“Started with what?” she murmurs, feeling her body sway. It’s so tempting to let herself sink back down to the floor again, to give in to the gauzy darkness that keeps trying to edge its way back to her.
“Started with what? The wedding, of course! What did you think?” His voice floats above her somewhere.
“Do you like the dress?” he goes on. “I had it made especially for you—remembered that you’re a perfect size five. I should remember. . . . I bought you so many lovely clothes. Do you remember?”
She’s vaguely aware of being lifted further. “Stand, damn it. Stand up. I can’t just hang around here and hold you, you know.”
It’s as if some other part of Liza takes over, and her aching legs automatically lock into place so that she finds herself standing on her own.
Still, she can’t grasp what’s going on.
Suddenly, she hears the sound of music playing. It fills her ears, some old love song that seems faintly familiar . . .
What the hell is going on, here?
She turns her head and sees him beside her, his face only inches from hers.
“What are you doing? And—who are you?” she whispers, searching her memory for his face and coming up with a blank.
He looks pleased. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“No, I . . .” Her voice trails off as she feels herself swaying, about to go down. But somehow, she manages to fight the impulse, wins another few moments—she hopes—of consciousness.
“It’s me,” he announces gleefully, his face twisted into a distorted grin. “Stephen!”
“Stephen?” she repeats fuzzily, trying to remember.
“Stephen Gilbrooke,” he elaborates.
“Stephen Gilbrooke . . .”
He waits.
She searches her memory desperately.
Stephen Gilbrooke?
There have been so many men. No way she can remember all of them, the ones she used and then casually discarded like used Kleenex . . .
Oh, why hadn’t she been more careful? Why hadn’t she realized that it would catch up to her someday?
“Stephen Gilbrooke,” he says again, this time more harshly. “You do remember me, Liza . . .”
She shakes her head faintly, still trying to recall the name, the face . . .
Suddenly, he’s grabbing her shoulders roughly, shaking her so that her body screams in pain.
“Stephen Gilbrooke,” he keeps repeating.
“I remember you,” she blurts finally, trying desperately to remain alert, though she’s fading fast.
“You do?”
“Of course . . .”
It’s a lie. She has no idea who he is. She’s never been good with names, and the face is totally unfamiliar. . . .
So many men, she thinks vaguely again. Too many men. . . . Which one is he?
“Who am I, then?”
A shred of panic rises in her weary, tormented body, a fearful response to something ominous in his sharp command.
“You’re . . . Stephen.”
“Where did we meet?”
“New York,” she guesses weakly, watching him through heavy-lidded eyes.
For a split-second, he seems appeased. Then his gaze narrows and he says, “Where?”
“Manhattan . . .”
“But where? Tell me, Liza. Right now. If you really know who I am, tell me where we met!”
“I—I don’t know!” Her voice is a whimper.
He slaps her, hard, across the face, and she starts to crumple; but he’s grabbing her, forcing her to keep standing.
“You don’t know me! After everything I gave you, everything we did together, you don’t know me?”
She can only shake her head mutely, too frightened to lie to him again.
The stranger’s face is contorted by rage now, his grip on her shoulders a deadly vise from which she can’t escape.
“You never cared for me at all, did you? You never loved me, after all I did for you. I gave you everything your heart desired but you never loved me, Lorraine.”
Lorraine? Who’s Lorraine?
Oh, Christ, who is this lunatic? What is he going to do?
“I’m not Lorraine,” she protests weakly as he releases his right hand from her shoulder.
For a moment, she believes he’s going to let her go.
But then, paralyzed with terror, Liza watches as he reaches inside his coat, his movements slow and almost mechanical. His blue eyes are still focused on her veiled face, but they suddenly seem void of recognition.
“You don’t want to marry me, do you?” he says in a faraway voice, and it isn’t really a question.
“Yes,” Liza says anyway, hoping desperately to divert him. “Yes, I want to marry you . . . Stephen.”
“Why?” He’s removing something from his jacket.
She sees that it’s a butcher knife.
He looks at it intently, strokes the handle almost lovingly.
Trembling all over, she battles to keep the sob out of her voice as she answers, “Because I love you, Stephen. I’ve always loved you. I always will. Marry me, Stephen.”
For a moment, he looks soothed by her words.
But when he raises his gaze to her again, he frowns and looks startled.
“No!” he barks abruptly, brandishing the knife. “You’re not Lorraine, and you don’t want to marry me. You don’t even remember me, Liza.”
“Yes I do,” she cries plaintively. “I remember you, Stephen. And I love you. Please don’t—”
Even though she sees the knife slashing through the air toward her, she’s stunned to hear her own voice suddenly dissolve into a bloody gurgle as the unmercifully sharp blade slices into her throat.
“Don’t lie to me,” he shouts as he brings the knife up, then jabs it into her again, this time catching her across her wrist as she brings her hand up to shield her face. Blood spurts like a fountain as her vein is severed; and she falls, bewildered, to the floor.
As the frenzied stranger continues to stab her, Liza’s mind screams Why? Why? Why? in a chilling refrain until black silence swoops over her like a shroud.
