspiratorially, as if someone else eavesdropping would find the conversation even slightly interesting. "Duran Cosmetics have dropped that dreadful Giselle Ham menstein as the face for their products, and they are actively looking. Cee Cee said she'd sent them several portfolios of models in her agency, but the word is that they're going for a more mature look."

Not tonight. Cait's head lolled as she rubbed the headache that had suddenly taken up residence behind her temples. After a full day of trading verbal jabs with Sharper, she absolutely couldn't have this conversation tonight.

"Of course, I thought of you. If you landed a contract this big, you wouldn't have to work your way back up the hard way again, you'd make a splash, darling! Don't you recall the glamour of our old life? Don't you just miss it?"

"Like a brick to the head," she muttered.

"What?"

"No, Mother," Cait said clearly, striving for patience. "I don't miss it. I've never missed it. I have a career, and it's one I've found far more fascinating than modeling ever was. I'm not going back. I thought we were done having this argument years ago." Thought she'd grown safer with every pa.s.sing year. Modeling was a young woman's job. And although at thirty-five Cait was hardly ready for a wheelchair, she was past the prime of most top runway models.

Of course Lydia wasn't talking runway. A point she used another six and a half minutes to painstakingly explain. To paint a laughably surreal image of Cait's former career that bore little resemblance to the reality.

Cait used the time to dig in her purse for some pain reliever for the headache that had taken on power-drill proportions. When that search failed, she switched to her toiletry kit. The lone two pills in the bottle were a welcome find. When she ran water for a drink to wash them down with, the sound almost, almost, drowned out her mother's voice in her ear.

". . . and think of the travel involved! When's the last time you've been to Europe, Caitlin? You can't begin to imagine how much has changed, with the . . ."

Apparently Lydia had already forgotten the miseries of travel she'd spent the first part of the conversation regaling her with. Downing the pills, Caitlin shuffled to the other room again to eye the alarm clock on the bedside table. Seventeen minutes. More than enough time to qualify as a polite conversation. When her mother showed no signs of winding down, she mentally recalculated. Maybe a little longer. Could she endure two more minutes of this?

The mental question was abruptly answered in the next few seconds.

". . . the life your father would have desired for you. He'd never have wanted you to end up in his grim world, Caitlin. To see the sights he saw every day. The countless hours away from his family. That job drove him to his death, Caitlin. Following in his footsteps isn't a tribute to him, it's a slap in the face. He'd have wanted better for you. Not to have you embroil yourself in the seamiest side of-"

"You don't know that." Her voice was tight. Sometimes Cait wondered if Lydia's memory of Gregory Fleming was as fuzzy as her own. Conveniently so, since her mother invoked his name to underscore whatever argument she was currently engaged in. "And I'm not a beat cop, so I haven't exactly followed in his footsteps."

The sound Lydia made was suspiciously close to a sniff of disdain. "Don't split hairs with me, we both know how you ended up where you are. If you hadn't given up everything to run off to college, there's no telling what you could have achieved by now. You were headed for the top."

Her mother was wrong. Cait stared blindly at her reflection in the mirror. She knew exactly where she'd be, what she would have become if she hadn't stood up to Lydia and left modeling for good to start college. It had been an ugly series of scenes, concluding with Cait hiring an attorney to end her mother's control of the money she'd earned. During their estrangement, Lydia had married and divorced twice. The husbands had at least kept her focus off her daughter. Maybe if she married Henri it would divert some attention away from Cait.

"Just think about it." Her mother's voice took on an unfamiliar note of pleading. "Not only could this be good for you, but it re-establishes me in the business as well. I did wonderfully by you as your manager, Caitlin. There's no reason I couldn't take on other clients, as well. But at this point, I've been away from the scene for too long. Not that I want you to do this for me. What I did for you I did for love. You don't owe me a thing, darling, and I don't want you to think I'm saying otherwise."

There was more, but Cait had stopped listening. Because Lydia meant just the opposite, of course. There had never been a moment when Cait hadn't been made aware what a burden it had been for her mother to raise her alone. How much she'd sacrificed to get Cait noticed by that first agency, the first art director. What she'd given up to travel with her to shoots and hire personal trainers and acting coaches.

And above all, how much her father would have wanted this for her.

