Part 7 (1/2)
But he'd opened Pandora's box, and he couldn't close it until he knew what was inside. It was a character flaw, his inability to leave things unfinished. His mother's murder was one of them. Holly Barrows was the other.
Holly gave him a faint worried smile as she let him in. ”So you met Inez.”
He wanted to ask her what had possessed her to marry into a family like that. But he feared he already knew. ”I need you to tell me about your husband's insurance policy. And your breakdown.”
She winced and turned back toward the living room. ”I would imagine you could use a drink.”
He watched her sort through the bottles of liquor in a small bar against the wall, pa.s.sing up several different Scotches to pull out a bottle of Glenlivet and pour him a couple of inches. Straight. No ice. She poured herself a cola on ice.
”How did you know I drink Glenlivet?” he asked when she handed him his drink.
She seemed startled by the question. ”I'm sorry, I should have asked. I just a.s.sumed-”
”-that all private eyes drink that brand?”
She dropped into one of the wingback chairs, the gla.s.s in her hand shaking. She looked scared. He knew the feeling.
”I don't know why I do half the things I do, if you want to know the truth.” Her voice broke as she glanced up at him, tears in her eyes. ”I'm sure you wonder why I married a man twenty-three years my senior. I wish I could tell you.” She dropped her gaze, took a drink and licked her lips before looking at him again.
”I wish I could tell you a lot of things.” This time she met his gaze unflinchingly, reminding him of the woman he'd known a year ago, making him remember the feel of her lips on his mouth, on his skin. Holly had been scared last year, convinced someone was trying to kill her. But there had been a strength of will about her that he'd admired. She'd had no intention of giving up without a fight.
This was the first time he'd seen it in this Holly. It stirred all the old feelings and some new ones. This was the kind of woman he could fall in love with. Had Had fallen in love with. fallen in love with.
”I have blank s.p.a.ces in my memory,” she said, even her voice sounded stronger, more determined. ”Some are only for a few hours. Others...are for...longer. I married Allan after one of those blanks. To answer your question, my husband left me well off financially. But that wasn't the reason I married him.”
”Inez said you and Allan were trying to have a baby, an heir.”
She jerked back, startled, her gaze nothing short of shocked. ”She told you that?”
”Was it a secret?” he asked.
”No, it's just...not...true. Allan and I never-” She waved a hand through the air. ”-consummated the marriage. Allan had no interest in...any of that.”
Slade stared at her, more than a little confused. ”Then why did he marry you? I mean-”
”I know what you mean. To be truthful, I have no idea how we got together or why.” She smiled ruefully. ”I've never admitted that before. At least not aloud. I can't explain why I've done a lot of things I've done in the last year.”
He held her gaze, debating whether to tell her he was one of the ”things” she'd done.
”I didn't marry him for his money, if that's what you're thinking,” she said.
”How long have you had these...lapses in memory?” he asked, not about to touch the other.
She looked as if she wasn't quite ready to drop the other subject, but then sighed and said, ”They started a little over a year ago.”
”About the time you met Allan?” he guessed.
”Yes,” she said, frowning. ”I guess it was.”
He could think of a variety of causes for memory loss. Epilepsy. Alcohol blackouts. Multiple personality disorder. Head trauma. Psychosomatic amnesia.
But he'd always been suspicious of coincidence. And it was one h.e.l.l of a coincidence that Holly's memory loss had started about the time she'd met Allan and his sister Inez.
”Have you seen a doctor about it?”
She nodded. ”Dozens of specialists, including Dr. Parris at Evergreen Inst.i.tute. They all say the same thing. There is nothing physically physically wrong with me. That leaves Inez's theory that I make up the memory losses to cover things I've done that I'm ashamed of.” wrong with me. That leaves Inez's theory that I make up the memory losses to cover things I've done that I'm ashamed of.”
He wondered if she was ashamed of what she'd done with him. ”Evergreen Inst.i.tute?” Where the upset Dr. O'Brien visiting Inez earlier had been from. ”Is that the sanitarium you were committed to?”
”Yes, Inez talked me into it.” She let out a humorless laugh. ”My so-called breakdown was nothing more than relief. And regret that I'd ever married Allan in the first place. And, of course, confusion because of the memory loss.”
”Did you ever see a Dr. O'Brien at Evergreen?”
”No,” she said. ”He must be new.”
Slade had hoped for a tie-in. No such luck. Other than the one common denominator: Evergreen.
Holly seemed upset. ”Inez believed Allan and I were trying to have an heir?”
He nodded, watching her closely.
”Well, he got his heir, didn't he?” she said.
”But it's not his baby.”
”No. But it also doesn't seem to make any difference to her. Does that make any sense at all?”
”No.” He was glad she'd noticed. If she'd been crazy, she wouldn't have noticed, right? He studied her, wondering if she didn't seem a little less blank this evening. ”You told Dr. Parris at Evergreen Inst.i.tute about your memory loss?”
”Of course. It had only just begun then, and Dr. Parris a.s.sured me it was probably caused by the trauma of losing my husband so soon after the marriage.” She looked up at Slade. ”I knew it wasn't that. But I had lost my mother just six months before that. My father died when I was nineteen, so my mother was the only family I had.”
”I know what it's like to lose your parents,” he said. ”I lost my mother when I was twelve, and my father not quite a year later.”
”I'm sorry.” She looked down at her hands clutched in her lap.
”Did the stay at Evergreen help?” he asked, suspecting he'd met her last year about the time she'd left the place-and according to Inez, without properly signing herself out. Interesting.
”Not really.”
”Why did you leave without checking out of the place?” Slade asked.
She frowned. ”I don't know. It's odd that I would run away from there. Evergreen Inst.i.tute is really more like a fancy spa than a sanitarium. I mostly just slept and read and rested.”
He was glad to hear that. He'd been imagining an asylum with padded cells and straitjackets and screams in the night. He worried that when Holly found out about their past, it might send her back there.
”But I don't remember leaving Evergreen-or how or why.”
”Inez made it pretty clear how she felt about your pregnancy,” he said, still wondering what hold the older woman had over Holly.
”My pregnancy was none of her business,” Holly replied hotly. ”I'm not ashamed of anything. Least of all that. I should never have told her that I didn't think that baby at the hospital was mine. Or about the memory loss. She's afraid people will think I'm crazy. But maybe I am crazy.”