"Graciella," said Clarissa, relieved that the clothes were similar to but not Rowland's.
"Forgive me, I don't usually work this way," Graciella told them matter of fact "Unfortunately, my employer's meddling assistants have given me no choice."
"Your employer?" Clarissa asked incredulously.
"Morgan Wolfe," Graciella replied. "Oh, I never tell them I know who they are, but as a matter of precaution, I always check them out."
"Morgan hired you to. "
"I like to make each job look like an accident. Under the circumstances, and since I've have another assignment, we'll just have to make due."
"No, please, wait...no!"
Graciella braced one gloved hand under the butt of the gun and took point blank aim. Clarissa closed her eyes. She heard the rush of the silenced gun as it fired. She waited for the impact of the bullet, felt instead Randy brush against her as he moved like lightning. He swung the shovel, missing Graciella, but coming close enough to her face with the sharp edge of the shovel to throw her off balance so that her shot went wild. Randy shoved Clarissa past Graciella toward the stairs and took another swing with his shovel.
Graciella stepped back, regained her footing, and aimed the gun, this time at Randy. He swung the shovel up like a tennis serve. It smacked the assassin square in the chest. It knocked her off her feet and the second shot missed its target. Randy raised the shovel again, but Graciella was too quick. She brought the barrel of the silencer around and fired twice. Randy stiffened and the shovel fell from his hands. He fell backward over the corpse in the tarp and crashed into the pile of crates and suitcases.
"Randy!" Clarissa screamed.
Graciella twisted around and fired in the dark at Clarissa's voice. The bullet slammed into the wooden banister. Wood chips flew into Clarissa's face as she raced up the stairs. Graciella struggled to her feet and sprinted after her. She could not see Clarissa but she could hear the thud of Clarissa's feet on the stairs. Graciella stopped and fired one more time. She heard Clarissa's sharp cry but the bullet had only ricocheted off of the brick wall behind the stairs. Then she heard Clarissa stumble and fall. The assassin smiled to herself and she moved to the bottom step. She took careful aim at a dark shadow on the stairs.
"Hold it, McKinnon!" Alex's voice commanded.
Graciella spun and fired. Alex groaned and the assassin knew she had hit him. She smiled wryly and turned to Clarissa on the stairs. A white flame erupted from the darkness and the sharp crack of gunfire echoed off the walls. Graciella's body jerked and sprawled into the black shadows at the bottom of the stairs. Clarissa screamed and pushed furiously on the basement door.
Hugo slipped another compact disk into the player on the dash of the black Porsche and heavy metal rock music pounded the interior of the sports car like trapped thunder. He gave a quick look at himself in the rear view mirror and fluffed the crown of his black hair with his fingertips. He smiled with elated satisfaction. He looked good, he felt terrific, and his spirits were soaring with the screaming success of the White Rose Salon grand opening.
Soap opera star Denise Kissling and pop singer Leeza made personal appearances. The press gave the opening great coverage and the Los Angeles morning talk show L.A. Morning, did a live interview with Hugo. The salon was packed all day and by closing time at six o'clock, appointments were booked almost three months in advance. The catered food was elegant, the jazz quartet was superb. It could not have been a more perfect day. Even the rain did not hinder the turnout or dampen the hairdresser's spirits.
Hugo called Wolfe to tell him the good news. Morgan did not want to hear about the salon and Hugo's feelings were hurt. Hugo sensed that Morgan was preoccupied with other business. Wolfe was not exactly rude but he was abrupt and somewhat distant over the phone. Hugo was so pumped at the response to the salon that he decided to drive back up to Los Angeles and tell Wolfe personally. He had to make the trip anyway. Wayne had called to tell him that Clarissa was stranded at some hotel and needed a ride. He wanted to bring her back to La Jolla anyway. She just had to see his most crowning achievement.
