All her life, Doris' mother Evelyn had suffered from fits. There was no other way to describe them. She would awaken with a sense of dread virtually paralyzing her, certain that some terrible fate was about to take one or both of her children again.
Whoever could have predicted that a rattlesnake would climb into the playpen of her firstborn?
On these days, no matter what the season, no matter how much her children might want to play outside, Evelyn Daye Tappley made both Peter and Doris stay indoors. And she ordered the servants to keep all doors and windows bolted tight. And she herself looked in on her children every twenty minutes or so. You could never be sure…
Doris thought of this as she peered into the den and looked at her mother in the wingback chair. Evelyn had gotten smaller with the yearsstill formidable to be sure, especially when she was blustering aboutbut smaller nonetheless. She sat now reading the newspaper in a pair of black silk day pajamas, a small blanket thrown across her legs as her black slippered feet stretched to reach the ottoman.
Doris knew what she was reading: the latest installment of Jill Coffey's travails.
Doris also knew who had caused those travails… a man named Rick Corday… and her own mother.
Doris had already made up her mind about calling Jill this afternoon. She just wanted to make sure that her mother was safely ensconced in one place for a while. She didn't want Evelyn walking in on her phone call.
She stepped into the den and said, 'How're you feeling this morning, Mother?'
Evelyn glanced up from the newspaper. 'Feeling?'
'You said last night you had a scratchy throat.' That was another thing about her mother latelyshe was forgetful.
'Oh, I'm fine.' Evelyn glanced at the front page with Jill's photo on it and said, 'She must be going through hell.'
'Yes, and I'm sure you feel terrible for her, don't you?'
'If I'd ever taken that tone with my mother, she would have sent me to my room.'
It worked, Evelyn's little attempt to shame Doris. It shouldn't have worked. But it did. Even after all these years. Even after all these times.
Doris walked over to her mother. 'I'm sorry, Mother.'
'I admit I don't care for Jill, of course, but I certainly wouldn't wish this on her.'
'Of course not. I shouldn't have said it.'
Doris bent and kissed her mother on the cheek. The flesh was so loose now. There was a sad mortal feel to it. She hated this woman and yet loved her; cursed her for what she'd done to poor Jill and yet had at least an inkling of why she'd done it.
'I think I'll go lie down, Mother.'
Evelyn patted her daughter's hand. 'A nap? Maybe you're coming down with something. You never take naps.'
Doris tried not to look at Jill's photograph on the front page. She hated to think her ex-sister-in-law was having to deal with the nightmare of publicity all over again. It was easy to sit in your living room and gloat over the grief of others. It was another matter to endure those griefs.
'I'll probably be down in an hour or so.'
'Maybe you should take an aspirin or something.'
'I'll be fine,' Doris said, glancing out the mullioned window at the snowy pines and the white hills beyond them. She could see herself and Peter sliding down those hills on their sleds many, many years ago.
Her mother always went with them, of course, petrified they'd break their necks.
Poor Mother, she thought, loving and hating her, hating and loving her, as she had all her life.
'See you in a while.'
'Yes, dear,' Evelyn said.
Mr Corday lived in a hip-roofed ranch house that had no neighbors close by. Despite the sun and the blue sky, the wind was whipping up the snow into duststorms of sparkling diamonds.
Marcy drove by once and noticed that there was a two-stall garage to the right of the house. The overhead door was open and she could see the tail end of a blue Volvo. Then she got a glimpse of a tall man in a dark topcoat and a merry red scarf emerging from the house and walking to the garage. The man had white hair and looked like James Coburn. He was the man in Jill's photograph.
Just as she reached the corner, Marcy turned right and drove down half a block. She turned into a driveway and then backed out quickly. At the head of the block she pulled into the curb.
A few minutes later, Corday drove by. He was headed east. He gave no sign that he'd noticed her.
She gave him a full five minutes, just in case he had noticed her and was going to try something fancy.
She then took a left and drove back past his house. She continued a quarter mile down the road. The snow was a whirling dervish, blinding her momentarily.
