Observation was easy. So was record-keeping, particularly since last summer when she’d started keeping a journal to chronicle the bizarre events and nightmares she’d survived. Made up of random thoughts, stream of consciousness, memories, full stories, whatever had come to fill or disturb her mind she’d written, and added even more after Kitt had died. There were occasions, like today, where her entries were more like a diary documenting an event. Accounts of this sort were the boring paperwork Kitt had always loathed, and Mae kept things brief; she would note the concern over the authenticity of a Jefferson Lafite brought by Mr David Case and mention that party guests danced, drank and ate the wine and food provided by their host, Taittinger.
She made a circuit around the room, scanning it, pausing near Mr Nash, his rumpled trousers too tight in the crotch, bunched at the top of dirty brown hiking boots, dinner jacket too short in the sleeve. Squirrel-like, he dug almonds from a bowl on the table, crunching one nut at a time, listening to a chubby African man. “The first South African wine was made in 1659 from French muscatel grapes. Not man—”
“Can I get a photo, guys? The hipster photographer hefted his camera.
Mae shimmied by Mr Nash and the African man smiling for the camera. She squeezed behind the photographer and tried to move out of the way for Hector Rodriguez. She went right. So did he. Then she went left. So did he. Mae turned side on. Hector stepped on her toe.
“Sorry, Ms Valentine.” He tucked flowing, silver-and-black hair behind an ear.
“No harm done, Mr Hector.” Mae said, eyes level with a chin cleft like Bryce had. “Leaving already?”
Hector made a face. “To be honest, some of the people here are an acquired taste, and two or three of them I’ve never found palatable, like that Nash guy. Don’t know how Jools—or anyone—puts up with him. ’Course, my wife finds Milton Foley’s laugh irritating and his fundamentalist biblical literalism and ultra-right-wing take on Christianity offensive.” He glanced back at the bald, bearded man chatting up Miss Bleuville. “He once told her all Catholics were going to hell for idolatry, but we’re all damned for something, and he’s really a generous man.” He laughed. “Well, Jools said he put out the invitation, but do you think anyone of these people here will come to my lecture at the Fuller Lodge?”
“His guests seemed interested.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Nice of Jools to invite an old man like me to these parties. He must like me or something.”
“How long have you been friends?”
“Since he was twelve and worked for my landscaping company.” He chuckled. “You have a Happy New Year, Ms Valentine.”
“You too, Mr Hector.”
The music stopped. Taittinger clinked a spoon against his wine glass. It was speech time. Heads turned in his direction. “Thanks for coming tonight to ring in the New Year. Some of you have already mentioned you thought the Richebourg would be a little more opulent and have a little more finesse instead of tasting like a two-day-old bacon cheeseburger. You can thank Milton Foley for donating the Richebourg to taste. I appreciate you telling me about your experience of the wine but direct your displeasure at Milt because it’s not good to keep things bottled up.”
Laughter and a few groans came from the guests.
Taittinger continued, “You’ve all already been very generous in your donations. It’s not even nine o’clock and we’ve hit one-hundred and fifteen-thousand. That’s a nice start. I’ll match that, but I know we can do better. I know we can hit a half a million by midnight. And I’ll match that too... Just like I bet Foley will, won’t you, Milt?”
Foley haw-haw-hawed and tapped a finger against his birthmarked temple, hairless skull reflecting twinkling Christmas lights. “I see you’ve let Jesus save you, Jools!”
“Now, now, Milt, atheism is a non-prophet organisation.” Taittinger dropped his head for a moment. “We are privileged, every one of us here. In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke suggested society as a partnership between the living, the dead, and those who are yet to be born. We need to see society as a chain of human continuity. We need to demonstrate a tradition of philanthropy that comes with the privilege we enjoy and not see giving as a tax incentive or means to protect our wealth.”
“Hear, hear!” the O’Keeffe collector shouted.
“Thanks, Felix, you know I named my dog after you.” Taittinger laughed. “So, I’m asking you all to give big, give small, but give, and give with your heart, give with the idea that you are continuing to add links in the chain of human continuity, of human history. The displacement of the Syrian people is the displacement of human history...” Taittinger went on, championing the need for altruism, philanthropy, responsibility and social justice in a world full of war, and his guests went on listening, drinking, and nodding, agreeing, clapping. “Now, drink, dance, roll on midnight, and love the wine you’re with!”
