The lights on the pier were all on now. I got out my phone and called Amy’s number.
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry I haven’t checked in. Got hung up at Nat’s. Only just left. You know what she’s like.” I didn’t say anything. “How are things back at the homestead? Got the place warmed up?”
“I’m not in Birch Crossing,” I said.
“Oh?”
“I’m in Santa Monica. I flew down this afternoon.”
There was a pause. “And why would you have done that?”
“Why do you think?”
“No idea, hon. Sounds kind of wacky to me.”
“Hardly seen you this last week. I thought it might be nice for us to meet up. Check out the old haunts.”
“Babe, that’s a really sweet idea, but I’ve got like a ton of work to do. Need to get my ducks in a row for the meeting tomorrow.”
“I don’t really care,” I said. “I’m your husband. I’m in town. Come meet me, for coffee at least.”
There was silence for maybe five seconds. “Where?”
“You know where.”
She laughed. “Well, actually, I don’t. Not being a mind reader.”
“So pick a place,” I said. “And be there soon.”
“You’re really not going to tell me where?”
“You choose. And just go there.”
“Jack, this is a dumb game.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
chapter
THIRTY-ONE
On the pier, groups of tourists strolled in the softening light, coming in and out of souvenir stores or suspiciously eyeing restaurant menus. I leaned against the rail and waited, the knot in my stomach getting tight and tighter. Twenty-five minutes later, I saw a woman walking down the ramp from the Palisades. I watched her come onto the pier and move purposefully through the crowd. She was in her mid-thirties but looked younger and was very smartly dressed. She glanced neither left nor right but headed straight to where she was going. She held something in her right hand, something that looked so wrong as to be trick photography, and I realized there had been things I’d misunderstood.
I let her go by, then got up and followed.
By the time I got to the end, she was leaning on the railing, looking across the water back toward Venice, a yellow glow surrounding her from the lamp at the corner of this section of the promenade. There were other people nearby, but not many—we had passed the restaurant sections and stores, were almost as far as possible from land. Most people got to this point, nodded at the sea, and turned to head back to where they could buy stuff.
Amy turned around. “Hey, you found me,” she said. “You’re good.”
She looked strange. Taller, yet more compact. As if she had edited or improved her form, become Amy 1.1, without consulting me on the development process.
“Not really,” I said. “This was the only place that made sense.”
“Exactly. So what’s with the cloak-and-dagger?”
“I just wanted to see if you could remember.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Jack. We came here on our first date. You proposed to me on this actual spot. We…well, you know. I’m hardly going to forget.”
“Good,” I said, feeling tired and sad, unable to completely remember what I’d thought the point of the exercise had been. I leaned on the rail next to her.
“So what’s up?” she said. “It’s lovely to see you, obviously, but I’ve got miles to go and promises to keep and a stack of work to do before I sleep.”
I shook my head.
“What’s that mean?”
“No you haven’t. Got work to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I called your office before I left home.”
She pushed back from the rail. “Honey, you’ve really got to stop bugging people where I work. It just doesn’t look very—”
“There’s no meeting here tomorrow.”
She cocked her head, Dyer style. I could see her judging how to proceed. In the end she nodded.
“That’s correct.”
There it was. Yes—I lied to you. It felt like a cold wind was blowing across the back of my neck, though the night was warm, and there was no breeze.
“So what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see Natalie.”
“Not according to her. She says it was a drive-by and she wasn’t even sure why it happened.” There was a cliff in front of me, the edge of which I could clearly see, yet toward which I was persisting in taking steps.
“You’ve been to interview her? Wow. Shame you were never this go-getting when you were a policeman, Jack.”
“I never wanted to be a detective. You knew that.”
“But now you do? When it’s too late?”
“I care about this more, I guess.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s you. Because something’s happening that I don’t understand. And you’re not answering my question.”
“There’s nothing going on, babe.”
I got out my cigarettes. Took one, then offered the pack to her—something I’d never done before in all the time we’d known each other. She just looked at me.
“Saw you walk by with one in your hand,” I said. “Found your ash on the deck the night you came back from Seattle, though I didn’t realize it. Saw you smoking out there last Sunday afternoon, too, when I was running. I thought it was just condensation. But it wasn’t.”
“Jack, you’re being ridiculous. I don’t—”
There wasn’t enough force behind the lie. I didn’t even have to raise my voice to interrupt.
“Plus, I found a collection of butts in the bushes. Couldn’t figure how someone could have been out there without you seeing them from inside. But that’s because it was you doing the smoking. Correct?”
She looked away. Being right brought me no pleasure. “So what starts you up again after…what—ten years? Twelve?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes remained elsewhere, and her mouth was pursed. She looked like a teenage girl stoically enduring being chewed out for breaking a curfew she believed was dumb and unfair.
“Is it the same thing that’s started you using abbreviations in text messages?”
“What are you talking about now?”
“You’re a bright woman. You’re capable of understanding the question,” I said.
“I understand the words, but not what you’re getting at. You’re out on some weird kind of limb here, honey.”
“I don’t think so. You’re the one who needs to get your head straight. Whatever or whoever’s clouding your mind has you falling down all across the board.”
“I’m really fine,” she said. “Seems to be you who’s running red lights.”
She looked so chillingly smug then that I wanted to turn and walk away from her. Or even, for a fraction of a second, to shove her over the railing. To punish this impostor for stealing the identity of someone I loved.
“Annabel’s birthday,” I said instead.
She frowned. Even when she spoke, it was with the air of someone treading water. “What about it?”
“When is it?”
The penny dropped. She rubbed her forehead. “Oh, crap.”
“No big deal in the grand scheme of things. But—”
“Of course it’s a big deal. Shit. Why didn’t Natalie say anything?”
“Probably didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Natalie? Does that seem likely?”