Precipice

by Tom Savage

  Departures. He ran from desk to desk, airline to airline, scanning the departure boards for information. Only one flight had taken off since he’d last seen her, a twin-engine Prinair to Puerto Rico. The pretty native girl behind the counter could not divulge passenger names, but she shook her head when he asked the crucial question. No, there had not been a young woman on board.

  He checked the waiting lounges, the restaurant, the gift shop. He even had a friendly Pan Am stewardess check the ladies’ room. Nothing.

  He thought of calling cruise-ship lines, but he knew that those lists, too, were classified.

  Finally he returned to the hotel. A small boat or private plane, he thought as he drove. He doubted it, though. Instinct told him that she was still here, somewhere on the island.

  He entered his room just as the sun disappeared. He didn’t bother to turn on the light. He went out onto the balcony and gazed up at the darkening sky. A cool breeze did little to soothe his hot, flushed face.

  Oh, damn! he thought. Now what? He’d finally snagged a decent gig, the first of his fledgling career. His boss had entrusted him with it. Himl Not that stupid Russo, who thought he was James Fucking Bond. A special assignment for a special client. A leg job. Babysitting, really. A few weeks, a thousand per and all expenses in some fancy watering hole. Just follow the mark, report whereabouts, and stay put for further instructions.

  A thousand per! Enough to pay off a big chunk on the Upper West Side one-bedroom condo he’d just moved into. And that, he admitted to himself, wasn’t his only motivation. The mark, it had turned out, was incredibly pretty.

  Okay, he’d read the dossier. Crazy, but pretty. . . .

  He shook his head in a mixture of self-disgust and self-pity. Some detective, he mused. Some goddamned Sherlock! He couldn’t even hang on to a perfectly easy tail, an emotionally unstable young woman. She’d simply walked right out of the hotel as he sat there, downing a brew.

  With great reluctance, he went back into the room and over to the phone. He was going to be fired. He just knew it! He’d have to find another job. Well, he thought grimly, no more waiting tables. No more driving cabs. And no more goddamned singing telegrams! He’d have to find some other way to supplement his acting career. He picked up the receiver and slowly dialed the number in Glen Cove, Long Island.

  “It’s me again, Miss Barclay,” he said. “Robin Trask. I’m afraid I’ve lost her. . . .”

  FIVE

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 15

  HE WAS OUT again, out on the ocean. His ocean.

  He waved back at Kyle on the Kay. The young man saluted, lit a cigarette, and resumed his work on the ripped sail.

  As soon as he was around the point, out of sight of the yacht club, he opened up the engine. He would have to be as quick as possible. As far as Kyle was concerned, he was merely testing the Boston Whaler, making sure it was still in working order. He did this periodically; if anything happened to the Kay at sea, the Whaler was their potential survival. There was nothing out of the ordinary in his action. No reason for suspicion.

  But he would have to be quick. The boat could only manage about seventeen knots at full throttle. He’d taken that into account, of course. He didn’t have far to go.

  He followed the coastline, keeping close to shore. Instinctively, he scanned every beach and waterfront condominium complex for bathers or residents taking an unusual interest in the tiny boat as it passed. No: nobody was watching.

  Excellent.

  It had been one week now since Diana moved into Cliffhanger. She had, as far as he could see, adjusted to life there with remarkable ease. She had immediately gone about the business of making herself indispensable to Kay and Lisa. She and Kay shopped and gossiped and went out to lunch together, and she was teaching the child the fundamentals of drawing and painting. All he heard from his wife and stepdaughter was Diana this and Diana that and I don’t know, let’s ask Diana. He gleaned that secret plans were under way for Lisa’s thirteenth birthday. There was much giggling and whispering among the women. His women.

  Excellent.

  They had not been able to meet alone, under the circumstances, either at the house or away from it. She was always with Kay and Lisa and Trish. And he made sure to spend as much time as possible away from Cliffhanger. Kay, silly though she was, could not help but feel the tension between them if she were given the chance. Lisa was sharp: little got past her. And he’d never trusted Trish Manning in the first place. He and Diana carefully kept their distance from each other.

