by Donn Taylor
After a few moments, she spoke again. “I suppose we all have fantasies at one time or another.”
“That’s what Pastor Tammons told us. I confess I had one about Cynthia.”
“I’ve had my own fantasies, too,” Mara whispered, “and I’ve wondered if any of them would ever become real.”
The dim form of her face, so very close, looked up into mine. My hands came out of my pockets as if they had minds of their own. They touched the shoulders of her coat, brushed aside her cascade of blonde hair, and stopped with my fingers lightly touching the back of her neck. She stood motionless, her shadowy face still looking into mine, neither inviting nor retreating.
I bent forward and brushed the briefest of kisses on her lips.
She did not move.
I brushed another kiss on one corner of her lips and matched it with one on the other corner, followed by a firm but gentle one fully in the center.
She came into my arms with a rush, returning the kiss with a fervor equaling the one she’d given me last fall. Yet there was a difference. Our kiss last fall had been frantic, an act of desperate comradeship when our fates depended on events of the next few minutes. This one equaled it in intensity, but brought with it a calm certainty that made the threats and vagaries of outside circumstances dissolve into irrelevance.
Even under the spell of its magic I knew, and she must have known, that we had stepped into a new world of unknown quantities we would have to explore together.
After a few moments, she stepped back. Not far, with my hands still touching her shoulders and her face still lifted toward mine. And that enchanted silence continued.
“Is this a fantasy, Press?” she whispered.
“Not for me,” I said. “It feels like enchantment, but it’s as real as anything can get.”
“Then where does it take us? This is uncharted territory for me. If we go on, I’ll have to rethink my entire way of living. Where do we go from here?”
“We go into deeper friendship.” As I said it, my whole being longed to kiss her again without stopping, and my Imagination leaped ahead with images of intimacy in marriage. Renaissance geniuses would have been proud of me, though, for my Reason intervened before Imagination stampeded me into ruining everything. “We need to spend time together and explore that friendship. We have to take a hard look at the barriers between us—the age difference, our habits, our value systems—and we have to spend a lot of time in prayer. Sooner or later, we’ll know if we’re supposed to spend the rest of our lives together.”
Put into words, it sounded so unromantic I feared it might frighten her off. But I’d forgotten how her mind clamped an iron control on her emotions.
“It’s going to be a wonderful time,” she said. “Lord willing, a wonderful life.”
She came into my arms again and we kissed—long and calm in our newfound certainty of intent. That kiss drove from my mind all thoughts of the Blatant Beast, of losing my job, of the burning of my house, of the mob’s attempts on our lives. Everything dissolved into nonexistence before the wonderful reality that was Mara.
I thought we might go on kissing forever.
Then from the Drisko estate came the sound of a pistol shot.
CHAPTER 39
We startled apart, listening. But no further sound came. Not even an echo. I whirled and stared at the Drisko estate. One window had been lighted before, but now the house stood in darkness, contrasting sharply with the long, lighted driveway.
Mara’s whisper broke the silence. “Could he have come back, and we missed him?”
“We’d have heard the car approach,” I said.
I reached in my topcoat pocket and gave back her cell phone. “Call 911 and report the gunshot.”
Then I ran toward the Drisko house. My thought, if indeed I had one, was to give first aid to anyone who might have been injured. I did have qualms about running up a lighted driveway toward a dark house where someone had just fired a gun. Yet, in that moment, my instinctive desire to help overcame all doubts.
Standing on the lighted front stoop, I rang the doorbell. I heard it ring two continents away, somewhere deep in the house. No one answered.
The contrast of light and darkness, the interplay of flickering shadows and silence, brought the same sense of unreality I’d felt the week before at the trustees’ reception, but my rational mind stayed locked onto reality.
I rang again, knocked on the door, and called, “Anyone home? Anyone hurt in there?”
Still no answer.
If the pistol had discharged accidentally, someone might be lying there wounded. The door was unlocked, so I eased inside, leaving it open behind me. If I had to retreat, I didn’t want the obstacle of a closed door. In the near-darkness of the long hallway I could see shadowy shapes of heavy paintings on the walls. Dark rooms opened up on either side. At the far end stood a single lighted doorway.
My feeling of unreality grew. So did my sense of danger.
But my rational mind still functioned. I dropped my topcoat on the floor and waited. I heard nothing. Was the house deserted?
In the oppressive silence, seconds ticked uselessly away. If someone was hurt, I had to find him quickly. So I walked down the hallway, walked as fearfully as if the contents of that lighted room would determine my fate. Perhaps they would.
I stopped short of the doorway and peeped into the room, half expecting to look into the muzzle of a pistol. There was none.
The room was a den, its walls lined with bookshelves filled with the covers of uniform special editions. The Driskos apparently bought their culture prepackaged in wholesale lots. In one corner stood a leather-upholstered chair with a reading lamp beside it. Seated in the chair with a book in his lap was Steven Drisko.
He was thoroughly dead. The shot that killed him had entered the right temple and exited the left, taking a good bit of matter with it. But it had left enough face for positive identification.
So much for rendering first aid.
