Keeper of the Keys Read online

  Keeper of the Keys

  Perri O'shaughnessy

  The New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Nina Reilly series returns with a bold and gripping new work, a masterful stand-alone that will delight devoted fans – and garner legions of new ones. This haunting and original tale of love, obsession, and the secrets that we keep – especially from ourselves – begins with a sudden, inexplicable vanishing.

  For ambitious, troubled architect Ray Jackson, the questions start one sultry California summer night when his wife, Leigh, disappears. No phone call, no ransom note, no body to reveal whether she has left of her own accord and is alive, or is dead. Although it's clear they had a passionate, close relationship, Ray Jackson is not looking for his wife. Why?

  Enter Kathleen, old friend of Leigh's, who shows up demanding answers. Ray wants answers, too, but his questions seem strange and shady to Kat.

  Suspected by his wife's best friend and the police, Ray launches a desperate, alarming search of his own. Using a collection of keys he has hoarded since he was a boy – keys to homes he once lived in – Ray invades each house, one by one.

  Will he unlock secrets from his past that will help him make sense of a life that appears to be disintegrating? Or will he expose chilling secrets that may have scarred him past redemption?

  Kat can't figure him out. Still, hoping to find answers to her own gnawing, emotional questions, she throws in her lot with him, at times terrified he killed her friend, and at other times convinced he's an innocent man.

  Past and present collide as the deceits and subterfuges are exposed, and Ray Jackson is confronted with the most agonizing decision of his life – to face his own violence-laden past, acting to prevent another murder – or not. His choice will leave nothing and no one the same.

  Perri O'Shaughnessy

  Keeper of the Keys

  © 2006

  For Brad Snedecor,

  generous soul and benevolent spirit,

  who has done so much for our family.

  PROLOGUE

  She felt sick all the time now, and it was guilt making her feel that way. The guilt had spread like malignant cells throughout her body. Now it squeezed her neck until she choked, and couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t speak truthfully. She didn’t want to live like this, and she couldn’t anymore. She would rather die. She felt she was dying anyway.

  In the shower, a glassed-in space with a glass tile floor that hovered gorgeous as a transparent butterfly over dark Topanga Canyon, Leigh Jackson scrubbed away the sweat of her day’s labor. Brushing a stiff loofah over her arms, she realized the pointlessness of worrying about what came next. She had to confess, outcomes be damned.

  Although tonight could ruin her life, and his.

  Correction: it could ruin her life more than it was already ruined.

  She heard him sawing downstairs. Her husband, Ray, had followed his latest routine tonight, the routine that made her crazy, made her act out, forced her to-

  No. Unfair to blame him.

  By the time she had come home, he had already eaten and disappeared into his dungeon workshop downstairs. He loved it; she hated the space, finding it as claustrophobic and as hard as an animal’s cave. She had never told Ray that, although he must know. He used to know her so well. He used to study her smile and the slight wrinkles around her eyes that had suddenly appeared when she reached thirty a few years before. He used to touch them almost-reverently.

  Well, that had stopped.

  Culpability. Not all hers. Not entirely unfair to allow that he played a role in her unforgivable behavior. Once locked together as tightly as barnacles on a rock, they had pulled apart. The parting cracked things: shells, muscle, tissue, heart.

  Wounded when he didn’t touch her anymore, unable to pierce the dark hood over eyes that had once looked at her so openly, for some time now she had pondered what had triggered his withdrawal. To her surprise, she traced the changes to when his architectural firm began to get truly successful. Newspapers covered their projects. The latest article featured her handsome husband, looking somewhat bewildered at the attention, with a foot up on a concrete pediment in front of a gigantic new structure.

  He had become the public’s toast, any crazy design idea accepted, no, even celebrated by the press. Jobs poured in.

  “We’ve got a cushion now. I could take some time off, have a baby,” she had said happily a few weeks before, reading the story with the color photo in the morning paper.

  He hadn’t said anything, but it was right after that he started in on the infernal model-building.

  She plucked a towel off the brushed-nickel rack and started on her hair. Ray had designed this house, right down to the metal plate behind the toilet paper roll that you could tilt out to hide things behind. How they had laughed about that, holding hands and poring over the plans. “My mother always had hiding places in the houses we lived in, so I guess I always expected every house to have one. I’ll buy you diamonds to hide in there,” he had said, taking her calloused hands in his. “You’d like a big fat diamond, wouldn’t you?” He twirled her hair between his fingers as they kissed.

  She told him, Make it a diamond-headed saw. That, she could use. Still madly in love, she let him have his way with her anytime he wanted, along with letting him have his way with the design of the house he called their dream.

  Only later did she realize what that cost her. She felt uncomfortable, out of place in her own home, preferring curvy organic forms like the furniture she designed and built in her business.

  So she didn’t care about diamonds, but she always thought they would have a child, half of each of them. She didn’t understand people not having kids. In her view, if a plan existed for human beings, it was to reproduce and raise a flock of terrific new human beings. She didn’t intend to drop the subject.

