Alice suddenly sounded very tired. “I was afraid that something like this might happen if Damon spoke with you too soon.”
My head felt like it was going to explode and I wasn’t sure I understood what she meant. “Do you mean you think Damon’s still…delusional?” I asked. “I mean, he just told me—”
Alice snorted derisively, cutting me off. “I know exactly what he told you, Susan. God knows I’ve been listening to it here all evening. Damon is now saying that he saw your dead fiancé alive.”
Everything was moving far too fast for me. I was having trouble getting my breath and felt as if I might pass out at any second. “But you don’t think Bobby is really…alive?”
“No, Susan.” Alice’s gruff tone had turned gentle, soothing. “I’m afraid that’s just your poor, befuddled friend’s way of defending his earlier paranoid delusion. Actually, it’s relatively common for patients with Damon’s condition to change their stories to fit changing circumstances…”
“Oh!” I whispered, all my fears and hurts of a moment before draining away to a single, dull ache in my chest. If what Alice was saying was true, then Damon’s mind had obviously been seriously affected by his injury, perhaps worse than any of us could have imagined.
The old house creaked and shuddered under a powerful blast of wind. I glanced nervously toward the turret windows, glimpsing the wink of the lighthouse beacon on its endless circuit across the troubled sea.
“I…We were going to drive up to Boston tonight,” I said.
Alice’s reply was immediate and firm. “No!” she insisted. “Please, Susan, don’t do that. As you must have realized by now, Damon is still very…confused. I’ve called in an excellent psychiatrist to see him, but it’s going to be some time before Damon is going to be ready for visitors.”
“A psychiatrist?” I had a sudden mental image of Laura sitting in her Italian leather chair, making glib pronouncements about what was going on inside my head, when she couldn’t in her wildest dreams have imagined the things I was actually experiencing. As a result of that experience, psychiatrists rate only slightly higher on my credibility scale than witch doctors and companies that run million-dollar sweepstakes.
Besides, I reasoned, although Damon’s story was unbelievable it at least explained why he had been flying up to see me that night.
And somebody had broken into my Manhattan apartment and gone through Bobby’s things.
“Alice, are you absolutely certain this new story is all in Damon’s mind?” I asked suspiciously.
“Absolutely,” she replied without hesitation. “I hope I don’t have to remind you, Susan,” she added, sounding slightly injured by my lack of faith in her judgment, “that I saved the man’s life. I assure you that Damon’s well-being is my only concern here. You’ve got to trust me completely on this.”
Chapter 32
After hanging up the phone I lay across my bed, trying to rearrange my shattered emotions while I waited for the tightness in my throat to ease.
For a few heart-stopping seconds during poor Damon’s paranoid rant I had actually allowed myself to believe that Bobby might still be alive. And with that belief all of the grief and hurt of the previous months had come rushing back once more, an unbearable, rending hurt that had been compounded by the mad accusation that Bobby had somehow lied to me, lied and betrayed our love by deliberately making me suffer.
I derided my own foolishness for having believed for even a second that such a thing was remotely possible. Surely the Bobby I had known and loved and whose memory I would always treasure, no matter how much I now loved another man, could never—would never—have put me through such an agony of despair.
Of course, I told myself, Alice Cahill had to be right. Damon’s horrible accident had mentally unbalanced him. And though I still wanted to see my dear, confused friend as soon as possible, and help him in any way I possibly could, I realized that, under the circumstances, attempting to drive to Boston in a major winter storm would be foolhardy.
My thinking thus adjusted, I finally sat up and looked around me, half-hoping that Aimee would show herself, so that I could talk to her.
But my sweet, gentle ghost was nowhere to be seen.
After a few minutes I slowly started taking my things out of the overnight case and replacing them in the dresser.
I decided as I unpacked that Dan and I would spend the rest of the stormy weekend together, just as we had planned. Then, in a day or two, perhaps, I would go up to Boston and meet with Alice Cahill, offering to assist with Damon’s recovery in any way that she thought might help.
