by Neil Mcmahon
Gwen paused, glancing at him in amusement.
"I know you're an expert there, Ivan."
"That thing still as tight as it used to be?" he growled.
"You certainly didn't stretch it any."
A ripple of laughter sounded from nearby guests, watching the two of them like a circle drawn up around teenaged boys getting ready to fight. Monks was touched by an equally adolescent outrage, a schoolboy urge to step in and defend his girl's honor. But she seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly – keeping the loutish attacker at bay, like an exquisite fencer, with quick, sure barbs.
Maybe the preoccupation with youthfulness that he sensed here was catching, Monks thought, although there had been none of it in the brilliant adamantine intensity that emanated from D'Anton.
She moved away from the group, her head turning, looking for Monks. He raised his hand to catch her attention.
'There you are," she called, and came to him. "I thought I'd lost you."
"No chance of that."
She handed him one of the flutes. "What shall we drink to?"
"How about the hostess?"
"Oh, you are good. All right. The hostess decrees that we entwine arms, like in the movies. Gaze into each other's eyes. And drain our glasses dry."
Monks had to stoop forward a little to be able to entwine arms and still drink. The champagne was wonderful, dry and tart, with a sort of muskiness like her perfume. Her eyes were dark, warm, intent, and their faces were close. She brushed his lips with hers. He was bemused. He had not seriously believed that she might be interested in him, no matter what Larrabee had said, and romance did not seem like a good mix with a murder investigation. But he wanted to keep things going and, he admitted, it was highly enjoyable. He felt a touch of guilt about Martine. Then he remembered the black Saab he had seen in her driveway earlier. That helped.
She took the champagne glasses, set them aside, and then came back to his embrace.
"Shall we do that some more?" she murmured.
"A lot more," Monks said. "But first, why don't you show me that person you told me about? The one who's so possessive of Dr. D' Anton?"
The wary look that he had seen in her eyes at the clinic came back.
"I've been trying to pretend this is just a party," she said quietly. "But that won't work, will it?"
Monks touched her cheek. "I'll be glad to pretend with you. But I need to do my job, too."
She stayed absolutely still for two or three seconds. Again, he got that eerie sense that whoever lived inside her had left.
Then she gripped his arm conspiratorially. "Come on," she said, and led him toward the house. She pointed in through a window. "There."
The nurse, Phyllis, was still in the center of the room. It looked like she was putting away the Botox materials. She was wearing a dark gray suit, jacket and skirt, that made her square figure look even frumpier in this gala crowd.
"Phyllis?" Monks said.
Gwen nodded emphatically. "She's very sneaky, and very jealous of Welles. She has all these little ways of letting everybody know she owns him. There've been times I've felt her behind me, and I'd have sworn she had a knife in her hand."
Monks added more weight to Gwen's suspicion than he had given it before. He remembered his sense that Phyllis was stealthy. And she certainly had the skills and opportunity to administer poison to Eden Hale.
He decided it was time to push.
"Did Phyllis know about D'Anton's affair with Eden?" he said.
Gwen turned to him swiftly, eyes wide. "How did you know?"
"It's not going to be a secret much longer, Gwen. Is that why you lied to me, about not knowing her?"
There was a pause. It had the feel of being timed for effect. Then she sighed.
"All right, that was stupid of me," she said. "I should have known you'd find out. But no, that's not why. If Welles gets dragged through the mud, he deserves it."
"Why, then?"
"It will make more sense if I show you something," she said. "And then I'll work on making you forgive me."
She took his hand and led him around the house, in the opposite direction from the swimming pool. The original old structure, its windows unlit, jutted out ahead of them like a wing.
"This place has been in our family more than a hundred years," Gwen said. "On Julia's side. I spent a lot of time here, growing up."
"Our family?" he said, startled.
"She and I are cousins. I'm sorry. I guess you couldn't have known that."
Monks wasn't immediately sure how this new factor affected the mix, but it seemed to tighten things another notch.
