by John Saul
“I just feel like I should be here,” Risa fretted.
“You will be,” Conrad reminded her. “Just not until she’s awake. Now scoot. Tell Maria we’ll want dinner in, and I’ll be hungry as a bear.” He stood up, took Risa’s hand, and drew her to her feet. “And tell Ruffles that he’ll have to sleep with us tonight, but that Alison will be home tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She smiled, then leaned against him again. “Thanks,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him and looking up into his dark eyes. “You’re so…good!”
Conrad looked down at his wife and saw the lines of exhaustion around her eyes.
Maybe—if he had time—he’d just tighten those eyes up in the next month or so.
“WINE CELLAR DOWN THERE,” Maria said in her broken English, not looking at Risa as she pointed her spatula toward a door on the far side of the kitchen.
Risa opened it and flipped on the light, illuminating a long, steep stairway. As she gazed down into the basement, she realized that she had not only never seen the rooms under the house, but until this moment hadn’t even known there was a basement.
She started down the stairs, and as the door at the top swung closed behind her, felt the vibration of machinery and knew it must be the air conditioners, furnaces, and water heaters that supported the huge house. The vibration turned into an audible hum as she walked down the silent, industrially carpeted hallway that ran away from the base of the stairs. The door to the pool equipment room, clearly marked, was on her right, and just beyond it was another room with a glass panel in the door. Through it she could see a digital thermometer reading 57° and soft glowing lights beneath a series of wine racks.
Inside the wine cellar—which must have been stocked with at least a thousand bottles of more varieties than she knew existed—she quickly found the champagne section, chose a bottle of Dom Perignon, then took another bottle, for good measure. With any luck at all, this could turn out to be a very romantic evening.
She turned the lights down again and left the wine to its aging, closing the door firmly behind her.
She was retracing her steps back toward the staircase when something in the air stopped her. Frowning, she sniffed. Yes, there was something there. Something sweet. Pleasant.
And totally incongruous in this purely functional area of the house.
She opened the door to the room opposite the one housing the pool equipment, and found the source of the humming that permeated this level of the mansion. It was a large equipment room, with a furnace, five air-conditioning compressors, and what looked like a powerful generator, along with half a dozen large gray metal boxes that presumably contained the electrical circuits and switches needed to keep the whole thing functioning. Risa closed the door, and seeing nothing ahead but the pool equipment room and then the stairs back up to the kitchen, turned the other way and ventured farther down the hallway, where it took a turn to the right.
An unmarked door lay at the end of the hallway, where the scent was stronger. It seemed to be emanating from behind the door.
Could something have broken open in a storeroom?
Risa approached the door and sniffed the air again. The scent was definitely stronger. She turned the knob, cracked open the door slightly, and a wave of fragrance washed over her. She set the two bottles of champagne on the hallway floor, then pushed the door the rest of the way open.
The disembodied face of Margot Dunn stared at her.
Risa gasped and took an involuntary step backward, tripping on the carpeting but catching herself just before she fell.
Heart racing, she peered into the room again and realized that what she’d actually seen was nothing more than a softly lit life-size photograph of Margot.
Her pulse starting to drop back to normal, she groped for the light switch that should be next to the door, found it, and flipped it on.
The light in the room came up, a warm glow that filled the room from invisible fixtures. Risa stepped farther inside, and saw a lighted vanity against one of the walls, the top covered with ornate, blown-glass perfume bottles, one of which was open.
Combs, brushes, and a hand mirror—along with a profusion of pots, jars, and bottles of creams, lotions, and makeup—were all carefully arranged on the vanity’s spotless glass top.
She moved to the middle of the room and gazed around her. Framed, poster-sized photographs of Margot Dunn at the height of her modeling career covered the walls.
A three-way mirror stood in a corner, another in the corner opposite. Three racks built along one wall held samples of Margot’s signature clothing. A mannequin, wearing a slinky black Valentino dress, stood next to a blow-up of the famous Vogue cover with the photo of Margot wearing that same dress.
Next to the vanity there was a three-panel changing screen with a silk robe casually thrown over it as if Margot were behind it even now, changing into something…what?
More comfortable?
What the hell was going on in here?
Though she knew it was impossible, Risa still found herself walking over to glance behind the screen to make certain that Margot truly wasn’t there. A pair of lace-topped, thigh-high black hose was draped over a small chair behind the screen, as if Margot had just taken them off a moment ago.
Risa shivered, though the room was far from cold, and her skin began to crawl with the feeling that she was not alone.
Could Conrad be home already? She stepped out from behind the screen, but nobody was there.
Except there was somebody there: Margot Dunn, who had been dead for a year, but whose essence filled this room to the point where the dead woman’s presence was almost palpable.
Risa opened one of the drawers in the vanity—Margot’s silk lingerie, neatly folded, filled it to the brim.
She opened the large jewelry box—apparently, every piece of Margot’s magnificent jewelry lay perfectly aligned, as if waiting to enhance their owner’s beauty. Unlike Risa’s own jumbled and tangled jewelry box, Margot’s earrings were sorted in matched pairs, her necklaces neatly coiled, her rings lined up in velvet slots.
