Cold Feet

CHAPTER FIVE

“C ALEB, WHERE have you been? I’ve been calling your cell for the past hour.”

Holly. Again. Between Caleb’s run to his folks’ house for his things that morning, and his trip to the grocery store in the afternoon, he’d met her at the university and helped pass out flyers with Susan’s picture and description. Every time his ex-wife had called since then, he’d jumped for the phone, thinking she’d heard from someone who’d seen Susan. Shortly before Johnny had pulled up outside, Caleb had finally realized she was just stressed and worried and wanted to go over the same things she’d been saying all day. Only he’d already done everything he could until morning and didn’t want to hold her hand anymore. He was comfortable in bed, once again flipping through satellite channels on television and enjoying the solitude.

“It’s after midnight, Holly,” he said. “Can’t this wait until we get together in the morning?”

“No, it can’t,” she replied. “Someone called me about the flyer a little while ago.”

At last! Caleb hit the off button and sat up, giving Holly his full attention. “Who was it?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I get there. I have something to show you.”

“ Show me?”

“I’m on my way.”

“Wait, I’m not staying at my folks’ place,” he said before she could hang up.

“You’re not?”

“No, I rented a small house.”

Silence. Eventually she asked, “Why would you rent a place? You could’ve stayed here for free.”

“Holly, we’re divorced.”

“I know that, Caleb. It isn’t as though I’m asking you to sleep with me. I only offered to put you up for a few weeks. You’re helping me, after all. I feel it’s the least I can do.”

“There’s no need,” he said. “I’m fine where I am.”

“And where is that?”

“Whidbey Island.”

“Whidbey! What made you move there?”

“It’s closer to the mainland.”

“If you wanted to be close to the mainland, why didn’t you rent an apartment on the mainland?”

Caleb considered telling Holly that he was renting from Ellis Purcell’s daughter, but decided not to. He didn’t want her badgering him for information until he was ready to share it. Just because he might come across answers no one else had been able to glean didn’t necessarily mean he would. It was possible that Madison was too secretive to let anything slip. It was also possible that she didn’t know anything. But he was willing to bet against both of those possibilities. She’d been living with Ellis during his killing spree. At a minimum, she should be able to tell Caleb bits and pieces of conversation she’d overheard between her parents, whether her father was really at home when he’d claimed to be, whether she sometimes heard things go bump in the night, whether she ever saw him move something heavy that just might have resembled a dead body….

“This place is nice,” he said instead.

“How much is it costing you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Waste your money, then. I don’t care,” she said. “You’re so stubborn. I don’t know why I married you once, let alone twice.”

He thought she might hang up in a huff, but she didn’t. “Are you going to give me directions?” she asked after an extended silence.

A quick glance at the clock told him it was even later than he’d realized. But she’d said she had something to show him. “What do you have?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

If she had a lead, he needed to know about it as soon as possible. He told her how to find him. Then he got up, dressed and put on some coffee.

Across the yard, he could see that the lights were still on in Madison’s house, and he wondered what she was doing. Earlier, it had looked as though she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders….

Guilt about masquerading as a random renter flickered inside him. He could already tell Madison wasn’t the ice princess he’d assumed from her television interviews and that one strongly worded letter. Her behavior wasn’t strange, either, like her father’s. Actually, she seemed pretty…normal. And there was no question she’d been through a lot.

Leaning against the wall, he stared out the window at her light. She might be nice. She might even be one of the most attractive women he’d ever met—but being nice and attractive didn’t change the fact that the truth had to be told.

M ADISON COULDN’T SLEEP . She was tired yet wound up, and didn’t dare take a sleeping pill, for several reasons. Brianna could wake up in the night. Johnny, or whoever had been with him, could come back. And she wasn’t yet comfortable with having a stranger living on her property. Especially one who knew she and Brianna were alone. Caleb Trovato’s credit references had checked out; he seemed like a pretty solid citizen. But still…

Pulling out her sketchpad, she sat at the kitchen table and began to draw. She had tons of paperwork to take care of. She needed to review the purchase offers her agents had generated in the past week. As their broker, she was liable for any legal repercussions if they made a mistake. She also needed to revise the independent contractor agreement she was having her agents sign when they came to work for her, decide whether or not she was going to hire the young woman she’d interviewed this afternoon, and review the lease for the new copier she was buying for the office. But she was too tense to delve into work-related matters tonight.

