Almost Dead Read online

  “Which hospital?” Paterno asked.

  “Bayside.”

  Paterno made notes while Cissy added, “Gran plays mahjong and bridge with different women every week. Mahjong on Wednesdays, I think, and bridge on Thursdays…or maybe it’s the other way around. I can’t remember. She gets her hair done without fail by Helene on Friday mornings and has for years. Helene has a shop somewhere around Haight-Ashbury. Lars would know the address.” The computer made a series of clicks as it came to life just as Coco trotted back to the living room and made a beeline for Cissy. “Oops,” she said, then placed the laptop on a side table while the dog settled onto her lap.

  “Okay, here we go.” As Paterno wrote in a notepad, Cissy, without any inflection, rattled off names and phone numbers, many of which Jack was hearing for the first time. Afterward, she added, “Of course, there’s Cahill International, the family business. It was in bad shape a few years back, but I think it’s doing well again. I don’t really pay that much attention, but Gran still sits on the board. I mean sat on it. God, it’s hard to believe she’s gone.”

  “You were close?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” Cissy shook her head. “I wasn’t that crazy about her, growing up, and she thought I was just okay. Believe me, she was all about a male heir for the family. It was ridiculous, so antiquated, but because of it, I only tolerated her when I was a kid. As a teenager I would have rather been anywhere else, and we lived with her. It was the worst!” She looked away for an instant, her features tightening with emotion. “But over the years we got closer, and then B.J. came along and Gran went nuts. Another boy, I suppose.” Her lips twisted wryly, and Jack hated the pain he saw in her eyes. “You know, I sometimes wonder how she would have reacted if he’d been a girl.” She looked up at Paterno. “Probably not the same. How is that for unfair?”

  Paterno lifted a shoulder. “From what I see, not many families are perfect.”

  She snorted, glanced through the window to the dark night beyond. Absently she rubbed her arms, as if a sudden chill had swept over her.

  “Where are the rest of the family now?” Paterno asked.

  “Around here it’s just me,” she said a little defensively, the way she always did when anyone pried too deeply about her family. She was prickly where they were concerned, and Jack didn’t blame her. “There’s my aunt and uncle, who are raising my brother in Oregon. You remember them.”

  Paterno nodded. “You got a number?”

  Absently petting the dog, she rattled off the phone number from memory. “Of course, there’s my mother too.” She looked through the window to the dark night beyond, almost as if she expected Marla’s visage to appear in the rain-drizzled glass.

  Paterno quit scribbling long enough to click the top of his pen as he thought. “Don’t you have some cousins, or half cousins?”

  “My father’s cousins.” Her jaw hardened at the mention of the man who had sired her. Though Alex Cahill had been dead for years, Cissy had never forgiven him for neglecting her while he’d been alive. “Gran always called them the black sheep.” Cissy scratched the little dog behind her ears. “Monty, er, Montgomery, is still in prison, but his sister, Cherise, is around. I think her last name is still Favier. It’s hard to keep up. She’s been married a few times.”

  The policeman nodded, as if he actually knew who she was talking about. Jack didn’t. Sometimes it seemed the longer he knew Cissy, the less he knew about her.

  “They never got along with the rest of the family. I think they thought my grandfather did something underhanded and cut their grandfather out of the family fortune. Monty and Cherise never got over it.”

  “Did your grandfather? Cut them out?”

  She lifted a shoulder, and Jack realized she was trying to hold on to her patience. He saw the tension in her body, the slight narrowing of her eyes. She didn’t like Paterno and didn’t like his questions. “I don’t know. Gran would remember….” Her voice trailed off, and she cleared her throat. “Look, I really don’t know what more I can tell you.”

  Paterno nodded and acted like he’d heard it all before, but it was news to Jack. The detective asked a few more questions, asking Cissy to check and see if any valuables were missing when she returned to Eugenia’s, then finally left. Jack walked him to the door and noticed that the KTAM van wasn’t blocking the driveway any longer.

