by Medora Sale
“She’s visiting one of her sisters for a couple of days. The kids are off school this week, and they’re driving her crazy. This way they can play with their vile cousins. And speaking of my wife’s relations,” he said, leading his friend into a large bedroom with an unmade double bed in the middle of it, “you were lucky to find me in. I was up at another sister-in-law’s cottage today, checking it over for them. I just got back. They left for Mexico a couple of days ago. For a month. Lucky bastards, eh?” He rummaged in a drawer and came up with a pair of yellow track pants. “That cottage is a hell of a worry in the winter. My brother-in-law has it done up like some kind of royal ski resort, and these sons of bitches with snowmobiles are all over the place, looking for places to break into. Of course, he just built it, and he put in enough security to hold back an invasion.” He tossed the pants on the bed and turned back to the drawer. “Anyway, they stocked it up this winter with enough food to last a year, I swear. Most of it will just get thrown out, too. But do you know where the stupid oaf keeps the key? On a nail under this hideous sign that says The Buchanans, with little gnomes or something carved in the corners. Anyone could get in.” He pulled out another drawer and tossed things around inside. “The area’s pretty deserted. Now that there isn’t much snow, nobody goes prowling around there. It’s on the Wanitake Lake Road, right at the very end. You get a choice of driving into a tree or down my brother-in-law’s little private road.” He discovered a top that matched the sweatpants. “I was tempted to stay there for a while, actually. It’s unbelievably isolated, like I said, and completely winterized.” He handed Lucas the two pieces of clothing. “Put those on her. They’re soft and comfortable, and they’re clean. Remember what I said. Everything I said. Lots of luck.”
On that slightly ambiguous note, they went to collect Annie and put her back into the car.
“Where are we going?” she asked again, very faintly this time.
“To a nice cottage on a very remote lake,” Lucas answered. “Where nobody knows where we are. It’s going to take us a while to get there, and the road in probably isn’t very good, so try to sleep.”
Chapter 12
Occasionally in later years a stray sound or scent would trigger some unexpected train of thought that hurtled Rob Lucas back to those weeks in early spring. And in the half-life of memory, the days all had a bright, feverish clarity, as though he, too, had seen them filtered through pain and delirium, and the sun never ceased to pour its brilliance down on the pine woods and bare birches and ice-rimmed lake. From the time he had carried Annie Hunter into the cottage until the day he left, the deserted landscape had changed from winter to the promise of summer, yet for him the entire episode took place on one long, silent sun-filled day.
It was very dark at the end of the Wanitake Lake Road. He left the car outside a suburban-looking garage, took his flashlight, and went to find the key. There was the name, carved with flourishes on a pale varnished board fastened to a post. His fingers ran lightly across the bottom of the smooth surface, found a hole, reached in and pulled out the key to a high-security lock. He shone his light over the back of the cottage. There were acres of dark rounded siding—the fake log-cabin look that he didn’t much care for—but no door. He followed what he assumed to be a path beside the cabin—down a slope, through patches of snow and leaves and pine needles and over small treacherous stones. The corner of the building sat on bare rock, smooth granite that appeared to sweep cleanly down to the lake. He scrambled up it and found himself standing on a broad deck. The air was still and cold; it smelled of winter still, of pine and snow. The almost total silence was broken only by the soft night murmur of lapping water. At least part of the lake must have thawed. He ran his light over an expanse of metallic security shutters that covered most of the walls from roof to deck, but there was no way through them by key from the outside. He turned the corner. More decking, more shutters. At the end, he dropped off the decking by swinging under a rail and landed a considerable distance below in the middle of a patch of prickly juniper bushes. Swearing, he scrambled up a steep and pathless slope until he reached the point where the building contours coincided with the land again, and of course, there it was. A path ahead of him, a concrete pad, neat and free of obstruction, a broad concrete step, and a door.
