What You Wish For

  What You Wish For

  A novel of suspense

  Janet Dawson

  2012 · Perseverance Press / John Daniel & Company

  Palo Alto / McKinleyville, California

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, companies, ­institutions, organizations, or incidents is entirely coincidental.

  The interior design and the cover design of this book are intended for and limited to the publisher’s first print edition of the book and related marketing display purposes. All other use of those designs without the publisher’s permission is prohibited.

  Copyright © 2012 by Janet Dawson

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  A Perseverance Press Book

  Published by John Daniel & Company

  A division of Daniel & Daniel, Publishers, Inc.

  Post Office Box 2790

  McKinleyville, California 95519

  www.danielpublishing.com/perseverance

  Distributed by SCB Distributors (800) 729-6423

  Book design by Studio E Books, Santa Barbara, www.studio-e-books.com

  Cover painting by Mary Proenza, Buena Vista

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  What you wish for : a novel of suspense / by Janet Dawson.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-56474-518-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  I. Title.

  PS3554.A949W37 2012

  813’.54--dc23

  2012014304

  To my mother, Thelma Dawson,

  and to friends of long standing,

  Dawn Zinser Church and Barbara Heep

  Many thanks to Rhys Bowen and Shelley Singer

  for their insights and input. And thanks also to

  Meredith Phillips and John and Susan Daniel of

  Perseverance Press for publishing this novel.

  1

  They were good friends, sisters that Lindsey Page had acquired through chance rather than birth. She knew these women well—or so she thought.

  April sun poured light from a blue sky as Lindsey walked through San Francisco’s Financial District. The scent of flowers from a nearby stand vied with the pungent stench of urine from the doorway of a shuttered business. On her first visit in 1967, the Summer of Love, the city had looked magical to Lindsey, full of wonder and promise. It hadn’t looked that way for a long time. The city was dirtier, the streets meaner.

  I am getting old and cynical, Lindsey thought.

  She walked up Montgomery Street past a homeless man muttering to himself, his hair and beard matted, clothes ragged and filthy. Other people on the sidewalk ignored him. They muttered, too, into cell phones or headsets, or pressed tiny keys, connected to their ­devices rather than the people around them.

  Gretchen Segal was already at the café, sipping white wine. She looked at her watch. “Claire’s late, as usual.”

  “Me, too. I lost track of time.” Lindsey ordered iced tea and glanced at the menu.

  A few minutes later, Claire Megarris arrived, carrying a shopping bag sporting the red-and-blue logo of Dunlin Coffee Roasteries. She sat down next to Gretchen and pulled out two bags. “I brought goodies. Sumatra for Gretchen, Costa Rica for Lindsey.”

  Lindsey held the bag to her face and breathed in the aroma. “Thanks. We coffee junkies appreciate having you as a source.”

  “As we say over at the Dunlin Building, life’s too short to drink bad coffee.” Claire glanced at the menu. “I’ll have iced tea and the salad with smoked trout. No wine for me. I need a clear head for an afternoon meeting.”

  “Linguine carbonara,” Gretchen said. “Never met a plate of pasta I didn’t like.”

  “Crab cakes, blue cheese dressing on the salad.” Lindsey handed the menu to the server. “Lunch with just the three of us feels strange.” After all, Annabel had originally brought them together. But today she would not be joining them.

  Claire sighed. “Yes, it does. She could be in rehab for months. She tries to talk. It’s hard to understand her, with that aphasia. Her left side is partially paralyzed. What if she has permanent disability?”

  “Give it time,” Lindsey said. “It’s only been six weeks since the stroke. She could make a full recovery. With all the therapy, I think she’s better.”

  Gretchen looked stricken. “If only we hadn’t played that last set of tennis...”

  “It’s not your fault,” Lindsey said. “It didn’t happen because you and Annabel were playing tennis. She could have had that stroke any time. You might as well hold yourself responsible for the last earthquake.”

