“I got right to work yesterday afternoon as soon as I got your message. And let me tell you, Henrie O, you …”
Her voice faded.
That set the pattern. We were barely within a transmission area. Snatches of information. Fadeaway. Information. Fadeaway.
But when I hung up I knew a good deal more than when I started. What I’d learned was damned interesting. Now I wondered just what my function was to be. Perhaps the other guests didn’t matter. Perhaps Chase wanted me here to study documents. Though if that was the case, he would have been smarter to invite someone with Lavinia’s skills. In any event, Lavinia’s information put a whole new face on my mission. But Lavinia’s parting, half-heard advice gave me even more food for thought: “Keep a close …hurricane nearing Cuba … listen to wea … keep out … trouble…”
Then the connection died.
At six minutes after five I knocked on the door to Chase’s study, turned the brass handle, and opened the door.
He was crossing the room to meet me. He still moved with that commanding grace, the; easy, confident, predatory swagger of a panther—beautiful, dark, fascinating, and infinitely dangerous. The kind of man to whom women lose their hearts.
On one level, it was a disturbing encounter.
On another, it was the most natural event in the world.
Chase Prescott. Forty years later. So much had not changed. The aura of power, of greedy desire, of iron-hard determination. It was there in his eyes, in his still darkly handsome face. Oh, time had touched him. The handsome face was lined, almost gaunt. He was much thinner than I remembered. His glossy black hair was threaded with white, his once smooth, youthful skin lined, the eager fire in his eyes transmuted to icy resolve.
“Henrie O.” And it was the familiar deep, compelling voice.
He took my hands in his, a strong, warm, vibrant grip. We looked at each other.
I knew what he saw. A slender, intense woman whose fire for life has not been quenched, a woman who still loves to laugh but who knows the world is bathed in tears.
“You came,” he said simply.
“Yes.” I kept my voice easy. I didn’t want to admit how difficult this journey had been;
“Because—”
I cut him off. “Let’s not look back, Chase.”
A quick frown drew his brows down, then it was gone, like a cloud slipping by a summer sun. He dropped my hands. “All right. If that’s the way you want it.”
“It’s the way it has to be.”
I was prepared to turn on my heel and leave.
He knew it. “But you came. Goddammit, you came.” He pounded a fist into his open palm. A grin of triumph curved his mobile mouth, and it was oh, so familiar, the old, reckless, daredevil Chase, on top of the world. “I feel like there’s no way I can lose, Henrie. Not now. Not with you here.” He took my elbow and propelled me to a chair near the fireplace. He remained standing. Yanking a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, he pulled one free, stuck it in his mouth, lit it.
So he still smoked. All of us smoked when we were young. Those were the years when Lucky Green went to war, and smoking was common and quite acceptable. I managed to quit thirty-some years ago. It was the most difficult thing I’d ever done. I was sorry to see that he hadn’t. I heard almost immediately that rattly smoker’s cough.
Dark shadows marked the hollows beneath his eyes. But most worrisome of all was the feverish quickness of his movements. That frantic edge contrasted sharply with the somnolent richness of his study: cypress paneling, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls, antique French parquet flooring, a Georgian mantel over the fireplace, Georgian tables and armchairs, Impressionist drawings, and a jewel-like collection of nineteenth-century music boxes.
He paced in front of the fireplace, then impatiently tossed the cigarette onto unlit logs piled on the hearth and turned toward me.
“Henrie—”
“Chase, you have eighty-three million in interest on loans due in thirty-five days. If you can’t meet that payment, it will throw your entire empire—holding companies, conglomerates, and all—into bankruptcy. The word in New York and London is there’s no way you can come up with the money.” Lavinia had found out a lot in less than a day.
His face froze in shock. Then anger crackled in his eyes with the same violence as fire licking at the edge of a forest. “So that’s the word that’s out. Listen, Henrie O, I’m going to beat the bastards. You can count on that. God, it makes me mad, the way they’ll suck up to your face and sharpen their knives behind your back. But they’re going to eat their words. Prescott Communications isn’t going down. I’ll die first. I’ve never failed—and I won’t fail now.”