Because she couldn’t forget Johnny, she drew his eyes. Because she was worried about Brianna, she drew her daughter’s full lips. She even sketched Danny’s angry brow—something that had come to symbolize their relationship. The scratch of her pencil and her intense focus usually eased the stress knotting the muscles in her back and neck. But nothing seemed to help tonight. She still felt as though she were walking a tightrope with the ground frighteningly far below.

Her eyes slid to her briefcase. The urgency to make her business successful was part of the problem. Sales weren’t going nearly as well as she’d hoped when she’d purchased South Whidbey Realty. She knew she was crazy to be wasting time while Brianna was sleeping, but Madison simply couldn’t face the work she’d brought home with her.

Flipping to a new page, she considered drawing her mother’s hands. But anything to do with her mother reminded Madison of her father, and she didn’t want to confront her doubts about him. Not right now. Not in the middle of the night with the clock on the wall ticking and the rest of the house so silent.

She sorted through the faces she’d seen lately: an obese woman with beautiful blond hair she’d met at Brianna’s school; a wiry, angular man who’d just started doing the janitorial work at the office building where she leased space; a baby she’d seen at the mall. None interested her enough to attempt them. But the gruff old man who worked on the ferry seemed to have potential—

A car pulled into the drive, and Madison’s heart began to race. Was Johnny back? What could he possibly want now?

Dropping her pencil, she went to the window, but the car that parked behind Caleb’s Mustang didn’t look anything like the one Johnny had been riding in earlier. This car was a late-model Honda. And the person getting out of it was a woman—a tall woman who wasn’t approaching her house.

A moment later, Caleb Trovato’s door opened and he stepped out under the eaves. His broad shoulders blocked most of the light spilling from the cottage behind him, but Madison could see that his visitor was blond and most likely very pretty. Was she a friend? A lover? Coming this late she could even be a call girl.

No, Caleb would have no need to hire a prostitute, Madison decided. He probably had more female attention than he knew what to do with. He was ruggedly handsome. More than that, he carried himself with the sort of beguiling indifference most women found so appealing.

Most women, but not Madison. She’d trusted her father. She’d trusted Danny. She would have trusted Johnny and Tye, except they’d never let her get close enough. For some reason, when it came to men, she wasn’t a very good judge of character. Which meant she was better off alone.

Even if she wanted a new love interest, how could she get close to anyone while guarding her father’s terrible secret?

“T HIS IS A CUTE PLACE ,” Holly said.

Caleb stretched out on the couch and flipped on the television. “Thanks.”

“How did you find it?”

“I stumbled across the For Rent sign.”

“So you leased it?” She snapped her fingers. “Like that?”

“Pretty much.” He waved to the chair at the end of the couch. “Sit down and show me what you’ve got.”

She didn’t move toward the chair. “If you didn’t want to stay with your mother or me, why not get a hotel? That’s what most people do.”

“Does it matter?” he asked, trying to head her off. She’d brought up the Sandpoint Strangler a number of times and was already frightened that Susan’s disappearance might be connected. He didn’t want to fuel her fears by admitting he suspected the same thing. At least until he had more to go on than gut instinct and a few wild coincidences.

She shook her head as she gazed around. “I just never expected it.”

He buzzed past a commercial for dandruff shampoo. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, Holly. Now I have a place of my own while I’m here. That’s it.”

“And the downside is you’re paying by the week?”

“ Forget the cottage.”

At the irritation in his voice, she propped her hands on her hips and faced him. “Why’d I have to fall in love with you?”

Caleb had asked himself the same question about her, many times. She’d just been so…lost when he met her. And he’d always been a sucker for a woman down on her luck. He liked feeling needed, liked taking care of others. Unfortunately, she’d exploited that tendency to its fullest. “I wish I knew.”

“I’ll never understand you or what happened between us—”

“That’s the beauty of being divorced,” he interrupted. “We no longer have to analyze what’s wrong with us. No more teary talks that carry on through the night. No more debilitating guilt. Surely you’re as relieved as I am.”

“But we loved each other.”

Caleb scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “We just hated each other more.”

“I never hated you,” she said.

“God, Hol, would you let it go?” He blew out a sigh, hoping some of his frustration would go with it. “We couldn’t be together for more than two days in a row. Now, do you have something on Susan or not?”

It took her a moment to regain control. But she managed to do so, for a change, and Caleb relaxed.

Leaving the remote control on the arm of the couch, he went to the refrigerator to get a beer. “Well?” he said when he’d popped the top and drunk almost half of it.

She finally sat down and stared at the television, probably so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “I’m not sure if it’ll tell us much in the end, but a woman named Jennifer Allred saw Susan the day after she and I had our nails done.”

