Veiled Threats

by Deborah Donnelly

  “Never mind how anyone acted,” I said flatly. “Ray, why did you call me? Did the kidnappers finally contact Douglas?”

  He sighed, looking very young and very weary. “No, not yet. But people are bombarding the house with phone calls about the wedding. It's getting crazy, and Holt thought I should call you.”

  “What about Dorothy Fenner? She's the one getting paid for all this.” I was ashamed of myself the minute I said it. After all, as far as Ray knew, I'd lost the job through my own greed. But he didn't seem to notice.

  “She's been in bed since the … the attack. Nickie's mother is staying with her.”

  “That's good.” Julia Parry would be a calming, capable nurse, and Dorothy would be able to talk freely about the kidnapping. Maybe she'd talk it out of her system and her sleep would be more peaceful than mine.

  “Yeah, it's a big help. But we need someone to talk to the press and the bridesmaids and the country club and everyone. To put up a good front.” He looked bewildered at the tempest of attention that a rich girl's wedding could generate. “Grace wanted to do it herself, but Douglas needs her. He's feeling pretty rocky. It was Douglas who agreed that I should call you.”

  “I bet that took some persuasion,” I said wryly.

  Ray nodded. “He's still pretty bitter about, uh, that other business. That's why he didn't call you himself. But the woman from the Sentinel keeps calling, and then Lieutenant Borden showed up—”

  “The police came?” said Holt sharply. His iced tea lapped over the rim of the glass and splashed on the floor. “No one told me that.”

  “It was after I talked to you this afternoon,” said Ray. He sat on the floor and leaned against the wall by the phone. I followed his example. Holt stayed standing.

  “What did Borden want?” he demanded.

  “It was about Gus, and the garden and all.” Ray ran his hand, the one that should have borne a wedding ring by now, over his glossy black hair. “Mariana let him in, she's terrified of policemen. I think she's afraid if she causes trouble, they'll deport her or something. Anyway, Grace got rid of him. He didn't ask about Nickie at all.”

  Holt seemed to relax. He sat down across from me, but near enough to touch, and I wondered if he was remembering that afternoon on his carpet. I certainly was. I blushed, angry at my body for turning traitor on me, and hastened back to business.

  “Ray, I'll do absolutely anything I can to help.” I quickly reviewed the week's schedule and began to think out loud. “Friday I'm supposed to drive over to Ellensburg, to make arrangements for a wedding. I was going to stay there overnight, and then Saturday there's this reception on Mount Rainier, but I'll make up some excuse—”

  “No.” Holt set his glass down. “We need a day or two of your time, Carnegie, but that's all. We don't want you to jeopardize your business. Stick to your schedule.”

  He knew, only too well, how precarious my business was at the moment, and I had to appreciate his concern. But where was his concern at St. Anne's, when he saw the necklace and found me guilty until proven innocent?

  “All right,” I said, shaking off the thought. “Ray, I'll leave you the number where I'm staying Friday night, and at the Glacier View over the weekend. If there's any news—”

  “I'll call you.” The haunted look on Ray's face made me pray for news, good news, much sooner than Sunday.

  “I talked to the caterer earlier today,” I went on. “First thing tomorrow, I'll call everyone connected with the wedding and give them an update on Nickie's flu. In fact, maybe we should announce a new date for the wedding, just to make it plausible.”

  “Whatever you say,” Ray answered, then added, with a wistful show of faith, “After all, we're going to need another date.”

  “Of course you are.” I wanted to hug him. His nightmares must have been darker, and his empty hours longer, than any of ours. Instead, I pulled out my pocket calendar and a notebook. “Let's pick one out, and get a list started of people for me to call.”

  We worked on the list for an hour or more. Aaron Gold's name didn't come up, but we talked in general about getting the Sentinel off the track, and negotiating with the many vendors involved in the ceremony and the reception. We even discussed the etiquette of keeping or returning wedding gifts. I realized, partway through, that the two men must be as grateful as I was for the sense of purpose that these incongruous tasks were giving us. Anything was better than idle waiting. Finally, I got up to use the bathroom, and when I came back Holt was alone.

