Annie made some notes on her clipboard. Richard Lewan concentrated on his work. Their efforts to mesh with the landscape seemed to lull Elizabeth into the false impression that we were alone. “I really enjoyed our lunch the other day. As soon as I get back, we should spend a day together at the spa, doing decadent girl things.”
“You’re going somewhere?”
She flashed the dimpled smile. “Oh, didn’t you know? Dane and I have a meeting in Chicago about a new commission. We’ll be gone all week.”
Like the snow, Rice blew in and blew out, turning the rest of us into frozen, ice-sculpture people. Annie turned on the heat. “She’s at her most obnoxious when she’s cheerful,” she remarked.
“She must be excited about the commission,” I said.
“Having the boss all to herself is Beth’s idea of nirvana.” She ticked off items on her clipboard. “She’ll sit at his right hand when they meet with those stuffy old curators, then go back to her hotel room, straddle the bidet, and pretend it’s his face.”
Lewan snorted, but his fingers kept molding, shaping.
It was a frustrating morning. Blackmoor’s office remained closed. Elizabeth said she’d given him the message that I wanted to see him, but that was all she could do.
To top it off, the weather reports were off base. No daylong lapse occurred between the comings and goings of the storm. Somewhere around noon, there was simply a gentle blurring between the angry, wet sheets of ice, and the soft, silent flakes of snow. They covered the skylights in the studio, tumbling mutely and irrevocably, one upon another, until the outside world was totally obliterated.
I felt muffled, as though someone had put a thick woolen scarf up to my face. I tried to remember what it was they said about the size of the flakes—when they were big, the cloud was emptying out and it would soon be over, orr…
I met Roberto in the foyer, dressed as though he were ready to trek to the North Pole with Peary. “You getting the hell out of Dodge, too?”
“Just checking my engine”—I tucked my hair into my hat—“to see if it starts.”
We tramped outside, our footfalls echoing in the silence. “I wouldn’t wait too long, or you might end up getting stuck here.” Roberto shivered theatrically. He began to clear off his windshield. The snow fell off cleanly, in thick shirrings like the winter coats of sheep. I opened the door to the Volvo and let the engine run while I helped him.
“Hey, Roberto,” I said. “What’s the story with you and Hadary?”
“He was in love with me once,” he said. “You know how that goes. Now we’re just friends.”
“Was he also a friend of Torie’s?”
“Graham adored her.” He kicked the excess snow off his furlined boots. “Listen, a lot of years back, something happened—”
“With Conrad Vestri?”
Roberto nodded. “Hadary never forgave himself. Since then, he’s been especially protective of the kids in his charge. Torie’s death devastated him.”
And probably scared him shitless, I thought. Roberto threw the shovel into the trunk of his Toyota. “Hope your parents have a nice anniversary.”
“The surprise is probably going to be that no one but me shows.” He sighed, tucking himself neatly into the front seat of the car. I waited until he pulled safely down the drive before turning off my car’s ignition and going back inside.
Blackmoor was standing there, watching me.
“You’re not leaving already?” he asked.
No, but you are. So why should you care? “Just checking the engine.”
“Oh.” He seemed to be getting altogether too much enjoyment from my hat. I look it off, letting my hair tumble, and tossed it on the rack.
He said, “You’re cold. I have some coffee in my office.” I followed him, but didn’t sit.
“I hear you’re taking a business trip.” The cockatoo was sitting on the window ledge, one grizzled foot stuck in its beak, chortling. “The least you could’ve done was to let me know.”
Blackmoor handed me a cup. “I don’t want your coffee,” I said.
“And I’m not going anywhere,” he replied. “I’ve been telling Elizabeth for weeks that it wasn’t going to work out, but she has a way of only hearing what she wants to hear. So”—he bowed slightly—“I’m all yours.”
His cockatoo suddenly squawked, “Waaak! Needadrink…needadrink!” The intercom buzzed.
“Sorry, Dane,” Annie’s voice said. “A guy named Kislin is on the line. Says he knows you.”
“He’s a reporter. Get rid of him.” He slammed down the receiver.