“Where?” He leaned one hip against the kitchen counter, enjoying the smooth taste of his Michelob Light and letting it siphon off some of the tension he’d been feeling only moments earlier.

“At a vegetarian pizza place not far from the university.”

“She’s sure it was Susan?”

Holly reached into her purse and withdrew a photograph. “She gave me this.”

Surprised, Caleb left his beer on the counter and walked over to get a better look. “ How did she give you this?” he asked. “I thought you said she called you.”

“She did. Then she asked me to meet her on campus because she had some proof to give me.”

“And you did it? Don’t tell me you went there alone, Holly.”

“What else was I supposed to do? Drag someone out of bed and coerce him or her into going with me? You weren’t picking up.”

He’d been outside creeping around, trying to figure out what was going on at Madison’s—not the type of errand on which he wanted to carry a cell phone. “Twelve women, if you count Susan, have been snatched from that campus or the surrounding area! What were you thinking, meeting someone so late?”

“Oh, don’t pretend you care about me,” she said, coming right back at him. “If you cared, you never would’ve given up on me.”

“Damn it, Holly, would you quit twisting the knife? I wanted to be there for you. I married you twice, remember? We aren’t a good fit. I don’t know how much more proof you need!” He hadn’t planned on shouting, but she always managed to snap the control that was sufficient for every other situation and relationship.

She stared at him for several seconds, her glare challenging enough to make him believe they were going to end up in another of their famous rows. She was probably going to start in on the miscarriage. She always used that as some sort of trump card, as if he hadn’t felt the loss of their baby just as deeply.

Instead, she covered her eyes and shook her head, obviously backing down. “Look at the picture, okay?”

Caleb felt the anger drain out of him. No one made him as crazy as Holly did. But this wasn’t about their marriages or their divorces. This was about Susan, he reminded himself, gazing down at the picture. “I don’t recognize any of these people,” he said.

“That’s because you’ve probably never seen them before. That’s Jennifer and her two roommates. They’re celebrating because the guy on the left just won an art grant.”

“So what does this have to do with Susan?”

“Look behind them, in the background.”

Caleb held the picture closer to the light, trying to make out the slightly blurred figure beyond the open door of the pizza place. It could have been any woman of Susan’s general size, shape and coloring. But then he saw a slice of leopard print halter beneath a short black jacket and knew it was her.

“She’s wearing just what I thought she was wearing,” he said in amazement.

“Notice anything else?”

Caleb’s blood ran cold. Next to Susan, parked at the curb, was a blue Ford pickup with a white camper shell. He cut his gaze to Holly. “Purcell’s truck?”

“Or one just like it.”

Another connection. At this stage, Caleb saw no benefit in keeping his reason for renting the cottage a secret. With the appearance of Purcell’s truck in this picture with Susan, Holly’s fears were already confirmed. “You wanted to know why I rented this place,” he said.

“You’re finally going to tell me?”

“Madison Lieberman lives next door. She’s my landlady.”

Holly’s brows drew together as if she couldn’t quite identify the name. “Madison Lieberman…”

“Ellis Purcell’s daughter.”

“Of course! I heard about her over and over when you were researching the Sandpoint Strangler. But she’d never talk to you. Has she changed her mind?”

“Not exactly. She doesn’t even know that Caleb Trovato and Thomas L. Wagner are the same man. She was looking for a renter, and I happened to get here first. That’s it.” He tapped the picture against his palm. “Tell me how Jennifer came across one of our flyers.”

“She’s a graduate student at the university and saw it posted at the library.”

Holly had insisted on putting her phone number on the flyer, which made sense because hers was local and not long distance. Also, Caleb knew a woman’s name and number would seem less threatening. But Holly and this Jennifer woman had both been stupid to meet on campus so late at night—not that there was any point in arguing about it now. “What I don’t understand is why she noticed something so obscure in one of her pictures,” he said.

“Susan was involved in an argument that drew everyone’s attention. When Jennifer saw the flyer, she looked through the pictures she’d taken that night and, voil

With a truck like Ellis Purcell’s in the same vicinity. Was it another strange coincidence? Or did the police have a copycat killer on their hands?

“Did Jennifer say what the argument was about?” he asked.

“She wasn’t sure. She thinks Susan bumped someone’s fender while trying to park or something like that. Jennifer and her friends weren’t really aware of anyone else until Susan screamed a curse. Then they all craned their heads to see what was going on. A male voice answered by calling her a stupid bitch. Then Susan got in her car and peeled off.”

“What did the guy who called her a bitch look like?”

