by Medora Sale
“You remember Mrs. Neilson’s birthday party, Randy? Maybe you helped Mr. Neilson organize it. It was here. Lots of people, lots of booze, everything. Costume party, wasn’t it?”
The big open smile returned to his face. “A birthday party for Mrs. Neilson?” He looked puzzled, very puzzled, and shook his head. “Gee, I don’t remember anything about that. Mr. Neilson had parties here sometimes, but Mrs. Neilson never came. I don’t even know what she looks like. She’s one of these real quiet ladies, I guess. Homey type.”
“Where does the cash go after you’ve finished counting it?” snapped Sanders.
“To the bank,” said West, opening his eyes in candid innocence. “Oh, you mean after that. Well, strictly speaking, Mr. Neilson didn’t own the place. It’s owned by a corporation. NorthSea owns fifty percent of the corporation. Anyway, I deposit the receipts in a special NorthSea account, the bills get paid out of that, and the auditors make sure the corporation gets what it’s supposed to get.”
“Who owns the other fifty percent?”
The smile came out again. “Who knows? Could have been Mr. Neilson under another company name. He had pretty smart accountants—very good at setting up things to minimize taxes and stuff like that. All legal, of course. But very complicated.”
“Then who is the guy who came here to talk to you, who seems to think he owns part of the place?” By now, Sanders’s voice was very soft.
“Are you kidding? There’s no one like that. Who told you that? You find him for me. I’d like a good laugh right now. Look, I got to get this done before the evening rush starts. If you don’t mind.”
“We’ll be back, Mr. West,” said Dubinsky, rising to his full height and leaning over the little bookkeeper. “You could just try to remember the name of your friend who thinks he owns the place. Because next time we come, we could be feeling a little less patient than we are now.” His voice was gently caressing.
Randy West started entering figures with furious haste onto the numeric keypad.
Annie had slept most of Tuesday and Wednesday, waking to eat, a little more each time, and obediently drinking whatever liquids Rob thrust at her. Her conversation was limited to monosyllables; either she was too weak to talk or she had no taste for it. Once he had helped guard a witness who spoke only Arabic, sitting, the two of them, in a hotel room, one shift on, one off, for four days. That had been bad. This was worse. Then he had been able to watch television, dreary as it could be sometimes, to pass the time. And he had felt that the man would have talked to him if he could have. Now he could only pace around the echoing room. When she was sleeping, he ventured outside in the sun, shaking himself like a bear come out of hibernation, stretching and stamping his feet and taking great gulps of outdoor air. He was impatient for her to get better, to tell him exactly what had happened, but he felt a strong reluctance to pry.
On Thursday he was awakened by a thumping sound, looked up, and saw her hopping across the room, leaning heavily on pieces of furniture and the wall as she maneuvered her way into the bathroom by herself. When she emerged again, he was leaning against the wall outside the door.
“Tired?”
“Not that tired. I can manage,” she said irritably.
“Why not let me help you back,” he said, picking her up again and carrying her to her bed. She felt more solid, less likely to crack if he grabbed her too hard. And heavier. “How about some real breakfast this time?” he said, as he dropped her down.
She nodded silently and turned to look out the window.
After breakfast he went out into the woods and began to look for a suitable piece of timber. He found a pine branch, relatively straight, ripped green off its tree by some violent winter storm. He had already picked up a hunting knife and a whetstone from the garage; he settled himself in the sun on the deck and began to turn the branch into a usable cane. Stripped of its bark and sanded a little, it gleamed palely in the sun. He purloined a heavy-duty rubber tip from a leg of the barbecue and slipped it on. He sacrificed one of his cotton T-shirts to make a padded handgrip on the top, fastened on by four neatly placed tiny nails. He returned the tools to the garage, walked back into the cottage, and solemnly placed the cane at the foot of her bed.
She stared at it. “It’s for you,” he said at last. “A cane. Crutches would have been better, I suppose, but they’re harder to make.”
