SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (40 page)

Now he was released and free to clean the house. He must wash her clothes. He had a basket of ironing to finish. Tonight he must finish scanning Death on the Moor so that he could find out if it was the rectory maid who killed the victim.

On the way down the hall he again tripped on a fold in the carpet. He dropped to his knees and beat it into submission, the sound a muffled tattoo in his ears. Finally it spread out flatly along the wood floor. He'd find carpet tacks and the hammer. He'd pound the damn thing down before he broke his fool neck.

With anger boiling inside, he thought that it was possible he was more his father's son than his mother ever suspected. In fact, he had to admit that it was a certainty.

It explained his own impatience, his volatile nature (which he was careful to keep under wraps when around his mother), and maybe it even explained his darkest of secrets. But he wasn't sure of that.

Not that it mattered.

A man was what he was, born or bred, and nothing in all of Earth could change it. Although life was a mystery written by the cleverest of authors, Son knew most people were preordained to function just one specific way and no other.

Besides, he thought, fumbling through the hall closet for his tool box, who would want to change anything?

“I love you, Son,” he whispered at the hammer he held close to his lips. He grinned at the sound of her high, old-lady voice coming from his mouth.

He could have become a ventriloquist. No doubt about it.

Just as his father could have become a murderer had his wife stayed around long enough to provide a victim. That's what she was really telling him now that she had finally spoken of temper, and rages, and her fear to stay.

“Chip off the old block,” he murmured, hauling a box of shiny black tacks from the back of the closet. “I'm my daddy's only boy.”

“Son, I'm going to go to the bathroom. You don't have to come, I can make it myself,” his mother called at his back.

He started, dropping the tacks all over the floor, and backed quickly from the closet to find her clutching her robe together with one hand and steadying herself against the wall with the other. Her head shook and her hands trembled, and she was white as first-driven snow.

The shout welling in his throat died there; the fire that flared was quenched as he swallowed against it. “Mother, you should have called me. Let me help you, please.”

He took her arm and let her lean on him as they made their slow, uneven way to the bathroom door. “I could have done it,” she protested.

“That's what I'm here for.” He stood guard outside the closed door while she made her water and emptied her bowels.

He didn't notice that he was tapping his thigh with the hammer head, and that later in the day he'd discover a bruise there that would require an ice pack to bring down the swelling.

Nine

“I wonder where the guy was killed?” Shadow strolled up one side of the circling staircase from the gigantic open living room to the third floor, trailing her fingertips along the wall. Her footsteps on the marble staircase rang out across the open spaces.

Charlene sat cross-legged on the carpet in the living room, leaning back against the sofa. Her eyes were unfocused, staring ahead of her. Her hands lay quietly in her lap. It was evident she was not going to answer the question. She might not have heard it.

Shadow paused at the top of the curving staircase and looked down to where Charlene sat, trance-like. She drew in a breath, wondering what she was going to do. She'd try to get through, keep talking. She hadn't any other plan devised.

“They said he was a monster. He threw the biggest parties along this coast. He had this place built to specification, all these windows barred.” She swept her arm before her toward the front of the house where the huge double doors opened onto a portico. Two-story windows blanketed the walls on both sides of the entrance, but ugly, black wrought-iron bars set into the brick mortar marred the grace of the scene.

“Did you notice even the middle section of the mansion is barred? Charlene?”

No answer. Not a flicker of an eyelash.

“Can you imagine it? The guy's into young boys. He throws his wild parties with booze and drugs, invites all the kids in here, then he locks the doors and pockets the keys. They're locked in a prison. That's what it looks like when you come down the drive to it, you know—a prison. Or maybe a boys' detention center. Something you think you'd see stashed away on some forbidden island for the most violent inmates.”

She wished she hadn't said “inmates.” Damn.

She moved along the railing overlooking the entrance way, feeling the smooth mahogany beneath the palm of her right hand. It seemed to have a warmth of its own, a fire inside. Most of the mansion was cold, always cold. Sunlight came in around two in the afternoon and began to warm the marble, heating the spacious rooms, but until then it was a freezer even on the warmest days. Yet the wood that her hand skimmed over felt good to her. It might have come from a sunny forest on a mountain slope; the polished grain still contained the summers of a hundred years.

