by Lisa Unger
He felt Irma’s eyes on him and he looked up from his glass.
“Welcome back,” she said, and gave him a smile that reminded him how pretty she was. There was concern in her eyes, and something more.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Lost in thought.”
She put a warm hand on his arm and he looked down at her slender fingers, her perfectly manicured nails. Her blond hair looked like spun gold and framed her face in a delicate flattering way. He found himself remembering how long it had been since he’d been this close to a woman. It opened the hole in his heart that Rose had occupied, and for a moment he felt like putting his head down on his arm and sobbing. Luckily, his cell phone rang and he was spared the embarrassment.
“McKirdy,” he answered, looking at Irma with apology in his eyes. She withdrew her hand and looked down at her Cosmo.
“Henry Clay here. This better be good.”
Ford had put in a call to the Haunted PD and convinced the desk sergeant to rouse his chief from bed.
“Chief, you have someone residing in your town that I need to bring in for questioning. I’d like to send two of my detectives up to you tomorrow and I am hoping you can put some uniforms on this.”
“Who exactly are we talking about here, Detective?”
“James Ross.”
There was a leaden silence on the other end of the phone.
“Chief?”
“Are you fucking with me, Detective?” asked Clay, and Ford could hear an angry quaver in the man’s voice.
“I don’t have time to fuck around,” said Ford, dropping the polite formality he’d employed up to this point and turning away from Irma. Ford was old school, and old school men don’t swear in front of women, if they can help it.
“James Ross has not lived in this town for more than twenty years.”
“I have good information that he’s residing in his family home.”
Silence again. Ford could hear Clay breathing on the line.
“Where did you get your information?” he asked finally.
“That’s not important.”
“The hell it isn’t. We had reports of a break-in at the old Ross house tonight. Was that your people?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Ford lied.
More silence.
“Look, are you going to help me or not?” said Ford, at the end of his patience. “I’ll send someone up there either way. I was just giving you the respect of a phone call to let you know we’d be entering your jurisdiction to question a suspect in a murder investigation.”
“Well, you won’t get any of my men to go near that house.”
“What are you talking about? Why not?”
“Because it’s … not right, that house. It’s evil.”
Ford shook his head slowly in disbelief. He let out an uncertain laugh.
“Bad things happen to the people who go into that house,” Clay continued, his voice low and serious.
Ford let a second pass before saying, “You’re supposed to stop the bad things from happening, Chief. That’s what cops do.”
“Your men want to go up there, be my guest. But I guarantee you’re not going to be bringing James Ross in for questioning.”
“Why not?” Ford asked.
There was static on the line when Clay spoke, and Ford was sure he hadn’t heard him correctly. “Can you repeat that?”
The man issued a mighty sigh.
“I said, because he’s dead, McKirdy. James Ross is dead.”
chapter twenty
“When you love someone, I mean really love someone,” she said, “it hurts so much. Even the pleasure can feel like a blade. It’s all temporary and your heart recognizes that transience because it is temporary. Even the beauty of love is edged with the knowledge that an end will come horribly, sadly, inevitably.”
Marion Strong sat serene and beautiful at the edge of Lydia’s bed. Jeffrey slept soundly beside Lydia, his breathing heavy and even. The angry words they’d spoken before bed still danced in the air.
“You look like an angel,” Lydia told her mother.
“Only because you love me.”
Marion’s black hair streaked with gray flowed down over her shoulders to the small of her back. She wore a crisp white cotton nightgown that Lydia remembered from her childhood. Sitting there, the amber light from the street lamps outside leaking through the blinds, she seemed to glow.
Lydia observed every line on Marion’s face, the way her strong veined hands rested in her lap, the arch of her dark eyebrows, the black of her eyes. She wanted every detail seared into her memory. Because that was all she would have of Marion to share with her own children. It was all she’d had for so long. Sometimes it seemed as if the sadness she felt over the loss of her mother was a well within her that could never be filled.
“I’m pregnant,” Lydia said, feeling an odd longing, a kind of desperation, grow in her heart.
But Marion only smiled sadly and shook her head.
“People die,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard. “But love lives on, we carry it in our blood and our bones. When you lose someone, you’ve only lost the giver, not the gift.”
When Lydia awoke she was already sitting up, her heart rate elevated, her breathing coming sharp and shallow. She reached for Jeffrey and shook him awake. He sat up quickly, startled.
“What’s wrong?”
She didn’t know what to say, so she moved to him, clung to him, feeling the soft skin and hard muscles of his chest against her cheek. He held on to her tightly. She needed to be as close as the boundaries of their bodies would allow so that she could feel his life and the warmth of blood flowing beneath his skin.
“It’s okay. I promise,” he said, not knowing what she was feeling but understanding that she needed him to comfort her. “I swear it’s all okay.”
