T. Parker: Summer Of Fear

I kissed Isabella good night.

"Don't stay out too late," she said. "Don't smile at an big-titted blondes."

"No. I'll be good."

I drove back down to South Laguna and parked a hundred feet short of Amber's solitary mansion. It looked just as it had the night before, the one faint light coming from deep within. Reuben Saltz had not gone into the bedroom. No, of course not. He had stood in the entryway, called out to her, heard nothing, maybe climbed halfway up the stairs before the creeping dread of being in someone else's home uninvited turned him back.

I took a drink from the flask. With all my love, Isabella. A voice inside told me to get out of there, go back home to all that love, preserve myself. But the voice was faint, drowned by alcohol. Yes, I wanted that love, but I wanted more. I wanted that other world now, the world of speed, the world with no history and no conscience. I got my gloves from the trunk and put them on.

Down the sidewalk, through the gate, along the stepping-stone walkway, around the corner of the house and onto the patio. The same half moonlight of the night before, a fraction, gradient brighter, maybe.

The glass door was shut and the screen door was pulled tight. I put my finger to the mesh-the flap gave, then closed

But neither was locked. Because you can't lock them from the outside, I thought, because whoever has been here since last night didn't want to be seen going out the front. Reuben?''

I slid open the doors and stepped in. I went to the stairway and climbed. On the landing, I stopped for a moment to receive whatever silent messages the house might be sending. A voice told me again to leave. I crushed that voice by walking straight to Amber's bedroom door. I felt the vein pounding in my fore head. I reached inside and flipped on the light.

The bed was made up.

The walls and mirror were clean.

There was a throw rug where I had last seen Amber.

Amber was gone.

Something from hell welled up inside me, rode along with my blood. I felt a tremendous withering-as if my cells were trying to retreat, shrink, cover themselves. I could smell something strong, and it took me just a second to realize what it was Fresh paint.

I stood beside the new rug, knelt down, and lifted. A stain very faint, so faint that it vanished when I stepped away and looked from another angle. Was it just a shadow? I arranged the rug over it-just as it had been.

I realized I was scarcely breathing. In the bathroom, I turned on the light to look in the mirror at my own sweating yellow face. The eyes belonged to someone I'd never met and wouldn't want to.

That was when the door slammed shut behind me and I felt the hard steel of a gun barrel jammed into the base of my skull.

"Turn around. Real slow."

I knew the voice. It went with the face. My forehead felt as if it were ready to explode. I turned very slowly, open hands edging up. "Hello, Marty," I said.

"Monroe."

Martin Parish's face looked worse than mine did. His breath smelled like gin. He was wearing a pair of underpants and that was all.

"Nice outfit," I said.

"You're under arrest for, for, uh…"

"For what, Marty? Put down the gun."

"Breaking and…"

I reached up and, purely on speculation, cupped the gun barrel away from my face and walked past Marty Parish, back into the bedroom. When I turned to look, Marty was standing in front of the mirror, hands to his side, shoulders slumped, and an expression of absolute bewilderment on his face.

"B and E shit," I said. "If you're going to arrest me for anything, it ought to be for the murder of Amber. But then you'd have to explain what you were doing here tonight-and last night, too. I saw you, Martin."

Parish turned to face me. He had the look of a man whose eyes are only looking about one foot into the world. "This is not what it appears. You don't understand what you're seeing."

I had to smile. "What the fuck am I seeing, Marty?"

"I didn't do it. I swear to God, I didn't do it."

"Who did?"

"I swear to God, I don't know." He lifted up his gun-a. 44 Magnum with a two-inch barrel, a stupidly big gun, I have always believed-and studied the end of it. In a flash, I thought, He's going to shoot himself. But he let his hand drop to his side again. There are few sights in life as vividly unsettling as a drunk man in his underwear with a gun.

"Where are your clothes, Marty?"

"Under the bed."

"Under the bed."

"Yeah. I was…"

The brief silence swirled with implications so bizarre, could hardly keep up with them. "Put them on and let's get out of here. I think maybe we need to talk."

While Marty got dressed, I checked the shower and tub. No one had used them in the last few hours, unless they'd wipe them out. Amber's peach-colored towels were dry. The sink was dry, too, no moisture under the plug. I went back into the bedroom, pulled a few threads from one tassled end of the new throw rug, and slipped them between two bills in my wallet. I got up close to the walls and saw the fresh paint covering the old writing. Amber's suitcases were still near the walk-in. I looked through them at the unremarkable travel provisions. Where had she been going? Marty, tucking in his shirt, watched me. Overwhelmed by curiosity, I knelt down and looked under the bed. I saw nothing but a small, flat rectangular object just a few inches from my nose. I picked it up by one corner, stood, and took it into the bathroom. It turned out to be just what it felt like: three pull-apart plastic ties, like you get with trash or lawn bags. I put them in my wallet, too. A considerable chill blew through me. Running my hands over the carpet near where Amber had lain, I found by touch something I could never have spotted with my eyes. It was a tiny screw, the kind used by jewelers and watchmakers, half buried in the Berber mesh. I extracted it with my fingernails, examined its copperish color, and dropped it into the casing of the pen I always carry. There was a collection of them in there be cause my own glasses are always falling apart and I need spares.

I got us down from the hills and into a bar on the beach. The place was right on the sand and you could look out at the white water, the dark horizon, the clear, star-shimmering sky. The white water wasn't white at all, but a faint, luminescent violet.

I'd been drinking, and I'd sobered up the second I parked my car near Amber's. But Marty had been drinking, and he didn't want to stop. He ordered a double brandy. I got coffee.

"You first," I said. "How come you were there last night?"

Marty drank half the snifter in one gulp. "I couldn't stop thinking about her," he said. "I think maybe I didn't quite get her out of my system." He looked at me, raising his glass again. He had a Band-Aid on his thumb. The shaving cut was still there, a lateral scab on the tip of his Adam's apple. "So I called her and got nothing, just the machine. Then I drove by just for the hell of it. JoAnn and I aren't real good now. I used to love her, but I don't know anymore. I'm fuckin' sick of worrying about us."

It was good that Marty was drunk, I thought. "Fifteen years since you and Amber," I said.

"Yeah. Twenty for you. I got to admit, I hated you back then, Monroe."

"I know. But she married you, not me."

"One great year, that was. Then she left."

"That was Amber."

Marty drank down the rest of his brandy and pointed to the waitress for more. He waited until she brought it. "So last night, I parked down from her house and sat in my car. There was another car, right in front of the house, a Porsche convertible. Red."

"Get the plate numbers?"

"Don't need plate numbers. It was Grace's."

Grace, I thought. Lovely, uncontrollable, unrepentant Grace-her mother's daughter, from her perfect olive skin to her errant spirit.