Hugo would do anything for Clarissa, especially when he was in such a good mood. The woman was pure crazy. How Clarissa could get herself stranded in a flop house without a dime on her was beyond Hugo's comprehension. He roared with laughter when Wayne told him. He could not understand why she just didn't call Morgan Wolfe. He would have sent a car for her. In fact, Hugo even asked Morgan on the phone why he didn't rescue Clarissa from the Hempstead Hotel himself. After all, they were engaged. Hugo told Morgan he was on his way to the Hempstead to pick up Clarissa and maybe take her to dinner first and back to La Jolla, if Morgan didn't mind. After all, he owed Clarissa for such a wonderful day.
Hugo thought it was quite rude of Morgan to hang up on him so abruptly like that. After all, he and Wolfe were partners and the salon was off to such a good start. Hugo planned to drive Clarissa home right after she saw the salon. He couldn't understand why Morgan was being such a twit. Well, once Hugo gave him his full and glorious grand opening report, Morgan would be more civil. Or would he. He never seemed to be happy about anything.
CHAPTER 13
The silence was complete, the darkness solemn and almost impenetrable. There was no rain, no thunder, no sound, only the oppressive stillness. The stench of death and fear hung in the air like a putrid vapor. The dim light from the rain dotted corner windows struggled unsuccessfully to cut the black night that had settled over the carnage on the cold cement floor.
Clarissa huddled at the top of the basement stairs, her knees drawn tight to her chest. One arm reached up, fingers still frozen around the stubborn doorknob. Terror held her rigid, her limbs leaden as if filled with sand. She waited, ears straining, to see what would crawl out of the black abyss below. The moments dragged on, each second tearing at her raw nerves.
Then she heard it, faint in the distant pitch-blackness. Scraping sounds, coarse cloth scraping across the rough floor. Closer with every breath, nearer to the bottom of the stairs. Clarissa felt the nausea well and swallowed desperately. The stair railing creaked and quivered, then the bottom wooden riser groaned under the weight of a foot.
Clarissa clawed at the basement door, the knob twisting freely in her hand, but the door refused to budge an inch. She pulled herself to her knees and pressed her shoulder against the door. Bolts of pain shot down her arm and she had to give up. The loose doorknob indicated that the door was not locked. Something heavy must have been wedged against it to hold it closed.
The second riser groaned and Clarissa peered into the darkness. She could see through her blurred vision, a bent form making its way slowly toward her. She braced her feet against the base of the railing and flattened her back against the door. With her hands gripping the lip of the top riser, she shoved backward, straining every muscle until she felt the door budge a little. There was definitely some object wedged against the door on the other side.
Clarissa braced herself again and gave it another try, pushing with her legs until they trembled from the extreme effort. The door opened just a crack. The risers beneath her creaked with each labored step of the advancing horror. Her knuckles were white on the riser as Clarissa strained her back and shoulders painfully against the door. It budged enough for her to claw and scrape her way through. She clamored over the obstacle and fell into the hallway. It was Dusty. There was a deep, long gash over one eye and blood trickled to a puddle on the floor. Clarissa slammed the basement door shut and knelt down to feel for a pulse on the old man's neck. It was faint but Dusty was alive.
The door to Dusty's cage was open. Clarissa could see it from where she knelt. If his office door was unlocked, she could get to the phone and call the police. She started down the hallway toward the lobby as far as the staircase and stopped dead. He pushed open the glass front door and brushed a speck of lint from his coat. Then he saw her. He stood there alone in the center of the hotel lobby, black double- breasted sport coat over a b
lack t-shirt, black slacks and black alligator boots. It was a black backdrop for the gold on his fingers and the wry smile on his lips. Only his eyes were not smiling. They were as deadly as a coiled cobra as they bored into Clarissa's blood-drained face.
"Well, Clarissa," Morgan said matter-of-factly. "You look like hell."
"Morgan," she breathed in a whisper. There was no terror, no feeling except shock. The fact that he stood there at all rasped her senses and jarred her soul. She blinked her eyes but the apparition did not fade. He was real. Morgan Wolfe was standing before her, alone and in the flesh.
"I think we should go now," he told her. "Come on. I have a car waiting."
Morgan held out his hand to her. She recoiled away from it as if it had fangs that dripped of venom. Morgan was here. She could not release that one thought from her mind. It meant something. Something important. Clarissa struggled to clear the jumbled mess in her head, tried to sort out the meaning of what her eyes were seeing.
