by Jill Jones
Jonathan glanced down at his yellow legal pad filled with doodles of the infinity design. He recalled the notation from Dr. Gull’s diary. He will kill into infinity. Who would kill? Jack the Ripper? J.K. Stephen? Prince Eddy? Trey Delaney?
Suddenly, he recalled his visit to Roger Hammersmith’s book shop the day before, and the family tree that was in the old Bible. J.K. Stephen was a cousin of Virginia Woolf. Janeece Fairchild’s family was descended of that bloodline.
And so was a family named Delaney.
Coincidence?
Renewed alarm washing through him, Jonathan raced to the telephone again and placed another call to Victoria’s office. This time, instead of leaving a message on her voice mail, he dialed the operator, who told him Ms. Thomas and Mr. Mosier were both tied up with an important Congressional committee and wouldn’t be available for the rest of the day. Damn! He slammed the phone down, his stomach knotting painfully. He felt helpless and frustrated, knowing that thousands of miles away, Victoria might be in terrible danger.
Running his fingers through his hair, Jonathan tried to decide what to do next. Call the police in Virginia? What, and quite possibly make a complete ass of himself? Trey Delaney was, after all, the son of a very powerful family there. On the surface, he seemed an unlikely candidate for being a serial killer. Would the police even listen to him? And again he considered the ramifications if he was wrong. Scotland Yard was sensitive to libel suits.
Maybe he was overreacting, he thought. But something in his gut told him he must take action. Now. He couldn’t just stand around and wait. As crazy as it seemed, he had to go to her. He had a substantial stash of money saved—for what, he had never known. He’d just never had much to spend it on. Now, he could think of no better use for it than to spend it to get to Victoria as quickly as possible. If he was wrong about Trey, so be it. But if he was right…
He picked up the phone again and in moments had secured a seat on the first available flight headed to the U.S.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was nearly seven o’clock when Victoria arrived at Trey’s townhouse in Georgetown. She’d had a light lunch with Mike late in the afternoon and was not one bit hungry, either physically or emotionally, for the evening that loomed in front of her. She lucked into a parking place not far from Trey’s front door, and drew in a deep breath as she turned off the ignition, praying everything would go smoothly.
“Hi,” she said, kissing Trey’s cheek when he opened the door. “I brought you something.” She handed him a bottle of his favorite single malt whiskey she’d purchased on a short shopping spree after leaving Mike. “Happy birthday.”
Trey lived in a gracious old townhome and had spared no expense in renovating it to suit his bachelor tastes. Most of the walls were painted in subtly contrasting shades of off-white, beige and taupe that could have set the room up for the blah so common with neutral tones, but Trey’s designer had offset the vanilla with generous splashes of black and red and other vivid colors in contemporary furnishings, artwork and accents. To Victoria’s eye, it was wild and frenetic. She could never relax in this place. But Trey had always been on the daring side, and she supposed it suited his nature.
“I’m flattered you remembered my birthday,” he said, looking a little surprised when she handed him the bottle.
“Of course I remembered your birthday. We’ve always made a big deal out of birthdays.”
Odd. It sounded like he’d forgotten his own.
He took the whiskey to the bar in the large, open living area and opened it eagerly. “What’s your pleasure? Want to share some of this mother’s milk, or would you prefer wine?”
Victoria rarely drank hard liquor, not at all when she was driving. “Got a nice white vintage something lurking in there somewhere?” she replied, indicating the built-in refrigerated unit designed specifically for maintaining wine at the proper temperature. It was an extravagant device, but Victoria knew Trey had installed it to impress the women he entertained here.
He poked around until he came up with one that pleased him. “Let’s see. Ah, yes. Will Pouilly-Fuissé suffice?”
He sounded like the Trey she’d always known, a trifle arrogant, decidedly flippant, untouchable except by a few, of which she was one. But Victoria thought he looked haggard, and she noted he had taken to walking with a cane, although he didn’t seem to lean into it. It looked like the cane that was part of his costume at the ball in London.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asked as she accepted the wine. “You look tired. Hard trip?”
“Just the usual strain of a new job,” he said. “I’m fine. Cheers.” They clinked glasses, and he quaffed his double shot in a single swallow, then poured himself another.
He was lying when he said he was feeling all right, and she knew it. Dark circles bruised his face beneath the eyes, and his skin seemed paler than ever. He looked, in fact, as if he hadn’t slept since she saw him last. She saw that his hands shook when he raised his glass, and she wondered how much whiskey he’d been drinking lately.
He most certainly did not look up to an evening with the senior Delaneys and Thomases.
“So, what’s the scoop on Inspector Clouseau?” he asked, taking a seat on the sofa across from where she sat on a cushy leather chair.
She smiled over the top of her wine glass. “His name, as you very well know, is Jonathan. Jonathan Blake.”
