Face Value

by Lia Matera

  No reply.

  “Do you suspect Roy’s complicity? Are you afraid he smuggled her in?”

  “No, not Roy, not any of my people here. Is the boat in? What time is it?”

  “It’s eight-thirty; a little later. I don’t know anything about a boat. I want to know why you called me.”

  “It’s just that Roy and the rest of them, well, they worry so much.”

  I wondered if it was worthwhile pressing for a more detailed response.

  Close by, a boat blasted its horn.

  Brother jerked, cuffs rattling. “Could you go down to the room where we were last night and check in the cedar chest for a universal handcuff key? It looks like a gray pen with a pointy thing on one end and a key part—”

  “I know what a handcuff key looks like.” I’d seen them on cops’ belts. “Why didn’t you call for Roy?” I assumed Roy knew the exact location of all their sex props, including handcuff keys.

  “I’m a little uncomfortable—my bladder. If you could hurry? We could talk afterward.”

  I hesitated. It mattered a great deal to me. If part of his agenda was exhibiting himself to me, I’d have to reconsider acting as his counsel.

  Except that he was paying me a hefty retainer. And god knew, I could use it.

  “Why don’t I call Roy now?” I was his lawyer, not his gofer. Maybe it was petty to harp on it, but the fact remained.

  “Please,” he said, “my bladder’s going to explode. And everyone here has so much baggage about my well-being. It’s simpler this way. Until I can think it through.” A final, “Please. If you could hurry?”

  Still something nagged at me. Nevertheless, I dashed downstairs, ignoring the curious glances of a threesome in the corridor. They were discussing a tract of land in Oregon that was selling cheap and would accommodate a “serious” tent village. Rajneesh’s old place, one said. I didn’t recognize them. They hadn’t taken part in last night’s session. Two had overnight bags at their feet.

  I kept my eyes on the shined wood floors, trying to trace the source of my anger. When I got to the room with the cushions, Rhonda appeared beside me.

  “Did you leave something in here?”

  “I’m on an errand. For Mike. Is the door locked?” I couldn’t get it to budge.

  She gave it a push. “It shouldn’t be. It isn’t usually even closed. Hunh.”

  “Do you have a key for it?”

  “I know where the key is, I think. Hold on.” She trotted away.

  I leaned against the door. Something was wrong. This wasn’t following the pattern of any of my previous cases, not even remotely. I told myself the nature of the case precluded similarity, but I couldn’t shake a feeling I was being manipulated. Why had Brother Mike called for me?

  Roy appeared a few moments later. He too tried the door, saying, “It shouldn’t be locked.”

  “You don’t worry about thieves?”

  “On an island? Not likely they’ll scuba in. Or get away with our stuff, for that matter.” He pushed again. “I’ll be damned. Rhonda just handed me this. Let’s see if it …” He fumbled a key into the lock. “There were some in a cupboard when we bought the house. We’ve never had to use them.”

  The key turned easily.

  “Thanks.” I opened the door, feeling the inner knob. A push-in lock. It might have been pressed accidentally. I was surprised it hadn’t happened before. “Are there new people here this morning?”

  “Yes, a group from San Francisco. The boat came in half an hour ago. What do you need in here?” Roy sounded suspicious. “Rhonda said Mike sent you on an errand.”

  “Yes, Mike sent me. How many on the boat? Who are they?”

  “Like I said, devotees from San Francisco. Six or seven of them.”

  “You’re sure they’re all devotees?”

  “I don’t know them personally. Why? What’s wrong?” He clutched my arm.

  I pulled free. “I’d keep an eye on them till Mike comes downstairs.” I entered the room. “In the meantime, like I said, he sent me down on an errand.” I closed the door behind me.

  I stood there a moment, expecting Roy to follow. He didn’t. I had the guru’s endorsement.

  The room looked small and bare in the silver light of morning. Cushions piled in the center showed watery stains in the dye. I crossed the polished floor fighting a rush of memories.

