The child would be all right in the attic. She was not strong enough to push the stairs down, and before he left he would wedge a piece of lumber between the floor and the trapdoor to make sure of that.
Whatever minimal heat there was in the house rose to the top. She would not freeze up there.
Simon’s neighbor had given Liam the perfect excuse to be at the house by reporting the fallen gutter to him. There was no way anyone could have seen Liam enter the house from the back with the child. There were too many trees and there was the twelve-foot deer fence surrounding the property.
Thanks to Ryan Simon, he would leave the rented Ford at this house, too, and take Simon’s Kawasaki. Ever since the car had followed him to Maritime (if it was following him and not coincidentally going down Maritime for some other reason), he’d been wary of driving the Ford.
Liam did not believe that Nell would go to the police, for all her concern about the child. She would be charged as an accessory, and with a record already she would have little chance of plea-bargaining her way out of a prison sentence. She was terrified of being locked up again, and anyone who had ever been in a women’s prison knew what inmates thought of other inmates who had let harm come to a child.
Liam admitted to himself he could not figure Nell out. Either she had planned to take her share (or all) of the money and run off with Rainbow, or, in a more diabolical scheme, work with Rainbow to hijack the project. That damn car on Maritime still puzzled him . . . angered him, as much as the message on the machine did—“Jimmy”—working him into such a state he’d even imagined he’d seen Rainbow in the parking lot. If Rainbow was involved, it would not be like him to show up here. He always worked the strings behind the curtain, let the others take the risks. That was his fucking style.
Cancel.
Cancel.
Without the child, Nell had no power, and nothing to offer Rainbow. That did little to assuage Liam’s feeling of betrayal. It was hard enough to accept Nell’s desertion, but it was devastating that she would leave him for his old nemesis.
He had always suspected Nell Slack would never settle for him if there was a way she could have Rainbow.
Still, he would not emerge the loser in this contest with Rainbow. All he had really lost was Nell, who would be of no use to Rainbow now. Neither one of them would win this game, thanks to Liam’s quick thinking that morning, when he had grabbed the child and run.
Liam hammered a loose shingle almost joyfully, buoyed by the thought that Nell wasn’t the only one who didn’t have to settle.
He looked at his watch.
2:10.
In Affirm it was suggested that when you overcame a major hurdle, you thought of it as a rebirth and you marked its occurrence.
He was going to remember the time and the date and the beautiful winter afternoon when he first perceived that after he had the Lucky We in his possession, neither would he have to settle for a woman who had learned how to be one in the slammer.
Lara Lasher said, “If rliis works out, Del, I’m going to reward you. Right now I’m going to give you $300.” She had in her hand one of the personal stationery envelopes with LE reve engraved in gold in the upper left corner. “This is not money left by Mr. Lasher, either. This is money from Deanie and me, to thank you.”
Delroy put out his hand to take it, but she placed the envelope on the cherry dresser top and said, “Leave it here until you return.”
The three cars were parked in front of the house, their tanks full. The maps of the Hamptons’ streets were on the library desk.
“There’ll be something else waiting for you if all goes well, Del.” “What is that, Missus?” He knew she’d make him ask, that she wouldn’t just tell him outright. It was her way, to make a production out of giving anything to someone. With Deanie she’d do something like put her hands behind her back and say, “Guess where a new bracelet is, sweetheart. You have to guess to get.”
Lara Lasher smiled coyly at Delroy. “It’s what you want. It’s the house.” “My house?” he said. He hadn’t meant to say “my.” That had slipped out, propelled by his astonishment.
“Yours from now until Memorial Day,” she said. “I’ll write a letter promising it to you, rent free. All you’ll be responsible for is maintenance and utilities. The kitchen needs a new coat of paint and so does the outside trim, but we won’t worry about that now.”
OK, he thought. I know you, Missus. Ton can’t help it.
That was him now, too. He couldn’t help it, either.
Over the chair in his nook was the leather jacket Mr. Burlingame had given him. “A peace offering, Delroy, because I had no business going through your things.”
Delroy had always admired that jacket. It had the smell of good leather and there were inside and outside pockets with silver zippers.
Delroy had put the velvet bag containing the lorgnette in an inside pocket. He had tossed out the blue box; it was too cumbersome. He had a scenario for how he would present the lorgnette to Scotti, but for now it was enough to have it where it would be next to his heart, as she was, in his thoughts. As he wished he were, in her thoughts, at the opera.
The Missus gave him a pat on the back. “We’re all depending on you, Del.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know that.”
“Something else. Detective Abrahams plans to have an unmarked car following you. They’ll keep a good distance and they won’t interfere unless they feel you’re in danger.”
“That’s good, Missus.”
“Abrahams will brief you when the time comes. There’s nothing to fear.” Her voice broke.
She had been doing that ever since Deanie had been taken, acting just like her old self until suddenly she’d weep. Then she’d get past it in seconds and carry on.
Len Lasher’s death could only be a relief to her. He had overheard a phone call to Dr. Mannerheim way last October when she had said, “Why can’t he die? This is not my Lennie!”