Marco was dead in the cellar with a knife in his back. There had been gunfire in the dark between Alex, Morgan's number two man, and Graciella, Morgan's hired assassin. Where were the others? Where was Morgan's army of security men, his network of lackeys and "yes" men he spent hours on the phone with day in and day out. Where were the business associates that would do his bidding even against their wills and their moral ethics? What had happened that brought the intimidating titan of international business to the Hempstead Hotel himself? What would it take for Morgan Wolfe to do his own killing, risk dirtying his own hands?
The realization washed like a cold wave over Clarissa. The Wolfe empire was beginning to disintegrate. Morgan was in trouble and his comrades in crime were keeping their distance. Just how or why, she could not fathom, nor did she want to know. Morgan was at the edge of his own abyss. She could see it in the deepening lines of his tanned face, the darker circles under his violet eyes. He was about to run, to escape whatever it was that was haunting him, whatever it was that was about to launch an assault on his domain. She was his one loose end, the one small thread that had to be clipped or his venal kingdom would unravel. He had to leave everything neat and tidy so that his hunters could not trace him in Europe or Asia or where ever it was he was planning to hide.
"My patience is rather thin, Clarissa," Morgan said impatiently. "Let's go."
She did not move. The ordeal of the past four days, the constant fine tuning of her will to survive, had honed her senses and heightened her perceptions. Clarissa felt the cracks in his cold veneer, heard the thin edge of fear in his voice. She was aware of the slight, almost imperceptible tremble in his outstretched hand. He was vulnerable, susceptible. There were discernible holes in his armor and Clarissa thanked God for them. Morgan Wolfe was cornered and possibly wounded. That made him a most deadly animal.
"You bastard," she hissed at him.
"I have no time for this," Morgan snapped and lunged toward her.
"Keep away from me!" she cried.
"Damn it, come here! Clarissa!"
She was cut off from Dusty's office and the phone, from the front door, from escape. The only avenue open was the stairs. She swung herself around the newel post and pounded up the stairs. Get to her room, lock herself in, and use the rusted fire escape outside her window to get out of the building. It would work if she could put distance between herself and Morgan. She rounded the second floor landing with so much force that she banged her hip into the edge of the banister. The sharp pain made her gasp and clutch her side but she couldn't dare slow down.
Her breath was heaving in deep gasps when she stumbled into the third floor hallway. The most welcome sight in the world was Rowland standing stooped over the lock on his door.
"Rowland!" she cried. He looked up startled and smiled at her.
"Well, child, I thought you was already down at the church kitchen. I knocked on your door but you didn't answer."
"Rowland, help me." The fear in Clarissa's eyes wiped the smile from the old man's face. "There's a man after me."
Clarissa turned, expecting to see Morgan in the hallway behind her. It was empty. She turned questioningly back to Rowland.
"He was in the lobby," she said quietly. "He's trying to kill me."
"There's no one there now, child," Rowland said soothingly.
"He was there, Rowland," she insisted. "I saw him. It was Morgan. He was there. Downstairs."
Clarissa rubbed at her temples and tried to make the blinding headache go away. She was not mad. Morgan was in lobby. He was no drug induced illusion. Yet, even as she thought about it, she doubted her own sanity. She knew she had been drugged. She knew what she had witnessed in the basement. Or had she? Had any of it been real? Her head pounded and throbbed trying to remember events after she had eaten Dotty Warren's soup and fallen asleep. Things were hazy, disjointed images of Dotty dead and Randy shot by the Mexican neighbor. Was it real or was her fogged mind putting together a patchwork of barely related people and events, laced together by the constant terror she had lived with since Byron Roth's murder. The admission that it was possibly all just a nightmare brought tears to her eyes.
Rowland unlocked the door to his room and pulled out a supermarket grocery cart. He jockeyed and angled the cart, struggling to pull it into the hallway.
"I brought up my laundry," Rowland explained. "I got to return this here cart on the way to dinner. Roast beef and macaroni tonight."