She found a DX station, one of those that likely got abandoned during the last recession when all the big oil companies were finding direct sales unprofitable, parked on the snow-covered drive and started her trek back to Corday's house.
The headwinds were a bitch. She kept her head down. Her cheeks froze into numbness almost immediately. The Midwestern countryside was diabolically pretty on a day like this. It could kill you through exposure, but at least you'd die looking at beautiful scenery.
She hoped that she wouldn't find anybody home at Corday's place. That was the first universal rule of the private eye: Never illegally enter a house that is occupied.
It's a fast way to get yourself killed.
Jill had just gotten back from her lawyer'swas just unwinding her scarf and slipping off her western bootswhen the phone rang.
She hobbled across the floor with a single boot on.
'Hello?'
'Jill, it's Doris.'
'It's nice to hear your voice.'
'Nice to hear yours, too. But right now' She was silent a moment, and spoke in a much lower voice when she resumed speaking. 'I thought I heard somebody at the door.'
'Are you at home?'
'Yes. And I'm sure you remember how Mother is.' She tried to sound sardonic but a certain bitterness was there, too. 'I'd like to set up a lunch for tomorrow.'
'I'd like that.'
'Then you're free?'
'Even if I wasn't, I'd make time.'
The pause again. 'Jill, I'm sorry for what you've been going through.'
Jill thought of what her lawyer Deborah had suggested during many of their conversations. Couldn't a bitter old woman with millions and millions of dollars have engineered this murderand made it look as if Jill were guilty?
'I appreciate you saying that.'
'Well, I have my reasons, believe me. That's why I want to have lunch. Just a minute.'
Silence.
Much lower speaking voice when she came back. 'Now I'm sure I heard somebody in the hall. I'd better go.' She named a place for lunch. 'Around noon?'
'That'd be great. It's so good hearing from you, Doris. It really is.'
'We'll have a lot of things to discuss tomorrow.'
'See you then.'
As she hung up the telephone, Jill replayed Doris' whispers. The poor woman. Still having to sneak around so her mother didn't know what she was up to. Jill even felt an errant wisp of pity for Evelyn. Her infant had been killed in one of the most unlikely ways anybody had ever heard of. Easy to understand why Evelyn had turned into a paranoid, over-controlling old witch. But she couldn't be forgiven for what she'd done to Peter and Doris. Not ever.
Jill had just gotten her second boot off when the phone rang again.
This time it was Kate.
Jill, exuberantly, told her all about Mitch tracking down Cini.
The lock took less than five minutes to pick.
Six months ago, Marcy had tailed an unfaithful wife for a husband who didn't have much money. But what he did have, as a graduate of Illinois State Prison, was a nice new set of burglar tools, the kind you just couldn't find at Sears.
Marcy swapped him pictures of his wife entering a place that said M TEL where she was trysting that afternoon with this kind of dorky-looking white guy who sold appliances out to Best Buys.
The client, black, had gotten very angry. 'He's white? She's makin' it with some white guy? White people don't know shit about sex! Nothin' personal, you understand.'
'Right. Now how about those burglary tools?'
This was Marcy's first opportunity to use them, standing in the wind-whipped side door of Rick Corday's house, her face a frozen mask from the biting snow dervishes, her hands a chafed red though they'd been gloveless less than a minute.
The first three picks were wrong.
The fourth one got the lock tumblers to move a millionth of an inch or so.
The fifth one opened the door instantly.
The smell. That was the first thing she noticed, even though she wasn't all the way inside yet. The smell. She wasn't sure she knew what it was. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.
She went in, closed the door.
Appliances thrummed; a grandfather clock tocked out eternity. A built-in dishwasher had reached rinse cycle.
The smell wasn't as acrid here as it had been on the landing leading to the basement. Spicescinnamon, paprika, oreganoscented the kitchen pleasantly. The room was done in contrasting yellows. The cabinets new built-ins, the refrigerator a mammoth sunny yellow machine that had an ice-maker set into one of the two front doors.
As soon as she left the kitchen, she picked up the odor again. What was it, anyway?