  But it hardly mattered. Their plan—the parts that involved her, at any rate—had been discussed and committed to memory two months ago. Phase One had gone beautifully: she’d made it back to the island and into the house without a hitch, and he’d kicked off his part of it with the Harrimans. He couldn’t help smiling when he thought about that.

  Excellent.

  Then, of course, there were the parts of the plan that Diana didn’t know about.

  Like Greg.

  And today’s little excursion.

  And . . .

  Four minutes, twenty seconds.

  He slowed as he neared his destination. Time for Phase Two. . . .

  “Sun—”

  “Bright.”

  “Bright—”

  “White.”

  “White—”

  “Snow.”

  “Snow—”

  “Christmas!” Lisa shrieked as she and Jumbi danced across the lawn and disappeared between two trees near the edge of the cliff. “Come on, Diana!”

  The young woman followed them. It was difficult for her to keep pace with them, encumbered as she was by sketchpads and paintbox. She entered the woods behind the girl and discovered a narrow, well-worn path that wound down the side of the hill, parallel to the cliff that dropped away some twenty yards to her left.

  So this was the promised adventure Lisa had been hinting at all morning. “After lunch,” she’d said, her Cheshire-cat grin widening mysteriously. “The most wonderful place! You’d never know it was there unless someone showed you.”

  They’d fallen into a familiar routine in the past week. In the mornings, as soon as breakfast was done, Lisa jumped on her bicycle and pedaled off down the hill to visit her best friends, two sisters who lived a short distance away on the main road toward town. Twice the other girls had come to Cliffhanger, and the three children had played on the lawn or disappeared into Lisa’s room, amid much rock music and high-pitched laughter. Kay used the late morning to correspond—mostly by telephone, but there had been two dictated letters so far. The end-of-month bills were arriving, and it soon became apparent that Kay was grateful to have these taken out of her hands. She merely signed the checks that the younger woman placed before her.

  One morning—the day after she volunteered to be Kay’s unofficial bookkeeper—the two women had gone into town to shop. Kay had bought a new purse and ordered some personalized stationery. They’d spent a good deal of time in the art gallery at A. H. Riise, where they’d discovered a remarkable similarity in their artistic tastes. Actually, Kay had pointed out what she liked, and the young woman had readily agreed. They’d wandered from the gallery to the store’s jewelry section, and it was there that she’d made the mistake of admiring a small, fairly inexpensive amethyst brooch. Before she’d known what was happening, Kay had handed a Visa card to the woman behind the counter, and the pin had been whisked from the display case, boxed, bagged, and placed in her hand.

  “That’s a bribe,” Kay had said, cutting off all protest. “To keep you around for a while.”

  Then they’d gone to meet Trish for lunch at a lovely little restaurant above Main Street. She had watched, smiling, as Kay and Trish fought over the bill, each woman insisting adamantly that it was her turn to pay.

  Every afternoon she was alone with the child. Kay busied herself around the house or went off to afternoon bridge games with Trish and her other friends, and she and Lisa would go out on the deck or the patio
with art supplies. Or if the girl was not in the mood for a drawing lesson, there was always the book.

  On her third day in residence at Cliffhanger, Lisa had arrived in her bedroom and looked around with undisguised interest at her belongings, zeroing in almost immediately on the large book on the table next to the bed. Not the scrapbook with the clippings and photos: that was in a locked suitcase at the back of the closet. This one was called Myths of the Greeks and Romans, and it was one of her favorites. So, naturally, it became Lisa’s favorite as well. She’d thrown herself across the bed right then and there and demanded the first chapter, aloud. This concerned Kronos, father of Zeus—who was known to the Romans as Jupiter, she’d explained—and it involved sex, bloodshed, and cannibalism, among other delicious ingredients. Lisa had been enthralled, and now hardly a day passed without the next installment of the most ancient of soap operas.

