Excerpt of Ricochet by Nancy Baker Jacobs

AS SHE PULLED HER Honda into the driveway and shut off the motor, Annabel noticed the man in the driver's seat of the dark green Toyota parked across the street. Another lost tourist trying to decipher a map, she figured. Carmel was overrun with vacationers this time of year — folks from Michigan or South Carolina or Idaho who would start searching for Clint East-wood's Mission Ranch or a shortcut to Monterey's Cannery Row, only to become hopelessly lost on the town's winding streets. Many had no qualms at all about knocking on a local's door to ask for directions, or even to use the bathroom. But if she hurried inside, maybe this one would bother one of her neighbors instead of her.

She reached across the seat to grab her shoulder bag, pushed open her door, and swung her long legs onto asphalt raised and cracked by the roots of adjacent cypress trees. Damn. The man was getting out of his car and heading in her direction. She was in no mood, today of all days, to play tour director for some confused tourist. After two hours in the lawyer's office, all she wanted was to lie back in a hot bath and pretend she was somewhere else. Maybe even, for a few minutes, pretend she was somebody else.

"Excuse me, ma'am."

The man caught up with her before she could remove the door key and escape into her bougainvillea-covered cottage. He wore dark rumpled pants with a white shirt and maroon-striped tie and held a clipboard. Maybe not a tourist after all, she decided; possibly a salesman, or somebody proselytizing for some oddball religion, although the Bible-pushers generally traveled in pairs.

"I'm looking for Dylan Nettleton," he said.

Startled, Annabel jerked the key out of the lock and stared openly at her portly visitor. She hadn't expected that — nobody had ever come looking for her husband before, not once in their entire eighteen months of marriage. Not here in Carmel, or in any of the other four places they'd lived. "I'm Mrs. Nettleton," she said. But maybe not for long. "My husband's not home right now."

"When do you expect him back?"

"Hard to say. He's out of town, probably for another day or two, but I couldn't swear." Dylan didn't share that sort of thing with her; that was part of the problem.

The stranger's gaze dipped toward the clipboard. "The man I'm looking for is Dylan Baez Nettleton," he said, "born September twelve, nineteen sixty-eight in San Francisco."

The sharp edges of the key dug into Annabel's fingertips as her grip on it tightened. "Why? Who are you?" Maybe this middle-aged man was a cop. Or a DEA agent. Her husband could be a drug runner, without her even knowing it; that would explain his strange absences and his secretiveness, maybe even his insistence that they move to a new town every few months.

"I'm Jeff Link, investigator specializing in locating missing persons. May I come in for a few minutes and explain? Might be worth something to your husband." He handed her his business card. It listed his name and a Chicago address and phone number. "Discreet Investigations" was printed in blood-red type across the top, with "Locator of Missing Heirs" in black just below.

Maybe Dylan wasn't about to be arrested. Relieved and curious, Annabel stuffed the card into the pocket of the one good suit she'd bought since losing her pregnancy weight and reassured herself that Louise wouldn't mind keeping the baby next door for a little while longer. He would be napping by now, anyway. She unlocked the front door and led the way into the living room.

"You can have a seat over there," Annabel told the investigator, indicating the green wicker sofa angled toward the window to catch a glimpse of the Pacific through a screen of pines. The morning fog had burned off and the water was now a brilliant, white-capped blue. She supposed she should offer Jeffrey Link a cup of coffee or at least a glass of water, but that would only keep him here longer, and she didn't want to impose much more on her neighbor's willingness to babysit.

"Nice place you've got here."

"Thanks." Lucky she'd taken time to tidy up the house before leaving for her meeting, Annabel thought, and that she'd put Nicky's toys into his bedroom toy chest. But her effort had also stripped the place of any personal touches, except for the salmon-colored lilies on the dining room buffet, bought at Tuesday's Farmer's Market, and her small gallery of family photos — not one picture from Dylan's side — on the lamp table. Like all the places where she and Dylan had lived together, this cottage was a vacation rental property, fully furnished by the leasing company, right down to dishes and linens.

