Chloe finally turns to me, as we drive out of Cockpit Country, onto the road to Windsor. “We have to go to Kingston,” she says.
I look at her, cock an eyebrow, say, “Now?”
“Claypool and Sons is in Kingston. Virgil Claypool will be holding all of Derek’s messages for Pa. Don’t you think we need to see what they say?”
“Sure.” I look at the sun, how low it sits in the sky. “It’s going to be dark soon. What good will it do for us to get there after the office closes?”
Chloe shrugs.
“Kingston can wait until tomorrow,” I say. “We can stop at Bartlet House for the night.”
“And do what?” My bride grins at me, puts her hand on my shoulder.
I smile at her touch. “Whatever we want, Chloe,” I say. “Whatever we want.”
22
By the time we reach Bartlet House, the day has turned dim. Shadows stretch over us as we make our way up the driveway. To my relief the yellow Land Rover, while now covered by a canvas tarpaulin, still remains parked by the front door where I left it. I hope that the small magnetic box holding the car’s spare key remains in place where Granny said he secreted it — inside the front driver’s side tire well.
I’m well aware that we’re driving in a Jeep that belongs to two missing men. “We can get rid of this car after dark,” I tell Chloe, then point to my car. “We can use that one tomorrow.”
She nods, gets out of the Jeep at the same time as I do.
Silence greets us.
No household staff comes out to welcome us. No watchdogs show themselves. No horses bray or whinny in their stalls. Chloe follows me to the stable. “This must be what a ghost town feels like,” I say, throwing open the door, finding each stall empty, the dirt floor raked clean of any sign of hay.
Chloe puts her hand on my shoulder. “I told you Derek closed up the house,” she says.
I nod. “It’s still spooky,” I say. I go back to the car, pull off the tarpaulin and feel for the small box in the tire well. Once I find it, I pull it out, open it and show Chloe the spare key.
She smiles, says, “Too bad you didn’t hide the house key in there too.”
Too bad indeed. I test the front door, find it locked. We walk around the house, find every window closed, every door locked too. At the veranda door, Chloe says, “We don’t have to stay here. We could stay at one of the hotels on the coast.”
I think of all the nights I just spent sleeping in the cell beneath Chloe’s house — the miserable and meager rest I had, both in the cave and in the Jeep. Shaking my head, hard, I say, “No,” and slam my shoulder into the veranda door. The door shudders, but doesn’t give way.
“I want to sleep in my own damned bed tonight!” I say as I smash into the door again, the frame splintering but still holding.
Chloe stares at me, a bemused smile on her face. “It might have been easier to drive to a hotel,” she says.
Glaring at her, I thud into the door again, splinters flying as the frame gives way. Pushing the door open, I give Chloe a triumphant smile and motion for her to enter.
Inside, the only light comes from around the edges of the drawn curtains and closed shades. Sheets cover all the furniture. The air is warm and stale, as if the house has been closed for weeks. Chloe wrinkles her nose at the musty smell, watches as I flick a wall switch.
Lights go on. “At least we still have power,” I say, going to the thermostat, turning it until the air-conditioning kicks on. Just the drone of the compressor and dull whir of the fan operating makes the house feel less dead.
“And not much else,” Chloe calls from the great room.
I join her. Except for two CDs and one videotape, the entertainment center’s bare, all electronics gone. In the kitchen we find the pantry and the freezer devoid of food, all the smaller appliances missing too.
Chloe picks up a phone, holds the handset so I can hear the dial tone. “They haven’t turned off the phone yet,” she says.
“Great!” I take the telephone from her and dial Lamar Associates in Miami. A recording comes on, Sarah’s voice, explaining the office has closed for the day and detailing the company’s business hours. I disconnect and dial Arturo’s cellphone number. It rings at least a dozen times before a mechanical voice asks me to leave a message. I hang up.
Chloe puts her hand on the phone when I start to dial Claudia Gomez’s number and says, “Peter. They’re all going to think Derek is you. You have to know that. What are you going to accomplish by calling any of them now?”
