Hiding in the Shadows tbscus-2

by Кей Хупер

  The neatness contributed to the empty feel, with accent pillows placed precisely, and magazines on the stone-topped coffee table aligned exactly, and no clutter anywhere.

  Looking around, she was sure that she had been here before, and more than once. I know there are two bedrooms and a bathroom. And even though I can't see it from here, there's a clock near the kitchen table, and the dish towels have apples on them. And she loves plants, but hers are silk because she forgets to water the real ones and they die ... Shaking off the odd sensations, Faith walked over to a wall between two large windows where a bookcase was filled to bursting.

  ... Inside the book.

  Which book? There must have been a hundred on this set of shelves alone, and she didn't have to look down the hallway toward the bedrooms to know that it was lined with bookshelves just as filled as these were. Conscious of Kane behind her, Faith reached up to a shelf and began running a finger along the spines of the books, stopping on each just long enough to read the titles.

  "What are you looking for?" he asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Don't you?"

  She looked back over her shoulder at him. "No, I don't know. I have no idea which book she... which book the note meant. Do you?"

  "The note was directed to you," he answered implacably.

  "Okay, fine. Why don't you go on to your appointment with the inspector? Leave the guard outside and take the driver with you. I'll stay here and look through these books."

  His mouth tightened. "I'm not leaving you alone."

  "I'm not alone. The guard can stay."

  "It'll take hours to go through all her books," Kane said roughly.

  "Then I'll stay here for hours."

  "Goddammit, Faith, you know Dinah didn't write that note!"

  She didn't flinch. "I don't know who wrote it. But I am absolutely positive the message is from Dinah."

  "Dinah is dead."

  "Yes." Faith made herself go on in the calmest voice she could manage. "And I've known things about her all along, Kane. The flashes of those scenes with you. The dog attacking her. That room in the Cochrane warehouse where they... where they hurt her. And the sound of water near where she was found. I knew all of that, saw it or heard it or felt it. And I'm telling you now that the message in the note is from Dinah."

  "Are you channeling the dead now, Faith?"

  "I'm just telling you what I know. There is something in one of these books, something Dinah wants me to find. I have to look for it."

  Kane stared at her for a long while, then swore and reached for his cell phone. "All right. I'll reschedule with the inspector for tomorrow."

  He stepped away to use the phone, and Faith didn't try to talk him out of it. She knew he still didn't believe her about the note, but at least now he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Faith turned back to the bookshelves and began scanning the titles again. She really had no idea what she was looking for. All the books were novels, ranging from mystery, romance, and science fiction to blockbuster bestsellers and literary fiction. If nothing else, Dinah had certainly ranged widely in her reading. Faith plucked a few titles off the shelves and flipped through them, feeling helpless and frustrated.

  Which book? How could she possibly guess what might be important?

  "We'll have to go through them one by one," Kane said behind her. "Check every book. That is... if you really don't know what we're supposed to find."

  "I really don't know," she said.

  He let out a short breath that sounded impatient.

  "Okay. You start in here, and I'll take the hallway."

  "She had a lot of books," Faith murmured.

  "There's another wall of shelves in her bedroom," Kane said, then turned and went into the hall.

  An awful lot of books.

  More than an hour later, Faith had taken down, searched, and replaced on their shelves nearly half the books, without finding anything out of the ordinary.

  A few bookmarks. A years-old grocery list. Theater ticket stubs.

  She sat on the floor, her legs out before her, touching her toes and stretching her sore muscles gingerly.

  She was tired. And she was frustrated.

  Dammit, Dinah, where is it? Where do I look?

  She didn't know. And if it had been Dinah trying to help her find some necessary clue, she was being silent and unhelpful now. Faith got to her feet and went into the hallway, intending to ask Kane if he'd found anything. She assumed he would have told her if he had, but the silence was wearing on her nerves and she wanted to hear the sound of his voice.

  He wasn't in the hallway, though books stacked neatly on the floor gave evidence of his efforts.

  Faith went on down the hall, moving noiselessly, not sure why she felt the need to be silent. At the end of the hallway were the two bedrooms and bathroom.

  In the room that had undoubtedly been Dinah's, Kane sat on the bed, his bowed head in his hands, shoulders hunched, utterly still.

  Faith had a confused impression of a lovely room decorated in cool shades of blue, of patterns and materials that were feminine without being frilly, of more bookshelves and oil paintings of seascapes and a few figurines that were beautiful and tasteful and didn't clutter up the room.

  Then she crept away silently, back to the living room. Mechanically, she continued searching through the books, looking at each one from cover to cover before returning it to its shelf. She didn't realize she was crying until everything got blurry and she saw wet splotches on the page she was staring at.

  "Dammit," she whispered. "Dammit."

  "Any luck?"

  Faith put one last book back on the shelf, got to her feet, and looked at Kane as he stood in the doorway. She thought he was calmer, less angry. Or maybe he was simply as tired as she was. They'd been in Dinah's apartment nearly three hours.

  "No. How about you?"

