Sooner or Later (2 page)

If you didn’t remind yourself where you were, you would have thought he was the easiest guy to get along with. In fact you might even have enjoyed his company. Except just when you were lulled into thinking he was okay and began wondering what he was doing in here anyway, he took you by surprise.

He’d almost succeeded in strangling a guard who got too close with him, began to treat him as a friend instead of an inmate. He’d leapt at him in a frenzy, fastening his hands round his neck with such ferocious strength, it took three men just to get him off. Even when they’d
knocked him unconscious they still had to prise his fingers from the guard’s neck. He was strong as an ox and crazy as a loon, they said.

Whenever he got violent, they put the straitjacket on him, locked him in a windowless cell and stood guard outside, listening to him howl his rage at them, and at the woman who had put him in here.

After a few days he would fall silent. “I’d like to be released from here, if you don’t mind,” he would say, so politely. And he would be. But this time in handcuffs and leg irons. He would be taken to his own room and locked in there, observed through the grille in the door. Mostly, he would just sit at his desk, choose a book of Latin poetry, or a gardening magazine he subscribed to, and begin quietly to read. He was the model inmate once more.

Buck Duveen watched Morrow, his eyes hooded, face impassive. He knew he was smarter than Morrow. And cleverer than the psychiatrist whom he saw on a weekly basis, twisting the man’s smug scientific brain around by feeding him the information he knew he would like to hear: about erotic dreams, fantasies, visions. He would watch him, scribbling his notes, nodding his head approvingly, and he would be laughing inside because he knew he’d fooled him.

But he wasn’t clever enough to escape, though he’d tried a couple of times, and it gnawed at his innards like a cancer. He needed to take his revenge on Charlotte Parrish, the old woman who had put him here. He wanted everything she had, everything that should belong to him.

He brooded over it, night after long dark night, in the cold of winter when the wind howled like the crazy inmates, and in the steamy summer when he prowled, naked, within the perimeter of his four walls. Trapped.

One day he would get her. But then there would still be another obstacle. He didn’t know what had happened to the child, Ellie Parrish Duveen, only that she must be a grown woman now. Young and ripe.

He had conjured up her red-haired image thousands of times, alone in that cell. And thousands of times he’d played with the idea of what he would do with her when he finally got her. It made him howl with laughter and the guards patrolling the corridors stiffened to attention, cocking their heads to one side, listening.

“There goes Buck Duveen,” they said. “Must be full moon again.” Then they went on their way and left him to his crazy solitary laughter.

Hal Morrow studied the papers in front of him, considering what he was about to do. The Hudson Sanitarium was a private institution. The inmates’ expenses were paid by their relatives who wanted them out of the way, out of their lives and as far from them and civilization as possible. When those fees would no longer be paid, as he had been told was the case with Duveen, he had no choice.

He looked up, met the man’s eyes. He said, “Duveen, you will be leaving here today. You’re a free man.”

Duveen’s head shot up, his usually dead eyes glittered like polished dark stones in a beam of weak sunlight. He thought quickly about why. How? Where he would go? What he would do? And just as quickly he decided not to ask. Better not look a gift horse in the mouth.

A grin spread across his still-handsome face. “And about time too, you fuckin’ old bastard,” he snarled. Cocky with freedom, he turned on his heel, heading for the door.

“Just a minute,” Morrow barked. Duveen stopped
but he did not turn round and Morrow heard his exasperated sigh.

“We have been informed by the attorneys in charge of your case that no further money is available to keep you here. However, there is the sum of three hundred and twenty-five dollars left in your account with us. This will be given to you in cash, along with your social security card and any other personal documents. Your possessions have been packed and you will be driven to the nearest rail station.”

Duveen tilted back his head, staring at the ceiling, waiting for him to finish.
Three hundred bucks
, he thought.
A hundred and fifty for each decade he had spent in this place. Fifteen dollars a year … and they would consider him a rich man just to have his liberty….

“That is all,” Morrow dismissed him. “I wish you good luck in your new life, Duveen.”

