The Arrangement (15 page)

What were the odds?

Something drew her gaze higher, to the deck on the third floor, above the party. That level was dark, too, but for a second, it had looked as if someone was up there. Either Marnie’s senses were still jumbled or she’d seen someone—a woman peering over the side, down at her and Andrew.

But no one was there now, and Marnie didn’t even know why she thought it was a woman. It was too dark to see anything but a vague silhouette.

“Are you all right?” Andrew asked.

She gave him a quick nod. If she’d spoken, he would have heard the tremor in her voice. She had to calm down. She was overreacting to everything, seeing things that weren’t there.

“I’d like to go,” she said, drawing his coat around her.

He cupped her elbow and they started to walk, slowly, with Marnie wobbling in her heels. If tonight was her test, then as of right now, she felt like a big fat failure. She couldn’t even walk without help.

“Let go of me,” she said. “I can do this on my own.”

He released her and stopped in apparent confusion. “What’s the problem?”

Marnie kept going. She didn’t feel like explaining herself. And she wasn’t going back to the party, either. She’d had enough excitement for tonight.

But she hadn’t taken two steps before Andrew shouted something. She turned to see him lunging at her, but there was no way to avoid him. His hands hit her chest with shocking force, and Marnie was literally lifted off the ground. She fell backward and tumbled into the railing.

She hit the iron bars and crumpled. The world seemed to explode. But the thunder she heard was not crashing waves. Marnie had no idea what it was as sharp, fiery objects bombarded her, cutting her skin and stinging her eyes. The pain was excruciating.

Something hit her temple and gashed it. The blood nearly blinded her. She could taste it as it filled her mouth, and her screams sounded strange and strangled. But that was all she could do—crouch and scream and cover her head with Andrew’s coat.

M
arnie heard him coming at her and braced herself against the railing. The voice shrieking at her to protect herself blocked out everything else.
Don’t let him near you! Keep him away!
All those years of being terrorized had taught her how to fight for her life.

“Stay back!” She struck out at him with the spike heel of her shoe.

Andrew dodged the slashing four-inch heel. “What the hell are you doing? I’m trying to help you.”

“You tried to push me over the railing!”

“No, I was pushing you out of the way.”

“Out of the way of
what?
”

“That.” He pointed to the shattered base of what must have been a huge clay planter. “It fell from the third floor balcony.”

She struggled to sit up and clear her head. She could see what was left of the pot now. There were broken pieces of clay all around her, some of them large. Planters that size didn’t fall all by themselves.

“I saw someone on the third floor,” she said. “I think it was a woman.”

He looked up, but there was no one there now. “Jesus,” he breathed.

He whirled back on Marnie, and she braced automatically; she couldn’t help herself. She was like a delayed stress victim in situations like this. Her survival instincts were swift and primitive, even though she’d begun to realize that he couldn’t have done it.

“It could have cracked your skull,” he said. “I pushed you out of the way. Why in hell would I want to hurt you, Marnie?
Why?
”

She sagged against the railing. He had a point. She was much more important to him alive than dead, which might make him the only person she actually could trust. But what a twisted reason to have to put your faith in someone. Her mind was still whirling. She’d just begun to feel safer with him, and now she was beginning to question everything again, especially this trip to Mirage Bay.

It had felt like a pragmatic move. She could have left him when she’d recovered enough, and started over again somewhere, but she hadn’t. She’d known that she could never go back to her life in Mirage Bay, not with Alison’s face and a murder charge if anyone discovered her real identity. But she’d needed to make sure her grandmother was all right. And maybe she’d wanted to believe Andrew’s story that he’d been framed—and his promise that he would find a way to prove them both innocent.

Staying with him had seemed like her best option when she’d thought everything through. People who looked like Alison Fairmont could not easily disappear. Marnie could have melted into the forest and lived on nuts and berries. She could have blended with street people or hidden out in a trailer park, but not Alison. Marnie didn’t know how to be Alison on the run. She would have been a dead giveaway.

He knelt and touched her forehead where some of the clay shards had hit her. “You’re covered in blood,” he said.

“I’m all right. You need to go look for whoever did it.”

“And leave you like this? No way.” Apparently the noise from the party had drowned out the sound of the crashing pot. No one had even looked over the railing to investigate.