The music kicked in again, Big Band Sinatra this time. Mae wound her way to the other side of the room, sifting by the older man in white dinner jacket, the photographer, Miss Bleuville and Foley, the man’s shiny head dipping as he rubbed the purplish-red patch at his temple, Ruby flashing a him a smile. Over the next twenty minutes, Mae prompted a waiter to circulate food to the guests near the windows, gave directions to the powder room, led two men to the front pergola where they could smoke, and detached a necklace snagged in a woman’s lace dress. Then a finger poked into her back.
The kitchen lackey, a young Asian man with a topknot, began spewing words. “Your dog got into the kitchen, knocked stuff from the table, took a big hunka Italian cheese, and tore off outside. I was taking flat champagne and stuff out to the garbage on the patio. Holy shit, that dog is fast—even with a big hunka cheese in his mouth, he just shot out the door. I tried to sto—”
Mae turned heel and made her way to the kitchen. The caterer and another staff member were cleaning up dozens of gooey smashed eggs and an upended serving tray of arancini, the squashed balls of rice like dead maggots across the tiles.
She picked her way over the mess. The swinging door into the laundry had been folded back into the kitchen, the sliding door to the patio gaping the way the lackey had left it. The entrance to her quarters gaped wide too. A tumbler and nearly empty bottle of Scotch sat on the kitchen workbench, right next to a soup bowl.
“Damn it, Grant,” she muttered, grabbing the dog’s collar and lead, and turned to the sliding door to the patio. She jerked her coat from a hook inside the laundry, toed off black satin shoes, and yanked on fleece-lined snow boots. Mae found a small torch and went out on the patio, leaving the sliding door half open, in case the dog came back on his own.
Bryce’s instructions had been to keep the dog close, but keep the dog close didn’t mean get close to the dog.
The lackey had left an open bottle of champagne on the table, light from the house and overhead patio fixture reached to the edge of the terracotta patio tiles. The outdoor speakers blared a Perry Como song about catching a falling star. Torch switched on, she stepped from the covered patio into the lightly falling snow and skidded a few steps across a patch of ice. Equilibrium regained, she swept the torch across the ground and walked on, looking for icy patches to avoid and signs of Felix. Paw prints appeared in the blanket of bluish white. Clouds moved overhead, flurries drifted, the bright, peekaboo moon illuminated Felix’s trail alongside tracks made earlier by deer.
She shoved a hand into one pocket and felt the dog’s ragged ball there. Snow and ice crunched softly beneath her feet. Mae crossed the back garden and headed toward the barn where the dog loved to run in mad circles. The moon poked through the clouds again, making patchy shadows, turning twisted piñon trees into squat monsters that creaked in cold gusts of wind. Felix’s trail led south, into the trees and brush.
A rush of dim movement, near ponderosa pines close to Evelyn Taittinger’s studio, caught her eye. Mae switched off the torch and let her eyes adjust to the moon’s light, watching for a moment. A shape shift
ed near the trees. “Holy Jaysus, don’t be a coyote cornerin’ Felix,” she muttered and hurried forward, remembering things she’d once read about chasing off coyotes: wave and shout, maintain eye contact, throw things.
Throw things. She halted. Her hand closed around the tennis ball in her pocket.
Kitt, barefoot and wearing grey pyjama bottoms, crossed his arms. “I don’t think coyotes play fetch.”
Despite her prevailing idiocy and auditory illusions of a dead man, she made her way to the pine trees beside the old stable turned art studio. Moonlight appeared and vanished. The clouds shifted. Snow wafted down. The wind gusted and fell, music from the house fading in and out, and over it all the sound of snuffling became distinct. As she got closer, eyes glinted in the kaleidoscopic moonlight. A single coyote nosed something at the front of the studio.