  “I asked Ray to take a walk around the block. He needs it, anyway.”

  I crossed to the window and watched Ray stride down the front walk. “Poor kid.”

  “He's a strong young man,” Holt said. “He'll hold up all right until he gets her back.”

  I turned to face him across the piano. “What if he doesn't get her back, Holt? What if they kill her?”

  “They won't.” He set his wide brown fists on the polished wood. “They won't. Douglas would never forgive Guthridge if they so much as hurt her, and Guthridge can't afford that.”

  “So you're sure it's him?”

  “Of course.” He slipped his hands in his pockets, the perfect host once more. As if he'd never misjudged anyone in his life. “Who else could it be?”

  “Someone who's just desperate for money. Me, for instance.” He flinched, and the movement gave me a perverse pleasure. “Or am I off your list of suspects now?”

  “You were never on it.”

  “Don't give me that. All along, you've been so ready to believe the worst of me. First you thought I was a white-collar criminal—”

  “I explained all that!”

  “—and then you thought I had stolen Nickie's pearls, and maybe her, too!” My voice was rising to an unreasonable pitch, but I didn't care. “Why? Is it because I'm not wealthy like you, so I must be after something? Just one more gold digger trying to become the next Mrs. Walker? Or because I don't live up to the memory of your sainted wife?”

  I stopped, shocked at my own words. Holt had gone white around the mouth. He drew his hands from his pockets. I held my breath. Then he stepped forward, and pulled Ray's piano bench out from beneath the keyboard.

  “Oscar Wilde,” he said carefully, “or maybe it was Chekhov, or somebody, said that you can change tragedy into farce by sitting down. Would you sit down with me, Carnegie?”

  W e sat, as far apart as the bench would permit. He brushed the fingers of one hand against the keys, making a soft ripple of notes in the dim, quiet room, and I recalled the touch of his fingers on my skin.

  “I'm not the most trusting person,” he said. “I'm sorry. I do have my reasons.”

  He pressed a single key, then another. The wrong one, apparently, because he went back to the first key and tried the sequence again. Another false note, but then he had it. Blue moon, the piano sang, in its lovely, mellow voice. You saw me standing alone. Without a dream in my heart—

  Holt brought both hands down on the keyboard in a single discordant jangle, then let them fall to his lap. When he spoke, his warm tenor had flattened to a bitter monotone.

  “My sainted wife married me for money. Except that I never made enough to suit her. We fought like animals, and when she drowned all I felt was relief. I never cried a single tear.”

  There was a long silence, and then he picked out the melody again. Blue moon …

  I laid one hand on his, and he bent his head and kissed it. I stroked his hair, my fingers pale in the gathering darkness. Then he straightened up and looked at me with grief fathoms deep in his shadowed green eyes. “I'm so sorry, Carnegie.”

  I meant only to embrace him, to offer comfort, but the embrace became one kiss and then another, hard and intense. He slid his hands down my spine and then stood, half dragging me up with him, and we pressed against each other as if the heat of our desire could fuse us together.

  “I want you,” he said hoarsely, his lips against my throat. “Christ, I want you, I love you, I
—”

  The apartment door opened, and we broke apart so fast that I barked my shin on the piano bench. Ray stood swaying in the doorway, staring down at a small package in his hands.

  “It was in the mailbox,” he whispered. “It looks like the printing on the note, the note about not calling the police or else, or else …”

  Holt reached over to take the package, but Ray wouldn't surrender it. Instead he set it on the piano and carefully, almost reverently, began to pull apart the wrapping. The sound of tearing paper was painful, but Ray's groaning cry was worse. Inside the paper, limp and heavy, lay the silken waves of Niccola Parry's hair.

  THAT NIGHT, AND FOR MANY NIGHTS AFTERWARDS, THE FACELESS men came again. But this time their groping nightmare hands were reaching for me. Over and over again I ran from them, calling out to Holt. But he couldn't find me in the darkness, and when the alarm went off I was more exhausted than ever. By Friday, the day of my trip to Ellensburg, I was dead on my feet.