He took his tuxedo coat and used it to blot her face. She let him do it because she couldn’t see what needed to be done—and she wasn’t sure she could have controlled herself. A strange inner tremor had invaded every muscle, every motor nerve.

“I’m taking you up to our room,” he said, “and once I’m convinced you’ll be safe there, I’m going to discover who did this.”

“It’s Alison, right? Someone’s trying to kill Alison?”

“I don’t know what they’re trying to do, but I’m going to find out. And meanwhile, let’s keep this to ourselves until I’ve had a chance to look around.”

Marnie was happy enough to keep quiet. An attempt on her life at her own belated wedding reception seemed like the ultimate degradation. The last thing she wanted was all that attention focused on her. And it was important now that she have time alone to sort through all of it—from Julia to Bret to Tony Bogart to this—something she should have been doing from the beginning instead of sleeping her days away and avoiding the reality of what her life would be like when she finally came out of the closet as Alison.

Alison,
she reminded herself. The attempt had been made on Alison, not Marnie. That was where she had to start.

At least she knew it wasn’t Andrew. He’d been right here with her. Although, if she wanted to let her mind run amok—and why wouldn’t it in a situation like this?—she could come up with a plausible explanation for Andrew having set the whole thing up.

It had been
his
idea to leave the party and come down here. What if he’d planned the attempt so that he could push her out of the way and once again be the hero? What was it now? Three times that he’d saved her?

She touched the copper ring again, wondering what it would take to make her feel safe now. “I’ll go back to the room,” she said, “but I want a gun.”

Marnie leaned toward the bathroom mirror and gently worked at the gash on her temple with a warm, soapy washcloth. She’d already cleaned the rest of her face, which was a bloody mess from this wound on her head, but it was the only real injury she had. It didn’t look deep enough to need stitches, but it would take a while to heal. Meanwhile she could cover it with her hair. She was lucky that Andrew’s coat had protected the rest of her body from the flying shards of clay.

Andrew watched her in the mirror, wincing as she dabbed away at the dried, caked blood.

“Go easy,” he said, “or you’ll have a scar. Want me to help?”

“Yes, get me a gun.”

His wince became a grimace. “No guns. People get hurt when guns are involved.”

“People get hurt when giant pots are dropped from balconies. You’re the one who said it could have cracked my skull.”

She left the rag in the basin and grabbed a tissue from the box on the vanity. “Someone tried to kill me.”

“No, they didn’t.”

She barely got the tissue to the oozing wound. “What?”

“Someone’s trying to scare you, not kill you.” He folded his arms and gave her a look that was patient and forbearing. “Dropping planters on people’s heads isn’t an efficient way to dispatch an enemy. In fact, it’s sloppy, and no self-respecting murderer would bother.”

“And
you’re
the expert on self-respecting murderers?” Marnie’s heart had begun to pound. Why was he acting like this was no big deal? “Why would someone want to scare me?”

“To see if you’ll turn tail and run. You don’t have a lot of fans around here, even among the immediate members of your family.”

“It wasn’t Bret, if that’s what you’re suggesting. I saw a woman.”

“Can you describe her?”

“No, but I’m certain it was a woman.” Unfortunately, Marnie couldn’t tell him why she was sure. She didn’t know herself. It was one of those lightning bolt realizations that left you with knots in your stomach because you couldn’t back it up with details.

She looked at the tissue, which was soaked with blood. “Why haven’t you gone up there to look for her?”

He pulled another tissue out of the box and handed it to her. “Because whoever did it is already gone. They were gone before we got back to this room.”

If he was trying to reassure her, he was failing miserably. She kept thinking he was downplaying what had happened because he was somehow involved, but that possibility made her sick to her stomach. And she didn’t understand how it would benefit him to have her killed, or even to scare her. It made no sense at all.

She had to put that kind of craziness away and start thinking more rationally. And most of all, she had to calm down instead of giving in to her worst fears. She was probably overreacting because she’d given up too much control to him. Dependence was a terrifying thing when you grew up believing people wanted to hurt you, and she had let herself become very dependent on Andrew Villard.

“You’re probably right,” she said, “but it’s still a crime scene, and someone should check it out. If you’re not going to, I will. She may have left clues that could identify her.”

“I’ll go, but I want to be sure you’ll be okay here. Can you handle that cut by yourself?”