And in the bottom drawer, lying alone on the black velvet lining, there was a key.
Risa looked around for something the key might fit, but saw nothing.
She closed the jewelry box, put the stopper back in the perfume bottle, and took a step toward the door, even while wishing she’d never come into the room at all. And then, as she stood alone amid Margot’s clothes and jewelry and makeup, with Margot’s eyes watching her from every frame on every wall, she recalled Conrad’s voice on that first night of their honeymoon in Paris.
Margot!
It had been Margot’s name he’d called out, not hers.
Before their wedding, he’d cleaned all of Margot’s things out of the closets, taken all the photographs off the walls, and removed everything that she might find difficult to live with, and she’d loved him for it.
But now she could see that he hadn’t gotten rid of it at all, hadn’t gotten rid of any of it. He’d only brought it down here to store it in the basement.
But as Risa took another look around, she knew this was no storeroom.
It was a shrine.
A shrine to a woman who was dead.
Except that to Conrad, Margot apparently wasn’t dead at all.
How often did he come down here? Did he prefer Margot’s perfume to her own?
She pictured Conrad prowling the room, caressing his dead wife’s lingerie, stroking the glimmering fabric on that black Valentino gown.
Was he happier down here, mourning at this memorial to his dead wife, than upstairs in the company of his warm, loving, living wife?
A terrible aching feeling of helplessness and hopelessness came over Risa as she gazed around the room once more. How could she ever compete with Margot’s beauty and grace?
Her eyes glistened with tears, tears she had no strength to fight, but just as they were about to overwhelm her, she remembered the night just over
a year ago when Michael Shaw had told her their marriage was over, and why.
She had cried that night. Not so much because she’d lost Michael, but because there was no way to fight for him.
But Conrad was different.
Conrad wasn’t gay.
And suddenly Risa felt her strength flooding back into her, and she gazed up at Margot again, this time seeing her in a whole new light.
“You’re dead,” she whispered. “You’re dead and buried and no longer a part of our life. And you will not claim my husband.”
Margot was dead, and no matter how much time Conrad spent down here with his memories, Margot could not seduce him any longer.
Not the way she herself could.
And would.
Starting tonight.
Snatching one of Margot’s peignoirs off the clothes rack, a peignoir that was far more beautiful—and expensive—than anything she would have bought for herself, Risa left the basement room, closing the door firmly behind her.
By the end of this evening, she resolved, Conrad would never want to come back here again.
21
The fingers played over the keyboard with the deftness of Van Cliburn racing through Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. At the top left-hand corner of the computer screen there was a photograph of a mousy young woman named Molly Roberts—whose name was of no more interest to the mind than the names of any of its previous subjects.
The eyes gazed steadily at the screen as the facial-recognition software measured every aspect of the nose that was enlarged in the center of the screen.
Molly Roberts’s nose.
A nose whose perfection the eyes had perceived at once, and which was now being confirmed by the utterly objective code running in the brain of the computer.
And then the measurements were done, and as the mind had expected, the dimensions and ratios were perfect right down to a single millimeter.
The computer had finally finished its most difficult job and was now assembling all the puzzle pieces it had been gathering over the past year.
At the top right-hand corner of the screen was a photograph of Margot Dunn.
The goal must never be forgotten.
When Molly Roberts’s medical records popped up in the center of the screen, the right hand manipulated the mouse, and in only a second or two the medical records shrank to fit into the lower left-hand corner of the monitor.
The forefinger of the right hand worked the wheel on the mouse, and the pages of the medical record began to flow by the window.
The blood type was a perfect match.
An attorney’s office served as next of kin.
The fingers picked up a pen and scribbled the address and phone number on a Post-it.
Google Maps pinpointed the location of Molly Roberts’s apartment.
But the medical records were voluminous. Why?
And then the eyes saw it: Molly Roberts suffered from agoraphobia. She was a shut-in.
A silent curse formed on the lips, and the small dog that was sleeping in his bed next to the desk stirred, as if sensing his master’s fury.
Agoraphobia.
That could make this more difficult than the mind had anticipated.
White-hot rage began to build behind the eyes as they scanned the medical records over and over again.
This was the final piece—the last payment! It should be simple. But now it wouldn’t be.
The chair creaked as the eyes closed and the body leaned back. The head rotated gently on the neck to reduce tension.
The mind ordered the body to relax, and slowly the body obeyed. After all, this was but a minor inconvenience, and given that this was to be the final payment of the old debt, whatever inconvenience was involved would be worth the extra effort. Soon it would all be over.
The eyes opened as a sigh escaped the lips, and once again the fingers began to fly over the keyboard, seeking avenues of access.
The girl had no next of kin. She lived alone.
Ah, but wait! Here was something: she ran a website for other agoraphobics.
The fingers moved more rapidly, and the browser opened a fresh window filled with information on the website. The masthead showed two miniature dachshunds. A quick check on the chat section of the site showed that Molly Roberts, logged in as MollyAtHome, posted more often than anyone else, and that she was constantly talking about her two elderly dogs and the mobile vet who came to the house to care for them.
