Beyond Eden

by Catherine Coulter

  “You can’t think of anyone else, Miss Werth?”

  “No. Lindsay’s always kept to herself, particularly after what happened, Taylor. You know, after Paris.”

  “No men?” Barry asked. “None before Taylor?”

  “Oh, no. She wouldn’t let a guy within ten feet of her. Taylor’s the first man she even smiled at. I still can’t believe this.” She stopped, then reached out her hand and shook Taylor’s. “Thank you. Lindsay’s great. I’ve always been so worried for her.”

  “The boy will keep her happy, Miss Werth,” Enoch said.

  “Yes,” said Gayle, “I think the boy will. He has heart.”

  After Gayle had left, Barry said, “We finished the check on all the family. No big surprises. Just as we thought. The father is in financial trouble—he’s a pistol as a judge but as a businessman he’s dog piss. His wife married him for his money and she’s not a happy lady now that her stepdaughter got the dough. Word is she’s also an alcoholic. The older daughter, Sydney, makes a bundle as a model, but she spends more, and not on her own amusements, in all fairness to her. As for her husband, the prince, the jerk’s well on his way to going through the family fortune. Big trouble there. Sydney is sending a good deal of her earnings back to Italy to keep things afloat. Whatever her faults, she hasn’t deserted the family.”

  “She does have a daughter there.”

  “Yeah, well, the daughter’s quite the little princess. Spoiled rotten, from what the police lieutenant in Milan told me. Throws tantrums in public. So, Taylor, it’s possible that one of the family or more than one of them would want her out of the way. Jesus, how many times does it all come down to money? Too often, my friend, far too often. But to kill her? I just don’t know.”

  “Well, since we’re married now, it’s academic. If any of them were behind the first attempt, there shouldn’t be another. They won’t get a dime if she dies now.”

  “Who’s going to tell them that their fat pigeon has flown to another coop?”

  It happened so quickly Lindsay had no time to react. She was groggy from sleep, her mind lulled and calm. She didn’t hurt, which was a blessing, but her throat was dry. Six days now since the surgery. She wished she could carve a slash on her bedpost for every day that went by.

  And now she was married.

  She smiled.

  And then the voice came, so warm and so familiar that she thought she must be making it up in her mind, dredging up a nightmare because she had nothing else to do. But it wasn’t a nightmare.

  “Little Lindsay. Poor Lindsay. I don’t know if you’re so beautiful now. You’re certainly old, ah, but your poor face. All smashed in, Sydney told me. All blood and smashed bone. But it isn’t all that important now, is it?”

  Where the hell was Missy? Why the hell had the young police officer outside her door let him in?

  Then she saw that Missy was standing in the open doorway, beaming at the prince’s back. She saw that Officer Fogel was standing behind Missy, not looking at the prince, but at Missy’s rear end.

  “Your brother-in-law just wanted to see you for a moment,” Missy said, smiling with lots of white teeth, all goodwill. She turned her high-wattage smile up higher when the prince turned at the sound of her voice.

  He looked the same, Lindsay thought. No, no, he looked more handsome. He was at least forty now, and he looked like a fairy-tale prince, tall and slender and elegant, his hands long and narrow. He looked like the perfect man.

  He liked teenage girls. He had raped her. What would Missy say if Lindsay told her that. Missy would probably beam her big smile, poke out her big bosom, and tell her that the poor man just needed a real woman to show him the proper way.

  “Won’t you say hello to me, Lindsay?” the prince said, turning back to her. “I came a long way to see you.”

  In that moment, something odd happened. The old paralyzing fear left her. Something inside her changed as she turned her head on the pillow to look more fully at him. Something grew inside her, something strong and whole. Something powerful. Something mean.

  She felt suddenly wonderful. “Hello, Prince. What a long time it’s been. Whatever are you doing here? I’m a bit surprised they’d let you into the country. Oh, but they don’t know about you here, do they?”

  He looked briefly taken aback. He frowned. “Your voice is different. Oh, I see. It’s difficult for you to talk because of that bandage under your chin.”

  “No, not really,” she said. “The bandage isn’t that tight now. It’s something else. What are you doing here? Fresh hunting grounds in New York?”