“Thank you,” she said at last. “That’s nice of you.” Her voice was dull and unenthusiastic.
He was nettled. He wasn’t expecting long speeches of gratitude, but he had spent a hell of a long time making that thing. He reverted to silence. Two could play that game. He fetched the medical bag that Mike had put together for him and began the daily routine of changing her dressings. The gunshot wound was not beautiful—the scar was red, thick, and jagged—but it had almost healed; the skin around it looked clean and healthy. There was no point in replacing the dressing, he decided.
The foot had always been a different story. Scarlet, inflamed, oozing, infected, for days it had looked unstoppable, intent on eating away her flesh. Only massive willpower had kept him from gagging whenever he uncovered it. But that day, as he carefully peeled the old bandage off, small areas of thin reddish new skin were visible around the edges of the wound. In his excitement he forgot his punctured self-esteem.
“It’s getting better,” he said, as he cautiously placed a new pad where the old one had been and then bandaged over it. “A lot better. All of a sudden.”
She nodded. “Thank you for the cane,” she said. “It will help.”
On Friday she sat up most of the morning. She had insisted on negotiating the potentially hazardous path to the bathroom entirely by herself, leaning on her pine cane, and the sense of independence it gave her seemed to have cheered her up. She still only spoke when he goaded her into it, and he was beginning to realize how very dependent on human conversation he was.
In a celebratory mood, he opened a bottle of beer, some smoked oysters and other oddities he found in the Buchanans’ well-stocked cupboards, and set out a small hors d’oeuvre plate on the bed before lunch. Annie was drinking fruit juice mixed with soda water—something she seemed to have acquired a taste for in her delirium—and looking soberly out at the lake. In the eight or nine days since they had arrived, the ice had almost disappeared, even from the shaded coves. The only trace of winter was the occasional patch of snow trapped under thick growth in the woods.
“You know,” he said. “People keep telling me you’re a singer. Why don’t you sing?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Even my mother used to sing sometimes—under her breath, and not very well, but she sang. When she was happy, I suppose, or concentrating on something.”
“The only thing I concentrate on when I’m singing,” said Annie coldly, “is singing.”
“I suppose I deserved that. So sing something. Concentrate.”
“What would you like?” she asked. As if he had suggested that she make him some lunch. “Opera? Pop? Folk moderne? Folk genuine? Folk artsy? English madrigal style? Lieder? Italian or French art song? Take your pick. If there’s one thing I got, it’s repertoire. I am not equally good at all of it, but you pays your money and you takes your chances.”
He shook his head. “Sing something you like—something you feel like singing,” he said, and walked over to the window, in case she was put off by having him three feet away.
“Then I shall sing ‘Down by the Salley Gardens,’” she said. “Nothing fancy. It’s Yeats, you know, and very pretty.”
She straightened up a bit, settled her shoulders, and sang, “Down.” Her voice quavered, lost, and began searching for the note she started with, turned husky, and died away. He stared at the lake, burning with embarrassment, unable to face her. For chrissake, she was absolutely awful. He should have known better.
“Sorry,” sh
e said calmly. “It’s been a while. Wrong key. Drastically wrong key.” This time “Down” was pitched higher—much higher. It grew and then faded softly, gathered strength, and the figure of the first line soared upward. He turned back in astonishment. Her voice, clear and rich, and yet totally unornamented, filled the room. He held his breath, terrified now that it could not last, that the hoarseness and quavery pitch would return. Almost without wanting to, he came closer and then crouched by the coffee table to bring himself down to her level. Here he realized that she didn’t see him at all. She was singing to a huge audience somewhere out across the lake, and he looked down at the floor, making himself a part of that audience. She toyed lightly with every playful, heartbreaking word of the little song until, with a wry grimace, she came to “But I was young and foolish, and now . . .” She paused. “—am full—” Her voice hoarsened, cracked and stopped again.
