Time Without End

by Miller, Linda Lael

  "Jillie Fairfield," O'Halloran answered, consulting his notes. "She was nineteen and worked with that hotshot magician over at the Venetian. What's his name—?" He began flipping pages.

  "Valerian," Daisy said, feeling jolted.

  "Yeah," O'Halloran agreed, tapping his pocket-sized notepad with the end of his stubby pencil. "That's him. You ever catch his show?"

  "Last night," Daisy managed.

  "I've heard it's really something. According to the papers, there are magicians flying in from all over the world just to see the act and try to figure out how he pulls it off. And he won't let anybody take his picture, either."

  "He's good, all right," Daisy said, glancing at the body again. She remembered the dancers coming out of the coach while it was suspended in midair, then sitting underneath, smiling and posing. She wondered if Jillie had been the one who'd brought out the umbrella and gotten a chuckle from the audience. Even to Daisy's trained eye, the performers had looked very much alike.

  The older cop led the way toward the gaping front door of the apartment, and Daisy went along gratefully. She'd never gotten used to the smell of death, or the clammy feeling it gave her.

  "You look a little peaked," O'Halloran remarked. "You have a bad night?"

  She drew in a deep draft of desert air as they descended the wooden stairs outside. The Las Vegas sun was bright, and for Daisy it dispelled some of the chill that had settled into her spirit. "Me? I never have a bad night, O'Halloran," she said with a manufactured smile. "And I never get PMS, either. What's your take on this? What happened to the Fairfield woman?"

  O'Halloran shrugged. "I don't know. The coroner will fill us in, though." He paused beside his car, a battered sixty-seven Mustang on its fourth engine, and scratched the back of his head. "This one's different, I can tell you that much. There ought to be blood, and we didn't find a drop. No blow to the head, no visible wounds except for those punctures on her throat. You'd better haul it over to the Venetian and see if you can track down that magician character. See what he can tell you."

  Daisy had hoped to encounter Valerian again, though certainly not under those circumstances. "I'm off to see the wizard," she said, heading for her own car, a sporty blue convertible. "Meet you back at the office later."

  When Daisy reached the Venetian, Las Vegas's newest and most elaborate hotel-casino, she left her car in the outer lot and stood looking at the place for a few moments, marveling. It was a spectacle in and of itself, bigger and gaudier than the Mirage or Excalibur or even Caesar's, an elegant palace with pillars and fountains. There was a maze of canals in front, traversed by sleek gondolas with costumed attendants.

  With a shake of her head Daisy went to the quay and allowed herself to be helped into one of the boats, along with several tourists. Sunlight flashed on the water, dazzling her, and she slipped on her sunglasses, turning her thoughts from the conspicuous consumption that surrounded her to the magician.

  Her first reaction, when she'd learned of Valerian's connection with the dead woman, had been to wonder if he'd had something to do with Jillie Fairfield's death. In cases like this one, the murderer often turned out to be someone the victim had known fairly well.

  The gondola coursed along the narrow channels, making its way toward the hotel entrance, and Daisy propped her elbow on her blue-jeaned knee and rested her chin in her palm. If Valerian hadn't killed Jillie, and there was no reason to believe he had, he probably wouldn't have heard about her death yet.

  Daisy hated being the one to break news like that. She and O'Halloran usually alternated, and when they couldn't remember whose turn it was, they flipped a coin.

  Daisy murmured a curse as the gondola struck the dock in front of the hotel. It was O'Halloran's turn, damn it. She'd told a woman, just two days before, that her fifteen-year-old son had been shot in a gang fight.

  Inside the hotel was a massive casino, filled with noisy slot machines, blackjack tables, and other accoutrements of gambling. The light was dim, the temperature pleasantly cool. Cigarette smoke made simple breathing a game of chance.

