“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
She looked back at her car, guiltily. On the seat were an empty coffee cup and a donut.
“Not much of a lunch,” I said.
“I—you’ll probably think it’s stupid, but I’ve decided to go up there and face him.”
“Not stupid,” I said, “but the timing couldn’t be worse. In the last two days I’ve learned things that indicate Karen Best did disappear at the Sanctum party. And your father paid some people to keep quiet about it. Other men were involved, too. Other people may have died because they knew about it.”
The color left her face in patches. “Why haven’t you told me any of this?”
“I’ve tried to call you several times.”
“Oh … I’ve been out.”
“With Ken?”
“No, just driving around by myself. He had to fly up to the home office. He’s been good to me, but I’ve been happy for the peace and quiet. Even though all I do is think about Puck.”
Biting her lip, she crossed her arms and hugged herself.
I stepped closer.
She moved back. “The hardest part was the funeral. Seeing them throw the dirt over him.… The funeral’s what crystallized things for me. The way he showed up in that horrid white suit with his bimbo. Making a show of himself, like the whole thing was a big performance. Even at a time like that, he couldn’t be decent. It brought home to me how he keeps doing rotten things and getting away with them. It’s time someone stood up to him. I’m sorry for not consulting you first, but I finally need to do something for myself.”
“The way I see it, you’ve always been pretty independent.”
“No,” she said. “Just alone. And now I’m going up there. Please don’t try to stop me, Dr. Delaware. What’s the worst he can do? Try to run me down in his wheelchair? Sic his bimbo on me?”
“Lucy—”
“And what are you doing here?” She smiled. “You were going up yourself, weren’t you?”
“Lucy, these people are dangerous—”
“Who are they? What are their names?”
“The main guy is probably a film producer named Curtis App.” I described the way he’d looked twenty-one years ago.
“That doesn’t sound familiar,” she said, “so maybe he was the one with his back to me … but who was the one with the mustache?”
“There are at least two possibilities. Trafficant or another writer named Denton Mellors. Big light-skinned black man. He had a mustache, though it was skimpy, like Trafficant’s, and blond. He was one of those murdered, possibly because he knew what had happened to Karen.”
“No,” she said. “The man I saw was definitely white. And the mustache was thick and dark.”
“Your dream may be accurate in some respects but not in others.”
She turned and opened her car door.
I held her wrist. “I met with App yesterday, gave him a phony story about doing a biography of Lowell. He may find out I was lying and get nervous. He or his henchmen could be up there right now.”
“No, they’re not. No one’s gone in or out of the place all day. I’ve been watching the entry from before daybreak.”
“You’ve been staking the place out?”
“Not intentionally. I was sitting there, building up my courage. I came down here to get some coffee and use the ladies’ room. I was just about to head back.”
“How can you be sure no one spotted you?”
“No one did, believe me. No one even came close. I was the one doing the watching.”
“You sat from daybreak till now?”
“I know you think I’m being stupid, but I need to stand up to him and get him out of my life once and for all.”
“I understand that, but this just isn’t the time.”
“It has to be. I’m sorry. You’re a wonderful man. I trust you more than anyone—you and Milo. But this is something that’s been building up my whole life. I can’t put it off any longer.”
“Just a little while longer, Lucy.”
“Till when? You’ve got no evidence on Karen’s death. The police will never have a case.”
“Till we know it’s safe.”
“It’s safe now. There’s no one up there. Besides, my going up there won’t look funny to anyone. He wanted to meet with me. What’s the big deal about a daughter meeting her father?”
“Lucy, please.”
She patted my shoulder. “The patient doing things for herself. That’s therapeutic progress, right?”
“My only therapeutic goal, right now, is to keep you safe.”
“I’ll be fine. The prodigal daughter returned. Maybe I can’t solve any crimes, but I can try for personal justice.”
“What kind of justice?” My voice was sharp.
She stared at me and laughed. “No, no, I’m not going to play Dirty Harriet—search me for weapons if you like. I just need to see him. To show myself I don’t need him.”
