Chapter 14

This would be so much easier, mused Laura, if she were a cop. She was seated at the dining room table in their apartment, working through some reports which Mildred had put together, occasionally taking notes on a yellow legal pad. For the last two days, she and Remington had been trying to trace the movements of Mr and Mrs Harold Shand on the night that Charles Edevane had been killed. Unfortunately, unlike the police, they couldn't simply go to Mrs Shand and ask her about her whereabouts at the time of the murder; and so, other approaches were called for.

After coming home from work, Laura had put away her work clothes, then had bathed, shaved her legs and under her arms, and had changed into a simple white shirt, a pair of close fitting, gray Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and a pair of tan cowboy boots which she rarely wore, but had acquired when she and Remington had chased after a cache of gold doubloons in the San Jacinto Mountains. The pair of boots was one of the few possessions that had survived the destruction of her house in 1983. Laura had left her makeup on, and her hair was as she had worn it at work – hanging loose around her shoulders, blow dried straight back from her face. Laura almost always blow dried her hair back these days, to hide the evidence of the rather regrettable experiment with bangs she had undertaken on her honeymoon – she could only explain it as being the result of some sublimated anger at Remington over the wedding on the tuna boat.

Laura took a sip from the cup of tea by her side, and looked again at the pile of paperwork before her. Their idea was to use what information they could get about Mr and Mrs Shand to pin down their whereabouts, through a process of reverse elimination.

Mr and Mrs Shand's phone records had shown no phone calls in the early hours of 20th June, when the murder had occurred; this was not surprising, since most normal people would be asleep at such a time. The log from the private security company that patrolled the gated community in Malibu where the Shands lived had reported no cars coming or going from the Shand residence that night. This was not necessarily an alibi, as the Shands may have left their home hours prior to the murder and lain low somewhere. Laura picked up the credit card report and began to read it; something caught her eye – a charge apparently made by one of the Shands in San Francisco at around 2.00 a.m. on the night of the murder – a murder which took place in Los Angeles…

Remington stepped out of the shower and put on one of his bathrobes. He felt refreshed after another day of high crime and low life at the agency – if only it had been so! Instead, today had been one of those slightly tedious days full of legwork! They were trying to either establish or break the alibi of the Shands as the guiding lights behind the Rossi company's sabotage, and Laura had sent him to speak to the private security company of the gated community where the Shands lived. The information was not privileged, but most security companies were very circumspect about releasing information about their clients – it had taken all of 'the' Remington Steele's persuasiveness to get the chief executive of the company to release the patrol logs for that night. Laura was inspecting the logs at this very moment, he knew.

After dinner, Remington had left her to do her paperwork while he went to have a shower. It was one of the emerging patterns of their relationship, now that they were living together, that Laura usually couldn't wait to wash away the grime of the working day when she got home, whereas Steele normally didn't bother to change out of his business clothes until much later in the evening.

He looked at himself in the large bathroom mirror as he plugged in his hairdryer and ran some mousse through his hair with a brush. He looked at the brush – there were a couple of hairs in the bristles, nothing too serious. Of course, for men, losing a few strands was an inevitable part of the human condition as you got older. Remington looked at his hair in the mirror again: he wore it a tad shorter these days, since the honeymoon, in a slightly more modern style, but it was still thick and lustrous – especially now that it was wet. And though he might lose one or two hairs, he didn't think he was in danger of going bald. He was thankful for his good head of hair; no doubt it was genetic. If Remington was lucky, there was no baldness gene in his family line; Daniel Chalmers had had a full head of hair even well into his sixties – and Remington hoped he had inherited that trait from his father.

His father…Steele hadn't thought of Daniel as his father since he had learned the truth in Ireland. Suddenly, inexplicably, Remington dropped the brush he was holding. His vision blurred – he wondered if he was fainting. But no – rather, he couldn't see much because his eyes were filled with tears: tears he hadn't shed before now.

Daniel! That mentor, that friend, that teacher, that father figure, that…father. Remington cried now, unable to hold back the tears as his grief gripped him. Daniel! That liar, that conniver – who had hidden the truth about their relationship for twenty years from Remington. What a bastard! Some father figure he had been!

Steele gripped the edge of the bathroom counter hard, to prevent himself from falling to the floor. He bowed his head down and wept, all thoughts of where he was or what he had been doing driven from his mind. The truth was that he had no coherent thoughts at all – just an inchoate grief, not even anything as specific as a mental image of Daniel – merely the vague remembrance of him.