  The book was beautifully illustrated, and Lisa was particularly fond of the “family tree” picture near the front, which delineated the hierarchy of Mount Olympus, complete with little drawings of all the major deities labeled with their Greek and Roman names and their godly functions. She had made a project of memorizing all this double information.

  “It’s like the Bible, only weirder!” had been the child’s glowing review. “Athena/Minerva. Demeter/Ceres. Ares/Mars—is he named after the planet?”

  “Nope. Other way around.”

  “Wow, what funky names! Themis, Aidos, Nem . . . Nem . .”

  “Nemesis,” the young woman slowly pronounced for her. “The goddess of retribution. Revenge. . .

  “Look, Diana,” Lisa cried. “One of them has your name! ‘Artemis/Diana. Twin of Apollo. Daughter of Zeus/Jupiter’—don’t tell me, let me guess: they named that planet after him—‘goddess of the moon and of hunting; protectress of women.’ What does that mean, ‘pro-tec-tress’?”

  “It means we’d better get out of this room and outdoors into the fresh air for your lesson, or your mother is going to tan our hides.”

  They’d laughed together then and gone outside. Lisa had taken the book with her, and later that day they’d read some more. She loved the book. She loved the painting lessons. She loved the word-association game they played almost constantly.

  She was crazy about her new companion.

  Now, in the woods below Cliffhanger, Lisa’s new companion glanced around. There was a wide variety of trees all mixed together, growing so close to one another that the leaves and branches above her head formed a thick blanket that blocked out the sun. There were mossy oaks and huge tamarinds like the one in the driveway and tall, slender, silver-barked birches and a plethora of others she could not identify. And everywhere among them, incongruous, the palms and century plants she’d expected. She inhaled deeply: the rich, moist, green scent of forests. It was dark here, dark and surprisingly cool. Hardly anyone’s idea of a tropical island at midday, yet here it unaccountably was, another gorgeous St. Thomian surprise. The sparkle of the water glinted through the foliage to her left. As she trailed the elusive figures of the child and the dog, she became aware of the increasing volume of the surf. Then the ground beneath her sandaled feet became sand, and she emerged from the arbor into bright daylight. She stopped, staring, as Lisa whirled around and came back to join her. Jumbi headed immediately for the breaking waves.

  “What do you think?” the child asked, giggling at the astonished expression on the woman’s face. “Pretty neat, huh?”

  They were standing on a tiny, perfectly curved beach, set deep in a little cove next to the base of the cliff, almost engulfed by the thick press of jungle surrounding it. Powder-white sand, electric-blue water, Kodachrome viridian palms and sea grapes. There were rocks at either end of the strip of sand and in the water as well. Large green, slippery formations were clearly visible just below the surface, covered with thousands of spiny, ink-black sea urchins. The cove, with all its attractions, would never be appropriate for swimming. Even Jumbi, prancing in the waves at the very edge, ventured no farther into the water.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

  Lisa laughed, grabbed her hand, and led her out to the miniature shore. From the center of the beach she could see the huge, solid pile of boulders to their left: the jagged, sea-swept rocks at the base of the high, sheer cliff face that loomed up from the water. The house was nestled at the apex high above their heads, with its jutting deck partially visible from where they stood. Her gaze traveled up, up, up to the tiny, distant structure. She shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun, peering up at the corner of the deck. A lone figure stood there, leaning on the railing, looking down at them.

  It was Kay Prescott.

  As she watched, the woman raised an arm and waved. Lisa screamed and jumped up and down, flailing her arms for the benefit of her mother, that diminutive dot of life on the miniature redwood platform suspended so precariously over the precipice.

  She shuddered, thinking to herself, imagining it, the enormous reality hitting her in a rush, at that moment on the glorious beach. A long way, she thought.

  A long way to fall.

  He checked his watch again. Six minutes.