  * * *

  Annabel and Gretchen had a tennis date that Saturday, at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley. Lindsey and Claire were joining them for lunch and an afternoon luxuriating at the hotel spa, treating themselves to massages and facials.

  The hotel, a white confection surrounded by manicured grounds and tennis courts, rose at the base of the Berkeley hills, where a major earthquake fault lay beneath wooded slopes and canyons. Like a snake slithering from its den to bite the unwary, the fault sometimes made its presence felt with a shake that rattled the animate and knocked the inanimate from shelves. Then the ground would still. The damage would be catalogued, the broken glass swept up and discarded. Until next time. There was always a next time, one that might bring a fatal bite.

  At the courts, Lindsey sat on a bench and watched Annabel and Gretchen play tennis. They finished the set and walked to the sideline where they’d left their gear. Both reached for their water bottles. Then Gretchen waved. “Claire! Over here.”

  “I’m ready for lunch and an afternoon of pampering,” Claire said as she joined them. “First we have to get these two aging Wimbledon rejects off the court. Come on, let’s eat.”

  “The reservation’s at one,” Annabel said.

  Claire grimaced in mock frustration. “You told me noon.”

  “You’re always late, so I compensate.” Annabel tucked her bottle into her tennis bag.

  “Now she’s a poet,” Claire shot back.

  “We’ll play one more set.” Annabel stretched, working the kinks out of her back and shoulders. She walked back to the service line, tossed the ball into the air and swung the racquet high above her head. But she never made her downswing. She froze. The ball dropped and rolled toward the net. Her racquet clattered onto the court. Annabel pressed both hands to her temples, face crumpling with pain. She took a step, then collapsed and fell like a broken doll, blue eyes wide with confusion, saliva dribbling from her mouth as she tried to speak. Claire shouted into her cell phone. Sirens wailed, lights flashed, paramedics ran toward the tennis courts.

  * * *

  “You haven’t played tennis since then, have you?” Lindsey asked now.

  Gretchen shook her head. “No. I can’t even bear the sight of my tennis gear. Doug hid it.”

  “If I knew where your tennis gear was, I’d haul it out and plop it down in front of you. I might even volley a few balls with you.”

  “Lindsey on a tennis court?” Gretchen smiled. “Now that’s scary.”

  Lindsey squeezed Gretchen’s hand. “Annabel will recover. You once told me she had a will of iron. Now Dr. Page prescribes a good meal.” She glanced at Claire. “How are Hal and the kids?” Annabel and Hal had two daughters, Tess and Sharon, and a son, Adam.

  “Being upbeat and positive,” Claire said. “Hal goes to the rehab place every day. He takes lunch for both of them and talks to her. I know he’s worried. At the office I’m shouldering as much of the burden as I can. But he’s the CEO. We have a board meeting later this month, with impor
tant decisions to make. Some people are using Hal’s preoccupation with personal matters to put forth their own agendas. The corporate world is so damned cutthroat.”

  “Yeah, and you love it,” Gretchen said.

  “It shows?” Claire laughed. “Oh, you know me too well.”

  Lindsey smiled. “The only difference between academic politics and office politics is that the corporate types are more plain-spoken than professors. Maybe less stodgy and hidebound.”

  “Hidebound? Stodgy? It’s worse than that,” Claire said. “Max Brinker is a sexist old dinosaur. He drives me crazy.”

  “You have to take Max as he is,” Lindsey said.

  “I don’t want him, period.” Claire scowled. “I’m tired of hearing how things were done in the good old days when Uncle George ran the company. I wish Max would retire. He’s way past his sell-by date. But he just keeps hanging on. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate, my assistant’s pregnant, going on maternity leave. I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.” The server brought their orders. Claire picked up her fork. “How goes it with you?”

  Lindsey took a bite of her crab cake. “I’m doing interviews for my book. Next week I’m going to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I’m glad I retired, so I can do what I want to do.”

  Claire shuddered. “Retirement would bore me silly.”

