by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
He showed no spark of anger at her rudeness. His tone of voice just became flatter. “I learned about his death only two days ago. An acquaintance of mine in this area read the newspaper article and notified me. I claimed Anthony’s body yesterday and arranged the cremation.”
“I’m sorry,” Linnet whispered.
Max continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “I came looking for Nola as soon as I could and found her already gone.”
“So you agree with me! She killed them.”
“I don’t believe she did it by her own hand,” he said. The tiger-haired man’s car cut right through a break in traffic. Max whipped into the right lane and followed. “At the same time, I have no doubt she’s responsible.”
Linnet’s heart jumped. She swallowed the acid that welled up in her throat. “The police wouldn’t take me seriously. Oh, they questioned her once, and the detective even gave me two minutes on the phone when I made a follow-up call.” She remembered the man’s patronizingly soothing voice. “He said they were convinced Nola Grant had nothing to do with the crime, so I should stop bugging him about her. Oh, he used more polite language, but that’s what he meant.”
“I’m not surprised she managed to persuade him of her innocence. Why don’t you believe it?”
“Nobody else had a motive. After Deanna broke away from Nola’s gang and moved in with Anthony, they told me they were worried about Nola’s reaction. That’s when Deanna gave me this.” Linnet clutched the ankh with one hand while wiping away the sting of tears with the other. “It was Anthony’s idea. He even said I should watch out for her—Nola—and this would protect me from her.”
“Protect you?” came Max’s sharp response. “He used that word?”
“Yes. Protect me against Nola and anybody like her, he said.”
“Did he emphasize this promise? Look into your eyes and repeat it once or twice?”
And this is important, why? Max’s assurance that he agreed with her suspicions had made Linnet start to trust him, but now she veered back to the idea that he might be slightly deranged. “Well, yeah. That didn’t make much sense, but I figured it proved how worried he was.” She saw no reason to mention the fact that she had only a hazy memory of the whole conversation. She had the impression that Anthony had lectured her at length on the subject, yet she drew a blank trying to recall what he’d said.
“I see.” After a brief silence, he said, “You identified Anthony? Then you witnessed…?”
“Not much, thank heaven.” Her stomach lurched. She breathed deeply until the nausea subsided. “They didn’t make me look at anything except the faces.”
She flashed on a memory of that night at the medical examiner’s office. The frigid room with a hospital smell that barely disguised an earthy odor in the background. The metal drawers lining the wall. She had drawn shallow breaths through her mouth, praying not to vomit or faint. The antiseptic in the air had made her nose and tongue feel numb. A middle-aged black man in a lab coat had pulled out the drawer. Above the folded-back sheet she’d seen Dee’s wax-pale face, the muscles slack in death, so that she had no more expression than a mannequin.
Linnet remembered the attendant gripping her elbow to steady her while she nodded and stammered, “That’s her—Deanna—that’s her.” After he’d slid that drawer into its slot, he’d pulled out the one where Anthony lay and turned down the cover to just below the chin. She hadn’t asked whether the neck under the sheet had been reattached to the torso yet. She had only confirmed the boy’s identity and stumbled out, her own head feeling hardly in contact with the rest of her body.
Now the mental image of Anthony’s lifeless face brought on a surge of faintness. She leaned over to rest her forehead on her knees until the grayness cleared from her vision. When she sat up, Max gave her a quick glance but said nothing.
He ran a yellow light and whipped in and out of holes in traffic where Linnet wouldn’t have suspected the car could fit. She gripped the armrest and swallowed another screech of alarm. Aside from a few blaring horns behind them, though, they continued unscathed, keeping the other car just barely in sight. Shortly it turned off the highway and drove past a shopping center into a maze of residential streets.
“Forgive my curiosity,” said Max, sounding not in the least contrite, “but why are you undertaking this quest? Why not your niece’s parents?”
The faintly sarcastic edge in the word “quest” made her skin prickle with annoyance. She reminded herself that people reacted to grief differently. She should make allowances for the man. “Deanna lived with me for the past two years, ever since she started college. That is, until she moved in with Anthony.”