That was it. There was nothing she could do. The dog had become coyote food. She’d lost Caspar, lost Kitt, and now she’d lost Felix. Snow began to fall heavily. Her throat tightened. What was the bloody sodding point of loving anything—man or beast—if it was simply going to die in some horrible way? She made a strangled little sound of self-pity and threw the ball. The coyote took off and grief exploded. She wept sloppily, noisily, sobbing helplessly until she’d become a whimpering, snotty mess.
“Hush now, Mae,” Kitt murmured. “It’s just a dog.”
Out of nowhere, Felix appeared, ball in his mouth. He spun, rushed off into the dark, without a sound, and rocketed back, leaping at her, landing with his front paws splayed, bowing down, ready to play. The ball fell from his mouth and rolled to her feet.
Mae snatched the fuzzy toy and Felix sat. Gasping, swallowing, and sniffling, she grabbed him around the middle and slipped the collar down his long neck, hugging him hard. Half-weeping, half-laughing, heart in her throat, eyes hot with tears, the dog licked her and she froze, staring at a bulky shape at the front of the studio, snuffling.
Nose running, she moved toward the lumpy contour, dog on his lead. The torch shone over paw prints and shoe prints in pristine white that gave way to speckles of crimson, clumps of pink and red, and a dark ruby pond spread beneath a man’s head. The wind kicked up a gust of snow, whipping hair into her face. The slap of biting cold didn’t take her breath away, but Mr Grant did.
He lay on his side, a layer of snow over his hip and thigh.
“Jaysus Mother Mary!” She rushed to the crumpled form half-hidden by shadow and crouched. “Mr Grant... Russell,” she said, giving him a shake before she tugged his coat and rolled him sideways.
Grant flopped over. The torch lit what remained of a face; one eye open, the socket of the other awash in dark blood, a flap of skin blown upwards, a hole ripped above his beaky nose. Mouth gaping, part of his top lip had warped, as had his chin. His ponytail had unfurled, his dark hair fanned out, flecked by dandruffy flakes of snow, bits of teeth, and globs of pinkish-grey brain matter.
A rolling whine filled her ears. Heat streaked through her, neck sweaty. She’d seen blood mixed with brain last July, when Kitt had crumpled on dark stone, his face battered, his nose bloodied, hands cuffed behind his back, the dead Sicilian slumped atop him. She’d stood over them both, vacuum cleaner in her hands whining, whining, whining in her ears. Fragments of the Sicilian’s brain, blobby and grey, scattered amid bright red and pink, and the sickly scent of rose perfumed hand-soap drifted up from the floor and the dead man. The fragrance filled her nose, and she stared at torch-lit brain matter and lifeless men and bloodied snow until a dog came into view.
Felix sniffed and pawed at the butler who had gone to bed with a miserable cold and now lay dead in the snow.
“Breathe.” Kitt knelt beside her. She felt his hand on her back.
“Think,” she muttered. “Panic later, think now. Think and breathe.” Everything smelled of iron and snow, and she breathed, taking in short, sharp, rapid breaths she couldn’t get under control. Mae clamped a hand over her mouth and nose. She counted to five, dropped her palm, took the longest, slowest breath she could, and exhaled even slower.
“Get up,” Kitt said calmly, hand moving to her elbow. “Get up, get out of here.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
“Mrs Valentine. Run.”
Mae gathered Felix and sprinted to the house, Taittinger’s music growing louder and louder. At the edge of the patio, she set the dog on his feet. He darted through the open sliding door, into the laundry, into the apartment. Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Taxi battled the noise of blood rushing in her ears as her feet hit the patio slate. God only knew what easy listening hell would play next and her fingers had begun to spike with pins and needles. Dizzy, deaf but not deaf, breathing but not breathing, she leaned against the side of the table and patted coat pockets for her mobile. The feckin’ thing was inside the apartment, charging.
With a mumbled curse, she took a deep breath, gripped the table’s edge and shuddered again with heat, with cold, with dread, with lingering horror.
“You’re going to pass out if you don’t slow down,” Kitt said, a towel around his neck. “Breathe, Mae.”
She took another deep breath and pulled her coat around her. The whining rush in her ears began to subside. She looked at the open bottle of champagne someone had left on the table. Dry-mouthed, hands shaking, she grabbed the bottle, and closed her lips over the mouth and drank deeply. The champagne was flat.