She looked up at him and in her eyes he saw such a painful combination of fear and love that it awoke a powerful longing within him. He regretted deeply the lecture he’d delivered when they’d returned to the apartment about her carelessness for her health and safety. Even in the darkness of the room, he could see the purple and black of the bruise that dominated the right side of her face.
“I love you so much,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You were right … about everything.”
He pressed his mouth to hers, wanting to be gentle but overwhelmed by a sudden hunger for her, which he felt returned in her kiss. She knelt before him on the bed now. He touched the slope of her shoulder and the curve of her bare breast. He touched the line of her jaw. She moved in closer, running her hand down his chest, over his tight abs, then stroking him as he grew hard in her hand. Then she leaned in to take him into her mouth. He lay back, her tongue, the wet walls of her mouth sending a shock of pleasure through him.
She slithered up his body and he felt every inch of her slide along every inch of him in a current of taut and silky flesh. Then she straddled him and took him inside of her with a moan. He placed his hands on the fullness of her hips and held her as she rocked, her movements slow, sensual. He felt weak with pleasure, as the rhythm of their bodies became more intense.
She threw her head back slightly as he pulled her closer, took her breast in his mouth and teased her nipple with his tongue. Her breath came in soft low moans. He knew her body so well, he could feel her coming to climax, every nerve ending in his body alive with the heat of wanting her. Then he came deep and hard inside of her.
“Lydia,” he whispered, her name sounding like a prayer as she came for him, pulling him deeper inside of her.
She lay beside him, back to his front, her body curved into his, his arm draped over her. He breathed in the lavender scent of her hair.
“I need you to promise to take better care from now on,” he whispered.
“I promise,” she answered, trying to push away the memory of her dream and be in the present, feeling the warmth of him besid
e her.
He moved the hair off her face and touched the bruise there, then kissed it lightly.
She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again, his breathing had sunk into the rhythm of sleep. She turned so that she could look at him. She observed every detail of his face, loving the tiny lines around his eyes, the fullness of his mouth, the small star-shaped scar on his right cheekbone. She watched him like this for she didn’t know how long until sleep came for her as well.
To her obvious disappointment, Ford had dropped Irma off at her Central Park West apartment building. He was flattered by Irma’s subtle advances and not a little attracted to her, but he was and maybe always would be in his heart still married to Rose. Still, Irma had awoken a terrible restlessness in him and he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned lazily above him. He thought of Rose, wondering where she was, how he might reach her, what he would say if he had her on the line.
He had the television turned on but the sound muted; it was something he did when he couldn’t sleep, when he was missing his wife. It made him feel less alone. Something on the screen had attracted his attention and he turned his head to see Fran Drescher being interviewed by David Letterman. The Nanny, he remembered, was a show that Rose had liked. The thought brought Geneva Stout to his mind, reminded him that he’d wanted to have another conversation with her. Then it occurred to him that he hadn’t seen Geneva the day they’d interviewed the twins.
He thought back to the night of the murder. After the paramedics had taken Julian Ross from the duplex, Ford had interviewed the live-in au pair. She was young, he remembered, twenty-one or twenty-two, soft-spoken, and very upset by the events of the evening. She’d been pretty in a dark, exotic way, with full lips and almond-shaped eyes. He remembered thinking the name sounded off, bringing to mind a busty Swedish girl with silky blond hair. Geneva clearly didn’t have a Nordic bone in her body, with café au lait skin and a bolt of shiny black curls that spilled across her shoulders and down her back.
She’d been sleeping, she claimed that night, and had seen nothing. Ford had no reason to suspect otherwise, since her room was in the back of the first floor behind the kitchen, far from the entrance and master bedroom in the palatial duplex. He’d given her his card, asked her to call if she thought of anything that might help him, and told her she’d probably be hearing from him.
He leaned over, looked at the clock, hesitated, and then picked up the phone anyway.
“Where’s the nanny, Ms. Ross?” asked Ford into the phone.
“Detective McKirdy, it’s after midnight,” said Eleanor, indignant.
“The nanny, Geneva Stout. She was there the night of the murder. But she wasn’t with you when we interviewed the twins this evening.”
“Well, naturally, she quit, Detective. Wouldn’t you?”
“Where did she go?”
“How should I know? I didn’t hire her. Only Julian would know that … and she doesn’t even know who I am at this point.”
“Do you know how long she worked for the family?”
“I’m not sure. A year, maybe eighteen months … Why is this relevant, Detective?”
“Thank you, Ms. Ross, sorry to disturb you.
“Huh,” he said aloud after hanging up the phone.
Other than the name, nothing else about her had set off any alarms. He’d asked to see ID and she’d provided him with an NYU student ID and a New York State driver’s license, both with the Rosses’ address as her own. He knew he’d written down both her student ID and driver’s license numbers. He’d run them through first thing in the morning. Even though she’d left the Rosses’ employment and Eleanor was right about that, why wouldn’t she? he figured she’d be easy enough to find.