Frustration crowded in on my sense of unreality. My whole plan rested on confronting Drisko and forcing a truce long enough to secure Mara’s and my safety and give the college time to unload his stock. Now that plan was as dead as Drisko himself.
But was his death suicide or murder? If it was suicide, where was the gun? Drisko’s left hand held the book in his lap, but the right hand lay empty. The Persian rug on the right side of his chair also lay empty. Could the gun have fallen to the left of the chair? It seemed impossible, but I checked anyway.
The rug on that side contained only matter that had previously filled Drisko’s head.
No pistol. He had not committed suicide. I stood frozen in place, trying to fathom what this murder meant and what I should do next.
Then, as from a distant country, I heard the sound of the front door easing shut. In the silent house, the click of its spring lock echoed as startlingly as another pistol shot. That closed door had cut off my escape route. And that person’s stealth meant he intended no good.
I searched frantically for a place to hide, but found none. So I stood waiting with my pulse hammering in my temples as slippered feet slithered softly down the hallway toward the door of this room. Then the statuesque form of Brill Drisko stood in the doorway.
And now I knew exactly where the pistol was.
It was in her hand.
CHAPTER 40
Brill’s throaty voice came out as a snarl. “Well, Professor Barclay, you can’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”
I raised my hands while my internal orchestra mocked me with something on a muted trumpet. Brill’s eyes blazed with black fire. Her hand held a .32 caliber automatic—enough weapon to do the same job on me it had done on Steven Drisko. And Brill’s eyes said she was eager to do just that. I had to stall, somehow, and hope the police heeded Mara’s call for help.
“A chance, Brill? I asked. “The same chance you gave your husband?”
“The same chance.” Brill’s lips twisted i
nto a sarcastic smile. “You and he have a lot in common.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “I’m poor as a church mouse.” My comparison was clichéd at best, but under the circumstances I couldn’t think of anything better.
Brill wasn’t attuned to academic distinctions. “You both had a habit of getting in over your depth.”
I didn’t like her use of past tense, so I protested. “That’s nonsense, Brill. Steven Drisko succeeded at everything he ever tried.”
I was kicking myself for not turning on my voice recorder before Brill entered the room. It might have produced evidence of my murder that could be used in court. I’d missed that chance, so I concentrated on mere survival.
Brill bridled at my claim of Drisko’s success.
“Successful?” She gave a bitter laugh. “Hardly! He thought he could beat the tables in Vegas the way he beat the competition in business. That trip your hick trustees and faculty made three years ago ... Before they came, we knew what each one of them was worth. We wrote the script, and they followed it to the letter.”
She squinted and the gun muzzle wavered. “Except the Fortier woman. She knew her numbers, and we had to get her back on script. The rest were like sheep to the slaughter.”
“They all lost?” I asked.
“We let some lose a little and others win a little. The house broke about even on them, but we chose two to lose big.”
“Drisko was one of those?”
Brill gave a snort of contempt. “By the time he left Vegas, we owned him. He had to embezzle from his company to pay up. Once he did that, we had him for good.”
“Why for good? One annual audit should have found the embezzlement. How did you stretch it out for three years?”
Brill showed a satisfied smile. “For one thing, he got interested in me during that trip. Guido thought if he had a little interest on the side, he wouldn’t have his mind on the game. As it worked out, Drisko got more than a little interested and asked me to marry him. I put him off for a while, but Guido thought it was a good idea. That would give him someone to look over Drisko’s shoulder full time. So as soon as we knew Drisko had embezzled, we closed the deal, and I married him.”
She sighed. “Marriage was no fun, but it was less work than hoofing around the stage every night.”
“You were lucky,” I said and tried to drive my previous point. “The first competent audit should have shown the embezzlement.” Holding my hands up made my arms ache. I began easing them down a little at a time. My internal orchestra lapsed into silence.
“Not just lucky.” Brill’s confident smile returned. “Guido showed Drisco how to put the money back and make a lot more.”
“Dustin Industries?” I asked. “I wondered how that figured in.” Leonard Morley had told me, but I needed to keep Brill talking. I had my hands halfway down, but Brill didn’t seem to notice.
She talked like one who thought time was on her side. “Drisko would subcontract parts of a defense contract to Dustin at an inflated price. Then Dustin would subcontract it to the original low bidder and make a quick profit. The scam had low overhead, and most of the profits ended up with Guido and Drisko.”
I kept listening for the sound of car engines, but none came. The police were taking a terribly long time to respond. I’d gotten my hands all the way down, and Brill hadn’t reacted. Now if I could flick the switch on my voice recorder ...
I tried another tack. “But Jerry Vaughan got on to you.”
“That was his problem.” Brill gave another bitter laugh. “It became his last problem. When we learned he was going to check into Dustin Industries, Guido had some of his boys fix the airplane, and that was that.”
“But Drisko flew it after they sabotaged it,” I said. “He might have been killed.”
“He might have been, but he got his orders. It might have been his hide if he flew it, but it would have been his hide if he didn’t. He came back so white in the face that he looked green—said he never gentled an airplane like that before in his life.”