“Of course. All it needs is a bandage.”

“Good. I’ll tell Julia you’re not feeling well, and ask her to make our apologies to the guests. I’d ask Rebecca to bring you up some tea, but there’d be too much explaining involved.”

“I’m fine,” Marnie insisted.

“Okay, I’ll lock the room when I leave, and take the key with me so I don’t have to disturb you when I get back. Why don’t you take one of those pills that help you sleep?”

She nodded, though she had no intention of taking a pill. “I could do that,” she lied.

“I know you’re frightened, and I’m not trying to downplay what happened. But I don’t want you to obsess about this. I don’t think we’re dealing with a killer. I really don’t.”

She nodded again, wishing he would leave. “Right, me either.” She fumbled through the medicine cabinet, looking for the bandages.

He touched her shoulder, hesitated, then gave it a quick squeeze. “Don’t make me the bad guy,” he said with a sigh. “I’m trying to help.”

He seemed to know he wasn’t getting through to her—and perhaps he even understood the impossibility of doing so. When she heard the lock turn over and click, she walked to the bathroom door to assure herself that he’d really gone. And then she let out the tension with a few choice words.

“Get the frigging hell out of this place, Marnie, while you still frigging can.”

She drew back her hair and studied the earrings he’d given her, their beauty so exquisite it gave her a premonitory chill. She did not want to become another statistic, another victim of the curse that seemed to stalk the women in Andrew Villard’s life. Alison had disappeared from his boat, his fiancée had drowned in his pool, and when he was a kid, his own mother, an opera singer, had been injured by stage rigging during a rehearsal. She’d gone into a coma and died.

That was too many accidents to be coincidental, and yet that would probably be what he maintained. She’d only asked him about it once, and he’d warned her not to bring it up again. He’d clearly thought she was accusing him of something. But she’d read the clippings about Regine in the newspapers she’d found in his office—and Julia had told her the rest.

You did know that every woman who’s loved him has had a terrible accident, didn’t you?

Andrew moved quietly through the dark hallways of the third floor. He didn’t expect to find anyone, but there was always a chance someone from the party on the floor below might wander up. He doubted that anyone had heard anything. The band had been playing when the clay pot hit, but things were pretty quiet now. They were probably taking a break, and people at these things tended to wander, looking for bathrooms—and places to have sex.

There was also the chance that someone might have noticed that he and Marnie were missing, like Julia. There were plenty of reasons to be cautious. He hadn’t been on the third floor until tonight, and didn’t know his way around. He and Alison had not been welcome at Sea Clouds when they’d come to Mirage Bay in February. They’d taken a vacation rental instead, and spent time on the boat. But Alison had been preoccupied with trying to make contact with her mother, who’d seemed reluctant even to take her calls.

He’d gotten to know his way around the house when he and Alison were dating, and she’d invited him on visits, but the third floor had been unfinished then. Now it appeared to be as beautifully decorated as the rest of the house, but largely unused. He’d already discovered two guest rooms and a workout room as he moved quietly through the dark hallways, but the next room he found was the one he decided to search.

The old-fashioned billiards room was paneled with burnished mahogany walls and high ceilings. Tiffany lamps and wooden ceiling fans dominated the decor, but more importantly, this room opened onto the balcony where Marnie had said she’d seen someone at the railing.

Once outside, Andrew moved slowly toward the railing, cutting arcs across the stone deck with his penlight. He couldn’t search the way he wanted to without drawing attention to himself, but at least there was no security to worry about. He’d convinced Julia it wasn’t necessary to hire guards for tonight, that the band would have their own bodyguards.

But right now, the group was on a break, and the party was showing signs of slowing down.

Andrew’s penlight picked up something bright. He knelt for a closer look. The faux amethyst looked like a gem that might have fallen off a piece of costume jewelry or summer clothing, possibly even a sandal. It was definitely something a woman would wear.

He picked it up and slipped it in his pocket, glad he’d found it before someone else did. He wasn’t telling anyone, even Marnie, about this bit of evidence, if that’s what it was. And once he’d finished here, he would go down to the ground floor terrace and clean up the mess from the broken pot.

He didn’t want to give Julia any reason to call the police or feel she needed security for the house and grounds. He had plans of his own, and security guards would very much get in his way.