  He said easily, calmly, as if to a cantankerous child, “I’m here to see you. That’s all. And to ask you to reconsider your engagement to that proletariat imbecile. Sydney told me about him, Lindsay, and I have to agree with her. It’s obvious what he’s about. He’s marrying you for your money. Everyone can see it’s true. He’s a ruffian and probably dishonest. He was a cop, wasn’t he? He would hurt you. He’s used to violence. Don’t marry him. Think about it. Give yourself time.”

  She wanted to laugh. She felt the meanness grow, and the hardness seemed to fill her. She felt strong and stronger still; she felt good. When he reached out his hand to touch her, she didn’t flinch, just looked him straight in the eye. “Don’t, Prince.” She’d spoken calmly, slowly. She smiled up at him. “If you get one inch closer, I’ll make you very sorry. I’m not a teenager now for you to intimidate.”

  He drew back his hand. His eyes changed. They were no longer warm and caressing. His mouth thinned. Odd, but it made him look only the more handsome, added somehow to his charisma, because it made him look faintly dangerous. Lindsay looked beyond him toward Missy and Officer Fogel. They’d retreated a couple of steps but the door was still open. Taylor’s order, probably.

  The prince bent down just a bit and said softly, his eyes glittering as he looked at her mouth, “Do you like to fuck your peasant, Lindsay? Is he rough with you? Do you suck him off? You like that, don’t you? Is that it?”

  Lindsay looked up at him. Over the past years when she’d tried to think objectively about him, she’d tried to figure out how his mind worked. She’d wondered why he had become twisted. Had it started when he was a child himself? When he became a man? Who had been responsible? His father? Mother? Genes? Now she simply didn’t care. Now all she wanted was to have him gone. Ah, but she felt powerful now, and free, even though she was trapped in a hospital bed.

  She whispered, her own eyes glittering up at him, “Oh, yes, Alessandro, the peasant rapes me nearly every night, holds me down or fastens my wrists to the bedposts with his neckties, don’t you know, and he slaps me and makes me bleed sometimes because he’s so rough. I love it. You taught me all about that, didn’t you? All that neat slapping and pain? By all that’s right, I owe you so much, Prince, so very much.”

  He straightened. “I thought as much. You’ve changed, Lindsay, and I don’t like it. No one likes your attitude now. And you’re lying to me about this man. But he’ll change on you the minute he’s got you married to him. You have money; he doesn’t have anything. Don’t marry him. I’m here to ask you to come home with me, to Milan. I’ll take care of you. You’ll be part of my family. You’re Melissa’s dear aunt. Come to Italy with me, Lindsay.”

  “Aren’t I a bit old for you now, Prince?”

  “You’re my dear sister,” he said. “Nothing more.”

  “How fickle you are. I fear you’re a day late, Prince.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand you.”

  A deep voice came from the doorway. “She means to say that you’re the only one going back to Italy. Now, Prince, it’s up to you how you return home. You can go flat on your back in a nicely lined casket or you can be a charming little princeling sitting in first class.”

  The prince turned slowly. Lindsay watched with great interest and a smile. For a moment she felt regret that Taylor had come. She’d wanted to tell the prince that she was free of hi
m, that she was free of the past he’d forced upon her. She’d wanted him to examine her freedom, to recognize it, to react to it.

  “Hello, Taylor,” she said in great good humor. “This is my brother-in-law, the Prince di Contini. Isn’t he absolutely something? For the first time since I met him I realize how truly remarkable he is. He has unplumbed depths. What do you think? He wants to take care of me because I’m his dear sister. Nothing else. I’m very old now, you know. Beyond eighteen is ancient to him. After he raped me, it seems he lost his respect for me. I think now he’s willing to swallow my old age because of my new wealth. Do you think he wants me to go back with him so I can buy his little girls for him?”

  Taylor looked the prince up and down, from his finely made Italian wool suit to his Gucci loafers, then said easily, “I think you’re right, sweetheart. He certainly is something. ‘Remarkable’ doesn’t begin to cover him, though.”