By the time I heard the front door opening downstairs and felt the accompanying blast of damp, Arctic air that rushed into the house, I had washed my face and combed my hair and was coming down the stairs.
“You’re back sooner than I expected,” I called, stepping into the fire-lit parlor.
Dan did not reply, and I squinted into the dim light of the room. To my surprise, he was hunched over in the big easy chair, his features obscured in deep shadow.
“God, I’m happy to see you,” I exclaimed. “You are not going to believe what I’ve just been through.” I walked directly to the chair and sat on the edge of the padded arm-rest.
Iron-strong arms encircled my waist and I shivered as I felt the clammy, grave-cold touch of wet leather against my skin.
“I’m happy to see you, too, Sweet Sue,” snarled a hoarse, menacing voice, a horrible, chilling voice that I had never again expected to hear in this life.
“Bobby!” His name erupted from my lips in a choked little scream and I attempted to leap to my feet. But the sodden, leather-encased arms held me in their viselike grip like a spider holds a struggling moth.
A terrible face vaguely resembling Bobby’s suddenly thrust forward into the light, its icy-blue eyes regarding me without a trace of human love or emotion.
I did not trust myself to speak as I stared at that once-handsome face that now seemed to wear a mask of evil. As terrified as I was, the only thing I could think of was that Damon had been right. Dear, loyal Damon, who at this very moment was being subjected to God-knows-what manner of psychiatric indignities because of me.
“Why, Sue,” Bobby growled after what seemed an eternity of stunned silence on my part, “you said you were happy to see me. Change your mind already?”
“I…They said you had been…killed,” I stammered through trembling lips.
Bobby’s battered head moved slowly up and down and he stared blankly into the fire. “Yeah,” he muttered, his ruined voice filled with bitter irony. “At least that was the general idea.”
Suddenly his body was wracked with a violent spasm of coughing. Bobby released me and doubled over, holding his sides. I jumped to my feet and stared down at him, uncertain whether to run for my life or go to his aid.
“You’re sick,” I said softly, feeling an unexpected wave of pity sweeping over me. For I could see that his blond hair was unkempt and dirty and his clothes, except for the leather flight jacket, were ragged and appeared to be soaked clear through to his feverish, pale skin.
“My God, Bobby, what happened to you?” I breathed.
The coughing attack slowly subsided and Bobby shook his head like a drugged animal and tried unsuccessfully to clear his throat. “Nothing,” he said hoarsely. “Nothing and everything.” He raised those icy eyes—eyes I had once adored—and smiled a smile that was really more of a grimace. “Got any hot coffee?” he asked. “I damn near froze to death out there, waiting for your new boyfriend to clear out.”
At the mention of Dan I glanced fearfully toward the front door. “He’ll be back any minute,” I warned.
Bobby’s crafty, red-rimmed eyes followed my gaze without concern. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he retorted, unconcerned. A wicked smirk made my stomach turn. “At least not before you and I have had a little talk.”
Thanks to Damon’s warning and the emotional firestorm I had already survived, my initial
shock at seeing Bobby alive was quickly wearing away. Now I felt it being replaced with a terrible, dangerous anger.
“What do you mean, you don’t think so?” I demanded. “If you’ve done anything to Dan…” I left the threat hanging in the static-charged air.
“So his name’s Dan, huh? Got over me in a hurry,” he sneered. “You must really have it bad for old Dan.” Bobby suddenly pulled a large military survival knife from his jacket and held it up for me to see.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Sweet Sue.” He laughed, seemingly enjoying my terrified reaction to the brutal weapon. “I only made a minor adjustment to the boyfriend’s fancy car…so far.” Bobby’s emaciated body was wracked by another intense coughing spasm. “Now, how about that hot coffee?” he demanded between coughs.
I remained where I was, staring at the reflected firelight gleaming wickedly along the razor edge of the huge knife. My mind was rapidly filling with visions of Dan’s Mercedes skidding out of control, its brake lines severed. “What kind of adjustment?” I shrieked. “What did you do to his car, Bobby?”
