“Of course he didn’t,” I said, perhaps more defensively than I ought to have. But I was peeved. Aside from the obvious sexism of the whole last-male-in-the-line thing, I took issue with the guy’s assumption that Jesse might have been off procreating somewhere when, in fact, he had been foully murdered. “He was killed right in my own house!”

Clive Clemmings looked at me with raised eyebrows. It was only then that I realized what I had said.

“Hector de Silva,” Dr. Clive said, sounding a lot like Sister Ernestine when we grew restless during the begats in Religion class, “disappeared shortly before his wedding to his cousin Maria and was never heard from again.”

I couldn’t very well sit there and go, Yeah, but his ghost lives in my bedroom, and he told me…

Instead, I said, “I thought the, um, perception was that Maria had her boyfriend, that Diego dude, kill Hector so she didn’t have to marry him.”

Clive Clemmings looked annoyed. “That is only a theory put forward by my grandfather, Colonel Harold Clemmings, who wrote—”

“My Monterey,” I finished for him. “Yeah, that’s what I meant. That guy’s your grandfather?”

“Yes,” Dr. Clive said, but he didn’t look too happy about it. “He passed away a good many years ago. And I can’t say that I agree with his theory, Miss, er, Ackerman.” I had donated Maria’s letters in my stepfather’s name, so Dr. Clive, sexist thing that he was, assumed that that was my name, too. “Nor can I say that his book sold at all well. My grandfather was extremely interested in the history of his community, but he was not an educated man, like me. He did not possess even a B.A., let alone a Ph.D. It has always been my belief—not to mention that of most local historians, with the sole exception of my grandfather—that young Mr. de Silva developed what is commonly referred to as ‘cold feet’”—Dr. Clive made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers—“a few days before the wedding and, unable to face his family’s embarrassment over his jilting the young woman in such a manner, went off in search of a claim of his own, perhaps near San Francisco….”

It’s amazing, but for a moment I actually envisioned sinking those tweezy things Clive Clemmings had made me use to turn the pages of Jesse’s letters straight into his eyes. If I could have got them past the lenses of those goobery glasses, that is.

Instead, I pulled myself together and said, with all the dignity I could muster while sitting there in a pair of khaki shorts with pleats down the front, “And do you really believe, in your heart of hearts, Clive, that the person who wrote these letters would do something like that? Go away without a word to his family? To his little sisters, whom he clearly loved, and about whom he wrote so affectionately? Do you really think that the reason these letters turned up in my backyard is because he buried them there? Or do you find it beyond the realm of possibility that the reason they turned up there is because he’s buried there somewhere, and if my stepfather digs deep enough, he just might find him?”

My voice had risen shrilly. I supposed I was getting a little hysterical over the whole thing. So sue me.

“Will that make you see that your grandfather was a hundred percent right?” I shrieked. “When my stepfather finds Hector de Silva’s rotting corpse?”

Clive Clemmings looked more astonished than ever before. “My dear Miss Ackerman!” he cried.

I think he said this because he’d realized, at the exact same moment as I had, that I was crying.

Which was actually pretty strange, because I am not a crier. I mean, yeah, sure, I cry when I bang my head on one of the kitchen cabinet doors or see one of those drippy Kodak commercials or whatever. But I don’t, you know, go around weeping at the drop of a hat.

But there I was, sitting in the office of Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., bawling my eyes out. Good going, Suze. Real professional. Way to show Jack how to mediate.

“Well,” I said in a shaky voice as I stripped off my latex gloves and stood up, “allow me to assure you, Clive, that you are very, very wrong. Jesse—I mean Hector—would never do something like that. That might be what she wants you to believe”—I nodded toward the painting above our heads, the sight of which I was now beginning to hate with a sort of passion—“but it isn’t the truth. Jesse—I mean, Hector—isn’t…wasn’t like that. If he’d gotten ‘cold feet’ like you say”—I made the same stupid quotation marks in the air—“then he’d have called the whole thing off. And, yeah, his family might have been embarrassed, but they’d have forgiven him, because they clearly loved him as much as he loved them, and—”

But then I couldn’t talk anymore, because I was crying so hard. It was maddening. I couldn’t believe it. Crying. Crying in front of this clown.

So instead I turned around and stormed out of the room.

Not very dignified, I guess, considering that the last thing Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D., saw of me was my butt, which must have looked enormous in those stupid shorts.

But I got the point across.

I think.

Of course, in the end, it turned out not to matter. But at the time, I had no way of knowing that.

And neither, unfortunately, did poor Dr. Clive Clemmings, Ph.D.

chapter

five

God, I hate crying. It’s so humiliating. And I swear I hardly ever do it.

I guess, though, that the stress of being assaulted in the dead of night by the knife-wielding ex-girlfriend of the guy I love, finally got to me. I pretty much didn’t stop crying until Jack, in desperation, bought me a Yoo-hoo from Jimmy’s Quick Mart on our way down to the beach.

That and a Butterfinger bar soon had me feeling like myself again, and it wasn’t long before Jack and I were frolicking in the waves, making fun of the tourists, and placing penny bets on which surfer would be knocked off his board first. We had such a good time that it wasn’t until the sun started setting that I realized I had to get Jack back to the hotel.

Not that anybody had missed us, we discovered when we got there. As I dropped Jack off at his family’s suite, his mother popped her head in from the terrace, where she and Dr. Rick were enjoying cocktails, and said, “Oh, it’s you, is it, Jack? Hurry and change for dinner, will you? We’re meeting the Robertsons. Thank you, Susan, and see you in the morning.”