Dance Upon the Air (15 page)

“What the hell do you want?”

“I want you to step back, sir, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

“You got no right coming in here. I'm renting this place paid in full.”

“Your rental agreement doesn't give you leave to destroy property. Now back up.”

“You're not coming in here without a warrant.”

“Bet?” Zack said softly. His hand shot out, lightning-quick, gripped the man's wrist, and twisted. “Now, you want to take a swing at me,” he continued in the same mild tone, “we'll add resisting arrest and assaulting an officer to the mix. More paperwork, but I get paid for it.”

“By the time my lawyer's done, I'm going to own this fucking island.”

“You're welcome to call him—from down at the station house.” Zack cuffed him and looked around with relief as he heard Ripley pounding up the stairs.

“Sorry. I was all the way over on Broken Shell. What's this? Domestic dispute?”

“And then some. This is my deputy,” Zack informed his prisoner. “Take my word, she can clean your clock. Put him in the back of the cruiser, Ripley. Get his particulars, read him his rights.”

“What's your name, sir?”

“Fuck you.”

“Okay, Mr. Fuck You, you're under arrest for . . .” She glanced back at Zack, who was already moving
through the broken glass and crockery to the woman sitting on the floor, holding her face in her hands and sobbing.

“Destruction of private property, disturbing the peace, assault.”

“You got that? Now unless you want me to kick your ass in front of all these nice people, we'll just walk to the cruiser and take a little drive. You have the right to remain silent,” she continued, giving him a helpful shove to get him going.

“Ma'am.” She was late thirties, Zack estimated. Probably pretty when her lip wasn't split and her brown eyes weren't blackened. “I need you to come with me. I'll take you to a doctor.”

“I don't need a doctor.” She curled into herself. Zack noted shallow cuts on her arms, gifts from flying glass. “What's going to happen to Joe?”

“We'll talk about that. Can you tell me your name?”

“Diane, Diane McCoy.”

“Let me help you up, Ms. McCoy.”

Diane McCoy sat
hunched in a chair with an ice bag held to her left eye. She continued to refuse medical assistance. After offering her a cup of coffee, Zack pulled his own chair from behind his desk, hoping the move would put her more at ease.

“Ms. McCoy, I want to help you.”

“I'm okay. We'll pay for the damages. You just have the rental agency make up a list and we'll pay for it.”

“That's something we'll need to see to. I want you to tell me what happened.”

“We just had a fight, that's all. People do. You didn't need to lock Joe up. If there's a fine, we'll pay it.”

“Ms. McCoy, you're sitting there with your lip bleeding, your eye black, and cuts and bruises all over your arms. Your husband assaulted you.”

“It wasn't like that.”

“What was it like?”

“I asked for it.”

Even as Ripley let out a vicious stream of air across the room, Zack leveled a warning glance. “You asked him to hit you, Ms. McCoy? To knock you down, to bloody your lip?”

“I aggravated him. He's under a lot of pressure.” The words tumbled out, slurred a bit from her swollen lip. “This is supposed to be a vacation, and I shouldn't've nagged at him that way.”

She must have sensed Ripley's furious disapproval as she turned her head, stared defiantly. “Joe works hard, fifty weeks a year. The least I can do is leave him alone on his vacation.”

“It seems to me,” Ripley countered, “the least he could do is keep from punching you in the face on your vacation.”

“Ripley, get Ms. McCoy a glass of water.” And shut up. He didn't have to say the last with his mouth, when his expression said it so clearly. “What started the trouble, Ms. McCoy?”

“I guess I got up on the wrong side of the bed. Joe was up late, drinking. A man's entitled to sit in front of the TV with a few beers on his vacation. He
left the place a mess—beer cans, spilled chips all over the rug. It irritated me, and I started on him the minute he was awake. If I'd shut up when he told me to, none of this would've happened.”

“And not shutting up when you were told gave him the right to use his fists on you, Ms. McCoy?”

She powered up. “What happens between a husband and wife is nobody's business but theirs. We shouldn't have broken things, and we'll pay for them. I'll clean the place up myself.”

“Ms. McCoy, they have counseling programs back in Newark,” Zack began, “and shelters for women who need them. I can make some calls, get you some information.”

Her eyes might have been swollen, but they could still flash fury. “I don't need any information. You can't keep Joe locked up if I don't press charges, and I won't.”

“You're wrong there. I can keep him locked up for disturbing the peace. And the property owners can press charges.”