Bobby grinned. “Relax. I just punched a little hole in the gas tank,” he said, “to be sure your pal would run out of juice after a few miles.” The grin faded and his tone turned sinister. “I don’t want any interruptions while you and I have our reunion.”
Unwilling to believe him, and fearful of what he had come all this way to do, I backed warily away. “I’ll get the coffee,” I murmured.
Considering how sick he looked, Bobby jumped to his feet with surprising agility and roughly grabbed my elbow. “On second thought, I think we’d better go get that java together.” He grinned. “I wouldn’t want you walking out on me before we have our chat.”
“Bobby, why are you doing this?” I pleaded as he roughly shoved me through the darkened house and into the kitchen. “Why?”
“Call it bad breaks,” he growled menacingly in my ear. “Just a case of plain-old everyday bad breaks, Sweet Sue.”
Bobby sat at the counter in the kitchen, wolfing down the canned soup that he’d made me heat up, and drinking black coffee.
I sat exactly where he’d told me to, directly opposite him, with the big survival knife on the counter between us, scrutinizing his drawn features and his darting, hunted eyes by the light of a flickering candle.
“It was such a sweet deal,” he began, wiping soup from his chin with a stained sleeve, “a perfect deal, Sue…too perfect.” Bobby’s blue eyes took on a distant look and he shook his head at the irony of his present degraded condition. “It started with the Gulfstream 550…Of course, that was the prize.”
I shook my head, bewildered. “I don’t have even the vaguest idea what you’re talking about, Bobby. What deal?”
He shot me an annoyed glance. “You remember Al Pearson, don’t you?” he abruptly asked.
I nodded. Albert Pearson was the oil company executive who had been lost when Bobby’s plane had disappeared over the Indian Ocean in July, the only passenger onboard.
“Okay,” Bobby continued, slurping the soup like a starving man. “The whole thing was Pearson’s idea. He’d spent years in Asia as the company’s front man, and he knew how things work down there. I mean, how things really work, the official bribery, the government corruption, the tie-ins to organized crime…all the usual crap that goes into cutting big-time oil deals.”
I was staring at him, still trying to reconcile the shifty-eyed human wreck sitting before me with the man I had once loved so desperately. The question of whether I had ever really loved him spun out of control in my brain.
“Oh, my, don’t look so shocked,” Bobby taunted, reading my expression. “Didn’t you know that was how the big, bad world of international business really functions—on bribes and crooked deals?”
“You were telling me about the late Albert Pearson,” I replied coldly. “Or is he still alive, too?”
Bobby shook his head and shoved his cup across the counter for more coffee. I grudgingly lifted the pot from its candle-fired warmer, briefly considering whether I could get away with flinging the bubbling hot liquid in his face and bolting for the back door.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned, placing his hand menacingly on the black handgrip of the knife. “In response to your question, good old Al Pearson is flat-out dead,” he said when the coffeepot was sitting safely back on its stand. “But the whole thing originally started out as his idea. And it was sweet—”
“Yes, you’ve already established that it was sweet,” I said impatiently.
Ignoring the sarcasm Bobby leaned forward until I could smell the flat, foul odor of his breath.
“It was like this,” he confided like a bookie with a hot tip. “Al had a friend down in Malaysia, a very rich friend. And this friend was in the market for a long-range corporate jet, a Gulfstream 550, as a matter of fact. So when the company offered me the chance to fly their new one, of course I jumped at it.”
Bobby stifled a fresh round of coughing with another gulp of hot coffee. “Now, Al’s rich Malaysian friend wasn’t so rich that he felt like shelling out 25 or 30 million for a brand-new jet—”
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “So you and good old Al decided to steal one for him,” I interrupted, suddenly understanding everything. “My God, Bobby, was that worth risking your career for? Worth leaving me thinking you were dead?”
For the first time since he’d appeared in my parlor, I thought I detected a faint trace of regret in his eyes. “Oh, Christ, no,” he protested, sounding for the tiniest of instants like the other Bobby, the one I thought I knew a lifetime ago. “I never meant to leave you. You don’t understand how it was.”
