by Linda Barlow
She parked her car in the half-moon area directly in front of the main entrance and climbed the wide stone steps that curved around the front of the house to the gigantic door. She saw no doorbell, so she raised the heavy knocker (the roaring head of a lion) and released it. The sound of the bronze striking its metal plate was like a gunshot. Startled, Annie felt little fear-devils chasing themselves up and down her spine.
“Get a grip,” she ordered herself.
She was expecting a lugubrious butler dressed like Boris Karloff to open the door, but all that happened was that dogs began barking inside. After thirty seconds or so she knocked again. She heard the sound echo through the house. Still, no one came.
This is odd. She began to wonder if she had the right day, the right time. She was sure his instructions had been clear, and that she had carried them out precisely.
She was lifting the knocker one more time when Carlyle himself opened the door. “Sorry for the delay,” he said with a smile. “I was locking up the dogs, and my housekeeper, Mrs. Roberts, has the night off.” He stepped back and showed her in with a flourish. “Welcome to the ugliest house in Pacific Heights.”
She smiled. “This is quite a place,” she said, crossing the threshold into a large foyer with a vaulted ceiling and a black marble floor.
“Yes, isn’t it. As an architectural designer, you might be interested in knowing that the man who conceived and built it ended his days in a psychiatric hospital.”
Annie laughed. She remembered his dry sense of humor from London, but she hadn’t seen much sign of it since then. “It’s certainly a mad mixture of styles.”
“That’s for sure. Francesca and I moved in just a couple of months before her death. She thought it had ‘possibilities.’ She was going to have it completely redone, of course. But then she died.”
The inside was perfectly in keeping with the outside—with high-ceilinged rooms and a seemingly infinite number of odd angles and small nooks and crannies. The walls were either painted in dark colors or hung with gloomy wallpaper that had seen the passage of several decades. The furniture was well made and expensive, but if any attempt had been made to choose the right piece for the right room, Annie couldn’t discern it.
The interior of the house had no soul. She wondered if this indicated a similar lack in its owner.
“In a way, I like the gloominess of the place,” he said, staring at her as if he guessed what she was thinking. “Its ponderousness and darkness seem appropriate to me somehow.” He came to stand beside her. “Have you ever been afraid of the dark, Annie?”
She took a step away from him. “Well, yes, actually, I still am. I’m a bit claustrophobic, especially in the dark.”
“I used to be terrified of the dark. As a kid, I’d curl up in bed and cover my head with the blankets, tense as a board, knowing—absolutely sure of it—that there was a monster waiting to consume me there. I used to pray very hard to God to protect me, back when I believed in God.”
“Imagination can be a terrible thing, can’t it?” she said lightly.
“So can reality.”
There was nothing she could say to that. She remembered that his reality had included living in a small, dark cell for more than a year while his trial droned on. She would have gone crazy, locked up like that.
She glanced at him. His expression was closed, his features like granite. A man who was in supreme control of his emotions. Yet she remembered the way he had appeared on television in the courtroom on the day when the verdict had been announced. The look in his eyes had revealed his inner turmoil.
Not so tonight, though. Tonight she had no idea what he was thinking.
They stared at each other for a long moment, then he turned away and said in a normal tone, “Come, I never use this room. There actually is a more pleasant place. Let me show you the garden.”
Sliding doors led from the living room outside to a small intricately laid-out Japanese garden. Here, clearly, a landscape artist had been at work. There were flowering plants of all sorts, their vividly colored blossoms dancing in the breeze. There were trees, both natural and exquisitely small bonsai trees, and flowering shrubs. Through the middle of the garden wound a flowing stream that opened into a fish pool where Annie saw the coppery gleam of carp.
“It’s very beautiful. Almost a fairyland.”
“I’m not a very visually oriented person, so I probably don’t even appreciate some of the finer details, but I do know that I feel at peace here,” he said. “When I come out and walk in the garden, sit quietly, feed the fish, the rest of the world seems, briefly, to slip away.”
“Yes, I can see why.”
He turned to her, and she noticed that he was very close. Self-consciously, she took a step back.
“I’m getting the distinct feeling that you’re uncomfortable here with me,” he said.
She met his eyes. “Yes, I am, a bit.” She was comparing the way she felt with him with her feelings about some of the other men she knew. Sam Brody, for instance. Or Charlie. With Charlie she’d felt a pleasant zing of combined friendship and attraction—the sort of feeling that blossoms into love, companionship, and trust. But with Matthew Carlyle she already felt the beginnings of the same wild and sweeping lust that had gripped her so strongly that weekend long ago in England.
It was a strong, earthy, passionate attraction, based purely on sexual chemistry. The sort of thing that did nothing but cause trouble in the people who were foolish enough to romanticize it.
“So what’s the source of your unease?”
Annie wasn’t about to say that she was fighting a strong and abiding attraction to him! As she fumbled for words, his expression darkened. “I presume you believe, along with so many other people, that the jury acquitted a guilty man?”