  It hadn’t been difficult to find her. She was staying in a small, inexpensive guest house above town, trying to decide what to do with the money. He’d suspected as much. A few casual questions to the right acquaintances, and he’d secured the address. Then it had been merely a question of an accidental meeting on the street just outside the inn, a harmless kiss and a discreet invitation. It was all right now, he’d assured her, now that their business relationship was over. And besides, she knew how he’d always felt about her, didn’t she? He’d fixed her with a gaze of long-smoldering desire and made a vague grab in the vicinity of her breast. She’d blushed and smirked and agreed to the rendezvous. Making sure there was no one on the street observing them, he’d kissed her again and told her where to be, and when.

  And here she was.

  Excellent.

  He came in to the shore and waited, watching, as she sashayed over to him. She was wearing a short-sleeved white blouse over her black bathing suit. A white silk scarf concealed her mousy brown hair. Hoop earrings, too much makeup, dime-store perfume.

  Deborah Kerr, no doubt. From Here to Eternity. And he was supposed to be Burt Lancaster.

  Fine.

  He grinned as he helped her into the boat. He held his breath and kissed her on her pudgy, rubbery lips. Nothing in this world, he thought, could be further from Deborah Kerr. . .

  “You look beautiful,” he crooned.

  She giggled, fluttering false lashes. “Merci, monsieurl Now, just exactly where is this special island—this Bali H’ai?”

  Oh, Christ! Not Deborah Kerr. Mitzi Gaynor in South Pacificl

  Fine. She could be whoever she wanted to be.

  He produced his laziest, sexiest smile. ‘You’ll see.”

  Eight minutes.

  He started the engine and headed the boat straight out, away from the island, toward the open sea. . . .

  If it hadn’t been for the dog, she probably would never have noticed it.

  They were sitting on the sand facing the ocean, and she was showing the child the secret of sketching water, a constantly moving model. The idea was to suggest the movement, to convey fluidity. Lisa, as usual, was getting it right on her first try. She was observant, all right. Very talented, and very clever. . . .

  Jumbi had been running at the breakers, barking and wagging her tail, attempting to frighten the water into staying on the sand where she could play with it. As clever as her young mistress, she soon realized that this would never come to pass. In the canine equivalent of disgust, she abandoned her inconstant playmate and ran off down the beach in search of another, more acquiescent friend. They laughed at her antics and resumed drawing.

  “I’ll start this time, Diana,” Lisa said. “Water.”

  “Wet,” came the reply.

  “Wet—”

  �
��Rocks,” the woman said, glancing off to their left.

  “Rocks—”

  “Cliff.”

  “Cliff—”

  “Woman.”

  “Woman?! All right, woman—”

  “Kay.”

  “Kay—”

  “Adam.”

  Lisa rolled her eyes and spat out the response. “Adam—”

  “Eve.”

  They giggled.

  “Eve—”

  “Christmas!” the young woman announced, triumphant.

  They burst into laughter. Lisa dropped her charcoal pencil and clapped her hands.

  “You’re wonderful, Diana!” she cried.

  At that moment, Jumbi began to bark.

  She was somewhere behind them, and the urgency of her yapping made them turn around. They saw the animal standing at the edge of the forest, her attention arrested by something not visible from their perspective. They stood up, dropping the art supplies, and walked toward her.

  “What is it, girl?” Lisa asked softly as they approached. “What do you see?”

  Jumbi was growling now, standing quite still, watching something in the woods.

  When they saw what she was watching, they began to laugh.

  It was an iguana, crouching at the base of a nearby tree, frozen in obvious terror. Its huge hooded eyes bulged more than usual, and its scaly gray spines and horn seemed poised for defensive measures. Even as they spied it, the shepherd sprang forward with a snarl.

  “Jumbi, no!” Lisa screamed.

  The reptile collected its wits and took off like a shot, slithering away into the forest with remarkable speed. Lisa reached out just in time to grab the dog’s collar and prevent her from giving chase.

  As she watched the iguana scurry through the woods, the young woman noticed something she had not previously seen. There, set back among the trees before them, obscured by the foliage, stood a small building. It was no more than a shack, really, perhaps twelve feet by sixteen, built rather crudely of wood.

  “What on earth is that?” she asked the child.