After a minute she patted the stone back into the flowerbed. The lock did not need a key. She turned the bolt and went inside.
A dish towel hung from the oven, and she borrowed it to wipe off her fingerprints. There were dishes in the sink. Carry out containers in the trash. A big ice chest on the counter, which seemed odd. She opened it and saw milk, orange juice, Swiss cheese, and three bottles of beer. She looked in all the cabinets, seeing nothing out of the ordinary.
She made a quick tour of the living room. Nothing behind the sofa but dust. Nothing under the sofa cushions, in the piano bench, or in the closet by the front door. The dining area near the kitchen had an oak table and four chairs.
In the hall she opened a door, saw linens and cleaning supplies. Nothing under the towels or behind the vacuum cleaner.
5:28. The bathroom. Blond hair in the shower stall. A dozen kinds of shampoo and conditioner. Cleaning supplies under the cabinet. The usual razor, aftershave, dental floss, et cetera behind the mirror. She opened the hamper and found dirty clothes.
Then to the bedroom. Light flooded in through the closed windows, which faced west. The room felt hot and short of oxygen, but Gail knew it was only her nervousness beginning to bite. Plenty of time, she told herself. Bed unmade, pillows askew at the head. Blue sheets, matching duvet. Nightstand with telephone, score to Boris Gudonov, several colored markers, and a Russian dictionary. Drawer contained porno videos. Gail pushed it shut.
She looked at her watch again. Only 5:30. The closet contained clothing—big surprise. Two tuxedos in garment bags. Likewise pleated shirts. Leather shoes, running shoes, boots, sandals. An empty suit bag. And a suitcase. Gail stared up at it. She could hear her breath rushing in and out of her lungs. She reached up carefully and poked it to see if anything was inside. It felt light. She brought it down and unzipped it anyway. No rifle. No scope or silencer. No bomb parts.
The realization was starting to dawn that she had committed a felony with nothing to show for it. She went to the bureau and opened drawers. Shirts, sweaters, workout clothes. Nothing. She looked at her watch. Told herself to relax.
To the dresser. A television and VCR sat on one corner. Top drawer. Bills, envelopes, checkbook, some cash. A few personal photos. Friends skiing. A postcard from Milan, someone named Fredericka. A small frame that opened up to show a three-by-five color snapshot, teenaged Tom Nolan at a piano with a blond girl standing behind him, probably another student. Gail knew it was Nolan only because she had seen the same face in her high school yearbook. She looked through some bills. Letters from friends. Nothing with Dixon's or Reyes's name on it. She glanced through his checkbook. No unusual deposits. Neat handwriting. Balance $4,389.18. Found an appointment book, flipped through it. Rehearsal schedules. Phone numbers. Dixon or Reyes not listed.
She pushed the drawer shut. She had been wrong. Glanced at her watch. 5:35.
With one last look around, she wiped the doorknob and went back down the hall, wanting only to get the hell out. She hung the dish towel back on the oven handle.
Shards of glass glittered on the wood floor in the living room. Through the broken pane she heard the fountain. Water splashed into the basin below.
What a weird feeling, she thought. As if suddenly she were standing by the seawall looking back at the cottage. Seeing a woman at the door, a grand piano behind her. The woman looking through broken glass at a fountain, the water gushing out.
She heard Anthony's voice. Los Pozos is a small village in the hills . . . covered in mist and rain, and the earth is red. ... We lived . . . in a house that belonged to the church . . . no plumbing, but there was a well. "Pozos" means "wells," so at least we had plenty of fresh water.
Gail could see the woman in the doorway backing up, disappearing into the cottage.
Moving down the hallway again, hurrying before the thought disappeared. As if coming out of a dream, wanting to hang onto it before it vanished like mist.
To the bedroom, open the top dresser drawer. And lift out the frame with the snapshot. Unfold it.
Gail stared down at Tommy Nolan, then the blond girl. The freckles on her face had thrown Gail off at first, but the girl was not a teenager. When I was young, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Miss Wells— my teacher—said no. You should sing. I owe everything to her.