The living room was a modern blend of natural fabrics and decorative accentsvery feminine but not effeminatea stylish cream-colored button-arm sofa with button-arm chairs in a dark brown and a glass-top coffee table in the center of the ensemble.
Nice. Comfortable. Homey.
Except for the smell.
'Gag me with a spoon,' as she used to say back in the misty days of eight years ago when she'd been in high school.
To the left was a hallway. She took it. The smell faded considerably back here. Wind caught in the chimney and let out a mournful whistle. She felt weird being here. She would be glad to get out. But what kind of self-respecting private investigator would go to all the trouble of breaking into somebody's house and then not go searching through his secret stuff?
The first bedroom was curious indeed for a man, with its rice carved bed with flowery spread. A highboy sat next to the bed, which was supported on a huge platform that lifted it several feet into the air. There was a trellis chainstitch rug and a cheval mirror and a massive burgundy lamp on the night-stand. It was all a little too decorative for her; a little too cloying.
The bureau was pushed against the back wall, next to a bookcase snug with bestsellers that ran to books intent on building your self-esteem. From what Marcy could gather about these books, the only people whose self-esteem they helped was the authors'. They felt just dandy about taking all that money from idiots.
Inside the bureau drawer, she found a tidy array of socks, underwear and T-shirts. Rick Corday was a neat freak. Everything was lined up just so, displayed just so. She hated neat freaks. Life was too short for all that anal-retentive stuff.
She tried the second drawer.
You might call this one The Wonderful World of Sweaters. V-necks, turtle-necks, crew-necks. Red, yellow, blue, green.
She was just opening the third drawer when somebody behind her said, 'Walk away from the bureau and put your hands up. And then turn around and face me. Just like TV.'
She put her hands up.
And turned around real nice and slow as if she were back in ballet class working on her pirouette.
And then she gazed up at the James Coburn-like countenance of Rick Corday standing in the doorway.
He had a. 45 straight out of a Bogart movie in his right hand.
He smiled. 'I knew I faked you out.'
'Huh?'
'When you were parked down at the corner there, waiting for me to drive past. I knew I faked you out.'
'You knew I was there?'
'Sure. I got curious the second time you drove by my house. We don't get a lot of that out here.'
'You're Rick Corday.'
'Right.'
'I can explain this, Mr Corday.'
'Sure you can.'
'What're you going to do to me?'
He didn't hesitate. 'Jeeze, kid, you should've figured that out by now. I'm going to kill you.'
'Ma'am.'
One thing servants in the Tappley house learned immediately: You were to report any suspicious activity to Mrs Tappley or risk losing your job. To keep her happy was to keep her informed, and so the maids tended to eavesdrop on any conversations that the children hadwhen they were growing upor that Doris had now.
The upstairs maid had listened at the door as Doris spoke to Jill.
She went downstairs, saw Mrs Tappley in the cozy warmth of the den, and said, 'Excuse me, ma'am.'
Mrs Tappley sighed. She was at a particularly exciting place in her Barbara Cartland novel. 'What is it, Jess?'
'I'm sorry to interrupt.'
'I didn't ask you to grovel. I asked you to tell me what you wanted.'
'Yes'm.'
'Well?'
'Doris was on the phone.'
Interest flickered in Evelyn's eyes. 'Oh?'
'Yes'm. For almost ten minutes.'
'I see.'
'And she was talking to your former daughter-in-law.'
Evelyn sat up in her wingchair and put the book face down on her lap. 'She was talking to Jill?'
'Yes'm.'
'You're positive? Jill?'
'She said her name two or three times. That's what I thought was so funny, ma'am, her talking to her.'
'I appreciate you telling me this, Jess.'
'Yes'm.'
'I'll speak with you later.'
Jess nodded and left.
Evelyn didn't go back to her Barbara Cartland. Instead, she began thinking of her medicine cabinet, and something Dr Steiner had given her for when she felt a nervous attack coming on…
Mitch spent the early afternoon forcing himself to smile and pretend that he really enjoyed being called a moron.