“He was beyond their view. After Susan left, Jennifer and her friends went back to their fun. She said if she hadn’t seen the flyer, she probably wouldn’t have thought about the incident again.”

Caleb returned his attention to the picture, trying to figure out what it meant.

Holly watched him closely, fiddling with the cuff of her long-sleeved, black cotton blouse. “This might or might not have any relevance to my sister’s disappearance, though, right?” she said. “I mean, for all we know that truck’s a coincidence and Susan was arguing with Lance, the guy she was dating.”

“At least this picture narrows down the time she could have disappeared,” Caleb said. “Jennifer said this was taken on Tuesday?”

Holly nodded.

“She was reported missing when she didn’t show up for work on Wednesday, which means she disappeared sometime Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.”

“Do you think it was Lance she was arguing with at the pizza place?” Holly persisted.

“We’ve talked to Lance. The last time he saw Susan was when they spent the night together on Saturday, remember?”

“That’s what he says. Maybe he’s afraid to tell us about the argument for fear it’ll make him a suspect in the case.”

“He’s already a suspect,” Caleb said. “In any homicide, the police look at the husband or boyfriend first, then extended family members and friends. But Gibbons doesn’t believe Lance is our guy.”

Her eyes narrowed. “When did you talk to Gibbons?”

“Last night.”

“You didn’t mention it to me.”

“I haven’t had a chance.”

“We were passing out flyers together all day!”

“It’s a moot point,” he said. “Lance has a good alibi.”

“For when?”

“For Monday and Tuesday nights.” And for Wednesday and Thursday, as well, but Caleb didn’t want to go into that.

“Where was he?” she asked.

Caleb raked his fingers through his hair, wondering how to frame his answer.

“What is it?” she pressed when he didn’t respond right away. “You know something you’re not telling me.”

What the hell, he decided. The truth was the truth. “Lance is engaged to be married,” he said. “He’s been living with his fiancée and seeing Susan on the side.”

“What?” Holly scrambled to her feet. “Susan told me he was living with his sister.”

“If it makes you feel any better, his fiancée didn’t know about Susan, either. She kicked him out as soon as she learned. But she maintains that he was home by six o’clock both Monday and Tuesday nights. She works evenings and needed him to sit with her mother, who just had surgery to replace a knee. The mother confirmed that she and Lance watched television together for several hours both nights.”

“I can’t believe it,” Holly cried. “What scum! Men are all alike!”

“Hey, I never cheated on you,” he said.

“You quit loving me. That’s even worse.” Burying her face in her hands, she dissolved into tears.

Her crying tugged at Caleb’s heart, but he told himself not to feel any sympathy. He couldn’t afford sympathy. Where Holly was concerned, the softer emotions always got him into trouble. But he couldn’t stand to see her, or any woman, cry.

Leaving his beer on the counter, he went to see if he could get her to settle down. “Holly, you’ll meet someone else,” he told her.

She slipped her arms around his neck. His immediate impulse was to pull away, but she looked so crestfallen he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Someone who’s more compatible with you than I am,” he added, patting her awkwardly. “And we’ll find Susan, okay? Don’t give up hope. Not yet. She needs us to believe.”

Holly clung to him, nestling her face into his neck. “What if we don’t find her? I’ll live my whole life never knowing what happened to my own sister. I’ve lost you already, Caleb. I can’t bear to lose her, too. She’s all I’ve got left.”

Caleb thought of the other families suffering through the same kind of loss. He didn’t relish the idea of lying to Madison Lieberman, but it seemed a small price to pay to resolve the mystery that had affected so many lives.

“I’m going to help you find Susan,” he said. “Have some faith.”

Holly shifted slightly in his arms, fitting her body more snugly to his. “If we don’t find her, you’ll eventually have to give up.”

“We’ll find her.” He got the impression she was making her body accessible on purpose, and decided he’d given her all the comfort he could.

But when he tried to release her, she held on tight.

“Caleb?”

“What?”

“Is it really over between us? Because sometimes it doesn’t feel like it is.”

It had been more than two years since he’d made love to Holly. After his second divorce, he’d gone on a brief womanizing rampage, trying to repair what his failed marriage had done to his ego, he supposed. But he’d soon found the lifestyle too empty to bother with and had thrown himself back into his work. Now it had been ten months since he’d made love to any woman.

He had to admit he was beginning to feel his body’s long neglect, but Caleb wasn’t about to make another mistake with Holly. After their first divorce, a moment’s weakness had left her pregnant and, for the baby’s sake, he’d married her again. He certainly didn’t want a repeat performance.

“It’s really over,” he said, putting her firmly away from him.