No one disputed her. No one argued against forcing the issue to a head. There was no other option. Mark filled his lungs. “Okay,” he said, not quite recognizing his own voice. “I’ll play decoy for you. But how can I provoke her to attack me again? Have a picnic in the parlor?”
“Mark,” Hilary chided, and bit her lip.
He sent her a contrite but stubborn glance. She knew there was no point in trying to talk him out of it. He’d won one small confrontation with the house. Now he was being offered a larger one—the chance to beat his nightmares once and for all. If he refused, he’d never respect himself again.
Hilary released her lip. Her eyes hardened. “I’ll be there, too.”
“It’s my responsibility to play decoy,” Jenny told them. “If you wish to join me, you’re very welcome. Detective, I presume you have some plan how to alert the hunter that the goats are waiting?”
“Oh yes,” said Zapata. “Give me the rest of today to set things up—we need to mend the wallpaper outside that room, Frank. My social spies tell me the Coburgs are scheduled for a dinner tonight, but even so, Jenny, you spend the night some place else. Tomorrow, call Wesley Bradshaw and tell him you found the Cross. If he doesn’t pass that tidbit on to Dolores, I’ll eat my badge. And she’ll come here.”
“Brilliant,” Jenny returned. “Dead brilliant.”
“You can leave out the dead part,” directed Hilary.
“We have to make sure she doesn’t get into the house ahead of us,” Zapata went on. “Having found her hidey-hole helps. But you and I, Frank, are going to spend the day as archaeology students.”
“I’ll send the real ones home,” said Jenny. “Can you fill in with some of your own people?”
“Definitely.”
“What if you get another case?” Mark asked. He couldn’t believe they were standing here calmly discussing committing—well, no, not suicide. No matter how frenzied Dolores was, she couldn’t kill all of them. This time she wouldn’t have surprise on her side.
“I don’t care if the mayor is assassinated and the entire city council held hostage,” Zapata returned. “We’ll be here.”
Do you care how many people you sacrifice to your ambition? Mark wanted to ask. But Zapata’s ambition served them all. He said simply, “Okay.”
“Let’s go for it,” said Hilary, her words strained between her teeth. “L’audace, toujours l’audace.”
“Right.” Jenny offered Zapata the notebook she held. “I’d best get back to work. You’ll bring me a copy of this by this evening—then you can replace it in the room, if you wish.”
Mark expected Zapata to leap to attention and deliver a sarcastic, “Yes, ma’am.” Instead she nodded. “Sure.”
The detectives trudged off toward the driveway, shoulders bumping but faces turned away from each other. Then Jenny stood at attention, grim and determined. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to allow the cat and me to spend the night in your flat, Mark? I am making the assumption you won’t be there.”
“Be my guest.” For one brief moment he allowed himself the vision of Jenny in his brass bed. Then he released his thought, like a child letting go of a balloon, and turned toward Hilary.
Her luminous eyes were fixed on the windows of the study. Mark followed her gaze. The movement that wasn’t quite a movement shaded the glass. The curtains shivered as though to a puff of wind. Sorry Arthur, he silently told the ghost. Not everything in the house is a fake.
Jenny strode back to the dig. Mark took Hilary’s hand, squeezing it so hard she yelped. “Sorry,” he said. She squeezed his hand back. They didn’t speak. Words simply weren’t adequate to the occasion.
Preston had thoughtfully left their sandwiches and drinks in the shade of the toolshed. The last thing Mark wanted now was food, but he forced down a shred or two of lettuce. “Well,” he said in answer to Preston’s curious look, “I have good news and bad news. We found some great evidence, but the killer’s still on the loose.”
He walked Preston through the events of the last couple of hours. The man’s face grew longer and longer, and the whites of his eyes glinted. “Man,” he said at last, “I’m going to invite myself to spend the night at Leslie’s place. And she can forget the negligee—I want her in her black belt!”
Hilary laughed around her own sandwich. Heartened, Mark managed to eat most of his before he went back to work in the garage ruins.
