The Sleeping Doll

thousands of golfers would have paid dearly. She recalled that, though neither she nor her husband played, they’d planned on taking lessons at some point.
    “Maybe when we retire,” he’d said.
    “Retire. What’s that mean again?”
    She now parked and walked into the Point Lobos Inn office, then took care of the paperwork.
    “We already had some calls,” the clerk said. “Reporters wanting to get pictures of the cabin. And somebody’s planning to give tours of where Pell got shot. That’s sick.”
    Yep, it was. Morton Nagle would not have approved; perhaps the tactless entrepreneur would appear as a footnote in The Sleeping Doll .
    As Dance was walking back to the car, she was aware of a woman nearby, looking out into the mists toward the ocean, her jacket fluttering in the breeze. As Dance continued on, the woman turned away from the view and fell into a pace that matched the agent’s, not far behind.
    She also noticed that a blue car was parked nearby. It was familiar. Was this the driver who’d been behind her? Then she noticed that it was a Ford Focus, and recalled that the vehicle stolen at Moss Landing had never been recovered. It too was blue. Were there any other loose ends that—
    At that moment the woman walked up to her quickly and called, a harsh voice over the wind, “Are you Kathryn Dance?”
    Surprised, the agent stopped and turned. “That’s right. Do I know you?”
    The woman continued until she was a few feet away.
    She took off her sunglasses, revealing a familiar face, though Dance couldn’t place it.
    “We’ve never met. But we kind of know each other. I’m Daniel Pell’s girlfriend.”
    “You’re—” Dance gasped.
    “Jennie Marston.”
    Dance’s hand dropped to her pistol.
    But before she touched the weapon’s grip, Jennie said, “I want to turn myself in.” She held her wrists out, apparently for the handcuffs. A considerate gesture Dance had never seen in all her years as a law-enforcement agent.
    •    •    •
    “I was supposed to kill you.”
    This news didn’t alarm her as much as it might, considering that Daniel Pell was dead, Jennie’s hands were cuffed and Dance had found no weapons on her or in the car.
    “He gave me a gun, but it’s back at the motel. Really, I’d never hurt you.”
    She didn’t seem capable of it, true.
    “He said no policeman had ever gotten into his mind like you had. He was afraid of you.”
    Threats have to be eliminated . . . .
    “So he faked your death?”
    “He cut me.” Jennie showed her a bandage on the back of her head. “Some skin and hair and blood. Your head bleeds a lot .” She sighed. “Then he gave me your address and your parents’. I was supposed to kill you. He knew you’d never let him get away.”
    “You agreed?”
    “I didn’t really say anything one way or the other.” She shook her head. “He was so hard to say no to. . . . He just assumed I would. Because I’d always done what he wanted. He wanted me to kill you and then come live with him and Rebecca in the woods somewhere. We’d start a new Family.”
    “You knew about Rebecca?”
    “He told me.” In a wisp of a voice: “Did she write the emails to me? Pretending to be him?”
    “Yes.”
    Her lips pressed together tightly. “They didn’t sound like the way he talked. I thought somebody else wrote them. But I didn’t want to ask. Sometimes you just don’t want to know the truth.”
    Amen, thought Kathryn Dance. “How did you get here? Did you follow me?”
    “That’s right. I wanted to talk to you in person. I thought if I just turned myself in, they’d take me right to jail. But I had to ask: Were you there when he was shot? Did he say anything?”
    “No, I’m sorry.”
    “Oh. I was just wondering.” Her lips tightened, a kinesic clue to remorse. Then a glance at Dance. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
    “I’ve had worse scares lately,” Dance told her. “Why didn’t you run, though? Maybe in a few weeks, when your body didn’t wash up on shore, we’d’ve wondered. But you could’ve gotten to Mexico or Canada by the time we started searching.”
    “I guess I just got out from underneath his spell. I thought things’d be different with Daniel. I got to know him first—you know, not just the physical stuff—and we developed this real connection. Or I thought it was. But then I figured that was all a lie. Rebecca probably told him everything about me so he could hook me in, you know. Just