Laura wandered into their bedroom, reading the credit card report which she had plucked out of the file. She wanted to show it to Remington, because it seemed to knock back the case against the Shands yet again and provide them with an alibi. She looked up – he was not in the bedroom. But she could hear an odd sound – sniffling – coming from the bathroom. Laura looked around the corner: Remington was leaning over the counter, his arms rigidly holding him up, as sobs wracked his body. Laura dropped the piece of paper she was holding, stunned by what she saw.

"Remington?" she queried, slowly approaching him. "What…what's wrong?" Steele didn't answer, but more tears fell and he sniffed loudly, and another sob broke forth. Laura turned him towards her, and as his arms gave way, he fell forward and most of his weight fell onto her. "What's wrong, Remington? What happened?" she asked, bewildered to see him like this. Laura held him tight, his head slumped on her shoulder and her arms around his back. Remington was so much taller than her, so much heavier, that she wasn't sure she could hold his weight, but she stood strong, while he continued to sob, great wracking heaves shaking his body every few seconds.

"Please, Remington – tell me what's wrong?" Laura pleaded. She was scared now – she had only ever seen him cry once in four years of knowing him – when he had thought she herself was dead.

"I'm…sorr-sorry, Laura," he answered, barely coherent.

"Look, come here…please, come with me," she said, as she adjusted her position and tried to lead him to the bedroom. Remington seemed to have found his legs now, and walked, with Laura's arm around his waist for support, until he flopped down onto the bed. He closed his eyes, put his hands in front of his face and continued to cry.

Laura sat by him, resting his head on her lap, and let him cry himself out. She ran her hands through his still wet hair, trying to soothe him. But she didn't try to speak to him – apart from once whispering 'It's okay, my love' in his ear, she simply contented herself with holding him close. Laura wondered what could have caused such a paroxysm?

When Remington seemed to have cried himself to a standstill, Laura smoothed the wet tear tracks from his face with her hand. Steele opened his eyes and looked at her blankly; Laura kissed his face and ran her hands through his hair again. "What happened, Remington?" she asked, as gently as she could.

"Er, I'm sorry, Laura."

"Shh – don't apologize. You've nothing to apologize for. Can you talk about it?"

"I don't know…I had just come out of the shower…I was thinking about Daniel…and suddenly I just…started crying, I suppose. I can't explain it. I'm sorry."

"No, no, no…I told you, you have nothing to apologize for," Laura said, as she rubbed away more of his tears and kissed his forehead. "Daniel: I would guess you were crying for Daniel, wouldn't you say?"

"Maybe…I'm not sure, Laura. He died weeks ago. I mean – I miss him, of course…but in the bathroom?"

Laura, close to tears herself, laughed. She kissed him again, on the forehead and face and lips. She wanted to make it better for him – to take away Remington's pain, if she could. She recalled the day after her house had been blown up – Remington had come to her in the night, to offer comfort and a shoulder to cry on as Laura had been the one laid low by grief. It was one of the moments when she had begun to fall in love with him.

"He was your father…and you had made a particularly heavy burden for yourself in searching for your father – for years. And then he was taken away from you – just as you found each other. You've never cried since he died, you know that? It was all probably inside you, buried away. We all need to grieve sometimes, Remington. It's good it came out."

Remington was embarrassed, suddenly. "I'm sorry, Laura. I don't know what you must think of me, er…blubbing like a baby." He made to get up, but Laura pinned him down and wouldn't let him leave.

"Don't go. And don't bottle it up, Remington. It's better to talk about it."

Remington stared up at Laura for a second, her eyes red rimmed with unshed tears of compassion. His head was still resting in her lap and she was still stroking his face lovingly. He had never known how to relate to people and expose his vulnerabilities – he had never been in a normal relationship that had given him the tools to expose his fears rather than covering them up. But he nodded at Laura. "I'm okay now, really, Laura. Thank you." He pulled himself upright, and looked at her.

She leaned in and hugged him again. "Alright, so you think you're all cried out and feeling better? But let's go and sit on the couch, I'll pour us a couple of brandies, and we'll talk about it anyway. It's good to let your feelings out sometimes."

"You're right, Laura – I'm cried out now. I'm okay. But we'll drink to Daniel's memory," Remington said with a wan smile.

"You were a good son, Remington."