Max obviously didn’t miss the accusatory tone she couldn’t filter out of that last sentence. “Believe me, I was as unhappy about that situation as you must have been. If those two hadn’t insisted on taking that step, they would probably be alive tonight.”
Since she agreed with that judgment, Linnet didn’t say anything. Instead, she wiped her eyes and breathed deeply to settle her temper. By now she couldn’t see anything of the car ahead except fleeting glimpses of taillights. She could only trust that Max was still tracking the right vehicle through the darkened streets. When she’d reburied her outrage beneath the surface of her mind, she dug her glasses out of the belt pouch and put them on to peer through the windshield. The view didn’t improve.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t lost him,” said Max, as if reading her thoughts.
Linnet settled back and folded her arms, casting a sidelong look at her companion. He drove with both hands tightly clenched on the wheel, occasionally flexing his fingers before returning them to the same white-knuckled grip.
After several minutes of silence, she ventured, “I liked Anthony. Compared to the rest of that crowd, he seemed so normal.”
“Really?” She couldn’t interpret Max’s brief smile.
“Sure, his hair was a little long, but that didn’t bother me. At least it wasn’t two-toned or half shaved off. And as far as I could see, he didn’t have any tattoos or a single pierced body part.”
“No, that wouldn’t have suited him at all.”
“Mainly, he distracted Deanna from Nola. Yeah, in my book your brother was a breath of fresh air.”
A block ahead, the car they were following turned right at a convenience store. Unhurried, Max did the same, maintaining the same cautious distance. Their quarry slowed down to circle the parking lot of a sprawling, one-story apartment complex, divided into six-unit buildings. With no other traffic to provide cover, Max had to drop back almost out of sight. He switched off the headlights again, but this time Linnet didn’t freak out. In the well-illuminated lot, she didn’t worry about having an accident at this low speed.
“In our…family,” he said, “it’s customary to act as mentor to one’s sister’s children. We’re unlike most Americans in that respect, though. How did you get into that situation?”
“I’m eight years younger than Robin—Deanna’s mother. I was more like a big sister than an aunt to Dee. When she graduated from high school, her folks were having such a rough time with her that it made sense to let her move in with me while she went to college. Plus, I live in College Park, not too far from the University of Maryland campus, so she didn’t have to choose between a long commute from Baltimore or paying a bundle for a dorm room.”
“So you took her in.” He slowed the car to a crawl and gestured toward the row of parking spaces just ahead. The tiger-haired boy disembarked from his car and walked, keys in hand, to an end unit, where he ducked inside after a nervous glance over his shoulder. Max sped up and drove around the curve to the back of the complex.
“She was a good kid, really. The rebellious pose was mostly a surface thing to bug her folks. Never gave me any trouble until she got sucked into Nola’s entourage, less than six months ago. That’s when her grades went down the tubes. I suspected drugs but never found any evidence.”
“No, you wouldn�
�t.” Max pulled into a vacant space and cut off the engine. “Nola wouldn’t have let any member of her ‘entourage’ take drugs. She wanted them healthy.”
“For what? Her orgies?” Her stomach churned. That scenario sounded almost as bad as a drug ring.
“Not exactly.” He turned on the dome light. “Now, Linnet, look at me.” He hadn’t addressed her by name before, and the syllables seemed to linger on his tongue as if he were tasting them. His voice sent a shiver through her despite the circumstances.
She automatically obeyed him. For a second she felt dizzy, about to drown in his unblinking gaze. She half-consciously fingered the ankh around her neck, and Max’s face snapped back into focus. “What do we do now?”
“You sit here quietly, while I interrogate that young man.”
Linnet shook her head. “Forget that. I’m sticking with you every step of the way.”
“Damn it, woman, I don’t need you underfoot.” To her surprise, he reached up to stroke her hair with gentle fingertips. She froze. In a softer tone, he said, “Listen to me, please. You will feel much better if you relax and wait here peacefully until I’m finished.”