Of course he would think that. Yet, oddly, despite her conversation with Darcy, she hadn’t given any thought to the murder since she’d arrived. The danger she sensed from him was of another variety entirely.
“No,” she said quickly. “I believe the verdict was fair. And I remind you that my own conflicts with you go back a lot further than your problems with the state of California.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then he smiled. “You’re right, of course. I’ve reclassified my life into two periods— Before Francesca’s Murder and After Francesca’s Murder. Anything falling into the Before period seems like ancient history to me, but of course that isn’t necessarily true of other people.”
Annie felt a tiny bit ashamed as it occurred to her that if he had not murdered his wife and if he had loved her, he must have suffered far more deeply even than she had when Charlie died. She had been consoled by friends; her grief had been respected. Carlyle’s grief, assuming he’d felt any—the inevitable qualification—had been discounted.
“Forgive me,” she said.
He blinked. “What for?”
She shrugged. “Insensitivity. Most people our age don’t know how it feels to have to cope with the death of a spouse. I do.”
He shrugged. “So it appears that you and I have something in common after all.”
Darcy pulled past the house, looking for a parking place. Damn San Francisco! There was never any place to leave your car.
She drove on up the next block, then pulled into a driveway and turned around. Coming back down the hill, she stopped on the sidewalk a few doors from Sam’s house in the Russian Hill district. She was blocking the entrance of somebody’s driveway, but it didn’t matter. She’d only be there for a few minutes, and she wasn’t getting out.
Fool! You shouldn’t be here at all. What if he sees you? What if you get caught?
She would die of embarrassment, she knew. There wasn’t much that embarrassed her, but being caught skulking around after Sam Brody would do it.
This was crazy. There was absolutely no point to it. It wasn’t going to help, and besides, it was pure emotional torture. Especially on a night like tonight. Sam had a date. He was seei
ng a blond woman who, from a distance, looked remarkably like Annie. In fact, if Darcy hadn’t known that Annie was out this evening with Matthew Carlyle, she would have thought Sam’s date was Annie.
They had enjoyed a romantic dinner in a restaurant downtown, and now they had returned to his apartment. They’d each come in their own cars. The blonde had parked hers just down the street on the left, lucking into an empty slot. She drove a little red Mercedes, and Darcy glared at it balefully, wanting to come up behind her at a stoplight and ram the shit out of that trim little rear end.
Sam had held the blonde’s hand as he’d led her up the stairs to the front door. By now he was probably kissing her and coaxing her toward the bedroom, where he would make love to her with that careful blend of tenderness and passion that made him such a skillful lover.
Stop it! This is crazy and self-destructive! He’s not worth it! Have you no pride, no dignity? Why can’t you stop obsessing over this jerk?
Darcy stared at the light in the front window of the old Victorian. Sam lived in one of the “painted ladies”—a beautiful restored Victorian from pre-1906 earthquake days. The lights were easily visible from the street, and Darcy couldn’t count the times she’d driven by, at all hours of the day and night, just to see if his lights were on. No matter where she had to go in the city, she chose a route that took her by his house. Frequently when she started out she would resolve not to drive anywhere near his house, but some demon would take over, directing her hands on the wheel, and she would find herself on his street.
It didn’t matter whether he was home. In fact, it was often better if he was away. Because he could come home while she was waiting, giving her a glimpse of him. Seeing him in person was better than simply seeing his lights, although it increased the risk that he would notice her and wonder what she was doing there.
For some bizarre reason, this obsession did not bother her during the day at work. She could deal with seeing him then. It was as if he were a different person during the day, in the office. There, she was in control.
But when she got away from work her control broke, and she was at the mercy of her unruly emotions. Sometimes they frightened her so profoundly that she thought she was going insane.
Over and over she’d told herself that this would pass, that time would heal her, that she would forget about him and exorcise this cancer from her soul. Sam Brody didn’t love her. He didn’t even want her. There was nothing she could do to change that fact, and she’d damn well better get over it.
Especially now. There were problems at work, things to think about, things to worry about. Things she had to do. She couldn’t afford to waste her evenings like this. It was beyond stupid—it was asinine.
Tonight was chillier than usual, and Darcy began to shiver. It was always a problem to decide whether to leave the motor running. Once the police had driven by as she was idling in front of a driveway. She’d hurriedly jerked a map out of the glove compartment and pretended to be studying it as they’d signaled to her to move on.
This is sick. It’s got to stop! At this rate I’ll soon be boiling bunnies!
The light in the front window went off. Darcy felt her heart twist. They must be moving into the bedroom. She imagined Sam and his date in bed, their naked limbs entwining, and her hands began to shake. Jerkily she turned the key to start the engine. She had to get out of there. No one in her right mind would torture herself this way.
She started to head for home, but one of the new impulses that were so difficult to control made her turn instead down the road that would take her once more around the block past Sam’s place.
Maybe someone would be leaving and she would spot a parking place.…
Chapter Thirteen
Annie was surprised at how pleasant her dinner with Matthew Carlyle turned out to be. They ate in a candlelit dining room at a mercifully small table set in front of a roaring fireplace. The food, served by an unobtrusive staff, was delicious.
