A second voice, older and definitely masculine, spoke up in the background. “Imani,” the gruff voice said. “I hope you’re not talking to that boy again. I’ve told you I don’t think Daryl is appropriate for a young lady—”
“No, no, Daddy. It’s not Daryl, it’s David! From the mainland.”
Even through the phone line David could hear the man’s confusion. “David? My David? From Los Angeles?”
The phone was taken away from Imani and the gruff voice broke in. “David? Is this really you? You must have received my letter.”
The voice had a slight English accent, brushed with Jamaican
patois
. Normally David could get a pretty clear image of someone from talking to them, but Joel Cameron’s picture wouldn’t come.
He was as enigmatic as he had been when David first learned of his existence. He wanted to ask who are you, but he knew he wouldn’t get the answers he needed. Not over the phone.
“Yes, I got it.” Again he and Chris traded looks. “Just today in fact.”
“You must have a thousand questions. I know I do. I know my daughter Imani can be impetuous, but I agree with her. I’d like you to come and visit us.”
BeRMudA heAt
13
Imani. David swallowed in a throat gone dry. His half-sister.
Did he have half-brothers, too? A whole, ready-made family. The idea was unnerving.
“Well, I don’t know, Mr. Cameron—”
“No, no, you must call me Joel. It’s altogether too odd to have you call me Mr. Cameron.”
David tried it out. “Joel. Ah, I don’t know if we can get away right now—”
Chris punched his arm at the same time Joel protested. “You must come. It’s already been too long. I’m sorry if you’re angry that I left you, but I thought… I never would have left if I’d known.”
Known what? That I was still alive? That my mother lied about so many
things I can’t keep track of them anymore?
Before he could think of what to say, Chris snatched the phone out of his hand. He pushed David’s hand away when he tried to retrieve the handset. “Mr. Cameron, this is Christopher.
Chris. We’d love to come out and visit. Yes, sir, we’ll let you know—”
Grinning, he handed the phone back to David. “He wants to talk to you.”
“You will come then?” Joel sounded a lot more enthusiastic than David would have liked. But what could he do?
“I guess we’ll be coming.”
“Excellent. I’m looking forward to meeting you.”
“Yeah, me too.”
David disconnected the phone and turned a cold stare at Chris. “Don’t even start,” he said.
Chris gave him his patented “who, me?” look. Then his smile faded. “So who were you talking to?”
“Joel—”
“No, before that. When you gave your name.”
14 P.A. Brown
“Imani,” David said.
“Imani?”
“My sister.”
Saturday, 6:20pm, Cove Avenue, Silverlake, Los Angeles
David left to go back to the Northeast Station after saying he’d be back around nine. Chris didn’t waste any time, he went online with Delta and upgraded their tickets to BusinessElite. Now at least they’d be comfortable for the long twelve hour flight. He didn’t want to be crammed into economy, no matter how much they might save. David, with his long legs, would appreciate it, even if he bellyached about the price.
He hoped he’d convinced David he was well enough for this trip. He never let on that he still got tired easily and sometimes in the afternoon, when he knew David wouldn’t be home unexpectedly, he would lie down for an hour or two, always careful to remove all signs of his siesta before David did come home.
This really would be a vacation; a good place to rest and get all his strength back. For the first time in years the two of them would have no work demands pulling them away. How could that not be restful?
Back in his office, he logged online and took care of the business he had abandoned earlier. After he checked his email and attended to the important stuff, he picked up his BlackBerry and speed dialed Becky. She answered on the third ring.
“Hey boss, how do you feel? Better, I hope.”
“I feel fine. Really, you’re as bad as David. What do you two think? That I’m some invalid on the verge of imminent collapse?”
“Of course not, but David told me how sick you were. He made me promise not to pester you about work for at least a week.”
“Oh did he?” Chris felt both irritated and warm at the news.
David cared. David was a meddling busybody, but he cared. He
16 P.A. Brown
shook the feelings off along with the strange lassitude that he’d been feeling ever since his bout with that nasty virus left him on his back for nearly two weeks. He couldn’t afford to be sick anymore. No matter what David might want, he had a business to attend to. And now he had this.
