All's Well That Ends (30 page)

“Didn’t it sound like a signal?”

“People who hear or see patterns in random events are in big trouble, pal. But even if it was a signal—why think it’s a bad one?

Maybe it’s Romeo saying, ‘Juliet, I’ve got wheels, so come on down.’ ”

Her worried expression made me realize I was tuned up tightly in a way that wasn’t helpful and didn’t make particular sense.

“Thanks,” I said. “I guess I needed that. It’s just that this week—”

Now she spoke much more warmly. “I know. Me, too. And I don’t know how anybody’s supposed to pull away and regain balance, but you have to, don’t you? You especially. You have to keep telling yourself that Toy—con artist that we now know her to be—was nonetheless just in the wrong place—or the right one, where the supposed treasures lay. Or, what it sounds like, the place somebody had been robbing with great regularity since Phoebe died.” She walked ahead of me into the living room, then turned and, head tilted slightly, watched me as if waiting for something she’d expected.

I remembered. “Tell me about him,” I said. “What’s wonderful and unique about him?”

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“I thought you’d never ask.” She unbuttoned her coat and tossed it and her long black scarf onto an ottoman. “Coffee? Tea?

Something stronger?”

“I’m going to need to work when I get home, but tea would be great.” I needed warming up, and I left my coat on for a moment longer. Sasha might be economizing, given the current cost of gas, so I said nothing about how chilly it was in here.

Jesse Farmer, I thought again. But Toy? Why, then, go after Toy?

“Make yourself at home.” She went into the kitchen, talking nonstop as she did. “He is really different,” she said.

As was every other man, every other time, I didn’t have to listen that attentively because I’d heard all this before. Why didn’t the two murders, the two deaths, fit into one piece?

“Honestly,” Sasha said. “I think I’ve found him.”

“Where?”

Dennis was the one who needed money, who had motives for both murders, sordid as those motives might be.

“Met him on a blind date my aunt arranged!” Sasha burst out laughing. “Surprised you, didn’t I? No bar, no online service—

my aunt Cassie!” It sounded as if she clanged the spoon against the cup on purpose, as if we’d hit some prize on a quiz show. I was shocked into attention by her answer. Religious great-aunts’

matchmaking was not high on Sasha’s list of favorites.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Based on the little I’ve heard about great-aunt Cassie, he’s a man of the cloth, right?”

“Not quite,” she said. “Unless cloth means he’s well dressed.

He’s actually a scientist, an oceanographer, who . . . ”

She continued to talk, but I no longer really heard her because the din of everything else—people, need for money, knowing about Bonaparte—was now fighting for space against a third factor, and this one was here, nearby. Something was wrong, but what?

I listened. No more horn. No noise outside at all. Was that all it was? The shock of silence?

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No. The horn had stopped its two at a time message a while back. This had just happened.

I looked around, but the room was, as always, a mélange of styles that combined to suggest another era, one you should recall and be able to identify, but couldn’t. I saw the same unknowable time and place. Nothing moved, nothing had a new, unnatural protrusion, silhouette, or dent.

From the kitchen, Sasha described the scientist’s hair and smile, muffling whatever other sounds I might have otherwise heard. But even so, something had shifted. Was there now a shadow where there hadn’t been one? Sasha had turned on only one floor lamp in her passage through the room, and its circle of light did not reach into the corners.

I barely breathed, I was straining so hard to hear and see. It—

whatever it was—wasn’t here in the living area, but beyond; in the shadows of the dining area, under the long satiny cloth covering the table, behind the brocade drapery. I stood up slowly, trying to avoid any floor squeaks, any shift in furniture.

And then I saw it, the slightest bulge in the brocade drapes, the shift of darker shadow on dark cloth. I grabbed the first solid and moveable object near me and slowly advanced toward the drapes, my hand gripping what I suddenly realized was the ugly statue—the scrawny centurian in his sculpted tunic. Skinny Caesar. He was made of metal, so I didn’t care that his muscles were weak-looking. I gripped it tightly, as if it were enchanted and had the power of that metallic legionnaire. As if his short knife would protect me.

I advanced, my eyes on the drapery. I thought I saw it move again, the slightest sucking inward, pulling back in on itself.