Hanging up the phone, I sigh. “I just want to know that Henri’s okay.”
“We’ll find out at Claypool’s tomorrow,” Chloe says. She hugs me. “I’m sure Derek hasn’t harmed Henri. He has no reason to.”
My bedroom is as stripped as the rest of the house, my clothes all gone, the mattress bare. Chloe goes to the linen closet and returns empty-handed. “They’ve taken everything,” she says. “We’ll have to use the sheets on the furniture to make the bed.
I shrug.
“Of course.” Chloe approaches me, puts her arms around my neck, smiles at me, her lips only inches from mine. “We could use it just as it is.” She kisses me once, softly, then backs up, saying, “You know what we never got to do on our wedding night?” as she pulls off her top — revealing her bare chocolate breasts, her dark soft nipples just starting to grow taut.
Shaking my head, I breathe deep at the sight of her. Chloe and I have spent so little time together. Nothing would be nicer than to lie down with her, forget my responsibilities for a while. But I know there are things we have to do. “We have to get rid of the Jeep yet,” I say.
“We will.” Chloe grins a bad girl grin at me, undulates her hips as she shimmies out of her jeans. “We just should do this first.”
“We need to find food.”
Chloe makes a fake pout. “I’m not hungry.” She pulls down her powder blue bikini panties and kicks them out of the way. “I want something else.”
Watching me as I stare at her, she flops back on the bed, naked, lying on her back, her legs spread, every part of her in view. “It’s your turn now,” she says.
I stand at the foot of the bed and fight to control my body. But my loins stir anyway. I can’t turn away. I can’t keep my eyes off her. “We need to leave early in the morning,” I say. “We should rest.”
Chloe moves down in bed, reaches with her foot, pushes it against my crotch. “There’s plenty of time for that later,” she says, rubbing me with her foot, smiling at my hardness.
After lovemaking, after we’ve disposed of the Jeep, after we’ve hunted and fed together, after we’ve made love again in our natural forms, after we’ve returned home, Chloe and I gather up sheets and make the bed as best we can.
Because Elizabeth preferred sleeping in her natural form and I preferred my human shape, we often slept separately. Chloe delights me by joining me in bed, snuggling close, her head on my arm, her bare back pressed against my front, her smooth skin warm against mine. “I hope you don’t mind,” she says. “I’m used to sleeping in my human form.”
Her body heat wakes me in the middle of the night and I attempt to pull away — to cool myself. But Chloe moans in her sleep and pins my arm with her head. I grin and cast off the sheets instead and Chloe pushes against me. Embracing her, I put my lips on the back of her neck and, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing, loving being so close to her, I drift off again.
The touch of hands on my body, holding me, stroking, teasing and then the touch of lips on my flesh, rouse me from deep slumber. I lie half awake, my eyes closed, and let the hands move me where they will — let the lips, the mouth, bring me to a sore, but willing tumescence.
When Chloe rolls me onto my back, straddles me and slides me inside her, I smile at the warm, wet pleasure of her and reach up with both hands to fondle her breasts. But they’re fuller than I remember, more pendulous. I crack my eyes open — just enough to see that the first rays of
daybreak have already penetrated the bedroom. Then I open my eyes farther and see the pale skin and the blond hair of the woman above me.
I gasp and pull my hands away.
The blonde guffaws and collapses against me laughing as I slip away from her. The woman says between whoops of laughter, “Peter, it’s me! It’s me, Chloe!”
But the yellow hair that cascades on me is soft and silky with none of the wiry body of Chloe’s hair. The skin is creamy white, without any hint of ever having been exposed to the sun. Chloe sits back up, still straddling me, cups her breasts in both hands and laughs again. “I thought I should change before we left for Kingston,” she says, swiveling from side to side, exposing her breasts, fluffing her blond hair, modeling her new appearance for me. “Don’t you think Virgil Claypool would find it odd that Charles and Samantha Blood have a black daughter?”
I know she’s right but still she looks too much like a cross between a Barbie doll and a younger edition of her mother for me to be comfortable with her new look. Touching her breasts again, I say, “Did you think Mr. Claypool would be put off with your own breast size too?”