“What’s your week look like, say…” He pulled out his BlackBerry and checked his calendar entries for around two weeks from today. “Let’s say starting the twentieth.” That would give him time to play catch up before he left again and put Becky in charge.
“So what’s up?” she asked.
“David and I are going to Bermuda. Call it a rest-cure-vacation.” It was better than calling it what it was; finding out the truth about David’s past. That was David’s call to explain if he wanted to in the future.
“Bermuda?” she asked. “I am so jealous.”
“I’ll send you a postcard.”
“Gee, no T-shirt?”
“Okay, I’ll splurge. A postcard and a T-shirt.” While he talked he opened Google and looked up Joel Cameron, not expecting much. He wasn’t surprised to see hits. He was disheartened when he saw there were over four million. Even narrowing it with the addition of Bermuda, there were still too many hits to sift through.
“Lucky me,” Becky said, breaking his concentration. Chris frowned at his laptop screen.
“You won’t have a problem taking over my clients, right?”
“Just send me what you need. I could use the excitement.”
“Well, try not to make it too exciting,” Chris said. “My clients are delicate souls.”
“Not likely, if they hire you.”
He disconnected and went back to reading. It was no good.
He could spend all day scrolling through all the names and never BeRMudA heAt
17
know if he had hit the right one. Instead, he Googled the history of the place. All he knew of Bermuda were pink sands and expensive living. It turned out there was a lot more.
First discovered in the early sixteenth century it proved the bane of sailors for centuries. More than five hundred ships lay wrecked on reefs guarding the island’s shores more effectively than most navies managed. A fleet of ships on their way to the Virginia colonies were separated in a storm and the
Sea Venture
foundered on the reef. All 150 on board survived. Eventually, two replacement ships were built and the castaways finished their voyage to Virginia.
People kept returning to the islands and a British colony was set up. It was still a part of the British Empire; all efforts to have true independence had been defeated to date.
All very interesting, but it didn’t get him or David any closer to understanding what had happened forty-one years ago. He shut down his laptop and reached for his BlackBerry again.
He had one more call to make, to Desmond Hayward, his best friend. He needed someone to look after the cat and dog while they were gone and Des was one of his few friends who tolerated animals. Des wasn’t as impressed as Becky had been.
“I’ve heard about that place. They are not nice to our kind of people.”
“Our kind of people? You mean Democrats? Library card holders? Spelunkers?”
“You—” Des stopped, momentarily silenced, “You’ve never been spelunking in your life.”
“Okay, forget spelunking, stamp collectors then—and before you say anything, I did collect stamps,” Chris said with a barely suppressed laugh which quickly became a jaw splitting yawn. He blinked, but the tiredness wouldn’t go away. “When I was a kid, knee-high to a grasshopper.”
Des snorted. “Well, you know what I mean,” he sniffed.
“It’s a holiday, Des. Let’s not make it into something more.
18 P.A. Brown
Can you watch the animals for us?”
“Yes, I’ll watch them. Trev loves the mangy mutt so he’ll be happy to take him out for a run. You have to promise you’ll be careful. You know what you’re like; you just can’t stay out of trouble. And don’t forget how sick you were just last week.”
“Like anyone will let me forget.”
“Hey, we all love your stubborn, self-destructive, pretty little tush. Just don’t do anything too strenuous. Really, how hard is that? Miss Trouble.”
“I am not—never mind, I can’t win with you guys.” Chris yawned again. “I’ll take care, really I will, hon. I’ll send you a postcard.”
“Forget that. Bring me a juicy twenty-something beach boy.
That would be yummy.”
“Trevor ought to love that.”
“Sure he would. You don’t know bad boy Trevor. You tell Fido not to shed all over my Hugo Boss.”
Chris laughed and hung up, after promising to talk to Des before they left. He went upstairs, set the alarm for four-thirty so David wouldn’t catch him in bed, and crawled between the covers. A sympathetic Sergeant leaped up beside him.
David was supposed to be off work at five. Today, he actually made it home by five-thirty, giving Chris enough time for a wake-up shower, a change into clean clothes and the table set. When he heard the car door slam shut, he slid two seasoned filets onto the grill beside the foil-wrapped baked potatoes already cooking.
David came into the kitchen and bussed Chris on the cheek, his five o’clock shadow rasping Chris’s freshly shaved face.