An idea began to take root, sprout, and quickly grow.
The right hand manipulated the mouse, and one by one the windows closed.
The screen went dark.
The vow came back to mind: “I will do whatever it takes.”
“Come here, Mr. Bojangles. Come here, sweetheart.”
The teacup schnauzer got up from his bed, stretched, then clicked his nails on the hardwood floor and jumped up into his mistress’s lap.
“I have a big job for you, yes I do,” she cooed to him, stroking his soft fur. After a moment, when the dog was settled, Danielle DeLorian snapped its neck and felt it die in her lap.
THE LAST THING Risa expected when she walked into Alison’s room at Le Chateau at eight o’clock that evening was to find her daughter sitting up in bed, the TV on and tuned to one of their favorite shows. As she came over to the bed, her daughter grinned at her.
“Can you believe it?” Alison asked. “All that stuff Conrad gave me really worked. I thought I’d be feeling terrible, but nothing hurts at all.”
Risa cocked her head and gazed at Alison, barely able to believe that she’d been under anesthesia only a few hours ago; indeed, when she’d called Le Chateau an hour ago, she was told that Alison was still in recovery. But now here she was, in a room far more beautiful than any hospital room Risa had ever seen, and looking as comfortable as if she were in the hotel suite the room resembled.
Unable to stop herself, Risa laid her wrist against Alison’s forehead, but felt no fever at all.
Nor did Alison look even slightly pale.
“So,” she finally said, dropping into a large overstuffed chair placed so it faced Alison, “I guess I wasted a lot of time worrying for nothing, huh?”
“Not as much as I did,” Alison replied. “I can’t believe it—I really thought all Conrad was doing was trying to get me to stop worrying!”
“And where, exactly, is Conrad?” Risa asked, doing her best to keep her voice as cheerful as Alison’s. For the last two hours she’d been worrying about what the strange shrine in the basement was all about. But she wasn’t about to mention it to Alison.
Or anyone else.
Not, at least, until she knew the results of what she’d planned for this evening.
But something in her voice must have given Alison a hint that something wasn’t right, because her smile had faded.
“Didn’t he go home?” her daughter asked. “He was here half an hour ago, and said he’d see me in the morning. I thought he was done for the day.”
“And so I was,” Conrad himself said, coming through the doorway. He crossed over to Risa, kissed her on the cheek, then took Alison’s wrist to check her pulse. “Until Teresa told me your mother was on her way over.” He fell silent for a few seconds, counting the beats of Alison’s heart, then dropped her wrist back onto the bed. “So I figured I’d wait around, see you one more time, and make sure your mother lets you go to sleep.”
“Except I’m not sleepy,” Alison challenged.
“You will be,” Conrad said placidly. “Everyone always wakes up feeling great, then crashes a few hours later. But it won’t be bad, and I expect you’ll still be going home in the morning. But I want you to sleep in, all right? I’m giving orders that you aren’t to be woken up until nine. The nurses can check on you, but they can’t wake you up. Okay?”
“This place really isn’t like a hospital, is it?” Risa said. “Every time I’ve been in one, they wake you up to give you sleeping pills.”
“
Obviously you’ve been going to the wrong hospitals,” Conrad told her. “And the nine o’clock do-not-disturb applies to you, too,” he added. “Think you can keep away that long?”
“Can’t I even come in and sit with her?” Risa countered.
“You’d never be able to do that. You’d start poking her to make sure she was still breathing.”
“I wouldn’t!”
“You would, too, Mom.” Alison yawned.
“Aha!” Conrad said. “See? You’re about to pass out for the night. What do you say I take your mother home for dinner, and leave you to sleep?”
Alison shrugged. “Actually, you’re right—I think I am starting to poop out. Don’t you have any more of those miracle pills you gave me?”
“Not to keep you awake. Not tonight. Tonight, all I want you to do is sleep.” He gently drew Risa to her feet. “So what do you think? Is it okay if I take your mother home?”
“Sure—I’ll be fine. Besides, Dad and Scott are coming by. Dad said they’d be here at eight-thirty.”
“And they’ll be gone by nine,” Conrad instructed. Then, at the look on Alison’s face, he relented. “All right, nine-thirty. But no later, understand?”
“Okay,” Alison grumbled. She tried to hold up her arms but failed. Risa bent down to kiss her gently on the cheek, careful to put no pressure on her, but Alison pulled her close. “Love you, Mom,” she whispered.
“I love you, too,” Risa replied. “See you in the morning.”
“But not too early,” Alison said before Conrad could repeat the admonition.
Risa, though, didn’t need the admonition repeated.
If everything went according to her plan, neither Conrad nor she would want to be getting up early tomorrow morning.
“I’M GOING UPSTAIRS,” Risa said, putting a hand on top of Conrad’s and glancing at the clock. It was almost ten. “Finish your wine and then come join me?”
“Sure,” he replied. “I’ve got a stack of journals to get caught up on. Might as well do it in comfort.”
“Not tonight,” Risa said, sliding her chair back from the dining room table. “I have a surprise for you.”