  There was a cedar chest at the far end, beneath a curtainless window. I squatted in front of it, lifting the lid. As I’d imagined, it was filled with standard sex toys—flimsy leather whips, studded harnesses, leather and satin bindings, handcuffs, some padded, some metal. I hated to touch the stuff. I scanned the cedar bottom until I saw a glint of scored gray steel, then reached in carefully, extracting it from the tangle.

  I looked up for a moment, admiring the view from the window. It was so pristine here, the mottling of autumn leaves and evergreens unspoiled by painted houses and littered roads. I gripped the handcuff key and fought a wave of anger. Mike Hover was ruining it as surely as a crass developer. Bringing in all this leather, all these people—he was changing it from the inside out, changing the way I looked at it.

  I found Roy lurking in the corridor outside, obviously hoping I’d explain my errand.

  I didn’t. I dashed back upstairs.

  I tapped at Brother Mike’s door knowing it was a stupid formality given his inability to open it. Nevertheless, I announced myself before entering.

  This too proved a wasted gesture. The room was empty.

  I approached the bed. The sheets retained the crumpled concave of recent use, but there was no sign of handcuffs on the posts. A dresser drawer was crookedly open, underwear trailing. The closet door yawned.

  The bathroom door was ajar. I stepped in. There were recent splashes on the mirror. The water in the toilet no longer eddied, but hadn’t quite returned to stasis. I walked back across the bedroom.

  I pushed through the French doors, stepping to the balcony rail. Bracing mist drifted across the island, muting its colors, bringing the cold smell of sea water. Along the horizon, ocean and sky blurred into a silver band.

  Close to shore, a motorboat arced through the water, maybe carrying Mike Hover away.

  I’d have feared for him if I hadn’t seen evidence of his ablutions. As it was, even supposing he hadn’t staged the whole thing (and I had no reason to think he hadn’t), he was probably in little danger from kidnappers who allowed him to use the facilities first.

  I went back downstairs and told Roy he should look for Brother Mike, that he’d been handcuffed to the bed prior to (somehow) leaving his room. Without waiting for Roy to become less agog, I added, “And I’ll need you to cut me a retainer check and arrange my boat and car ride to the Seattle airport.”

  With luck, Mike Hover would turn up before I left. If not, I’d phone from the airport to satisfy my curiosity.

  If I learned a crime had been committed, and if I was asked to respond as either a witness or an attorney, I would do so. Until then, I would stick to my original plan.

  Mike Hover had plenty of other people to worry about him and look for him.

  I just wanted to get back home, to be alone. Unlike Brother Mike’s titillated devotees, I liked being the organizing principle behind my reality.

  19

  Brother Mike had gotten to me. As an attorney, I was supposed to be safe from certain intimacies. Yes, I had cared about some of my clients—I still mourned Dan Crosetti. My pity and my conscience were sometimes vulnerable. But my business suit and my sexual feelings had never been part of the same package.

  I sat on the airplane, flying home to San Francisco, feeling discouraged and overmatched. I made two calls. The first was to Brother Mike’s group. I asked if he’d returned. Roy told me he’d phoned them.

  “Where was he calling from?”
<
br />   “The mainland.”

  “He left without telling you?”

  “Yes.” Roy sounded plenty irritated. “On the boat that brought the devotees over. I guess he heard the fifteen-minute horn—he went running down to the dock with nothing but some cash and plastic. Just like Rhonda thought he would. She should have left him handcuffed till it was gone.”

  “Rhonda unlocked him?”

  “She went up after she talked to you. She’s got her own key.”

  The Energy of Bondage—she’d mentioned being in that video. Apparently it reflected her preferences.

  “She unlocked him and left him there? You’re sure?” Rhonda seemed to be second lieutenant. Theoretically, she wouldn’t lie about freeing her guru. But she was angry about the distribution of the videos. I’d heard her say so to Roy. Maybe angry enough to teach Brother Mike an anonymous lesson? Angry enough to have him abducted?