  “You’d be surprised what crops up to fill the time.” Gretchen twirled linguine on her fork. “I’m gardening, volunteering.”

  “Are you still working with that adoptive parents organization?” Lindsey asked.

  Gretchen nodded. “This is my last term on the board, though. I want to keep my summer free to spend time with Doug and the kids. Nat graduates from high school this spring. Can you believe that?”

  “Where did the time go?” Claire asked. “That sweet little toddler, all grown up.”

  “He’s grown, all right,” Gretchen said. “He was so small when we adopted him. Now he’s almost as tall as his dad. He goes off to college in the fall. I’ll probably be glad to have him out of the house.” The misty look in Gretchen’s eyes belied her words. “We’ll still have Amy at home. She’ll be thirteen in September. Another teenager.”

  Claire turned to Lindsey. “How’s Nina? Does she like living in Texas?”

  “I haven’t heard from her lately.” Lindsey sipped iced tea. She hadn’t communicated with her daughter in months. Daughters—a dangerous subject.

  Fork in hand, Claire reached across the table and excised a bite from one of Lindsey’s crab cakes. Taking people’s food was an old habit of Claire’s. Lindsey had gotten used to it over the years.

  They all shared a decadent chocolate dessert, then paid for their lunches. Claire headed back to work, Lindsey and Gretchen to BART. As they walked home from the downtown Berkeley station, they passed the empty shell of the UC Theatre on University Avenue. A scrap of song went through Lindsey’s mind, Fred Astaire singing of danger ahead, as he and Ginger Rogers twirled and dipped through the last frames of Follow the Fleet. The old movie house’s marquee lights were out, the box office was boarded up, and the display cases that once held movie posters were empty. Fred and Ginger no longer danced here.

  “It seems strange not to see the names of the latest double feature,” Lindsey said. “Old movies. Film noir and screwball comedies. Or musicals. I could always count on Fred and Ginger to cheer me up.”

  “The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday nights.” Gretchen grinned. “Yeah, I was sorry to see it go. But these days, with cable and DVDs, I’m not surprised. The last time Doug and I took the kids to a movie, dinner and tickets for four added up to an expensive evening.”

  “I remember when I could get into a movie for a buck and a quarter,” Lindsey said, “back when I was in high school. Watching a DVD at home isn’t the same as seeing a movie in the theater. Sitting in the dark gazing up at the big screen, with all those people. You came here on your first date with Doug.”

  “You remember?” Gretchen laughed. “He spilled buttered popcorn in my lap. I never did get the stain out.”

  “I seem to be on the nostalgia train lately,” Lindsey said. “Thinking about the past, all of us living together in that house. But we’re not in college anymore. We’re middle-aged.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Gretchen said. “You never talk about Nina. That must have been some argument.”

  Lindsey sighed. “It was. Same damn thing. Just different words.”

  They walked north on Milvia Street. The neighborhood segued from commercial to residential. Houses mostly, though there were plenty of apartment buildings and houses divided into flats. They said good-bye in front of the Segals’ house. Lindsey lived a block away. She’d returned to Berkeley last year after retiring from California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, moving into this house where she’d lived while finishing grad school. Now she’d inherited the house from Aunt Emma.

  The one-story brown-shingled bungalow was larger than it looked, added onto several times since it was built in 1910. It sat on a narrow corner lot at Milvia and Vine Streets, its yard full of plants and flowers—dark green rosemary, pale green succulents, tall stalks of red-and-yellow alstroemeria, fringed white Shasta daisies, and orange California poppies. A dark red clematis vine climbed a trellis and rosebushes lined the fence. Lindsey pushed through the gate and stopped to inhale the fragrance of a lush coral rose, its extravagant bloom the size of a plate.

  A woman sat on the wide porch railing. Short dark hair framed her face and her left eyebrow was pierced with a gold stud. Multiple earrings decorated both lobes and her right forearm had a pink rose tattoo. Dark circles under her blue eyes, drawn by fatigue, looked like bruises.

  Daughters—the dangerous subject had come home.