The words rolled over her in a tired litany that Cait had heard thousands of times in the past. How that "unfortunate situation"-Lydia-speak for the drawn out court case and their resulting estrangement-had destroyed whatever chances she'd had to continue her successful career as talent manager. A stretch by anyone's definition, Cait figured, given that she'd been her mother's only client.

"Even if you didn't get the Duran job, we could get you noticed again. Cee Cee would have you back in a minute. You have been taking care of your skin, haven't you? The last time I saw you, I swear you hadn't moisturized in-"

"No, mother." The steel in her voice came in spite of the pounding in her temples. "I left that world over fifteen years ago and I have no intention of ever going back. I'm sure Cee Cee could get you a client or two to start you out if you want to get into talent management." A fact Cait could hardly imagine, but that wasn't the important point here. "I don't want to hear any more about it. Now if you'll excuse me, I've had a long day and I've got an early start tomorrow. We'll talk later." Long practice had her disconnecting the call without anything further. A proper good-bye would entail another fifteen minutes of pleas turning to icy anger from Lydia. Better to p.i.s.s her off now rather than later since the end result was the same either way.

She leaned her hands against the dresser, mentally counting to ten. On seven the phone shrilled again. Twice. Three times. Each ring was like a stake battering through Cait's brain. After the fifth time it went to voice mail. She gave it another few minutes before she accessed the message box and deleted the message her mother would have left. There was nothing worse than stumbling across one of Lydia's callbacks when checking for work-related messages.

Cheered slightly by the action, she checked the lock on the door and headed for bed. She knew from past experience that she hadn't heard the last regarding the issue from her mother, but she'd be more careful in the future about screening her calls.

Snapping off the light, she yanked back the covers and slipped under them, gingerly laying her still-throbbing head against the pillow. Useless to wonder what had set her mother off on the career-resurrection pipe dream this time. Perhaps it was the phone call from Cee Cee. Or maybe Henri was proving wary about becoming husband number four and Lydia was reaching the bottom of her settlements from husbands two and three.

Whichever it was, she knew enough to lay low until her mother gave up. She wasn't a child anymore, to be manipulated at will. Nor a teen with a fragile ego seeking her ident.i.ty in all the wrong places.

Knowing that should have been security enough. But it was the certainty Lydia couldn't realize only a few hundred miles, instead of the usual thousands, separated them that finally lulled her to sleep.

Cait welcomed the time when she finally met up with the perp responsible for killing seven victims and defleshing their bones before painting macabre scenes on their scapulas.

Thoughts of a face-to-face meeting with her mother, however, had dread pooling in her gut.

Chapter 10.

The woman had cost him twenty bucks and two games of pool that he could have easily won.

Since his concentration was shot to h.e.l.l, Zach handed over his cue to the next guy waiting for a game. Heading to the bar to drink the rest of his bottle in peace, he ignored the good-natured ribbing that followed. His mood had gone south in the last hour, and the reason for that could be laid squarely at Cait Fleming's feet.

A position he was sure she was used to having men occupy.

Scowling, he tipped his bottle to his lips and took a long pull before lowering it and sliding into a stool. For a man who liked his women s.e.xy, simple, and short term, he was spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about a female there wasn't a chance in h.e.l.l he was going to lay a finger on.

Although she had s.e.xy nailed, there was nothing simple about Caitlin Fleming. She was as contrary a female as he'd ever met, and he'd encountered more than a few unreasonable shrews on the job. Those women didn't have much in common with the special consultant, either. Her abrasiveness came from overconfidence rather than sheer b.i.t.c.hiness.

The pain-in-the-a.s.s end result was the same, though.

"Hey, Sharper." Bill Reagen detached himself from the group of men at the other end of the bar and strolled over, taking a seat beside him. "Heard you been spending lots of time with that hot thing that was in here earlier. You screwin' her?"

Slowly he lifted his gaze to level it at the man beside him. Something in it must have warned Reagen, because he lifted his palms placatingly. "Hey, none of my business. It's just that I heard she's working with the sheriff's department and might be around for a while. Didn't want to try my hand with her if I was stepping on toes, you know?"

The thought of the burly Reagen shooting rusty pickup lines to Cait had one corner of Zach's mouth tugging upward. "Go ahead." Might be worth sticking around to watch, if only to make sure the man didn't go too far and get knee-capped for his efforts. Bill was an affable enough sort, if not too bright.

