by EC Sheedy
She walked to the window, peered out. A hint of mist building on the lake clung precariously to the shoreline. Already dark, and with the clouds coming in, soon it would be rain-sodden black. Adam was downstairs; she’d decided to let him have his run while she made her plans, so she didn’t have much time. She knew he’d take a nap, as he always did after his run, but if she had trouble here, she risked waking him. Or Delores did.
No. She’d hurry, because she much preferred waking Adam her own special way. She squeezed her legs together at the thought, waited for the pulsing to stop.
Adam said he was tired of waking up with her hand wrapped around his cock—but she knew it wasn’t true, because his cock told her so. She smiled.
Still, she intended to keep this Delores business quiet, because her beautiful lover was jumpy enough about her plan for Camryn; she didn’t want to add to his uneasiness, make him do something stupid. She wanted him to . . . well, she just wanted him. Period. Everything was for Adam. Or because of Adam.
This was really his fault.
He should never have talked to Delores or listened to her stupid promise to get money from Paul Grantman. That’s when she’d known what she had to do. That’s when something eely and slick had oozed through her, then congealed to a deadly resolve.
He should never have dropped the towel, let Delores see what belonged to her. Only her.
Perhaps when she was finished with Delores and Camryn, she would punish him. But not until she was certain he couldn’t leave her.
The rush of the shower stopped abruptly.
Gina’s heart didn’t quicken, it hardened. She looked around the messy room, took in the unmade bed, the bottles of pills, books, and papers on the bedside table. She picked up the bottles, three of them, and shook her head. Pain-killers, sleeping pills, and vitamin B. She put the vitamin pills back, studied the others.
Possibly . . .
The bathroom door opened, and Delores, holding the doorjamb with one hand and the doorknob with the other, walked unsteadily into the room. Busy reaching for her chair, she didn’t see Gina standing in the shadows near the window until she was settled in it.
Gina noted her mother’s shock, quickly covered, when she spotted Gina.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Delores tucked her bathrobe awkwardly over her knees and glanced toward her bed where a dress was laid out. A red dress. Her shoes sat on the floor below it.
Gina, smiling, walked toward her. “I thought I’d check in on you, see if there’s anything you need before you go to bed.”
Delores eyed her warily, then rolled herself toward the large ebony vanity beside the window. She flicked on a lamp. It might as well have been a candle for all the light it cast.
Her vanity was a mass of carvings: elephant trunks, lion heads, all swirled into tall grass. The mirror frame simulated a series of drums and huts. Hideous.
“Are you crazy? It’s not even eight o’clock.” Delores said to Gina and rolled her chair so she could see herself in the mirror. She picked up a fat jar of cream and lathered her face and neck with it. “What do you want, Gina? As you can see, I’m busy.”
Gina could see her mother watching her in the mirror, so she strolled to the bed and fingered the dress, a soft combination of silk and velvet. A black velvet jacket lay beside it. Beautiful and expensive. Delores never had shortchanged herself. Gina knew her closet was full of clothes like this. From her days of wine and roses, her mother always said.
“You’re going out?” she asked, careful to keep her voice neutral. She didn’t comment on the rarity of the event or remind Delores she hadn’t set a foot outside in months, just as Delores hadn’t commented on the rarity of Gina coming into her room. As always, there was more unspoken than spoken chilling the air between them.
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I have a date.”
“Hm-m.” Gina risked a glance at the duct tape, put her hand in her sweater pocket, and fingered the long silk scarf she’d taken from her bureau. The scarf that would cut off her mother’s unending supply of ugly, hateful, hurtful words. Forever.
She’d have used the gun, but it was noisy, and she’d risk ruining Adam’s prints.
Delores spun her chair, enough to meet Gina’s carefully impassive face. Her expression was taut, irritated. “What? You think you’re the only one around here who can get a man? Well, I’ve got news for you, Gina. All it took was one call.” She smiled then, and looked pleased with herself, nothing at all like the traitorous bitch that she was. “Not that it’s any of your goddamn business, but Paul Grantman is sending a car for me. We’re having dinner.” She turned her chair again, maneuvered it back so she could face the vanity, and picked up a brush, started drawing it through her heavily silvered dark hair. “Now, if you want to do something useful—before you get the hell out of here—you can bring me my dress.”