“I’d like a set of keys,” I said.
“Searching for the spot where I stashed the body?”
“You. Or somebody else.” Blackmoor looked genuinely touched. I added, spitefully, “Or you and somebody else.”
His face hardened. “Of course.” Rice appeared in the doorway wearing the same red suit, but looking different somehow, like a double of herself in a wax museum. “Ms. Quinn needs a set of keys, Elizabeth.”
She reached into her shoulder bag and tossed me a key ring. “Knock yourself out.” Then she settled into a chair as though she planned to be there for a long time. “If I’m going to Chicago by myself,” she said to Blackmoor, “you and I have to talk.”
I stuffed the keys into my pocket and shut the door.
Annie peeked out the kitchen window, clapping her bony hands with delight. Her boyfriend was coming in this afternoon from Manhattan, she said. Maybe tonight they’d go skating on the canal.
“If you can find it under all the snow,” I grumbled, adding, “Do you know if Torie had a special place at the Mill?”
“Just the studio and the workshops. We’d come in here on breaks, mostly.”
“Is there a floorplan I could see?”
“Lucy Moon might know.” She nodded toward the kitchen door. Lucy Moon had just entered. Today, perhaps in honor of the snow, she wore a blue crushed-velvet baby-doll dress atop metallic-silver palazzo pants. She peered at us over her rhinestone glasses. “What might Lucy Moon know?”
“If there was a floorplan to this place.”
“Got me,” Lucy replied. “All I’m sure of is that Dane keeps the prisoner chained in the tower, and the torture chamber is still under repair.” Her glasses looked like gondolas under the moons of her eyes. She turned to me. “Of course, if you’re interested in seeing where I keep my own personal collection of whips and restraints, I’d be happy to oblige.”
“Lucy Moon,” Annie hooted, as though she was just the biggest kick around, “you are too weird.” Coming from her, it sounded like a compliment.
I sat at Rice’s desk, putting my feet up, just because I knew that it would piss her off. I’d learned nothing new from the files and logbooks. While each sculpture had its own three-ring binder detailing a work from inception to completion, the information was geared toward design and propping. I could find no written system telling which person had assembled the piece. Even the names of models were omitted, except for cryptic notations—Otis 552-3401, or Jessy, size 22 dress, 9 shoe.
I tossed aside the binder for Lady Sitting and studied the tidy desk in front of me. Telephone. Tulips in a bowl. An expensive leather desk set. Two messages tucked into the blotter—Mr. Bruce (312) 555-0940 WCB; Kyra (212) 555-2259—where is her check? The notes were torn from a preprinted telephone log. Near the bottom, next to the date and time, the message-taker had printed her bold initials—AH. Ann Houghton.
I wandered over to Annie’s desk, leafing through a logbook of pink carbons, the secretary’s record of incoming calls. Peppered among the young woman’s scribbles were notes in a more artistic hand. I didn’t have to guess. This person had signed her name in script: Torie Wood—with a squiggled scroll under it for emphasis. I thumbed through the pages quickly.
The last entry written by the dead girl was from the previous March. March 15. The Ides of March.
My eyes wandered to the window. Graham H
adary was scuttling into the snow, mackintosh flapping. I watched him clear the windshield of a black BMW and drive away. I pictured him traveling through the storm to haunt some local gourmet shop, his alert little eyes in search of the perfect baguette. Or later, after nightfall, perched on a stool in one of the neighborhood bars, a small, pale man with a tall, clear drink, scoping out young flesh.
The lower section of the Mill seemed to be a maze of cellars, some no more than earthen traps, others with stairways and partially finished subterranean rooms. I started down a flight of old steps, equipped with the flashlight I’d found in a kitchen cabinet, breathing in the dank air, feeling nothing more than the vague sense of urgency I’d been carrying around since morning. At the bottom was a dark little foyer. A hooded overhang sheltered yet another door. I turned the wooden knob and trained the flashlight on more stairs, thinking this would be the last stop on my itinerary for today.
