Forget to Remember (29 page)

They unwound their way along several
streets, back to the entrance to the subdivision, and parked where
the volume of traffic wouldn’t bring undue attention to the Jeep.
They got out, and Ivan retrieved a small backpack from the
backseat. He led the way as they walked along a combination bike
path and walking path beside the highway. They were now on the
other side of the fence. The noise of the almost continuous traffic
made it difficult to carry on a conversation.

Carol followed Ivan to the end of the fence.
They went around it and found themselves on a bank, sloping gently
downhill and overgrown with bushes and small trees. Ivan stopped
behind a short bush and pointed over it.

“That’s Katherine’s house.”

It took Carol a few seconds to adjust to the
different perspective. They were facing the side and back of the
house instead of the front. However, they could see where the
driveway was. Anybody coming or going would be visible to them. She
was glad she was with Ivan. He was an expert at this sort of
thing.

“What do we do now?”

Ivan grinned at her. “This is where you find
out the private detective business isn’t all fun and games. We wait
and see who comes and goes. If our assumption that Michael might be
living with Katherine is correct, maybe he’ll show his face.”

“Or maybe he won’t. We could be here all
night.”

“We won’t stay all night. Listen, if you
want to opt out, I’ll take you back to your car and you can go to
your motel.”

“No.” Carol shook her head vigorously. “I
want to nail Michael. Do we have to stand? The ground is damp and
muddy and covered with branches and dirty leaves.”

It had rained recently. Ivan opened his
pack. He pulled out a thin tarpaulin, unfolded it, and spread it on
the ground. He also took out a pair of binoculars. Carol knelt on
the tarp. This was marginally better than standing. Ivan sat down
beside her.

“I’m worried about your bare legs. They’ll
get cold.”

She had jeans at the motel, but that was too
far away. She’d just have to tough it out. Ivan had put on an old
sweatshirt. He also had a moth-eaten sweater in the pack. He lay on
his stomach and had her do the same. Then he covered her legs with
the sweater. He was a gentleman.

“How do we go to the bathroom?”

“Well, that isn’t much of a problem for a
man, but I can see where it could be for a woman.”

Carol wanted to wipe the smile off his face.
“In today’s world of equality, that is by far the biggest
disadvantage of being a woman—at least outdoors. Is there a reason
for starting the stakeout now when we know Katherine isn’t
here?”

“Michael might be here. Even if we don’t see
him, we may learn something when Katherine comes home.”

Carol wondered whether Michael was a ladies’
man. She couldn’t remember anything about her brother. He’d have to
be pretty sharp to have Katherine for a girlfriend, judging by her
picture. He had probably promised her they’d take the inheritance
once the foundation received it and split to some exotic part of
the world.

To while away the time, she asked Ivan about
himself. He had been in the military. He was wounded during Desert
Storm in 1990 and discharged. He had recovered enough to become a
policeman, but the remnants of the old wound plus a more recent one
had left him disabled, at least as far as police work was
concerned. He had gone into business for himself. Carol was certain
he’d been wounded in the face and wondered where else. He didn’t
say, and she didn’t ask.

She told Ivan about her amnesia and went
over everything she remembered. She mentioned the four times she
thought Michael had tried to kill her. Ivan said Michael was
demented, and he ought to know because he’d seen a lot of demented
people in his life.

She eventually gave up her resolution to
play camel and said she had to pee. She moved away from Ivan along
the inside of the fence to do it. He didn’t show any interest. In
fact, he barely looked at her at all. She wondered if he were gay
like that scam artist, Beard. Or maybe his injuries had made him
impotent.

Ivan focused the binoculars, which would
come in handy if a person appeared. There were no windows on this
side of the house, so seeing the interior wasn’t a possibility.
They had eaten a big lunch, but when the hunger pangs started to
gnaw, Ivan pulled energy bars out of his pack. He also had a couple
of water bottles. He had obviously done this before.

The sun was setting when a car drove into
the driveway and stopped. Ivan looked through the binoculars, but
Carol could tell with her naked eyes that the woman who got out of
the car was Katherine. All that blond hair. She disappeared from
their view and presumably went into the house. It was
anticlimactic. They had learned what they already knew.