“Okay,” Shadow continued, glancing often to see if she was making any headway reaching Charlene. “This nutcase built the mansion, threw his parties, locked the boys inside and had his way with them. They say he must have locked in the wrong kid that night. He probably paid some of the boys to service him and one another, but that night, hell, he must have offered money to his murderer, and it just didn't set right. Do you think that's how it happened?”

Charlene stared. Stared. Had not moved a muscle.

“Well, the story goes that the cops were called, they were always being called by neighbors because of the noisy wild parties. The cops knew this place like the back of their hands, they'd been out here so much. So they come out again, a couple of squad cars. They park in the circular drive and walk up the steps to those doors. No hurry, they've been here a dozen times, right?”

She pointed to the front where the police would come on a routine complaint.

“A dozen boys are piled up at the door, banging on it. They can't get out, you see, because the owner had the keys in his pocket, and they didn't know that. And the owner was dead by then. They said it was a real blood bath in here. Blood on the walls, on the stairs. The kid who did him in used a kitchen knife. The cops say, "Open the door! What's going on here?" The boys are screaming and crashing open the windows with chairs and beer bottles. But they couldn't squeeze out of the bars. Some of them are screaming and some are crying and pleading to get out. The cops look at one another. They think there's a fire inside or something and the kids can't get out. They have to shoot the lock off the door, telling the kids to step back, get outta the way. And what do they find when they get inside?”

Shadow paused coming down the opposite curving staircase. “Charlene? You heard this story? Isn't it fantastic, like a movie story or something?”

Charlene grunted softly. Shadow jerked a little at the sound. Well, it was better than nothing. She knew about nothing. It was a dead place. And lonely. She didn't want Charlene to wander in that place if there was any way she could prevent it. She nodded, moved slowly, step by step down the stairs.

“It's like a movie, all right. The cops get in here and boys are all over them, scrambling to get outside. Half of them aren't even fully dressed. They're in their underwear and bathing suits. A few are starkers. Some of them have already vomited, others are rushing outdoors to throw up on the lawn and in that circular flower bed you drive around out there. Then the cops see the blood. It was up here somewhere, top of the stairs . . . somewhere here.” She halted and turned around to look up to the landing on the third floor where she had just come from. She shivered, wrapped both arms around herself.

“They got the kid who did it. Because of all the witnesses and how the stories matched, they let the kid off on self-defense. He was just fourteen, they said. A big, gangly, red-headed, freckled fourteen-year-old. He wasn't gay. He'd come along with a friend who told him there was a party. He was from Houston somewhere and he didn't know the reputation of the parties in the Shoreville Mansion. When the owner came after him, he panicked, they said. He begged to be released from the house. Everyone laughed at him and he just went berserk. Ran for the kitchen and got a knife. Found the owner at the top of the stairs, threatened to gut him if he wasn't let free. Who knows what happened then? Maybe they laughed at him again or the old guy moved on him. Tragic,” she said quietly, suddenly thinking about her children and the one tragedy that had changed her own life forever. “An accidental thing.”

Charlene turned her head. Shadow saw the movement from the corner of her watering eyes. She came down the rest of the stairs and went to her. She stooped near the sofa and laid a hand on her friend's shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Do we have to live here?” Charlene asked.

They were making progress now. It was the first time she had spoken in two hours, when Shadow first found her sitting alone on the floor, staring.

“Nothing here's going to hurt us. What happened, the guy deserved. He was using the kids and paying them off with drugs and alcohol. He was the scum of the earth. Look at those bars on the windows. He was a sadist to lock those kids up in here. He ruined half the boys in this town. But he's gone, Charlene. He isn't here anymore. You might say this place paid him back. You don't have to be afraid.”

“I've seen his ghost. At night. Floating through the rooms.”

Shadow sighed and patted Charlene's shoulder. “You were just dreaming.”

“I've heard boys laughing.”