She got into the Colt. “Maybe I’m making a mistake, but at least it’ll be mine.”
The car started. “I have to do it now,” she said. “I may never have the guts again.”
She pulled out of the lot.
I waited until she was out of sight. Then I followed her.
CHAPTER
42
She drove slowly, and I had to hang back. When I reached the honeysuckle at the mouth of Sanctum’s entry road, she was nowhere in sight. I began the upward crawl. A speed-walker could have beaten me to the double gates. Lucy had left them open. The second pair of gates was unlatched, too.
A few more bumps up the shaded path, then the trees parted and I saw the big lodge house, brown as the trunks of the bristlecone pines that nestled it. The Colt was parked nose out, as far as possible from Lowell’s Jeep and Mercedes.
No other vehicles in sight.
The front door to the house was shut, and I figured she’d already gone in. But then she appeared from around the back of her car—taking something out of the trunk?
No, nothing in her hands. No pocket bulges.
Her mouth opened as I pulled up.
I said, “Think of it as an extended house call.”
Expecting anger, but she stared past me.
Blank and focused at the same time.
Hypnotic.
When she put a hand to her mouth, I thought she’d lost her nerve and I felt relieved, yet sad.
Then she walked quickly to the house, stomping up the wide porch stairs.
I was next to her as she knocked hard on the front door.
No one answered. She tapped her foot and knocked harder. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”
I looked through the dusty windows. The big front room was unlit and uninhabited.
Lucy began pounding the door with both hands. When there was still no response, she dashed off the porch and stood in front of the house, taking in its bulk.
Walking toward the right side of the building, her steps were fast and deliberate, scuffing the dust. Another brief pause; then she continued. Toward the back. Toward the high thicket that rose behind the house like some great green tide.
I found her staring at the overgrowth.
“Back there,” she whispered.
A voice above us said, “What’s going on?”
Nova, framed by a second-story window, her face grayed by a screen.
“Hi,” I said, taking Lucy’s icy hand. “We knocked but no one answered.”
A finger poked the screen. The expression above it was hard to gauge. “So you decided to come.”
Lucy’s fingers dug into my hand. “Sure,” she said. “We were in the neighborhood and decided to pop in. Is there a problem with that?”
Nova tented the screen with her fingertips. “No. Not unless Daddy’s got one.” She gave a strange laugh. “Come around the front.”
She was waiting for us, holding a glass of lemonade. The copper in her hair shone like electric wire.
&nbs
p; “He wasn’t in any great mood when he went to bed, but I’ll tell him you’re here.”
“I’ll tell him myself,” said Lucy, walking past her into the front room. Taking in the stuffed heads, the shabby furniture, the emptiness.
Staring at the log walls.
Nova seemed amused. Nothing nurturant about her. Why had she chosen to care for a feeble, cruel man?
Kindred souls, just like Trafficant and Mellors?
What was her particular brand of cruelty?
Lucy made her way toward the staircase, moving slowly and cautiously, like a trapper on ice, passing under the steps, then continuing toward the back room.
Nova put her hands on her hips and watched, rubbing one foot against the other.
She wet her lips with her tongue and glanced at me.
Her eyes returned to Lucy and satisfaction filled them.
Lucy’s discomfiture turned her on.
Lucy looked up at the ceiling, then the floor.
Then back to the walls.
Stopping short. Arms straight at her sides, her face frozen.
She stared at the left-hand door.
Nova said, “That’s right, Daddy’s back there, dear.”
Despite her smile, tension in her voice.
Competition—mock sibling rivalry?
Wanting Lucy to come here, certain it would destroy her?
I took Lucy’s elbow. She shook her head and moved her arm out of my grasp.
Twenty feet from the room.
I covered the distance with her.
The door was pine, once heavily varnished, the finish cracked, flaking like dandruff.
She sucked in breath and opened it. As we stepped into a big, dark, book-lined room, a sulfurous smell hit us, not unlike the stench of the ER at Woodbridge. A hospital bed was in the center, cranked to a semi-upright position. Lowell’s wheelchair was folded in a corner.