  The next time she broached the topic of getting pregnant, she picked a moment she thought propitious, her on top, him enjoying her body the way he always did. They had eaten a lovely meal, cooked by her. She had changed from her usual working togs after work to look pretty for him, and she could see by the appreciation in his eyes, he liked the silvery sandals and short black dress, and had, even more, enjoyed removing them.

  They lay together in candlelight and she, warmed by the moment and the caresses she could still feel on her naked skin, said, “I love you. Now, let’s do it again. Make me pregnant, Ray.”

  He pushed her off and pulled on his jeans. “It’s not a good time for me.”

  But time was starting to work against her. A thirty-five-year-old woman had to consider such things. She tried to raise the issue several more times, but each time agitated him more until finally he refused to discuss it.

  In her contemporary-as-hell bathroom, sticking dangling purple earrings into the holes in her ears, Leigh allowed herself a few moments to mourn. She might never have a child after all, not with Ray anyway, and this thought reminded her of other people she had lost through death or distance.

  Tom and his sister, Kat Tinsley.

  Brushing a little powder over her shiny nose, she wished she hadn’t run from Kat, who had been her closest friend once. They hadn’t seen each other in years. Every time she went to Tom’s grave, she expected to run into her. In the six years since he died, she never had.

  Ray used to like the smell of gardenias, like the ones she had carried in her wedding bouquet, so she pulled out some cologne he had given her in more sensitive times and squirted herself liberally. Who knew whether she might gain a subtle, unconscious advantage? As she selected a cool cotton blouse and knotted it above her navel because she still could get away with that, just barely, because her work was often physical and kept her in good shape,
she could not stop a fleeting memory of his arms around her, how good they used to feel, how safe.

  She didn’t feel safe anymore. Ray, her Ray, had gone away, to be replaced by a man she didn’t know and could no longer predict, subject to fits of temperament, fits of temper, in fact. When she arrived late to a restaurant date the previous week, he had already gone home. He bolted the front door from the inside. He made her wait outside the exact amount of time she had been late, as he explained later, as if somehow that made his reaction entirely sane.

  She yanked on her favorite purple T-shirt and fresh shorts, gave her hair a shake, and walked barefoot into the stainless-steel kitchen, punching at cabinets that had no handles because they might ruin the “line.” Frustrated even more than usual, she finally opened the wine cooler with a good hard kick. She pulled out a bottle of something red, uncorked it, and poured two glasses, setting them on the table in front of the couch, then called to him, “I’m coming down. You need anything from up here?”

  “No.”

  She felt afraid but would tell him, whatever it cost her tonight. Whatever their problems, he deserved an honest wife. How could they ever love each other again without that much?

  She used to love sneaking up behind him, enveloping him in her arms, feeling how his heart and breathing steadied as he relaxed against her body. Now, she didn’t dare surprise him because, well, who knew? Considering that strange tantrum last week, he might even strike out at her.

  Clutching the railing, she prepared herself. Rip everything apart. Only then could they mend.

  Ray watched his wife’s muscular, long legs slipping down the stairs to his studio, telling himself, don’t say anything. Don’t let her get to you.

  But it wasn’t easy. The epic nature of his feelings frightened him, like his first sight of Godzilla had when he was a child. Big, mean, and evil. That described him lately, and he didn’t like that about himself, but didn’t know how to change it, either.

  At nine o’clock on a summer night, the dark already frank outside, Ray’s bright white basement workshop remained timeless and chilly. Although tonight, caught up in a bigger emotion, he felt immune to its pleasures, usually he liked it that way, bland. He concentrated best in a non-distracting environment. Leaning forward in his Herman Miller chair, he pasted a small stick of plywood meant for model airplanes onto the model house he was building out of balsa and Styrofoam, remembering the way the garage on Bright Street had always listed slightly to the side.

  “Hi.” Leigh lingered at the bottom of the stairs. Specs dangled around her neck and long, light hair drifted down over her shoulders. Silky nylon shorts cut into her pale skin. She chewed her lip.

  “Hi.” Give her that much. Reveal nothing because he dreaded another confrontation with her. They got nowhere, except farther down the downward spiral. He had an awful feeling they were close to saying something irrevocable, and it scared him so much he felt afraid to talk at all.

  Looking down at his architectural model, she walked over to the table. She placed a hand on his shoulder. Her touch felt forced. His heart beat harder.

  “Which one is that?”

  “From when I was ten. There were three that year.”

  She tilted her head. “The foundation seems to be slanting.”

  “Just like the real thing.” Six other models sat lined up on the shelf above the massive wooden table. He continued to work, lining up a few dozen tiny shakes for the garage roof. He squirted some glue onto one, then tried to place it, but his hand fumbled, and the shake went on crooked. He took a deep breath, then adjusted it.

  He wanted her to go away right now, give him an opportunity to cool down and put his vile feelings where they belonged, somewhere besides in this room with them. “Is it still hot outside?”

  “Down to ninety-two,” she said. “I turned the a/c down a little.”

  “Good.”

  Leigh sat down on the leather daybed, a fair copy of a van der Rohe original.

  She was not going away.