Rebecca had said, Emily was a scholarship student. She gave piano lessons to earn spending money.
How had Seth described Emily Davis? A pretty girl, loads of freckles.
Gail heard her own low moan as she put the picture back. "Oh, no. Oh, my God." She closed the drawer with the tip of her finger. She felt a chill so intense the hair on her arms stood up.
She looked in the mirror, seeing the woman again, such a pale face, then behind her the mussed bed with the duvet hanging off the end of it. She turned slowly around.
Kneeling on the carpet, she lifted the hem of the duvet, and bent over to peer underneath the bed.
It was as if she had known all along it would be there. No surprise.
She slid it out. An expensive Hartmann, tweed with brown leather trim. Not new. There was something inside, but not a great deal of weight. She ran her hand over the surface.
In her intense concentration, with every sense focused on the zipper rasping smoothly around a corner of the suitcase, Gail did not register the other sound until a second after it had occurred: the creak of wood in the doorway.
By then it was too late.
Thomas Nolan had come home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
What are you doing here?"
Nolan spoke in nearly a whisper, not believing what he saw—Gail Connor kneeling at the foot of his bed unzipping a small brown suitcase.
In those few seconds she managed to find in his expression more astonishment than anger. "Oh, Tom. I'm really sorry. I wanted to—to see your house. That's all." Legs shaking, she stood up. She found her breath again. "I mean—I'm such a fan. I wanted something of yours. A memento."
Looking at her sideways as if studying an apparition whose reality was still not certain, he moved slowly into the room. A blue denim shirt was tucked neatly into black jeans. His hair was free, curling past wide shoulders, and the stage makeup was gone. Once more the eyebrows were only vague arches on the bony ridge over deep-set eyes. His lips had vanished entirely, sucked inward as he continued to watch her.
"I thought ... a shirt . . . some pages from a piano score. You were at the party."
"So you decided to burglarize my house."
"Please don't have me arrested. I'll leave. You'll never see me again." With a foot she shoved the suitcase under the bed.
"Why were you opening that?"
"I wasn't. I didn't actually open it."
He stooped to check the zipper.
"I'll pay for the glass I broke. And the bother." She moved toward the door. "Whatever you want."
His eyes fixed on her. "Did you come looking for this?"
"Tom, I don't know what it is, and I don't care."
He came across the room. "What else did you look at? What did you touch?"
"Nothing." She was walking backward in the hall. "I'm really sorry."
She whirled around and ran. Fingers slid off her shoulder as if a cat had swiped at her. The heels of her pumps pounded out of the hall, across the living room, everything a blur, then toward the open French door.
Across the patio. She lost a shoe taking the turn around the cottage. A scream for help died in her throat when trees and sky whirled and the grass rushed toward her. She put out her arms and rolled.
Tom Nolan's hand became a fist. In the next instant her head exploded. The light wavered and went out.
Gail came slowly out of the darkness, and for a while she drifted. Then the pain dragged her into full consciousness. It burned down the side of her head into her neck. She shifted her jaw. Nothing broken. Her eyes opened. She saw a grand piano. A worn oriental rug prickled her cheek.
Then she felt the constrictio
n around her wrists and ankles. She was bound with rope and lying on the floor in Thomas Nolan's cottage. The window behind the piano showed a colorless sky. The light was fading. The curtains across the French doors were drawn shut.
Music soared from the stereo on the bookcase opposite the sofa. An opera. Wagner. Then a deep voice from somewhere behind her joined in. Tristan und Isolde. Gail concentrated to orient herself. Her back was to the kitchen. She heard a cabinet drawer shut.
She shifted. Her hands were tied behind her, numb and tingling. The blood came back into the arm she lay on, and she grimaced. With effort she twisted around. Saw the dining area between herself and the kitchen. Everything at a crazy angle, the lamp hanging sideways, the table coming from the other direction to meet it. The French doors were closed. Someone in a blue shirt stood in the kitchen doorway on long black legs.
She turned her head and the world righted itself. Tom Nolan said, "How could you screw things up like this?" She didn't know if he was talking to her or to himself.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
He squatted down beside her and flipped his hair over his shoulder. "Where are you supposed to be right now?"