He looked up, surprised. The tears that were supposed to end the song were pouring down her face. She shielded herself from his gaze with her right hand and clumsy, plastered, left wrist, sobbing now, helpless to control her grief. He got up and walked over to the bed, sat down beside her, and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Don’t touch me,” she gasped, and then began to cry even harder.
He got up again and headed for the bedroom, reached into his overnight bag, and extracted a large, clean linen handkerchief, elegant, expensive, monogrammed—another little offering from his stepmother. “Here,” he said, once he was sitting down beside her again. “This works better than plaster of Paris.” He opened up the handkerchief and thrust it into her good hand. Now she buried her face in it, still sobbing.
He waited for a minute, two minutes. “I don’t know if it will help,” he said. “But you have a magnificent voice. I was overwhelmed.” It didn’t seem to help. She continued to cry, each sob turning into a huge gasping intake of breath.
He couldn’t stand watching her so unhappy and comfortless, with no one to turn to but him—and he was clearly the last person she wanted to depend on. “Annie,” he said helplessly, “Annie, darling, please—” and, astonished at himself even as he did it, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. She stiffened and then let herself fall against him, burying her face in the harsh wool of his sweater. He wanted desperately to lift that unhappy face, to kiss the tears from her eyes and cheeks, to murmur mad things in her ears, and now it was his turn to hold himself still and in check. It was one thing to comfort a weeping woman who was sick and in distress—anyone could do that; it was quite another to transport a wounded, helpless creature forcibly to a remote spot in the woods and then to rain kisses on her. There were nasty terms for that—many of them in the criminal code—and in his innocence or stupidity he had never thought this out. “Christ,” he murmured into her tangle of black hair, “this is one hell of a complication.”
When had he fallen for her? Listening to her sing? Way before that, he realized. Before he nursed her through those dark nights or carried her away from her cabin or spent all those hours searching for her. It must have been when he thought she was dead and then saw the body of the real Jennifer Wilson—and suddenly he could see her gray eyes mocking him, could see her holding up the sleeve of his sweater and telling him he was beautiful. Don’t kid yourself, Lucas, he said to himself. Ever since the day you met her, you’ve been pursuing her like some demented fool.
The convulsive sobs began to ease, and he had to fight not to hold her tighter. He ran his right hand lightly over her hair, smoothing it back, allowing himself the luxury of resting his cheek against it for an instant. She began to straighten herself up, and he released her hastily. He turned away to hide his burning cheeks and said the first thing that came into his head. “Listening to you sing, it suddenly came to me why all those rich bastards, the bloated robber barons of this world, go batty over singers. Imagine having all that—”
Annie blew her nose fiercely and turned to face him. Her nose was red, her eyes swollen, her face blotchy. Unlike his stepmother, who could cry at will—and did—and look both pathetic and elegant as she did it, she did not cry well. She hiccupped. “Was that supposed to be funny? Or just in appalling bad taste?” she snapped. It was almost the longest unprompted sentence he had heard from her since they had arrived at the cottage. “I’ll have you know that I never ever sang for—” She couldn’t bring out the name. Her eyes began to look watery again.
“You’re not going to believe me,” said Lucas, furious at his thoughtlessness, “but I was thinking of Callas captivating the shipping king. I had forgotten all about Neilson. I find it very easy to forget him.”
“I find it pretty hard,” she said bitterly.
“I wouldn’t have thought he was that memorable,” said Lucas. “After all, if the relationship was purely business, he can’t have been much of a personal loss.” There was a nasty edge to his voice, and he had no trouble identifying it. Jealousy.
“My God, what do you think of me?” she said. “No, I know what you think of me. You’ve sure as hell told enough people. You think I’m a cheap, nasty little whore. You’d prefer me if I called myself a hooker and went out and picked up anybody on the street, wouldn’t you? That would appeal to your goddamn perverted masculine vision of women, wouldn’t it? Then I could have been the prostitute with the heart of gold. As it is, you think I’m a cheap whore with pretensions—the kind that calls herself an artiste or a model or something. Only in my case it’s a singer, isn’t it? You were surprised that I can sing, weren’t you? I saw it—you were bloody astonished. You couldn’t have been more surprised if that chipmunk out there had started singing Puccini. Admit it—you were surprised.” The thought of his reaction brought a grin to her face in the midst of the blotchy cheeks and scarlet nose.