There was no mistaking the total conviction in his words. This was a Chase I knew well, single-minded, ruthless, absolutely certain of success.
“No, Henrie O, I’d give anything if that was the problem. Money, hell, I can always get money. I’ve got new financing in the wings. That’s going to be all right.” With a wave of his hand he indicated that eighty-three million dollars of debt wasn’t worth talking about. “That’s no problem—if I live long enough to swing it.”
“Live long enough? Chase, are you ill?” That could explain the thinness, the haunted look in his eyes, the quick mood swings.
He managed a tight grin, but there was hurt in his eyes, hurt and an unwillingness to believe, and a wildness. “No. I’m fine. Everything would be perfect—I’d be on top of the world, the financial crunch behind me or soon to be, rich beyond most men’s dreams, blessed with a beautiful wife, ready to expand my empire”—he leaned toward me—“the next frontier will be the ultimate utilization of home computers for news delivery, information retrieval, books, purchasing, banking, you name it. It can be done, and I’m going to be there, Henrie O, I promise you…” He paused. The excitement seeped out of his face. “…unless someone, someone here on my island, kills me first.”
3
Chase paced and talked, smoking one cigarette after another. It was as if a dam burst; a torrent of words and fears and passionate conjectures buffeted me.
Finally, he slumped exhausted in a club chair and stared at me with desperate eyes. “You know a lot about murder.”
Yes, I know a lot about murder.
Murderers will often urinate involuntarily after committing the crime.
Murder makes a killer hungry. Check the fast-food outlets close to the scene of a crime.
Two to six hours after death rigor mortis begins, starting with the head and spreading clown the whole body.
If the position of a body is changed after death, it will affect postmortem lividity.
Toothlike projections from a bloodstain will indicate the blood fell from a moving body and will show the direction of movement.
I could continue. But this knowledge was useless in trying to prevent a crime.
I suppose it was a combination of fear and inadequacy that made me snap at him. “For Christ’s sake, Chase, why didn’t you call the police?”
But I knew the answer to that. What good would it have done? Calling the police in the instance he’d described would have been about as effective as a battered wife getting a court order forbidding harassment. There are a lot of death statistics tied to the latter.
“All right, all right.” I opened my purse, grabbed my notepad. “Let me see if I’m clear on the timing. And the people.”
He bounded up from his chair. “You’re going to help.”
“If I can, if I can. I’m not a sorcerer.”
“You’re the smartest goddamn reporter I ever knew,” He was once again Chase-in-charge, Chase-on-top-of-the-heap.
I won’t say the tribute didn’t please me. But what Chase wanted was a far cry from what I did best, ferreting out facts—gouging them out, if need be—and purveying information as clearly, cleanly, and justly as I could.
I said as much.
And the old Chase exhorted me. “But that is exactly what I want.” He
was pacing and gesturing again, lighting one cigarette from the remnant of another, just as he had when I was a young reporter and he was an intense, hard-driving bureau chief. Those days—I wrenched my mind back to the present; I don’t like the melancholy ache of remembrance.
Chase gripped my arm, his hand warm against my skin. “Think of it as a story, Henrie O, the way you always have. Dig out the truth. That’s what I want: the truth.” His hand slipped away. His face was suddenly tight and grim. “Then I will deal with it.”
“Deal with it? How?” I was still sorting out the implications of what he’d told me and what he wanted; I hadn’t given a second’s thought to what might be done if I figured out who the culprit was.
He dropped onto the sofa and now he was relaxed, one arm flung casually along the back. He gave me an impish grin. “It will be fun.” But the grin abruptly tilted sideways and disappeared.
I understood. Just how much fun would it be to discover who it was, among people whom you knew intimately, who actively, malevolently, stealthily wanted you dead?