He’d need to check his notes again and then look through the papers at the Stratton-Ross home, see if there was another address for her. It was probably nothing, but now that the twins were part of the equation he had a strange feeling that maybe Geneva Stout, someone who’d been intimate with the children for more than a year, had more to contribute to his investigation than he’d originally thought.
After talking to Eleanor, he lay still for a few more minutes. Then with the remote he switched off the television and closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would come, that he wouldn’t lie awake watching the hours pass, thinking of murder and lost love.
chapter twenty-one
“Nice face,” said Craig from his seat behind the reception desk as Lydia and Jeffrey pushed their way through the glass doors. As tall and thin as a reed, Craig slumped at the desk gripping a tattered copy of Neuromancer. He pushed aside the curly blond hair that fell over his round spectacle lenses and looked at Lydia quizzically.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“You should see the other guy,” answered Lydia with a half smile she didn’t feel.
“Where’s Rebecca?” asked Jeffrey.
“I’m filling in. She called in sick. Flu,” he said. “She sounded like you look, Lydia.” A boyish smile broke his long, narrow face and saved him from the barb she was about to toss back at him.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot,” she answered as she stepped into her office. At the door, she paused a second. Something felt off. She looked around the room, saw nothing unusual, and decided she was just being paranoid. She shed her coat, though she knew they’d only be there for a short time, draped it over the sofa, and sat at her desk. She pulled a compact from her bag and gazed at herself in the mirror for the hundredth time since she’d gotten out of bed. A face only a prizefighter’s mother could love, she thought. She snapped the compact closed and booted her computer.
“Was someone in my office?” she heard Jeffrey ask Craig over the intercom.
“Not that I know of,” he answered. “Why?”
She got up and walked across the hall to Jeffrey’s office. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. My computer is on, my day planner is open. It’s just not the way I left things,” he said with a frown.
“Maybe Rebecca was looking for something?” she offered, knowing even as she spoke that it wasn’t Rebecca’s style. Everything would have been left exactly as she found it. Rebecca was precise, effective, and compulsively neat. Her appearance was always perfect; her work was always exceptional. In fact, Lydia couldn’t remember a time when Rebecca had called in sick before today.
“Hm,” said Lydia.
“What?”
“Let’s get her on the phone.”
“Why?”
“Because I had a feeling someone was in my office, as well.”
“Something missing?”
“Nope. Just a weird feeling,” she said thoughtfully. She walked back to her office and stood in the doorway. The space was pretty sterile because of Lydia’s compulsive need to carry things with her everywhere she went and because she really considered her office at the loft to be her workspace. Still something seemed different.
“I got the machine. Left a message for her to call,” said Jeffrey, coming up behind her. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Lydia nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” The uneasy feeling in her gut said something else. It was a feeling that stayed with her as they headed out the door, on their way to get some answers from Eleanor Ross.
When Lydia and Jeffrey reached the Waldorf, Eleanor and the twins appeared to be on their way out. Their luggage had been loaded onto a cart and a porter was leaving the room as Lydia and Jeffrey entered.
“Going somewhere, Ms. Ross?” asked Lydia.
“Back to the apartment. The children need to be in their home.”
“But it’s a crime scene,” said Lydia, appalled that she would even consider moving the children back to the place where their father was murdered and wondering how she was even allowed access.
“Money talks,” said Eleanor, drawing back her shoulders and jutting out her chin. “It’s up to me to decide what’s right for the children now, since there’s no
one to look after them.”
“But to bring them back to the apartment where their father was—” Lydia stopped abruptly when the children entered the room.
They seemed to move as one, holding hands as they walked into the room. Their matching white blond heads of hair glowed golden in the sun that shone in from the window. Ivory skin and ice blue eyes, they looked as if they were made from light, luminous and ethereal.
“Grandma, Nathaniel can’t find Pat the Bunny,” said Lola, her voice light and musical.
“It’s on the cart headed downstairs, Nathaniel. You’ll have it before we get in the car. I promise.”
Nathaniel nodded, but Lydia could see his anxiety. The kid wanted his bunny. Lydia felt an irrational wash of anger that Eleanor hadn’t kept the bunny off the cart, knowing, as she must, that he would be looking for it.
“Who’s that?” said Lola, eyeing Lydia suspiciously.
“These are friends of mine, children. Their helping us find out who hurt your father.”
Lydia was surprised at the candor of Eleanor’s answer and couldn’t imagine what good could come of them knowing that. But the children didn’t seem upset. Both Lola and Nathaniel turned their eyes on Lydia and Jeffrey with a kind of wonder. Lydia leaned down and offered her hand.
“I’m Lydia,” she said, smiling. Each child shook her hand properly in turn. “And this is my partner, Jeffrey.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Lola wanted to know.
“He’s my partner,” she said again. It was really a more truthful answer anyway.