"Sure is a looker." Reagen took a long drink from his bottle. Lowering it, he added, "My brother had a poster of her in our bedroom when we were kids. When I heard she was around here, I thought they were talking about someone else. But after seeing her tonight . . . that's the same lady all right. Wonder what would make a woman like that want to do what she does, look at bones for murders and stuff?"

It was clear Reagen was inviting the sort of philosophical speculation that pa.s.sed for conversation when someone new arrived in the area. But Sharper found himself oddly reluctant to partic.i.p.ate. Not only because he had an aversion to gossip, having been on the receiving end of it most of his life. But he didn't want to talk about her at all.

His silence didn't deter the other man. "Tony Gibbs has been saying how she's some sort of genius with them bones. Can tell all sorts of stuff like how old they are and who they belonged to. That Raiker outfit she works for? Gibbs says they call them the Mindhunters, 'cuz of the work they do catching criminals and stuff. Raiker used to be with the FBI till he got hurt chasing down that killer in Louisiana. Remember that one seven, eight years ago who killed all them kids?"

Zach let the man drone on while he silently finished his beer. The Mindhunters. He recalled Barnes saying something about it the first day he'd taken Cait to Castle Rock. Obviously she was a very big deal in law enforcement circles. At least her employer was. Maybe that explained that att.i.tude of confidence she exuded, even when it would pay to exercise a little caution and good sense.

He gave an impatient roll of his shoulders. Not his business. She was just a job, and in a few days, weeks at most, she'd go back wherever the h.e.l.l she'd come from and he'd be rid of her. She wasn't responsible for this . . . restlessness or whatever the h.e.l.l it was that was burning a hole through his chest these days. Drummy's suicide wasn't, either, though that sure as h.e.l.l had upped the ante considerably.

If this were due to a midlife crisis, it had arrived about a decade early.

"You guys need another beer?"

Del Barton reappeared from wherever he'd been and hurried down the bar toward them. Zach shook his head. Shoving the stool back, he rose. "I'm calling it a night." Two beers was his usual limit these days. The night he'd heard about Drummy eating his gun proving the exception to that rule.

A red-hot poker of pain stabbed through him. Alcohol hadn't helped dull feelings when he'd heard the news of his friend's suicide. It had only brought a tidal wave of memories that he spent far too much time trying very hard not to recall. He wouldn't be making that mistake again any time soon. He'd seen far too many guys try to wash away their failures with booze. He turned and headed toward the door.

"Hey, did I tell you I ran into your dad in Las Vegas?"

Case in point. Zach halted midstride and turned for the inevitable conclusion to Reagen's question. "Nope."

"Yeah, I went with Handley and Miles on one of them red-eye junkets. Ran into him at the Hilton. I recognized him and went up to say hi. He didn't seem to know who I was, so I said I knew you. Funny thing. He looked right at me and said, 'I don't have a son.' Just like that. I would have thought I had the wrong guy, but Miles, he recognized him, too."

Zach smiled humorlessly. "He was right. He doesn't have a son." And he continued out the door. His relationship with his father had always been strained, but the reading of his grandfather's will seven years ago had severed it completely. No big loss. Jarrett Wellen Bodine III was a f.u.c.kup of monumental proportions. The best day of Zach's life had been when he'd gone to live with his grandfather for good when he was twelve. The old man had been hard, set in his ways, and difficult to please. But that had been infinitely better than being subjected to his father's erratic behavior and drunken rages.

Letting the screen door slam behind him, he continued down the walk and rounded the corner to the parking lot. Thoughts of his father worsened his mood.

Maybe he just needed to get laid. He gave brief consideration to driving over to Sh.e.l.lie Mayer's place. Thought better of it. A woman who'd called him an emotionally unavailable b.a.s.t.a.r.d just a couple weeks earlier probably couldn't be counted on to roll out the s.e.xual welcome mat, even if he'd agreed with her description. Especially since he had.

He unlocked his Trailblazer and got in. It wasn't Sh.e.l.lie Mayer on his mind, at any rate. He had a mental flash of Caitlin Fleming's expression before she'd walked out the door. Mocking. Daring him to . . . what?

Zach started the vehicle and shoved it into gear with a bit more force than necessary. It wouldn't do to start reading things into her expression. Into her words. Wouldn't do to start convincing himself that she was the kind of woman he could take to his bed and not end up with a truckload of regrets afterward.

