Riptide (27 page)

The hairs on the back of Christina’s neck were waving wildly now. She crossed the hall to Tyler’s room.

Things here were the same. The bedspread hung off-kilter.

Someone had pulled off the covers and remade the bed.

The desk had been gone through, with some drawers closed and some open a fraction of an inch.

Tyler’s paperweight cube and pencil case had been dumped, their contents strewn on the desk blotter.

The entire place appeared to have been burgled by someone moving fast, with no time to spare.

Christina hurried to the window.

Danny was pouring gasoline onto something in the fire pit.

Her heart started to pound. She was surprised it wasn’t pushing the terry robe open. She cinched the belt tighter in an effort to stop shivering.

It was no use.

She turned back to the room.

The bookshelves had been gone through but not, she prayed, as thoroughly as the rest of the place. The books on the lower shelves had been moved. Hoppy, Humpy the camel, and Clown still sat up top where they always did.

She reached up and grabbed Humpy, pulling the Velcro apart.

Her shaking fingers felt paper.

The manila envelopes were still stuffed inside.

Thank God.

Her knees practically buckled with relief.

She pulled the envelopes out and tossed Humpy on the desk, certain these were what Danny was after.

Just as Pamela Lofting Cardiff had been.

One of the envelopes had a familiar heft in its center. It was the one containing the DVD.

Christina fumbled for the maroon string with fingers that shook while she walked to the window.

A thin plume of smoke was rising through the air.

Danny watched, arms crossed over his muscular chest.

She got the envelope open.

Inside was a sheaf of papers from the law offices of Maurice Gold, pertaining to the filing of divorce proceedings in the State of New York.

The words Cardiff vs. Cardiff swam into focus.

Christina’s pulse raced. Her breaths came in short, shallow bursts.

The
New York Post
had it right. Jason had been about to file for divorce.

But she didn’t have time to read through those papers now.

Not with the DVD weighing heavy in her hand. A distant thrumming noise started in Christina’s ears as she stared down at it, plain and white.

The thrumming noise in Christina’s head intensified into a hammering. Her hands turned slick, so each finger left a small, humid print on the side of the plastic case.

Which made it difficult to pry the case open.

But she managed.

Christina switched on the plasma-screen TV they’d given Tyler for his thirteenth birthday.

She slid the DVD into the slit at the side, and it seemed to take forever to start scanning, but it was only a few seconds.

Enough time for Christina to realize she knew what it contained.

Waking up the day after was like finding myself in a pit at the bottom of hell.

Memories of that night come back to me in bits and
pieces.
I don’t know what I can’t remember until something else comes back to fill in the gaps. Big, empty gaps.

There is a word for what happened that night, and the word is too ugly even to think.

I remember there was music coming from Danny’s boom box. I know I liked it, and we were dancing.

Other people were waiting for us in the little basement apartment he rented in the Springs. They were partying when we got there and everyone laughed and clapped when we walked down into this cave of a room he lived in.

There was a mattress on the floor in a corner.

I smelled pot right away, I do remember that. I don’t like it, I never have, but once you smell it, you can always recognize it.

A couple was on the bed making out. The girl had her top off. She looked at me and smiled.

Danny kind of pushed me into the center of the living room, and said, “We’re here. It’s ladies’ night.”

Everyone started laughing, and so did I.

I remember being thirsty, so thirsty I ran to the sink for water. I was on my second glass when Danny took it from me. “You don’t want too much of that,” he said. “It’s the E, do you get it?”

I didn’t really get it, but I said I did. I knew those tablets we dropped in the car were something like that, Ecstasy. He had talked about it before and I resisted but right then I was glad we did it. Ecstasy does that to you, you know what I mean? I guess I shouldn’t say this, but I felt better that night than I ever had in my entire life, like I loved every single one of those people more than anyone I had ever met.

We started dancing, Danny and I, and everyone joined in. Everyone was laughing. We were all in a big circle like a square dance and I wanted it to go on and on forever.

The couple from the bed got up and she was dancing topless and really getting off on it, you know, touching herself and letting her boyfriend touch her boobs and then Danny started touching them, and it didn’t even bother me. I mean, if you really want to know, it turned me on. I wanted them to touch ME that way and I must have said it out loud because Danny came right over to me.

“Come on, baby,” he said, smiling that way he has. “You could, too, you know.” He put his hands up inside my shirt and next thing you know it was off and we were all laughing and I felt hands on me, all over me, and it was wild.

Christina stared at the screen in Tyler’s room with its flickering scenes from hell.

She watched a version of herself, Christina the Porn Queen, star of the movies Jason liked to watch, bobbing her head up and down like a rubber doll to keep time with the rhythm of the men and women taking turns with her.

At one point, Porn Queen Christina squinted drunkenly at the camera. “Are you filming this?”

There was laughter, then Danny’s thick hands coming up to pull her down…

She had taken part in an orgy.

The clicker slid from Christina’s hand to the floor as a wave of hot shame crashed over her, swamping her in memories of that night.

She gasped for air. It was difficult to breathe.

Christina raised her hands to her throat to clear a passage, but it did no good.

What would Nana say? Nana, who’d lit a candle before Mass every Sunday in memory of her own long-dead husband, the smiling young man in military garb whose photo had been lovingly preserved next to Christina’s inside a plastic sleeve in Nana’s frayed wallet.

Christina’s ears filled with the mighty roaring sound of that wave of shame.

How did the DVD get here? How? How? How?
How?

A memory came back. Danny sliding his hand high up inside Christina’s short skirt while Jason leaned over, steps away, peering at something the head contractor pointed to down near the floorboards.

Realization hit home in another deep wave.

Danny didn’t care if Jason saw the flirtations between them because he knew Jason was in on it.