Everyone at Le Reve was nervous but Delroy, who could not help thinking that maybe when this was all over, when Deanie was home safe and sound, word would get out that he was the one who took the ring to the kidnappers.
Then Scotti would have two reasons for seeing him in a new light.
He was a trustworthy man, yes, but he was also a generous man. He could hear himself saying, “What would I do with a lorgnette?”
“Sell it,” she’d say. “It must be worth a lot.”
“I’d never sell something given me as a gift, Ms. House. That wouldn’t be right. It was his way of thanking me for all I’ve done for him. He’s heard me say often how I love opera, even though I so rarely get the chance to attend.”
He knew she’d probably say, “I can’t accept something so valuable.”
And then he’d say, “One thing the Mister taught me: possessions are anchors if you have no use for them.” It was really Burlingame who had said that. It was not something the Mister was liable to say, but Scotti House wouldn’t know that.
Delroy would tell Scotti how he had always loved the looks of it, too! A black panther with emerald eyes; it was so rare! Delroy had not even seen it until he had removed it from the blue box that very day. The sight of it had not overwhelmed him, either. It resembled one of the gimcrack ornaments Sade kept on her “Shelf of Souvenirs” from every state she’d visited.
Just to look at it was a thrill, he’d tell Scotti, but to know someone who could use it, the Mister would have approved of him passing it on to such a person.
It had also crossed Delroy’s mind that Scotti would be impressed by the idea that Len Lasher thought enough of Delroy to give him something so costly. It made him feel slightly sick to his stomach to imagine what she’d say if she knew the truth about the will . . . and then a while ago the measly $300 for risking his life (why not think of it that way, even though he did not think of it that way at all?) to save Deanie.
“Delroy?” Lara Lasher said, “I want you to help me pick out some
clothes to take to Yardley and Pino—” but she could not manage “Funeral Home.” She just waved her hand as though she’d waved away the whole idea the Mister was there. The morticians had been instructed to keep his presence top secret.
Delroy said, “I know the suit he wants to wear.”
That was all written down in Mr. Lasher’s instructions, with “Be sure I have on underwear” underlined.
“Then let’s get everything ready while we wait, until it’s time for you to go.”
“Yes, Missus.”
The Armani suit was hanging in the back of the Mister’s closet, with the light blue Turnbull and Asser shirt, the striped tie, and of course his favorite shoes: the reversed, waxe-calf John Lobbs.
Delroy had not attended his father’s funeral, shunned even on that occasion. But he had an autograph book from his childhood with a first-page entry in his father’s tiny, perpendicular writing. It was the only remembrance Delroy had of anything to do with his father.
The leaves are green The roses are read And here is my name When I am dead.
Harrell A. Davenport.
Ha, Eelan liked to call him sometimes. Ha! Ha!
Afternoons in the old days, Delroy would sneak across the highway near their farm to visit the forbidden mall with her. She would chant: “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! If you could see us now! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Delroy would be her lookout while she’d stop in Music Music to hear Bernado play the accordian. He’d play his favorite old song for her, “Fernando,” and she’d sing along, changing the words to, “There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, Bernado. They were shining there for you and me, for liberty, Bernado.”
Bernado would have been incredibly handsome save for acne that spotted his cheeks. Thick black hair and bright blue eyes, he wore tight satin pants and a ruffled silk shirt with a bolo tie. He rode to the mall on a red and black Bandit 1200S with a red Bieffe helmet and goggles over his head. He was a demonstrator of the accordion, the harmonica, and the flute, and he had other fans besides Eelan, most of them teenage girls with acne, too, but it was Eelan he favored. His eyes shone and looked all over her face as he played, and Eelan would hug herself and whisper to Delroy, “Look! I can see his thing!”
“Don’t talk that way, Eelan.”
“You and Ha think your things are shameful, but Bernado’s proud of his and I like to hold it in my hand.”
Delroy would blush and look away
Eelan ran off with Bernado on an early summer night with a red sun easing down into the dark blue clouds. Delroy had crept away from a community' songfest with her when she heard the ice cream truck signaling its arrival down by the fence where the English would shout and run toward it, just as he had with Eelan.
Behind the truck was the motorcycle.
“I'm not taking anything, Delroy!” she’d grinned and hopped on behind Bernado. “I don’t want one damn thing from them! But I’ll miss you, darling brother!”
Delroy watched them go, then turned and saw Deacon Blyer standing on the top of the hill Eelan and Delroy had just run down.
Blyer looked like an enormous, predatory hawk in the setting sun, getting ready to flap his wings and descend on some smaller animal.
But the deacon waited patiently instead, in the Amish way, eyes narrowed at the approach of the sinner.
The police believed he had the child with him and they were probably right about that. Scotti thought that if he used one house, the Karpinksi house, to keep the child in, why wouldn’t he use another one Homesafe watched over?
The only other house she knew he serviced was the one with the gutter hanging down, the one that belonged to someone called Ryan.
As soon as she dropped off Mario, she went out to Hydra.
Gus was tending bar and she ordered a souvlaki and a glass of retsina.
“Do you know anyone named Ryan who goes back and forth to Greece?” she asked him. “I don’t think he lives here year-round, but he has a house here.”
“A Greek?”
