The Girl Who Knew Too Much(49)
The kiss made her giddy, downright euphoric. She felt as if she had accidentally opened a long-forgotten closet and discovered some bright, shiny dreams that had been locked away since she was fourteen years old.
The illusion ended with the honking of a horn. A car pulled off the road and stopped next to Oliver’s car. The vehicle overflowed with a pack of young people in their teens, male and female. Someone had borrowed his father’s car for the day, Irene thought.
The kids waved and laughed as they bailed out of the front and back seats. They opened the trunk and hauled out blankets and a large picnic basket.
The driver grinned at Oliver as the teens made their way to the beach.
“Say, you’re the magician who owns the big hotel in town, right?” he said enthusiastically. “You were in the paper this morning, sir.” The kid switched his attention to Irene. “Are you the reporter who found the body in the spa?”
“Time to go,” Oliver said.
He tucked Irene’s hand in his. Together they made their way up the short beach path. The teens followed, clustering around and pelting them with questions. The girls wanted to know more about the dead woman in the spa but the boys soon switched their attention to Oliver’s car.
“Is it true it’s the fastest car in California?”
“How fast does it go?”
“What does it have under the hood, sir?”
“Say, would you mind if I took your car for a spin, Mr. Ward?”
“Not today,” Oliver said.
One of the girls studied Oliver’s cane.
“Daddy took me to see you perform once,” she said. “I loved the part where you made the woman vanish in the mirror.”
Oliver got the passenger side door open and bundled Irene into the seat.
“Glad you enjoyed the act,” he said to the young woman.
He rounded the front of the car and got behind the wheel.
“Daddy says no one really knows what went wrong the night you nearly died onstage,” the girl continued in a voice laced with ghoulish excitement. “He says there were rumors that someone tried to murder you.”
“The rumors were wrong,” Oliver said. “Have fun with your picnic. Keep an eye on the waves. Never turn your back on the ocean. It will take you by surprise every time. There’s a strong riptide just offshore here.”
There was a polite chorus of yes, sirs.
Oliver fired up the engine and drove onto the road.
“Sorry about that,” he said after a moment.
“What, exactly, are you apologizing for?” Irene asked.
She held her breath waiting for the answer.
“The interruption. I should have found a more private location.”
She started breathing again. “Not the kiss, then.”
He gave her a quick, searching glance.
“Should I apologize for the kiss?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
He nodded once. “Good. The kids will talk, and Burning Cove is a small town. There will be more gossip.”
Irene laughed, feeling lighter and more carefree than she had in a very long time.
“Misdirection,” she said.
Oliver laughed. It was, she realized, the first time she had seen him laugh.
“Right,” he said. “Misdirection.”
Chapter 22
The skull-faced man was sitting at the counter, reading Silver Screen Secrets. He looked like an extra from a horror film, Irene thought. He wasn’t ugly, she decided, he was just weird.
She took a seat at the end of the counter and ordered a lettuce-and-tomato sandwich and a cup of coffee. It wasn’t much of a dinner, but she was too nervous about the late-night meeting with Daisy Jennings to eat anything else.
The skull-faced man folded his paper very precisely and got to his feet. He walked toward her. She was careful not to look at him, but when he stopped a short distance away, she knew she was doomed.
“You’re Irene Glasson, aren’t you,” he said in a voice that sounded like it emanated from a crypt. “You wrote that piece about the woman who drowned in the pool.”
“Yes,” Irene said. “Who are you?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
“Good point,” she said. “Would you mind leaving me alone? I’d like to eat my dinner in peace.”
“You should stop making trouble for Mr. Tremayne.”
Irene went still and then, very deliberately, she swiveled around on the stool and confronted the skull-faced man. For the first time she got a good look at his eyes. She had been wrong about the resemblance to an extra in a horror movie, she decided. The stranger looked more like one of the fanatics who carried signs announcing that the world was coming to an end.
“Why are you so concerned with Mr. Tremayne?” she said, going for a softer tone.