The Mephisto Club

by Tess Gerritsen

  “Absolutely not.” She flashed him a smile that struck Maura as distinctly flirtatious. “I can take care of myself.”

  “These are different circumstances, Joyce.”

  “Afraid?”

  “We’d be crazy if we weren’t.”

  She flung her scarf around her neck, a theatrical flourish to emphasize that she, for one, was not going to let something as trivial as fear slow her down. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  He opened the door, letting in a whoosh of frigid air, a flurry of snowflakes that scattered like glitter across the antique carpet. “Stay safe,” he said. He waited in the doorway, watching as O’Donnell walked to her car. Only after she drove away did he close the door. Once again, he faced Maura.

  “So you and your friends think you’re on the side of the angels,” said Maura.

  “I believe we are.”

  “Whose side is she on?”

  “I know there’s no love lost between her and law enforcement. It’s her job as a defense witness to be at odds with the prosecution. But I’ve known Joyce for three years now. I know where she stands.”

  “Can you really be sure?” Maura picked up her coat, which she’d left draped over a settee. He did not attempt to help her on with it; perhaps he sensed that she, unlike O’Donnell, was not in the mood to be indulged. As she buttoned her coat, she felt she was being watched by two sets of eyes. The portrait of Antonino Sansone was watching her as well, his gaze piercing the mist of four centuries, and she could not help a glance in the portrait’s direction, at the man whose actions, so many generations ago, could still make his namesake shudder.

  “You say you’ve looked evil in the eye,” she said, turning back to her host.

  “We both have.”

  “Then you should know by now,” she said, “that it wears a pretty damn good disguise.”

  She stepped out of the house and breathed in air that sparkled with frozen mist. The sidewalk stretched before her like a dark river; streetlamps cast pale islands of light. A lone Boston PD cruiser was parked across the street, engine idling, and she saw the silhouette of a patrolman sitting in the driver’s seat. She raised her hand in a wave.

  He waved back.

  No reason to be nervous, she thought, as she started walking. My car’s just down the street, and a cop’s nearby. So was Sansone. She glanced back and saw that he was still standing on his front steps, watching her. Nevertheless she pulled out her car keys, kept her thumb poised on the panic button. Even as she moved down the sidewalk, she scanned shadows, searching for even a flicker of movement. Only after she’d climbed into her car and locked it did she feel the tension ease from her shoulders.

  Time to go home. Time for a stiff drink.

  When she walked into her house, she found two new messages on her answering machine. She went into the kitchen first, to pour herself a glass of brandy, came back into the living room, sipping her drink, and pressed Play. At the sound of the first caller’s voice, she went very still.

  “It’s Daniel. I don’t care how late it is when you hear this. Just call me, please. I hate to think that you and I—” A pause. “We need to talk, Maura. Call me.”

  She did not move. Just stood clutching her brandy, her fingers numb around the glass as the second message played.

  “Dr. Isles, it’s Anthony Sansone. I just wanted to make sure you got home safely. Give me a call and let me know, will you?”

  The machine went silent. She took a breath, reached for the phone, and dialed.

  “Sansone residence. This is Jeremy.”

  “It’s Dr. Isles. Could you—”

  “Hello, Dr. Isles. Let me get him for you.”

  “Just let him know that I’m home.”

  “I know that he’d like very much to talk to you himself.”

  “There’s no need to disturb him. Good night.”

  “Good night, Doctor.”

  She hung up and hovered over the receiver, poised to make the second call.

  A sharp thump on her porch made her back snap straight. She went to the front door and flipped on the porch light. Outside, the wind swirled snow fine as dust. On the porch, a fallen icicle lay in glistening shards, like a broken dagger. She turned off the light but lingered at the window and watched as a municipal truck rumbled past, scattering sand across the icy road.

  She returned to the couch and stared at the phone as she drank the last of her brandy.

  We need to talk, Maura. Call me.

  She set down the glass, turned off the lamp, and went to bed.

  THIRTEEN

  July 22. Phase of the moon: First Quarter.