Chloe puts her hands on top of mine and giggles. “I just thought these went better with the blond hair.”
“You are going to change back after we leave Claypool’s, aren’t you?” I say.
“That depends on you,” Chloe says, moving her body against mine, touching me until I grow hard again. “Show me how much you want me to be back to my old self.”
We stop in Falmouth long enough to shop on Market Street for fresh clothes for me and a new outfit to show off Chloe’s new, more ample body — a green silk dress, she decides, with a plunging neckline.
After the bumpy, slow country roads of the interior, the A1, the modern highway that runs along the coast, is a pure delight. It’s still early enough in the day for the road to be relatively uncongested and we speed along past Runaway Bay and Ocho Rios without incident. But once the highway curves inland at Port Maria, traffic thickens with cars packed with passengers and trucks full of produce and other cargo, all heading for Kingston.
Drivers jockey for position, shouting, cursing at each other, beeping their horns. At an intersection where I seem to be the only driver unwilling to creep through a red light, Chloe loses patience. “Let me drive,” she says. I shrug and change places with her.
“Our women are the true warriors among us,” my father used to say, chuckling. “None of us would dare be as reckless as they.” Chloe is no exception. She accelerates into traffic and weaves around a Toyota compact, swerving just in time to barely miss an oncoming pickup truck.
She turns, flashes a wide smile. “I love this!” she says. I nod, make sure my seat belt is properly fastened.
Just before Annoto Bay, Chloe turns onto the A3, driving through the center of the country, climbing the foothills of the Blue Mountains. “Look,” I say to Chloe and point at the beauty around us, but she stares forward, her jaw set, intent on the road and the competing drivers.
We reach Kingston well before noon, descend from the mountains with the whole city laid out beneath us. “We’re going to New Kingston,” Chloe says. “Derek talks about it all the time. Claypool’s offices are at the top of the Garvey Building at the intersection of Halfway Tree and Hope Road. Derek says it’s the tallest building around and the only all white one.”
I point to a white rectangular building, inelegant in its simplicity, surrounded by smaller but much better designed office buildings. “That must be it,” I say.
Chloe nods and maneuvers the Land Rover through traffic that suddenly is as intense as in any other large city. It takes us thirty minutes before we finally find a parking spot in a lot across the street from the Garvey Building. Once Chloe turns off the ignition, she looks at me. “Please let me do the talking when we get up there,” she says.
Claypool and Sons offices may be on the top floor of a major office building, but they possess neither the size nor the elegance of LaMar Associates. We enter through a poorly finished wood door, marked only with the suite number, 1512, and a small brass plaque proclaiming: CLAYPOOL AND SONS, EXT. 1715.
The receptionist, an elderly Jamaican woman, thin, very light skinned, her face and hands textured with wrinkles, sits at a mica desk in the middle of the room, four folding wooden chairs lined up against the wall facing her. All the walls are dull white, marred and bare, obviously in need of a new coat of paint. The woman looks up at us as we enter. “Yes?” she says. “May I help you?”
“We’d like to see Virgil Claypool,” Chloe says.
“Do you have an appointment?”
Chloe makes a show of examining the empty room, the empty chairs. “My name is Chloe Blood. I’m Charles and Samantha Blood’s daughter,” she says, her tone suddenly aristocratic, tinged with a hint of disdain. “I think Mr. Claypool will want to see me if he isn’t too busy.”
“One minute,” the Jamaican woman says. She motions for us to sit.
“We’d rather stand,” Chloe says, shaking her head.
The receptionist nods, goes through an inner door to another office.
I look around the office while we wait. “Why does your family use these people?” I whisper. “It looks like they can barely afford their rent.”
Chloe shrugs. “Pa’s always used them. His father used them before that. They’ve always done whatever we needed.”
Virgil Claypool comes through the door, followed by his receptionist. He’s even lighter complexioned than she, his face sporting the nonspecific features of generations of intermarriage and the tautness of a recent facelift.