  Daisy hurried through, toward the nearest bank of elevators. She hated casinos; they reminded her of when she was a kid. Her divorced mother, Jeanine, had been a cocktail waitress, and every once in a while she'd gotten the gambling bug. When that happened, Jeanine either left Daisy and her younger sister, Nadine, to fend for themselves, often for days at a time, or dragged them along with her. In some ways, that was worse, because Jeanine would either park them on the curb with a hamburger and a bag of french fries to share, or point out the pinball room and order them to stay there until she came back. Only later did she allow the girls to stay with their grandmother for a short time before wrenching them away again.

  Snap out of it, Daisy scolded herself as she stepped into a sumptuously appointed elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. The business offices were there, along with a number of conference rooms and hospitality suites.

  The receptionist looked Daisy over coolly when she asked where to find the magician. The main entrance to the theater would be locked at that hour, and there were probably big guys posted outside the stage doors.

  "You a fan?" the girl asked. Her name tag read "Tiffany."

  Daisy wondered how Tiffany could see, since her false eyelashes were the size of whisk brooms. In answer to the girl's question, she pulled her badge out of her handbag and showed it with the appropriate flourish. "Where do I find him?"

  Tiffany tapped acrylic nails on the surface of the desk while she thought. From the looks of her, that was no small accomplishment, but a feat involving many wires and gears. "How should I know?"

  Daisy braced her hands against the desk's edge and leaned in close. "Look it up," she said evenly.

  The receptionist flushed, and her plump lips, no doubt pumped full of collagen, quivered. She left her desk, disappearing into a nearby office, and returned a few moments later, looking resolute.

  "We're not supposed to tell," she announced.

  "Do I have to get a warrant?" Daisy muttered.

  Tiffany vanished again, and when she came back, she brought a man in a three-piece suit. He smiled and offered a manicured hand.

  "My name is Jerry Grover," he said. "I'm the assistant manager. And you're Officer—"

  "Daisy Chandler," Daisy said. "Look, I don't see why this has to be a big deal, Mr. Grover. I want to talk to your headliner—" She pretended that the name had slipped her mind for a moment. "Valerian. It's police business, and it's important."

  Grover smiled sleekly. He reminded Daisy a little of a lithe, vicious fish, gliding smoothly through his environment, hunting weaker prey. "If you'll just step into my office, Ms. Chandler…"

  Daisy shrugged and followed him. Jillie Fairfield had had a connection with the hotel, although she'd been employed by the magician. She might as well clue management in before somebody saw it on the news.

  Tiffany gave her another haughty once-over as she passed. A look was nothing to Daisy—the names gang members, streetwalkers, and other misguided souls had called her had hardened her sensibilities a little.

  "We found a body this morning," Daisy said without preamble when she and Grover were inside his office. Apparently the casino brass believed in looking after middle management—the desktop was black marble, and the view from the wall of windows at the opposite end of the room was panoramic. The carpet swallowed up the lower half of Daisy's purple Keds. "The victim was identified as Ms. Jillie Fairfield. She was one of the dancers in the magic show."

  To his credit, Grover paled and sagged bonelessly into the leather chair behind his desk. He recovered quickly, though, and gestured for Daisy to take a seat. "Damn," he said. "What happened?"

  Daisy settled herself in the cushy leather chair she'd just pulled up. "We're not sure," she admitted readily, but she had no intention of discussing the details. "Ms. Fairfield was a hotel employee before signing on with Valerian, wasn't she?"

  A thin sheen of p
erspiration appeared on Grover's upper lip. "I wouldn't know that, Ms. Chandler, without checking further. We employ a great many people, and as you probably realize, the Venetian hasn't been open all that long. In either case, the publicity won't be good for the Venetian, will it? Any hint of crime or scandal can be devastating financially…"

  Daisy felt the old impatience surface inside her. A woman was dead, damn it. Jillie Fairfield was never going to dance or laugh or make love again; somebody had put her out like a candle. And all Grover was worried about was the publicity.

  "You didn't meet Ms. Fairfield personally, then? Ever?" she asked in a taut voice.

  "No," Grover answered quickly, flushing. "And I don't know the magician, either. He's an eccentric—in fact, he gives new meaning to the word weird."

  Daisy leaned forward, intrigued. "In what way?"