  Fortunately, Lily volunteered to do the driving, so that I could review my paperwork on Fay's wedding. Not that I could concentrate on anything but Nickie. I hadn't seen Holt since Monday night, when he dropped me at my van before driving Ray and that horrible package over to Medina. Both of them were spending most of their time at the Parrys’ estate now, to provide moral support and wait for the kidnappers’ next message.

  So I spent the two-hour drive over Snoqualmie Pass staring at checklists and contracts without really seeing them, while Lily hummed along to the van's radio. Once in Ellensburg, we checked into a motel and parted ways until dinner. Lily went off to see her friends and I spent the day taking care of business and restraining myself from calling Holt until seven P.M., our prearranged time. The hours crept by, and finally I was back in the motel, hunched over the phone, listening to it ringing at the Parry estate.

  Holt grabbed it on the second ring. “Carnegie?”

  “Yes. Any news?”

  “They finally made the ransom demand.” He paused. “They want two million dollars, and a promise from Douglas that he won't testify against Keith Guthridge.”

  “So it was Guthridge!” I said. “Will Douglas go to the police now?”

  “He doesn't dare. He told them he won't pay unless he hears directly from Nickie that she's all right, but he's already getting the money together. It's the business about the testimony that will really be hard on him. He'll have to keep silent, though. He'll never be able to let Nickie out of his sight again if he doesn't.”

  “I wish there was something I could do.”

  “We all wish that,” Holt said ruefully. “But all we can do is keep up the appearance of normal behavior. The kidnappers knew that Lieutenant Borden had come to the house—that's why they cut her hair—so we know they're watching.”

  “So I should still go down to Mount Rainier tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely. In fact, I'll still go with you. I'm beginning to think I'm doing more harm than good around here, because Douglas is embarrassed about being seen when he's so upset. I'm going back to my place tonight.”

  I cradled the phone with both hands, wanting to hold him. “I can't wait to see you. It's so crazy, trying to act as if nothing's wrong. I miss you terribly, Holt.”

  “I miss you, love. I'll be at the houseboat at one o'clock tomorrow afternoon, OK?”

  “One o'clock.” Just a few hours, really. But how many hours would it be until Nickie came home?

  I met Lily at a steakhouse recommended by her friends. Ellensburg is a ranch town, and this was a restaurant where cowboy boots were footwear, not a fashion statement. We ordered steaks and a pitcher, and I nodded and smiled while Lily chattered. Nickie had been held hostage, a piece of merchandise with a price tag on her, for six days. I wondered if she was getting enough to eat, and when my steak came I couldn't touch it.

  So I had another beer instead, and then another, while Lily switched to coffee. The country music began to throb inside my skull, and the laughter of the men at the pool table seemed cold and malicious. Damn them all, damn everything. Lily said something to me about checking in with her babysitter in Seattle, but her face was lopsided and her voice was far away. Another burst of laughter, and someone lit a cigar that smelled like Eddie's. What if I never, ever saw Eddie again? My wonderful, darling Eddie … I drained my glass and stumbled to the ladies’ room.

  Lily found me leaning by the sink with a wad of wet paper towels pressed to my forehead. “Carnegie, I've got to go back to Seattle. Ethan's got a fever and—Hello? You're drunk, aren't you?”

  “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Stupid thing to do, stupid to be here. I shouldn't have come….”

  “Well, you had to come, Carnegie, but your brain is sure somewhere else. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” I made the mistake of shaking my head, and the room whirled around me. “No, I'm sorry, it's just … maybe another time. Wait, you said Ethan's sick?” Ethan was her four-year-old cherub.

  “Yeah.” Lily smiled mechanically, but even in my beery fog I could see the strain in her eyes. “No big deal. I'm sure it's only the flu. I just want to be with him.”

  “Of course. Let's get going.”

  “What about your appointments tomorrow morning?”

  “I'll come back over next week. It'll be fine. Let's go home.”

  I paid for dinner, we checked out of the motel, and within half an hour we were driving into the darkness with Lily at the wheel, back over the mountains on Interstate 90, westward toward Seattle. Sagebrush ridges rose steep and black against the starry sky, pine trees marching across their crests in silhouette, like soldiers to some ghostly battle. I fell asleep just before the summit of the pass, and didn't wake again until Lily roused me.