The teapot screamed, and I nearly did, too. But that high, ungodly warning meant only that the water had boiled. The scream died off as Sasha removed the pot from the burner.

I reached the drapery, stood there, trying to breathe, then with my right arm brandishing Caesar, I put my left hand on the edge of the drape.

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The scream was Sasha’s this time. “For God’s sake, what are you—”

I half turned, and moved my head to make her come closer.

She was carrying a pot of boiling water, an even better weapon than the Roman statue.

“Amanda, really—you’ll kill somebody!”

My eyes wide—how many ways could I silently signal somebody to be quiet? In any case, I’d failed to get the message across, but seeing is believing, so while she shouted at me, I whipped the drapery back.

And revealed nothing. No one.

“What in God’s name were you—”

“I saw movement—”

“The window’s open! Air currents do that.” She was giving me that look again, and I could understand how, from her point of view, I deserved it. But she was wrong.

“Sit down,” she said, brandishing the teapot until I was afraid she’d use it on me. “And put that down. It isn’t a—”

“Somebody’s here,” I whispered, nonetheless sitting on a dining-table chair. I kept hold of the soldier, needing all the help I could get. From where I sat, I could see into Sasha’s bedroom, which looked still and unoccupied. Her window curtains were pulled back with ties. Nobody could hide behind them, and nobody could hide under her bed, where, she’d once proudly shown me, she had drawers for extra clothing storage. It was a spacious flat, but it did not have an infinite number of rooms. There was the bathroom, off of Sasha’s bedroom, and—

“Dennis? You think Dennis is in my house?”

“Listen, Sasha—”

“You’re out of your—”

“Shhh!” I said.

“I’m worried about you,” she whispered.

I felt as if we were closed in a box charged with extra ions, electrical waves—something. As if everything had been drenched in colors so intense they hurt the eyeballs. And every sound, how-GILLIAN ROBERTS

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ever tiny, buzzed and roared into my brain. I heard a squeak, an old floorboard’s complaint, and my back muscles tightened and my heart beat still faster.

Somebody was in this apartment. I had heard something, I knew it. Something I couldn’t account for, even if I couldn’t remember what it had been. I refused to believe it was pure coincidence that tonight, for the first time ever, some random thief would break into Sasha’s condo in order to rob her. Coincidences happened, but not that many. Not now. Whoever was here had to do with Phoebe and Toy, and that house, and probably with Joseph Bonaparte.

Phoebe must have known. She’d somehow finally put the family legends together, read Bordentown history, found a site online—I didn’t know how, but I was sure she knew.

My mind kaleidoscoped. The spinning elements swirled: Phoebe, Toy, the king of Spain in New Jersey, the appraisals, the idling car outside tonight, the honks. The joyride in the BMW.

“Sorry,” said once too often.

I felt sick.

The colors around me swirled and ran together, and I was afraid I might faint. “Call nine-one-one,” I said.

“Are you crazy? Why?”

I stood up again despite Sasha’s soft protest and the hand with which she grabbed me. I shrugged off her hand and pointed to the closed darkroom door across from us and moved closer to it. It was the only space we couldn’t see.

She shook her head. “It’s always closed,” she whispered. “It doesn’t mean anybody’s hiding—”

I shook my head. It was the only thing that made sense. The person behind it had heard the signal, the warning beeps, had not had time to get out before we entered, had hidden behind the only closed door.

Sasha frowned and shook her head again.

I ignored her, then turned and whispered, “Bring the kettle, the teapot.”

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“No!” she whispered back. “That’s horrible! You could—”

“Two people were murdered,” I snapped, my voice wobbling out of control. “It isn’t going to turn into four!”

“Nobody’s here! You’re imagining all this and scaring me! Put that thing down and get yourself—”

This time we both heard it, though I couldn’t have said what the wheezed, full-of-air noise was. A small scream? Someone inhaling mightily in order to have the strength for an attack?

“You’re right,” I said. “Put the kettle back.”

“But I heard it,” Sasha whispered. “OhmyGod. Dennis?”

Her voice got louder. “I’ll kill him! How dare he—how dare he!”

“No,” I whispered. “Not Dennis.” I felt my eyes well up.