The man doing the calling was a dapper yuppie from the DA's office named Fitzsimmons. Twice in the conversation he managed to sneak in the fact that he was a Yale alumnus, and three times he mentioned that he'd been on a Barbara Walters Special about crime prevention in the United States.
Nobody on the planet was half as cool as Robert D. Fitzsimmons imagined himself to be.
'I belong to the same club,' he said toward the end of the conversation.
'Club?' Mitch said.
'Country club.'
'Ah.'
Fitzsimmons studied him a moment, looking for any signs of irony in Mitch's face. He then glanced at Lieutenant Sievers as if he expected Sievers to reprimand Mitch in some way. They were in Sievers' office and had been for better than an hour.
'What I'm saying,' Fitzsimmons said, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his vest and strutting around the office as if he were presenting a case to a jury, 'is that this should be your one and only case, Mitch. No other cases until this one is solved. I thought we had an understanding.'
'I'm not working on any other cases.'
'Of course you are.' He shook his head. 'I have my spies in the department, Mitch. I know what's going on. You're concerned about your lady friend.'
'I don't know why I would be,' Mitch said, letting a nasty edge come into his voice. 'She's only being charged with murder.'
Fitzsimmons of the seventy-five-dollar haircut addressed Sievers directly. 'I see two things wrong with Mitch working on his lady friend's case.'
'I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't call her my ''lady friend." Her name is Jill.'
Fitzsimmons paused a moment and pursed his lips, as if pondering a vast and deep philosophical issue.
'All right, then. Jill it is.'
He still looked directly at Sievers. 'There are two things wrong with Mitch working on Jill's case. One, it takes him away from the case we want him working on; and two, it's hardly professional for a detective to work on a case involving somebody he's in love with.'
Sievers said, 'He isn't spending much time on it, Bob. Just an odd hour here and there. Most of the time he's working on your case.'
Fitzsimmons burst into rage, slamming his fist on the desk and spearing a long finger in Sievers' face. 'I told you I don't want him working on anything except my case! Do we understand each other!'
He had shouted so loudly that the cops outside the glass-walled office looked in.
Sievers sat there, eyes downcast, humiliated.
Mitch wanted to grab this candy-ass by the throat and throw him out the fourth-floor window.
'We understand each other,' Sievers said meekly. 'Mitch works on your case.'
'And I'm holding you personally responsible, Lieutenant, to see that he does.'
He was still angry. His neck was red behind his white collar. Spittle covered his lower lip. His parents had perhaps given him a little too much self-esteem.
He picked up his topcoat, which he'd laid neatly across the back of a chair, and his briefcase, which appeared to have cost about as much as Sievers made in a week.
'I don't like pulling rank but sometimes it's necessary,' he said.
Mitch wondered if this was a clumsy attempt at apologizing. Not that it would change his opinion of this jerk, even if it were.
Fitzsimmons walked to the door, opened it slightly. The collective noise of phones, computers, faxes and voices invaded Sievers' tiny domain.
Sievers still looked humiliated and whipped. When somebody this rich was murdered, there was always a lot of heat, especially when the DA put a country-clubber like Fitzsimmons in charge of the case.
Fitzsimmons said, 'I'm going to trust you'll do your job as I've outlined it, Lieutenant.'
He still wasn't favoring Mitch with any eye contact.
He left.
The asshole.
Mitch said, 'You OK?'
Sievers smiled sadly. 'You ever see that John Wayne picture She Wore A Yellow Ribbon?'
'Sure. It's one of my favorites.'
'You know how Wayne had this big calendar hanging on his wall and he checked off every day till he retired?' He smiled. Sievers was always good at bouncing back. 'I think I'm going to get myself a calendar. And meanwhile, go call that Cini girl. Keep the heat on her.'
'What about Fitzsimmons?'
'Screw him.'
'Thanks, Lieutenant. I appreciate it.'
Mitch went back to his desk.
Doris slept.
Just as she was drifting off, she realized how odd this was. She'd never been able to nap, not even as a small child.
But todaypossibly because of her anxiety over meeting Jill tomorrowshe fell into a fast and deep slumber.
