Danger Zone

by Doreen Owens Malek

  The driver turned on a quiet tree shaded street. It was graced by widely spaced Georgian homes with lush front gardens enclosed by black wrought iron gates. He entered the drive of the most elaborate mansion on the avenue, a two-story white stucco colonial with wide marble steps. The red door had a polished Regency knocker and brass kickplate, with a carved oak lintel. Lustrous dark emerald ivy trailed down the sides of the long, shuttered windows, and twin carved lions flanked the Greek revival portico, which was supported by four Ionic columns. A row of etched glass lanterns mounted on hanging posts lined their way as they drove up the circular gravel path, and the car glided to a stop at the foot of the entry stairs.

  Karen got out when the driver held the door for her, and he bowed slightly as she hurried past him and ran up the steps. As if by magic, the red door was opened by another uniformed servant, and behind him stood Linda.

  Her friend took one look at Karen’s reddened eyes and tearstained face and grabbed her arm, ushering her into a side room. Linda dismissed the servant and yanked the door closed behind them. Karen hardly got a look at the high, vaulted ceiling of the entry hall, the Baccarat chandelier or the antique furniture before she found herself confronted by an angry, exasperated Linda.

  “I knew it!” she said. “I knew something nasty was afoot, and you wouldn’t tell me. You just present yourself on my doorstep in this condition. I mean to say!”

  Karen fell into a brocaded Louis XIV armchair that was probably worth more than her entire life’s earnings and sighed heavily.

  “Don’t holler at me, Linda; I don’t think I can take any more today,” she said wearily and blew her nose.

  “Oh, give me that,” Linda said imperiously, snatching the disintegrating tissue and shuddering delicately as she tossed it into a lacquered wastepaper basket at her feet. She went to a carved armoire in a corner and returned with a freshly laundered, scented linen handkerchief.

  “Here, have this. They’re supposed to be for guests and I assume you qualify. Wipe your face properly, and then you can tell me what’s been going on.” She grabbed a velvet bell pull behind Karen’s head, the like of which Karen had previously seen only in Sherlock Holmes films, and seconds later there was a discreet knock at the paneled door.

  “Come in,” Linda called.

  A maid in a gray dress with a sheer ruffled apron presented herself.

  “Please bring a pot of tea and some sandwiches for us, Doris,” Linda said. “We’ll take the tray right here in the study.”

  The maid disappeared as silently as she’d entered, and Linda uncapped a crystal bottle on a silver tray sitting on one of the side tables. She poured two fingers of dark amber liquid into a glass .

  “Drink this,” she said to Karen, handing her the tumbler.

  “What is it?”

  “Brandy.”

  Karen grimaced. “I don’t want it.”

  Linda put her hands on her hips. “Drink that this instant. I am losing patience with you very fast. If you don’t calm down every one of the boring matrons my stepmother is entertaining down the hall will shortly be in this room. And you don’t want to deal with them, that I can promise you.”

  Karen took a sip obediently and made a face as the searing warmth spread through her body.

  “Tastes awful,” she said.

  “Good, you’re not supposed to like it. Only riverboat gamblers in those dreadful historicals like it. Ladies drink lemonade.”

  “If those books were so awful, how come you read every one I gave you in a single night?”

  “May we get back to the subject, please?” Linda said, arching one aristocratic eyebrow and tapping her foot. “Which was your dramatic arrival ten minutes ago in a state of semihysteria. I repeat, what happened?”

  “Colter is gone,” Karen said sadly.

  “Well, since he isn’t here, and much to my regret I might add, I gathered that. Where is he?”

  “On his way to someplace I don’t know, with this group of revolutionaries, to break one of their comrades out of a government jail.”

  At this news Linda didn’t look so well herself and sat hastily on the settee to Karen’s right, her expression blank.

  “I beg your pardon?” she finally managed to say.

  “You heard me. They brought me here so he would go with them.”

  “You mean they were blackmailing him into it?”

  “Sort of. It was an old debt that he owed them, and when they arrived to collect on it I was there. So they seized the opportunity, you might say.”

  “And you were in Ireland?”

  “Yes ”

  “Why?”

  “Colter was injured there about a month ago and he sent for me when he was in the hospital.”

  Linda sat forward, interested. “Really? He asked for you to join him?”

  “Well, he thought he was hurt badly, and he was... scared.”

  “Hmph,” Linda said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t know him,” Karen said quietly.

  “Not as well as you do, apparently,” Linda replied significantly.

  “No, I mean it,” Karen insisted. “He’s actually very emotional beneath that tough facade.”

  “The facade will do,” Linda observed dreamily. She clasped her beringed hands together and studied Karen alertly. “So, you stayed all that time with him in Ireland? What happened?”

  Karen folded her arms. “Linda, don’t be obtuse. What do you think happened?”

  Linda sighed. “One can only hope.”

  “We became quite close.”

  “How close?”

  “Lovers.”

  Linda clapped softly. “Oh, goody.”

  “But then those men came and...”

  “You wound up here.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wouldn’t have told me a word of this if you hadn’t needed a place to hide. You would have kept it all to your selfish, niggardly self and left me waiting for the post like a jilted maiden in a Victorian romance.”