Chapter 14
Jasper paces the tiny first-floor bedroom, wishing Stephen would hurry up and get back here so that he can tell him what happened.
He can’t risk calling the emergency phone number again.
Not after what happened last time.
Not when Stephen is right in the middle of . . .
Well, taking care of Liza Danning.
And the blond bitch deserves everything she gets, Jasper tells himself, remembering how she had spoken to him, how she had looked at him as though he were a mere speck of dirt.
It was all he could do, the entire time Liza Danning was staying here, to treat her as a guest . . .
To keep from informing her that he, Arnold—no, Jasper Hammel—is the person Stephen Gilbrooke has chosen to spend the rest of his life with. Not Liza . . .
Or Sandy.
Or Laura.
Or Lorraine.
Frowning, Jasper runs his hands over his neatly trimmed hair and tells himself that everything will work out fine.
Despite the fact that the plan isn’t going as smoothly as he and Stephen had expected.
He thinks again about the phone call for Laura Towne. He isn’t sure what, exactly, her sister had started to tell her, but it doesn’t matter, not really.
A bolt of lightning had miraculously intercepted the call.
And if that isn’t a sign that everything will be all right, Jasper tells himself reassuringly, I don’t know what is.
All he has to do now is keep an eye on Laura to make sure she doesn’t get any ideas about leaving again . . .
And wait.
Wait for Stephen to come back to the inn.
Then wait for him to leave again, with Laura.
Then wait for him to come back a final time, for Jasper . . .
And then we’ll sail away together, Jasper tells hi
mself contentedly. Just as Stephen promised—just the two of us, forever and ever.
But somehow, his image of bliss is marred by an elusive, but nonetheless disconcerting sensation that keeps flitting through his mind . . .
The nebulous notion that maybe everything isn’t as it should be.
That maybe things are about to go horribly irrevocably, wrong.
And when the doorbell rings suddenly and shrilly a moment later, the thought lands with a dull thud.
His fury spent once again, Stephen stoops down and slowly pulls the knife out of the heap of red-stained, white-covered flesh at his feet.
Liza Danning will never look at me again with that superior smile and smug green gaze of hers.
The knowledge should leave him with some degree of satisfaction, but Stephen feels oddly unsettled.
She didn’t remember you, he thinks incredulously and gives the bloodied corpse a frustrated kick with the toe of his black wing-tip shoe.
How could she have forgotten?
Had he meant that little to her?
Of course he had. He had known all along that she’d never cared about him, only about his money and the things that it could buy for her.
But never had he imagined that she would forget he had ever existed. That to her, he wasn’t even worthy of a tiny, distant corner of her memory. He had been invisible to her even when they were together; and after their affair had ended, she had simply wiped her mind clean of any remnants of Stephen Gilbrooke.
“Bitch,” he mutters, and kicks her again, noticing the pool of blood that’s seeping at his feet.
He ought to get Jasper over here and make him clean up the mess, he thinks, distastefully eyeing the gore he’s created. After all, he might as well put the simpering pain in the ass to some good use, instead of letting him sit back at the inn, twiddling his thumbs.
But no, that would be impossible. There isn’t time. Not when there’s a chance that that dolt of a police officer might get suspicious and come back snooping around here.
Stephen would rather not have to raise the body count even higher. It would be so . . . messy.
And besides, when he’s made a plan, he likes to stick to it.
It’s bad enough that he can’t wait until tomorrow to take care of Laura Towne, as he had originally intended.
Oh, well.
Reaching into his pocket again, he thoughtfully takes out the blank rectangular place card and black-handled pen he’d brought along with him. He crouches beside Liza’s lifeless body and dips the tip carefully into the thick pool of blood then begins to letter her name in swirling calligraphy.
He’s almost free . . . almost to the point where he can banish, forever, the demons that have been tormenting him for so long.
Just a few more things to take care of, and he’ll be home free . . .
Sailing off into the proverbial sunset toward a glorious future . . . alone.
Sherm rings the doorbell again, thinking that it seems strange that the door of an inn would be locked, when suddenly, a face appears in the glass, startling him.
Even through the ice-encrusted window, he recognizes the man, having seen him around the island lately. Must be Jasper Hammel, he thinks as the door swings open.
Sherm doffs his hat and pastes an affable smile on his face. “Good afternoon,” he says pleasantly above the roar of the wind. “You the fellow who runs the place?”
“I’m Jasper Hammel, yes,” the man says, offering his hand, but making no move to gesture him inside.
“Sherm Crandall—I’m chief of police here on the island. We spoke earlier.” Sherm grasps the man’s fingers in a firm handshake and notes that they’re clammy.
Well, it’s a raw, chilly day. That could be all it is.
On the other hand . . .
“Just thought I’d drop by,” Sherm goes on, stepping past the innkeeper into the foyer of the inn, “to check things out.”
He turns and glimpses a startled expression in Hammel’s eyes; but it vanishes quickly, and the man seems composed as he smiles and says, “Of course. Please come in.”
“I’m already in,” Sherm notes.
“Yes, you are, aren’t you?” Hammel closes the door, shutting out the blasting storm, and turns to Sherm expectantly.