  Good news, at least for now. But it wouldn’t last long. Sooner or later, Lani Saito, or someone else who smelled a story, would be back.

  He closed the door behind Paterno and watched as the policeman walked to his Caddy. Once satisfied that the detective wasn’t coming back, Jack returned to the living room, where the fire hissed in the grate and Cissy sat in the chair, petting the dog, still staring out the window. “So,” he said, picking up a framed picture of B.J. on his first birthday, one candle burning on a cake placed on the tray of his high chair. His eyes seemed twice their size as he stared at the cake in awe and amazement.

  “So what?” she asked, not even looking at him.

  He replaced the five-by-seven on the table. “Are you going to throw me out again?”

  “Am I going to have to?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  She hesitated, as if there were just the tiniest chink in her armor. She slid her gaze to one side, and he had the good sense not to walk close to her, try to touch her, offer unwanted consolation and sympathy. “You keep pushing me.”

  “No, Ciss, you’re the one pushing. You’re pushing me away.”

  “And you know why,” she declared, throwing her arms up in defeat. “I am so tired of fighting. You can stay, Jack, on the couch—on one condition. No…make that two…on second thought, three conditions!”

  Before he could argue, she held up a finger. “First, you leave early in the morning. You do not pass ‘go,’ you do not ‘get out of jail free,’ you do not expect to move in, and you just get the hell out before I get up.”

  “Okay.”

  A second finger shot skyward. “You walk the dog tonight.”

  “The dog hates me.”

  “Tough!” The third finger joined the others. “Before you leave, you find a way to fix the damned furnace.”

  “You’re not calling a repairman?”

  “It’s Sunday. The thermometer in here says the temperature is hovering below sixty-two, and the thermostat is set to seventy.”

  “I’ll look at it.”

  “Okay.” Cissy gazed at him uncertainly, as if unsure whether she’d won or lost. “Then, good. Good night, Jack.”

  “Good night,” he said, but she was already striding out of the living room, across the foyer, then hurrying up the stairs, her bare feet nearly noiseless on the hardwood steps. Above, as she walked, the floor creaked. He heard a door open and shut, then watched a pillow and a sleeping bag come hurtling down the stairs. The sleeping bag bounced against the door of the closet in the foyer; the pillow skidded across the floor and stopped when it hit the back of the couch.

  “Thanks,” he called up the dark staircase toward the landing.

  “Don’t mention it.” A second later he heard the distinctive creak of the master bedroom door as it opened, then shut with a soft thud and a click of the lock. Obviously Cissy was taking no chances that he’d try to sweet-talk his way into their king-sized bed.

  He wasn’t that deluded.

  He picked up the sleeping bag, unrolled it, and tossed it over the slick leather cushions of the damned couch. Throwing the pillow toward one end, he surveyed his work. Not that great, but at least it beat the car, he thought as he walked into the kitchen, found the last beer in the refrigerator, and uncapped the bottle. After taking a long, not-that-satisfying pull, he carried a growling and suspicious-looking Coco outside, deposited her on the turf just off the patio, and waited in the cold drizzle for the damned dog to sniff every damned bush before she finally got down to her damned business.

  “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,”
he confided to Coco as he carried her inside and found a dishtowel to wipe her tiny wet paws. For all his efforts, he was rewarded with a warning growl. He thought for a minute that the feisty bit of fluff might actually bite him. “Don’t even think about it,” he advised, and when he set the dog onto the floor, she scrambled to get away from him, nearly skidding as she headed for the stairs and ran up them as if she were a dog half her age and was fleeing for her life.

  “Good riddance,” Jack muttered.

  With one look up the darkened stairs, he returned to the living room, flopped onto the couch, and picked up the remote. He thought of the irony of his earlier assessment of the single life. Even married and in his own house, it wasn’t much different.

  He clicked on the local news, and there, filling up the flat screen, was the last picture his wife had of her mother: Marla Amhurst Cahill’s mug shot.

  You’re a fool!