They spoke in more detail about the progress of the work on the cathedral. She found him to be a quick, intelligent conversationalist, good both at talking and at listening. After some initial reticence, she began to open up, and he appeared to do the same.
“One thing I’m not sure I understand,” she said. “Having lost the last year and a half of your life, there must be a lot of things you need to do, a lot to catch up on. Why get involved with the cathedral? You mentioned earlier that you don’t believe in God.”
He shrugged. “That’s true, but I do owe something to Barbara Rae. And, as you probably know, I’ve been peripherally involved in the cathedral from the start because of Francesca’s interest in the project.” His expression was intense as he added, “The fact that you were involved was a major factor, for me at least, when it came time to write a check to the building fund. Frankly, I admired your work.”
“I’m astonished to hear that,” she said. “And I’m not sure I believe it.”
He blinked. “Why not?”
“You’d refused to engage Fabrications the previous year.”
“I told you the reason for that. Everything I predicted came true.”
Her chin went up. “Everything you predicted came true because we didn’t get the Powerdyme job. If we had, Fabrications might have survived!”
“Temporarily, perhaps. In the long run, no. You were too small. And, apart from you, the company didn’t have the talent. Your work, personally, was terrific, but after Charlie died—”
“Let’s not rehash this now,” she said testily.
“Okay, but I think I’m just realizing something that I’ve never understood before.” He paused. “You blame me for the demise of Fabrications, don’t you?”
“No, of course not,” she said, but she could hear that her tone was unconvincing. It was irrational to blame him, she knew. Fabrications had failed for many reasons; probably mainly for the same reason that most small businesses fail—they simply aren’t well known enough to get the contracts to keep them out of the red. The economy had been bad as well. Even big companies like Brody Associates had suffered during those years.
Still, it had been much more comfortable to have a villain to blame. And Matt Carlyle had fit the bill very nicely for a while. “What I blame you for, I guess, is blasting my hope. Fabrications was all I had left after my husband’s death. I desperately wanted to believe I could keep it going.”
She looked at him, expecting a lecture on the risks and the realities of entrepreneurial ventures. But instead he said, “It must have been a tough time for you. I’m sorry if I made it worse. My first company failed too, so I know how it feels.”
Annie was amazed at the congeniality of this statement. She never knew what to expect from this man! “You had a company that failed?”
“Yup. One of the first computer game companies. If things had worked out, my life might have turned out quite differently.” He shook his head. “Sam Brody’s life would have been different too. He and I were partners. Did you know that?”
“I knew you were friends. Roommates in college, right? But Sam’s an architect. What would he have had to do with computer games?”
“He’s also a talented illustrator. And in those days he had no desire to go into the family business. He and I were going to change the world together.”
Instead, she thought, he’d started a software company and changed the world alone.
“I don’t really know all that much about Sam’s personal life,” she said.
“Well, when we met, he was the sophisticated, wealthy private-school boy who took me under his wing. I was poor but smart—a typical math and science geek. Sam used to call me the human computer—which wasn’t exactly a compliment at the time, since computers were awkward, clunky things that took up an entire room.”
His manner was low-key and self-deprecating, which Annie found very appealing.
“Since Sam was so affable and well connected, he was the front man for our company,” he went on. “I
didn’t know how to market a product properly, and, what’s more, I hadn’t the slightest interest in doing so. Pretty ironic, isn’t it, considering what I do today. Back then I didn’t own a three-piece suit, and my idea of sophisticated marketing was to candidly tell people not only the strengths but also the weaknesses of our products.
“Anyhow, we failed, and poor Sam was pretty disgusted with me. Can’t really blame him, in retrospect. It took me a few more years to learn the lessons about business that I needed to know.”
“You and he are still good friends, though, right?”
“Oh, yes, absolutely,” he said warmly. “Sam was one of the few people who stood by me during the trial. He never doubted that I was innocent.”
“It’s good to have a friend like that.”
“Yeah, it is. Sam is one of the few people in my life whom I know I can always count on, no matter what.” He paused, then added, “I’m glad things have worked out so well for you at Brody Associates. Sam’s previous design manager was incompetent. And the timing was perfect—he had just gotten rid of her when I told him about you.”
Annie blinked. “When you told him about me?”
“I called Sam on your behalf, yes. He’d heard of you, although he knew your husband’s work better.”
“You mean Sam asked you for a reference when he was deciding whether or not to hire me?”
Matt shook his head. “Never mind. It’s not important. I’m just glad it all worked out.”
“No, wait.” Annie was so astonished at the implications of what he was saying that she couldn’t just let it go without explanation. “Are you telling me that you were the one who put Sam onto me in the first place? He called me initially, you know.”
He nodded. “Right after that meeting we had when I told you I wouldn’t be hiring Fabrications. I mentioned to Sam that you were a top-notch designer and might soon be looking for a job.” He hesitated for a moment. “Sorry if that sounds patronizing, but I respected your work and wanted to do something to help.”
All this time she’d seen him as a villain—when in fact she owed her current job to him!