He did not reply and Morrow watched him go, walking with that confident swagger that had never left him in all the years he’d been in here. Morrow knew he had no choice but to do what he was doing. The financial spigot that had supplied the funds for Duveen had been turned off by the old lady’s attorneys. And the state institution didn’t want to know. He sighed again, regretfully. He hoped he was doing the right thing.

Back in his room, the handcuffs were removed. Whistling “Dixie” under his breath as he always did when he felt elated, Duveen quickly changed his clothing, putting on the neat white button-down shirt, the Brooks Brothers tweed jacket, the soft beige cords and tasseled loafers. He combed back his hair and felt he must look pretty good. He couldn’t check because no mirrors were allowed in case they smashed them and used the shards as weapons.

An attendant had already packed his bag. He hefted it, smiling at its weight. The old lady had kept him supplied with enough clothes for a proper social life even though one did not exist. He took a last glance around as he left the place that had been his home for so many long years. There was no glimpse of emotion in his stone-dark eyes. But he would not forget.

Once again the guards escorted him, unhandcuffed this time, down the green windowless corridors to the administration building. In the front office a middle-aged secretary handed him his papers and a plastic wallet containing the three hundred and twenty-five dollars.

She slid the receipt across the table, looked up at him and said, “Sign here please, Mr. Duveen.”

His dark eyes burned into hers, sly with sensuality. It was as if he were looking at her naked, and she blushed, instinctively clutching her hand to the collar of her white blouse to cover herself.

Duveen’s lips twitched at the corners, just enough so she knew he knew what she was feeling. Then he signed boldly,
Buck Duveen.
He pocketed the money and the papers, and said mockingly, “You don’t have to worry, honey, I like ’em younger and sexier than you.” Whistling “Dixie” again, he strode out the door and into the waiting Yukon wagon.

Two guards rode shotgun with him as far as the station, just so he wouldn’t hijack the driver and steal the Yukon, he guessed. As though he would be that dumb. They had always underestimated him here, but now the world was about to find out what a clever man he really was. Especially those nearest and dearest to him.

He’d had a long time to figure out what he would do. There had been many long nights when he’d planned
and plotted and dreamed of how it would feel. He could almost taste it, like the slick sharp flavor of good bourbon on his tongue. Revenge was going to be so sweet, so very very sweet.

E
LLIE
P
ARRISH
D
UVEEN BACKED THE TAXICAB-YELLOW
Wrangler out of the garage of the tiny Santa Monica house she called home, and headed down the hill toward Main Street. Like the Jeep, her house was old and decrepit. Since the last big earthquake, none of the walls quite met at the corners and the bedroom floor trembled when she walked across it, but it did have a view of the ocean, and getting up in the morning was so much easier with the sun glittering on the waves just two blocks away. Besides, it was cheap. Something that mattered very much to her.

Main Street was at a standstill and she fretted behind the wheel, checking her serviceable steel watch anxiously. As usual, she was running late. Keeping an eye on the traffic, and without the benefit of a mirror, she dusted powder onto her freckled nose, swept black mascara onto her copper lashes, and added a slick of deep mocha lipstick. Years of being late had made her an expert at the quick traffic-light fix-up. A spritz of Eau d’Issey, a quick flick through her red hair with a brush, and she was ready
to face the day. Taking a sip of coffee from the paper Starbucks cup, she put the car into gear as the traffic moved off again. Life, she decided, was just one big rush, and no matter how hard she tried, she was always just a couple of beats behind.

Ellie was twenty-nine years old, with her mother’s misty blue-gray eyes and curly red hair worn long and flowing down to her shoulder blades, except when she was at the cafe she owned in Santa Monica, and then she skewered it beneath a black baseball cap with
Elite’s Place
inscribed on it in green silk.

She was tall and slender, though not model-thin, with long legs and embarrassingly large feet that her grandmother always said, teasingly, she needed in order to keep herself anchored safely to the ground. Her nose was straight and freckled, she had a big smile that began in her eyes and ended at her generous mouth, and a faint scar ran across her forehead, all the way into her scalp.