So she was not aware when her door crept open
Not aware when her mother entered the room bearing a needle and syringe
Not aware when Evelyn sat down next to her on the bed and pulled up the hem of her dress so she could find a good and true place to administer the shot
Not aware
But then she was aware.
Mother. Needle in her hand. Injecting the fluid into Doris' thigh. Pain.
'Don't worry, dear. This is just the sedative Dr Steiner has me give myself. I'm letting you have a triple dose, is all.'
Shrieking, grabbing her mother. 'Why are you doing this?'
'I want you to be sensible about Jill, dear, that's all. I want you to see that you shouldn't be talking to anybody who betrayed our trust and our family the way she did.'
Triple dose. Feeling the effects already. A darkness pulling her downward…
'You shouldn't talk to her, dear. Not ever.'
Her mother's face blurring. Her voice faint.
'She betrayed our family, dear. Every one of us. I'm just trying to protect you from doing something you'll regret.'
The darkness pulling Doris down…
Down…
Marcy had to give Rick Corday one thing: he was real good at tying people up. He was also good at taking their clothes off.
Marcy lay naked and trussed on a dusty single bed in the east corner of the very cold basement. Rick Corday's basement. She was already sneezing. And her throat was already raw.
Actually, she tried not to think about her throat.
Before he'd left this morningright before, at the last moment, almost as an afterthought, he'd tied a gag across her mouthhe took his axe and he gave Marcy a little demonstration.
It had been truly weird. Rick brought out this simple wooden X made of two-by-fours. He'd set the log in the crook of the X and then chop away.
He could cut a log in violent half with a single swing.
Impressive.
She tried real hard not to think of what would happen to her head if he ever rested her neck on the log-holder.
But that wasn't the weird part.
All the time he split logsand he must have split around thirty of themhe told her about axes.
It was as if he were doing a TV infommercial and she was the audience at home.
'Don't buy a long handle just because it looks more powerful. Always get a handle you feel comfortable with.'
And then he'd rend another log in two.
'Always treat your axe like your best friend. If it's been stored away for some time and the socket at the head of the handle isn't snug around the axe, soak the handle in water and then later on treat it with linseed oil.'
Another log would shatter.
'Be sure to be careful in winter weather, especially when you're outside. Axes can break sometimes. It's a good practice to warm the axe first over a stove or fire.'
'Enough already!' she was shouting inside her mind. Too bad she couldn't shout it out loud. Maybe then he'd take the hint.
She tried for a time to will herself out of this basement. She'd read somewhere that during great periods of stress in World War Two some soldiers had been able to will themselves out of their bodies.
But it proved impossible to do this feat with a four-inch-thick piece of wood clattering to the concrete floor every few minutes. Sawdust and chips and chunks of bark littered the floor around the X.
'So what's the best axe-head for you?'
She forced herself not to listen anymore.
There was only one thing she knew about Rick Corday. He was clinical. Real clinical. One of her Crim courses had included some profiles of criminally insane people, and Rick here certainly fit the profile.
Especially since his voice kept changing every five minutes or so. He was, from what she could see, at least two different peopleand both of them were insane.
He finished with the axe and then walked over to her.
'I'm going to go get my friend and bring him back here and then the three of us are going to have a good time.'
She just stared up at him. She felt very self-conscious about being nakedand very scared of what he might be suggesting herebut she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of letting him see this.
'Did I mention that you've got a nice little body? You've got a very nice little body. And I'm going to capture it for posterity on my videocam.' He smiled his fruitcake smile. 'That'll be fun, won't it?'
'Oh yeah,' she wanted to say. 'Yeah, that'll be a whole lot of fun.'
Rick left then, clomp clomp clomp up the basement stairs, clomp clomp clomp across the kitchen and out the back door.
Then she was alone, utterly alone, and terrified.
O'Hare was always a pain in the ass and never more so than when flights were delayed because of bad weather. Even though the plows had been out and the runways were clear, flights had piled up from yesterday and many people were still waiting to get flown out of here.
