See No Evil

by Morgan Hayes

  But he needed to see her.

  Gazing at the dark building, Allister wondered if the drive had been for nothing. Still, he’d come all this way, he thought, tugging at the car’s door handle and shoving it open to the numbingly cold night. The least he could do was try. And if she was home, he just might get the answers he needed.

  In seconds he was across the street and knocking at the door. He cupped his bare hands over his breath to warm them as he stamped the snow from his boots. It was a good minute before he knocked again, and this time he was rewarded by the sound of movement on the other side of the door.

  There was a heavy thump, followed by a muffled curse, and in another second he recognized Stevie’s voice asking, “Who is it?”

  “Stevie? It’s Allister Quaid.”

  He heard the scrape of metal against metal, followed by the slap of a door chain and finally the thud of the dead bolt.

  “Allister?” With one hand on the door handle, Stevie used her free arm to hug herself against the cold. She wore a large faded NYU sweatshirt over a pair of gray tights, and in a sudden burst of snow-laden air, she shivered.

  “Hi, Stevie. Look, I’m sorry it’s late—”

  “No, not at all, Allister.” She smiled. “It’s not late. Come in. I’ve just made a fresh pot of coffee. At least, I think I did. Smells like it, anyway, if you’d like some.”

  “Sounds great,” he said, and stepped into the darkness of the front hall. He unzipped his leather bomber as he watched her fumble with the door chain and turn the dead bolt.

  “I was just in the area,” he lied, wondering if he sounded at all convincing, “making a delivery. So I thought I’d drop off your light meter. You left it at the warehouse.”

  “Oh, thanks.” In the liquid neon glow of the sign in the window, Allister saw her stretch out one hand. When he put the small instrument into her palm, delicate fingers closed around it.

  “Actually I didn’t think you were home. The lights are all off.”

  “They are? Sorry about that.” She reached for a bank of switches next to the door, and the studio’s entrance flooded with light from strategically placed halogens. “Afraid I hadn’t noticed. And Paige has been locked away in the darkroom since dinner, developing negatives. Oh, and watch your step,” she warned. “I think I killed the coat tree when I went to the door.”

  “Dead in its tracks,” he joked, lifting the heavy wooden rack from the floor, coats and all. “You’ve got a good aim.”

  She returned his smile. “I’m getting better. I only managed to maim the umbrella stand the other day.”

  Allister couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen a smile like Stevie’s before, or if one had ever had the same effect hers had on him now. It curled her exquisite lips into a sensuous curve and drew up the corners of her eyes, where it set off sparks of amusement her entire face.

  She broke the magical silence. “Come on. Let me show you upstairs.”

  Allister followed her through the studio’s plush reception area.

  “You’ll have to excuse the cold in this place,” she told him as they crossed the wide expanse of the main studio, her wool-stockinged feet shuffling over the hardwood flooring. “Our furnace has a mind of its own, I’m afraid. It’s one of those early all-or-nothing models. We’re either turning blue from hypothermia, or Paige and I are prancing around here in our bikinis in the middle of January.” She turned briefly to flash him another quick smile.

  She slowed as they neared a metal staircase that spiraled up to the second floor. Casually, as though not wanting him to notice, Stevie reached out for the handrail but groped only air.

  “One more step,” Allister offered, taking her hand in his. She didn’t seem startled by his touch but allowed him to guide her forward and settle her hand on the cool railing.

  “Thanks,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, and immediately he regretted having interfered. She could have done it on her own, he realized. She would have taken another step and found the railing herself. And no doubt she would have preferred it that way.

  When they reached the top of the steel staircase and Stevie hit another bank of light switches, Allister was immediately impressed by the decor of the second-floor apartment. The high-ceilinged kitchen, dining and living rooms worked together as a single open area. Its focal point was a virtual oasis of large potted plants that thrived beneath a huge skylight bordered by an elaborate pattern in stained glass.

  He followed Stevie to the kitchen, admiring the skill with which she navigated around the furniture by touch: running her hand along the back of the couch, tracing her fingers over the kitchen bar and finally turning to rest her hip against the counter.

  “I probably should have called first,” Allister said, feeling the need to let her know where he was by the sound of his voice. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

  “Not at all.” She took two mugs from their hooks under the cupboard and handed him one. “In fact, you rescued me, in a sense. Out of sheer boredom, I was going to pop Casablanca in the VCR one more time. I’ve seen it so often I figured I could do without the picture, you know?”

  Allister watched her take the coffeepot from its hot plate and set it on the kitchen bar.

  “You’d probably do better pouring your own coffee,” she recommended. “Less chance of my spilling it all over you. What do you take?”

  “Just black, thanks.”

  “You might want to check for grounds, as well. I’m still working out the kinks in this coffee-making process. Paige doesn’t exactly condone my caffeine addiction, so I’m pretty much left to my own devices in that department.”

  “Coffee’s fine,” he assured her, filling her cup, too.

  She motioned to the living-room area. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “Sure. I’ll take the cups,” he offered. “It looks like your place has recovered from the break-in. I take it there wasn’t much damage?”

