Chapter One
With a short laugh, she pulled open the door to the main housing, immediately unwrapping her sweater from around her waist and pulling it over her shoulders. It was always cold inside the building, and it was the only reason any of them kept their sweaters around in the spring. "I just want to check my messages," she said, breaking off the conversation between the other two girls as she sauntered up to the desk in the corner, smiling at the woman behind there. "Good morning, Karen. Got anything for me?"
The secretary tapped her fingernail against the counter, a habit that all the girls teased her about. "I know there's something here for you. I just have to find it." She started to rifle through the stack of letters and phone messages on her desk before looking over her shoulder. "Oh, and the headmistress wants to see you. She's in her office. I'll have your stuff ready for you when you come out."
Smiling brightly, she nodded. "Thank you." Turning away, she walked around the corner and dug into the pocket of her black sweater, taking out two silver barrettes. If there was one thing that the headmistress hated, it was to have "her girls", as she called them, come to see her with hair hanging in their faces. The teenager was just in the process of growing out the bangs that she had ever since she was a young child, and she wasn't really in the mood for a lecture.
Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door in front of her and crossed her fingers, hoping that her hair was pulled back enough. A faint voice asked her to come in, and she opened the door, stepping over the threshold with a bright smile. Immediately, she straightened her posture and cleared her throat. "Miss Coolidge, you asked me to see me?"
The older woman, looking severe with her gray hair pulled tightly back in a bun, motioned for her to step inside further and close the door behind her. The teenager did so, waiting until she was motioned to take a seat. No matter how many times she switched private schools, the rules never changed, and they had been burned into her mind about a decade ago. "I received a call from your father today, Tara."
Holding back her sigh, she fought the urge to roll her eyes. Not only at the fact that she was reminded that she had to live by her middle name, but the fact that the call had probably been her father taking her out of the private school in Orlando and sending her somewhere else in the country to finish off this year and her senior year after that. It was a shock that she had spent over a year at the school she was at now, she thought to herself. "About what, Miss Coolidge?"
"Your father has requested that you pack up your things immediately and fly back to Nevada. He also mentioned something about this having to do with your mother." Her eyes widened immediately. That could only mean one thing. "Your luggage will be transported to your father's place, and it should be there in two days. Just pack what you need immediately in your backpack and take that with you. The school's driver will take you to the airport, where there's a ticket being held in your name, leaving in three hours. I'm sorry for the short notice, but the call just came in."
Nodding, she took a deep breath and stood up. "Thank you, very much. Could you please call my father back and inform him that I will be on that flight?"
"Of course, Tara." The older woman stood as well and extended her hand across the desk. "It was a joy having you here. I'm sorry to see one of our best students leave."
Shaking her hand, the teenager smiled. "It was a pleasure to be here, Miss Coolidge. Your school is one of the best that I've attended. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some unexpected packing to see to."
It was already dark and very late when she stepped outside the airport, immediately fumbling in her bag for a cigarette. Only two good things were coming from her trip back to her father: the fact that she had a chance to actually see him, and the fact that she didn't have to wear any more school uniforms. The past ten years had been spent in plaid skirts, white blouses, dark sweaters, and knee high socks, with the occasional matching blazer tossed in, always complete with the school's crest, to break up the monotony of her clothing. It was a joy to get back into her faded jeans and tank tops that were usually reserved for weekend wear, or summer vacation.
In fact, she thought as she took a deep drag of her smoke, most of her spring breaks, summer vacations, and winter vacations weren't even spent with her father. Oh, she came home for Christmas every year, that was a given, but everything else was spent away from him. If she could spend more than a week, total, with her father, it came as a shock. He usually sent her money to go to Aspen with a friend and her family for a ski vacation, or the last summer, which she had spent in Hawaii with a family that she had met when she had attended a private school out there.
She knew why she wasn't with her father much. She reminded him too much of his late wife, her mother. Not a day went by, she knew, that he didn't think about how she had her mother's dark brown eyes, or her long, blonde hair, which had recently turned a honey color that resembled her father's hair...or what color it used to be. Every time he looked at her, she knew that he thought of Tara, her long-ago deceased mother.