Yes, maybe she would. She felt worn-out from an afternoon of spying on Nola’s house, followed by an unexpected car chase. She did need to rest, just close her eyes for a minute—
No, I don’t! Was the man trying to hypnotize her? “Not a chance. I didn’t take my life in my hands riding with you so I could wait in the car. We’re going in together. I have as much right to question that guy as you do.”
“It’s a matter of efficiency, not right. I can get answers that you cannot.”
Given how she’d nearly caved in a minute earlier, Linnet almost believed he could. “Well, if we’re talking about efficiency, how do you figure on getting to him? You think he’ll just let a strange man into his house? You’ll have to barge in and maybe attract a lot of attention from the neighbors.”
“Your point?”
“I can probably persuade him to open the door. He won’t feel threatened by a woman, especially when I mention that I’m Deanna’s aunt. And once he lets down his guard, you can come in and do your interrogation thing.” She glared at him. “If he doesn’t spook the moment he sees a man with no shirt right behind me.”
Max leaned back in the driver’s seat, scanning her as if evaluating her fitness as a decoy. “A valid suggestion. You do look fairly harmless.”
Gee, thanks. “Another point—I can still call the cops on you. The authorities wouldn’t take kindly to people snooping around a suspect’s house. I bet you don’t want them interfering with your private investigation, either.”
He let out a clearly exasperated sigh. “Very well, I accept your suggestion. But for hell’s sake, don’t get in my way once my…interrogation begins.” He turned off the dome light and reached into the back seat for a short-sleeved shirt, which he shrugged into and partially buttoned. “Tell me one thing, though. Why do you feel you must do this personally? You aren’t a detective any more than I am.”
“Because it’s my fault.” She inhaled a steadying breath, determined not to get weepy again.
His eyebrows arched. “What is?”
“Deanna’s death. Robin said having her live with me would end up as a disaster, and she was right. I can blame Anthony for not protecting Dee, but I’m the one who didn’t stop her from hanging out with Nola in the first place. I’m the one who let her move in with Anthony, which got her killed.”
“By that logic,” he said, “I ought to blame you for Anthony’s death, as well. Have you heard me say anything of the kind?” He gave her shoulder a quick, firm squeeze. “Now, if your peculiar sense of responsibility compels you to go through with this, pull yourself together. I can’t have an over-emotional, scatterbrained decoy.”
Her mood snapped from depression to annoyance. “My brain’s no more scattered than yours. Let’s get it over with.”
“Yes, let’s discover what really got those two killed.” He got out of the car, took a couple of long strides, then paused for her to catch up.
She scanned the car for a few seconds, noting the color and memorizing the license plate, then hurried after Max. When they came within sight of their target’s apartment, he faded into the shadow of a tall bush. “Go ahead,” he whispered almost inaudibly. “Once you’re inside, make sure he doesn’t lock the door again. I’ll come in immediately after you.”
Linnet walked up to the front stoop feeling less confident than she had when arguing with her exasperating coconspirator. She would probably squeak like a mouse when she tried to spin some plausible excuse for her visit. But she wasn’t about to back down after making bold noises to Max. No doorbell. She knocked.
The door opened to the length of the chain. The young man peered through the crack. “Yeah?”
Might as well state her mission straight-out, before he got impatient and slammed the door in her face. “Can I please talk to you for a few minutes? I’m Linnet Carroll.”
He didn’t look hostile, but he didn’t relax, either. “Should I know you?”
“I’m Deanna’s aunt.”
“Oh, my God.”
“You knew her, didn’t you? Please let me in.” Somehow she kept her voice from shaking, even though her pulse was racing.
“What do you think I can—Okay, all right, come on.” His hand trembled as he unhooked the chain. Now that she saw him up close, she noticed a tattoo of some kind of bird on his forearm.
She slipped inside, watching his face as she said, “I have so many questions. I just need to talk to one of Deanna’s friends.”