  “Not upstairs,” she explained as she felt her way across the wide room. “They got in through the back door on the first floor. The police figure that whoever it was must have scoped the place first. They knew what they were looking for. They went through the studio and the darkroom. Took most of the cameras, but that was it. Could have been worse, I guess.”

  “What about your security system?”

  “Up until now, we’ve relied on dead bolts and chains. But Paige has made arrangements with a company the police recommended to us. We’re supposed to have some new state-of-the-art system in here by the end of the week. Knowing my luck, though, I’ll be tripping the thing every ten minutes.”

  She had found her way to the large armchair next to the couch, and it was when she started to sit that Allister spotted the furry mass curled up on the cushion.

  “Hang on, Stevie.” In a second he was beside her, grasping her shoulders in his hands. Through the heavy sweatshirt, he could feel her body tense as he pulled her back from the chair, and her hand shot out to grasp his forearm. She must have sensed how close they were, how a few more inches would have constituted an embrace, yet she did not pull away.

  In that suspended moment, as Allister looked down into her perfect face, he remembered the feel of her body cradled in his arms, the tickle of her soft hair against his cheek and her warm breath on his neck. At the time, six nights ago, he hadn’t considered their contact enticing, but now, with Stevie less than a breath away, he felt a sudden and unexpected arousal.

  It would take nothing to lean over and lift that proud chin of hers, to taste those lips and feather his fingers through that glossy black hair.

  Embarrassed by his rampant thoughts, Allister took a step back, steadying Stevie as he released her shoulders.

  “It’s your cat,” he explained. “On the chair.”

  “Oh. Tiny,” she said, turning to scoop the massive Persian from the cushion and ease him to the floor. “It’s all right. I’ve been stepping and sitting on him ever since I got home from th
e hospital. He’s resilient.”

  Tiny moved indignantly to the middle of the room where he stretched across the area rug.

  “Actually he acts like he owns the place,” Stevie added as she lowered herself into the chair and pulled her legs up beneath her, “ever since he showed up on the doorstep last year. All in all, this has been a very humbling experience for him, having me step all over him. So, how’s the coffee?”

  He’d been staring again, Allister realized. Being so close to her, able to openly admire her beauty, had to be as unsettling for her as it was for him. Ashamed, he turned his attention to the mugs on the table.

  “Let me hand you your cup,” he offered. But as he tried to ease it into her outstretched hand, the cup jerked and the coffee nearly splashed over the rim. Allister noticed for the first time how her hands trembled.

  “This blind business,” she admitted, as she took firm hold of the warm cup, “makes life a bitch.”

  But her flippant remark and quick smile couldn’t hide the frustration she undoubtedly felt now, especially in his presence, Allister realized, a person she’d never met and therefore couldn’t envision, a person she knew only through Gary.

  “I have to hand it to you, Stevie,” he said, taking a seat on the couch, “and I hope I don’t sound too intrusive, but I think you’re doing amazingly well. Adjusting and all. The courage it must take to go on…it’s very admirable.”

  She took a sip of coffee and then smiled. Once again Allister could tell it was forced. “Well, I haven’t broken any of the equipment in the darkroom yet, and I still haven’t burned the place down. So if that’s any indication, I guess I can’t be doing too badly. Then again, Paige follows me almost every second of the day and picks up after me.”

  “What do the doctors say? Have they given you anything more concrete about when you might regain your vision?”

  Stevie shrugged. “The closest they’ve been able to pinpoint is somewhere between a couple of days and never.”

  But as soon as the words slipped from her lips, Allister sensed that she regretted the moment of bitterness she’d allowed herself.

  “I’m sorry, Allister,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to sound—”

  “It’s all right, Stevie. You don’t have to apologize. Really.” Not to me, he added in his thoughts, especially not to me, the person who did this to you. “I…I can’t imagine what it must be like for you.”

  He fought the impulse to reach out and touch her now, to put his hand on her arm, comfort her.

  “You’re very courageous, Stevie. I mean, if it were me, I think I’d be lying in bed with the covers over my head.”

  “Oh, well, don’t think for one second that I’d rather be anywhere else if I actually had a choice in the matter. It’s Paige who’s been keeping me on my feet.”

  “So what do the doctors say is wrong then?”

  She balanced the mug on her knee and nervously wound a short strand of hair around one finger.

  “They don’t really know. But from what I understand, it has to do with swelling around the occipital lobe or something, and they won’t know the extent of the damage until the swelling goes down. I have to go for more tests the day after tomorrow…” Her voice trailed off.

  He looked away, regretting his question because of the obvious discomfort it caused her. On the opposite wall was a series of framed black-and-white photographs. Allister didn’t need to move closer to admire the unique camera work or to recognize the family resemblance of most of the people in the portraits. All dark-haired and dark-eyed, and all possessing Stevie’s arresting beauty.

  “I see you have a big family,” he commented. “Those photographs are beautiful.” When he glanced at her again, she appeared grateful for the change of topic.

  “Three older brothers and one sister. Not to mention my aunt and uncle who came over from Sicily, along with my parents. There’s all my cousins, as well. My father and my uncle ran a deli together back in Chicago, so we were one big family. In fact, that was the main reason I accepted the scholarship from NYU. With a family that big, as much as I love them, I needed to get away on my own, at least for a while. I always figured I’d go back someday, but I don’t know now. I’m comfortable here.”