She was smart and sassy, alone in the world but for her grandmother, Miss Lottie, and she was determined to be a success. After college, and then culinary school in New York and a stint in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, she had come home and learned the restaurant business the hard way, from designing her tiny storefront premises; to battling downtown bureaucrats for the necessary permits; to dealing with building contractors who didn’t keep their promises and left her weeks behind schedule and overbudget. It had been tough but she didn’t regret a minute of it.

The cafe had been open for just over a year and she worked hard six days a week, which left very little time for a private life. She did the ordering, kept the accounts and, along with her best friend, Maya, served the food, opened the wine and cleared the tables. She also cooked up a storm whenever the temperamental chef quit, which
he did every few weeks, as well as baked her own bread and her famous
tarte tatin
that was the specialty of the house. Plus, she had been known to clean the place at the end of a long night, when the crew failed to show. She was practically a one-man band, and she loved it.

She would tell new customers maybe they cooked fancier at Wolfgang Puck’s glamorous Chinois a few doors away, but Ellie’s was cozier and cheaper. “I’m your local bistro,” she’d say. “You can drop in here anytime, no need to dress up. Just a glass of wine and some good food …”

Ellie’s Place was ticking over, not making a fortune yet but enough to keep a roof over her head and to stay open. She was, she would remind herself determinedly at the end of yet another long, hard day, doing all right.

Snagging the only free parking spot, she jumped from the Wrangler, shoved a quarter into the meter and sprinted, long red hair flying, half a block to the cafe. She stopped for a minute to look at it. It was cheerful, painted forest green with lace cafe curtains on a brass pole, and
Elite’s Place
in gold script on the window. The old-fashioned bell tinkled musically as she opened the door.

Inside, it looked like an old Parisian bistro, with smudgy mirrors on the walls, a sprinkling of fresh sawdust on the floor, an authentic zinc counter, inexpensive cane chairs, crisp white tablecloths and fresh daisies crammed into yellow pottery jugs.

It was a Monday, her day off, but there were still things to be done. She checked the tiny kitchen. The cleaning crew had done their stuff; the floors gleamed, the big steel refrigerators and stoves shone, everything was in its place. She glanced, half longingly, at the marble workstation where she did the baking. She kind of missed it, on her days off, getting her hands into the
pastry, working with food instead of managing a business, but she’d learned early on that she couldn’t be two people at once. And despite her talent and her training, for the moment, that had meant hiring a chef.

Opening the refrigerator, she removed the stacked boxes containing the leftover food from the previous night, plus the rosemary olive bread she’d baked herself. Laden, she staggered back to the car, tripped over her feet and lost her backless brown shoe. “Oh shoot,” she muttered. Ellie never cursed, because her grandmother had taught her a lady never did. Balancing precariously on one leg, the boxes shifting and sliding, she felt around for the shoe with her bare foot.

“You look like a stork without wings.” Maya Morris pulled her red Pathfinder into the curb and leaned out the window, laughing.

Maya was Ellie’s best friend, and her co-helper at the cafe. She was blond and gorgeous and she was never up this early in the morning. “You might help instead of laughing.” She shot Maya a glare, clutching the boxes to her chest, her bare toe pointed.

“Or maybe a ballet dancer.” Maya climbed from the car. She was on her way to yoga class and had on a black leotard and sneakers, and not much else, and she was stopping traffic. She slid the shoe onto Ellie’s foot. ‘And I’m the fairy prince who turns into a pumpkin at midnight.”

“Cinderella’s
coach
turned into a pumpkin and she married her prince.”

Maya put her hands on her hips, looking at Ellie, still clutching the sliding boxes. “Fat chance you have of marrying a prince, or anyone else. You’re a woman married to your work. Anyhow, where are you going?”

“To see Miss Lottie.”

Maya nodded; now she knew why, instead of her
usual jeans, Ellie was wearing the ice-blue flowered skirt and a deeper blue skinny-knit top. And her mother’s pearls—the ones taken from her throat after the automobile accident that had killed her. She dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Give her my love.” She got back in the car, wishing Ellie would get herself a date. It was all work and no play for her.