Carol turned toward Ivan who was still
looking through the binoculars. “What do we do now?”

“Chances are she’s going out again since she
parked in the driveway. We’ll wait a little while longer.”

Five minutes later someone walked along the
far side of the car and then down the rest of the driveway to the
mailbox. It was a man with long hair. Carol grabbed the binoculars
from Ivan and tweaked the focus as she looked through them. As the
man left the mailbox and started back toward the house, she had a
good look at his face and his red hair, lit by the last rays of the
sun.

“That’s him. That’s Michael.” She forgot to
keep her voice down, but the noise of the traffic behind her
drowned her out. “Let’s go get him.”

Ivan grabbed her shoulder as she started to
get up. “Let him go. He’d see us coming long before we got to him.
Besides, we can’t just grab him.”

“What, then?”

“We know where he lives. Now we have to make
a plan to entice him out of there.”

CHAPTER 37

At nine o’clock the next morning, Carol met
Ivan in his office. It barely qualified as an office. It was
cramped and dingy with plentiful quantities of dust and grime.
There were stacks of books and papers everywhere, not in any
meaningful order. Some had obviously been in the same spot for
years, having taken up permanent residence. Carol wondered how Ivan
could find anything.

He did have a computer in working order, a
requirement for a detective in the digital age. The first thing
they did was to call Paul on a speakerphone and fill him in. He
wasn’t surprised to hear they were together and was happy they’d
spotted Michael.

“Good work. We’re going to nail that
bastard. He killed two people, and he tried to kill Carol. It’s too
bad we can’t just have him arrested. Since his crimes are
scattered, and we don’t have any direct evidence except for Carol
and others being able to ID him at the Hillsborough motel, it’s
going to take time. Faking his own death isn’t enough to hold him
unless he’s using it for a fraudulent purpose. I’ll talk to the
authorities here, but they’d have to get him extradited, and that
might give him a chance to disappear again. Aarrggh.”

Ivan said, “What if we can shortcut the
process? What if we can lure him out of his house and get a
recorded confession from him?”

“I’m not sure I like the word ‘lure.’ Are
you going to use Carol as bait?”

Carol spoke up. “We’re going to do it in a
way that’s not dangerous. Ivan will be here to protect me. He’s got
a gun.”

“I’m glad you two are hitting it off, but
Ivan isn’t invincible. Michael has used a gun, too, upon occasion.
He winged you once, Carol. The next time you may not be so
lucky.”

They discussed a plan, going over the pros
and cons. Finally, Paul gave reluctant approval but said he was
also going to the local district attorney’s office to attempt to
get them to start the process of extraditing Michael to North
Carolina for attempted murder.

After they completed the call with Paul,
Carol and Ivan talked about how they should proceed. Carol found
Ivan to be very thorough. He had purchased two disposable cell
phones with numbers that couldn’t be traced. He used one to call
the home number he had for Katherine Simpson.

As he expected, nobody answered the phone.
The answering machine switched on, and Katherine’s voice asked the
caller to leave a message, promising the call would be returned as
soon as possible. There was a beep. Ivan winked at Carol and
assumed an extreme southern accent.

“This call is for Jake Zimmerman, the
director of the Weatherford Foundation. You don’t know me, but we
have a common problem. It’s the young lady known as Carol Golden. I
have it on good authority that Ms. Golden is looking for you, and
her intentions are not honorable. It would not pain me to see the
problem of Ms. Golden, uh, taken care of, if you follow my meaning.
I happen to know where she’s staying.”

Ivan went on to give the name of a motel—not
the one where Carol was actually staying. He gave a room number and
said that through connections he had obtained a card key to her
room. He would leave this in an envelope behind the bushes at the
corner of the motel. He suggested Mr. Zimmerman use it to enter the
motel through one of the back doors and go into her room before
eight p.m. He could wait for Carol there.

“Won’t he suspect a trap?” Carol was trying
to figure out how she would react to that kind of phone call.