“Please—just call!

“Why are you—”

“Call!”

“Okay, but don’t
do
anything until I—”

Wrong. I wasn’t going to give the person behind the door the advantage of flinging it open and springing on me.

Besides, I knew who was behind there.

Armed with Little Caesar, I took a deep breath and whipped the door open, my arm held high as Sasha screamed, “NO! Don’t do that!”

“Call!” I shouted, trying to see into the dark of the room.

The dim, faraway living-room floor lamp gave the windowless space the merest outline and blurry glint of bottles, countertops, the stainless faucet.

I blinked, then blinked again, and for a third time, heard the noise.

A sob.

And then, loudly, a voice screaming, “Don’t shoot me! Don’t kill me!”

I knew that voice. I’d been right.

I could not remember ever so acutely wanting to have been wrong.

Twenty-one

Jonesy Farmer sat on Sasha’s sofa between the two of us. I still held the skinny centurion that Jonesy, hearing Sasha’s protests, had thought was a gun.

“What are you doing in my home?” Sasha demanded.

It was an unnecessary question. He’d been sitting in the far corner of the darkroom, clutching the rosewood case that held the ornate silver.

“Why were you in my darkroom?” It was her sanctum, hers alone. Of all this young man’s crimes, right now, Sasha was most horrified by that one.

“I couldn’t get out the window in time. You came upstairs fast, and I had the box and . . .” He shook his head. “I was scared,” he mumbled. “I thought I’d be able to stay in there till 243

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you went to bed, and I could leave then.” His eyes were still half filled with liquid, and he blinked furiously, ashamed, even at this most ridiculous moment, of crying.

“I’ve warned you about that fire escape,” I said to Sasha.

“And open windows with no grates on them.”

“I had no idea I had to protect myself against Philly Prep kids,” she said, her hands in fists. She tapped the rosewood box of silver. “How did you know about this?”

He looked at her, still fighting for control. I wasn’t sure if he was more horrified at what he’d done or at having been found crying. “I saw you take it.”

“You were watching me?”

“The house, not you.”

“And you knew what was valuable, didn’t you?” I asked rhetorically, because it hadn’t been Jesse Farmer, although he’d known the worth of Phoebe’s treasures. “You saw the report your father was going to deliver to Phoebe.” I wanted him to deny it, to explain why he hadn’t done any of the things I knew he had.

“It was on the computer,” he said. “He was going to print it out and mail it to her.”

“Were you along for that business dinner? Is that how you knew to look? To be interested?”

“It was my week with him. My Dad. We—he—lives upstairs from the store and he’s weird about leaving me alone on his weeks. It’s like I’m a kid to him. Besides, he thought it would be interesting for me to learn more about what he did. Get a head for business, is what he always says.”

Some lesson learned. Along with everyone else who’d been hurt along the way, I felt terrible for Jesse Farmer, who had so innocently played a role in all this.

“I don’t get it,” Sasha said. “I just don’t. You killed my friend, a really nice person. You poisoned her. Why? Why on earth?”

“I didn’t mean to! I swear it. I wanted her to fall asleep so I could take stuff and she’d never know—she had so much! She’d told my dad she had problems sleeping, I knew she’d have had to GILLIAN ROBERTS

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have her doctor give her stuff, so I put two pills in her drink, to be sure she’d sleep. It was only one drink. How was I supposed to know she’d been drinking before I got there? I got so . . . I just left.”

We were guarding him, but we didn’t really have to. He was defeated in more ways than I could count. “I still don’t get it, kid,” Sasha said. “What do you want with engraved sterling, or whatever else you took?”

He looked down at his hands and shook his head. “I didn’t take anything that time.”

But the thoughts of money had answered that for me already.

“You were in debt, weren’t you?” I said. “That perpetual poker game. Big debt, it must have been. That’s what those conferences with Griffith were about. Did he charge interest, too? And then, you thought Phoebe’s treasures would solve everything, but poor Phoebe died.”

He swallowed hard.

“So you siphoned funds from the hurricane money. How?

Strong-arming kids in the hall? I don’t care how. I can think of a dozen ways. And you still went back to that house in Jersey when you could. It was kind of like your ATM machine, wasn’t it?”