“Nice,” he comments, looking around the foyer, his sharp eyes taking in the fussy antique furniture and globed lamps. On the check-in desk is a basket of magazines, a telephone, a tall vase filled with dried flowers, and a bowl of pink shredded things that look and smell like potpourri. Carly always loved that stuff.
“Is there anything in particular that I can help you with?” Hammel asks in a clipped tone, watching Sherm cautiously sniff the cinnamony contents of the bowl. “As I said earlier, I’m afraid I’ve told you everything I know about that woman . . . Sandy, isn’t it?”
“Yep, it is.” Sherm wonders if it’s his imagination or if Hammel seems edgy as he moves across the small room and takes up a post behind the desk.
“I wish I could tell you something more . . .”
“That’s all right. I’m actually not here on business,” Sherm lies. “Thought I’d check the place out, see what it’s like. I’ve got some relatives coming to the island soon, and I need to find someplace for them to stay.”
“Oh, we’d love to have them.”
Is that relief spreading over the man’s face above his neatly trimmed mustache, or merely a cordial response to a business deal?
“Are you pretty booked for the upcoming months?” Sherm asks.
“Oh, no, we have plenty of availability.”
“How about this weekend?”
“This weekend? I thought they weren’t coming until—”
“No, I mean how booked are you this weekend?”
“Why do you ask?” This time, there’s no mistaking the look in Hammel’s eyes. He’s definitely on guard.
“Just curious,” Sherm says casually, yet focusing intently on the man’s face. “How many guests do you have staying here?”
“This weekend? Well, I don’t know off the top of my head . . .”
Sherm raises an eyebrow.
The place isn’t that enormous. He doesn’t say it, but the pointed look on his face gets the message across to Hammel, who smiles nervously back.
“I guess . . . Let’s see, there’s Sandy Cavelli, but she left, as you know. And . . . oh, yes, there’s Miss Laura Towne . . .”
The Boston brunette with the Liz Taylor eyes, Sherm wonders, or the blond bitch?
“And,” Jasper finishes, “that’s about it.”
“That’s it?” Sherm keeps his expression carefully neutral, though his mind is racing.
That can’t be it.
Even if Ned Hartigan was mistaken about the blonde staying here, what about that LaCroix fellow Sherm had spoken to out at the old Gilbrooke place?
Jasper Hammel is thrumming his fingertips on the desktop.
Somebody’s lying, Sherm thinks, but who?
Judging by the innkeeper’s actions, he’s hiding something. But why?
Sandy Cavelli’s disappearance is looking more suspicious by the second.
“Officer . . .” Hammel says after another moment of silence.
“Oh, sorry—I wonder if I could look at a few of the rooms? Just to see if it’s what I have in mind for my sister. She’s pretty fussy. You know women,” he throws in, adopting a good-old-boy attitude.
Hammel does his best to rise to it, nodding and agreeing, “Certainly. I know women.”
I’ll just bet you do.
“So how about it?”
“The rooms?”
Sherm nods, thinking that the guy can’t possibly worm out of this one. He just finished saying that there are only two guests at the inn this weekend, and one of them has already checked out.
“I . . . of course. I’d be happy to show you,” the man says abruptly, as though he’s just reached a decision. “Just let me find the keys . . .”
�
��No problem.”
Just as Hammel starts digging through a drawer, there’s a distinct creaking noise above. Footsteps.
Sherm turns to look toward the stairs, wondering if the woman from Boston is about to make an appearance.
He’d like to ask her—
The thought is cut short by a swift and sudden blow to the back of his head.
Stunned, Sherm sinks to his knees and looks up to see a blurry image of Jasper Hammel holding the heavy crystal vase of dried flowers.
As the police chief opens his mouth weakly in futile protest, Hammel brings it down again, obliterating Sherm’s senses with the brutal impact.
Jennie pauses with her hand on the doorknob, frowning.
She just heard a thud from the foyer downstairs, as though something heavy has toppled onto the floor.
She stays absolutely still, listening for the voices to resume their conversation, but there’s only silence.
Oh, God . . . something happened to the police officer. What did Hammel do to him?
She had been napping on her bed when she’d awakened to hear muffled voices floating up from below. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. Though one voice was a deep, unfamiliar rumble, she easily recognized that the other belonged to Jasper Hammel.
After trying to make out the conversation, she had gotten up and looked out the window that faced the front of the inn. A police car was parked there.
Jennie had been both elated and frightened.
If the cops were here, did it mean Jasper really was up to something? And if so, had something terrible happened to Sandy and Liza?
She was about to go downstairs and see what was going on when the thud had stopped her cold.
Now, she wonders, with a sinking feeling, what’s going on down there. She hears a faint groan—Jasper again—and then the sound of something being dragged across the floor toward the back of the house.
He’s killed the cop, and now he’s taking the body away.
What should I do?
Run for it?
Jennie considers that option, and discards it.
The inn is virtually in the middle of nowhere, and there’s a storm raging outside. Even if Hammel didn’t hear her leaving, where would she go?
She could take the chance that she’d find someone in one of the few houses between here and the boardwalk, but what would she tell them?
Dearly Beloved Page 26