“Then make me understand,” I spat. “Make me understand what was worth destroying both our lives for, Bobby. Because that’s what you’ve obviously done to yours and very nearly did to mine.”
He stared silently at the countertop.
“Make me understand, you bastard!” I yelled.
Bobby’s eyes slowly came up to meet my enraged gaze.
“It was supposed to be foolproof,” he explained, looking suddenly like a frightened little boy. “Pearson and I had dropped off the other two passengers and were making a long, over-water crossing alone. At a predetermined point in the flight—a spot where the Indian Ocean happens to be more than 20,000 feet deep—I put the Gulfstream into a steep dive and we just dropped off the radar. To anyone tracking us it would have looked exactly like we’d had a major mechanical problem and crashed into the sea.
“Then we flew south at wave-top level for a couple of hundred miles, to a tiny island with an abandoned World War II airstrip. Pearson’s friend was waiting for us there with a boat. He had his own flight crew ready to ferry the stolen jet back to Malaysia.”
Bobby’s eyes grew misty as he recalled the details of the illicit deal. “Before they took off, the Malaysians stripped some identifiable gear from the stolen Gulfstream, gear that would float—a couple of seats, life jackets and so forth—and put it aboard the waiting boat. The boat was supposed to take me and Pearson back out to the general vicinity where we’d disappeared from radar and dump all the stuff in the water, along with a couple of drums of jet fuel. So it would look like there’d been a real crash. So the Malaysians took us back out to sea. And, after they’d dumped all the debris, they inflated the life raft, which had also been taken from the plane, and Pearson and I got into it.”
“I’m very impressed,” I said sarcastically. “I suppose then you were supposed to activate the raft’s emergency radio beacon and wait to be rescued. You and Pearson would come home with a great story and, how much money, Bobby?”
“Three million apiece,” he said miserably. “I’d made arrangements to have mine deposited directly into a series of numbered offshore bank accounts I’d set up a few years ago, for some money I’d made in other deals…”
I nodded, not trusting myself to comment. But my mind was racing furiously. So there had been other
illegal “deals” before the stolen jet, deals big enough to require secret bank accounts. I winced inwardly as the full realization struck me of how little I had really known about this man I thought I had been in love with.
Bobby was silently observing me, obviously waiting for me to say something. I whistled softly. “Three million tax-free dollars! Not bad,” I said, no longer pitying him even a little. “So what went wrong?”
“Those cold-blooded bastards double-crossed us,” he whined, anger mixed with disbelief creeping into his tone. “As soon as we were helpless in the life raft, they moved off a little way and machine-gunned us.”
Bobby closed his eyes and shuddered, obviously reliving for the umpteenth time the exact moment when they had been betrayed. “Pearson was killed instantly,” he said, “three rounds to the head…I ducked into the bottom of the raft and only took one hit in the leg. But a stray round shattered a steel first aid kit.”
He absently fingered the knife. “That damn first aid box saved my life.”
“And then?” I asked, intrigued by Bobby’s story, but increasingly wary of his reasons for confessing it to me—me, who had thought for months that he was dead.
Bobby slowly shook his head. “Then the dirty sons of bitches just sailed away.” He drained the rest of his coffee. “Of course,” he continued, “they’d thoughtfully removed the emergency radio from the raft before they put us in the water. And, as it turned out, they’d also taken us a hundred miles in the opposite direction from where the jet had gone off the radar.”
“Guaranteeing your silence, if by some miracle you happened to survive,” I finished for him.
Bobby nodded and stared back down at the counter. “I dumped Pearson’s body over the side and drifted for six days in the sinking raft before a native fishing schooner picked me up. It was another four weeks before the fishermen got back to land. Not that it mattered at that point,” he said bitterly. “Between the bullet hole in my leg and what the fishermen would report about where they’d picked me up, if anybody asked, I was a dead man. As dead as Al Pearson. Because there was no way the accidental plane-crash story was ever going to wash in an investigation.”
Maidenstone Lighthouse Page 21