“Sort of fun,” he amended wryly. He reached for another cigarette but didn’t light it. “Also simple and foolproof. If you come up with the name, all I have to do is give a sealed envelope containing that information to my lawyer and to the executor of my estate—an envelope to be opened in the event of my death by any other than natural means. Then I inform the person named in that letter.”
“Hard cheese for them if someone else should do you in,” I pointed out.
He pulled out his gold cigarette lighter and touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette. “Tough.” His voice was cool.
I could see his point. Why be overly solicitous of a person who wants you dead?
“Still, that is a drawback,” I pointed out crisply. “But one we can deal with later. All right, Chase, let’s see if I have it straight.”
I read aloud:
“Date of Attempted Murder of Chase Prescott: July 25, a Saturday.
“Location: the Prescott brownstone apartment, Central Park West, New York City.
“Modus operandi: poison.”
Chase took a deep drag on the cigarette, smothered a cough. “If I hadn’t seen it happen, I still wouldn’t believe it. I went into my study to work on some of the financial stuff, you know, getting ready for the refinancing. I was right in the middle of that. Anyway, I went into my study and found a box of candy sitting on my desk. From my favorite store. I was pleased. I thought probably Miranda”—he broke off, took a deep breath, coughed—“probably Miranda had got them for me. I opened it up, and it was a box of marzipan—”
Marzipan. That brought back a few memories of my own. Chase’s taste hadn’t changed.
Chase flashed that well-remembered boyish grin with just the smallest tinge of embarrassment. “I’ve always been crazy about them. Hadn’t had any for a while. The damn cholesterol business.”
I restrained myself from suggesting that cigarettes were a good deal more deadly—usually—than marzipan.
Smoke wreathed his face. “So I grabbed the box and pulled out the nearest one and I lost my grip on it. The damn thing tumbled right off the desk.” Chase’s lips pressed together for a moment, then he spoke so quietly I could scarcely hear him. “God, it was awful. Chesterfield—my retriever—came across the room in two bounds. He bit a candy and, I swear to God, Henrie O, he was dead in five seconds.” Chase managed a grim smile. “Turns out there really is a smell of bitter almonds. A stink. Anyway, there was only the one poisoned candy in the box. I had the rest of them tested. I had the box dusted for fingerprints. Not a single damn print on it or in it but mine. Just mine.”
Pain was replaced by a dogged matter-of-fact-ness. “I worked it out. The poisoner had to know I was the only person in that house who would eat a marzipan. My staff is superbly trained. Anyone seeing the box on my desk would assume it was for me and leave it be. The poisoner had to know I was in New York that weekend. He must have been in the house on Friday or Saturday—a guest, an employee, or … or someone who lived there.”
Miranda, of course, would not be a guest.
“I checked my daybook. Dropping in on either Friday or Saturday were Valerie St. Vincent; my stepson, Haskell; my son, Roger; and my lawyer, Trevor Dunnaway. Lyle Stedman was up from Atlanta for the weekend.”
I made a note. “How about the people living or working in the house?”
“Miranda, of course. My secretary, Burton Andrews. You’ve met him. And the staff that’s here this week: Enrique, my manservant; his wife, Rosalia, the housekeeper; and Betty, the maid.”
“No one else was in the apartment on either Friday or Saturday? A repairman? A friend of Miranda’s? A guest of a member of the staff? A delivery person?”
“I checked. Believe me, I checked.” He brushed back a lock of ebony hair that had fallen across his forehead, making him look—for an instant—younger, vulnerable. “No one else. It’s one of them. It has to be one of them.” He ground out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
I wondered if Chase’s insistence had to do with conviction or fear. It would be even more horrifying to think you had a deadly enemy abroad and no hint as to his or her identity. It was better, if terrible, to be able to draw a circle around a particular group.
But he should be able to do better than that.
“Chase, how about leveling with me? You know these people. You know them damn well. Who hates you? Who would benefit?”
His feverish eyes slid away from mine. “Henrie O, I promise you, I’ve looked at it from every angle, and I don’t have any idea. Not a single damn idea.”