"Rowland, you have to go call the police," Clarissa was near hysterics. "Dusty is hurt. Please."
"I just spoke with Dusty on my way up here," said Rowland. "He was at the desk. He seemed just fine to me. Child, you come with me. We'll go get some of that beef."
She screamed silently inside her head. She had seen Dusty laying in his own blood from the wound on his forehead. He was in the hallway blocking the cellar door. She saw him! Damn it, she did see him. He was hurt bad. Then what was he doing there away from his desk? He never left his desk or his office. She had never seen him outside his cage except the one time with the county inspector.
The awful doubt clouded her vain attempt to remember. She struggled to get a mental picture of Dusty lying in the hallway. She could not hold the scene in her mind. Dusty's frail form continually faded to became her mother's body lying next to the bus stop in a pool of her own blood. Clarissa clenched her fists in the agony of frustration. Madness scraped at the edges of her soul and she pushed it away with one rational thought. Escape.
"Clarissa!" Morgan's voice from the other end of the hallway spun her around. She shrank back from his slow advance. "I can get you help if you come with me. The best doctors, I promise you. There is no need for you to live with your problem any longer. It's lucky I found you this time. It will be alright."
"Stop it, Morgan!"
"Don't make me call the hospital, Clarissa," Morgan's voice was enticing and silky, brimming with believable compassion. "You need your medication. Come with me."
"There's nothing wrong with me," Clarissa spat back at him. "You keep your bloody hands off of me."
Rowland glanced at Clarissa with pity in his sad eyes. "Child?"
"He's lying," Clarissa said, tears of frustration welling up in her. "He's a master at it."
Morgan gave Rowland a weary smile. "I love this woman," Morgan explained. "We're engaged to be married. She is manic depressive. Do you know what that is?"
"Damn you, Morgan, I am not."
"It's a mental disorder, something out of balance chemically in the brain. She takes medication for it," Morgan continued, flicking an imaginary piece of lint from his expensive jacket. "When she's off the meds, she gets very deeply depressed or very hyper active. I usually find her in places like this. Clarissa grew up in neighborhoods like this one. She tends to go back to her roots when the depression comes on her. She saw her mother killed not far from here when she was very young. But she doesn't belong here. You know that she is international fashion model Clarissa Hayden?"
"Rowland
, please call the police," Clarissa begged as she edged closer to the elderly man and the grocery cart. Rowland had not said a word. He stood very still, occasionally eyeing Clarissa, but never taking his eyes off Morgan Wolfe for more than a half second.
"I love her, Mister Rowland," Morgan said softly and there was compassion in his eyes. "She may not believe that but I have been looking for her continually for the past seventy two hours."
"To kill me," Clarissa screamed at him.
"No, my love. You don't know what you saw from your bedroom window Friday night. You think you saw something that you really did not. Think, Clarissa. I have given you everything you ever wanted. When have I ever hurt you or even threatened to do you any harm? Never. I love you. If you let me help you, we can put all of this behind us. Together, we can get you through the pain of your mother's death. Let it go, Clarissa. Come with me."
In her mind she could see the azure water of the swimming pool from her upstairs bedroom window. She could hear the gun shot. Or was it simply the backfire from a passing car? She could see Byron's body floating in the pool and dark shadows in the night, of Morgan and his men staring into the water. The image rippled and became a crowd of onlookers standing around a bus bench. Myra floated in the pool. Clarissa stared out of the window in shocked silence. Then Morgan's eyes turned up to glare at her. Escape.
"You killed Byron Roth," Clarissa yelled.
"You know that isn't true," Morgan said evenly. "I've never hurt anyone."
"You're a monster, Morgan," Clarissa said near tears. "You may have not been the one to pull the trigger but you ordered his death."
"You see, Mister Rowland, why she needs her medication?" Morgan said as he subtly let the light from the bare bulb in the hall ceiling play on his gold and diamond rings. "I am a businessman, not some killer in Clarissa's depression inspired fantasies. Help me, Mister Rowland, to bring her back to reality. We have to get her back on the meds."
Domino Page 22