  "Not so far." He frowned at her, seemed about to ask something, but in the end didn't.

  Faith wondered if her eyes were red. She said, "I thought of something a few minutes ago. My apartment was searched at least a couple of times. Do you think this place might have been searched too?"

  "Maybe. Right after Dinah disappeared, I went through here with a fine-tooth comb, and the police searched it as well. The security system has been active, and the only ones who are supposed to come in are the cleaning crew. But there's always a chance somebody else got in. If they did, though, they were neat about it. The cleaning service was under orders to report anything out of the ordinary — and I certainly haven't noticed anything out of place."

  Faith went over to sit in an armchair near the fireplace. "I keep thinking I should know just where to look. That note ... it assumed I'd know. "Inside the book," it said. As if there were only one book. One important book."

  Kane sat on the arm of the couch near her chair. "And you have no idea what book would be important." He didn't say it derisively or accusingly, just matter-of-fact.

  She pressed her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes. "No. But I..."

  Her head lifted abruptly, and she stared at him.

  "Did Dinah use a day planner? A date book?"

  "Two of them. One she kept with her in the jeep, for business, the other one here for personal stuff."

  Kane got up and went to the antique desk near one of the windows. He took a black leather book out of the top drawer and came back to hand it to Faith.

  "I've been through it a dozen times," he said, sitting on the couch. "So have the police. In the first few weeks, we retraced her steps those last days, trying to find some clue to what happened to her."

  He paused. "I never saw anything unusual in there, nothing that drew my attention."

  But that would have been the point. Not to draw anyone's attention. Faith examined the book carefully. It was the usual sort of day planner, with an address book and calendar and tabbed sections for appointments and schedules and notes. There was a pocket i
n the front cover for Dinah's business cards, and several pages of clear plastic sleeves for the cards people had given her.

  There was, as far as Faith could see, nothing out of the ordinary. She looked through the sections one at a time, turning each page slowly. It wasn't until she reached the second-to-last section intended for notes that she looked up at Kane.

  "There are no pages here. The tab says notes should be in this section, but all the pages are missing."

  "I didn't notice that. But it might mean nothing. Dinah could have torn them out one or two at a time, never intending to keep them. People do that."

  Faith closed her eyes, thinking. "if I knew somebody might try to get some information I had, that someone could come looking for it, I just might write it down twice. Once in a reasonable place where I could be fairly sure it would be found — and then again somewhere else."

  "Where?" Kane asked.

  Faith stared down at the planner. "When you're looking for something and you find it, you stop looking. Right?"

  "Right. "

  She turned the final tab, which was labeled misc, and discovered several lined pages with a scattering of reminders written in Dinah's hand. Faith ran her finger down them slowly.

  Get the jeep's tires rotated.

  Find out Sharon's birthday.

  Have a putting green installed in Conrad's office.

  Faith looked up at Kane and repeated that one aloud. "Conrad?"

  He smiled slightly. "Conrad Masterson. A financial manager who's also a golfing nut. Dinah was wondering what to get him for Christmas."

  "Oh." Faith returned her gaze to the pages. More reminders.

  To trace the whereabouts of a catalog order that had not arrived.

  To schedule a routine checkup with her doctor.

  To return a Stephen King novel to the library.

  Faith stopped again at that one. "But she buys his books."

  "What?" Kane leaned toward her.

  She looked up at him with a frown. "This note says she has to remember to return a Stephen King novel to the library. But she buys his books in hardcover I found half a dozen."

  "I found two," Kane said slowly.

  "Does she even take novels out of the library?"

  Kane had to think about that for a moment. "I don't think so. She used the library for research, but she was always willing to buy a book, even by a new author. Building a personal library was important to her." He indicated the bookshelves throughout the apartment."Obviously."

  "Then I think," Faith said, "we should look for more Stephen King novels."

  They found the handwritten list of names in the fourth King novel on the bedroom shelves.

  There were six names, all men. Five were prominent Atlanta businessmen, two of whom were politically active. The sixth man, Kane told Faith, had committed suicide a week before Dinah vanished.

  The third name on the list was Jordan Cochrane.

  But what caused Faith and Kane to look at each other in surprise was the single word Dinah had written and twice circled at the bottom of the page: Blackmail

  "Blackmail," Tim Daniels said, "is a nasty business, and the kind of dirt men pay to keep under the rug tends to be bad enough to provide a motive for murder."

  "Or suicide," Kane said. "One man on the list took care of his apparent problems by blowing his brains out, and it emerged afterward that for about six months before he'd been trying to pay back some money he had borrowed from the company he worked for. It was a lot of money. He would have gone to jail for a long time if the company had found out, and his very churchgoing wife would have been disgraced."

  "I'd call him a likely target for blackmail," Daniels allowed. "Assuming somebody found out what he was up to."

  "And if he was paying hush money, it was probably next to impossible for him to also pay back the money he'd embezzled. Which probably explains the suicide. Poor bastard was caught in a no-win situation."

  "I'd say," Daniels agreed.