  “So why Danby?”

  Stevie shrugged. “A guy. Nick Ditaranto.” The name rolled off her tongue so easily it was obvious she looked back on the relationship as little more than a mistake. There was no trace of bitterness, no twinge of sentimentality. She’d gone on with her life, it appeared, a stronger person for her experiences and mistakes.

  “We dated during our last couple of years of college, and when he accepted a position with an engineering firm here in town, we decided to move together, share an apartment. But after a year he accepted a transfer. Things weren’t working out between us, anyway, and I’d already started to establish myself, so I stayed. It was just luck that this was Gary’s hometown and he’d moved back here. During my first couple of years in Danby, I saw a lot of Gary and Barb. But gradually work got in the way, and we hardly saw each other socially at all. In fact, until I set up the shoot at the warehouse, I hadn’t seen either of them in several months.”

  “You knew Gary from college, right?” Allister ventured.

  “He dated my roommate for a bit. Then we ended up in a couple of English lit classes together, shared notes, studied together, that sort of thing. We were close back then.” Her smile faded. “I wish…I wish I hadn’t let my work come in the way of our friendship like it did the past couple of years.”

  She fell silent for a moment, lifting her mug to her lips, and when she looked up again, she seemed to push her regret away.

  “So what about you? You grew up in Danby. Is your family still here?”

  Allister gazed at the cup in his own hands for a moment. His family. A far cry from the smiling faces of Stevie’s.

  “Gary and Barb are…were pretty much it. My dad left when I was four and my mother raised me herself. She moved down to California a few years ago, remarried and started over. No brothers or sisters. Just Gary.”

  “I’m sorry,” Stevie whispered across the sudden quiet. “His death must be really hard on you.”

  “No more than anyone else, I suppose. It’s hardest on Barb.”

  He watched Stevie nod. He wondered if she’d known about the impending divorce, if she’d been aware of the discord in Barb and Gary’s marriage, or if she had any idea of the risks Gary had taken with his life because of it.

  “And Barb’s leaving for Baltimore?”

  Allister nodded. “She’s catching the noon flight with her mother tomorrow.”

  “And she’s really going to stay there?”

  “I’m pretty sure. With Gary gone, I don’t think she feels there’s too much left for her here in Danby. She’s already talked about closing her counseling practice and starting up fresh down there. I think she needs her family right now.”

  “I wish I could have been of more comfort to her,” Stevie admitted. “Barb and I weren’t…well, I wasn’t as close to her as I was to Gary really. But…I’m going to miss her.” She took another sip of coffee and seemed to lose herself momentarily in her memories.

  “You’re going to manage the business for Barb then?” she asked eventually.

  “Until she decides what to do with it. I’ve been helping out for the past few months, anyway, so I’m familiar with the employees and some of the larger clients.”

  “I’m still surprised that we never actually met before. After all this time, after everything Gary’s told me about you…”

  Allister wondered exactly what Gary had told her. “I’ve been out of town for the past few years,” he offered, realizing that Stevie had been fishing for an explanation and hoping she wasn’t seeking a more detailed one.

  “Gary said you’d been traveling.”

  Allister shifted uneasily on the couch. What could he say now? How far should the lies go? And why was it he felt this sudden gui
lt in deceiving Stevie? After all, wasn’t everything he said to her a lie in a way, given that his only reason for being here tonight was to find out her connection to Bainbridge’s coins? Given that he was the man, if anyone, responsible for the loss of her sight?

  And then, just as Allister thought he’d have to add yet another lie to the pack, he heard Paige on the stairs.

  “Hey, Stevie,” she called out. “Did I hear someone at the—” She stopped when she reached the landing. “Oh,. Allister. Hi.”

  “Hello, Paige.”

  “Sorry I didn’t come up sooner. The slave driver here had me working up these proofs.”

  Allister watched the affectionate smiles the two women exchanged.

  “And hey,” she said to Stevie as she crossed the room and fell into a wing chair, “that had better be decaf you’re drinking. I am not spending another night with you stumbling around this apartment because you can’t sleep. Or worse, listening to one of those old movies of yours for the hundredth time.”

  Stevie’s only answer was a grin and another sip of coffee.

  “So how did the proofs turn out?” she asked.

  Paige tossed the contact prints on the coffee table, and Allister caught a glimpse of them, recognizing the backdrops as Gary’s warehouse.

  “Well, in spite of your mangling the film out of that useless camera, they’re actually pretty great. You really should see them.”

  Stevie grimaced while Paige gave Allister a wink. Obviously this kind of ribbing was a feature of their friendship. He smiled.

  “Still,” Stevie said, “we’re going to have to reshoot the entire thing. Is your offer of the warehouse still open, Allister?”

  “Whenever you need it.” He nodded and got to his feet. “But we can talk about that some other time. I really should get going. It’s late, and I’m sure you two have things to do.”

  Stevie set her mug on the table and stood up, too, steadying herself on the arm of the chair for a second as though finding her bearings. “I’ll walk you to the door, Allister.”