A rush of stale, cold, inhospitable air hit him as he turned the key in the lock and thrust the door open. So much for winterized cottages, he thought grimly, reached for and found a switch beside the door. It flooded the room with discreetly indirect light and revealed a kitchen. A clean and useful-looking kitchen. Fastened to the refrigerator with a magnet was a large piece of paper headed “Mike.” He stepped over to look at it. “The thermostat is on the wall across from the counter,” it started out. He looked to his right. There was a broad counter jutting out from the outside wall that divided off the kitchen from the rest of the building. On the wall across from it was the familiar round shape of a standard thermostat. He turned it up to above seventy—Annie needed warmth—and returned to the instructions.
“The hot water heater switch is beside the laundry room door, marked.” There was an arrow pointing to the left. He followed it to a door, found the switch and turned it on. “There is a fire laid; use it by all means. It’s the least we can offer you! More wood in back. Lots of beer, wine, etc., in the laundry room. I hope you and Christy manage to get up for a weekend or two. Leave the kids behind! You’ll have more fun.
“The food in the freezer is left over from skiing. It has to be used before summer, so anything you don’t eat, we’ll be throwing out when we get back. You can take your garbage home with you or leave it at the dump. Map in drawer by refrigerator. Rest of keys are in the laundry room. Be sure to lock shutters before you go, please. (And could you give Muffin her shots before we get back? Thanks.) Love, Susie.”
He walked through the rest of the structure, finding and flicking on light switches. He was in a great barn of a room, divided between dining and living areas by a giant freestanding stone fireplace whose rough-tiled hearth spread far into both rooms. The walls were covered with vast expanses of drapery, corresponding to the steel shutters outside. In the living room, two couches faced each other at right angles to the fireplace, one a single bed, dressed up with a brightly colored rug and fancy cushions, the other having the square, lumpish quality of something that would convert into a double bed. Warmth began to ooze up from every corner. He turned on a couple of lamps that crouched on small tables, pulled out the sofa bed, turned off the intrusive overhead light, and went to fetch Annie.
Susie Buchanan, who was obviously a woman of infinite kindness and sterling character, had left both beds in the living room made up. He set Annie carefully down on the sofa bed. Her eyes fluttered open and then shut again. After a rapid search, he found a pile of pillows, neatly encased in clean linen, inside a large painted box that defined one end of the single bed; inside the matching box at the other end, he discovered two eiderdowns. His search for a bathroom took him into a master bedroom, countrified but sumptuous, behind the living room. Its adjoining bathroom was—except for the cedar-lined walls and ceiling—not countrified at all. Merely sumptuous. He considered putting Annie into the splendour of the master suite and rejected the idea. In the living room he could sleep on the single bed at her feet, and she would be near him; he wouldn’t be tempted to spend all night getting up to make sure she was alive. He settled her for the night, trying not to notice her vague and unfocused eyes, and collapsed, exhausted, into the smaller bed.
He was dragged from heavy sleep by a husky voice; in an instant he was crouched on the floor, taut and alert. The sound stopped. He held his breath, listening for some indication of where it had come from, reaching one hand out, slow and silent, to find his weapon. He heard the voice again, close enough to make him jump. He sighed and sat up. It was Annie. He pulled himself up off the floor and glanced at the clock—4:10. He turned on a light.
Annie’s face was flushed, and her eyes glittered in the lamplight. He put his hand on her forehead. It was hot, frighteningly hot. Her lips were bright with irritation, cracked and painful-looking, like a dried up, muddy riverbed, baking under the sun. Liquid was his first panic-stricken thought. He tried to remember back to illnesses in his childhood. Surely there had been a time when his mother had sat by his bed when he was feverish. What in hell had she done? Nothing. It had been Mariana, of course, who had sat by his bed. His nanny, small and pretty, who rocked him and spoiled him. He remembered that cracked little soprano voice singing to him in Spanish to take his mind off the pain and misery of an earache. And glasses of orange juice mixed with soda water and ice, very cold and diluted. And more ice that bobbed musically about in a bowl with water, in which she dipped a cloth and cooled his forehead. He pulled on his discarded clothing and raced into the kitchen. There was frozen orange juice in the refrigerator and ice. He threw the juice container into the microwave oven and began searching for soda water.