  2

  Lindsey found her voice. “Nina. What are you doing here?”

  Nina stood and sighed. “You could say you’re glad to see me.”

  “I’m always glad to see you,” Lindsey said. “But...”

  At Nina’s feet were a zipped red nylon tote and a black backpack with wheels and a handle, airline tags attached to both. “They say home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

  “That bad?” Lindsey asked.

  “Yeah. Can I come in?”

  Lindsey climbed the steps and put her arms around her daughter. At first there was no responding pressure. Then Nina’s arms moved and her cheek brushed against Lindsey’s head. Awkward, after those harsh words months ago.

  I’m leaving. I don’t want to see you, ever again.

  Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me. Not true. Words hurt worst of all.

  “Can I stay here for a couple of nights?” Nina asked.

  “Do you have anywhere to go after a couple of nights?” When Nina shook her head, Lindsey pulled out her keys and unlocked the front door. “You can stay here as long as you like. Have you eaten?”

  “Not unless you consider pretzels food,” Nina said, as they took her bags to the guestroom. “You can’t even get peanuts anymore.”

  “Let’s get you something to eat.”

  “Be right there.” Nina shed her jacket and went into the bathroom.

  Lindsey headed for the kitchen, wondering what had prompted Nina to swallow her pride and come home from Texas, four months after that horrible argument. She opened cabinets and drawers, setting the table. From the refrigerator she took a pitcher of iced tea and a container of chicken left over from last night’s dinner.

  “I’ve already had lunch,” Lindsey said when Nina joined her in the kitchen. “But you can make a sandwich. Here’s some chicken and cheese bread.”

  Nina reached for the cutting board and a serrated knife. The cats appeared, their unerring feline instinct telling them food was in the vicinity and the humans could be persuaded to share. Clementine, the calico cat, wound around Lindsey’s legs. Lola Montez, the fluffy white cat with crossed blue eyes, sat in
the doorway and meowed. Lindsey put a handful of chicken into each cat bowl, on opposite sides of the kitchen. The cats moved quickly to their respective bowls and began to eat.

  “They still don’t get along,” Nina said.

  “They’re learning to tolerate each other, after all these years.” Lindsey filled two glasses with iced tea. “At least Clementine doesn’t pounce on Lola as much as she used to. It just takes time, or they’re getting older.”

  “You cats have it lucky.” Nina knelt and stroked Clementine’s sleek back. “Sleep all day, plenty to eat, not a care in the world, except that other cat. What a life.” She straightened, then washed and dried her hands.

  Lindsey took a jar from a cabinet. “No pretzels. But I have peanuts.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Nina managed a tired smile as she ate a handful of peanuts. She layered chicken and cranberry chutney on the bread. Lindsey joined Nina at the table, sipping iced tea as she watched her daughter. Nina ate quickly, hungry after a day of traveling.

  “There’s ice cream in the freezer,” Lindsey said. “Chocolate chip.”

  “Later. I need a shower. And some sleep.” Nina put her plate and cutlery in the dishwasher.

  “The bed’s already made up,” Lindsey said, following Nina to the guestroom. Nina unzipped the backpack and took out a toiletry bag and an emerald silk robe. She drew the blinds and stripped off her jeans, then pulled her T-shirt over her head. She unfastened her bra and reached for the robe.

  “What’s that on your arm?” Lindsey asked. “A new tattoo?” The mark was a faded patch of yellow-green on Nina’s left upper arm. Not a tattoo. A bruise.

  Nina slipped her arms into the silk robe, reached under it and removed her panties. As she tied the belt of the robe she said, “You were right about Chad.”

  Anger welled up. But Lindsey kept her voice even. “I didn’t want to be right. Take your shower and lie down. We’ll talk later, if you want.”

  Nina carried her toiletry bag into the bathroom and shut the door. A moment later, Lindsey heard water raining down in the shower, reminding her of the last time she’d seen her daughter. That awful day in December, as the old year spun to its end. A gray day, full of rain.