  Aunt Amy stands at the stove stirring a pot of stew, her face as contented as a cow’s. On this overcast day, with dark clouds gathering in the western sky, she seems oblivious to the rumble of thunder. In my aunt’s world, every day is a sunny one. She sees no evil, fears no evil. She is like the livestock fattening on clover on the farm down the road, the cattle that know nothing of the slaughterhouse. She cannot see beyond the glow of her own happiness, to the precipice just beyond her feet.

  She is nothing like my mother.

  Aunt Amy turns from the stove and says, “Dinner’s almost ready.”

  “I’ll set the table,” I offer, and she flashes me a grateful smile. It takes so little to please her. As I set the plates and napkins on the table and lay the forks tines-down, in the French way, I feel her loving gaze. She sees only a quiet and agreeable boy; she’s blind to who I really am.

  Only my mother knows. My mother can trace our bloodline all the way back to the Hyksos, who ruled Egypt from the north, in the age when the God of War was sacred. “The blood of ancient hunters runs in your veins,” my mother said. “But it’s best never to speak of it, because people will not understand.”

  I say little as we sit down to dinner. The family chatters enough to fill any silence. They talk about what Teddy did at the lake today, what Lily heard while at Lori-Ann’s house. What a nice crop of tomatoes they’ll be harvesting in August.

  When we have finished eating, Uncle Peter says, “Who wants to go into town for ice cream?”

  I am the only one who chooses to stay home.

  I watch from the front door as their car drives away. As soon as it vanishes down the hill, I climb the stairs and walk into my aunt and uncle’s bedroom. I’ve been waiting for the chance to explore it. The room smells like lemon furniture polish. The bed is neatly made, but there are minor touches of disorder—my uncle’s jeans draped over a chair, a few magazines on the nightstand—to confirm that real people live in this room.

  In their bathroom, I open the medicine cabinet and find, along with the usual headache pills and cold capsules, a two-year-old prescription, made out to Dr. Peter Saul:

  “Valium, 5 mg. Take one tablet three times a day as needed for back spasms.”

  There are at least a dozen pills still left in the bottle.

  I return to the bedroom. I open dresser drawers and discover that my aunt’s bra size is 36B, that her underwear is cotton, and that my uncle wears medium jockey shorts. In a bottom drawer, I also find a key. It’s too small for a door. I think I know what it opens.

  Downstairs, in my uncle’s study, I fit the key into a lock, and the cabinet door swings open. On the shelf inside is his handgun. It’s an old one that he inherited from his father, which is the only reason he has not gotten rid of it. He never takes it out; I think he is a little afraid of it.

  I lock the cabinet and return the key to its drawer.

  An hour later, I hear their car pulling into the driveway, and I go downstairs to greet them as they come back into the house.

  Aunt Amy smiles when she sees me. “I’m so sorry you didn’t come with us. Were you terribly bored?”

  FOURTEEN

  The squeal of the truck’s air brakes startled Lily Saul awake. She raised her head, groaning at the ache in her neck, and blinked with sleepy eyes at the passing countryside. Dawn was just breaking and t
he morning mist was a haze of gold over sloping vineyards and dew-laden orchards. She hoped that poor Paolo and Giorgio had passed on to a place this beautiful; if anyone deserved Heaven, they did.

  But I will not be seeing them there. This will be my only chance at Heaven. Here, now. A moment of peace, infinitely sweet because I know it won’t last.

  “You’re awake at last,” the driver said in Italian, dark eyes appraising her. Last night, when he had stopped at the side of the road just outside Florence to offer her a ride, she had not gotten a good look at him. Now, with the morning light slanting into the truck’s cab, she saw coarse features, a jutting brow, and a day’s dark stubble on his jaw. Oh, she could read that look he gave her. Will we or won’t we, Signorina? American girls were easy. Give them a lift, offer them a place to stay, and they’ll sleep with you.

  When Hell freezes over, thought Lily. Not that she hadn’t slept with a stranger or two. Or three, when desperate measures were called for. But those men had not been without their charms, and they had offered what she’d sorely needed at the time—not shelter, but the comfort of a man’s arms. The chance to enjoy the brief but lovely delusion that someone could protect her.