The sun beat down. The leaves of the oaks hung flaccid, stirred only by the occasional hot, humid puff from the south. Frank Yeager reappeared and gave Jenny a thick envelope of photocopies so fresh they reeked of developer. “Very kind of you,” she told him.
“With Rosalind’s compliments.” Smiling wryly, he carried a paper bag of wallpaper paste into the house. By the time he emerged, a forensics team had descended on the dig, collected the cases containing the skeleton and the burned equipment, and carried them away. Yeager gave Jenny back the keys, offered everyone a quick thumbs-up, and followed.
For a time Jenny expounded on the virtues of post holes and rusty nails, until at last it was late enough for her to dismiss the students and tell them to take Wednesday off. Mark handed over the key to his apartment with a plea to look in on Lucia. “Very kind of you,” Jenny said again. Her stern expression, Mark thought, belonged alongside the white cliffs of Dover, an eternal, unchanging verity.
Dover Beach. Love, let us be true to one another.
Preston checked over his car and drove hurriedly away. Jenny corralled Graymalkin for the short drive to Moss Street. Hilary rolled up her drawing and stowed the board in the toolshed. Mark scavenged his brain for something profound to say to her, but found nothing better than, “What would you like for supper?”
“There’s some leftover chicken. We can have it over pasta.”
He cared considerably less about chicken and pasta than he did about Hilary herself, but he said, “Sounds good.”
As soon as they arrived back at the condo they made a ritual check of the doors and windows. No broken glass, no intruder. They shared quick remarks like the tips of icebergs, and avoided each other’s eyes.
Mark went upstairs to shower. In the bathroom mirror he saw that his own face was slightly sunburned, although not so much so as the back of his neck. Hilary’s birth-control pills lay just where they had been—had it been three weeks ago? Although this packet, he realized after a quick peek, must be a new one.
While Hilary took over the bathroom Mark called Lucia. She was much calmer now, telling him that Gilbert was banged up, but not so badly that he couldn’t be released from the hospital tomorrow. The nicest policemen were sitting on her front porch consuming gorditas, the children were playing with Graymalkin, and Jenny was sitting on the bench beneath the oak studying some papers. Everything was fine. Mark didn’t ruin Lucia’s illusions by telling her about tomorrow’s trap.
After supper Mark took the box of evidence into the living room and stared moodily at it. Hilary sat down on the couch beside him. “Why did Arthur get off for Felicia’s murder, anyway?”
“The timetable, basically. He showed up at that Foundation meeting too soon after she had to have been killed. There was no way he’d had enough time to mutilate her and then clean up—even though it is tempting to imagine him throwing his bloody clothes into the burning garage.”
Hilary considered that. “We have more than one ghost. We have more than one killer. How about this: Arthur kills Esparza—either the man is stealing the rings, or Arthur thinks he is. Felicia, sneaking in to collect some rose cuttings, sees the murder. Arthur, panicked, kills her. In even more of a panic, he calls Dolores in Dallas. Then, hoping to establish an alibi, rushes off to his meeting. Dolores gives her hosts some excuse about shopping, hurries back to Osborne, and adds the embellishments to poor Felicia’s body—meaning to confuse the issue, I suppose, but I wouldn’t discount a sadistic streak. Then she tidies up, starts the fire, tosses in her own ceramics for effect, and goes back to Dallas.”
/>
Hilary, too, was slightly sunburned, the flush of color the traditional roses in her cheeks. How inspiring, Mark thought, that the gray matter between her ears was just as exquisite as the rosy flesh on her bones…. Don’t think about it, he ordered himself, unsure whether he was shying away from tomorrow’s trap or tonight’s temptations. “I bet you’re right,” he said.
“Poor Arthur,” said Hilary. “Probably Dolores was more or less blackmailing him the rest of his life. That would account for Lucia’s impression that they were barely tolerating each other.”
She’d feel sympathy for Jack the Ripper himself. Mark liked her for that. He raised his hand, lowered it, raised it again and traced the back of her neck with his forefinger. Their eyes met like magnets clicking together.
“It’s a shame,” she said softly, “that reality never quite lives up to fantasy.”