  Cissy peeled off her clothes, let them drop to the bedroom floor, then stepped into pajamas that had gotten at least one size too big for her over the last month. Her appetite had been off; the stress over the separation from Jack had cost her ten pounds she could ill-afford to lose.

  And now he was downstairs.

  Great!

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Tonight on the couch. Tomorrow up here in the bedroom? And then what? Are you going to forgive him just like that? Set yourself up for more heartache? Put yourself and B.J. on an emotional roller coaster for the rest of your lives? You can’t do it, Cissy. No matter how much you want to. Jack Holt is a player, plain and simple. He might not ever intend to hurt you, but if you let him, he’ll break your heart over and over again.

  She couldn’t let him.

  It was that simple.

  She walked into the small master bath that she and Jack had carved out of an existing attic space, brushed her teeth and stared at a face she barely recognized. Her eyes, whiskey gold, as Jack had referred to them, were rimmed in running mascara, the whites shot with red veins from all of the crying she’d done since finding her grandmother on the floor of the foyer. Her nose was pink, a couple of damned zits daring to erupt on her chin, and her cheekbones more defined than ever. She scrubbed off all remnants of her makeup, dug in the drawer for acne cream she was way too old to be using, then gave up the search when she heard Coco scratching at the door.

  “Hang on for a sec,” she called, then walked through the bedroom.

  She opened the door, half-expecting Jack to be on the other side, his shoulder propped against the doorjamb, an irrepressible grin tugging at his lips, devilment in his eyes.

  But the dog was alone.

  Insanely she felt a little bit of disappointment.

  “Come here,” she whispered to the dog, “let’s go check on Beej.”

  She heard the soft noise from the television in the living room filtering up the stairs and noticed the illumination of a flickering screen playing against the wall of the staircase. Sighing, she found it ridiculously comforting knowing that she wasn’t alone tonight. That Jack was downstairs. In their house.

  Oh man, Cissy, you ARE a basket case!

  She pushed open the door that she always left just slightly ajar. Inside B.J.’s room, her son was sleeping in his crib, and her heart swelled at the sight of him in the one-piece pajamas that covered him head to toe in soft, powder blue cotton. His blond curls had dried from the bath, and his lips were parted as he slept on his back. A mobile of airplanes through the ages, biplanes to Lear jets, hung suspended from a ceiling where she and Jack had painted clouds.

  “Don’t let his angelic demeanor fool you,” Cissy whispered into Coco’s ear as she stared at her son. “He’s been a holy terror all week.” With her free hand, she adjusted Beej’s blankets and watched his small chest rise and fall.

  Satisfied that he was sleeping soundly, she slipped back into the hallway and then nearly screamed when she saw a dark figure near the stairs. Her hand flew to her heart the nanosecond before she recognized Jack. “Holy God, Jack, what’re you doing up here! We had a deal.”

  “I was just going to do what you’ve been doing. Check on my son.”

  “He’s fine!”

  But Jack brushed by her and poked his head into the nursery anyway. She followed and peeked through the open door. Her heart squeezed as she saw Jack smile and place his big hand on B.J.’s tummy.

  Her heart squeezed.

  Don’t let him get to you, do not!

  “You’re right,” Jack said, easing into the hallway again and brushing up against a picture she had yet to take down, an eight-by-ten of their wedding in the stupid little Las Vegas chapel. She was in a short white dress, he in a tux, and no one they knew had been there to witness the event.

  Jack saw her quick glance and looked at the picture, righting it. “You don’t like Detective Paterno much, do you?”

  “He’s not exactly been a champion of my family, but let’s discuss this some other time.”

  She thought he might grab her right then and there, close as they were. But the little dog in her arms growled, causing Jack to curb whatever impulse he might have had. “That dog hates me,” he said, faintly amused.

  “Maybe she has a reason.”

  “Cheap shot, Ciss,” he said, but his amusement didn’t fall away. “You know, I’m getting damned tired of being your whipping boy.”

  “You’re the one who lobbied hard and fast to get back into the house.”