Lowell reclined under the covers, his hair greasy and limp, his long arms resting on the blanket, white and blue-veined below frayed gray undershirt sleeves. His chin was coated with white stubble, his eyes unfocused. It was 2 P.M. but he hadn’t awakened fully. He turned toward us with obvious effort, then turned away and closed his eyes.
Lucy’s hand found its way back into mine, so sweaty it slithered in my grasp. Her shoulders twitched, then began shaking.
I followed her eyes as they reconnoitered, landing on the pine bookshelves that sheathed three of the walls.
A door in the right-hand corner was open, exposing a small bathroom. The other, centered between the windows, led outside. Bolted. Lucy’s gaze lingered on it, then moved on.
Books and piles of magazines and newspapers littered the floor. Atop a stack of New Yorkers was an aluminum tray laden with dirty dishes: curling bread crusts, congealed eggs, cornflakes swimming in milk that looked bluish in the mean, grainy light. An empty bedpan sat on a stack of old Paris Reviews. Packages of adult-size disposable diapers were piled high on a tottering mountain of assorted periodicals. A cardboard box next to the diapers was filled with empty whiskey bottles. A tower of Dixie cups and an old black rotary telephone, the phone’s cord snaking into the jumble and vanishing.
The shakes had moved down to Lucy’s fingers, and I felt her knuckles slap against mine. Nova was nowhere in sight, but I felt her presence—an icy current.
Lowell moaned and moved his head from side to side. His eyes had closed.
Lucy didn’t move. Then she began scanning the room again.
The filthy windows.
The door to the back.
Back to the log walls.
Repeating the circuit. Staying, this time, on the door. Wide-eyed.
This was where she’d slept the night of the party. The room she’d left, sleepwalking.
Her hand was shaking so badly I could barely hold on to it.
Lowell’s eyes opened and he flipped his face at us.
Seeing us for the first time.
He let out a deep, pitiful, angry noise and began the long, excruciating process of sitting up. No hoists above the bed. He hadn’t availed himself of conveniences—not even an electric wheelchair—and I wondered why.
Cursing, he slid and heaved and finally propped his upper body high enough to rest his back against the pillows. His chest was caved in, his shoulders knobby and narrow. The flair of the white suit and the panama hat seemed a distant joke. The last couple of days had knocked him low.
Grief?
Lucy watched him the way you watch a repulsive but fascinating insect make its way up a wall.
He laughed. She turned away and hugged herself.
“So,” he said hoarsely. Several moments of throat clearing. He gave a look of distaste, rotated his lips, and spat a wad of phlegm at the log wall. It missed and landed on the floor. Coughing and grinning, he expelled another wad.
Lucy looked ill, but she didn’t move.
Lowell watched her intently.
His fingers scratched the sheets as he continued to pull himself up. Trying to move his head in an upward arc. Pain stopped him.
“So,” he said again. His voice had cleared a bit.
“Cute,” he said. “Very cute.”
“What is?” said Lucy, straining for a light tone.
“You.” He chortled, as if she’d set him up for a punch line. He looked her up and down. None of the lasciviousness he’d shown with Nova. Cold, precise, as if taking the measure of a piece of furniture.
“Play tennis?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Those are tennis player’s legs. Even through those dungarees I can see them. Play anything?”
Another headshake.
“Of course not,” he said. “No appetite for games.”
He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms, laughing some more.
“So what can I offer you, Mary–Little Lamb?” he said. “Alcohol? Percodan? Demerol? Morphine? Endorphins? Or is alleged truth the dope you’re shooting? What kind of stories should I tell you to help you lubricate your mental deadbolt? Is this a monumental moment for you?”
Lucy remained silent.
“No stories? What then?”
Lucy looked at the rear door.
Lowell shouted wordlessly and slapped the bedsheet. “Ah, the spectacle! Here to goggle at my groanery, my little serpent’s tooth? Barge in with your brain mechanic in tow, so you can listen to the thrum-thrum and imagine my torment?”