When was the last time he had called her "princess", she wondered as she dropped her half smoked cigarette and walked up to a waiting taxi driver. Giving him the name of the building that she was to go to, she slid into the back seat and watched out the window as all the lights started to melt together. She must have been six the last time he called her that, just before he sent her away for the first time, to her first private school in Texas. Her nickname wasn't the only thing that had changed. Her father had finally moved from their small, comfortable house, to Las Vegas, a city that she had never really cared for. Anything to get him far away from the memories, and far away from what had happened. She was the only reminder of that hot afternoon in July, when her and her mother took their last trip to the shopping mall.
Rolling her eyes, she broke out of her thoughts and pulled a pack of gum out of her purse, pushing a piece in her mouth to cover the scent of tobacco. A quick spritz of her favorite body spray covered up what was on her clothes as they pulled up to the somewhat familiar building. She thanked the driver and handed him a twenty dollar bill, telling him to keep the change from the sixteen and a half dollar ride as she got out and looked around. She had only been there three times, and only been in the building once, when her father had forgotten something and ran back in to pick it up. None of the inside was particularly interesting to her, and she couldn't remember a thing about it.
Steeling herself, she opened the door and walked to the front desk, giving her name before obtaining a visitor's badge, which she clipped onto one of the pockets of her jeans. She waited for the receptionist to let her father know that she was there, before the woman told her to go in, and gave her quick direction to his office.
She whistled a song under her breath as she walked along the confusing corridors before she came to the office she was supposed to find. Opening the door without knocking, she walked in, still whistling with a smile on her face. "Dr. Hook's Queen of the Silver Dollar," the man said when she stood in front of his desk.
"Yup, got it in one," she said brightly, before sitting down in the chair beside her. "What was up with the cryptic message, Dad?"
Gil Grissom smiled faintly as he looked her over, examining her to see if anything had changed since her last visit out to see him. The only difference was the short hair that had once been blonde that was now past her shoulders and falling in her face. "That used to be your mom's song, you know," he said quietly. "How have you been, Anastasia? Your grades are the same, I take it?"
Rolling her eyes, she nodded. "Yeah, I haven't slipped yet. I'm also fine, and no matter how hard I try, I think I've learned that you'll never called me Stacey." Or princess, she thought. She had been named after the Russian princess, and that was all he used to call her. Now, he only used her full first name, one that made her practically shudder when she heard it. All of her friends had better names, she always thought, like Jennifer or Amanda. She had the strangely pronounced Russian name. "So, are you going to tell me why I was yanked out of another school? One that I didn't really mind, either, even if the uniform did suck."
"I'm sorry," he started, even though she could see that he really wasn't. He was never sorry that he had taken her out of a school, or taken her away from the friends that she had made. Whenever he heard about a school that was better than the one she was at, she was immediately sent there. It didn't matter how much the tuition was, or what the students were like. As long as it had a good academic program, and highly recommended teachers, she could kiss whatever life she had built up goodbye and start a new one, under her middle name and her mother's maiden name. It also helped if the school was far from him, so that there wouldn't be the occasional weekend visit or the holidays spent together. As far as her father was concerned, Anastasia Grissom was as dead as her mother was, but he supported and paid for Tara Davidson, no matter where she was sent. "Have you heard a word that I said?"
Her head shook quickly. "Sorry, what? I wasn't listening."
"Obviously," Grissom said dryly. "I was talking to myself, I guess."
"Give me a break, Dad. This afternoon, I was in Florida, coming back from a field hockey game, when I was told that I had to pack up everything, leave what friends I managed to make in the year and a half that I was there, and fly back here. Not only that, but the headmistress said something about you saying something about Mom, who you never talk about. So, an explanation is much needed."
He looked mildly surprised at her words. "I didn't know that you played field hockey."
Pressing her back further against the uncomfortable chair, she sighed impatiently. "I think every girl that goes to private or boarding school knows how to play field hockey. It's like a requirement or something. 'Behave like a lady, do well in your studies, oh, and play a prissy game that shouldn't even be considered a sport'. Besides, the school's team was playing, I was just watching. I'm more of a softball girl, anyway. At least you don't have to wear a skirt for that." The smile that had flashed across her face quickly disappeared as she looked around his somewhat dark office. "What, did they forget to pay the power bill or something? Just why am I in the house of horrors, anyway," she added, looking around at all the insects and embalmed items with a theatrical shudder.
"Your mother's killer is out of jail," he began again, referring to her the only way he could, as if he and Anastasia weren't related. She motioned with her hand for him to continue. "That would be my reasoning behind why I brought you here instead of keeping you in Florida. I'd like to be able to keep an eye on you."