“You'll just make it worse.” Tears began to fall. She took the paper cup Ripley offered her and gulped at the water. “Don't you see? You'll just make it worse. He's a good man. Joe's a good man, he's just got a short fuse is all. I said we'd pay. I'll write you a check. We don't want any trouble. I'm the one who made him mad. I threw things at him, too. You're going to have to lock me up along with him. What's the point?”

What was
the point? Zack thought later. He hadn't been able to reach her, and he wasn't egotistical enough to think he was the first to try. He couldn't help when help was rejected. The McCoys were caught in a cycle that was bound to end badly.

And all he could do was remove the cycle from his island.

It took half the day to straighten out the mess. A check for two thousand satisfied the rental company. A cleaning crew was already in place by the time the McCoys had packed up. Zack waited, saying nothing as Joe McCoy loaded suitcases and coolers into the back of a late-model Grand Cherokee.

The couple got in from opposite sides. Diane wore big sunglasses to hide the damage. They both ignored Zack as he got into the cruiser and followed them to the ferry.

He stayed there, watching, until the Jeep and the people inside it were no more than a dot on their way to the mainland.

He hadn't expected
that Nell would have waited for him, and decided it was just as well. He was too depressed and far too angry to talk to her. Instead he sat in the kitchen with Lucy, nursed a beer. He was considering indulging in a second when Ripley came in.

“I don't get it. I just don't
get
women like that. The guy's got a hundred fifty pounds on her, but it's
her
fault he bashed her face. And she believed it.”
She got out a beer for herself, jerking the bottle at him as she twisted off the cap.

“Maybe she needs to.”

“Oh, like hell, Zack. Like hell.” Still simmering, she dropped into the chair across from him. “She's healthy, she's got a brain. What does she gain hooking herself to a guy who uses her for a punching bag when the mood strikes him? If she'd pressed charges, we could've held him long enough for her to pack her bags and get gone. We should've held him anyway.”

“She wouldn't have left. It wouldn't have made one damn bit of difference.”

“Okay, you're right. I know it. It just burns me, that's all.” She sipped her beer, watching him. “You're thinking about Nell. You figure it was like that for her?”

“I don't know what it was like for her. She doesn't talk about it.”

“Have you asked?”

“If she wanted to tell me, she would.”

“Well, don't snap my head off.” Ripley propped her feet on the chair beside her. “I'm asking you because I know you, big brother. If you've got a thing for her, and the thing turns into a
big
thing, you're never going to be square with it unless you have the story. Without the story, you can't help, and when you can't help, it drives you nuts. You're brooding right now because you couldn't help—to your satisfaction—a woman you'd never seen before and won't see again. It's that Good Samaritan gene of yours.”

“Isn't there someone else on the island you can go annoy?”

“No, because I love you best. Now, instead of
having another beer, why don't you take Luce and go for a sail? Still plenty of daylight yet, and it'll clear your head and improve your disposition. You're just no fun to be around when you're broody.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Good. Go. Odds of a second crisis in one day are slim to none, but I'll take a cruise around, just in case.”

“Okay.” He got up and after a moment's hesitation leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “I love you best, too.”

“Don't I know it.” She waited until he got to the door. “You know, Zack, whatever Nell's story is, there's one key difference between her and Diane McCoy. Nell got gone.”

O
n Monday
the incident at the Abbott rental was the talk of the village. Everyone had had time to form an opinion, particularly those who hadn't witnessed the event.

“Buster said they'd busted up every blessed knickknack in the place. I'll have some of that lobster salad, Nell, honey,” Dorcas Burmingham said, then went straight back to gossiping with her companion. She and Biddy Devlin, Mia's third cousin once removed and the proprietor of Surfside Treasures, had a standing lunch date at the café every Monday at twelve-thirty.

“I heard Sheriff Todd had to forcibly remove the man from the premises,” Biddy expounded. “At
gunpoint
.”

“Oh, Biddy, no such thing. I talked to Gladys Macey, who had it straight from Anne Potter who sent for the sheriff in the first place that Zack had his gun
holstered right along. Can I have an iced mocha with that salad, Nell?”

“Domestic disputes are one of the most dangerous calls for a policeman,” Biddy informed her. “I read that somewhere. My, that soup smells divine, Nell. I don't believe I've ever had gazpacho before, but I'm going to have to try a cup, and one of your brownies.”

“I'll bring your lunch out to you,” Nell offered, “if you'd like to get a table.”

“Oh, that's all right, we'll wait for it.” Dorcas waved the offer away. “You've got enough to do. Anyway, I heard that even though that brute bloodied that poor woman's lip and blackened her eye, she stuck by him. Wouldn't press charges.”