I knew it as clearly as if it were splashed on a billboard. He was lying. He had an idea, all right. That made me mad.
“Chase, dammit, I can’t work in the dark. Whom do you suspect?”
He stared stubbornly down at the floor and shook his head, once, with finality.
It was an impasse, and it was I who finally surrendered. He wouldn’t say. Perhaps if he put his suspicion into words it would destroy for him forever that gossamer trust that binds friends and lovers.
I looked down at my notebook, recalled the faces I’d met at tea, and wondered how I was going to undertake what might be the hardest assignment I’d ever had.
I don’t suppose Chase has ever borne silence well. “Well, what do you think?” His deep voice crackled with impatience.
I looked up in surprise and some irritation.
He was regarding me with the demanding air of a small boy awaiting the production of a rabbit from a magician’s hat.
“Chase, I have yet to talk with anyone. I scarcely have any ideas.” And the few I had, I didn’t intend to share for now.
“But you’re so good with instinct.” He sounded almost querulous. Once again he pushed back that stray lock of hair. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you before you met any of them, so you could be prepared, be on the lookout …”
His voice trailed off.
I suddenly felt terribly sorry for him. Did he think I was the human equivalent of a divining rod, able to sniff out the presence of evil like a dowser locating water? Was that why he had instructed his secretary to sweep me to my room upon arrival? To keep my faculties untainted by exposure to his intimate circle of suspects?
“I thought I’d tell you everything. Then maybe at dinner tonight, maybe you’d just know.” His eyes flickered around the room, touched my face, moved on, returned. “But maybe—what do you think, Henrie O? Do you know which one did it?” He lit a cigarette, drew on it, stubbed it out.
How interesting. Obviously, Chase knew I’d crashed Miranda’s tea party and he believed his would-be killer had been there, too. Apparently he had included the members of his staff on his list of suspects simply because they had opportunity. I wondered how wise it was to dismiss them from his suspicions. It’s always astonished me that more of those who live out their lives cosseting the very rich do not harbor enormous resentment. Personally, every time I s
ee a Mercedes arrogantly encamped in a no-parking zone or hogging two slots, I’ve wished I was in the turret of a tank.
I tapped my notebook with my pen. “Chase, I’m not into instant Rorschach—”
“Henrie O, I want your gut response.”
“My gut response? My gut response is that you’re acting like a fool.”
His head jerked up. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “What the hell do you mean?”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you, Chase, how dangerous this could be? Let’s say one of these people intends to kill you. And you’ve conveniently gathered here—with no means of escape other than a single boat, which you control—a handful of people who were on the premises when your candy was poisoned. I should think the temptation—for the guilty one—would be overwhelming.”
He pushed up from the couch. Jamming his hands in his pockets, he stared down at me with burning eyes. “So it’s a gamble, Henrie O. The ultimate gamble. Black or red, which will it be? Will I win? Or lose? Well, I don’t intend to lose, my dear.” His voice was harsh. “I’ve never been a loser. Never. The house always wins. Ultimately, the house always wins. Well, I’m the house and I damn sure intend to win. Look at it”—he pulled his hands free, smacked a fist into a palm—“I’ve got the advantage. I know one of them’s a killer. I’m on guard. I’ve got my defenses up. Even more than you know about. But you’re my secret weapon, Henrie O. No one knows who you are. No one knows what a devil you are for the truth.”
I rose. “Chase, you’re talking years ago. I haven’t gone after a story in almost a decade. And how can I do it here? No telephones, no files, no contacts, no way to find out about each of these people.” I certainly didn’t consider the intermittent working of my cellular phone an adequate resource and did not believe this was the time to mention it. “You know how I did a story. I looked and searched and scraped back the surface and peeled off the facade. I knew whom I was dealing with. I knew more about them than their doctors or their lovers, never mind their mothers. How the hell can I do that here? Look, this is an ill-conceived idea from start—”
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