Public Secrets by Nora Roberts
up for Best New Group. She could feel the nerves from them, and she could see, with a sense of pride, the way they glanced toward her father from time to time.
Would they last so long? she imagined them asking themselves. Would they make so deep a mark? Would another generation be touched, and moved by their music?
“You’re right,” she said to Stevie. “You are the best. All of you.
She didn’t think of Blackpool again. She didn’t look over her shoulder. For hours she indulged herself, taking pictures, talking music, laughing at old stories. It didn’t even bother her to make an entrance, and stand at the podium reciting her lines to a near-empty theater. She sat, sipping a lukewarm Coke, as some of the musicians jammed centerstage on old Chuck Berry tunes.
Only P.M. left early, anxious to get back to his wife and baby.
“He’s getting old,” Johnno decided, plopping down beside her to play some blues on a harmonica. He glanced back to study the seventeen-year-old vocalist who was already an established star. “Christ, we’re all getting old. Before long, you’ll commit the ultimate insult and make us grandfathers.”
“We’ll just push your rocking chair up to a mike.” She tipped up the bottle.
“You’re a nasty one, Emma.”
“I learned from the best.” Chuckling, she draped an arm around his shoulders. “Look at it this way, there hasn’t been anyone else onstage today who’s lived through two decades of rock-and-roll hell. You’re practically a monument.”
“Truly nasty,” he decided and cupped the harmonica. “All this talk about lifetime achievement awards,” he muttered between chords. “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
“They have their nerve, don’t they?” She laughed and hugged him. “Johnno, you’re not really worried about age.”
He scowled and began to blow more blues. Behind him, someone picked up the rhythm on bass. “See how you like it when you’re cruising toward fucking fifty.”
“Jagger’s older.”
He shrugged. The drums had fallen in, a brush on the snare. “Not good enough,” he told her and continued to play.
“You’re better looking.”
He considered that. “True.”
“And I’ve never had a crush on him.”
He grinned. “Never got over me, did you?”
“Never.” Then she spoiled the solemn look with a chuckle. She began to sing, improvising lyrics as she went. “I’ve got those rock-and-roll blues. Those old, old, rocking blues. When my hair is gray, and you ask me to play, I say don’t bug me, Momma, my bones they’re aching today. I got them rock-and-roll blues. Them old man rocking blues.”
She grinned at him. “Did I pass the audition?”
“Pretty bloody clever, aren’t you?”
“Like I said, I learned from the best.”
While he continued to play, she slid off the edge of the stage and framed him in. “One last shot before I go.” She snapped, changed the angle, and snapped again. “I’ll call it Rock Icon” She laughed when he called her a nasty name, then packed the camera in her case. “Shall I tell you what rock and roll is, Johnno, from someone who doesn’t perform, but observes?”
He gestured with the harmonica, then cupped it again to play softly as he watched her.
“It’s restless and rude.” Walking back, she laid a hand on his knee. “It’s daring and defiant. It’s a fist shaken at age. It’s a voice that often screams out questions because the answers are always changing.”
She glanced up to see her father standing behind Johnno, listening. Her smile swept over him. “The very young play it because they’re searching for some way to express their anger or joy, their confusion and their dreams. Once in a while, and only once in a while, someone comes along who truly understands, who has the gift to transfer all those needs and emotions into music.
“When I was three years old, I watched you”—she looked back up at Brian—“all of you, go out onstage. I didn’t know about things like harmony or rhythms or riffs. All I saw was magic. I still see it, Johnno, every time I watch the four of you step onstage.”
He toyed with the copper column at her ear, then sent it spinning. “I knew there was a reason we kept you around. Give us a kiss.”
Her lips were curved as they touched his. “See you tomorrow. You’re going to knock them dead.”
It was dusk when she walked to her car. Sometime during the afternoon it had rained again. The streets were shiny, and the air was cool and misty. She didn’t want to go home to an empty house. Michael was working late, again.
When she started the car, she turned the radio up loud, as she liked it best on aimless drives. She would entertain herself for a couple of hours, look at houses in the glow of street lights, try to decide if she wanted the beach, the hills, or the canyons.
Relaxed, she set the car at a moderate pace and let the music wash over her. She didn’t check her rearview mirror, or notice the car that fell in behind her.
MICHAEL STOOD IN front of the pegboard in the conference room and studied his lists. He’d made another connection. It was slow work, frustrating, but each link brought him closer to the end of the chain.
Jane Palmer had had many men. Finding them all could be a life’s work, Michael thought. But it was particularly satisfying when he turned one up whose name was on the list.