He blushed, hating himself. “Okay, I admit it—I was surprised. I didn’t ask you to sing to trap you, though, if that’s what you think. I was just trying to make conversation. Honest.” He stopped for a moment. “And I’m sorry it made you unhappy. Believe me, I’d never have asked you to do it if I had thought it would make you unhappy.”
She looked at him oddly for a moment and then shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have sung that song. It runs too close to the bone. And besides, it reminds me of my mother. And the old days, before things got so . . . complicated.” She fell back on the pillows. “I’m tired,” she said. “I’d like to be left alone, if you don’t mind. Can’t you ever leave me bloody well alone?”
He grabbed his jacket and went out by the kitchen door, followed a small path through the woods down to the smooth granite that edged the lake. He sat down and stared into the water. At last he picked up a small rock and threw it, hard, into the smooth surface. A gull came gliding around the point, looking rather hopeful. “I’m going crazy,” he said to it. “Locked up here with a nutty woman. Whom I am falling madly in love with against my will, and she hates me. No wonder I’m going crazy.” The gull was either uninterested or on her side. It gave him a distinctly cold look and reversed its direction. “To hell with you, too,” said Lucas vehemently and threw another rock into the water, this one right off its port wing. It squawked, shook its feathers, and flew off to the east.
Rob Lucas sat on the smooth, cold granite and stared into the icy lake. His mind darted about in a multitude of directions: love, desire, suspicions of complicity in murder, haunting melodies. He was doomed to have that song in his head for days. He stood up with a sigh—he seemed to be doing a lot of sighing lately—and turned to go back to the cottage. He couldn’t stay out here forever. He’d die of exposure. And besides, he was hungry.
One step, though, and he halted. Bouncing over the lake, from its far western end, he heard a sound so foreign to this deserted place that it took him a second or two to identify it. But no more than that. It was the sound of a noisy internal combustion engine. A car with a faulty muffler or a motorcycle.
Chapter 14
A panic-stricken voice calling Rob’s name sent him racing back up the path toward the cottage. The kitchen door was swinging open. He caught it by the edge, using it to propel himself inside.
Annie stood in the kitchen, one hand on the counter, the other clutching her makeshift cane, in nightgown and bare feet, her face gray with terror. “There’s a car coming.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I heard it. Go back to bed. As fast as you can.” He closed and bolted the door, pulled the curtains over the horizontal slits up near the ceiling that acted as windows, and turned off the light. “Turn on the lamp beside the bed,” he called. “I need it to see what I’m doing.” Then with speed born of practice, he lowered and locked the shutters on all the French doors. The engine noise faded away; a delusion, he knew. Those shutters were partially soundproof. He looked around. Light seeped in from the master bedroom. It, too, had broad window slits placed high on the wall; he yanked its lined curtains closed.
He raced into the bathroom. Once again he could hear the sound, closer now. This bathroom had no curtains. Susie must have felt that the window had been placed too high for privacy to be a problem. Lucas had less faith. He grabbed all the towels, face cloths, bath mats and toiletries he could carry and dumped them on the bed. One more glance assured him that the room looked at least temporarily unused. He went out and closed the door. He had never used the other bathroom between the master suite and the kitchen. He shut that door as well. The noise of the engine was now very loud. That should be—“Dammit!” he muttered. The laundry. He ran back into the kitchen, into the laundry room. It had a rather ordinary window, covered with a mesh security grill, through which one could see the driveway and the garage. And be seen. He tumbled all the clean and dirty laundry into the basket and slipped out, shutting the door behind him. The engine noise was deafening now in the silence of spring. He walked back into the living room, dropped the basket of laundry, and sat down on the foot of Annie’s bed.