“I’d say the definition of reality is that which dashes your expectations.” Her hair tickled his palm and her cheek lay against his fingertips. He couldn’t help but think about her beauty and how short a time he might have to appreciate it. “Hilary, what kind of sexual fantasies do you have?”
“The kind most women have, I guess—moonlight and roses. I never had the chance to come up with anything kinky. Why?”
Mark visualized the covers on the romance novels his stepmother read. Most of them tended toward exotic settings and fancy costumes. He’d wear a kilt for Hilary, if he had one, and he certainly wouldn’t mind unfastening a bodice or a wimple…. Flowers, he thought. “I could run over to Lucia’s and bring back a bushel of rose petals to bathe you in.”
“You mean play to my fantasies?”
“Exactly. You won’t freak out again if you feel in control of the situation.”
Hilary considered that, too, her brows arched delicately, her lips primly shut. Mark held his breath. “There’re some votive candles in the kitchen,” she said at last. “And we could take the radio upstairs. The classical station might be a safe bet—I sure don’t want any of that heavy metal stuff—it sounds like a migraine headache feels.”
“Just as long as they don’t play ‘The 1812 Overture’.” Mark grinned—all right!—kissed her cheek, and went to find the candles. But he didn’t actually trek over to Lucia’s; any roses he and Hilary gathered tonight would be metaphorical.
They set two candles in saucers on the dresser, well away from anything flammable, and the radio on the floor next to the bed. The ardent strings of Vivaldi gushed from the speakers. Talk about working without a net, Mark said to himself as Hilary turned back the bed. But if he’d learned anything from his adolescent pratfall, it was state-of-the-art skill in making love to a woman. He wouldn’t lose it this time. He knew the value of second chances. “I love you,” Hilary said against his shoulder. “It’s never been that I don’t love you.”
“I understand,” he replied. “I love you, too.”
He limbered up his fingertips, his lips, and his tongue and went delightfully to work undressing her. She blushed, glowing in the candlelight, and hesitantly undressed him. Her very artlessness was intoxicating. But Mark forced himself to wait until she lay down on the bed before he made any move toward the horizontal. When he stretched out beside her, he inhaled the heady scent of roses, roses no less sweet for bearing thorns.
Hilary touched him, curious and naive at once, and more than once giggled softly, pulled away, and then returned. Mark reminded himself that nothing about his anatomy was intrinsically funny. He shut his eyes, distracting himself, keeping his all-too-eager body in check.
From the radio swelled “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis”, one of the last pieces he would’ve expected to fit the occasion—it was based on a sixteenth-century hymn. But the way a solo violin answered the joined strings, tentative at first, then abandoning itself to a soaring melody, perfectly echoed that harmony of mind and body that Mark had wanted for so long. That Hilary had wanted for so long, he told himself. The sensual purity of the music wrapped around them, safe from anger, safe from fear.
Hilary kissed his eyes open again. Her expression was dreamy, as though she really were living a fantasy. Good, Mark thought. More than good. Great. Laughing, he began again, exploring every inch of her succulent skin until it tasted of salty sweat as well as roses.
She was panting gently, her fingernails sunk deeply in his back. He tucked her body beneath his, listening with every nerve ending rather than with just his ears…. She tensed. That’s what he’d missed last time. All right then—on to Plan B.
He rolled them both over, propped his upper body on the pillows, and folded Hilary’s legs beneath her. She looked down at him, puzzled. “Like this,” he said. “Now you’re in control.”
“Oh. I see.” Slowly, warily she settled herself. “Oh!” she said again, and capped her exclamation with an experimental wriggle that had Mark saying the alphabet backwards. When he’d quelled any untimely responses and was able to look at her again, she was grinning. “So this is how it’s supposed to feel. Now what?”
“Move,” he wheezed.
“Like this?”
Between his lashes Mark saw Hilary’s face upturned, abstracted, like a phoenix rising from the ashes…. He didn’t think any more, but caught and magnified the rhythm of her body, until at last she stared at him with amazement and gratitude shining in the depths of her eyes, and his entire being sang the Hallelujah chorus.
The classical station was playing the “William Tell Overture”. “Hi ho, Silver?” Hilary ventured, and they collapsed with laughter into a damp tangle of limbs.