  “What am I going to tell everyone? Damn it.”

  “The people who arrived this morning, they’re definitely devotees?”

  “I don’t know them personally. But why else would anyone come all this way?”

  To handcuff a guru to his bed? To collude in a kidnapping?

  “Is the boat one of yours?”

  “No. It’s from a charter place on the big island. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the devotees. They’re expecting a session this afternoon.”

  “Did you ask Mike when he called?”

  “I didn’t take the message, or I’d have told him to get his butt back here. But maybe Rhonda’s right …” He paused.

  “Rhonda took the message?”

  “No, Jeff did.”

  “Is Jeff one of the new people? You’re not taking a stranger’s word for this?”

  “I think you met Jeff. Kind of a pretty lawyer.”

  “Do you trust him?” I didn’t.

  “He’s been part of the group quite a while, if that’s what you mean.”

  It was, and it wasn’t. “What did he tell you Mike said?”

  “He said Mike was laughing. Talking about how politics are nothing but a ball and chain. That Mike was in a real good mood.” Roy’s tone told me he didn’t share that mood. “He’s supposed to call back tonight.”

  The plane dipped over crater lakes the color of rain clouds. A thread of road filigreed the volcanic slope. Evergreens rose in ragged silhouette against a watercolor-gray sky.

  “You’re sure he won’t come back in time for the session?”

  “Huh!” Roy’s tone bespoke bitter experience. “When Mike pulls this shit, it means shopping. There’s a cyberspace show in the valley. Me and Rhonda went and scouted it—definitely a good one. But we agreed he’d wait until tomorrow, till everyone left. Okay, so he’s a scientist, not a therapist quote-unquote, piss and moan, and he’s got to keep his eye on the future! But what difference is a day going to make? It’s not like the future’s going anywhere. He’s such a kid about moving-holography and VR.”

  “VR?”

  “Virtual reality. Damn it, some of these people have to leave after dinner. We’ve got a boat coming for them. Which is pretty fucked, considering they paid their own way here.”

  “They came specifically to make a video?”

  “Yes.” His tone was decidedly more parental than devotional.

  “If you don’t get a call tonight—if you don’t speak to Mike yourself—let me know.” I gave him my home number.

  I hung up. I’d known clients to do stranger things. Why did I find this so inscrutable?

  Someone, in a “joyous” rush of anger, had handcuffed Brother Mike to his bed.

  Once freed, he’d washed his face, then dashed to catch the boat that had ferried in the morning’s devotees.

  Why the hurry? Because he’d felt the whim to shop and was used to doing as he pleased?

  Or had Rhonda been lying? Had the pretty lawyer been lying?

  Without more information, it was useless to speculate. It was useless to imagine a connection to The Back Door murders. I begged myself not to, in fact.

  My second call, made in don’t-think-about-it-anymore haste, was to Arabella de Janeiro’s attorney.

  It was time to find out what, as well as whom, I was dealing with.

  20

  I was achy and dehydrated after a turbulent and worrisome flight. I was depressed to return to an apartment I still couldn’t call “home.” I unlocked the door and hit my light switch.

  I looked at my living room and turned the light back off. I couldn’t have seen what I thought I’d seen. I couldn’t have, and so I turned the light off.

  I’d watched strange videos lately. I’d sat in on strange shows, stranger sessions. I’d watched them without quite accepting their reality; they had nothing to do with me, not really.

  I’d seen seven dead bodies, seen them and scored myself with recriminations for putting myself in a position to see them. I’d run away from seven corpses, taking with me information that might have helped the police. I’d run away from the physical reality of their presence because I hadn’t been willing to accept the implications of what I’d seen.

  In the dark, for a tiny interval, I tried to reerect the wall of aloof voyeurism that had protected me from three days of sensory overload. But when I turned the light back on, the impossible scene was still before me.

  My living room had been torn apart.