Shadow brought her head close to Charlene's and touched foreheads. She whispered, “Come on, listen to me now. We're partners, aren't we? We're friends. I wouldn't let anything happen to you, would I?”

“No.”

“That's right. I wouldn't. You're safe now. Betty's not here to steal your things. You don't have to hear the women's life stories and remember for them. You don't have to lose your mind. You're free, Charlene. I want to keep you that way, but you have to talk to me. You can't let these moods take over where you don't say anything or move. It scares me.”

Charlene managed a smile and brought up her arms to hug Shadow. “You're the best person I ever knew.”

“Damn right!” Shadow stood and pulled on Charlene's hand to raise her to her feet. “Now, let's go find out what we have in the fridge. Are you cooking? You're cooking, right? Can we have omelets? We have any mushrooms to put in them? I could eat a basketful of mushroom omelets. And I need a strong pot of coffee. We have any of that chocolate-almond coffee we bought in Galveston—what's it called, mocha almondine?”

Charlene let herself be propelled up the stairs, cringing slightly when she passed the wall next to the landing at the top where the blood was supposed to have splattered, and followed Shadow toward the kitchen. “You'll get fat and then you can't dance,” she said.

“Oh, I can dance. After we eat, we'll go run around this place, get all sweaty and feel glorious. All right? You want to run with me after we have breakfast?”

“It's noon. It's not breakfast time.”

Shadow laughed, pushing Charlene toward the stove, taking the egg carton from the commercial-size refrigerator. “It's my breakfast time. I'm a night person now, remember. I work the night shift at the titty joint. All for you, Charlene. What I do for you and you're bitching it ain't breakfast and I can't have an omelet.”

“I didn't say that.”

“Okay then, whip this up and I'll find the mushrooms.”

While they busied themselves chopping and whipping and frying, Shadow kept up a stream of conversation until Charlene's frozen demeanor thawed and she became herself again. Soon it was Charlene who was talking nonstop, rattling on about when she was a girl and had to cook for her large family because her mother had died young. By the time the omelets were served at the shiny oak table pushed against one wall of the big kitchen, Shadow wolfing down the fattest, fluffiest mushroom omelet she had ever tasted, Charlene was a changed person. Happy, bubbling, overflowing with enthusiasm, jokes, and talk talk talk.

Shadow grinned while she ate and listened to her friend, but one part of her attention wondered which drawer had held the knives, and which knife, if it wasn't taken for evidence, killed the former owner. Crazy. She shouldn't even be thinking such dark thoughts for they led her to think about violence in general, and her loss in particular.

Trailing Scott to the den.

Pleading for him to put the gun away.

Watching him pull the trigger.

“You're not listening!” Charlene reached over and drew away her plate. “I listened to that whole sick-sick story about the killing in the mansion and you won't even listen to me now. That's not fair, is it? Is that fair?”

Shadow shook herself mentally, blinked, and smiled tentatively. “We both just tend to drift off, don't we? What a pair we make. Isn't it strange and wonderful?”

Charlene grinned uncertainly and started up where she'd left off about what slobs her brothers and sisters were and how much responsibility she had caring for them when she was growing up. It never occurred to her that drifting off might not be wonderful at all, that the two of them were wounded creatures fighting for survival, and that the odds were against them holding onto reality for any measurable length of time . . .

~*~

Charlene, a tall woman carrying twenty extra pounds around her forty-year-old waist and hips, jogged as easily around the house behind Shadow as any Olympic champion. She didn't even breathe hard or become flushed. Mainly, she thought, it was a trick of the mind, what the body went through. She knew how to turn off her mind from the event the body experienced so that she wasn't affected greatly by either exercise, heat, cold, even pain.

Especially pain. She had known such physical and mental pain, that she had long ago learned how to escape. Now, as she pumped her legs and swung her long arms in the baggy sweater, pacing herself ten feet behind Shadow as they circled the brooding old brick mansion, Charlene went over her earlier thoughts when she had been sitting on the rug, Shadow's voice coming through to her from the stairway as through veils of thick gauze. She was . . .