  Grover spread his hands, clearly flustered. "There are rumors, that's all. It's probably just a lot of hype, to bring people in to see his shows…"

  "What rumors?" Daisy pressed. There it was again, that odd quivering in the pit of her stomach; her own instincts were telling her, as they had the night before, after the show, that there was something very strange about Valerian. Something far beyond the ordinary mystique of a magician.

  "Well, he won't come out in the daylight, for one thing. And for another, he refuses to be photographed—ask our publicity people if you don't believe me."

  Daisy thought of the program she'd brought. The text was accompanied by drawings and paintings, but there had been no photographs.

  "I believe you," she said, wondering if she should go and get Grover a glass of water or a paper bag to breathe into. He looked really upset.

  Grover wrenched a wad of tissues from a box in the top drawer of his fancy desk and daubed at his face with them. "Murder," he muttered to himself. "Oh, Christ—"

  Daisy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Is there anything else?"

  "Yes," Grover burst out, after a moment of consideration. "Even the people closest to Valerian have no idea how he performs his tricks. He has never revealed even the smallest detail."

  Daisy was irritated and not a little disappointed. "Of course he doesn't. He's a magician—everyone knows how carefully they guard their secrets." She stood. "If you'll just give me Valerian's home address," she said, nodding toward Graver's computer, ''I'll be on my way."

  "We don't have one," Grover said.

  "What about a Social Security number?" Daisy pressed.

  Grover spread his hands again. "Too personal. I don't have to give that out unless you can show me a warrant."

  Daisy bit back a nasty remark. Grover was right. "At least get one of your security people to let me into the backstage area, then," she said. Maybe Valerian was in his dressing room meditating or practicing his levitation or something like that. Or perhaps he was onstage, rehearsing.

  "All right," Grover agreed at length and with the utmost reluctance. "Come on. I'll let you in myself."

  Valerian

  Dunnett's Head, 1348

  Today, I thought when I felt a shred of cold sunlight touch my face, I am going to die. I was in such pain, both physical and emotional, that I could not help thinking death would be a mercy.

  Then Brenna stirred beside me, in the stale straw, and I remembered all that had transpired the night before, with rising horror as well as desperate love. She had come to me, washed my wounds, and finally lain with me.

  We had both been virgins, and for me at least, the experience had been one of almost unbearable bliss. Before Brenna, I had known only the usual furtive satisfactions a lad discovers on his own. Now, having entered her sweet body, moved upon her supple softness in that ancient rhythm, and cried out as she rendered my seed from me, I was a man. And I was more aware than ever that life is precious, poignantly so.

  "Valerian?" She raised herself, rumpled and mussed, her lovely hair filled with straw. That same skimpy light that had awakened me, infiltrating that dark hole through some chink in the dungeon wall, played over her face. "I love you. And if you die today, you must wait for me on the other side. I'll soon follow."

  I felt tears fill my eyes. The pain of my wounds was nothing to that of loving her, of knowing that an irrevocable parting lay ahead. I cupped her face in my hand, and brushed the pad of my thumb over the lips I had kissed so thoroughly, so hungrily, during the night.

  "No, Lady Brenna," I said hoarsely. "You must live."

  She shook her head wildly, but I stilled the motion with my hand.

  "Listen to me," I growled as we heard an outer door opening, far off in the distance. We both knew that the day had arrived, they were coming for me, and I would soon mount the scaffold. "You must hide, over there in the shadows, until they've taken me out. Don't move until you're certain they've all gone. Return to your chambers when you think it safe, make yourself pretty, and pretend you've never heard of the bootmaker's son—"

  She was sobbing by then, incapable, I think, of responding.

  "I will find a way to be with you," I vowed, and I meant it with all my youthful soul. "I will curl up in a corner of your heart, and all you'll have to do to find me is turn your thoughts inward. Please, Brenna. Give me this one gift—a living heart to hide in."

  Brenna was silent, and the voices grew nearer. Finally she nodded and hid herself in a pile of straw, off in a corner of the cell.

  Two of the baron's men arrived to collect me only a moment later. They were murmuring to each other in fearful tones, and I could not make out what they were saying.