Gina took the few steps necessary to stand behind her mother. Their gazes met and caught in the mirror. “Actually”—Gina pulled the soft silk from her pocket—“I don’t feel much like being useful, mother dearest. And I don’t think you’ll be going out—ever again.”
Chapter 27
“I’m going to call Paul,” Camryn said, heading for the phone. “He said after eight-thirty. It’s past that already, and we’ve got to go.”
“Go for it,” Dan said. “I’ll get our coats.”
The phone rang as Camryn reached for it.
She answered Dan’s questioning glance with a nod, then listened. “Did you phone? . . . Yes, I know. They let it ring. No voice mail…. Okay. … Yes, we’ll call you tonight.” She clicked off.
“That was short. What did he say?”
“Delores didn’t show. So we’re on our own.”
“Exactly how I like it.” Dan hadn’t been comfortable snuggling up to Grantman, anyway.
“He wants us to call him, let us know how it goes with Adam and Gina.” He held her raincoat, and she settled into it.
“I’m sure he does.” Typical Grantman, not prepared to show his hand but wanting to see theirs.
“Oh, I forgot the wine.” Camryn disappeared into the kitchen, reappeared waving a bottle. “Got it.” She headed for the door.
Wine . . . as if this little get-together of theirs was a regular Saturday-night party of four. A party wasn’t exactly what Dan had in mind.
His mood darkened. Hell, this whole thing with Dunn was probably a waste of time. He’d already forwarded everything he’d learned about the guy to the Boston police; if he were smart, he’d let them take it from there. But damned if he didn’t want to meet the man face-to-face—the man who had most likely murdered Holly and who was now messing with his daughter’s life. The thought made his mouth acidic and his chest cold.
He opened the door, and he and Camryn both stepped onto the porch. At the top of the stairs, before he could take the first step down into the rain and toward the car, Camryn put her hand on his arm.
“One question, one suggestion,” she said.
He pulled up the collar of his windbreaker. “Shoot.” “My mother says, when you go into a meeting, you should always know what you expect to get out of it, so you can measure your progress when you leave, know whether you gained or lost ground.”
“Good advice,” Dan said.
“I think so, too. So my question is this. What do you expect to get out of . . . whatever happens tonight?”
Dan eyed her, wondered how honest he could afford to be. Hell. “Nothing. I expect nothing. Other than everyone ‘making nice,’ pretending all’s right in their tight little worlds and skirting any issue that might change that.”
She cocked her head. “You’re cynical.”
“That surprises you?”
She took the first step down, then turned back. The porch light lit her face, making it the only bright thing in a world of gray and rain. “No. Nothing about you surprises me. Not anymore.”
He touched her hair—he loved her soft hair. “Good. I guess that
’s one benefit, among many, to our sleeping together.”
She clasped his hand. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He turned her hand in his, kissed her palm, and let go. “But the truth is I expect more from myself than Dunn.”
“Like?”
“Like not giving him a new face the second he steps in front of mine, then seeing how well he answers a few direct questions about what the hell he’s doing hanging around my daughter.”
“What if he doesn’t show? Once he knows you’re in the house, he might make himself scarce—and that house is huge.”
“As the saying goes, he can run, but he can’t hide. I’ll find him if I have to search every room in the house. That asshole and I are overdue for a face-off.” He stepped off the porch to the first step, level with her now. “What about you? What do you expect?”
She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. “Now that I think of it, pretty much the same as you. Except, my concern is less with Adam than with Gina. I want to know if she’s . . . okay. Maybe talk some sense into her.” She lifted a hand, brushed at her hair. “She’s my friend, Dan, and she’s hurting. I don’t want her hurting anymore.”