"My mother's house. She's expecting me. My daughter—Karen—''
"Do they know where you are?"
The yes caught in her mouth. If she said it, then what? Would he go and find them? She shook her head. "I didn't tell anyone."
"Where is Anthony Quintana?" Nolan poked her shoulder when Gail felt dizzy and closed her eyes. "Where is he?"
"Having dinner with a client."
"Does he have a portable telephone? How do you get in touch with him?"
Hesitantly she asked, "Why do you want to know?"
Nolan exhaled, then said patiently, "I want him to come and take you out of here. If he gives me any trouble, I'll call the police and press charges against you."
"Call his voice mail. He has a beeper." Gail gave Nolan the number. When he stood up, she started trembling with relief. Nolan didn't know. He didn't know what she had found in the drawer. He didn't know why she had come.
Her eyes followed him across the room to the stereo. The Wagner went off, and the room was silent. "Tom, untie me. My arms hurt. I won't run away."
He held up a hand—wait—and picked up the cordless telephone by the sofa. After a few seconds, he said, "Hi. Mr. Quintana, this is Tom Nolan. I've run into a problem. You're probably busy, but this is extremely urgent. Could you call me back as soon as you get this message?" He left his own number and hit the button for disconnect.
With a bubble of fear rising in her chest, Gail said, "Why didn't you mention me?"
Nolan hung up the phone. "When he gets here, you can go."
"Please don't hurt him."
"Why would I hurt him? And I'm not going to untie you. Just lie there and be quiet." He sat in the armchair and tapped tented fingers on his forehead in a steady rhythm. "I have to think."
When the telephone rang, Nolan slowly lowered his hands. It rang again. He picked up the handset and carried it down the hall into his bedroom. The door closed.
Gail rolled against the sofa and used it to get herself on her knees. Pressing her lips together not to let out a sound, she walked herself across the rug. The skin on her knees burned through torn hose. She would somehow get to her feet, maneuver through the curtains, and turn the doorknob on the French doors. She swept the curtain aside with a shoulder and saw that the hurricane shutters had been rolled across the doors. She collapsed to a sitting position, then struggled up and went toward the kitchen.
A knife. She could visualize it. Heavy, sharp, with a wooden handle. Somehow get to her feet. Open a drawer. Sit down. Wedge the knife between her heels, cut the rope on her wrists. There had to be a way. There was time. Anthony was with a client. He wouldn't want to come. Nolan would have to convince him.
The ice chest was on the kitchen floor. Gail dropped her shoulder on it, intending to lever herself to a standing position. Her knee dragged through a puddle of water. Gasping for breath, she got up halfway and saw a man lying next to the cabinets. The water had run from his clothing.
As if in slow motion her mind pulled in the details: rumpled black clothing, gray mustache, close-cropped graying hair. Everything gray. The face. The hands. He lay on his side. Arms crossed on his chest and tied in place. The rope around his knees was looped around his neck, pulling him into a tight package.
Gail noticed that the left hand had only a thumb and two fingers. It was Felix. She let out a scream of horror and rage. Now she knew how his fingerprints had been placed on the evidence. The night, the bomb went off, Felix was already dead. She knew where Nolan had kept him.
A few seconds later Tom Nolan was dragging her by an elbow to the middle of the living room. He dropped her, then pushed a hand through his hair to get it off his face. "I told you to stay where you were."
Gail was shaking with terror. "Anthony—"
"He's on his way. I told him the police were about to arrest me for beating up a member of the crew. I had just hung up when you screamed." Nolan pulled back his cuff to see his watch. "He said he'd be here in half an hour."
Numbly Gail said, "Seth and Rebecca and Felix. Now you want Anthony. Please don't. Please."
Nolan stared down at her.
"I know everything, Tom. Your piano teacher. Miss Wells. Oh, my God. It was there all the time. Los Pozos. Emily Davis went to Los Pozos in 1978. You left school in the spring semester of 1979.1 never connected the two. Is that why you tried to kill yourself? I remember they found you in the bandmaster's cottage."