  Linda looked so genuinely outraged that Karen had to laugh. It felt good.

  “What’s so amusing?” Linda said, sniffing.

  “You are. You’re making all these noises about my condition and my situation, and what’s really bothering you is that I didn’t keep you informed on the progress of my affair.”

  “Well, you could have dropped me a postcard,” Linda said grudgingly.

  “Linda, I was busy.”

  “Oh, no doubt. Busy rustling under the counterpane with that gorgeous male, while I was trotting around after the dragon lady, emptying ashtrays and folding napkins for her garden parties.”

  Linda smiled mischievously. “You know, Linda, judging from the number of servants around here, I would have sworn you weren’t killing yourself.”

  “A lot you know about it,” Linda said crossly. “Sometimes I wish I were back on Almeria—the atmosphere in this mausoleum is so stifling. At least in Ascension I was gainfully employed.”

  “Can’t you get another job?” Karen asked, trying to take the subject seriously. Linda’s need for employment was about as critical as Kuwait’s need for oil.

  “Not one that would suit my father. Almeria was acceptable because it was a government house and he’d got the position for me. But I can’t exactly become a ribbon clerk at Harrods now, can I? And the usual pastimes are so dull and routine that I could absolutely cry.”

  “What are the usual pastimes?”

  “Oh, socials, teas, museum benefits, hunting in the country, you know the sort of thing.”

  Karen didn’t, but she was aware that some people spent their lives completely absorbed in such pursuits. Linda’s house looked like the type of place where they might hang out.

  “What about beaux?” Karen asked.

  Linda snorted. “Wax dummies, right out of Tussaud’s.” She turned on Karen abruptly. “I’d give my dear old mum’s star sapphire for one night with a man like Colter.”

  �
��Not if you want to keep your sanity,” Karen replied darkly.

  “Who says I have it?” Linda retorted.

  They both glanced up as Doris returned with a tray. Karen was dimly aware of a sotto voce conference between the two women before the maid left. As Linda poured the tea Karen looked around the room.

  Furnished with antique pieces like those in the hall, it featured a well-worn Aubusson rug in a pale pink rose pattern, with matching pink satin draperies at the leaded casement windows. Twin book chests stood on either side of the windows, filled with volumes that were obviously both old and valuable. An escritoire that seemed to be of the same period as the armoire occupied a nook in a bay window on the other side of the study, and chairs and love seats were scattered around the vast stone fireplace that covered most of the far wall. The other three walls had been “dragged,” treated with an eggshell paint and then rubbed with grasscloth to give a finely streaked two-tone effect. The whole place looked, and felt, like one of those display houses opened to tourists on Sunday afternoons.

  Linda brought Karen a cup of tea, served in a tiny Meissen china cup with a slice of lemon on the side.

  “Just as I thought,” Linda said. “The dragon lady is on the prowl, wondering what the two of us are doing in here.”

  “Is that what the maid said?”

  “No, Doris said that Margaret’s guests were missing me, which is a blatant lie if ever I heard one. I told her to send word that you were exhausted from your trip and ‘indisposed.’ Don’t you love that word? It always conjures up images of ladies in empire gowns passing out in swooning chairs.”

  “Swooning chairs?”

  “You’ve never seen them? There’s one in the library; remind me to show it to you. It has only one arm so you can faint on one side and support your head on the other.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  Linda held up her hand as if taking an oath. “On my honor as a former Girl Guide. Do you want some cream for that tea?”

  “No, this is fine.”

  “I must say your color is improving. You looked like death when you arrived.”

  “I am feeling better. This is lovely china,” Karen said.

  Linda nodded. “My father’s mother’s. It’s quite precious, made from an original Dresden pattern that’s been discontinued. You can’t buy it any more at any price.”

  Karen set the cup down carefully. “Don’t you have any Farberware?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “My little joke.”

  “All right,” Linda said, handing her a miniature sandwich. “You’ve been glossing over the details, just hitting the high points. I want all of it, right now.”

  “Okay.”

  For the next twenty minutes Karen told her as much as she could remember of recent events, and at the end of it Linda stood, smoothing the skirt of her navy cashmere sweater dress and patting her hair.

  “Just as I thought,” she said crisply. “Nothing ever happens to me.”

  “You were kidnapped on Almeria.”

  “Nothing good ever happens to me.”

  “I wouldn’t call being escorted out of Kinsale by a trio of thugs something good.”

  “At least it was different.”

  “It was that, all right.”

  “I wish something a little unusual would happen to light a fire around here, and that’s a fact.”

  “Well,” Karen said, squirming uncomfortably, “something may.”

  Linda looked at her.

  “I think I was followed here. By one of those men.”

  “What men?” Linda said sharply.

  “The men who came after Colter.”

  “One of them trailed you from the airport?”

  Karen nodded. “I recognized him in the car behind me as your driver was bringing me to the house.”

  Linda ran to the window which faced the street. “What did the car look like?”

  “A dark blue compact.”

  “What’s a compact?”

  “A... mini, I think you call them.”