She hung her purse on a hook by the front door and smoothed the wrinkles from her teal raw silk skirt. Now that she'd risked inviting a strange man into her home, she couldn't help wishing the skirt were a little longer, that it didn't reveal quite so much leg. She lowered herself as modestly as possible into an old oak rocking chair opposite her guest. "Now, what's this about?" she asked. "Ever hear of Oliver Nettleton, Nettleton Metalworks?" he asked, settling back against the sofa's green plaid upholstered cushions.

"No. Should I have?"

Jeff Link shrugged his shoulders. "If your husband's the right Dylan Nettleton —"

"You got his birthday right. He was born September twelfth, sixty-eight."

"In San Francisco?"

"Right."

"And his middle name's Baez?"

Annabel nodded.

"Well, then, not likely there'd be two Dylan Baez Nettle- tons born on the same day in the same city, right? Oliver Nettleton's your husband's grandfather."

Annabel was confused. "But all my husband's relatives are dead, so if you're looking for this Oliver guy, I'm afraid we can't —"

Link shook his balding head. "No, no, you don't understand. It's not Oliver who's missing, it's Dylan. Missing from Oliver's point of view, anyway. I was hired to find Dylan. Chances are your husband doesn't know much about his grandfather — they've never met."

Annabel's green eyes narrowed. "I don't under — ?"

"Seems there was some bad blood between your husband's mother, Eleanor Nettleton, and her father." The private eye flipped a page on his clipboard and consulted his notes. "Eleanor left home in sixty-seven, when she was only seventeen. Family says she ran off with some hippie friends. Gave birth to a son a year later — that'd be Dylan. Wrote home just once after the baby was born, to tell her father he had a grandchild and that she'd named him Dylan Baez — after her two favorite protest singers. But Oliver was still mad at her. Probably more steamed than ever, "cause Eleanor didn't bother to marry the baby's father, didn't even identify the guy on the kid's birth certificate. Midwesterners didn't go for that sort of thing, at least not back in the sixties. So Oliver ignored his daughter's letter."

Annabel bristled. "What about Eleanor's mother? Didn't she care about her daughter and grandson, either?" She couldn't imagine herself acting so unforgiving toward her own daughter, assuming she ever had one. But, of course, times had changed when it came to tolerating a variety of sexual behaviors.

"The mother was dead," Link explained. "Died of cancer when Eleanor was in grade school. There were no other kids, so it was just the girl and her father left. Don't know if Oliver ever tried to contact Eleanor after she wrote him that one time, but he got a note five or six years later from a pal of hers. Told him his daughter had died from drugs and her friends had scattered her ashes at sea. Letter was postmarked San Francisco, but there was no return address."

San Francisco — the same place Eleanor's child, Dylan Baez, was born. Annabel wondered whether the young mother had stayed in San Francisco the entire time, maybe hanging out with the hippies in the Haight. The old clock on the fireplace mantle struck two with an annoyingly tinny sound. "So why now?" she asked, feeling increasingly irritated by the story she was hearing. "Why didn't Oliver Nettleton try to find Eleanor while it might have done the two of them some good? Or at least look for Dylan right after his mother died, instead of letting the poor kid end up in all those horrible foster homes?" Didn't the man realize how precious blood kin were, how you had to cling to them with everything you had and, even then, they could just slip away from you? Annabel herself had almost died twice — she had the scars to prove it — doing whatever she could to keep her own family going. Yet this self- righteous old man hadn't even bothered to put pen to paper to save his. Hell, she thought, it was probably as much old man Nettleton's fault as anybody's that Dylan was so screwed up, letting him spend his childhood being shuffled from one temporary home to the next. Was it any wonder that now her husband couldn't bear to stay in one place for more than a few months? Or that he never really trusted anyone, not even his own wife?

