“Going off where?”
“On a shopping trip.”
“That never ended.”
The arm rose in defense, again. “She was happy! Better off, not being pummeled!”
“What about Sherry? What explanation did she get?”
“I … I told her that Sharon had …” She submerged the rest of her sentence in vodka.
I said, “You told her Sharon had died?”
“That she’d been in an accident and wouldn’t be coming back.”
“What kind of accident?”
“Just an accident.”
“At Sherry’s age, she would have assumed the drowning did it—that she’d killed her sister.”
“No, impossible—ridiculous. She’d seen Sharon survive—this was days after!”
“At that age none of that would have made a difference.”
“Oh, no, you can’t accuse me of … No! I didn’t—wouldn’t ever have done anything so cruel to Sherry!”
“She kept asking for Sharon, didn’t she?”
“For a while. Then she stopped. Put it out of her mind.”
“Did she stop having nightmares too?”
Her expression told me all my years of schooling hadn’t been wasted. “No, those … If you know everything, why are you putting me through this?”
“Here’s something else I know: After Sharon was gone, Sherry was terrified—separation anxiety’s the primal fear at three. And her fear kept climbing. She started to lash out, get more violent. Began taking it out on you.”
Another good guess. “Yes!” she said, eager to be the victim. “She threw the most horrid tantrums I’d ever seen. More than tantrums—fits, animal fits. Wouldn’t let me hold her, kicked me, bit me, spit at me, destroyed things—one day she walked into my bedroom and deliberately broke my favorite Tang vase. Right in front of me. When I scolded her, she snatched up a manicure scissors and went for my arm. I needed stitches!”
“What did you do about this new problem?”
“I started to think more seriously about her origins, her … biology. I asked Billy. He told me her lineage wasn’t … choice. But I refused to be discouraged by that, made improving her my main project. I thought a change of scenery might help. I closed up this house, took her back with me to Palm Beach. My place there is … tranquil. Rare palms, lovely big bay windows—one of Addison Mizner’s best. I thought the ambience—the rhythm of the waves—would calm her.”
“A couple of thousand miles between her and Willow Glen,” I said.
“No! That had nothing to do with it. Sharon was out of her life.”
“Was she?”
She stared at me. Began to cry, but without tears, as if she were a dry well, had nothing to draw upon.
“I did my best,” she finally said in a strangled voice. “Sent her to the best nursery school—the very best. I’d attended it myself. She had dance lessons, equestrian training, charm school, boat rides, junior cotillion. To no avail. She wasn’t good around other children; people started to talk. I decided she needed more of my individual attention, devoted myself to her. We went to Europe.”
A few thousand more miles. “To your place in Rome.”
“My atelier,” she said. “Henry gave it to me when I was studying art. On the way there, we took the grand tour—London, Paris, Monte Carlo, Gstaad, Vienna. I bought her a darling set of miniature luggage to match mine, had a whole new wardrobe made up for her—even a little fur coat with matching hat. She loved dressing up. She could be so sweet and charming when she wanted. Beautiful and poised, just like royalty. I wanted her exposed to the finer things in life.”
“To compensate for her origins.”
“Yes! I refused to see her as incorrigible. I loved her!”
“How did the trip go?”
She didn’t answer.
“Throughout all of this, did you ever consider reuniting her with Sharon?”
“It … came to mind. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t think it was best…. Don’t look at me like that! I was doing what I thought was best!”
“Did you ever think of Sharon—of how she was doing?”
“Billy gave me reports. She was fine, doing just fine. They were sweet people.”
“They are. And they did a damned good job of raising her, considering what they had to work with. But did you really expect them to make it?”
“Yes, I did! Of course I did. What do you take me for! She was thriving! It was the best thing for her.”
Mayonnaise from a jar. Wax-paper windows. I said, “Until last week.”
“I … I don’t know about that.”
“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t. Let’s get back to Sherry. Given her social problems, how did she do in school?”
“She went through ten schools in three years. After that we used tutors.”
“When did you first take her to Kruse?”
She looked down at her empty glass. I rationed another inch. She polished it off. I said, “How old was she when he started treating her?”
“Ten.”
“Why didn’t you seek help before then?”
“I thought I could work things out myself.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“She … hurt another child, at a birthday party.”
“Hurt how?”
“Why must you know this? Oh, all right, what’s the difference? I’m already stripped raw! They were playing pin the tail on the donkey. She missed the donkey and got angry—she despised losing. Tore off her blindfold and stuck the pin into a little boy’s rear—the birthday boy. The child was a brat; the parents were nouveau riche social climbers, utterly without sense. They made a mountain out of a molehill, threatened to call the police unless I took her to someone.”
“Why’d you choose Kruse?”
“I knew him socially. My people had known his people for generations. He had a lovely home not far from mine with a beautiful office suite on the ground floor. Complete with a private entrance. I thought he’d be discreet.”
She laughed. A drunken, strident laugh. “I don’t seem to be much for … prescience, do I?”
“Tell me about the treatment.”
“Four sessions a week. One hundred twenty-five dollars a session. Payment for ten sessions in advance.”
“What diagnosis did he give you?”