His well-tailored black silk suit, his gold Rolex watch and his three jeweled rings — one diamond, one emerald, one ruby — all contradict the first impression of impoverishment his front office made on me.
“Chloe,” he says, grinning a wide, white-toothed smile. “Your family’s women don’t ordinarily grace us with your presence. Most often I have to make do with your brother and we both know he has nowhere near the beauty that you do.” He extends a manicured hand to her. “Please come into my office.”
As we follow him into the office, I mindspeak to Chloe, “How old is he?”
“Derek says he’s at least sixty-five and” — she looks back and grins at me — “he’s the son in Claypool and Sons.”
Virgil’s office is as elegant as the front office is bare. The desk is a rich mahogany, the seats leather, the oakpaneled walls covered with pictures of a younger Virgil Claypool playing cricket and sailing on his yacht with his light-skinned family. Other pictures show him posed with various Jamaican politicians — Seaga, Manley and others. A large frame holds an obviously prized photo of Virgil and Bob Marley, both men grinning as if they had just shared a joke. The window behind Virgil’s desk offers a panorama of downtown Kingston — all the way down to the harbor.
Virgil grins as I examine everything and then says, “And you are?”
Before I can answer, Chloe says, “This is my fiancé, John Ames. He’s visiting from the U.S.”
Claypool cocks an eyebrow, motions for us to be seated, sits himself after Chloe does. “Derek didn’t mention you were engaged.”
“John?” I mindspeak. “You couldn’t come up with a more original name?”
“Live with it,” Chloe says.
She motions with one hand, as if to wave Virgil’s question away, says to the man, “He wouldn’t know. Johnny just asked me, a few days after Derek left.”
The Jamaican nods, leans back in his chair. “And how can I help you today?”
“Pa asked us to come by and pick up any news you’ve received from Derek. He’s anxious to hear how everything’s going in Miami.”
“I’ve been anxious to hear from your father. I was worried I’d have to hire a helicopter soon and fly out to see him. You know how much Charles hates to be visited. And there’s always a problem of what to do with the pilot when we return.” Virgil chuckles then pauses, looks at me. “Will your
pa be comfortable with us discussing all this in front of him?”
“Look at his eyes, Virgil,” Chloe says. “Johnny’s family too. My second cousin. There’s nothing he can’t hear.”
“Of course. Please excuse the suspicions of an old man. Caution, I fear, sometimes gets the better of me.” Virgil opens a side drawer on his desk, rifles through some papers. “Here,” he says, pushing three sheets of paper across the desk. “I’m afraid these are all the faxes I’ve received so far.”
Chloe scans them, then says, “I assume you’ve talked to my brother too.”
“Yes.” The man nods his head, smiles. “Not very often, but enough. Fortunately, his people are much better communicators. We’re all very excited.”
“About?” Chloe says.
Virgil Claypool’s eyes narrow. “The merger, of course.”
“Of course,” Chloe says, “When will it all finally be done?”
“Ian Tindall, from LaMar Associates, is due here in two weeks. Actually, I was beginning to worry I wouldn’t hear from your father in time. Please tell him we need his presence here two weeks from next Monday. By then all the papers will be drawn and ready for his signature.”
“I’m sure he’ll be pleased,” Chloe says.
It takes all of my self-control to sit still and show no emotion. “What the hell is going on?” I mindspeak to Chloe.
“You know as much as I do,” Chloe says.
“What about Henri?”
“Oh,” Chloe says to the Jamaican, “did Derek mention my nephew Henri? He has him in his care.”
Virgil nods and chuckles. “I think the boy’s been a bit of a trial for him. But Derek said to tell your father that they’ve reached an accommodation. The boy now knows better than to defy him.”
“Good,” Chloe says. “I’m fond of him but I’m afraid he’s been very spoiled.”
“Not anymore. Derek was quite specific about the boy learning to behave.”
“But Henri’s well?” I say.
The Jamaican frowns at my interruption. “From what Derek has told me, except for possibly a sore rear end, the young man is perfectly fine.”
Dragon Moon Page 18