That thought stayed with me as my foot went through the first of the rotting stair treads. There was no railing. Somewhere during the long descent, the flashlight flew out of my hand. I kept falling downward, while it went up, on a course toward the low ceiling. I caught shutter-quick illuminations of sagging beams, cobwebs spreading like fairy wings in the darkness.
That was the last I remembered, until they were around me, and I heard Dane Blackmoor’s angry voice, demanding, as from a far distance, “Who took the sign off the door? Who took the sign off the door?”
THIRTEEN
Richard Lewan slowly brought up my arm. Joint by joint, limb by limb, his gentle, ever-moving fingers carefully probed, bent, and twisted. “That left wrist may be sprained,” he said, “but I don’t think anything’s broken.” If it were, there’d be no shortage of qualified hands here to whip up a plaster cast. The thought was enough to make me laugh out loud.
“She’s in shock,” Elizabeth Rice said.
“Where’s Annie?” barked Blackmoor. Houghton rushed in carrying a glass of water and a small white tablet. As if I’d really swallow some nameless pill and surrender consciousness in this godforsaken place, in the middle of a blizzard, surrounded by a group of people, at least one of whom may want me dead. I shook my head. “I’ll pass.”
“Who took the warning sign off the door?” Blackmoor asked again.
Silence dropped like an egg and rolled around without shattering. He went over to a cabinet and brought out a bottle of whiskey. “If you don’t want the Valium,” Dane muttered, “at least take some of this.” He poured some into the water glass. I kicked it back.
Everyone suddenly started to talk. Elizabeth suggested that the limousine, which would be here any moment to take her to the airport, could instead drive me back home.
“Or you could stay with me,” Annie chimed in helpfully.
“There are plenty of wonderful bed-and-breakfasts around,” Lucy Moon said.
I stood, to prove how steady I was on my feet. “I’m perfectly fine. I’m just going to warm up my car.”
“No, you’re not,” Blackmoor said. It was as though someone had turned on the overhead sprinklers in the room. Everyone scattered.
“Let me know if you change your mind.” Annie gave me a little hug.
Richard sounded disappointed that no drastic measures were called for. “You should put some ice on that hand,” he called from the door.
Elizabeth was the last to leave. “My flight will probably be canceled, anyway,” she told me. “Why not just take the limo when it comes?”
“No. Really, I’m fine.”
When we were alone, Blackmoor tipped some more whiskey into my glass. “I’m driving,” I insisted, sinking into a chair.
“No,” he repeated. “If you want, I’ll make arrangements for a room in town.” He sat on his heels next to me. “Or, you can stay in the guest quarters. Unless, of course, that thought frightens you.”
I said, “I’ll call home and let them know,” calmly, as if it were my idea in the first place.
I was surprised to discover that Temple wasn’t there. “Didn’t you get any snow?” I asked Cilda.
“What’d you do, fall on your ’ead?” she huffed. “It’s a blizzard out!”
“Well, where is she, then?”
“She call after school, say she stuck over Emory’s, and please can’t she stay because Emory’s modder don’t want to drive in all the ice.”
“Oh. That’s okay, I guess.” Cilda’s disapproval crackled over the line. “What?”
“Not’ing. Just she got boys on ’er mind, more than weather.”
“What boys?”
“Emory’s brodder, ’e’s a boy. And ’e probably got friends are boys, don’t ’e?”
My head hurt. My wrist hurt. “Look, I can’t do anything about that now,” I sighed. “I’ll deal with Temple when I get back, tomorrow. Any messages from Jack?”
“Only that ’im think you a crazy woman for being out in the first place,” Cilda replied. “Not’ing I ’aven’t said ten t’ousand times before.”
Blackmoor had left me alone to make the call. When he returned, he slid open the door of an ornate confessional and turned on the television inside. Peter Jennings was reporting the news. “Why don’t you relax for a while?” He indicated the sofa.
I unlaced my boots, the ones that Richard Lewan said had probably saved me from breaking an ankle, and stretched out. Just before falling asleep I remember thinking it was a good thing there was no fireplace in the room, because I might never want to leave.