“Something wrong?” A voice that wasn’t a phantom of Kitt said above the music.
Mae choked on the liquid, coughing and sputtering. Ice-cold flat Brut poured over her neck and chest. She turned and the flame from a lighter illuminated David Case’s face as he lit a cigar and stepped away from the wall, where he’d been half-hidden by shadows and empty champagne boxes. “Sorry,” he said, thumping her on the back, cigar between his teeth. “Didn’t mean to give you a start.”
“Mr Case,” she said hoarsely, moving away from his heavy-handed assistance, bashing into something hard with her toe. The hard wedge of Parmigiano Reggiano the dog had stolen from the kitchen spun at the tip of her right boot. Mae tossed the bottle of champagne out into the darkness beyond the patio’s dim light and shook off the champagne’s wetness. She picked up the cheese and straightened. “I need to use your phone, Mr Case.”
Case puff-puffed his cigar. It was an expensive one. The smoke gave off an earthy, woody smell. “I know I can smoke at the front of the house, where you showed me earlier, but I wanted a little quiet, except there isn’t any quiet. There’s no escape from Taittinger’s shithouse taste in music. You right, possum? You look like you saw a ghost.”
“You’re not far off the mark. Mr Grant... I found...” she swallowed, tongue drier than before she’d drunk the champagne.
“Breathe, Mae,” Kitt said.
“I need to use your phone, Mr Case. Something’s happened to Grant.”
“I thought the dog was Felix.” Case’s brow furrowed, cigar between his teeth again. “Who’s Grant?” Case moved closer, tapping ash from the cigar.
Mae leaned her bottom against the table, took a deep, steadying breath and blew it out slowly. The rushing noise in her ears surged, one, two heartbeats, and then receded. “Mr Basil’s man.”
“Oh, yeah, the butler.” Case drew in smoke. “Pretty sick, isn’t he?”
“He’s more than sick, he’s dead. I think he killed himself.”
Smoke rushed from his mouth. “Did you just say he’s dead?”
“Yes, I found him out there.” She pointed into the darkness. “May I use your phone? I need to ring the police.”
“I left it in my room. Maybe you better take me to him. I have medical training. He might still be alive.”
“Trust me, he’s dead. I’ll go inside. I just...need a minute.”
“Okay, yeah. Okay. Shit. Take a minute. Catch your breath.” Case leaned on the table, half-sitting beside her. “We’ll both take a minute.” He smelled of cigar and red wine when he sighed. “Listen, I won’t say anythi
ng to Jools, but how much have you had to drink, Valentine?” He set his cigar on the edge of the table.
“Oh, balls.” Mae mumbled and slid off the edge of the table. He was drunk and she’d done enough breathing and calming and regaining her composure.
A faint buzz came from a mobile on vibrate. Case patted his chest and pockets. “Huh. I guess I do have my phone.” He pulled the mobile from his jacket, lifted it to his ear. “Well, you were right. Housekeeper found him.”
The bottom dropped out of Mae’s stomach, the world shrunk to a pinpoint, and exploded in slow motion.
Chapter 5
Mae shoved David Case hard, but his stumble from the table’s edge was as lethargic as a leaf floating on water. His phone drifted to the ground and bounced like a drowsy balloon. Her feet took an eternity to move across the tiles to the half-open sliding door. Case snagged the back of her coat and she spun in a dawdling circle. In a graceful ballet arc, she slid an arm out of a sleeve and left him with a handful of wool.
With a sluggish Tai Chi lunge, he caught the chain around her neck and twisted it along with the front of her damp dress, drawing her forward, his nose to her chin. “Ssssssstop! Waaaaaait!”
Mae swung the fat wedge of Parmigiano, slamming it into Case’s head. Time snapped back to speed. Her brain and Kitt shouted, “Run!”
Her coat slipped off, her glasses flew from the chain, and she shot for the door, for the safety of the crowd inside, her fingers barely brushing the edge of the metal doorframe. Case clamped her wrist and yanked, twisted, wrenching her arm behind her back, dragging it up high. She lost the cheese and hit the table face down, the force drove the wind from her, she watched the cigar roll off the edge.
Forever in Your Service Page 7