“Yes, okay. You say he saw Christie?”
“He called me, said he saw her.”
Dix’s hands fell away. He took a step back. He stared blindly at his father-in-law, shaking his head back and forth, his brain blank. He had to make himself breathe. He had to get spit in his mouth so he could talk. No, it wasn’t possible.
Chappy grabbed Dix’s wrist. “You know if anyone else had told me that, I’d have dismissed it out of hand, maybe even belted them, hut not Jules. He was there when Christie was born. He knew her all her life. He might be older than I am but he’s not senile, Dix, and he’s still got the eyesight of an owl. Truth is, I’d trust him with everything but my money.”
And that was saying something indeed. Dix had met Jules Advere perhaps a dozen times before Christie had simply up and vanished that long-ago day. He pictured him in his mind the day Jules had flown into Richmond from some weird place like Latvia, a short, older man with a big dark mustache and a good-sized paunch on him that made Chappy razz him endlessly. He’d worked as hard as anyone trying to find Christie, did everything he could to comfort the boys. He’d even hired his own private investigator—but with no luck. No one had had an ounce of luck.
Jules had seen Christie? No, that was impossible. Dix had long ago accepted that Christie was dead, killed by some psychopath and buried in an unmarked grave somewhere, and it had sunk him deep into himself for too long a time, and nearly brought his sons into the pit with him. He thought about his sons, Rob and Rafe, what this news could do to them. He wasn’t going to say a word about this to them. Not yet.
He was a cop and he had to take a step back, had to get it together. “Chappy, where did Jules say he’d seen her? In San Francisco? Did he speak to her? Come on now, get your thoughts together and tell me everything.”
Chappy slumped down onto a three-hundred-year-old Hepplewhite chair covered with what looked like the original green-and-white-striped brocade. He looked down at his Italian loafers. Dix saw his hands were trembling. Chappy said, “He was attending a fundraiser at one of those big yahoo penthouses on Russian Hill, given by a man supporting a senatorial candidate. Jules said it was this guy’s wife—he said there was no doubt in his mind. She was Christie.”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“Thomas Pallack. I’ve done business with him. He was here in Maestro once, maybe three and a half years ago, before Christie disappeared. He only stayed a couple of days. I don’t think he met Christie, though. He’s decades older than even the income tax laws, and he’s wealthy, made his money in oil and diversified. Like I said, it’s his wife, that’s what Jules said—his wife is Christie.”
Dix said slowly, patiently, “You know that’s impossible, Chappy. You know it.”
“I know it, but still, Dix, I’m just not as certain as you are. Yes, yes, I know she’d never have left you willingly. She loved you and the boys more than anything. Hell’s bells, she even loved me, even tolerated her brother’s idiot wife. But Jules swore it was her. It shook him so much to actually see her he told me he thought he was having a heart attack—searing pain all up his right side and he couldn’t breathe. He said he whispered ‘Christie’ to her and Thomas kneeled down beside him while they were calling 911. He said Pallack leaned close and said, ‘My wife’s name is Charlotte. Do you understand? Don’t forget it.’ Jules said Christie looked down at him like a hostess would at someone who was ruining her party, a sort of polite forbearance because the last thing she wanted was for this old buzzard to die on her beautiful oak parquet floor. Admittedly he felt really sick at this point, even admitted he didn’t see any recognition in her eyes when she looked at him, and that bothered him because, you see, he knew it was her.”
“So you’re saying Jules never got to speak to this woman before he collapsed?”
“No, just the one look in the receiving line, and then he was lying on his back staring up at her. The paramedics arrived and whisked him off to the hospital. Turns out he hadn’t had a heart attack, but the doctors wondered if he’d suffered some sort of temporary stroke, said it could paralyze your body and make you keel over, that it could happen to an old guy like him. He called me from the hospital a few minutes ago while they were still doing all their infernal tests, said you had to get out to San Francisco, find out what Christie is doing there.”
“It’s not Christie, Chappy. She’s dead. You heard what Jules said, the woman looked at him with no recognition at all.”
“Then who the hell is she?”
Dix only shrugged, but all the memories, all the faded pain was back again, almost bowling him over, as it had in those early months after she’d disappeared. It isn’t Christie!
He said, “We’re all supposed to have a twin somewhere on this earth, a thought that should curdle your own blood, Chappy. Evidently Jules met Christie’s twin, nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t her, Chappy, it couldn’t have been Christie. So you know this guy Thomas Pallack, it’s a coincidence, nothing more.”
“No, Dix, wait! What if Thomas Pallack’s wife is Christie and she’s lost her memory or something? She was in some sort of accident or had some sort of mental breakdown? Hell, maybe she escaped something terrifying that made her repress everything.”
“Chappy—”
“She might have ended up in San Francisco, met Thomas Pallack by chance, married him for whatever reason, I mean, the guy is older, and—if that’s so then naturally she wouldn’t recognize Jules. She had to have a name, so she called herself Charlotte. Dix, Jules is so certain. You’ll go to San Francisco, won’t you? Hell, no problem, both of us will go.”
Dix didn’t pause, simply walked to the door of Chappy’s study, and said over his shoulder, “Chappy, I’ll tell you what. I’ll go to San Francisco, find out what this is all about. I’ll meet this Thomas Pallack and his wife. I don’t want you to come with me, Chappy. I need you to stay here, see to the boys.” Then he stopped, turned. “Chappy,” he said very quietly to Christie’s father—not to the man whose soggy morals sometimes drove him nuts, the man who wouldn’t lift his foot off his own son’s neck—”please don’t get your hopes up. It simply can’t be Christie. Deep down you know it. You know Christie is dead.”
Chappy didn’t say a word.
“And don’t say anything about this to anyone, all right? Not even to Tony or Cynthia. The last thing I want is for the boys to hear their mother might be alive, have them go through this pain again when I know it simply can’t be true.”
“You got it, Dix. I won’t say anything.”
When Dix reached the double front doors, Chappy’s white face still stark in his mind, Bernard appeared at his elbow. Dix said, “Make sure you see to Chappy, Bernard. I think he needs a good shot of something. I know Mrs. Goss keeps a bottle of twenty-five-year-old single malt Scotch whisky. What’s it called?”
Bernard said with reverence, “Lord of the Isles. She said she gave it to her husband for an anniversary gift, then he up and died the next week. She hoards it. I think it must be about thirty years old now, almost as many years as she’s been the housekeeper here!”
Dix nodded. “Maybe she’ll break it out this once.”
“Doubtful,” Bernard said, then blurted out, “Do you think it’s Christie, Dix?”
So Bernard had been listening at the door. Dix would have been, too. He looked Bernard straight on, saw the concern in his dark eyes. Bernard had been with Chappy since the two of them were in their twenties. “No, it can’t be. It’s some sort of mistake. Bernard, like I told Chappy, this has to stay among the three of us. You understand? Not even Mrs. Goss.”