  “If you need a place to stay,” the driver said, “I have an apartment, in the city.”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  “You have some place to go?”

  “I have…friends. They’ve offered to let me stay.”

  “Where is their address in Rome? I will drop you off.”

  He knew she was lying. He was testing her.

  “Really,” he said. “It is no trouble.”

  “Just leave me at the train station. They live near there.”

  Again, his gaze raked across her face. She did not like his eyes. She saw meanness there, like the gleam of a coiled snake that could, at any instant, strike.

  Suddenly he gave a shrug, a grin, as if it didn’t matter to him in the least.

  “You have been to Rome before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your Italian is very good.”

  But not good enough, she thought. I open my mouth and they know I’m foreign.

  “How long will you stay in the city?”

  “I don’t know.” Until it’s no longer safe. Until I can plan my next move.

  “If you ever need help, you can call me.” He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. “The number for my mobile.”

  “I’ll give you a call sometime,” she said, dropping the card inside her backpack. Let him hang on to his fantasy. He’d give her less trouble when she left.

  At Rome’s Stazione Termine, she climbed out of the truck and gave him a good-bye wave. She could feel his gaze as she crossed the street toward the train station. She didn’t glance back, but walked straight into the building. There, behind windows, she turned to watch his truck. Saw it just sitting there, waiting. Go on, she thought. Get the hell away from me.

  Behind the truck, a taxicab blared its horn; only then did the truck move on.

  She emerged from the station and wandered into Piazza della Repubblica where she paused, dazed by the crowds, by the heat and noise and gas fumes. Just before leaving Florence, she had chanced a stop at an ATM and withdrawn three hundred Euros, so she was feeling flush now. If she was careful, she could make the cash last for two weeks. Live on bread and cheese and coffee, check into rock-bottom tourist hotels. This was the neighborhood to find cheap accommodations. And with the swarms of foreign tourists moving in and out of the train station, she would easily blend in.

  But she had to be cautious.

  Pausing outside a sundries store, she considered how she could most easily alter her appearance. A dye job? No. In the land of dark-haired beauties, it was best to stay a brunette. A change of clothes, perhaps. Stop looking so American. Ditch the jeans for a cheap dress. She wandered into a dusty shop and emerged a half hour later wearing a blue cotton frock.

  In a fit of extravagance, she next treated herself to a heaping plate of spaghetti Bolognese, her first hot meal in two days. It was a mediocre sauce, and the noodles were soggy and overcooked, but she devoured it all, sopping up every particle of meat with the stale bread. Then, her belly full, the heat weighing down on her shoulders, she trudged sleepily in search of a hotel. She found one on a dirty side street. Dogs had left their stinking souvenirs near the front entrance. Laundry flapped from windows, and a trash can, buzzing with flies, overflowed with garbage and broken glass.

  Perfect.

  The room she checked into looked over a shadowy interior courtyard. As she unbuttoned her dress, she stood gazing down at a scrawny cat pouncing on something too small for Lily to make out. A piece of string? A doomed mouse?

  Stripped down to her underwear, she collapsed onto the lumpy bed and listened to the rattle of window air conditioners in the courtyard, to the honking horns and roaring buses of the Eternal City. A city of four million is a good place to hide for a while, she thought. No one will easily find me here.

  Not even the Devil.

  FIFTEEN

  Edwina Felway’s house was in the suburb of Newton. It sat at the edge of the snow-covered Braeburn Country Club, overlooking the east branch of Cheesecake Brook, which was now a gleaming ribbon of ice. Although it was certainly not the largest house on this road of grand residences, its charming eccentricities distinguished it from its more stately neighbors. Thick vines of wisteria had clambered up its stone walls and clung there like arthritic fingers, waiting for spring to warm their knobby joints and coax forth blooms. Framed by one of the gables, a large ocular of stained glass peered like a multicolored eye. Beneath the peaked slate roof, icicles sparkled like jagged teeth. In the front yard, sculptures reared ice-encrusted heads, as though emerging from snowbound hibernation: A winged fairy, still flash-frozen in mid-flight. A dragon, its fiery breath temporarily extinguished. A willowy maiden, the flower wreath on her head transformed by winter to a crown of snowdrops.