“Who are you?” she said, staring at him when he returned with a glass of watered-down orange juice and a bowl of ice water. “Leave me alone.” She made a feeble pushing gesture with her hands. “I don’t want you around tonight.” She turned her head away. “I’m cold,” she added. And he noticed that she had begun to shiver.
“It’s me. Robin.” She stared up at the ceiling. “Can you hear me, Annie? I’ve been here all the time.”
“Not Annie,” she said. “Don’t call me that. Not Annie.” She rocked her head back and forth.
He tried to straighten out her bedclothes and get the eiderdown over her. She shivered and then pushed the coverings away. “If you’re not Annie, then who are you?” he asked, curious in spite of his alarm.
She stared at him, unseeing. He dropped a face cloth into the ice water, wrung it out and placed it on her forehead. She sighed. He lifted her head and put the glass to her lips. Some of it seemed to go into her mouth. He sponged her burning cheeks with the cold cloth.
“I am no one,” she said suddenly. He wrung out the cloth again in the ice water and pressed it to her forehead. Still staring, she clutched him awkwardly on the wrist with her good arm. “I come from nowhere.” She shook his arm for emphasis. “I come from nowhere. I am no one.” Her voice drifted off. He propped her up again and poured a little more liquid into her mouth. She seemed to find swallowing difficult. “I am no one,” she muttered. “I come from nowhere.” Suddenly her eyes flew wide open again and she clutched his arm once more. “I have no soul.”
“What?” he said, startled in spite of himself. This went beyond anything he could imagine—having a weird philosophical discussion with a delirious hooker at four in the morning. Her hand relaxed its grip, and he forced some more juice into her mouth. She coughed and swallowed and subsided into silence again. He looked around him for a radio; if he was going to be sitting there all night, he wanted something less spooky to listen to than her demented ramblings. Like music—any kind of music. He put her hand, which had somehow found itself caught in his, down beside her and went to see.
Of course there was a radio. Tucked into a corner of the dining room was an expensive stereo system. As he turned on the receiver, it all suddenly made sense to him, and he laughed. Music. That was it. He had forgotten she was a singer, too. And in her feverish state she was running through Lulu. Because it was Lulu who had no soul. Not Annie. He fiddled with the dial until he got a country and western station and a girl singer breathily telling him her woes. That was reassuringly normal. Annie was mixing herself up with Lulu. He walked back over to the bed and looked down at her. She was quiet for the moment, sleeping again, he hoped. He pulled a chair over to the bed, dipped the cloth into the ice water, and went back to sponging her face and shoulders.
When he woke up, he was still seated on the chair but twisted around and half lying on the bed beside Annie. The room was still plunged in profound darkness, except for a trickle of light escaping from the bathroom. Annie was stirring restlessly; that meant she was asleep. He knew her well enough now to realize that, awake, she lay as still as a mouse that suspects there is an owl nearby. Only in sleep did her body reveal its misery. He got up awkwardly, stretched, and slipped into the bathroom to throw some water on his face and check the time.
Light was pouring into the room through the windows set high up against the ceiling. He looked at his watch. 7:45. He turned on the shower, stepped into the elaborate oval tub, and tried to restore himself to normal with a rush of cold water. By the time the water coming through the pipes was hot, he was wide-awake and starving. He remembered Annie, jumped guiltily out of the shower, and set out to do what he could with her.
He pulled the curtains back to wake her up. The room was still plunged in deepest gloom, and he remembered the shutters. Every expanse of glass wide enough to admit a body was covered with steel shutters. He turned on a light and began looking. The French doors were locked at floor level; in the laundry room, as promised, he found a board of keys, removed the one marked Windows, and set to work in the dining room. The key fitted, the glass slid back, and his hand touched cold steel. He searched around the frame looking for a device to raise them, found a switch, and turned it on. There was an unhappy whine of machinery; nothing happened. He looked again. Another lock fastened the shutters into the floor. And, sure enough, back in the laundry room, there was another key marked Shutters. In five minutes the huge room was flooded with light. He stepped outside to investigate his surroundings in daylight.
