Claire hung up the phone. “Who?”
“Ellen Roberts. She says you called her yesterday, and grilled her for fifteen minutes about Brian. And then you got her son, Michael, on the line and interrogated him for ten more minutes.”
Claire frowned. “I simply asked them a few questions. You make it sound like I strapped them each to a chair and used the brass knuckles.”
“Well, you can’t go calling everyone up and asking them about Brian.”
Claire said nothing. She’d already called all the mothers on the car pool list—and talked with over a dozen of Brian’s friends. No one had a clue as to her son’s whereabouts. She’d even asked about Derek Herrmann’s trip to Europe, and the possibility that Brian had gone with him. A few of the mothers expressed surprise over Derek’s sudden departure; others didn’t know a thing about it.
“Harlan already phoned several of Brian’s friends and their families when he ran away two weeks ago,” Linda went on. “It’s beyond pointless that you’re calling and hounding them again. In fact, Claire, I hate to say this, but it’s downright embarrassing. I mean, it’s a family matter. The whole island doesn’t need to know that Brian ran away from home.”
Claire frowned at her. “What’s it your business anyway, Linda?”
She straightened in the chair. “Well, it becomes my business when Ellen Roberts phones me and asks what’s wrong with you. Plus, she star-six-nined your call. She wanted to know why she got this hospital here in Bellingham when we’ve been telling everyone you’re in Seattle. I had to make up this elaborate story about how the Seattle number is routed through Bellingham. That’s another reason you shouldn’t be calling all these people. You’ll blow our cover story.”
Claire rubbed her forehead. “Do we really need a ‘cover story,’ Linda? Is it necessary to lie to people about a mugging and my recuperating in some Seattle hospital? Why not simply tell everyone the truth?”
“Well, now, you’re just not making any sense, Claire,” Linda sighed. “It’s common knowledge that Jane Doe is in a Bellingham hospital. That’s why we’re saying you’re in Seattle, dear. The fewer people who are clued into the fact that you’re Jane Doe, the better.” She motioned toward the tabloid on the foot of the bed. “I mean, do you want everyone knowing that’s you? You were missing for a week, and practically the whole island is aware of that. Do you want them to make the connection? So you were mugged, and you’re in a hospital in Seattle. That cover story is for your protection, your privacy.”
Claire looked her in the eyes. “You know, Linda, I have a feeling that you and Harlan are giving
me
a cover story. There’s something you’re not telling me, something you’re keeping from me—and from the police.”
Linda glanced toward the closed door, then squinted at her. “What, are you nuts?”
“Did we really go shopping together in Seattle? Because I don’t remember it at all. And I know I’ve never spent the night in your guest room. You made that up, didn’t you?”
“Why would I make it up?”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking you, Linda. Something happened, and you’re covering it up. Does it have to do with Brian? Is that why you don’t want me calling people and asking—”
Linda shook her head. “Claire, you’re talking nonsense—”
“Do you expect me to believe that within a twenty-four-hour period, Brian ran away, his best friend took off for parts unknown in Europe, and I disappeared? Isn’t that a pretty strange coincidence?”
“It’s not so strange, considering Brian has run away twice before. And if I were Dottie Herrmann, I’d have sent that kid to Europe too. Hell, with all the trouble Derek was into—along with Brian, I might add—I’d have given him a one-way ticket to Timbuktu ages ago.”
Linda got to her feet. “Now, I’m sorry you don’t remember Brian running away. But you’re the one who broke that news to us the night he took off. And I’m sorry you don’t remember how Ron and I tried to be good friends, and put you up for the night. It’s exactly as I told the police, Claire. The next day, I took you to Anacortes on the boat, and drove you down to Seattle. I’m not lying, or keeping anything from you. Quite frankly, I resent your accusations.”
With a sigh, she glanced down at Claire on the bed. “I should be hurt, Claire, but I’ll just chalk up your suspicions to the stress and strain you’ve been under.”
Claire stared up at her. “No, Linda,” she whispered. “Chalk up my suspicions to the fact that you’re a bad liar.”
Linda shook her head and clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Well, I see there’s no reasoning with you while you’re in this mood. I’ll come by tomorrow. Call if you need anything—or if you want to apologize.”
She shot Claire one last wounded look, then headed out the door.
