4:50 P.M. COOKING: POTATOES, ONIONS, GROUND BEEF
I let the journal drop in my lap. I felt teleported backward through time. The day I picked up my cap and gown, I had been surly as hell. The last thing I wanted to do was step foot on that campus again, where I was Convo of the Century. I had asked—begged, pleaded—for Dad to just pick it up for me, but he’d refused. He’d wanted to take pictures of me in front of the school.
Ultimately, I lost the battle. Dad followed me to the school and jumped out as soon as I emerged with cap and gown. He attacked me like paparazzi and it pissed me off. We argued. Loudly. Right there in front of the school at dismissal time. I’d said a lot of things that I ended up regretting about five minutes later. I wasn’t sure at that time what I could trust with my dad and what I couldn’t. But the look on his face when I’d said those things told me he was disappointed. I’d gone home and cooled down, and then gone downstairs to cook us both a nice dinner.
And there it was, logged in the journal I stole from Peter Fairchild.
It was a journal about me.
But there was something else about it as well. Something familiar. I realized what it was—a thin magenta glow around every letter. I went to my desk and pulled open a few drawers until I found it—last year’s yearbook. Clumsily, frantically, I flipped through the opening pages, scanning. Finding nothing, I opened the back.
There it was.
I can’t wait to see what this summer brings. LOVE! Jones Each and every letter ringed with a magenta glow. I took the yearbook to the bed and compared it to the writing in the journal. It matched perfectly. I slammed the journal shut and saw on the back cover a notation from an L.A. County juvenile detention center that it had been inspected and approved.
Son of a bitch.
Jones had been watching me. He’d been writing it all down. And he’d been feeding it to Luna.
My gut lurched up into my throat. I jumped up and crossed the room, pulling my curtains shut angrily. I went through every room in my house doing the same. I felt violated, and even though Jones was dead, Peter and Luna weren’t, and I still felt vulnerable. Who were they using to report my every move now?
Restless, I turned on some music and cranked the volume. I turned out the lights and sat on my bed, letting the music envelop me. Letting it hatch a plan inside me. In the darkness, I fumbled through my nightstand for my leftover pack of cigarettes and an old lighter. The flame flicked open the darkness for just a moment, and then there was the red glow of the end of my cigarette.
I needed to calm down. I needed to get some sleep. To center myself.
I had a boat to crash the next day.
28
NICE OF YOU to stop by.”
I jumped, nearly dropping the yogurt I’d taken out of the refrigerator on the fly. I hadn’t even noticed Dad sitting at the kitchen table, his bathrobe open to expose a white V-neck, boxer shorts, and tube socks. What I used to call his Dad Uniform, back when I felt comfortable enough with him to tease him. He had his laptop open and was browsing the news.
“You scared me,” I said. “I was just leaving.”
“Broken record,” he said to the screen. “I almost forgot you lived here.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” I pulled the foil off the top of the yogurt and licked it clean, grabbing a spoon out of the drawer at the same time.
His eyes flicked up to me. “It’s dramatic to miss your daughter?”
“It’s normal for someone my age to be gone all the time. If I was like everyone else, I would be off at college right now.”
“But you’re not like everyone else.”
I paused with a spoonful of yogurt halfway to my mouth. “Thanks for that.”
He shut the laptop and took off his glasses, then laid them on the table and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Well, it’s the truth, right? You’re gone all the time. You’re with some mysterious man I’ve never met. You’re not going to school. You’re not working. Where in the world are you all day?”
“I’m busy being eighteen,” I said defensively.
“You’re busy hiding things from me.”
That was it. A pop of ragemonster red on the ceiling and a splash of indigo in my yogurt, fern and ink seeping across the floor and under my feet. I was done.
“Really?” I asked, setting my half-eaten yogurt on the counter. “You’re going to talk to me about hiding things?”
“Nikki, let’s not turn this into a big deal,” he said wearily. “I just got out of bed. I’ve been working and I’m tired and I’m not awake enough for theatrics.”
“Oh, sure, you’re right. This isn’t a big deal.” My Chucks were on the floor next to the garage door, and I went to them. “What you’re hiding, though, is a big deal.” Once it was out of my mouth, I could hardly believe I’d said it aloud. But it was too late to go back now, and I wasn’t even sure if I would have.
“What are you talking about?”
“Mom!” I practically shouted. I had one shoe on and was working the second one, but my hands were shaking now. “You’re hiding what happened with Mom. You knew, Dad. You knew about Hollywood Dreams. You knew about Peyton. You knew about Bill Hollis. You burned his studio down and you knew he wanted revenge. I think you even knew he wanted her dead.” I finally got my other shoe on, and I found my finger angrily jabbing the air in his direction. “You knew everything. You kept evidence in that box under your desk. I don’t know if you physically killed her yourself, but you might as well have. Because you let the killer in, didn’t you? You left her alone on your supposed date night, knowing how powerful Bill Hollis was.”
Dad’s face had remained a stunned oval. It had gone ghostly white and then filled in high up on the cheeks with pink splotches. “Nikki,” he said, his voice raspy.
“You lied to me,” I said, my throat constricting with angry rusty starbursts. I almost felt like they were going to choke me. “You said the police couldn’t solve her murder, but all these years you never said their only suspect was you and that they just didn’t have anything concrete on you. You lied to me, Dad, for my entire life. So don’t get all high and mighty on me about hiding things. I could never hide anything as well as you.”
“Nikki,” he repeated. He sounded small, defeated. “You don’t understand.”
I pulled my keys out of my pocket. “Spare me, okay? I don’t need any more of your lies.” I opened the garage door, then turned back while the big garage door rumbled and creaked open. “Oh, and what I’m hiding from you is this. I’m going after Luna. And her dad, Peter. Because somehow Mom’s murder is tied to the Hollises and to him, and Luna’s the last one standing. And because she’s tried to kill me twice, and I won’t ever be able to live normally as long as I know she’s out there. Not that I would really know what normal is anyway. But, honestly, I have been looking for her because I want her dead. And if I have to kill her myself, then so be it. Like father, like daughter, right? There. How’s that for honesty?”
I stomped down the wooden step into the garage, slamming the door behind me. My colors were going crazy—rage and sadness and giddiness and relief—and I let them float me all the way to the car. I didn’t know what was going to happen when I came back home—if I came back home—but I knew everything between Dad and me had changed, all in the course of one conversation.
And that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I backed out of the driveway and pointed my car toward the beach. As I rolled past my house, I could see Dad standing in a front window—the one in the spare bedroom—watching me leave, his bathrobe cinched around his waist and a serious look on his face.
29
IT WOULD TAKE me twenty minutes, give or take, to get to the marina. I hopped onto the 405 and turned on my Bluetooth.
“Call Martinez,” I said.