But knowing that didn't stop him from nosing his Trailblazer in the direction of Ketchers. Just to be sure she hadn't done something stupid and headed over to the tavern despite his warning.

He didn't see her vehicle in the rutted gravel lot around the tavern. But as he was pa.s.sing by, a body flew out of the front door. A stream of men followed, trading blows and curses he could hear through his rolled-up windows. The thought of Cait mixing it up with the lame heads in there was difficult to picture.

What was getting increasingly easy to picture was the image of her stretched out in his bed. Beneath him. Over him.

He shifted uneasily. Because that train of thought wasn't going to make it easier to spend the day with her tomorrow. Wasn't going to make it easier to ignore the way she moved or the unwilling fascination about her lodged in his mind that he couldn't shake loose.

Zach clenched his jaw and drove in the direction of home. He had a feeling sleep was going to be a long time coming tonight.

He'd used duct tape to shut her up, and he didn't feel sorry for it. Not one bit.

There were still faint noises coming from the locked room, though. Metal clanking against stone. She must be using her feet somehow to slam the lawn chair against the wall.

Gritting his teeth, he adjusted the light and peered more intently at the sketch he was making. Barb Haines was a horrible, nasty woman. Unappreciative and foulmouthed. Never had it been this difficult to wait. To do things right. Respectfully . She wasn't making things easy for him. For herself.

But the easy way wasn't necessarily the right way. He'd learned that for himself when his mother had died.

Get a shovel boy. Start digging.

He flinched. He could still hear his father's voice. Still feel the sting from the careless blow that had accompanied the words. But the old man couldn't hurt him anymore. Couldn't hurt anyone. He'd made sure of that.

But far, far too late to help his mother.

The memory burned, so he thrust it away. Tried to concentrate on the pleasant fifties melodies on the iPod. His mother's favorite music. When his father wasn't around, they'd listen to the radio for hours while they worked in the garden or did ch.o.r.es. But whenever his father came home, the music always stopped.

The night they'd buried his mother had been a night much like this one. Clouds covering the moon and stars, as if their glow had been doused out of mourning. He hadn't been allowed to mourn. Tears were another excuse for a beating. And digging his mother's grave in the middle of the night had left him too exhausted to feel anything at all. At least at the moment.

When his hand trembled, he paused, took a deep breath to calm himself. He needed absolute steadiness for the close work of the sketches. The sooner he got done, the sooner he could be rid of the woman in the next room.

But the sneaky slivers of memory wouldn't be banished. He was nine again, shivering in the night air despite the sweat that slicked his body. Watching in the dim light let by the lantern as the old man rolled his mother's body into the shallow grave.

Fill it in. And not a word to anyone about this. Remember? What's the story?

The shovel handle had caught him across the back hard enough to leave a bruise that would last for weeks.

She ran off. She ran off and left us.

And uttering those words had been the ultimate betrayal to the woman who'd shielded him as best she could until then.

Don't think about that. He drew in a deep breath. Blew it out slowly. He had all her best qualities. Hadn't she always said so? He was sensitive and artistic and perhaps too compa.s.sionate for his own good.

The thought steadied him, so he picked up the pen again. Began drawing swiftly, surely, the final panel for the woman in the next room. It wouldn't do to draw what he wanted, what best depicted his impression of Barb Haines. That would be an image of a she-demon, horned and fanged, complete with monstrous features. It might be true, but it wouldn't be respectful.

The drawing soothed him, as it always did. But it would be good to get done with this last guest so he could return to the sketching he most enjoyed. He flicked a glance around at the superhero comics he'd drawn and taped to the wall. An artist needed his s.p.a.ce to create. And he never felt closer to his mother than when he was engaged in the drawing she'd always encouraged.

That sound came again. Metal against stone. Faint but unmistakable. And fury bubbled up with a startling intensity.

"Shut up, you f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h! Shut up shut up shut up!" The pen snapped in his grip, and he hurled the pieces across the room to bounce harmlessly off the door. He tried to draw a breath through a chest that had gone tight. His vision had grayed at the edges. He couldn't hear his mother's voice whispering in his ear anymore. But he could hear his old man laughing. Louder and louder until it echoed and rang in the small s.p.a.ce, hurting his ears and filling his brain until there was nothing but that painful sound.