  “How about ‘pervert’ then?” Lindsay asked, loud enough for Missy and Officer Fogel to hear.

  Missy gasped.

  Officer Fogel giggled.

  Taylor turned and waved them away from the door, saying, “Show’s over.” He closed it softly. He turned back and said, “So, Prince, you’ve been speaking to my wife?”

  “Yes, I want her to tell you to go to hell, I don’t want you to hurt her, and you will because you’re uneducated and a ruffian and I want her to come back with me. . . . What did you say?”

  “My wife. She is my wife. Her name is now Lindsay Foxe Taylor. It has a ring to it, don’t you think?” Taylor walked past the prince to stand beside Lindsay. He lifted her hand. Her engagement ring shone brilliantly, highlighting the wedding band.

  “No, you can’t have married him, you can’t have. Oh, Jesus, this can’t be—”

  The prince fell silent, stunned, disbelieving. Lindsay wasn’t certain what he was thinking now. Was it about all the money he’d never get out of her now? Had he been the one to want her dead?

  It needed but Sydney to complete the drama, and she arrived two minutes later to a thick pool of silence. She looked at her husband and said with disgust and no preamble, “I thought you’d come here, you bloodless fool. I’ve looked and looked for you. You just couldn’t keep your distance, could you?”

  The prince looked up at his wife. He showed no interest. A faint line of displeasure marred his brow.

  “I told you to leave her alone, damn you! Why can’t you ever listen? Jesus, why did you come to New York anyway? I didn’t want you to get near her! There’s nothing you could say to her that she’d believe!”

  “I’m glad he came, Sydney,” Lindsay said quietly. “I really am. I see things so clearly now.”

  Sydney looked at her half-sister and smiled slightly. “Did your pulse flutter anew when he walked in? Isn’t he handsome? And his body is as fine as any model’s.”

  “Oh, no, no flutterings. He just wants me to come home with him. He’ll take care of me. I tend to believe him, since I’m twenty-six and very old. That was how old you were when you married him, so you should know. I guess he also wants access to my money.”

  The prince said very quietly, “It doesn’t matter now, Sydney.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  Not even for an instant did Taylor feel sympathy for the man at his wife’s deadly sarcasm.

  “She’s already married to him. Can you believe that? She’s already married to him.”

  Taylor said to a slack-mouthed Sydney, who was shaking her head back and forth, “It’s true. We didn’t invite you because the screaming and yelling and cursing would have disturbed the other patients, not to mention the minister.”

  “She’s married to him,” the prince repeated.

  “So,” Taylor said, “here’s the bottom line. If any or all of you tried to kill her for her money, you can forget it. She dies and I get it all. You don’t get a penny. Not even half a lira. Nothing. Do you understand me, both of you?”

  “She married him and he’ll hurt her. Just look at him, tough as a peasant. How could you marry someone like him, Lindsay?”

  “You’re fucking disgusting!” Sydney screamed at him. She grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the door. “Just shut up. I can’t believe this!” At the doorway Sydney turned. “Oh, yeah, little sister, all my best wishes. I’ll ask Valerie to call you with some advice. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I think I do, Sydney. I asked him to give himself to me and he said yes.”

  “I’ll just bet he couldn’t say yes fast enough.”

  “That’s right,” Taylor said. “I was so fast I nearly knocked her bandages off.”

  “She married him,” the prince said, shaking his head. “Him!”

  “Oh, shut up!” Sydney yelled at him. Then they were gone, the prince still mumbling, but quiescent, Sydney silent and pale, her hand firmly on his arm.

  Taylor said nothing for many moments. He was studying Lindsay. Finally, “I’m sorry I ruined your show. I didn’t realize then that you had everything under control. He didn’t hurt you this time, did he? You saw him clearly, didn’t you?”

  She raised wondering eyes to his face. “How can you understand things so readily? You’re right. He didn’t even scare me a little bit. I was kind of sorry when you arrived, but no matter. He’s pathetic, isn’t he, Taylor?”

  “Yes, very pathetic.”

  He kissed her fingers, her mouth, her nose.

  “I like the sound of that, Taylor. Control. Yep, I had control. You know something else? I was a sarcastic bitch. I felt mean and hard. It was wonderful.”