He flushed. “I didn’t know her that well. We hung with the same crowd, that’s all.”
“Nola Grant’s crowd, right? I went to her house, but it was empty.”
“Yeah. We haven’t gotten together since…” His voice trailed off with a stammer that sounded almost guilty. For what, Linnet wondered? Failing to warn Deanna against Nola—or something worse?
Hovering near the door in case he suddenly remembered he hadn’t refastened the chain, she surveyed the living room. An entertainment center covered an entire wall, with a couch that looked like a garage-sale bargain on the opposite wall. A leather jacket lay on the floor, and newspapers spilled off the edge of the couch. A full ashtray on the scarred coffee table accounted for the smoke in the air. “Since Dee and Anthony died?” The man flinched at the question. Linnet decided to go on the offensive. “Can you think of any reason why Nola would murder them?”
He backed away as if she’d aimed a gun at him. “Nola didn’t do it.”
“Then who did?”
The door behind her swung open. Linnet jumped. In the heat of the conversation, she’d forgotten about Max lurking outside. He darted around her so fast her head spun, grabbed the young man and shoved him onto the couch. “Linnet, lock the door,” he growled without looking at her.
Shaking, she fumbled for the doorknob, closed and locked the door, and hooked the chain. The man didn’t even try to fight off Max. Instead, he gibbered incoherent phrases that conveyed nothing but terror.
“Shut up.” At Max’s quiet command, the man fell silent. “You will be quiet and listen. You will not speak or move unless I order you to. Is that clear?” The man nodded. Though he was slumped with his arms limp at his sides, his eyes stayed wide-open. “Good. Now sit still.”
Linnet couldn’t help retreating a step when Max walked over to her. “You hypnotized him somehow.” She’d never heard of any form of hypnosis that worked so fast, with no soothing chants or shiny focal objects.
“More or less.” His hands skimmed up her bare arms to settle on her shoulders.
Recalling the vertigo that swept over her each time his eyes captured hers, she said, “You tried to do the same to me. But you can’t.”
“So I’ve concluded. Very intriguing.” One of his hands crept from her shoulder to her neck. His cool fingers on the flushed skin made her shiver. “But I don’t want y
ou to hear my conversation with our host, so—”
She felt pressure on the side of her neck. Gray spots clustered before her eyes. He’s strangling me! The gray thickened to black. With a sensation like a rapid fall in an elevator, she tumbled into the blackness.
Voices murmured like wavelets on a beach. Queasy and light-headed, Linnet strained until the words came into focus, like a radio being tuned.
“Don’t fight me. You know it only causes pain.” Max’s voice. “There, that’s much better. Now, I ask again. What is your name?”
The voices sounded distant, barely distinguishable. Linnet kept her eyes closed, both to hold nausea at bay and to avoid letting Max know she’d awakened. She was lying on what felt like rumpled sheets. The odor of stale sweat permeated the air. She felt no bruises. So Max had set her down easily, instead of just knocking her out.
Pins and needles prickled the arm tucked under her body. She shifted position to ease the numbness. Opening her eyes, she discovered she was on an unmade bed. The small room was littered with magazines, CD cases and dirty clothes. A couple of drawers in the bureau gaped open, and a half-packed suitcase took up part of the bed. On the opposite wall a garish poster from some Japanese horror movie hit Linnet between the eyes.
She pulled herself to her feet, tiptoed to the closed door and pushed it open a crack to hear the conversation more clearly.
Max repeated, “Your name?”
A second voice mumbled, “Falcon.”
In a tone between a purr and a snarl, Max said, “Your real name.”
“Okay! Fred Pulaski. Just don’t hurt me.”
“Answer my questions peacefully and you’ll feel no discomfort at all. Fred, tell me about your relationship with Nola Grant. Did you nourish her?”
“Yeah. It was…” His voice trailed off.
“Did she enter your mind?”
Linnet’s head buzzed with confusion. She wondered whether she’d heard him right.