  Standing there in cold shock, a rational part of me issued commands: Look around. See what’s been done, and maybe you’ll understand why.

  I heeded the voice only because further denial was impossible. I began a slow survey. Everything I encountered had been overturned or displaced or tossed down or spray-painted. The painting was the most shocking. The far wall, a dull beige, was looped with a fuzzy-edged black line. It cut across my collage, coating its lovely handmade papers.

  All the objects Hal had dirtied or not cared enough about, all the wood I’d waxed and chairs I’d admired as if they’d give me some of the comfort he hadn’t, they’d all been brutalized. As if to slap me for lavishing attention on mere things.

  I stepped farther inside, leaving the door open. I would want to leave soon. I would want to be with Sandy.

  Halfway across the living room, I turned around and closed the door. I didn’t need to run to anyone. I needed to think; that was more important than solace.

  And I’d lied to Sandy. Maybe this had something to do with my lies.

  I had to be careful before I shared this with anyone. I had to understand it first. That was the only way to protect myself.

  My quick impression, walking through the room, was that someone had been angry. Just angry, not looking for anything. Chairs had been overturned, but cushions weren’t slashed. Hutch drawers had been pulled out and flung to the floor, but their contents seemed strewn only by momentum. I entered the bedroom, steeling myself.

  I turned the light on, finding nothing overtly amiss. My body flooded with relief.

  My anger thesis might need revision: Had the vandal’s anger been sated after only one room? Or was I the object of a warning? Wrecking one room might be enough to make a point.

  I backtracked through the living room.

  Like the bedroom, the kitchen was untouched.

  I returned to the living room and walked slowly through it. I’d gotten in the habit, after seeing how Dan Crosetti lived, of viewing my possessions as symbols: of working at White, Sayres & Speck; of putting my energy into having, rather than doing, the right things.

  I touched the paint sprayed over my collage, a wonder of textures and colors. It had been on my wall so long my eyes usually ignored it. Now it was traversed by what might have been car touch-up paint. The black line continued across the wall in a messy circle.

  I stepped back. A shaky circle with a loop on the
bottom.

  Maybe not a loop, maybe a cross with its lines connected. Maybe a circle with a cross beneath, the ancient representation of a mirror symbolizing woman.

  I staggered back, colliding with an overturned chair.

  What did it mean? Something to do with the dead women at The Back Door?

  Was the person who’d killed them after me?

  Did someone know I’d found the bodies?

  I wanted to flee. I wanted to be with someone. I wanted to feel safe.

  I forced myself to breathe deeply. I walked to the telephone.

  I dialed Sandy’s number. He didn’t pick up. I left him a message. Please come over. Come now.

  I turned away from the paint. I followed pathways chance had left on the floor.

  Nothing else had been damaged, only displaced or overturned or flung down.

  It had been a quick job, probably. A hurry-through of knocking over and pulling out, with a flourish of paint.

  Anger wouldn’t look like this if it were personal, would it? If I tore through the room of someone I hated, I’d dawdle vengefully over things that unpredictably fed my fury. I’d ravage in a more animal and less systematic way. I’d do more real damage.

  It was a message, it had to be. Woman. It had to be about the women at The Back Door. Someone knew I’d found them. Or someone wanted to do to me what had been done to them.

  Why? Because I’d been there that night? Because I’d seen the show? Because I’d seen something whose significance I didn’t fathom?

  I wanted to leave this apartment. I hadn’t lived here long enough to think of it as mine, anyway. I’d get a new apartment. Now. I had a bag packed from my trip north. I’d just go. Whoever did this wouldn’t find me.

  Except that I had an office, too. I had a career that made me visible.

  Aloud, I realized, “I can’t become Hal. I can’t hide.”

  It was no use being a recluse. I’d wasted most of a year and a hell of a lot of money proving that to myself.

  I forced myself to look at the situation as it was, unmagnified by recent trauma. (Wasn’t that what Brother Mike had counseled me to do? Had predicted I would do?)