  Ray finished pasting a few more shakes. Leigh watched, although she appeared preoccupied. “You missed dinner.” He tried for a normal tone. He did not want her to have the slightest clue about how very, very upset he had been about the images that arose in his mind during her absence. See, this was the thing about relationships. His mother had warned him that the heart was the nastiest place in the body, not the genitals. She had encouraged him to have loads of girlfriends but to keep his heart private, but then Leigh had come along and plucked it right out of him as easily as if she were picking a wildflower along a road.

  How could she?

  “I thought you said you would cook tonight,” he went on. How surprising, to continue operating as if they had something to salvage.

  Did they? The thought confused him, and for a moment, he stopped working and tried to think.

  She looked startled. “I did? Oh. I guess I did. Sorry. I forgot. I really am sorry, Ray, but I had something else to do, and so I just-” She tried to squeeze his arm, but he moved away. Instead, she picked up a piece of balsa he had formed into an intricate porch trim, then put it down when she saw the look he was giving her. “I stopped by the drugstore to get a few things.”

  “That took, generously, one hour,” Ray said. He tinkered with a small step leading up to a porch. He couldn’t seem to get the porch right. Memory failed him sometimes. How many people could remember such detail, going back twenty-five years or more? He did pretty well, considering how the mind worked, how emotions colored and distorted memory.

  He tried again, but couldn’t get the stair to sit right. He had trimmed it too tight. He pushed through it with his thumb, breaking the lightweight wood in half. “What else did you do?”

  A wrinkle between her brows registered something in his voice. “Errands,” she said. She eyed the now ruined porch step.

  “Must have been a lot of them. Errands.”

  “I drove around, okay? I wasn’t ready to come home.”

  “It’s the anniversary of Tom Tinsley’s death, isn’t it? You went to the cemetery. You always do, Leigh. I’ve known it since we got married.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Brought him flowers. Had a chat with a dead man. I never could understand that routine. See, it seems to me you should celebrate someone’s life, not their day of death.”

  “It wasn’t a celebration, Ray.”

  “No. I guess not. But I get tired of eating alone, Leigh, and it seems I eat alone an awful damn lot these days.”

  “Look, I didn’t come down here to fight with you, okay? I poured us some wine. Why don’t you put this stuff away for now. Let’s talk, okay?”

  The glue flowed, balsa wood meticulously slid into place. He had it exactly right this time, and stepped back to admire its perfection. “Maybe later.” He suppressed the urge he felt to start in on her, but that didn’t stop the heat rising inside him or the emotions preparing to launch like fireballs. He studied the architectural model of the house, the tiny floor plan fully visible as though a hurricane had blown the roof off. He admired its neatness, although possibly the front window should be larger?

  “Damn it!” She slapped at his hand, knocking a small piece of wood out of it. “What is wrong with you? What is all this crap? Your own sick celebration? I mean, you lived in a bunch of houses when you were a kid. Millions of kids do, but they move on, not pissing life away on a screwy hobby, trying to resurrect a screwy past!”

  He picked up the piece that had fallen and laid it carefully on his table next to a pile of scraps. “I’ve explained it to you,” he said, with what he thought was amazing restraint. “I developed my love for architecture living in these funny little boxes. It’s a hobby, like boatbuilding or hunting. It makes me feel good.”

  “You used to say every house you lived in had an aura. I thought about that. I thought, what, was this one warm? Did this one protect him? Did this one scare him? I forgave that thing that took you so far away from
me. But you’ve become obsessed. You’re at it all the time. You won’t even go to the movies with me anymore.” She stopped and he saw the effort she expended calming herself. “Look, Ray. I just can’t live so disconnected from you or from how we used to be. We were so close. We told each other everything!”

  “Not anymore, we don’t.”

  “I’m trying, okay? I’ve got things to say. Things I need to tell you.”

  “Okay.” He slammed his fist down on the table, keeping his voice steady but unable to unclench his hands. “You want to talk? We’ll talk.” Fear came up in her face, and while he hated himself, he also could not stop himself now. She wanted an adult. She had one, had his full fucking attention now.

  “Not here. Come upstairs. Please.”

  “First why don’t you tell me about where you go when you don’t go to the store or to work or to the cemetery. How about let’s start with that?”

  A silence as palpable as the haze hanging over the canyon outside sucked the oxygen from the air. Ray let his hand dig down into his pocket.

  Her voice sounded small. “I get lonely.”

  He pulled out a key and threw it on the table. It spun, then landed in front of the miniature garage.

  “I was going to tell you, Ray.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “Tonight.”

  “You left it on the TV.” The cheesy motel on Pacific Coast Highway still used old-fashioned keys, which had surprised him. He thought metal keys were becoming as obsolete as dial phones.

  “But you didn’t say anything.” She put her face in her hands.

  “Neither did you.” Pain crept through his heart like a slow-motion bullet.

  “I want to explain-”

  “You gave yourself away so cheap,” Ray said, pacing around the table. “It’s totally mechanical to him, attracting other people. He’s not even that good-looking; he’s just a smooth salesman. We used to laugh about him, Leigh! Remember? Now you-How could you?”