  “Carnegie, we're here. Do you need help getting inside? Have you got your house keys?”

  “In my purse,” I mumbled, sitting up. I could hear familiar sounds, water lapping against pilings, the houseboats swinging and bumping gently at their moorings in the darkness. I rolled the window down and the night air swept in, damp and chilly after the dusty sunshine of Ellensburg. My neck was stiff, and my tongue tasted like a bar towel. “But wait, I have to drive you home.”

  “No way,” she said. “I'll bring Vanna back in the morning. Do you need your tote bag from the back?”

  “No.” I just needed more sleep, preferably horizontal. “Lily, I'm sorry you had to drive—”

  “Hey, look, we all have our crazy times. You get some rest.”

  “OK. Love to Ethan.”

  I unfolded myself from the passenger seat. Lily handed me my purse, and I tottered down the dock as she drove away. The van burped and backfired, then all was quiet. I was queasy and shivering, grateful to duck inside my dark, familiar home. I left the lights off, in deference to the headache building up behind my eyes, and went straight to the answering machine. No blinking light, no messages. No word about Nickie.

  Well, what had I expected? That my sudden return to town would miraculously bring her freedom? I slumped, defeated, onto the couch, and waited for the energy to take a shower and go to bed. Up and at 'em. But even hunting up some aspirin seemed too great a task, and the longer I sat the farther away the bathroom became. Beer, fatigue, and disappointment chopped away at my resolve like axes at a tree trunk. I swayed, and I fell. Timberrr. Tomorrow morning, I promised myself. Tomorrow morning I will get up and go straight to bed. Meanwhile I nestled into the cushions, hung my too-long legs off the too-short couch, and slept.

  The key turning in my front door lock was a delicate sound, fitting neatly into a dream of my mother's house in Boise. In my dream the sun was shining, lighting up the gay pinwheel blooms of the dahlias that crowded her backyard. It all disappeared as I opened my eyes in the darkness. A creaking door, and footsteps. I yanked myself upright, my heart banging like a loose shutter in a windstorm.

  Two men. I could hear them muttering to each other in the hallway off the kitchen, as if they had the house to themselves. Of cou
rse. I wasn't supposed to be here. There was no van outside; I was supposed to be out of town. That's why they could stand muttering inside my front door. Oh, Jesus, the door. The only door out, my only line of escape, and they were standing there in the shadows blocking it. Faceless men, men with hands that groped at me in nightmares, the men who took Nickie, who slashed off her hair.

  I should have shouted, I suppose, screamed for the neighbors or called the police or something rational like that. But I wasn't rational. I was groggy with alcohol and half asleep and strained to the snapping point with the tensions of the last several days. I had one thought, and one only: They don't know I'm here. And if they didn't know, if I could hide and listen, maybe I could find out what had happened to Nickie, and whether Theo was involved.

  But could I hide? What if they searched, what if they cornered me in a closet with knives in their hands? They were moving into the kitchen. I could hear their heavy steps; they'd be in the room with me in another moment. I could slip into the bedroom and out the window to the dock, but would that window open wide enough? Windows, doors … of course! There were doors just behind me, the always-open door to the sunporch and the sliding glass door from the porch to the deck outside.

  I rose with the thought, crossed the room in a split second, then glanced back and saw my purse. It was lying on the coffee table, screamingly visible even in the faint illumination that fell across the room from the urban night outside. Advertising my early return, and my presence on the premises. I bit my lip and took another endless second to cross back and snatch it up, the patterned leather slipping in my trembling hands. They don't know I'm here, don't let them know, hurry, hurry, hurry.

  Onto the porch; slide open the glass door; thank God it ran smooth and quiet in its metal track. Out to the rough old planks of the deck. I pulled the door closed behind me and gulped the cool air, but I was no safer, not yet. As soon as they stepped into the living room they would see me through this glass wall, silhouetted against the lights across the lake just as clearly as those pine trees against the stars. Which way to run? To the right, past the uncurtained kitchen windows and around to the dock? Or—