She pushed open a door and touched a switch that turned on an overhead light. The space was large, two full stories high and taking up most of the wing. Apparently, the interior walls and upper floor had been taken out. The old hardwood floor was strewn with dust and rubble. There were a couple of large wooden workbenches and racks of stone-carving tools.
And the space was crowded with sculptures. All were human figures, and they all seemed to be of women – busts, torsos, a few full-sized. There were some clay models, but most were of stone. The style was classical, the forms lifelike. As best as he could judge, the renderings were competent – no more.
'This is how these parties got started," Gwen said. "Welles and Julia like to entertain. His patients, their social circle. Then Julia started inviting some of her models. It took on a life of its own."
"It does seem like an odd mix."
She shrugged. "The older guests are rich. Some are connected, film, modeling agencies, that sort of thing. They like having young, pretty people around. And they need money and favors. Most of them don't have any real talent."
Monks noted that it was the second time she had disdained them. And yet she, the fortyish hostess, ultra-sophisticated supermodel, was dressed like one of them, and had clearly loved being the center of attention – sparring like a teenaged cock-tease with the satyrlike Ivan. Monks wondered if her costume was a whim, or if there was a deeper element involved.
She walked to a figure that was draped and lifted away the canvas. This one was full-sized, a nude of a woman reclining on her side. It was unfinished, but the stone had an intrinsic quality – a sheen, almost a glow, that seemed to come from within.
"Is that marble?" he asked.
Gwen nodded. "Carrera. Julia got it from Italy. Recognize the model?"
He did not, at first. The delineation of the face had barely been started. But this piece stood out from the rest. The body was graceful, the pose sensuous, with thighs parted slightly in enticement, and Julia D'Anton had managed to capture a taunting element in the tilt of the head.
Then it clicked. "Eden," he said.
"Julia was a little-" Gwen hesitated, then said, "All right, I'll say it. In love with her. Then Eden started up with Welles. It hurt Julia badly."
"In love with, as in having an affair?"
Another hesitation. "Yes."
Monks gazed at the statue, and abruptly he saw the sorrow it contained – the passion the sculptress had invested, shimmering out through the muted glow of the stone. Accomplished or not technically, it was charged with emotion.
"Julia can be cruel," Gwen said. "A lot of people know it. So that's the reason I fibbed. I didn't want anyone to think she might have done something to Eden, for revenge."
"How do you mean, cruel?"
"Emotionally. When she's angry, she'll take it out on people. She was like that when she was young, and she never outgrew it."
"Why are you so sure she didn't do something?"
"I just am. I've known her all my life, for God's sake." Gwen let the drape fall back into place.
Monks was getting confused. Her words seemed to be leading in too many different directions. But it was not just that. Something was happening in his head that he could not quite grasp.
"How about D'Anton?" he said. "How well do you think you know him?"
"Since I was seventeen
, when he and Julia met. He refined my face and gave me these." She touched her breasts. "And I've worked for him for eight years. Why? Do you suspect him?" She seemed amused at the thought.
Monks had been working his way toward something, but it slipped out of his recall. Gwen was watching him, eyes warm and lips parted. He stared at her, struck anew by her beauty, then turned away, trying to concentrate.
Roberta Massey, and the other girl who had gone missing, Katie. That was it.
"Gwen," he said. "Did you know that the police came to the clinic?" His voice sounded thick and slow to his own hearing.
She stepped to him, put her hands on his hips, and very lightly pressed her pelvis against him.
"No. But can't it wait?" she said, arching up to be kissed, lips open this time.
Monks imagined that he could feel the heat rising from her, a shimmer of delicious sensation seeking to enfold him. He held her, entranced by this ritual of human beings exploring each other's mouths with their tongues. It was very strange. But it was good. He remembered feebly that he had been thinking about something that had seemed important. But yes, that could wait.
"I feel like getting wet," she announced.
Feel like getting wet. The words spun disjointedly in his head. That was a strange way to put things. How could a person feel like getting wet?