The slowly turning arms of the ceiling fan blessed them with a cool breeze. The flickering candles sent warm, dappled shadow over the bed. Mark waited for the ceiling to fall in, or for the room to be invaded by rogue elephants, or for the Keystone Cops to leap into the bed and search them for contraband. But nothing happened; the moment’s peace was untarnished. He swallowed to moisten his mouth. “You look like a Boccaccio angel.”
“You mean Botticelli? ‘Venus Rising from the Waves’ and ‘The Three Graces’?”
“Yeah.” Mark smiled, knowing he was half-drunk, and loving it. “Would you consider Hilary Owen? Or would you rather stay Hilary Chase?”
“What?”
“I think I just asked you to marry me.”
“Mark, don’t let me catch you with your hormones down.”
He stroked her tangled hair back from her face. “Okay. I’ll ask you again tomorrow.” He asked himself, Am I out of my mind?
“I love you,” Hilary said drowsily.
No, he answered. I’m not of my mind.
A radio announcer was muttering tomorrow’s weather forecast—cold front, instabilities, thunderstorms. Great, Mark thought. Special effects for the final countdown…. That was tomorrow. Carpe diem, he told himself, reached over the edge of the bed, and turned the radio off.
Silence seeped into the room, a silence filled with Hilary’s soft breathing. The candles guttered and went out, but the darkness was a shield, not a threat. Hiding in each other, Mark thought, we’re both safe. He drew the covers up, clasped Hilary tightly, and slept.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hilary became aware of a cacophony of birdsong and a faint odor of candlewax blended with a teasingly subtle masculine scent. She was snugged against Mark in a cocoon of bedclothes and peace. They’d done amazing and wonderful things last night. All was right with the world, everything was shipshape, the spheres moved in harmony.
Her eyes flew open, registering the sunlight peeking through the curtains and gilding the blades of the ceiling fan. No. Not yet. First Mark had to face down his nightmares. She understood that; she loved his stubborn pride just as much as its flip side of sensitivity. And while Osborne held very specific terrors for him, for her it had become a symbol of fear and anger, lies and darkness. She would be in the shadows with him, waiting for the sudden, sharp bite of a knife…. Don’t think about it!
Hilary slipped from t
he bed, tugged the covers over Mark, and walked as though on broken glass into the bathroom. No aerobics class she’d ever taken had left her thigh muscles so sore—and that was only a partial inventory of tenderized tissue. But Mark said it was a simple matter of conditioning.
She showered, dressed gingerly in jeans and a T-shirt reading “Departement des peintures au Louvre”, and emerged from the bathroom to find Mark sitting on the edge of the bed. She forced herself not to blush. “Hi!”
“Will you marry me?” he replied.
“Mark, really—I don’t—I can’t….”
His brows drew down, canceling his wry smile. “You’re right. Now is hardly the time to discuss the future. I’ll save it.”
Hilary fled downstairs, wondering if she’d hurt his feelings, wondering why she wasn’t delighted with his offer. By the time he appeared in his own uniform, shirt emblazoned with the red dragon of Wales, she knew. She poured coffee, buttered toast, and asked, “Can we elope?”
Mark swallowed half a cup of coffee without taking his eyes off her. She went on, “I don’t want to argue with my mother about not being entitled to wear a white dress. I don’t want her to rush out to Marshall Field’s to register a bunch of china and silver I’ll never use. I don’t want her to send hundreds of engraved invitations to people I don’t know. I don’t want my sister-in-law to throw me a shower—her idea of the perfect wedding present is a sterling silver artichoke peeler. I don’t want my father to walk me down the aisle as though I were one of the awards he gives out to well-behaved employees.” She turned back to the stove and stirred the scrambled eggs so vigorously that yellow bits flew onto the burner and sizzled.
“Hilary,” Mark said, “you’re talking wedding. I’m talking marriage.”
He was right. He usually was. She laid a plate of singed eggs before him and scooped up some for herself. “I don’t want to marry you just to get away from my family. I don’t want you to marry me just to do me a favor.”
Garden of Thorns Page 38