  Linda peered through the shrubbery that partially obscured the view. “He’s out there,” she said positively.

  Karen came to stand at her shoulder. “Where?”

  “Parked at the foot of the drive across the way. Do you see?”

  Karen did, and her heart sank.

  “Linda, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to involve you in all of this. I just had no idea what else to do. They wouldn’t let me go back to the States.”

  Linda turned to face her. “Darling, don’t be ridiculous. This is too exciting. Shall we go out and talk to him?”

  Karen stared at her, aghast. “Linda, these people are dangerous.”

  “So is Colter; you said so yourself. Can you imagine how lonely that poor man must be, sitting out there staring at this house with nothing to do? ”

  Karen shook her head. “Linda, he’s watching me, making sure I say here until Colter does what they want. He’s not looking to make any friends.”

  “You always were a spoilsport,” Linda said huffily. But she left the window as a light tap sounded at the door.

  “Yes?” she called.

  The same maid who had brought the tray came in and said, “Madam is asking for you again, Miss Linda.”

  Linda shot Karen a pained glance.

  “Tell her I’m with my guest and will join her shortly,” Linda replied and waited until the woman had left before adding, “I wondered how long it would take her to send out the second alarm.”

  “I guess she’s not going to take no for an answer.”

  Linda rolled her eyes. “I imagine I had better get in there and show my teeth. You might as well come along.”

  Karen’s eyes widened. “Linda, look at me.”

  Linda studied her dishabille. “Yes, I see your point. Where are your things?”

  “In the car.”

  “Then Stock brought them in.”

  “Stock? His name is Stock?”

  “Do you have anything suitable to wear?” Linda asked, ignoring the commentary.

  “To see your stepmother? Of course not. I have wool slacks and pullovers and you’re wearing that slinky thing.”

  “Then we’ll go upstairs and get you dressed. We can’t have Margaret thinking I dragged you in off the street.”

  They left the study and ascended a central curved staircase to a long hall on the second floor. An Oriental runner covered the washed pine floorboards, and every five feet or so a round window set with colored panes shed streams of filtered light across the opposite wall.

  “Nice little shack you got here, Lin,” Karen commented dryly.

  “Oh, hush,” Linda said. “It’s not mine anyway, belongs to the family trust.”

  “I’m impressed just the same.”

  Linda opened a six-paneled door at the end of the passage. “We’ll see if we can’t find you something in here.”

  “Here” was an entire room that looked like one big closet.

  “What is this?” Karen asked, awed by the racks of clothes, the clear plastic drawers of shoes and hose.

  “My dressing room.”

  “And where’s the bedroom?”

  “Through there.” She pointed to a door in one wall.

  “I can’t believe you left this to live in three rooms on Almeria.”

  “I was happier there,” Linda said, in such a desolate tone that Karen knew she was telling the truth.

  “I can’t choose from so much,” Karen said, overwhelmed.

  “I’ll do it. This suite was my mother’s before she died,” Linda said quietly. “When my father remarried he moved into the other wing with Margaret, and I took these rooms.”

  “Does Margaret have children?” Karen asked.

  Linda shook her head. “Which leaves all of her considerable time free to work on improving me,” she said sourly. “It’s her favorite hobby, next to cultivating her country house roses for the county prize and doing good works for t
he charity bazaars.”

  Karen was staring at one of the racks, obviously not listening. Linda put her arm around the other woman’s shoulders.

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s tough. He’ll get through it in splendid shape.”

  Karen nodded.

  “I’m going to keep you so busy you won’t have a minute to think about it.”

  Karen smiled. That would be busy, indeed.

  Linda found Karen something to wear and then took her to meet the formidable Margaret, a perfectly coiffed and made up glacial blonde who looked as if she emerged, encased in plastic, from a doll box every morning. She barely tolerated Linda, although she was so exquisitely polite and deferential to the younger woman that only Linda’s reaction gave her away. Karen began to see that her presence in the house would provide Linda with a welcome ally, and she felt a little better about descending on her the way she had.

  * * * *

  Linda was as good as her word. For the next three weeks Karen joined in the whirl of social engagements that occupied Linda’s days, and at the end of it she had to dispute the term “idle rich.” These people were rich but they certainly were not idle. They spent most of their time working for charities, as if in expiation for their inherited wealth, and literally exhausted themselves with luncheons and teas and auctions to raise money for everything from the Kensington Orphans’ Home to the British War Veterans. Karen fell into bed at night dead tired and slept, but her first thought upon waking was always of Colter.

  Karen had wired her sister Grace to let her know where she was, but as time went on she began to feel guilty about imposing on Linda’s hospitality. Linda, for her part, said that she wished the present arrangement could continue indefinitely. She had even taken to waving to the watchdog in the car across the street every time they went out of the house. After two weeks, sheepishly, he began to wave back.

  From Colter, and of him, they had heard nothing.

  At 7:30 one evening they were in Linda’s bedroom, dressing for a dinner party that Margaret was hosting. Linda’s father was away on government business but his wife was entertaining some of their friends in his absence. Linda was expected to put in an appearance, and Karen, as usual, had been pressed into service to accompany her.