“He never gave me one.”
“What about treatment goals? Methods?”
“No, nothing like that. All he said was that she had serious problems—character problems—and needed intensive therapy. When I tried to ask questions he made it very clear that everything that went on between them was confidential. I was forbidden to be involved at all. I didn’t like that, but he was the doctor. I assumed he knew what he was doing. I stayed completely out of it, had Ramey drive her to her appointments.”
“Did Kruse help her?”
“In the beginning. She’d come home from seeing him and be calm—almost too calm.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sleepy. Drowsy. I know now that he was hypnotizing her. But whatever benefits that brought didn’t last. Within an hour or two she was the same old Sherry.”
“Meaning what?”
“Defiance, foul language. That terrible temper—still breaking things. Except when she wanted something—then she could be the most charming little doll in the world. Sweet as sugar, a real actress. She knew how to twist people to her needs. He taught her how to do it even better. All the time I thought he was helping her, he was teaching her how to manipulate.”
“Did you ever tell him about Sharon?”
“He wouldn’t let me tell him anything.”
“If he had, would you have told him?”
“No. That was … in the past.”
“But eventually you did tell him.”
“Not until later.”
“How much later?”
“Years. She was a teenager—fourteen or fifteen. He called me late at nigh
t, caught me off-guard. He liked to do that. All of a sudden he’d completely changed his tune. All of a sudden it was imperative I be involved. Come in to be evaluated. Five years of going nowhere and now he wanted me on the couch! I wanted no part of such a thing—by then I’d realized that it was useless, her personality wasn’t going to change. She was the prisoner of her … genes. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer, kept calling me, badgering me. Dropping in to chat when I was entertaining guests. Pulling me aside at parties and telling me that she and I were a … what was the word he used?… a dyad. A destructive dyad. Two people on a psychological seesaw, trying to knock each other off. Her behavior affected mine; mine, hers. In order for her to stop doing all those terrible things, we needed to equalize our communications, find emotional homeostasis or some rubbish like that. I felt he simply wanted to control me, and I wasn’t about to give in. But he was like a … a drill. Kept at it, simply wouldn’t give up. Still, I was able to resist.” Prideful smile. “Then things got much worse and I caved in.”
“Worse in what way?”
“She started doing … teenage things.”
“Running away?”
“Disappearing. For days at a time—completely without warning. I’d send Ramey out for her but he rarely found her. Then, out of nowhere, she’d come crawling back, usually in the middle of the night, all disheveled, filthy, crying, promising never to do it again. But she always did.”
“Did she talk about where she’d been?”
“Oh, the next morning she’d be boasting, telling me horrid tales in order to make me suffer—crossing the bridge and heading over to the colored part of town, things like that. I never knew how much to believe—didn’t want to believe any of it. Later, when she was old enough to drive, she’d take off in one of my cars and vanish. Weeks later, the credit card bills and traffic tickets would start trickling in and I’d find out she’d been traipsing all over—Georgia, Louisiana, dull little towns I’d never heard of. What she did there God only knows. One time she went to Mardi Gras and came home painted green. I finally took away her driving privileges when she ruined my favorite car—a lovely old Bentley painted lilac, with etched windows. Henry’s gift to me on our tenth. She drove it into the ocean, just left it there and walked away. But she always managed to find a set of keys, be off again.”
One way or the other, Sherry would triumph.
No smile, now.
I remembered what Del had told me about the needle marks, said, “When did she get into drugs?”
“When she was thirteen, Paul had tranquilizers prescribed for her.”
“He wasn’t an M.D., wasn’t allowed to prescribe.”
She shrugged. “He got her those drugs. Prescription tranquilizers.”
“What about street drugs?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. Why not? Nothing could stop her from doing what she wanted.”
“During this period, how often was Kruse seeing her?”
“When she chose to go. He billed me even if she didn’t show up.”
“What was the official schedule?”
“No change—four sessions a week.”
“Did you ever question him? Ask why years of treatment hadn’t improved her?”
“He … he was hard to approach. When I finally raised the issue, he got very angry, said she was irreparably disturbed, would never be normal, would need treatment all her life just to maintain. And that it was my fault—I’d waited too long to bring her in, couldn’t expect to wheel a jalopy into a garage and have a Rolls-Royce emerge. Then he’d start in again, pressuring me to come in for evaluation. She was getting worse and worse. He broke me down—I agreed to talk to him.”
“What about?”
“The usual rubbish. He wanted to know about my childhood, did I dream at night, why I’d married Henry. How things made me feel. He always talked in a low monotonous voice, had shiny things in his office—little toys that moved back and forth. I knew what he was doing—trying to hypnotize me. Everyone in Palm Beach knew he did that kind of thing. He did it at parties, at the Planned Parenthood ball—made people quack like ducks for amusement. I resolved not to give in. It was difficult—his voice was like warm milk. But I fought it, told him I didn’t see what any of that had to do with Sherry. He kept pushing. Finally I blurted out that he was wasting his time, she wasn’t even mine, was the product of some slut’s bad genes. That made him stop droning and he looked at me strangely.”