“It's a crying shame is what it is. Odds are her father beat on her mother, so she grew up seeing such things and thinking that's just what happens. It's a cycle. That's what the statistics say. Abuse spawns abuse. I'll wager you, if that woman had grown up in a loving home, she wouldn't be living with a man who treated her that way.”

“Ladies, that'll be thirteen eighty-five.” Nell's head throbbed like a bad tooth, and her nerve endings stretched thin as hair strands while the two women went through their weekly routine of whose turn it was to pay.

It was always playful, and usually it amused Nell. But now she wanted them gone. She wanted to hear no more about Diane McCoy.

What did they know about it? she thought bitterly. These two comfortable women with their comfortable
lives? What did they know about fear and helplessness?

It wasn't always a cycle. She wanted to scream it. It wasn't always a pattern. She'd had a loving home, with parents who'd been devoted to each other, and to her. There had been arguments, irritation, annoyances. While voices may have been raised, fists never had.

She had never been struck in her life before Evan Remington.

She wasn't a goddamn statistic.

By the time the women headed off to a table, thin, sharp-edged bands of steel had locked themselves around Nell's temples. She turned blindly to the next customer and found Ripley studying her.

“You look a little shaky, Nell.”

“Just a headache. What can I get you today?”

“Why don't you get yourself an aspirin? I'll wait.”

“No, it's fine. The fruit-and-cabbage salad's good. It's a Scandinavian recipe. I've had positive feedback on it.”

“Okay, I'm game. I'll take an iced tea with it. Those two,” she added, nodding toward Biddy and Dorcas. “They chatter like a couple of parrots. It'd give anybody a headache. I guess everybody's been yakking about the trouble yesterday.”

“Well.” She wanted a dark room, an hour's quiet. “Big news.”

“Zack did everything he could to help that woman. She didn't want to be helped. Not everyone does.”

“Not everyone knows what to do with an offer of help, or who they can trust to give it.”

“Zack can be trusted.” Ripley laid her money on
the counter. “Maybe he plays it low key, that's his way. But when push comes to shove, he stands up. You ought to do something for that headache, Nell,” she added, and took her lunch to a table.

She didn't have
time to do more about it than swallow a couple of aspirin. Peg was late, rushing in full of apologies and with a sparkle in her eye that told Nell a man had been responsible for her tardiness.

As Nell had an appointment with Gladys Macey to—please, God—finalize the menu for the anniversary party, she had to rush home, gather her notes and files.

The headache had escalated to nightmare territory by the time she knocked on Gladys's door.

“Nell, I've told you, you don't have to knock. You just call out and walk in,” Gladys said and pulled her inside. “I'm just so excited about this. I watched this program on the Home and Garden channel just the other day. Got me all sorts of ideas to talk over with you. I think we ought to string those little white lights through my trees, and put those luminaries—with little hearts on the bags—along the walk and the patio. What do you think?”

“Mrs. Macey, I think you should have whatever you want. I'm really just the caterer.”

“Now, honey, I think of you as my party coordinator. Let's sit down in the living room.”

The room was spotlessly clean, as if dust was a sin against nature. Every stick of furniture matched,
with the pattern in the sofa picked up in the valance of the window treatments and the narrow border of wallpaper that ran just under the ceiling.

There were two identical lamps, two identical chairs, two identical end tables. The rug matched the curtains, the curtains matched the throw pillows.

All the wood was honey maple, including the cabinet of the big-screen TV, which was currently running a Hollywood gossip program.

“I've got a weakness for that kind of show. All those famous people. I love seeing what clothes they're wearing. You just sit down,” Gladys ordered. “Make yourself comfortable. I'm going to get us a nice cold Coke, then we'll roll up our sleeves and dive right in.”

As she had the first time she'd toured Gladys's house for pre-party plans, Nell found herself bemused. Every room was tidy as a church pew and as rigidly organized as a furniture showroom floor. Magazines were fanned precisely on the coffee table, and offset by an arrangement of silk flowers in the exact tones of mauve and blues as the upholstery.

The fact that the house managed to be friendly said more, to Nell's mind, about the occupants than the decor.

Nell sat, opened her files. She knew Gladys would bring the tea in pale green glasses that matched her everyday dishes and would set them on blue coasters.

There was, she thought, a comfort in knowing that.

She began to read over her notes, then felt her stomach hitch at the chirpy voice of the program host.