  “My house,” he reminded her. “At least half of it. But listen, I’m not going to argue with you tonight. I know you’ve been through enough today. So for now, good night, Ciss.” He walked the few feet to the stairs and descended, leaving her in the hallway. She glanced at the wedding picture, yanked it from its hook and, once inside the bedroom, tossed it into the trash with enough force that the glass splintered and the frame broke.

  Telling herself she didn’t care two cents about the damned picture, she set the dog on the floor, but the terrier was having none of it. With surprising agility, Coco launched herself onto the bed and settled on Cissy’s pillow. “Oh, no. Not a prayer.” Cissy pushed the tiny beast onto Jack’s side, where Coco circled about a million times before settling into the spot formerly occupied by the man downstairs.

  How pathetic was that? She and this little dog on a bed that suddenly seemed an acre across.

  She slid between the sheets and picked up a book, then, after reading the same paragraph three times without remembering a word, tossed the paperback onto the nightstand and clicked off the light. Coco was already snoring contentedly, but Cissy stared up at the dark ceiling.

  The police really thought her grandmother had been murdered.

  During the very week her mother had escaped from prison.

  She shuddered, drew the covers up around her neck, and glanced out the window, where the streetlight illuminated a spot on the sidewalk. No police car was outside, but the rain beat steadily, slashing downward, and for a second, just half a heartbeat, she thought she saw someone standing outside that watery pool of light, a dark, smudgy apparition that could have been a person in a dark coat, or a figment of her imagination.

  A frisson of fear skated down Cissy’s spine, and her heart nearly stopped.

  You’re imagining things.

  But she slid out of the bed and, in the darkness, walked to the side of the window, obscured by the curtains, peering out into the damp night. Lights from neighboring houses should have made her feel more secure. Jack being downstairs should have made her feel safe.

  Her fingers wound in the sheer curtains as she squinted into the night.

  There’s no one there. Look…there’s nothing.

  But she swallowed against a suddenly dry throat and resisted the urge to call out to Jack.

  She thought about Marla as she stared at the spot where she felt she’d seen someone lurking.

  Where was she?

  Here?

  Chapter 6

  The couch wasn’t made for sleeping.
r />   It was fine for sitting on.

  Great for watching television.

  Perfect for making out.

  But sleeping all night, no way.

  Jack woke with a crick in his neck and a bad taste in his mouth. He didn’t dare go upstairs and wake his wife, so he walked into the small bath off the foyer and cleaned his teeth with some of the soap from the dispenser and his finger.

  He thought about making a pot of coffee and carrying it up to Cissy, maybe even finding a fake flower and placing it between his teeth in an effort to make her smile, but thought better of it. Part of their deal was that he would leave before she awoke. Cissy was not a “morning person” and was still too pissed at him to even think about forgiving him. He walked into the kitchen, ground some beans for coffee, found the filters, and poured in a carafe of water. With a press of a button, java was on its way.

  Just as the first fragrant drips were working their way into the pot, his cell phone jangled. He flipped it open and spied his sister’s name and number. Not a good sign. He almost didn’t answer, but knew that wouldn’t stop her. Jannelle—tall, blond, and five years older than Jack—had been a print model before opening her own school for girls who were on the fast track to the runway. She was tunnel-visioned to the nth degree and relentless when she wanted something. If she was calling at six in the morning, it wasn’t just to say hello. She had to be on some damned mission.

  “Hi, Jannelle,” he said in a whisper so as not to wake his wife, child, or the yappy dog.

  “What’s this about Cissy’s grandmother being murdered?” Jannelle demanded.

  That was Jannelle, never one to sugarcoat anything. “Good morning to you too.”

  “You know about this, right? It’s all over the news! Jesus, Jack, did someone really kill Eugenia Cahill?” She sounded nervous, anxious. He heard her breathe in hard, then the distinctive sounds of her lighting a cigarette, though she’d quit smoking a good six months earlier.

  “That appears to be the current line of thinking,” he said, leaning one hip against the corner of the cabinets in the kitchen. The coffee was really doing its thing, percolating and sputtering and hissing and filling the small kitchen with a warm, rich scent.