She sighed, closed her eyes. “My heart sank. Trying to resist him, I’d said too much, given him just what he needed to bleed me dry.”
“You’d never told him she was adopted?”
“I never told anyone—from the day I … got her.”
“How did he react to finding out?”
“Broke his pipe in half. Slammed his hand on the desk. Took me by the shoulders and shook me. Told me I’d wasted his time all these years and severely damaged Sherry. Said I didn’t care about her, was a terrible mother, a selfish person—my communications were perverse. My secretiveness was what had made her what she was! He kept going on like that, attacking me! I was in tears, tried to leave the office but he stood in the doorway and blocked me, kept hurling abuse. I threatened to scream. He smiled and said go ahead, by tomorrow all of Palm Beach would know. Sherry would know. The moment I stepped out the door, he’d call her, tell her how I’d lied to her. That broke me. I knew it would be the final straw between us. I begged him not to tell, begged him to have pity. He smiled, went back behind his desk and lit another pipe. Just sat there puffing and looking at me as if I were trash. I was whimpering like a baby. Finally, he said he’d reconsider on condition that I be honest from now on—completely open. I … I told him everything.”
“What exactly did you tell him?”
“That the father was unknown, the mother a tart who’d fancied herself an actress. That she’d died soon after the baby was born.”
“You still didn’t tell him about Sharon.”
“No, no.”
“You weren’t worried Sherry would tell him?”
“How could she tell him something she didn’t know? It was out of her head—I’m sure of that because she never mentioned it, and when she was angry she threw everything else in my face.”
“What if she chanced to open up an old Blue Book?”
She shook her head. “She didn’t like books, didn’t read—never learned to read well. Some sort of blockage the tutors couldn’t break through.”
“But Kruse found out anyway. How?”
“I have no idea.”
But I did: a college Careers Day, spotting his former patient. Discovering it wasn’t his former patient at all, but a carbon copy, mirror-imaged …
She was saying, “He bled me for years, the monster. I hope he’s writhing in eternal hellfire.”
“Why didn’t brother Billy fix that for you?”
“I … I don’t know. I told Billy. He always told me to have patience.”
She turned away from me. I doled out more martini but she didn’t drink it, just held her glass and straightened her posture. Her eyes closed and her breathing got shallow. A boozehound’s tolerance, but it wouldn’t be long before she passed out. I was phrasing my next question for maximum impact when the door swung open.
Two men stepped into the sun-room. The first was Cyril Trapp in white polo shirt, pressed designer jeans, Topsiders, and black Members Only jacket. California Casual betrayed by the tension in his white-blotched face and the blue steel revolver in his right hand.
The second man kept his hands in his pockets as he examined the room with the practiced eye of a pit boss. Older, mid-sixties, tall and wide—big bones padded with hard fat. He wore a doeskin-colored western suit, brown silk shirt, string tie gathered by a large smoky-topaz clasp, peanut-butter-colored lizard boots, and a straw cowboy hat. His skin tone matched the boots. Forty pounds heavier than Trapp, but the same hatchet jaw and thin lips. His eyes settled on me. His stare was that
of a naturalist studying some rare but hideous specimen.
“Mr. Hummel,” I said. “How are things in Vegas?”
He didn’t answer, just moved his lips the way denture wearers do.
“Shut up,” said Trapp, pointing the gun at my face. “Put your hands behind your head and don’t move.”
“Friends of yours?” I said to Hope Blalock. She shook her head. Her eyes were electric with fear.
“We’re here to help you, ma’am,” said Hummel. His voice was badlands basso profundo, coarsened by smoke and drink, and desert air.
Ramey came in, all spotless black serge and starched white. “It’s all right, madam,” he said. “Everything’s in order.” He looked at me with tight fury and I knew who’d called in the goon squad.
Trapp stepped forward, waved the revolver. “Get those hands behind you.”
I didn’t move fast enough to suit him, and the weapon was pressed hard under my nose.
Hope Blalock gasped. Ramey went to her side.
Trapp put a little more weight behind the gun. Looking at all that metal crossed my eyes. I tightened reflexively. Trapp leaned harder.
Royal Hummel said, “Easy.” He came around behind me. I heard a ratchet slip, felt cold metal around my wrists.
“Not too tight, son?”
“Perfect. Uncle Roy.”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Trapp.
Hope Blalock winced.
Hummel said, “Easy, C.T.,” and patted the back of my neck. His touch bothered me more than the gun. “Close your eyes, son,” he said, and I obeyed. The pressure of the revolver was replaced by something tight and elastic around my head. Banding my eyes so tight I couldn’t open them. Strong hands gripped me under my arms. I was lifted so that only my shoe tips touched the floor, propelled forward like a kite in a headwind.
It was a very big house. They dragged me for a long time before I heard a door open, felt hot air on my face.
Trapp started laughing.
“What?” said his uncle, stretching the word to two syllables.
“How we got this joker. Fucking butler did it.”
Chapter
33
They searched me, confiscated my watch, keys, and wallet, and put me in a vehicle that smelled brand-new.
Four Classic Alex Delaware Thrillers 4-Book Bundle Page 41