Linda Castle climbed into her sports utility vehicle in the hospital visitors’ parking lot. She pulled the cell phone out of her purse and pressed the speed dial. She gazed at the hospital through the windshield while listening to the ring tones. Someone answered on the third ring.
“Hi, hon,” Linda said. “Listen, I tried to discourage her from calling half the island about that son of hers, and she got all uppity with me. Honestly, I wanted to smack her. We really have to move her out of this hospital before she starts to remember things. I mean it. The sooner the better…”
“Do you want me to close this door, ma’am?” asked the guard outside her room.
Still sitting on the bed, Claire glanced over her shoulder at him. “Yes, thanks very much.” Once he closed the door, Claire curled up on the bed.
She didn’t give a damn if calling Brian’s friends and their parents had made certain people uncomfortable. She needed to find her son. She didn’t want to think that Brian could have run away and decided to
stay
away this time.
Claire closed her eyes for a moment. She felt herself drifting off. Then an image flashed in her mind. She saw the hospital door open. In the doorway stood that half-photograph, half-cartoon of a man from the tabloid. He stared at her, unmoving, unblinking. He held a gun in one hand and a knife in the other.
She quickly sat up, and glanced back at the closed door. She felt her heart racing near the fresh scar on her chest.
“Shit,” she muttered, getting to her feet.
Claire brushed her hair, put on some lipstick, then buttoned up her robe. She nodded and smiled at the guard as she stepped outside, then she headed down the hallway toward room 304. She figured Sherita was probably right. Maybe she needed to take her mind off her own worries for a while.
The door to 304 was open, and Claire peeked inside the room. A thin woman sat on top of the bed with a remote control device in her hand. She wore a beautiful, long, red kimono and black embroidered slippers. Claire figured she must have prepacked the outfit in her maternity overnight bag.
The patient’s big blue eyes were glued to the TV—on a bracket high on the wall. She was pretty, despite a slightly weak chin and a long neck that made her look a bit like a bird. Her wispy, delicate blond hair was pinned back behind her head.
“Tess?” Claire asked, working up a smile. She paused in the doorway.
The patient turned to frown at her. “Wouldn’t you know? My one opportunity for unlimited amounts of bad afternoon–TV, and people keep interrupting me. What do you want?”
Momentarily speechless, Claire glanced at the TV. A couple were screaming at each other while a TV-therapist sat between them, caught in the crossfire.
“Well?” Tess prompted. Then she sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, Jesus-Mary-Joseph. You’re the woman from down the hall that Sherita told me about. I was praying you wouldn’t come.”
Claire let out a stunned laugh. “Huh, you sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”
Tess shot a final look at the TV, and switched it off with the remote. Then she turned toward Claire again. “C’mon in,” she said, with mock enthusiasm and a forced smile. “Pull up a chair, and let’s swap dead baby stories. That’s what you’re here for, right? Sherita said you lost a baby daughter in a crib death about ten years ago. Gee, that’s tough. I lost a baby son, hydrocephalus. You want to hear the corker? According to a couple of the nurses, he was just about the most beautiful baby they’ve seen around these parts in a long time. But I wouldn’t see him, because I knew he was going to die. I knew during the delivery. See, they didn’t catch it on the ultrasound. Can you believe that? Talk about a screw up. I’ve had four different lawyers come in here unsolicited, saying I have ‘a terrific case,’ bless their greedy little hearts. It’s like I lost a baby and won the lottery. How about that? Aren’t I the lucky stiff?”
Claire walked around to the foot of her bed. The fake, almost manic smile was still plastered across Tess Campbell’s face. Yet tears were locked in her eyes. Claire noticed she had a large strawberry mark on the left side of her face. It went from her cheekbone to halfway down her neck. Irregular in shape, it resembled an outline of Africa.
“Whew! I feel better now,” Tess went on. “I’m glad we had this little talk. Thanks for stopping by. You can go now.”
Claire studied her. “Does this caustic routine work with everybody?” she asked.
Eyes downcast, Tess wouldn’t look at her. “It seems to scare off the lawyers and social workers,” she muttered. “I don’t need anyone trying to cheer me up. I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me either. And if one more person tells me that I’ll get over this, I’m going to punch their lights out.”
“I lost my baby eleven years ago,” Claire said. “I’m still not over it.”