Grinning. Laughing.
“Yes, I’m in pain, girl. Sacramental, sizzling battery-acid synaptic joy. Maybe you’ll know it too, one day, and then you’ll understand what a fucking hero I am to be sitting here, smelling like shit and looking like a Gehenna-leaseholder knowing the only fuck-damn reason you pranced your little tennis butt in here is to drink up my misery so you can say you’ve had a tall, frosty revenge cocktail at the expense of the best.”
Lucy kept staring at the door.
“Ho,” said Lowell. “The silent treatment. Just like when you were a baby.”
“How would you know?” said Lucy.
Lowell guffawed, very loud. His shrunken body seemed to grow with each expulsion. Laughter energized him, turning him demonic and lively and bringing color to his face.
“The opening movement of The Guilt Sonata! Don’t waste your quarter notes, lass. I’ve soloed with the best of the Sin Symphonies!”
Lucy began circling the room, moving as freely as the clutter would allow.
“Your silence,” said Lowell, “is not artillery. It’s an empty knapsack—you were a mute baby with skinny legs. No cries, no tears, not a yawp. Dead-mute as an anencephalic accident. Unlike the other one, Peter-Peter morpho-morto poison eater; he howled professionally. It was rent a studio down the block or strangle the little snot-rat.”
He closed his eyes. “You, on the other hand, kept your lips glued as if your tonsils were treasure.” The eyes opened. A bony finger shot out, accompanied by a hoarse laugh.
“You wouldn’t shit, eit
her, har. Anus on strike, weeks at a time, quite a style, quite a style. Take all, hold in, give nothing. I thought you were abnormal. Your mother assured me you weren’t and poured mineral oil down your aphasic little gullet.”
Still walking, Lucy mustered a smile of her own. “Is that why you ran? Scared at having an abnormal baby?”
Lowell chuckled, but there was anger in it.
“Run, did I? No, no, no, no, no, I was invited to vacate the premises. Menstrually shrill banshee bye-bye from Maw-Maw and a claw at the face.”
“Mother kicked you out?” Lucy’s turn to laugh. “A big tough guy like you?”
Lowell looked at her, as if in a new light. Sucking in breath, he wiggled his thick eyebrows and stuck his finger in his mouth.
He kept it in there, probing and scraping and breathing roughly.
Pulling it out, he examined a fingernail. “Mother,” he said, “was a blindered, bujwhacked, neurally corseted, parlor-bound stumplet with the textbook vision of a suburban storm trooper. Middle-aged at twenty-three, old at twenty-four. Tapioca libido—her sheer puddingness turned me into a rebellious adolescent. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—learn how to be. She had nothing to live for but rules and rot.”
Lucy’s hands clenched as she turned. For a moment I thought she’d pounce on him; then she shook her head and put one hand in her pocket. And laughed. Her hips angled forward. A lounging pose as staged as Nova’s.
“God,” she said, “you’re pathetic. Terminally blocked, blah, blah, blah. Hiding behind all that bad Joyce.”
Lowell paled. Smiled. Lost the smile. Fished for it and finally found it. But it had lost its cruel luster and his grizzled jaw seemed to weaken.
“Joyce,” he said. “Know him well, do you, Mademoiselle Sophomore? I met the dwent. Paris, 1939. Clerk face, no lips, woman’s hips, lime-suck, lime-suck, lime-suck, bloody gud. That fucking Irish lechery for talk with no conclusion … but let’s get back to lovely Mother. She died a virgin and you genuflect to her daily; the truth is, you know as much about her as you do about prostate clog but you defend her because that’s your script—well, believe what you will, shutter your limited mind to your heart’s contempt.”
He wheezed and inflated his voice.
“Whether or not you know it, you’ve come here to learn. If you fail to do so, it’s your lowered expectation, not mine. The truth, Constipata: she invited me to leave because she couldn’t tolerate a bit of in flagrante delicious.”
Four Classic Alex Delaware Thrillers 4-Book Bundle Page 165