The sun was blinding after the darkness of the room. It poured down on the granite, bleaching it to a pinkish off-white; it glittered off the chunks of ice that slid across the water of the lake. Then he shivered in the chill air, remembered Annie, stepped back inside, and pulled the window shut. Her eyes were open, looking fixedly at him.
“Would your friend Lydia murder her husband if she suspected he was going to run off and take the boy?” asked Sanders. The couple at the next table turned their heads, startled, caught his cold glare, and, embarrassed, returned to their steaks.
“Wait a minute,” said Harriet. “First of all, let’s stop calling her my friend. I haven’t spoken to her for four years. And what happens if I said yes, she would? Or no, she wouldn’t? That’s a hell of a question to dump on someone between salad and dessert.” She frowned. “Was he?”
“I don’t know.” Sanders shook his head. “He told his secretary he needed two tickets for Florida because he was taking his son with him. But he could have been lying. For all we know, he was taking a girlfriend. He didn’t mention the trip to his wife.” He looked across the table. “I did, of course. And if I’m not wrong, I gave her quite a shock.”
“If you gave her a shock, then she hadn’t known what he was going to do. And that means that she didn’t—” Harriet nibbled her lower lip. “Unless the shock was that you knew about it, of course.”
“You’re getting cynical, Harriet,” said Sanders. “Hanging around me too much.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, John. My cynicism comes from having survived the world for this long.” She stared thoughtfully across the cherry-red tablecloth, seeing nothing. The waiter’s hand crossed her sight line, and she looked down. “Why in hell did I order apple pie?”
“Because it’s that sort of place—and I told you to. This is probably the first instance since our relationship began that you have done something because I told you to. Don’t knock it. The pie is good.”
“Mmm,” she said vaguely, and ate a mouthful. “Did Lydia kill him?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. But then, nothing much surprises me these days. Except for your extremely mellow state of mind,” he added, reaching over and touching her cheek lightly with his fingertips.
“Pay no attention to it.” Harriet caught his hand, dropped a light kiss on it, and returned it to his side of the table. “I’m still suffering from post-holiday
euphoria.”
“But other people hated the man as well. Did you hear about the fire in Markham? It was the night after we left for the coast. A woman and two kids were killed. Well, Neilson owned that development. His company built the house. Of substandard materials. The husband survived because he worked night shift. Anyway, he threatened to kill Neilson and to burn down his house—wife, child, and all.”
“Did he? I mean, kill Neilson. Obviously he hasn’t burned down Neilson’s house, or we would have heard.”
“I don’t know.” Sanders shook his head. “Lydia Neilson gave him to us, saying she feels terribly sorry for him. Handing over his threatening letters with sweet reluctance. You know—Gee, Officer, I hate to do this to the poor guy, such an unhappy man, but here they are, waiting for you, encased in plastic to preserve fingerprints, if any.”
“She didn’t,” said Harriet. “Not Lydia.”
“Well, not quite. But she dredged him up in one hell of a hurry once we started talking about her kid.”
“I told you she was hysterical on the subject of that child. Otherwise she’s quite a rational woman.” Harriet toyed with the crust of her pie for a moment. “Motherhood does strange things to people—I see it all the time in my friends.”
“Anyway, to get back to your question,” interrupted Sanders, alarmed at the direction the conversation was taking. “As soon as we find the man, we’ll ask him. He didn’t try to conceal his identity. The letters were handwritten; he referred to himself quite clearly. He didn’t sign them, but he didn’t start with ‘Dear Carl,’ either. If he killed Neilson, he’ll probably tell us.”
“Where is he?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Harriet put down her fork and looked gravely at him.
“Okay,” said Sanders irritably, “he’s probably with relatives somewhere. We’ll find him soon enough.”