Carla Neggers - Tempting Fate

“Is she in any danger?”

“As far as I know, only from herself.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help, Roger, but that’s just not my gig.”

The CEO of Chandler Hotels sighed, nodding. “You’re right, of course. I guess we’re just feeling helpless, given Danielle’s lack of affection for us all.” He stared into his wineglass, then looked at Zeke. “Oh, by the way-did you know Quint Skinner is in town?”

Bingo, Zeke thought. This was why Roger had asked for this little tête-à-tête. Quint Skinner and Zeke Cutler in Saratoga at the same time was more coincidence than Roger could swallow-though it didn’t concern him, except that he was Dani’s uncle. It was more than Zeke could swallow, too, even if he hadn’t seen Skinner in the rose garden that afternoon.

“No, I didn’t. Small world, I guess.”

Roger’s blue eyes narrowed. “He’s not the reason you’re here?”

“Not at all.” Zeke gave the rich man across the table one of his easy smiles. “I’m on vacation.”

He could see Roger didn’t believe him. “Well, thank you for letting me air my concerns. You’re sure you won’t reconsider?”

“Dani Pembroke’s not my problem.”

John Pembroke lay on his back, stark naked, debating whether to answer the door. The knocking had woken him up. It was noon-he’d checked his Timex-and he’d been sound asleep. No one ever visited him.

There was another knock.

A reporter? He hoped not, but it was Friday. Tonight was the annual Chandler lawn party and the twenty-fifth anniversary of Lilli’s disappearance. John wished he could sleep the whole damn day.

His two window air conditioners-one in his small bedroom, one in his all-purpose room-rattled and groaned trying to keep up with the blistering Tucson summer heat. He’d heard the temperature was supposed to climb to a hundred-fifteen today. Might as well be living in hell.

He rubbed one hand across the grizzled gray hairs of his chest, trying to wake up. He’d been dreaming about swimming in the ice-cold stream out behind his nutty mother’s gingerbread cottage, as he had summers as a boy. But he’d never go back, hadn’t since Lilli disappeared. Saratoga was nothing but memories for him. Even Lilli had become just another memory. You couldn’t touch a memory, he’d discovered. You couldn’t live one.

Except once in a while.

Like just now, when he’d opened his eyes, thinking he was in the maple bed in his and Lilli’s old room at the Chandler cottage on North Broadway. He’d heard her breathing beside him. He’d rolled over, knowing she was there. So certain. He’d wanted to hold her, to make love to her.

There was yet another knock.

“I’m coming!”

He heaved himself out of bed and pulled on a pair of wrinkled elastic-waist shorts. He’d developed the habit of working late, often past dawn, and sleeping well into the afternoon. In summer he missed the worst of the blazing heat. And the desert night sky, he’d discovered, was incomparable. He’d head up into the mountains and stare at the sparkling stars and endless dark and imagine Lilli’s spirit in union once more with him, imagine what their life together might have become.

Hell of a romantic he was.

He’d tell her, as he hadn’t often enough in their too-short time together, how much he loved her.

Rubbing his face with his palms, he could feel the rough stubble of a couple of days’ growth of beard. He seldom shaved every day. His neighbors initially had thought he was a do-gooder or gentrifier come to restore one of the street’s old adobe houses and sell it at a profit. Now they pretty much figured he was just an old reprobate. He’d once asked the family next door, eight people crowded into an apartment not much bigger than his place, their advice on identifying and killing-unless there was a damn good reason why he shouldn’t-a giant spider that had taken over his bathroom. Turned out it was just an ordinary desert spider. Nothing to worry about. They’d thought his naïveté and terror great fun and gave him a beer and had Carlos, the baby of the family, go back with him to liberate his bathroom. Meanwhile, of course, the spider had vanished. Now John never took a leak without wondering where the damn thing had gone.

He went through his all-purpose room to the front door. When he’d fallen into bed early that morning, he’d left out the books, photographs, articles and two hundred pages of the manuscript for the biography he was writing of his notorious great-grandfather, Ulysses Pembroke. Dani had commissioned him. John had no idea what she planned to do with it. He hadn’t asked. He knew damn well she hadn’t given him the job out of a sense of charity. He’d used up his daughter’s goodwill a long, long time ago.

He pulled open the door, the dry heat hitting him as if he’d pulled open a furnace running full blast against a subzero chill. “Yeah, what’s up?”

A kid, no more than eighteen, in shorts, T-shirt and sandals, stood red-faced on the landing. He looked parched. John felt a wave of guilt at having kept the poor bastard waiting in the scorching heat. It was hot, even for Tucson in August.

“Mr. Pembroke?” the kid asked tentatively.

John stiffened, immediately thinking of Dani. Something had happened to her. Then he thought of Nick: his father was dead. Ninety years old and finally gone to the great beyond. Or Mattie. But he wasn’t ready to say goodbye to his mother yet. He tried to will away the habit of thinking the worst, but couldn’t. The worst had happened often enough.

“Yes,” he said sharply, trying to control his fear.

The kid took a step back, no doubt wondering if he’d come to the wrong place. John supposed he looked like hell. Although still lean and rawboned, his black eyes as alert as ever, he’d lost weight, both fat and muscle, and his skin had begun to sag on his neck and elbows. He was fast becoming an old man with flabby knees. Lately his grooming amounted to daily teeth cleaning and a weekly shower. Part of his routine came from conviction: the desert wasn’t a place to be profligate with water. Part came from not giving a damn. Twenty-five years ago he’d never have answered the door unshaven, gray hair sticking out, in nothing but a pair of wrinkled turquoise shorts.

“I’m from Tucker’s Office Supply,” the kid said. “A fax came for you.”

John had never received a fax here. He didn’t own a telephone or a computer. He’d given up on as much technology as he could since Eugene Chandler had given him the boot.

“Delivery was included,” the kid said.

“So I don’t owe you anything?”

He shook his head. The air was so hot and dry his sweat evaporated instantly. Or maybe John had left him out there so long he’d stopped sweating. Dehydration and hyperthermia were constant threats in summertime Arizona.

John took the offered envelope. “Wait a second.”

He went back into the cooler gloom of his adobe, walking right over the scattered books and papers in his bare feet, and dug in his small refrigerator for a bottle of Pembroke Springs Natural Orange Soda. Dani had sent him a case-and the bill. His daughter was a barracuda. He handed the soda to the kid, who looked relieved. John heard the fizz of the bottle opening as he shut his door. His good deed for the day. Didn’t want the kid croaking on his drive back to the two-bit office-supply store where he worked.

The fax had been sent from Beverly Hills:

Dear John, What kind of damn fool would live in the desert with no phone? Dani’s been robbed. She’s okay, but I’m not. Call me: I have a phone. Nick

Not, John observed dispassionately, “Love, Dad,” or even the conventional “Your father.” Just Nick. Like they were old pals, which they weren’t. Of course, they weren’t much as father and son, either.