“Gordon Samstag also flew the airplane after it had been sabotaged,” I said. “How does he figure into this?”
Brill showed a sadistic grin. “That’s for you amateur detectives to figure out.”
“We came up blank on that one,” I said, and shook my head as cover for moving my hand toward the pocket with the voice recorder.
“Put your hands up again,” Brill shouted.
I complied. So much for my attempt to record my murder. The muted trumpet returned to mock me.
I tried another stall. “The crash took care of Jerry, but what about Mitra Fortier?”
“That nosy broad.” Brill snorted again. “We knew she was poking into things, so Guido sent us some chemical stuff to take care of her if she got too close. He said to make it look like an overdose. We carried the stuff around in Drisko’s car.”
“What brought things to a head?”
“That reception. We saw her talking to several people, but the only ones we worried about were you and your blonde Wiccan.”
“Former Wiccan,” I said reflexively. I was getting tired of people’s describing Mara that way, but this did not seem like the time to make a great issue of it.
Brill’s mouth twisted in disgust. “For all the Fortier woman’s smarts with numbers, she was dumb enough to ask Drisko about Dustin Industries. And she was stupid enough to believe him when he said it was confidential, but they could talk in her office. He coaxed her into the front seat of his car, and I rode in the back. Like I said, we kept the stuff from Guido there. So I reached up and chloroformed her good. Then we parked at the edge of the campus circle and carried her standing up between us like she was drunk or something. We used her keys to get into her office, and I gave her the big shot there. Drisko didn’t even have the nerve to do that.”
“Weren’t you afraid someone would see you or notice the light in the office?”
“Someone did see the light. A woman. We heard her high heels stop outside the door, and for a minute I thought we’d have to take care of her, too. But she left, and we knew she hadn’t seen us.”
Cynthia Starlington would never know how close to death her spite against Mitra had brought her.
Brill laughed again. “We left the Fortier woman on the floor and got out before someone else came.”
She would have shown less bravado if she’d known how near they were to getting caught. Elmo Koonz would have seen them leave except that a loud car engine drew him from his third-story lookout. He saw Cynthia leave, but apparently didn’t get back to his post until after the Driskos had gone.
Still no sound of a police car. I goaded Brill again.
“But the police found chloroform residue on Mitra’s lips …”
Brill squinted one eye. “I guess I used too much of the stuff. I’d never done that before.”
“But you’d done other things.”
“Not really. Once in a while, I set up a John so Guido’s boys could take care of him. But I never did it myself.”
“Until tonight,” I said. “Why did you shoot Drisko?”
“Guido’s orders. Drisko had gotten greedy in ways we didn’t know about.”
“I thought you were supposed to keep an eye on him.”
Her eyes flashed black fire. “How was I to know he was cheating on quality control? He used substandard parts on his subcontract for that botched rocket, and one of the parts went bust. They’d eventually find out that part came from Drisko, and then they’d look at everything else about him. They’d stumble onto Dustin Industries, and Drisko would buy himself a shorter sentence by squealing on Guido. With the government that close, Guido said it was time for Drisko to commit suicide.”
Where were the police? I tried desperately to gain more time. “The cops will never believe it was suicide.”
“They would have, but now you’ve given them a better story. They’ll figure that Drisko shot you and then killed himself. That’ll keep them scrat
ching their heads till I’m out of the country. Besides, the cops on our payroll will believe anything Guido tells them.”
Fireworks went off in my head. “That’s why Clyde Staggart was talking to some of your goons?”
Brill nodded. “And that’s why he didn’t solve that other murder last fall. Guido told him to kick up a lot of dust but let it turn into a cold case. You and your little Wiccan messed that up but good.”
With great restraint, I refrained from saying “Former Wiccan.” The last thing I wanted was to shunt Brill’s train of thought onto a siding.
She continued, “Staggart was supposed to write the Fortier case off as an accidental overdose, but then the lab people found traces of chloroform. After that, Staggart had to call it murder and either hang it on somebody or make a lot of noise and let the case go cold.”
A car engine sounded outside. I hoped it was the police, but Brill had other ideas.
“That’ll be Guido’s boys, come to haul me out of the country. Now all I have to do is take care of you.”
I made one more try. “What makes you think they’re going to do that, Brill? You know too much. They’ll take care of you the same way you took care of Drisko.”
She laughed. “Guido looks after the people that look after him.”
Her finger tightened on the pistol’s trigger. In that split-millisecond I remembered being shot by last fall’s murderer, except that Mara had sabotaged the ammunition so that the bullet only stung. I’d have no such luck this time. I stared into the black hole of the pistol’s muzzle.
Suddenly from the dark hallway a small white object flew through the air. A light bulb, for heaven’s sake! It burst with a loud pop on the floor to Brill’s left. As Brill’s head jerked in that direction, Mara sprang out of the hallway and knocked Brill’s gun hand upward. The gun went flying and caromed across the floor. I dived after it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mara throw Brill to the floor the same way she’d thrown me in the executive center. By the time I grasped the gun, Mara had Brill face down with her arm twisted up behind her shoulder and Mara’s knee punching into her kidney.