She led him back the way they had come. Monks inhaled deeply, feeling the scents of the night cut into him in a heady rush, the eucalyptus, her perfume, smoke that he identified as marijuana. Bits of the conversations they passed joined feel like getting wet in his mind, swirling and reverberating with hidden importance.
told her I'd never ever
he came around with
five thousand? bullshit maybe twenty
There were more swimmers now, fluid shapes moving through the water or hanging on the sides. Monks was close enough now to see that the underwater lights revealed bare feet, legs, asses. He looked at Gwen in astonishment.
"No suits in the pool," she said, with a slight smile. 'That's the rule."
pool that's the rule
The marijuana smoke was thicker here, with glowing red dots traveling through the darkness a few feet at a time, pausing, traveling on. He had been catching more whiffs of the deep acrid smoke of harder drugs, too.
"It gives the young people a chance to get looked over," she said. "Arrangements get made."
Monks realized that almost all the swimmers were from the younger set. The older guests stood on the deck with drinks in hand, chatting or just watching.
He remembered what Gwen had said on the phone – like parties, but more focused.
Then he saw that one of the watchers was Julia D' Anton. She was alone, a little way apart from the crowd, wearing a long black dress and heavy dark eye shadow – another mourner for Eden. But she was gazing intently at the swimmers.
The term chickenhawk came into his mind.
As if he had spoken it aloud, Julia raised her gaze and met his. Her eyes seemed as dark and empty as a skull's. He looked away quickly.
He became aware of a couple clinging to the wall in a dark far corner of the pool, face-to-face, their steady underwater motions creating an eddy that rippled out across the water's surface and right through his skin, penetrating him in a whoosh as if his body was gone and only his raw nerves were left to feel.
And he saw, as he had seen the heartbreak glow from the statue of Eden Hale, but with an intensity so heightened it was almost unbearable, that this was a marketplace – that some commodity was being bartered away by the young to the old, in return for money, drugs, the hope of fame. It was not sex, or pleasure – that was only the medium of exchange. It cut far deeper, into the vitality of youth.
Coffee Trenette. Used up.
Focused.
Monks moved onward, lurching a little. Gwen walked patiently beside him. They came around the grotto's rock cornice, and he found himself staring at another tableau. A man was leaning against the wall, relaxed, complacent-looking. Monks recognized the satyrlike older man who had accosted Gwen earlier. He was clothed, but his trousers were open and his chubby member protruding, gripped in the hand of a pretty young woman. She was nude, her skin glistening with water, apparently just out of the pool. One of her knees was slightly bent, as if she was about to kneel.
But when she saw Monks and Gwen, she let go of him and stepped away, head turning aside and gaze going downcast, arms moving automatically across her body. Monks had once read somewhere that a Western woman, if caught unclothed by a strange man, would cover her vulva and breasts, but in other parts of the world, she would cover her face. There was a certain logic to that.
The satyr grinned at Gwen. "I keep telling you, baby, I got the power," he said.
"You got Viagra," Monks suggested distantly.
The grin dissolved into a hostile stare.
"Why don't you go back where you came from?"
"Impossible," Monks pointed out, frowning. "No space-time continuum can ever be repeated."
"You're a fucking wacko, you know that?"
"Not my fault. Schroedinger's."
"Get outta here!"
Monks backed away, shaking his head, trying to clear it. His brain seemed to bounce inside his skull.
Gwen came beside him again, catching his arm, steadying him. "Ivan likes to make sure everyone knows he's still virile."
"Poor girl."
"Don't worry, she's getting hers," Gwen said. "He owns a modeling agency."
Monks was starting to hyperventilate. Waves of pure sensation were washing through him. They were not unpleasant, but they were frightening.
Then he was aware that Julia D'Anton was standing in front of him. Her arms were folded imperiously.
"I see you found a date," she said coolly to Gwen, but her gaze stayed on Monks.
"I see you're looking for one," Gwen retorted.
