by Dan Flanigan
ROY CAME UPSTAIRS and found her lying there. His fat face folded into a frown as he studied the tears drying on her cheeks. He wanted to bend down and kiss her, but he was afraid to. He had fallen in love with her and had no idea what to do about it. He ought to go home, but there was nothing to do there. He decided to go down and look at the minks. He had never watched anything starve to death before. He kept wanting to let all of the minks out of their cages and back to the forest where they belonged. But he guessed that would be wrong, and they might do something bad to him if he did that.
WHEN JANE WOKE up, two men in white shirts and suits and ties were standing over her. They did not seem to mean her any harm. She thought, Now these guys look like detectives are supposed to look.
CHAPTER 9
LENNY AND TAG Parker had found the choicest spot in the county on which to build their dream house, at the end of a newly developed lake road, on a hill above the lake. There was not a neighbor within sight. A name, he guessed it was “Parker,” had been recently stripped from the mailbox. A “For Sale” sign stood next to the mailbox with a smaller “Sold” sign pasted on the front of it. The house was fifty yards off the road. Approaching the house, O’Keefe could barely see its outlines through an imposing line of trees that obscured his view.
He parked in the driveway. The house looked unoccupied and seemed to disapprove of him in some way. He approached the front door warily, for he had been shot at more than once by the occupants of houses as magnificent as this one. An architect must have been paid well for designing it. It was a Colorado-style house, a flashy collage of redwood, fieldstone, and tinted glass. To his right the house bordered on the forest. To his left a portion of the field had been cleared and sodded and made into a tennis court. The clearing extended farther to his left and down a steep hill for another fifty yards, ending at a boat dock that rocked gently in the water. The boat slips were empty. “Selling everything as fast as she can,” Jane had said. He wondered how much of this little palace had been paid for by the investors. Well, dummy, all of it, of course.
No one answered the door. He turned the doorknob and pushed, but it was locked. The door could be easily jimmied, but he thought better of that and walked back to the driveway where his van was parked in front of a three-car garage. Through the garage windows he could see a white Jaguar parked inside. He wandered around the side of the house along the edge of the tennis courts. The house was two stories in the back. There was a kidney-shaped swimming pool in the backyard.
He stood beside the pool on the edge of the patio, looking up at a huge deck that extended from the top story of the house. The house towered over him, grand looking but bleak in the late afternoon shadows. He thought of the beautiful, long-haired lady in the mink coat. Was she in there, watching him from one of the massive slabs of black-tinted window? Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair. Or was it just the house itself staring down at him, its occupants gone or otherwise engaged?
He walked across the patio, cupped his hands around his eyes, and peered through a sliding glass door into a country kitchen. The appliances were built-in and costly, the Parkers having spared no expense, but all the kitchen furniture was gone. A fireplace at one end of the kitchen contained unburned logs sitting on an iron grate.
It would be easy to break in through the sliding glass door, but someone might be in there waiting to do grievous harm to an intruder. Or, if he were reported to the cops, he would be guilty of breaking and entering, a felony if the cops wanted to stick him with it. He had not committed a crime since he had become a private detective, in or out of the line of duty. Just walk away, he told himself, but he kept seeing that face and that hair and those eyes.
The felony took only a few seconds to commit, and then he was inside the kitchen opening a cupboard, which was bare. The refrigerator also was empty, recently cleaned, and no longer plugged in. A broad archway led into a room that had probably been a dining room. There were indentations on the carpet where furniture had recently stood. The fireplace in the dining room occupied the middle of an outside wall between two picture windows that displayed the tennis courts and the lurking forest beyond. Stairs climbed from the dining room to the next floor.
There was a room toward the front part of the house to his left, probably a living room. He would have to make a blind left turn into the room. The house creaked occasionally. Metal things knocked a little. Electric things whirred a little. He considered going back to the van and getting one of his guns.
He darted his head around the wall of the dining room and quickly pulled it back again. No one could hit a target that was so small and moved so fast. But there was no one there anyway, just a couple pieces of furniture, an Eames chair, and an oriental panel, which made the room look even more forlorn than the empty rooms had looked. Little paper labels hung on both pieces of furniture that said, “Sold to Dean Doggett.” What a name to be stuck with, he thought. Dean’s nickname would surely be “Hot.” There was another fireplace in this room. Lenny and Tag Parker had a thing about fireplaces.
He bounded up the stairs as fast as he could, prepared to dive right back down them if he had to. Upstairs he saw an open door that led into a master bedroom at the back of the house. The bedroom gave way onto a deck, which was above the tree line and had a view of the lake and the wooded hills beyond. He was not surprised to find another fireplace in the bedroom, but he was surprised to find a bed with several pieces of luggage on it including a large backpack and a strapless purple sundress laid out for someone to come and put on. Above, you would be able to see her bare shoulders, below would be her long, lean legs. She would look especially good in this dress and the luggage too. She was leaving soon or had been planning to anyway.