She had used Brian’s money to move out of her dingy little flat and into bigger, more comfortable quarters in Chelsea, where she’d lived from 1968 to 1971, until she’d bought the house on King’s Road. For the better part of ’70, she’d had a flatmate, a struggling pub singer named Blackpool.
Wasn’t it interesting, Michael thought as he rubbed eyes dead-dry with strain, that while the McAvoys had been living in the hills of Hollywood, Jane Palmer had been playing house with Blackpool? Blackpool who had been at the McAvoys’ party that night in early December?
And odd, wasn’t it just a bit odd, that Jane hadn’t mentioned the connection in her book? She’d dropped every name that could have made the slightest ring, but Blackpool, an established star by the mid-seventies, didn’t rate a footnote. Because, Michael concluded, neither of them wanted the connection remembered.
McCarthy stuck his head in the door. “Christ, Kesselring, you still playing with that thing? I want some dinner.”
“Robert Blackpool was Palmer’s live-in lover from June of 70 to February of 71.”
“Well, call out the wrath of God.”
Michael slapped a file in McCarthy’s hand. “I need everything there is to know about Blackpool.”
“I need red meat.”
“I’ll buy you a steer,” Michael said as he walked back into the squad room.
“You know, partner, this whole business has ruined your sense of humor. And my appetite. Blackpool’s a big star. He does beer commercials, for Christ’s sake. You’re not going to tie him to a twenty-year-old case.”
“Maybe not, but I’m down to eight names.” He sat at his desk and pulled out a cigarette. “Somebody stole my damn Pepsi.”
“I’ll call a cop.” McCarthy leaned over. “Mike, no fooling around, you’re pushing this too hard.”
“Looking out for me, Mac?”
“I’m your goddamn partner. Yeah, I’m looking out for you, and I’m looking out for myself. If we have to go out on the streets while you’re strung out like this, you’re not going to back me up.”
Through a veil of smoke, Michael studied his partner. His voice, when he spoke, was dangerously soft. “I know how to do my job.”
It was a tender area. McCarthy was well aware of the razzing Michael had taken his first years on the force. “I’m also your friend, and I’m telling you, if you don’t ease off for a few hours, you’re not going to do anybody any good. Including your lady.”
Slowly, Michael unclenched his fists. “I’m getting close. I know it. It’s not like it was twenty years ago. It’s like it was yesterday, and I was there, right there going over every step.”
“Like your old man.”
“Yeah.” He braced his elbows on the desk to scrub his hands over his face. “I’m going crazy.”
“You’re just overcharged, kid. Take a couple hours. Ease off.”
Michael stared down at the papers on his desk. “I’ll buy you a steak. You help me run the make on Blackpool.”
“Deal.” He waited while Michael shrugged into his jacket. “Why don’t you give me a couple other names? Marilyn’s on a new kick and we’re getting nothing but fish this week anyway.”
“Thanks.”
EMMA STOPPED THE car and looked at the house through the rising mists. She hadn’t consciously decided to drive to it. Years before she had sat in the car with Michael and studied the house. It had been sunny then, she remembered.
There were lights in the windows. Though she could see no movement, she wondered who lived there now. Did a child sleep in the room where she had once slept, or where Darren’s crib had stood? She hoped so. She wanted to think that more than tragedy lived on. There had been laughter in the house as well, a great deal of it. She hoped there was again.
She supposed Johnno had made her think of it, when he had talked of growing older. Most of the time she still saw them as they had been in her own childhood, not as men who had lived for nearly a quarter of a century with fame and ambition, with success and failure.
They had all changed. Perhaps herself most of all. She no longer felt like a shadow of the men who had so dominated her life. If she was stronger, it was because of the effort it had taken to finally see herself as whole, rather than as parts of the people she’d loved the best.
She looked through the gloom to the house nestled on the hill, and hoped with all her heart she would dream of it that night. When she did, she would open that door. She would stand, and look, and she would see.
Releasing the brake, she started down the narrow road. Six months before, she knew, she wouldn’t have had the courage to come alone, to open herself to all those feelings. It was good, so good not to be afraid.
The headlights flashed into her rearview mirror so close, so fast, they blinded her. Instinctively she threw a hand up to block the glare.
Drunk and stupid, she thought and glanced for a place to pull over and let the car pass.
When it rammed her from behind, her hands clamped automatically on the wheel. Still, the few seconds of shock cost her, and had her veering dangerously close to the guardrail. Dragging the wheel back, she heard her tires squeal on the wet pavement. Her heart jackhammered to her throat as she slid sideways around the next turn.
“Asshole!” With a trembling hand she wiped a smear of blood from her lip where she’d bitten it. Then the lights were blinding her again, and the impact of the next hit had her seat belt snapping against her breastbone.