  “What do you think?” asked Jane as she stared out the car window at the house. “Two million? Two and a half?”

  “This neighborhood, right on the golf course? I’m guessing more like four,” said Barry Frost.

  “For that weird old house?”

  “I don’t think it’s all that old.”

  “Well, someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look old.”

  “Atmospheric. That’s what I’d call it.”

  “Right. Home of the Seven Dwarfs.” Jane turned the car into the driveway and parked beside a van. As they stepped out, onto well-sanded cobblestones, Jane noticed the handicapped placard on the van’s dashboard. Peering through the rear window, she saw a wheelchair lift.

  “Hello, there! Are you the detectives?” a booming voice called out. The woman who stood on the porch waving at them was obviously able-bodied.

  “Mrs. Felway?” said Jane.

  “Yes. And you must be Detective Rizzoli.”

  “And my partner, Detective Frost.”

  “Watch those cobblestones, they’re slippery. I try to keep the driveway sanded for visitors, but really, there’s no substitute for sensible shoes.” Sensible was a word that clearly applied to Edwina Felway’s wardrobe, Jane noted, as she climbed the steps to shake the woman’s hand. Edwina wore a baggy tweed jacket and wool trousers and rubber Wellingtons, the outfit of an English countrywoman, a role she certainly seemed to fulfill, from her accent right down to her green garden boots. Although she had to be sixty, she stood straight and sturdy as a tree, her handsome face ruddy in the cold, her shoulders as broad as a man’s. The gray hair, cut in a neat pageboy, was pinned back with tortoiseshell barrettes, fully exposing a face with prominent cheekbones and direct blue eyes. She had no need for makeup; she was striking enough without it.

  “I’ve put the kettle on,” said Edwina, ushering them into the house. “In case you’d like some tea.” She shut the door, pulled off her boots, and shoved her stocking feet into worn slippers. From upstairs came
the excited barking of dogs. Big dogs, by the sound of them. “Oh, I’ve shut them up in the bedroom. They’re not all that disciplined around strangers. And they’re quite intimidating.”

  “Do you want us to take off our shoes?” asked Frost.

  “Heavens, forget it. The dogs are in and out all the time anyway, tracking in sand. I can’t worry about the floor. Here, let me take your coats.”

  As Jane pulled off her jacket, she could not help staring upward at the ceiling that arched overhead. The open rafters were like the beams of a medieval hall. The stained-glass ocular that she had noticed outside beamed in a circle of candy-colored light. Everywhere she looked, on every wall, she saw oddities. A niche with a wooden Madonna, decorated in gold leaf and multicolored glass. A Russian Orthodox triptych painted in jewel tones. Carved animal statues and Tibetan prayer shawls, and a row of medieval oaken pews. Against one wall was a Native American totem pole that thrust all the way to the two-story ceiling.

  “Wow,” said Frost. “You’ve got a really interesting place here, ma’am.”

  “My husband was an anthropologist. And a collector, until we ran out of space to put it all.” She pointed at the eagle’s head that glared down from the totem pole. “That thing was his favorite. There’s even more of this stuff in storage. It’s probably worth a fortune, but I’ve gotten attached to every hideous piece and I can’t bring myself to let any of it go.”

  “And your husband is—”

  “Dead.” She said it without hesitation. Just a fact of life. “He was quite a bit older than me. I’ve been a widow for years now. But we had a good fifteen years together.” She hung up their coats, and Jane caught a glimpse into the cluttered closet, saw an ebony walking stick topped by a human skull. That monstrosity, she thought, I would’ve tossed out a long time ago.

  Edwina shut the closet door and looked at them. “I’m sure you detectives have your hands full with this investigation. So we thought we’d make things easier for you.”

  “Easier?” asked Jane.

  The rising squeal of a teakettle made Edwina glance toward the hallway. “Let’s go sit in the kitchen,” she said, and led the way up the hall, her worn slippers whisking across the tired oak floor. “Anthony warned us you’d have a lot of questions, so we wrote out a complete timeline for you. Everything we remember from last evening.”