“Something smells good.”
“You have time for a shower,” Chris said. He pointedly rubbed his own face. “And a shave.”
David kissed him again and plodded toward the stairs. He returned twenty minutes later, looking almost human. This time the kiss he gave Chris was a serious one.
BeRMudA heAt
19
“Come on.” Chris pulled away, albeit reluctantly. “Let’s get some chow in us first.”
“Dessert then.”
“Promise.”
Sunday, 12:00pm, Carlyle Street, Glendale, Los Angeles
Church bells rang someplace. Well, it was Sunday, David thought morosely, while he climbed the cracked, weed-infested steps up to the house where his CI said Bart Trimble could be found.
Trimble was a person of interest in a botched liquor store robbery that left one guy dead and another in Glendale Memorial.
Supposedly, Trimble had been present at the robbery. No one could say whether he’d been a part of it or simply a bystander.
Either way, he and Martinez needed to find the guy.
No warrant, so they had to find Trimble and persuade him to talk. A curtain swayed in the window beside the front walk.
David rapped on the wooden door and a dog barked, deep. He shared a glance with Martinez. Big dog.
He brushed his hand over the butt of his Smith & Wesson.
Knocked again.
“LAPD. Open up. We need to talk.”
The door opened wide enough to let a girl peer up at them.
She looked young and scared. David knew Trimble was thirty-six. So… daughter?
“Your dad home? Bartholomew Trimble? Is he here?”
A dog’s head pushed the door opened more. The mastiff’s scarred muzzle curled open in a silent snarl. David freed his gun.
“Trimble,” he called over the dog’s growling. “Call the dog off and get out here.”
The girl vanished. So did the dog. Replaced by a hatchet-faced man with unshaved cheeks and a cigarette jammed in his mouth.
20 P.A. Brown
“Bartholomew Trimble?”
“Yah. Watcha want?”
“I need you to come out here so we can talk,” David said.
He’d holstered his weapon, but kept his hand near it. No telling when this could turn hinky. “Now, Mr. Trimble.”
“All right, all right.” He yanked the door open all the way and stood in the foyer wearing paint-covered gray sweats and a loose wife beater that showed off flabby flesh. He carried a half empty bottle of Old Milwaukee in one hand and held the dog’s collar in his other.
The mastiff strained toward the two cops and both David and Martinez kept wary eyes on both it and Trimble.
“We’re looking for Tony Sutton,” David said. “You know where he might be?”
“Sutton? Never hearda him. He do somethin’?”
The dog snarled and twisted in its efforts to reach the two armed men. David had had enough. “Sir, put the dog away.”
When Trimble hesitated he snapped. “Now. Don’t worry. We’ll wait.”
Trimble grumbled but huffed his way back into the house.
A moment later, an inner door slammed and he shuffled back.
He took the cigarette out of his mouth, took a slug of beer and popped the butt back between his lips. His teeth were as yellow as his fingertips.
“We’d like to come in, sir. We’ll only take a minute of your time.”
Inside, a woman’s voice could be heard, “What the fuck they want with us? Get rid of them, Bart.”
When Trimble returned Martinez snarled, “You want us to vamoose, dirtwad, you answer our questions.”
Trimble seemed torn between listening to his wife or the cops on his doorstep. The cops won. He waved them inside.
In the living room a wide screen TV was blaring out some BeRMudA heAt
21
frenetic music, and some bizarrely colored animated characters were being ignored by everyone. All eyes were on the intruders.
A copper-headed woman sat on a green and gold sofa between two children; the girl who had opened the door to them and an older teenage boy. Four pairs of eyes watched on intently.
From the back room the surly mastiff kept snarling and yowling.
The hairs on David’s neck stood up. They still needed to do what they came here for.
“I want you to tell me what you saw last Thursday at Mike’s Liquor Store on Verdugo.”
“Wasn’t there.”
“We know that’s not true,” David said. “Don’t waste our time.”
“And we won’t waste yours,” Martinez added, taking a step closer to Trimble. In the back room, as though knowing it was needed, the dog howled and threw itself against a door. Neither cop looked toward the outburst. Their focus was on the only real threat in the house, the people in front of them.