Dan, from what he’d learned about the Gina-Dunn affair, figured Camryn was going to fail big time, but he also understood why she felt she had to try.
He took another step down and offered her his hand. “Then we’re on track—ready to measure our progress, like your mother said.” They walked down the stairs and got into his truck. Before turning on the ignition, he slid a glance at her. She was more tense than she admitted. “You said you had a question and a suggestion. What was the suggestion?”
Her mouth twisted into a brief smile. “That you restrain yourself from ‘giving Adam a new face.’ “
Dan chuckled.
At the end of the driveway, before they turned onto the road, she said, “There’s something else you should know.”
“I’m listening.”
“I called Sebastian and asked him to be there tonight.”
Dan’s eyebrows shot up. This should be a real love-in.
“I thought he could help with Gina,” she went on, “He didn’t say he’d come, but . . .” She glanced at him. “If he does, are you okay with it?”
“Did you tell him Dunn would be there?”
“No.”
Dan could only shake his head. “This is going to be a hell of a party.” He turned the truck onto the road.
In less than ten minutes they were at the Solari gate, and two minutes after that, they were at the front door, and Gina and Camryn were hugging each other with the affection and fierceness of an airport reunion. But when Gina spotted Dan over Camryn’s shoulder, her eyes went cool as ice picks.
“Who’s this?” she said, stepping back from Camryn and eyeing him as if he were an alien life-form. There was no fear in her face, though, only calculation. He had an immediate gut reaction: he didn’t like Gina Solari.
He had to hand it to Camryn; she didn’t miss a beat. “This is Kylie’s stepfather, Gina. I’d talked so much about you, and when you told me Delores wasn’t going to be here, I thought I’d bring him along to meet you in person.” Eyes wide, she added, “You don’t mind, do you?” She looked around. “Delores is out, isn’t she?”
Camryn was damn smooth. If Gina didn’t want him and said so, she’d look as crazy as her mother, which, according to Camryn, Gina would never admit, considering the mother was straitjacket material.
Nice family.
He offered his hand. “Good to meet you, Gina.” She ignored his outstretched hand.
“Hm-m.” She eyed him with a gaze both hot and cool at the same time. Her eyes were brown, deeply intelligent, yet strangely bright; they made him think of pinwheels. She was a lush woman, curves in all the right places, with a head of thick black hair, and a chest that would make a Hollywood starlet proud. He wouldn’t call her a pretty woman, no softness anywhere. No warmth. She still hadn’t said a goddamn word. All she did was stare at him, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her bulky sweater. She looked as if her brain were shuffling out-of-order paperwork. Then, suddenly, as if she’d filed her last folder, she smiled at him. Barely. “Odd we’ve never met, because I’ve heard a lot about you . . . from your dead wife.”
Okay . . . not the best turn of phrase and it caught him off guard. When he looked at her, saw the faint upward twist on one side of her mouth, he knew she’d intended it to do that and was waiting for his reaction. He gave her nothing.
He looked around. “Interesting place you’ve got here.” And a goddamn mess. He tried not to look judgmental, but even a sweeping glance told him that was the only sweep this place had had in years.
“We like it. Mother and I.” She hooked her arm through Camryn’s. “Let’s go into the parlor,” she said.
“Delores’s parlor?” Camryn looked surprised.
“Why not? She won’t be home for”—she waved her other hand—“hours. And hours.”
“Where is she?”
“She has a date. Very mysterious.”
“Really,” Camryn said, frowning.
Dan knew she was thinking about Grantman’s call, about Delores being a no-show. “If you’re sure, then.”
“Not to worry.” Gina smiled again, and those pinwheel eyes of hers spun to Dan. “I’m so sorry you won’t get a chance to meet her. My mother is what most people would call a real piece of work. A rather nasty piece, but entertaining at times.”
When Dan didn’t reply, she took the wine from Camryn’s hand and gave it to him. “Can you handle this?” He took the wine but couldn’t stop looking around.