Julia ignored her. "So you think someone murdered Eden, Dr. Monks? And that they might be here tonight?"
Things had gotten far more complicated than that, Monks thought, but the right words would not come.
"If thou hast blood on thy hands and shed more blood, wherewith shall ye cleanse it?" he asked, trying earnestly to explain. "For how shall ye wash off blood with blood?"
Both women looked startled.
Gwen murmured, "You'd better excuse us," to Julia, and helped Monks to a chair. He sat heavily.
"Something – is happening to me," he said.
"What kind of something?" Her fingers massaged his neck and shoulders.
"In my brain," he tried to explain. "The universe is getting scrambled."
She inhaled sharply. "Oh, my god. It sounds like ecstasy."
"Like what?"
"Ecstasy," Gwen said. "XTC."
Monks raised his head and stared at her.
"I wonder if someone slipped some in your drink," she said. "Sometimes they do that, to newcomers. It's supposed to be a joke, but this is awful." Her fists went to her hips in outrage. "If I find out who did it, they'll never come here again."
The import hit him with numbing impact. "I can't believe," he said. "Can't believe – I need to get someplace." He tried to heave himself to his feet. Her hand held him down with surprising strength.
"But darling, you are someplace," she said. "Just sit still a minute. You'll calm down." She crouched beside him, her face close. Her eyes were luminous with passion. "I'll predict the future. A beautiful woman wearing black will fulfill all your desires. Soon."
"Black?" he said stupidly. Her blouse was white. The only thing black she was wearing, that he could see, at least, was the top underneath it.
"Come on. We'll go where we can be safe and alone."
"My car," he objected.
"Don't be silly, you can't drive. Let yourself go, Carroll. I'll take care of you."
This time, she helped him get to his feet. He stumbled along, holding her hand like a child.
She led him away from the pool and p
arty, around the base of the cliff that abutted the house, and up a stairway of flat stones that had been set into the earth. It was quiet here, and dark except for the gibbous moon, topping the coastal mountains to throw its cold fire across the land.
Monks became aware of the musical sound of trickling water, growing louder as they climbed. They came to a plateau, a hundred yards behind the house and a bit higher than its roof. The water was running down a rock face in a little fall, into a natural pool, about twenty feet across.
'This is the spring that feeds the swimming pool," she said. "Julia and I used to play here. Sit."
She eased him down onto a flat rock. Monks started to get his wind back. The dizzying surges were leveling off, leaving him bristling with unimagined perceptions. He turned his head slowly, seeing the swelling hillsides split into deep, secretive crevasses, watered by streams that emptied into the great sea. Trees burst from the earth with their fierce erect trunks, then gentled out into feminine branches that lifted long-tipped fingers in supplication to the sky. All of nature was fueled by this huge engine, the generator of life.
And everywhere within it, death was waiting – hidden, seething with menace, razor talons ready to strike.
"Are you ready for the lady in black?" she said.
He turned toward her voice. The blouse was gone and she was stepping out of her skirt, tossing it aside. Her fingers worked at a knot between her breasts. She unwound the garment sensuously, then tossed it around her neck. Monks realized that it was not a tube top. It was a black scarf.
Except for that, she was all flesh, shining ivory in the moonlight like a pagan goddess. Her splendor filled him with worshipful awe.
She walked to him boldly, high full breasts shimmying with her steps, nipples taut in the crisp air. She was shaved bare as marble. He stared, entranced by the miracle of skin, its color that no image could ever quite capture, its smooth sheen so warm to the touch.
"How old am I?" she demanded.
Monks was confused. How could she not know?
"Thirty… nine?" he hazarded.
"No! I'm eighteen. And very naughty." Her hand moved to the back of his neck and urged him toward her. "Taste me."
Monks parted the delicate slick flesh with his tongue, finding the tiny bud within. Jewel in the lotus, he thought. Man in the boat. He felt her shiver, her fingers tightening in his hair. She shivered again, and again, and then tensed, thrusting hard against him.