The bathroom off the master bedroom was larger than his bedroom at home. It had “His” and “Her” showers and a Jacuzzi on a raised platform. The House That Mink Built, he thought. Condensation dripped down one of the frosted shower doors. Someone had very recently taken a shower.
Back in the bedroom was a set of double doors that would lead, no doubt, into a large closet. He put his ear to the crack where the doors came together and listened, trying to open his mind and body to detect any presence within. He felt nothing. He grabbed the door handles and swung the door open as fast as he could.
Pain exploded in his left arm, but there was no noise, so he had not been shot. Someone had stabbed him in the arm and pushed him violently back into the room at the same time, and that someone, wearing nothing but a man’s shirt that hung down to her thighs and armed with some small metal object, was coming after him, slashing at him with one hand and scratching at him with the other. When he fell backward, she leapt on top of him and tried to drive that small metal object through his left eye into his brain. He raised his arms in defense, and the small metal object gouged a small trough in his left arm. Exerting all his strength, he rolled her over and pinned her arms to the floor.
She kicked and squirmed furiously for a few moments, then abruptly stopped and lay still. He lay on top of her, between her spread-eagled legs, his forehead and nose buried in the carpet, his lips touching her neck. Later, he remembered how soft she was even as she struggled with him there on the floor. When he lifted his head to look at her face, her eyes danced and flickered like a flame in the wind.
“I’m not going to hurt you. Your father sent me.”
She tossed her eyes and head, indicating his hands still pinning down her arms. “Do you mind?” she said.
O’Keefe let go of her, grabbing the scissors as he did. They stood up. He could not help but stare at the creature trembling in fear before him, eyelids rapidly blinking, a patina of sweat on her forehead and temples, the ends of her hair matting into the sweat, her bare feet gripping into the carpet, poised to spring at him if she had to, toenails and fingernails painted the palest shade of pink, crease of muscle at the side of her calf, tiny blue splotch of varicose vein beneath the skin on the inside of her thigh.
> “Do you think Daddy would mind if I got dressed? Or did he tell you to watch?”
“Give me your car keys.”
Her eyes told him to go straight to hell, but she was not ready to defy him yet. When she reached down to extract the keys from her purse on the bed, the shirt hitched up a little, and he tried to look away. She dug around in her purse for the keys. When she found them, she handed them over, grabbed the sundress, and headed for the bathroom.
“Wait for me out on the deck,” she commanded, as if control of the situation had now suddenly shifted to her.
The deck was the only fully furnished part of the house, but there were labels on most of the items like those on the furniture downstairs. A powerful-looking telescope pointed at the sky.
An old-fashioned hot tub was situated such that its occupants would have a perfect view. A heavy, wooden lid leaned against the tub. He sat down in a white canvas director’s chair and appreciated the scenery.
She came out barefoot in the sundress, sat down in the chair next to him, crossed her ankles, and propped them on the chair across from her as if it were a footstool. The purple sundress hung flouncy and loose except where it gathered under her breasts. She had brushed back her hair, which hung far down her bare back. Golden hoops hung gypsy-like from her ears. Her face reminded him of a white coral shell he had found once on a shoreline in Martinique, each line and feature sharply defined, no confusion anywhere in its delicate structure. He had to take his eyes away from her, out toward the lake, to keep from staring.
“This must be nice,” he said.
“It is. It was. You can see every star in the sky out here.”
“Are you an astronomer?”
“Sort of. A stargazer anyway.” But she was quickly through with small talk. “What’s my father want besides his money?”
“He sends his love.”
“That’s love all right. A man who breaks into my house.”
“I’m a private investigator hired by some of the investors, including your father, to find out what’s going on down here. To find out what’s happened to their money.”
The skin below her aqua eyes crinkled into little lines of pain. Her throat rippled as she swallowed hard. She locked her hands together and pressed them down on her stomach as if to hold herself down in the chair.
“You’ll have to ask dear Lenny that question,” she said.
“It looks like some of that money may be right here. This little palace. The Jag in the garage. All of the furniture gone. Did you have a little yard sale?”
“What’s your name?”
“Peter O’Keefe. But . . .”
“‘But I can call you Peter, right?”
“Actually, it’s ‘Pete.’”
“Well, Mr. O’Keefe, if you think those investors have a claim on me, I’ll give you a hundred bucks right now, and you can take it and march right down to the courthouse and file a lawsuit. Otherwise, I suggest you vanish. Before I call the sheriff and have you arrested for burglary.”
“Tough.”
“I’m not tough at all, but nobody’s gonna push me around anymore.”
“Somehow I can’t see anybody pushing you around.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
She tossed her head like she was trying to shake off a bad memory. “All my life I’ve just been a wisp, waiting for the wind to blow me somewhere, going along with whoever happened to be pushing or pulling me at the time. First your client, my father. Then Lenny. And look where I end up. Well, it’s my life from here on. Whatever happens, it’ll at least be mine. And nobody—
not Lenny, not my father, not you, or your investors—is gonna take it away from me again.”