There was no time to think, no room for panic. Her rear fender slapped against the metal guard as her car shimmied. The car behind backed off as she fought her own out of a skid. She saw the tree, a big leafy oak, and used every ounce of strength to jerk the wheel to the right. Panting, she concentrated on maneuvering around an S turn, pumping her brakes to slow her speed.
He came again. She caught a glimpse of the car, burned the image into her brain before the lights glared against her mirror again. Though braced for the impact, she cried out.
He wasn’t drunk. And he wasn’t stupid. In one part of her mind the terror screamed out. Someone was trying to kill her. It wasn’t her imagination. It wasn’t leftover fears. It was happening. She could see the lights, hear the crunch of metal against metal, feel her tires skid as they fought for traction.
The car came up on her left, punching hers toward the drop. She was screaming; she could hear herself as she laid on the gas and tore around the next turn.
She wouldn’t outrun him. Emma blinked the glaze out of her eyes and tried to think. His car was bigger, and faster. And the hunter always had the advantage over the hunted. The road cut through the hills gave her no room to maneuver, and there was no place to go but down.
He pulled up again. She could see the dark shape of the car, creeping closer, and closer, like a spider toward a victim in the web. She shook her head, knowing at any moment he would ram her and send her crashing over the edge.
In desperation, she jerked her car to the left, surprising him by taking the offensive. It gave her an instant, hardly more. But even as he approached again, she saw the headlights gleam from the other direction.
On a prayer, she took her last chance and poured on the speed. The oncoming car swerved, brakes high and shrill, horn blasting. She caught a glimpse of the car behind her veering back to the right at a dangerous speed.
For a second, she was alone, around the next turn. Then she heard the crash. It echoed with her own screams as she hurtled down the winding road toward the lights of L.A.
MCCARTHY HAD BEEN right. Not only did Michael feel better after a meal and an hour’s break, but he thought more clearly. As a second-generation cop, he had not only his contacts to call on, but his father’s. He made a call to Lou’s poker buddy who worked in Immigration, to his own contact in the Motor Vehicle Administration, used his father’s name with the FBI and his own with Inspector Carlson in London.
No one was particularly pleased to be called on after hours, but the meal had made it easier for him to use charm.
“I know it’s irregular, Inspector, and I’m sorry to bother—oh, Lord, I totally forgot the time difference. I am really sorry. Yes, well, I need some information, background stuff. Robert Blackpool. Yeah, that Blackpool. I want to know who he was before 1970, Inspector. I should be able to connect the dots after that.” He made a note to himself to contact Pete Page. “Everything you can find. I don’t know if I’ve got anything, but you’ll be the first—”
He broke off when he saw Emma running in, glassy-eyed, with a trickle of blood on her temple.
“Please.” She collapsed into the chair in front of his desk. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”
He cut Inspector Carlson off without a word. “What happened?” He was beside her, taking her face in his hands.
“On a road up in the hills…a car…tried to run me down.”
“Were you hit?” He began to search frantically for broken bones.
She heard other voices. They were crowding around her. A phone was ringing, ringing, ringing. She saw the lights revolve. The room followed it before she slid out of the chair.
There was a cloth against her head. Cool. She moaned, reaching a hand to it as she opened her eyes.
“You’re okay,” Michael told her. “You just passed out for a minute. Drink a little of this. It’s only water.”
She sipped, letting her head rest against his supporting arm. She could smell him—her soap, his sweat. She was safe again. Somehow she was safe again. “I want to sit up.”
“Okay. Take it easy.”
She stared around, waiting to settle. She was in an office. His father’s office, she thought. She’d seen it when she’d stopped by earlier in the week, wanting to see where Michael worked. It was very plain. Brown carpet, glass walls. The blinds were closed now. His desk was ordered. There was a picture of his wife on it. Michael’s mother. Looking beyond, she saw another man, thin, balding.
“I’m sorry. You’re Michael’s partner.”
“McCarthy.”
“I met you a few days ago.”
He nodded. She might have been concussed, but she was lucid.
“Emma.” Michael touched her cheek to make her look at him. “Tell us what happened.”
“I thought I was imagining it.”
“What?”
“That someone was after me. Could I have that water?”
“Sure.” Because her hands were shaking, he closed his over them on the cup. “Who was after you?”
“I don’t know. Before I left London, I…maybe it was my imagination.”
“Tell me.”
“I thought someone was followi
“You don’t have to,” Michael told her. “Go on.”
She looked at him and wanted to weep because he meant it. She would never have to explain to him. “While I was in New York, I saw someone watching the loft. I was sure Da had hired someone to look out for me. But when I asked him, he said he hadn’t, so I decided I’d been wrong. The first night I was back, a car followed me home