A tear ran down Tess’s cheek, and she quickly wiped it away. She still wouldn’t look at Claire. “I’m sorry, I really am.”
“Her father died five years ago,” Claire heard herself say. “Cancer. I’m still not over that either—even though I’ve remarried.”
“Jared, that’s my baby’s father, he’s dead too. A skiing accident.” She let out a sad laugh. “Having his baby was going to be my way of getting over Jared’s death. He was going to keep living through this baby. I guess the joke was on me.” She pulled a Kleenex from the pocket of her kimono and wiped her eyes. “Huh, Sherita was right. We do have a lot in common. It’s almost scary. Now, all you need is a high-rolling, Bible-thumbing, fundamentalist insane bitch for a mother, and I’d say you and I were the exact same person.”
Claire sat near the foot of the bed. “Well, my mom and I butted heads a lot, but we had a pretty good relationship in the years before she died.”
“You’re lucky,” Tess grunted. “When I called my mother and told her that Collin died—that’s my son, Collin. When I told her that he’d died, she said it was my punishment for having a baby out of wedlock. She said I was going to hell, and the baby’s soul was also damned to hell. So—I told her, ‘Fine, that means I get to spend eternity with my baby.’ And I said, ‘I’d tell
you
to go to hell, old woman, but my baby and I don’t want to see your sorry-ass self down there, so just piss off.’ I think she’s praying for me right now, as we speak.”
“Was she always that way?” Claire asked.
“Pretty much borderline. But she really hopped on the crazy bus around the time I went to college. I remember her telling me when I was nineteen that this thing here…” Tess pointed to the strawberry blemish on her face. “She said it was the mark of the devil. I always thought it looked like South America, myself.”
“Really? Because I was thinking Africa.”
Tess laughed. “Well, anyway, I’ve had it all my life, and suddenly she tells me it’s Satan’s imprint or something like that. Anyway, she’s a piece of work. She didn’t even ask why I was still in the hospital four days after I had the baby.”
“She didn’t?”
“Nope,” Tess frowned. “Anyway, F-Y-I, there were some ‘complications.’ But I shouldn’t have to stay here too much longer. How about you? Why are you here?”
“Didn’t Sherita tell you?” Claire asked.
Tess shook her head. “She just said your name was Claire, and that you’d lost a baby to SIDS about ten years ago, and you might stop by. So what are you in here for?”
Claire hesitated. “Um, I was mugged outside a department store in Seattle, and I—” She trailed off, then shook her head. “No, that’s not true. Two weeks ago, I was left in a garbage dump with a bullet in my chest, a cosmetic make-over, and a plastic bag over my head.”
Tess stared at her. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “You’re Jane Doe. And here you are, trying to cheer
me
up.”
Claire shrugged. “Mostly I’m here for selfish reasons,” she admitted. “I’m trying to take my mind off my own worries. See, I have a seventeen-year-old son, who ran away the day before I was attacked, and I don’t remember it.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t know where he is…”
She couldn’t help it. She started to cry.
“Oh, here.” Tess plucked a couple of Kleenex from the dispenser on her nightstand, then handed them to Claire. Then she opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out a box of chocolates. “And take a couple of these. My girlfriend, Mary Lou from Seattle brought them up. They’re Godiva.”
Tess smiled at her. There was nothing fake or forced about the smile this time. It was genuine.
With Tess, Claire felt as if she’d made her first real friend in years. Nearly all of her acquaintances on the island had been chummy with Harlan’s first wife, Angela; and she couldn’t help feeling she’d merely
inherited
their friendship. She wasn’t particularly close to any of them, including Linda.
Her new friend lived in Bellingham, only a ferry ride and a thirty-minute drive from Deception Island. Tess had recently moved from Seattle, figuring the recently dubbed, “All American City” was a better place to raise a child. A real estate agent, she relocated to her company’s Bellingham office, where business was on a steady rise. She hated leaving her friends. But she had no real family, and her baby’s father had been dead for three months when she’d made the move.
“Jared was sweet,” Tess explained to Claire, the morning after their initial meeting.
Wearing their robes over some scrubs Sherita had pilfered for them, Claire and Tess had snuck away to the physical therapy room on the second floor. The two of them were still a bit weak, so they’d limited themselves to some very, very light stretching on the mats together.