  He continued kissing her; then, “How’s the pain?”

  “I feel brain-dead but I hurt hardly at all.”

  “Is Missy driving you nuts?”

  “No, but she’s driving Officer Fogel crazy.”

  “He deserves it, the horny sod.”

  They spoke quietly for a while longer, then Taylor looked down at his watch and said, “I’m off now to see Dr. Gruska. Barry’s coming with me. Fogel and Missy will be here. I’m going to pin their ears back for letting the idiot prince in. You rest now, okay, sweetheart?”

  “Be careful, Taylor.”

  It was cold in the psychology building. Heat sputtered and hissed from the old radiators along the walls of the long corridor and the linoleum cracked beneath their feet. “This is his office,” Taylor said. The door to room 223 was closed but there was a light inside. They paused, hearing voices.

  “He’s got a student in there,” Barry said, raising his hand to knock.

  Taylor pressed his hand down. “Just a moment,” he said. They stood very still, listening to a girl’s intense voice. She couldn’t be more than twenty years old, if that. She was speaking softly, leaning forward—they could see her outline through the opaque glass. “I do trust you. Do you truly think you can help me, Dr. Gruska?”

  “Ah, Bettina, I know I can. You’re young and beautiful and smart. You’ve repressed so many feelings, my dear, and your father hasn’t helped you by ignoring you and pretending not to notice that you’re nearly a woman now. But I can free you by releasing those feelings. I’ll cleanse you. We’ll free them together and I’ll show you what it can be like to express yourself, all of yourself, to give all of yourself and not hold anything back.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Barry said under his breath. “Is this guy serious?”

  “Dead serious, more’s the pity. Sounds like he’s got another live one.”

  “Shall we rescue the kid?”

  “Yeah, let’s.”

  Dr. Gruska didn’t at first recognize the hard-faced man who strode into his office. A harder-faced older man came in behind him. He felt a spurt of alarm. Then he recognized the first man.

  “You visited me a while ago. You’re a doctor from Omaha, right? Dr. Winston.”

  “That’s right. But I’m really not. I lied to you. My name is Taylor, and this is Sergeant Barry Kinsley with the NYPD.”

  If Gruska chose
to think him a cop, just as well. Taylor paused and looked at the girl, who’d stood and was now staring in sheer fright at both of them. She was small, slender, with long blond hair straight down her back. She wasn’t especially pretty but she was as innocent and guileless as a pup. Taylor wondered what Lindsay had looked like at her age. Taylor nodded coldly to her, then said to Gruska, “We’d like to speak to you, Dr. Gruska, about Lindsay Foxe.”

  Gruska jumped up from his chair and several blue books went flying off the desk. The girl was evidently forgotten. “Oh, God! Is she all right? I saw it on TV but I didn’t know which hospital they’d taken her to and I called and called but no one would tell me anything. I thought she was at St. Vincent’s but they kept giving me the run-around. Then the news said it wasn’t an accident. Is she all right?”

  Barry and Taylor looked at each other.

  The girl said, curiosity overcoming her fear, “Are you here about the model, Eden?”

  “That’s right,” Barry said. “Dr. Gruska here evidently wanted to help her too. He thought she was too repressed, just like you. He wanted to be the one to, er, free her up, just like you. He’s just full of helpfulness. Why don’t you leave, miss, and think about him. He really isn’t what you think he is.”

  The girl looked toward Dr. Gruska, her eyes large with fright and doubt, but he wasn’t paying any more attention to her. She fled without another word.

  Maybe they’d saved one, Taylor thought.

  Taylor said, “Lindsay is going to be all right. Someone tried to murder her, that’s true. We’d like to ask where you were at the time of the explosion, on Monday, at noon.”

  “Me?” Gruska simply stared at them, shaking his head back and forth. “You think I could have been involved? I wouldn’t hurt Lindsay. I love her, I’ve loved her for years. My father loves her too. I want to take care of her. She needs me, you know, needs me very much. Only I can help her, but she won’t let me. Please, take me to her.”

  “Not much furniture in his living room,” Barry said under his breath.