Another memory came back. She had returned home early from a canceled tennis lesson to find Danny and Jason on the lawn, out of earshot of the other workers, deep in conversation. Seeing her, they sprang apart…

The awful significance of the DVD swirled through Christina’s mind like a funnel cloud.

Danny had made the DVD, and it wound up in Jason’s safe.

Why? Why? Why?
Why?

Christina knew the answer would be spelled out in the papers from the law offices of Maurice Gold, LLC.

Jason planned to use the DVD as evidence against her in divorce proceedings.

Danny,
her
Danny, the one she imagined she was in love with, had videotaped their sex play.

At Jason’s request.

Another realization, just as awful, followed the first.

Her mind recoiled from it, even though she knew it was true. What if Danny had pursued her, initiated their entire affair, because Jason had hired him to do it?

Another memory. Danny, half-joking, asking if the Storm dealership in Southampton would give him a good deal on a Mercedes like hers.

“I might be in the market. Business is good this year,” he’d said, “Better than ever.”

Their affair had been tumultuous and wild, building finally to that night barely two weeks ago.

Not just any night, the night that had left her too sick and too ashamed to look at her own reflection in the mirror the next day.

The day Christina Cardiff woke up so sick and so desperate she packed herself off to rehab.

She must have thrown a monkey wrench into her husband’s plans.

Jason Cardiff had told her many times that he’d leave her penniless, the way he found her, if she cheated. But that wasn’t the part that scared Christina. It was Jason’s cool resolve that he would take Tyler from her.

Christina had never doubted that Jason would keep his word.

New York’s archaic divorce laws would have made it easy for Jason to walk away with his precious Cardiff family trust intact, taking his son—
their
son, with him. It would be easy to do if he had proof that Christina’s behavior was immoral.

The images she’d just viewed, complete with sounds
that would have been at home in a barnyard, were all the proof he needed.

Her sister-in-law, Pamela Lofting Cardiff, had told the truth. The tabloids had got it right.

Jason
had
been planning to divorce her, and she was the last to know, on terms so ugly Christina would have had no choice but to walk away.

But Christina had thrown a curveball Jason’s way.

Checking herself into rehab made it less likely Jason’s mud would stick.

There was another curveball, however. Her growing feelings for Danny as the summer wore on. She thought back to the game they played so many times after they had sex.

Danny and she would take turns imagining what life would be like if they were married.

“If you got a good settlement,” Danny said, “I wouldn’t have to work so freakin’ hard.”

When had their pillow talk turned to talk of divorce settlements, she wondered?

It had been Danny’s doing, not hers.

Because he had known what Jason was planning.

“Oh, my God,” Christina whispered, pressing her fingers to her mouth to keep from throwing up. But there was nothing she could do to stop the pounding in her heart.

Danny had been hired to trap her. By Jason.

And now Jason was dead.

Young Jake had tried to warn her. So had Frank McManus, the Suffolk County Homicide detective. He had come to the church yesterday morning, and later through the day he’d left two messages on her cell phone. Urging her to call him.

But she hadn’t.

There was a click from the TV as the DVD played to the end.

“My God,” Christina breathed.

The bedroom walls were spinning like a Tilt-A-Whirl.

Her stomach heaved.

Jason rarely swam in the pool. Especially not at night.

Never when he was alone.

Now she suspected he hadn’t been alone. More than likely, Danny had been there.

Downstairs, the screen door slammed.

“Christina!” Danny’s voice boomed.

Christina made no reply; her only thought was to find someplace to hide.

“Christina!” Danny crossed the wood floor of the main room and began climbing the stairs. “You outta the shower yet?”

Heart pounding, she picked up the remote from the floor and fumbled for the
OFF
button. Her palms were slick with sweat, her fingers shaking so bad she fumbled and dropped it.

Danny was climbing the stairs.

Christina made a frantic grab for the clicker, sweeping it under Tyler’s bed along with the manila envelopes from Maurice Gold’s office.

“Christina?” Danny’s voice was sharp now. A moment later he appeared in the doorway. “There you are,” he said softly, scanning the room.

Too late, Christina realized she had left Humpy lying on the desk, upended with his Velcro compartment hanging open.

Empty and glaring.

She had been in the midst of tightening the belt on her robe but she froze, watching Danny take it all in with those dark eyes, hooded now.

The DVD player whirred and clicked the way the newest models did even after they were switched off. Resetting itself.

The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot.

The screen flashed,
PLAYER READY,
across the bottom and went dark.

Christina’s heart sank.

“So”—Danny turned his gaze on Christina with eyes that were laser-sharp—“you found it.”

There was something there, in the words he left unsaid. A challenge, perhaps.

Christina sensed that her world hung in the balance. She tried to speak and failed. Her mouth was so dry her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

He stepped inside.

It was a small move that made Christina jump. Instantly, she regretted it.

Danny Cisco gave a smile that was like watching a reptile stretch its lips. “I’ll take that.”

“No.” She raised a hand to stop him.

The look he gave her was a mix of surprise and something else.

It raised hackles along Christina’s spine.

Ignoring her protest, Danny walked swiftly to the TV and hit the
EJECT
button.

This was her house, Christina reminded herself, tightening her grip on the belt of her robe to hide the trembling in her hands. “You didn’t tell me,” she said, forcing her lips to move, “you were here that night.”

Danny held the DVD in his hand. He was very still, watching her with eyes that were rimmed with red, wary. Watching.

On full alert. She thought again of the raccoon they’d found in the attic last fall, how frightened the thing was when they’d first discovered it and tried to coax it toward an open window.

Just before it bared its fangs and hissed, preparing to attack.

“Don’t go there,” he said softly, running his fingers lightly over the edge of the DVD, never taking his eyes from her face.