  Finally they reached the cell door.

  "Come along, then, bootmaker's son," said Tom, the largest of the two. He'd often come to my father's shop; they'd been friends, in a manner of speaking, and Tom, like the rest of the men in the village, had enjoyed watching my mother as she went about her daily tasks.

  "The baron says you're to be set free. Or at least that's what his manservant told us he said."

  Brenna moved, rustling the straw slightly, but I made a surreptitious gesturing, bidding her to be silent. There would be no freedom, and no mercy, for either of us if her father learned what we had done, lying together in the straw.

  I stood, painfully, for though my wounds were superficial, they burned like fire. I felt as if I'd been trampled by war horses and then set ablaze, but beneath it all was a thrumming sense of satiation. Brenna had done that with her lovemaking.

  "If this is a jest," I said, "it is a cruel one."

  Tom opened the cell door, never noticing, it would seem, that the lock wasn't engaged. "It's no jest," he replied. "The baron fell ill two hours ago. Black as a Moor and spewing blood, he is. And there are others, too."

  I shivered, despite the wild relief I felt. "What others?"

  "Your mother for one," Tom said. "You'd best go home and look after your family. Both Noah and Seraphina are both off their heads with fever, according to that brother of yours."

  Alarm mingled with the ineffably sweet knowledge that I was going to live. I would find a way to be with Brenna forever—after the events of the night before, we were certainly bonded, in God's eyes as well as our own hearts—and we would both put Dunnett's Head behind us.

  In the meantime, though, I had to go to my parents.

  I made my way back to the shop as rapidly as I could, while the sunrise spilled a golden glow to light my way. The village was unnaturally quiet, even for such an early hour, and rife with a hideously putrid stench. There were no dogs barking in the streets, no housewives throwing pots of slop from windows and doorways, no fishermen going down to the sea.

  It was eerie.

  When I reached the shop, I entered by the back way, peering first into the little room Krispin and I had always shared. I had never expected to see it again, and, humble as it was, my heart lifted at the sight of my pallet, my blankets, my spare tunic and leggings.

  There was no sign of my brother, so I went on to my parents' chamber. It was a squalid cell, barely larger t
han the one Krispin and I shared, and when I stepped over the threshold I was struck by a smell so much viler than the one pervading the village that it sent me stumbling backward a few steps.

  "Mother?" I said, speaking to the shadows.

  I heard a moan from within, and knew it for my father's cry, not my mother's. I squared my shoulders and forced myself to take a step inside. "Father?"

  "No—" he said hoarsely. "Don't—come any closer. We—it's plague. Save yourself. Save—Krispin."

  Yet again I wept. And for once in my life I obeyed Noah Lazarus, the bootmaker. "What of my mother?"

  "Dead," my father answered. "For your own sake, and hers, you must not look upon her. Please. Flee this—place—"

  I turned, unable to bear the stink any longer. My father could not be saved; I knew that. I would find Krispin, if I could, and Brenna, I decided, groping numbly through a welter of disjointed thoughts. We would take horses from the baron's stables and ride away to a new place—London, perhaps.

  I stumbled back into the street and encountered Mistress Jane, the cooper's wife. Her face was contorted with grief. "God have mercy on us!" she cried, seeing me and, at the same time, not seeing me. "My Will, and my babies—all dead—"

  I wanted to offer the poor woman some comfort, but there was nothing I could say that would alter the grim realities in any way. I took her shoulders gently in my hands. "Have you seen my brother?" I asked.

  She looked at me without recognition. "All dead," she said again. "Little Mary, and Sam, and my Will, too. All dead, with their skin all black—"

  I embraced her for a moment, on impulse, and went on.

  All through the village, it was the same. Death raged in every hut and croft, and among the living there was naught but chaos. I didn't find Krispin, though I searched everywhere, and once I stopped, enthralled, to watch two rats rise onto their hind legs in the path and twirl, in a horrible and graceless pirouette, before toppling over in death. Blood spilled, thick, from their muzzles.