“He might, but I think his desire to get rid
of you will overcome any misgivings he may have. Remember, he’s not
playing with a full deck, and he has the power to delude himself
into thinking the world is the way he’d like it to be.”

“Where did you learn that bullshit?”

“I was a psych major in college.”

***

“The fish has taken the bait.”

Carol’s heartbeat ramped up another notch
from the high plateau it had already achieved. Michael had found
the hidden card key for the motel room. Ivan was watching his
movements from his car parked outside the motel and passing them on
to her.

“He’s entering the motel.”

The manager of this motel was a friend of
Ivan. They’d taken two rooms. The one Michael was headed for was
located just inside the back entrance on the first floor. Carol was
safely ensconced in another one known only to the manager and
Ivan.

She pictured what Michael would find when he
entered the room. She and Ivan had written a note, computer-printed
it, and left it on the bed. It read like this:

Mr. Zimmerman: I have just been informed
that Carol Golden has taken another room at this motel, but I have
been unable to find out which one. However, while speaking with her
earlier in the day (I pretend to be her friend; she is unaware of
my animosity) I discovered that because of her memory loss she
doesn’t think of you as being dangerous. This will work to your
advantage. I suggest you call her and entice her to come to your
room.

The note contained a cell phone number for a
disposable phone. Carol’s hands shook as she disconnected from Ivan
so she would be ready to receive Michael’s call. She couldn’t sit
still. She paced around the room, holding the phone in front of
her, waiting for it to ring and yet dreading the call.

She jumped when the ring came in spite of
her preparation.

“Hello.”

Silence for several seconds. Was he going to
speak? “Cindy.”

Cindy? Short for Cynthia.

“Who is this?”

“Your brother—Michael.”

“Michael? Michael, is it really you? I heard
you were dead.” Feigning excitement and pleasure.

He laughed. “It’s really me.”

“Oh, Michael, how wonderful. Where are
you?”

“Right here at your motel.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Don’t worry about that. The important thing
is we found each other. Let’s get together. Tell me what room
you’re in.”

He was a fast worker. Carol had to make sure
he stayed where he was because everything he said was being
recorded, and Ivan was listening. She pretended she hadn’t heard
him. “Tell me how you survived the plane crash.”

“It was just luck. I was supposed to fly
with Dad and Mom, but something came up at the last minute.”

“But then you disappeared and everybody
thought you were dead.”

“I was paranoid. I thought somebody had
sabotaged the plane and they were out to kill me too.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“You.”

“Me?” Carol couldn’t believe the direction
this was taking. “I was in England.”

“
You
are the one who disappeared. I
had no idea where you were. You could have come back to the U.S.
Anyway, now I know I was wrong. What did you say your room number
was?”

“Help me remember, Michael. After the crash
I did come back, but Mrs. Horton—Grandma—says she didn’t see me. I
can’t remember what I did. All I know is that I ended up in
California in a Dumpster.”

Silence on the line. Was she pushing too
hard? She waited for him to speak.

“Cindy, Cindy, fat and windy.”

The phrase triggered something in Carol’s
head. “Cindy, Cindy…” That’s what she must have been called, at
least by Michael. She had a vague mental picture of coming back to
the farm in a taxi from the airport after the crash. It was getting
clearer. She hadn’t called Mrs. Horton and told her she was coming,
thinking it would be less stressful on the old lady to reunite with
her in person. She must have spotted Michael at the farm. No, it
couldn’t have been there, because he was playing dead.

Somewhere. Maybe he was staking out the
farm, waiting for her, knowing she would go to their grandmother’s.
That was it. His car was parked at the entrance to the dirt road
that led to the farm. He was out of the car, clearly visible. He
must have grown tired of sitting in his car, waiting for her for
hours—perhaps days.

He had seen her, too. Frightened because he
was alive, she had the cab driver take her back to the airport. She
panicked and bought a ticket for a flight to California. Then the
picture became fuzzier. Had Michael followed her, taken a ticket on
the same flight—maybe in first class while she was in the back and
didn’t know he was on the plane?