“Do you know where Lenny is?”
She shook her head “No.”
“Have you been out to the ranch?” she asked.
He shook his head “Yes.”
“Was Jane there?”
He nodded again.
“Ask her where he is. He’s been screwing her for two years now.”
“She says he’s madly in love with you.”
“Well, if he is, the feeling’s not mutual and hasn’t been for a long time. I woke up one morning and realized I was living with a ferret. He’s slept in a separate bedroom ever since.”
“Who’s ‘Mr. Canada’?”
He was looking right into her eyes, and they changed, clouding with doom. Again he wondered where he had seen those eyes before.
She recovered quickly. “Lenny’s mystery investor. I don’t know anything about him.”
“Did he ever come here?”
“Never. Lenny always went to see him.”
“Where?”
“He never would say.”
“Is ‘Mr. Canada’ his real name?”
“I always thought it was some kind of a code name, but like I told you, I don’t know him or anything about him.”
“Are you leaving soon?”
“How about tonight? I’m gonna get in that Jag and just drive. See the country.”
He thought of the Bob Seeger song.
“Roll Me Away,” he said.
She understood him. “You’ve got it,” she said and smiled. It was the first time he had seen her smile. Was she the tough bitch she sometimes talked like or the other person that the smile revealed? Probably both.
He remembered some of the lyrics of the song:
“Rolled across the high plains
Deep into the mountains
It felt so good to me
To finally feel free”
He wished she would take him with her.
She was looking out at the lake. “I loved this place,” she said. “For a long time I really believed it was real. What a dope.”
The wind kicked up, shaking the leaves on the trees and blowing some of her hair into her face. When she brushed her hair back, O’Keefe was staring at her again, his visage mournful.
“What’s with you, Mr. O’Keefe?”
“I’ve seen it a hundred times. People think they can buy their dreams cheap and easy, and usually with somebody else’s money.”
“So you’re a social critic as well as a burglar,” she said. “Well, one thing I know is real is the sunset here. I’m gonna see it one last time. Tonight. Alone. And then I’m gone.”
He remembered Harrigan’s instructions not to take his eyes off her and decided to at least give it a try.
“Why don’t you let me buy you dinner on your way out of town?”
“Now, why would you want to do that, Mr. O’Keefe?”
“I don’t know. Because I like you. Because you’re the best-looking lady in the county, I am very sure. Because I was always a sucker for a damsel in distress. Take your pick.”
“Here’s what I pick. You want to keep me under your watchful eye. So I won’t get away with the money, money I don’t have by the way.”
“I have to go back to the ranch to take some notes on the books and records. Then I’m off duty. Then I owe nothing to anyone except you. At six o’clock I change into whatever you want me to be.”
He didn’t know whether he was lying to her or betraying Harrigan. He was thoroughly confused.
“Don’t kid me. I have a feeling you’re the type that’s never off duty. I’m gonna pass on the dinner, Mr. O’Keefe. What I’m gonna do instead is put as much distance between me and this place and you and your investors as I possibly can.”
He struggled to stay in the game, “How about telling me where you’re heading? Maybe I can meet you somewhere along the way.” Lame, lame, lame, he thought.
“You’re too obvious, Mr. O’Keefe. I wouldn’t tell you where I was going even if I knew.”
“That’s too bad.”
“And much as I hate to break off such a promising relationship, it’s time for you to go. Goodbye, Mr. O’Keefe.”
She stood up and looked down on him tenderly, as if pitying him. When she extended her hand to shake his goodbye, he held it for a moment.
A confident hand, smooth and surprisingly strong. And for a moment he thought he had won her, but she caught herself and pulled her hand from his grasp.
“Anything you want me to tell your dad?”
“Yeah. Tell him to get the hell out of my life and leave me alone. Tell him he’s got no hold on me anymore.”
“You know what’s funny? I think I might have been telling you the truth about the dinner, about being what you want me to be after six o’clock. Too bad it didn’t work out.”
“Too bad,” she said matter-of-factly.
He started to walk away.
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”
He looked innocently back at her.
“My keys.”
He smiled and pulled the keys out of his pocket. She stood with her hand out, indicating he should throw them across the deck to her, which he did. She caught them with a swift, supple move of her arm and watched him leave.
DRIVING BACK TO the mink farm, he kept thinking about the long-haired lady in the modern-day castle on the hill. He could do nothing to stop her from hitting the road in that Jag. Following her all over the country was out of the question. He had no evidence of any wrongdoing that would interest the police. She could disappear for a while, but he and Harrigan would be able to find her if they wanted to. Everybody left a trail. All you needed was the money and the time to track them down. He had the feeling he would see her again, wanted badly to see her again, but if he did see her again, he would certainly find her in a very bad spot, and he indulged in a moment of traitorous hope, for her sake, that she would make good her escape. Hell, if she had given him half the chance, he would have gotten in that Jag and rolled away with her. Yet he suspected her bid for freedom was doomed from the start. You just can’t buy your freedom with other people’s money.