When I awoke, the office was dark except for the glow from the television. Peter Jennings had gone home, leaving Eastern Standard viewers at the mercy of a game-show host. Snow scudded the windows. The room seemed like a posh, padded, high-security cell. I couldn’t see Blackmoor’s face, but it looked as if he’d fallen asleep in his chair. I bent over to put on my boots.
“Are you hungry?” His voice made me jump.
“Starved.”
He zapped the television with a remote and turned on a desk lamp. We both blinked in the brilliance. “Hadary always leaves something in the kitchen,” he said. “But if you’re feeling up to it, there’s a place not far down the road I like. We could take the Rover.”
The night was so quiet it was like wandering onto a blank canvas. We painted it with our footseps, making hollow gray caverns with our boots. Blackmoor had on something like a pea coat, only I could tell it had never seen the inside of an army-navy store. Everything he wore seemed to have been custom-made. Or maybe it was just the way clothes sat on him. And, of course, he’d have a Range Rover for blizzards, just as he probably had a Rolls for dress-up, and—who knows?—maybe a Peugeot for Bastille Day. I waited while he backed it out of the brick barn that served as a garage. He reached over to the passenger side, opening the door and extending his arm so I could pull myself up.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Fine,” I lied.
He drove slowly. The canal followed us like a sliver of mirror cut and pasted alongside the road. After about ten minutes, we turned into a parking lot that had been shoveled, but not plowed. An inn was tucked helter-skelter into the banks of the river. The sign hanging out front was covered with snow and unreadable.
We stamped off our boots before entering a small sitting room with a fieldstone fireplace. Tongues of yellow flame lapped at the perfectly stacked triangle of wood. Whoever had built this blaze definitely rated a merit badge. I’d married a man for less. An old fellow sat in a chair to the side of the fire. “Hello, Dane,” he drawled easily. They shook hands, but Blackmoor made no introductions.
“You serving on a night like this?”
A younger man entered the room. “Always for you, Mr. Blackmoor,” he said, shooting a glance at me. He was nimble, but I caught him just the same, mentally making all the tabulations—not a local, not a kid, not a glamour girl…
“Madam,” he said, with a beckoning nod. And definitely not a madam.
The floorboards creaked. Large historical l
ithographs lined the dark walls, framed in funerally ornate frames. Classical music was playing a little too loud for the empty dining room. Our table had a view of the canal. A small suspension bridge spanned the shores, its arches drippydipping ice. It looked like one of those tiny blown-glass creations sold in flea markets.
Blackmoor ordered a bottle of Ruffino, and carefully watched as the waitress uncorked the bottle and poured. Once she’d gone, I said bluntly. “I thought you were an alcoholic.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear from Elizabeth.” He shrugged. “I was on the wagon for, oh, three years. Now I drink, one day at a time.” He tilted his glass in a mock toast.
“Does that mean you’re resigned to being a drunk?”
Blackmoor considered this. “I’m not sure I ever was a true alcoholic. I was one of the crowd, with a capital C, you know?” His lips twisted with scorn. “The crowd that got high in the sixties, wasted in the seventies, saved in the eighties, and healthy just as the century started to wane.”
“So where was I?” The words tumbled out before I could stop them. “Somewhere between the high and the waste?” I hated myself for letting him know it still mattered.
“Look,” he said quietly. “What I did was unforgiveable, coming on to a fourteen-year-old—”
“Thirteen.” I couldn’t help myself.
“Thirteen,” Blackmoor acknowledged. “What makes it worse is I can’t even say for sure whether that was the first…or the last… time. The truth is, I don’t remember much of those days.” His voice was thin, breakable, like glass. “But…I remember you—”
How many were there? Besides Torie and me? How many other little girls who loved you like a father, you fuck?
The waitress came over with her pad. I ordered the Dover sole and a garden salad. Through gritted teeth Blackmoor said he’d have the usual.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said, after she’d left.
I cut him dead. “For many things, no doubt.”
“People change.” He offered the line, hopefully, as if he’d just unraveled it from a fortune cookie; then, embarrassed by the effort, he lapsed into his usual mocking sneer. “Except, of course, in Garner Quinn’s book. The people there, I suppose, make the same mistakes, over and over.”
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