Link's voice took on a defensive edge. "Maybe Oliver did try to find his daughter and grandson, I don't know. All I know is that now he's dying — in the final stages of Parkinson's disease and failing fast. He's pretty much paralyzed, so he hasn't got much longer. Obviously, Mr. Nettleton had a change of heart and decided he wanted to leave his estate to his grandson, if he could be found. Seems he's trying to make amends for the past."

Annabel wanted to ask how much those amends were worth in dollars, but she held back. It probably wasn't any of her business. Instead, she warned, "I'm not sure how my husband's going to feel about being asked to run off to Chicago or wherever to see a dying old man who didn't give a damn about him until now." Certainly she was in no hurry to bundle up Nicky and haul him off to see this newly discovered great-grandfather, even if he did plan to leave Dylan a few dollars.

"You don't understand," Link said, a smirk crawling onto his lips. "Oliver Nettleton isn't expecting visitors. Or love, or dedication, or anything like that. This is just about his estate. His money."

Annabel shifted in her seat. "What do you mean?" Link's face broke into a broad grin. "Oliver Nettleton is a very rich man. Sold Nettleton Metalworks maybe ten years ago, and invested the money in the stock market. His holdings have been up and down some since then, but mostly up. On a good day, his estate is worth somewhere in the area of forty million after taxes."

Annabel felt like she'd been punched in the chest. "Forty million dollars?"

Link nodded, grinning broadly now. "And every cent goes to Oliver's grandson — Dylan."

Annabel sagged back against the rocker. Forty million dollars! Things like this just didn't happen to people like her, or to anyone she'd ever known. Not even most lottery winners ended up with that kind of money, did they? Her mind whirled as she tried to process what this unexpected windfall might mean. Not that money had ever been a really big a problem for her and Dylan...or had it? She knew virtually nothing about their finances. Since their wedding day, her husband had deposited cash into her checking account each week, money for groceries, clothing, Nicky's care, whatever she needed to cover their living expenses. There'd always been plenty available and she was a thrifty person, so she'd never had to ask for more. She hadn't had to return to the workplace after they'd married, either. In fact, Dylan had insisted she not even look for a job.

How this inheritance would change things between them, if it would change things, would require some analysis. The fear that immediately pierced Annabel's heart was that now Dylan would have an endless supply of money to fight her for custody of Nicky. Providing she went ahead with her plan to divorce him, of course. Obviously, she would have to talk to the attorney again before she actually confronted Dylan with her plan. She only hoped that Dylan's good luck wouldn't turn into her bad luck.

"How can Dylan reach you when he gets back?" Annabel asked, turning her attention back to her visitor. "I'm at the Pine Lodge here in town for another day or two. After that, he can get me at my Chicago number."

"And if he wants to visit his grandfather before he dies?" For that kind of money, who knew what Dylan might feel obligated to do? If he wanted to, he could go directly from Salt Lake City to Chicago without returning to Carmel in between — providing he bothered to call her before showing up at home.

Jeff Link seemed to choose his words carefully. "If your husband thinks it's important for him to see his grandfather, I'm sure no one would object. But I'm afraid Mr. Nettleton no longer recognizes people, and he can't talk. The disease has affected both his memory and his speech, so it really won't make any difference to him whether your husband makes the trip or not."

"I don't get it. I thought you said Oliver Nettleton hired you to find Dylan."

"No, no. Mr. Nettleton changed his will to benefit Dylan at least a year ago, but he didn't do anything about finding him. I was hired just last month by his late wife's nephew, Warner Schuman. Mr. Schuman runs the household and handles the dying man's business affairs, now that Mr. Nettleton can't do it himself. Mr. Schuman wants the lawyers to be able to find Dylan quickly when the inevitable happens."

"I see." Annabel stood up. "I'll have Dylan contact you then, as soon as I hear from him." She ushered Jeff Link out, closing the door tightly after him, then pressed her shaking hands and her forehead against the door's smooth, cool wood for a long moment, considering the new form of upheaval that suddenly promised to intrude upon her life.