They were standing in a poorly lit room off the kitchen, a room large enough to host a prom night. Dark, scuffed hardwood floors, furniture at odd angles, a dozen or more long-dead potted plants, more mess than he’d found in the roughest and most remote camps he’d worked in, and the ugliest pink and silver draperies he’d ever seen, some of them off their hooks. Everything upholstered in the room was pink in one shade or another, and all of it was beat-up. Cobwebs shadowed the corners.
“It’s mother’s take on a bordello waiting room. Like it?” Gina asked, her mouth, tightening, told him she didn’t.
“Creative,” he said, looking at her, then lifting the wine bottle. “Glasses? A corkscrew maybe?”
“Over there.” She gestured toward an enameled bar in the corner of the garish room. “When you’re done. We’ll be in there.” Another gesture toward a door a few feet away. Delores’s parlor, he presumed.
“How many glasses?” he asked.
Gina eyed him, then looked at Camryn. Defensively, Dan thought. “Four. Adam will be down in a few minutes.” She upped the wattage in her sharp eyes. “And he’s the one you’re just dying to meet, right?” She smiled then, as if what she’d said was in jest. The woman was a definite nut job.
“Four it is.” He crossed the room, opened the wine—a decent one thanks to Camryn—then joined the two women in what could only be described as a dark, furniture-packed pigsty of a room that faced the lake.
“Could use some light,” he said.
“Mother likes it this way. Sorry.”
He shrugged, set four glasses—none too clean from what he could see—on the coffee table next to a couple of heaping ashtrays. He poured the wine for the three of them.
Camryn, who’d been standing by the window when he came into the room, walked toward the settee. She shoved some magazines aside so she could sit down, but before she could sit—
“No!” Gina said. “Don’t sit there.” Holding her drink in one hand, she pointed toward two chairs, and, as if she were directing a stage play, said to Dan, “You sit there,” nodding to one, “and you there, Camryn,” gesturing toward another chair, directly across from the settee and in the opposite corner from Dan. The room was long and somewhat narrow, so it seemed their hostess wanted them as far apart as she could get them. Damned strange, thought Dan.
Gi
na went on. “While you settle in, I’ll go up and see if I can hurry up Adam. Oh, and I’ve got some cheese and crackers. I’ll get them, too.” She set her wineglass precariously on a stack of books that sat beside the ugliest sofa he’d ever seen. “God,” she babbled on, her voice a pitch higher. “We have so much to talk about. It’s been ages. Absolute ages.” She shot a look toward him. “You won’t mind listening to some girly catch-up talk, will you, Dan?”
“Not at all.” From here on in—at least until Dunn showed up—he’d happily let Camryn carry the ball.
When Gina was gone, Camryn, aghast at her friend’s odd behavior, turned to Dan, “God, I didn’t know it’d got this bad. Something’s not right with her. I felt it the minute we walked in the door.” She tugged nervously on her earlobe. “And where’s Delores?”
She was asking herself, not Dan, but he shook his head. “Can’t say I’m sorry to have missed her, after meeting the daughter. That woman’s more out of it than Erin Grantman on her worst day—and not from drugs.” Dan wandered the room, tried a couple of the lamps, but none of them worked. They were left with the light from a gooseneck reading lamp near a chair in the far corner, enough to cast shadows but little else.
“Damn it.” Camryn said, letting out a frustrated sigh. “I should have stayed in closer contact these past months, but she kept resisting any effort I made. Kept saying she needed time alone for a while. When I’d press, saying I’d come here, she’d put me off.” Camryn got up, sipped her wine, and started to pace. “She always blamed Delores and, knowing Delores, I believed her. Damn it,” she said again. “I shouldn’t have taken no for an answer.” The truth was she hated coming here; the unending mess and Delores’s withering tongue did not make for a fun time. So she’d decided to give Gina what she wanted. Time alone to work out whatever needed to be worked out. She’d never dreamed it had anything to do with Adam.
“So now you’re making this loony bin”—he waved a careless hand—“and its flaky inhabitants your fault?”
“No, but I could have been more sensitive. Maybe helped in some way.”