“Last night's gala brought out the glitter and the glamour. Evan Remington, power broker
extraordinaire and attorney to the stars, looked as sensational as one of his own clients in Hugo Boss. Though Remington denies rumors of a romance between him and his companion for the evening, the delectable Natalie Winston—who simmered in a beaded sheath by Valentino—sources in the know say differently.

“Remington was widowed only last September when his wife, Helen, apparently lost control of her car while driving back to their home in Monterey. Her Mercedes sedan crashed over the cliffs on Highway 1. Her body, sadly, was never recovered.
Hollywood Beat
is happy to see Evan Remington back in stride after this tragic event.”

Nell was on her feet, her breath short and shallow. Evan's face seemed to fill the wide screen, every handsome line, every strand of golden hair.

She could hear his voice, clear and terrifyingly calm.
Do you think I can't see you, Helen? Do you think I'll let you go?

“I didn't mean to take so long, but I thought you might appreciate someone else's baking for a change. I just made this pound cake yesterday. Carl packed away nearly half of it. I can't think where that man puts it. Why, if I ate a fraction of what he—”

Tray in hand, Gladys stopped, her happy chatter shifting instantly to surprised concern when she saw Nell's face. “Honey, you're so pale. What's wrong?”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well.” Panic was an icy poker jabbing through her belly. “Headache. I don't think I can do this now.”

“Of course not. Poor thing. Don't you worry. I'm going to drive you home and tuck you right into bed.”

“No, no. I'd rather walk. Fresh air. I'm so sorry,
Mrs. Macey.” Nell fumbled with her files, almost sobbing when they slipped through her trembling fingers. “I'll call you. Reschedule.”

“I don't want you to think a thing of it. Nell, sweetheart, you're shaking.”

“I just need to go home.” With a last terrified glance at the television screen, she bolted for the door.

She forced herself not to run. When you ran, people noticed you, and they wondered. They asked questions. Fitting in, that was essential. Blending. Doing nothing to draw attention. But even as she ordered herself to breathe slow and steady, the air wheezed in her lungs, clogged there until she was gulping for it.

Do you think I'll let you go?

Sweat ran cold and clammy on her skin, and she smelled her own fear. The edges of her vision blurred as she shot a single wild look over her shoulder. The minute she was through the door of her cottage, the nausea hit, a bright bite of pain.

She stumbled to the bathroom, was hideously ill. When she was empty, she lay on the narrow floor and waited for the shaking to pass.

When she could stand again, she peeled off her clothes, leaving them in a heap as she stepped into the shower. She ran the hot water, as hot as she could bear, imagining the spray penetrating her skin until it warmed her icy bones.

Wrapped in a towel, she crawled into bed, pulled the covers over her head, and let herself slide into oblivion.

Diego climbed agilely up the bedskirt, stretched out alongside her. And lay still and silent as a sentry.

She wasn't sure
how long she slept, but she woke as if from a long illness that had left her body heavy and tender and her stomach raw. She was tempted simply to roll back into sleep and stay there. But that would solve nothing.

It was doing that got her through, and always had.

She sat on the edge of the bed, like an old woman testing bone and balance. The image of Evan's face could float back into her mind if she let it. So she closed her eyes, let it form.

That, too, was a kind of test.

She could look at him, would look at him. Remember what had been, and what had changed. To deal, she reminded herself, with what had happened.

For comfort, she gathered the kitten into her lap and rocked.

She had run again. After almost a year, the sight of him on a television screen had terrorized her to the point of blind flight. Had made her ill and stripped away every bit of the hard-won armor she'd built until she'd been a quivering, quaking mass of panic.

Because she had allowed it. She let him have that hold on her. No one could change that but herself. She'd found the courage to run, Nell told herself. Now she had to find the courage to stand.

Until she could think of him, until she could say his name without fear, she wasn't free.

She held the picture of him in her mind, imagined it breaking apart, her will a hammer against glass. “Evan Remington,” she whispered, “you can't touch
me now. You can't hurt me. You're over, and I'm just beginning.”

The effort exhausted her, but she set Diego on the floor, then pushed herself to her feet, dragged on a sweatshirt and shorts. She would go back to work, design and evaluate her menu. It was time to figure out how to set up an office of sorts in the little bedroom.

If Gladys Macey wanted a party coordinator, that's just what she was going to get.

She had dropped the file when she bolted into the cottage, and now she gathered up all the scattered notes, magazine clippings, and carefully written menu selections and carried them into the kitchen. She was mildly surprised to see that the sun still shone.