The place looked like a refugee camp as Adam made his way to the public phones. Some people had slept in their seats all night and looked like it, rumpled, glassy-eyed, vaguely dirty. Little kids ran around screaming while sleepy parents snapped at them. College students tried hard to concentrate on Sartre just as housewives tried hard to concentrate on Danielle Steel. The massesin the abstract they weren't a bad idea. It was just when you got up close to them.
When Adam reached the phone, he took his wallet from his topcoat and ran a finger down a list of names and phone numbers. He called the office of Arthur K. Halliwell and when the receptionist asked who was calling, Adam gave a false name that Halliwell alone would recognize.
Halliwell came on. 'Do you know how many days I've been trying to reach you?'
'I went to New York on business. I wish to hell you'd relax.'
'He's going to get us in trouble. He's a loose cannon. I take it you know by now that he killed Eric Brooks?'
'Yes, he told me.'
Halliwell sighed. 'I need to approach Evelyn today. I need the money.'
It was all going to be so simple, Adam thought. Several years ago, just after Adam had gotten to know him, Rick had told him a strange storythat he had once been a young man named Peter Tappley supposedly put to death in the electric chair for killing several young women. But he'd made a deal with the family lawyer to give him his entire part of the Tappley estate if Halliwell could arrange for the execution to be faked. This meant bribing, for a great deal of money, the man in charge of the execution, the attending physician, the County Coroner and the funeral home director in charge of the corpse. Evelyn Tappley knew nothing about any of this, as Peter wanted to escape her power and influence. He'd gotten extensive plastic surgery in readiness to start a new life. He was sentimental about the Chicago area so the two men lived there. The first year or so was fine, Adam showing him how paid assassins went about their work, Peter being a willing and eager student. Then the change started. Adam first noted the symptoms in Rick: the mood swings, the depression, the blinding headaches, even the change in voice. There seemed to be another person inside of Peter struggling to get out. Then the more frightening symptoms began: periods of amnesia, sleepwalking, terrifying hours of dazedness… and then insane fits of jealousy. Where had Adam been? How could he betray Rick this way? Didn't he know that someday he'd be sorry? Adam was unfaithful, true; but not that unfaithful. Adam called Halliwell and introduced himself. Both were afraid that Rick would crack and end up in a hospital and tell his doctors all about how Halliwell had faked Peter's execution and how Adam was a hit man. Peter had become somebody else completely, somebody Adam neither recognized nor controlled. One day, Adam had shown Rick some pictures of Peter Tappley as a boyand newspaper clippings of his executionbut Rick had shown no recognition whatsoever. Then Evelyn called one day and asked Halliwell to arrange a murder for which her former daughter-in-law Jill Coffey would be blamed. Halliwell said yes. He was virtually bankrupt. He needed money desperately and Evelyn was offering half a million. Then Halliwell got a better idea. After Jill was framed, he'd go to Evelyn and tell her that he'd just learned that Peter was alive. Naturally, she'd be desperate to see him. He would say that his source wanted one million dollars for the rest of the information. Evelyn would pay it without question. They would set up a meeting for mother and son, but just before it took place, Adam would kill Peter, for which he would be paid one hundred thousand dollars. Adam would then leave town. By now, both men were seriously worried about Peter. What if he did something really crazy before they got their million from Evelyn?
'I wish we could just kill him now,' Halliwell said, 'but we can't. In order to convince Evelyn that he's alive, we'll have to have him say hello to her.'
That was the only reason they wanted Rick alive now. They'd have him call this woman and say hello to herthey'd force him at gunpoint, if necessary. She'd recognize the voicethere wasn't anything the plastic surgeons could do to alter a voice in any significant wayshe'd recognize the voice and pay Halliwell the million dollars.
'Just hope he doesn't run amuck somewhere and take us all down with him,' Halliwell said.
Adam checked his watch. 'I'll keep a close eye on him,
Arthur. Relax. This'll work out fine. I can control him. I really can.'
'I'm not sure you can these days, Adam. He's different now. Truly psychotic.'
Adam heard several flights being announced. 'I'd better go. He's waiting out there to pick me up.'
'Call me and let me know how things are going.'
'Just relax, Arthur. Relax.'
He hung up and walked out to find Rick.