  "We can also assume that since his name was lumped in with the five others, all these men were probably being blackmailed. Which begs the question..."

  "Who's doing the blackmailing?" Faith supplied.

  "Exactly."

  "It also," Faith noted, "seems to indicate that Jordan Cochrane is on the victim side of the equation."

  "That doesn't mean he wasn't involved in Dinah's in murder. Some secrets are worth killing to keep."

  "True enough. But there are four other names on that list, Kane. And you said all five share one other connection besides apparently being blackmail victims."

  "All are in some way involved in the construction business. The man who committed suicide was too. He kept the books for Mayfair Construction."

  "Isn't that the company..."

  "Working on the Ludlow building, yes. Or we, when I can put them back to work."

  Slowly, Faith said, "Another connection."

  "Another connection," Kane agreed.

  CHAPTER 13

  "I don't much like you waltzing around in my dreams," Faith said to Dinah.

  "It's not my idea of fun either," Dinah retorted, very busy with what she was doing. "If you'd only get your head on straight, I could get on with my life."

  Faith opened her mouth to remind Dinah once again that she had no life to get on with, but finally just shrugged and stepped closer, watching the other woman curiously. "What are you doing now?"

  "I'm fixing it, of course." Dinah was carefully gluing together delicate porcelain pieces of a shattered figurine. It was, Faith saw with a shiver, the figurine of a woman.

  "Are you trying to say you put me back together?" Dinah sighed, a bit impatient. "Never mind this. You aren't ready to think about it yet. What you have to do first is understand what that list means."

  "The names? It means blackmail, doesn't it?"

  Dinah looked at her sympathetically. "This is going to be very hard for the next little while. But you have to get through it. You won't begin to see the truth until you get through it."

  "Get through what?"

  "There's another body, of course. Once you begin killing, it's so easy to keep doing it. It even seems reasonable to use that means to solve a problem — especially if you've been successful before. And he has. First back in Seattle, and now here."

  "Who? Who is he, Dinah?"

  "Just remember that the body isn't who it appears to be. Don't let them make that mistake, Faith. You have to be sure who the body is, or you won't have the right answer."

  "But..."

  "And when you find the bell, make him tell you the truth. He won't want to, but you have to make him. He has pieces of the truth, and you need them."

  "Dammit, why do you have to talk in riddles?"

  "It's the only way you can hear me."

  That made no sense to Faith, and she sighed. "Can't you at least tell me where to look? There has to be a key to all this, and we need it. I don't even know the right questions to ask!"

  Dinah returned her attention to the figurine. "Ask yourself this, Faith. Ask yourself how many people you would die to protect. And be careful. Be very careful. He's watching, you know."

  It was the second time in as many days that Faith had jerked awake in the darkness just before dawn, but this time no intruder lurked outside the window.

  "Just the one in my mind," she heard herself murmur.

  She remained in bed for as long as she could, but it wasn't yet six-thirty when she finally got up. She slipped into the bathroom to take her morning shower.

  Ask yourself how many people you would die to protect.

  What frightened Faith about that question was her certainty that Dinah had done just that, had died believing her silence was protecting someone she cared about. And so far, the only person Faith could imagine the other woman caring for so deeply was Kane.

  Had he been in danger even before the last few days?

  Because he was somehow involved? Viewed objectively, she supposed it was p
ossible — though nothing she had seen or felt supported the likelihood.

  But there was that elusive thing Dinah's torturers had demanded of her, and Faith's apartment had been searched at least twice. She doubted the simple list of names was the cause of all that. Whatever else it was, its threat against the equally elusive villains had to be incredibly explosive to justify torture and murder, gunshots and bombs.

  No, it wasn't the list. She thought it was something she herself had found not long before the accident, some evidence that not only identified but condemned those behind the blackmail, and the murders of her family and Dinah.

  The list was a beginning, at least, the beginning where Dinah had started.

  Faith made her way to the kitchen. She didn't go near the couch, hoping that Kane was sleeping. He needed to sleep. She turned on the dim light above the stove and got the coffeemaker started. Then she leaned back against the counter and waited, trying not to think because she felt so weary of her thoughts chasing one another around in her mind.

  "You're up early." Kane stood in the doorway, his pale hair tousled and stubble on his jaw.

  "Sorry if I woke you," she said.

  "You didn't." He came in and busied himself getting the cups.

  Faith moved away a bit nervously to get the cream from the refrigerator. Kane didn't appear to be watching her, but she thought he noticed.

  "You cried out in your sleep," he said suddenly.

  That surprised her, and she looked at him uncertainly.

  "About two-thirty. I opened your door and looked in. You seemed restless, and you'd thrown off most of the covers."

  Remembering the thin nightgown she'd slept in, Faith felt heat rise in her face. But Kane was pouring coffee into their cups and didn't notice.

  "I went in to straighten the covers, and I thought for a minute you were awake. You said my name. But you were sound asleep."

  "I must have been. I don't remember."

  "Bad dreams?" He looked at her finally, as he handed her a cup.