Gail twisted to a sitting position and leaned on the sofa. "The State Department sent a report to Emily's aunt. Did she show it to you?"
"Yes. It had all their names."
"Anthony didn't kill Emily Davis! Neither did Seth or Rebecca. Tom, please. It was Felix Castillo. Felix confessed to me."
"What do you mean? Felix wasn't there. His name wasn't in the report."
"Of course not. He was a Cuban spy."
Nolan bent down to look into her face, and his hair swung forward. He slowly enunciated every word. "Felix Castillo was in Cuba until 1980. Rebecca Dixon told me that. Oh, very good, Gail. Blame Emily's murder on a man who wasn't there."
"But he was there. He shot her because she spied for the CIA."
"Emily? That's ridiculous."
Gail shouted at him, "If Felix wasn't there, then why did you kill him?"
"He was asking me questions. Where had I been the night Seth died? What friends had I been with? Where did we go? I came home late after the recital at the Dixons' apartment. I beeped Felix and said someone had just threatened to come over and kill me. Felix arrived and I shot him as he got out of his van."
"You vicious, heartless son of a bitch," Gail said between clenched teeth. "Why did you have to kill his girlfriend, too?"
"I'm sorry about her, but she started screaming. I had to go to Felix's house, and I didn't expect her to be there."
The tears were rising again, and Gail forced herself to hold them back. "How did you know Seth was going to WRCL?"
"I was following him. I had planned to do it that night at his house, but Rebecca came over, and then you. When the two of you had left, I followed him to the radio station. A stroke of luck."
Laughing, Gail lowered her head to the sofa cushion. "I thought—at one point—that you were working for Lloyd Dixon. And then I thought you did it for the CIA, and the CIA had framed Felix Castillo."
Nolan narrowed his eyes, studying her in that sideways fashion. "The CIA again. You're raving." He walked to the bookcase.
"Tom, please don't hurt Anthony. He didn't do anything to her, I swear it."
From behind a row of books he pulled out a red metal can and a small cardboard box. "You've been seduced by a master. I tried to warn you several times, but it went right over your head. Too bad you're not more observant."
"Tom, he didn't do it! None of them did!"
<
br /> With slow deliberation he set the box and metal gasoline can on the table. The hanging lamp made his hair into a penumbra of light. "They destroyed the most beautiful creature—the sweetest, most gentle—They took her to that backward, violent, filthy place, murdered her, and left her there."
"But why?"
"Why? Because she discovered the real purpose of their trip—to establish a connection for illegal drugs— and they thought she would tell the authorities."
Gail wavered on the edge of hysteria. Version number five. She thought she might lose her sanity. "Where- did you hear that?"
With slow paces he walked across the room, his soft-soled boots making no sound. "Emily told me she was involved with a Cuban named Tony. She said he wanted her to go with him to Nicaragua. I begged her not to. She said, 'Oh, it's only for the summer. I promise I'll be back. I'm going to be your accompanist. You'll be a great opera singer someday.' She kissed me. She said ... I was the one she would always love. Then she was gone."
Nolan paused to get his voice under control. "Three months later this same Tony informed Emily's aunt that she had fallen in love with one of the men in the town. That was impossible. Emily had such talent, such beauty and promise. When I read the report from the State Department—Emily was presumed dead—I fell into despair. I tried to kill myself. Later, I vowed to find out what had happened to her. There was civil unrest in Nicaragua until 1991. In 1992 I spent a week in Los Pozos. People remembered the four Americans, one of whom called himself a Cuban. They remembered Emily. They called her la rubia—the blonde. Her friends made connections with a supplier. La rubia found out and tried to leave. They killed her."
He now stood so close that Gail was forced to look up the length of black jeans and blue denim torso. His nose projected like the beak of a bird of prey. "I have planned this for a long time. I learned all about them. Their history, their habits. I even know about you. No, I don't know which one of them killed her, but they're all guilty—Anthony Quintana the most culpable of all." Nolan laughed. "And now he defends criminals. Drug dealers and murderers. He hasn't changed."
Suspicion of Deceit Page 33