And it was the return of the paranoid father, she thought sarcastically to herself. "Dad, think about this for a minute. This guy hasn't seen either of us in ten years. I don't think he even knew that you guys had a daughter, or have. This half present, half past tense thing is really screwing me up. Anyway, I don't even go by your name, remember? You had my name hyphenated with Mom's maiden name, and I go by that name. If this guy even remembers an Anastasia Grissom, I'm sure he can't figure out that Tara Davidson is the same person. He probably doesn't even remember your name."
With a tired expression, her dad rubbed his forehead as if he felt a headache starting. "Anastasia, he was accused of killing his wife. He knew that all the evidence pointed to him, and I had enough to present to the district attorney. I almost put him in jail. And then he shot your mom, and I did put him in jail. I'm sure he remembers my name very well."
"But you don't live in California anymore. Don't you get it? You're not in Santa Monica. You're in Las Vegas, surrounded by half naked women and annoying tourists that come to lose their hard earned money at one of many casino slash hotels out here. I doubt that this guy, whoever he is, is smart enough to figure out where you live. Besides, can't you just get a restraining order against him or something? Or get one for me, and then send me back to school?"
His eyes flashed quickly with repressed anger. "Don't use that tone with me, young lady. This isn't a joke," he told her sternly. "This is serious, and I want you to be somewhere I can see you and know that you're all right."
There had to be someway out of this situation, she figured. She had gotten so used to living by herself in another state, away from him, that the last thing she wanted to do was have to be looked after by a father that paid her tuition, sent her money every two weeks, and called her monthly to make sure that she didn't need anything else. "I still don't get it. If I'm here, then it's obvious that you have a daughter, and it makes me a target, doesn't it? Damn it, I just want to go back to Orlando."
"Now you've resorted to whining?" Grissom asked her, raising one eyebrow at her tone. "You could easily be linked to me, if someone looks in the right places. The bank transfers, for one thing. Every few weeks, the money that goes from my account to an account in your name. And I'm quite easy to find. I, somehow, keep getting my name in the newspapers and on television."
"I know," she said dully. "Sara sends me the news clippings all the time. I've got a photo album full of articles about you, and stuff that you've written for those forensic magazines. She always sends me that stuff."
Now, he looked more surprised than he had ever since she walked in the door. "I didn't know that you and Sara still kept in touch. She never mentioned anything to me."
Shrugging, Anastasia looked down at her nails and wondered if she should put something on them besides the clear polish that was allowed at her school. "Not many kids keep in touch with their old baby-sitters, but I'm different. Besides, I liked her when I was a kid. She used to crank up the radio and dance around the house with me." And she was there for me when you weren't, she wanted to add, but didn't dare say. Because it had been Sara Sidle that had comforted her when she finally understood that her mom was never coming home. Her only baby-sitter, one of her dad's old students, was the only person from her past that she heard from on a regular basis. "She writes me every other week, too. You know, she probably did tell you, but you just didn't hear her." Snapping her gum, she looked away.
Grissom kept his biting comment to himself, reminding himself that she wasn't any smart-mouthed teenager, but his smart-mouthed teenager, before sighing. "Whatever the case may be, Anastasia, you're staying here. You're only sixteen, and I'm still your father, which means that I make the decisions."
"Gee, that's news to me," she said sarcastically.
"I've already enrolled you in distance education school, so that you'll be doing your school work at home," he continued, ignoring her comment. "Despite the fact that you won't be going to a high school, I expect you to keep your grades up, and after this is all finished, you and I will talk about whether you'll go to a public school out here or another private school. All right?"
With a sour look on her face, her eyes met his. "Well, it's not like I have much a choice, do I? I'm basically at your mercy, no matter how much it hurts me to say that. What's next, you're going to head down to Bodyguards'R'Us and get some hired muscle to follow me around? Oh, I know. You're going to make me take a drug test, right? This is ridiculous."
Rolling his eyes, he wondered if he was ever going to get the point across to her that her life could very much be in danger just because of what he had done eleven years ago. "You may think so, but all this is necessary. You might see that one day."
Then again, he didn't expect to look out the window and see pigs flying anytime soon.
"Queen of the Silver Dollar", by Dr. Hook, is found on "Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show Revisited".
Chapter Two
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