“Ryan doesn’t sound very Greek, I know.”
“I never heard a Greek called that.”
“It could be our artist,” Zoe piped up as she came to the bar with a check and cash to pay it. “Urian. He rides a dirt bike, makes an awful noise!”
“He rides a GS, right!” Gus waved his arms at the walls, where all the paintings were of a beautiful silver-haired woman with a black eye patch. In the lower right-hand corner, the tiny signature, Urian Simonides. “He goes to Athens all the time.”
Zoe said, “He’s a stockbroker in New York, and he’s shortened his name for business. He has a place in Amagansett.”
“In the book?”
Urian Simonides wasn’t, but there was a Ryan Simon on Cranberry Hole Road.
“Hey!” Gus shouted at Scotti after she put a twenty on the bar and headed toward the door, “Don’t you want your change? Don’t you want a doggie bag for your food?”
She hadn’t dared hope she would actually see him, but diere was no way to miss Liam Yeats.
He was up on the roof of the house she was looking for, the sun spotlighting him there as he pulled an end of the gutter up with a lasso. A hammer hung from a wide leather tool belt around his waist. A cigarette hung from his lips.
She drove the length of Cranberry Hole Road and turned the Saturn around as Napeague Bay came into view.
On her way back she pulled into a driveway a few houses away from Ryan Simon’s property. She was in front of a summer residence near Bendigo Road, which led down to the Devon Yacht Club.
He could not see her car from the roof. It was nestled in a grove of scrub oaks and pines. Fortunately, early that morning when she’d walked Baba, she had thrown on a pair of old jeans, a flannel shirt, and the parka she had given her mother for Christmas. She had no socks on to keep her feet warm inside her Merrell boots.
She had warm gloves tucked into her pockets and a wool scarf, which she wrapped around her head.
She sat a moment wondering if she should try to go the back way through the weeds and sand, or head down Cranberry on the pavement.
The latter was the better idea, she decided, and she got out, tucked her arms into her sides, and then headed up the driveway onto the road.
She chose the leisurely pace of a jogger.
He could see her then, of course, if he looked down. He would see her jogging along, head bent away from the wind, like anyone out for exercise. She counted on the idea that if he saw her, he would not expect she was doing anything else. And she also counted on the fact that at a certain point, if he stayed up there to hammer the gutter in place, he would not be able to see her go around the back of the house, then go up to whatever point of entry she could discover.
SIXTY-THREE
Scotti could hear the hammering above her on the roof. The white Ford was parked in the driveway, a cellar garage ahead of it, the door raised revealing a silver-and-blue dirt bike, skis, and steps leading up to the first floor.
She went quickly through the downstairs, calling softly, “Deanie? Deanie Lasher?”
If the child was there in the house, her mouth was probably taped. She was probably tied up.
At the sight of a bathroom, Scotti went in quickly and relieved herself. She had become accustomed to doing that ever since she had started dressing as a woman, taking advantage of a safe place so that her bladder wouldn’t ever put her in a perilous situation. There was no way she could chance the sound of flushing.
As she arrived on the second floor, Scotti saw a chain connected to the trapdoor in the attic. A wooden plank rested against the wall.
She pulled the heavy wooden stairs down, thankful to Scott for his years of exercise and weight lifting. She saw the light at the top and went halfway up.
“Deanie?”
“Rona?”
She went the rest of the way, and saw the child sitting atop a blanket on the attic floor.
“Oh, Deanie, thank heaven you’re okay!” Sh
e pulled the stairs all the way up.
“Who are you?” Deanie said.
“My name is Scotti House. You can trust me, Deanie.”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
Scotti went across to her, bending over because of the low attic roof. “Right now you have to trust me. I’ll help you. Otherwise you’re at his mercy.”
“How did you find out about me? Do my father and mother know I’ve been ‘kidtrapped’?”
“Yes, they know.”
“Do the police know? Is it on the television?”
“Deanie, the police know but it’s not on the television. People don’t know. Now I want to try and think what we can do to escape this place.” “He won’t let us out of here!”
The hammering stopped.
“Shhh.” Scotti put her finger to her lips.
The hammer sounded again.
“Listen carefully to me, Deanie,” Scotti said. “We’re going to get out of here together, before he takes you with him.”
“Al’s leaving me here.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes. He said he’d take the lightbulb with him if I made noise.” “We’ll find a way out, honey.”
The hammering stopped again. A minute . . . two.
Scotti crouched there while she listened to his steps right above her. “I think he’s coming,” Deanie whispered.
Scotti crawled into the dark end of the attic, where there was fiber insulation lining the walls. She could feel cobwebs in her hair, and her hands came down on small beads of mice turds.
“Al will see you back there,” said Deanie.
There were no boxes, no old furniture, none of the usual debris pushed into attics, nothing to hide behind or cover herself with. There was a Sound Off smoke alarm, a fan, and several large canvases leaning against one wall.
Scotti stood one of the canvases on its end, at a slant, so she could crouch behind it. There was the silver-haired woman again, a Urian Simonides painting, her eye patch half concealed by a large straw sailor hat. “How’s that, Deanie? Can you see me?”
scott free Page 21