He lit a pipe and crossed one leg over the other. “You make it with him?”
Since when did Trey smoke a pipe? “None of your damned business.”
He laughed caustically. “You did. And Mommy doesn’t like it.”
“It’s none of her damned business either.” She sighed. “I wish she wasn’t such an elitist. Jonathan’s a good man. An excellent law enforcement officer. I’m in love with him, and…I’m going to marry him, Trey.”
His glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the polished hardwood floor, jolting Victoria. He stared at her in disbelief. Then a cynical smile turned up one side of his mouth. “Oh, I doubt that, Tori.”
Jonathan looked out the window as the massive jet descended into New York’s JFK airport. He set his watch to the local time. Six pm. He hoped Victoria had not yet gone with Trey to her parent’s house, or that if she had, that she would be safe until after the party. He reasoned that—if he was indeed the killer—Trey would wait to make his move, rather than attack her beforehand and not show up for the party. It would be too suspicious.
He tried again to reach her from a pay phone at the airport but got the same response as he had when he’d placed the numerous airphone calls en route—her answering machine. He didn’t know her cell phone number, nor Mike Mosier’s personal number; he’d never had reason to learn either. All he could do at the moment was make sure he didn’t miss his connection to Dulles. And pray.
Victoria was pissed at Trey as they left the townhouse, although she tried to cover it with a polite veneer. It was his birthday after all. But she was disappointed in his sardonic response to her announcement that she planned to marry Jonathan. He’d told her she didn’t have the balls to go against her parents’ wishes, and he was certain that they would be against such a marriage. But she sensed that Trey himself was being as big an elitist as her mother at the moment, and she felt betrayed that her lifelong friend would not support her in this.
She pulled her car onto the beltway and headed toward the exclusive suburb where the Thomases and the Delaneys lived in neighboring mansions. Suddenly realizing the direction she had taken, Trey asked, “Where are we going?”
Before, she had been willing to let him off the hook if he didn’t want to go to his birthday party. Now, it would be a little payback for his disloyalty.
“Surprise.”
But when she turned down the lane that led to the two properties they both knew so well, he snarled, “What the hell are you doing, Victoria? Get me out of here.”
“Sorry.” She smiled at him sweetly as she pu
lled up to the front portico of her parents’ palatial home. “It’s a surprise party for your birthday, Trey. You may not like it, but people are trying to be nice to you. So behave.”
She got out of the car and hurried up the steps and into the house, not at all sure Trey would follow. But he did. And when he caught up to her, there was thunder in his expression.
“Thanks a lot,” he growled under his breath as they entered the drawing room. He shook his elegant walking cane in her direction. “I’ll get you for this.”
Their parents rose from their seats when they entered, and Victoria saw anxious expressions on their faces. It had been years since Trey had spoken directly to his parents. Victoria couldn’t remember the last time he’d been face to face with hers. Meghan’s funeral perhaps. Apprehension knotted her stomach. These people meant well. She hoped he would behave himself.
“Happy birthday, son.” His father, James Winston Delaney II, stepped forward and extended his hand. “We’re glad you could make it.”
Trey glared at his father, but eventually took his hand in an unenthusiastic handshake. Marilyn Delaney hurried over to him. “Happy birthday,” she said, touching his cheek in a motherly fashion. Trey jerked back as if he’d been burned. Although Victoria did not like Marilyn, at the moment she felt sorry for her, for it was apparent that her only child hated her.
“Good evening, Mother,” Trey said stiffly. “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas.” He nodded toward her parents. “Whose idea was this little shindig anyway?”
“We thought it was time for you to come home,” Marilyn said in a tone that brooked no argument. She’d always been like that. Bossy to the extreme. “You’ve spent enough time licking your wounds. It’s time you grew up. Fulfilled yourself as a man.”
Trey went to the bar and poured himself a stiff drink, tossed it back and refilled the glass. His back was to the rest of them, and Victoria saw James Delaney frown at his wife and shake his head, warning her not to nag Trey. Victoria agreed with him. If Marilyn didn’t shut up, she’d drive yet another wedge between them and their son.
“We’ve missed you, son,” his father said, sounding uncharacteristically conciliatory. Victoria had seen this man shout at Trey and berate him in front of others for real or perceived transgressions. Was he going to apologize now? Had he really changed that much? She couldn’t see it.
Trey whirled and faced them all, drink in hand, his face contorted with fury. “Missed me? You’ve missed me? That’s a good one, old man. You never missed me a day in your life. Out of sight, out of mind it was, as I recall. Unless you needed something from me.”
“That’s not true,” Marilyn protested. Her British accent always got thicker when she was upset. “Your father and I have always enjoyed your company.”
Trey gave her a scathing look. “Like you are enjoying it at the moment? You’re a lying sack of shit, Mother.”
“Now see here. Don’t talk to your mother like that.” Trey’s father advanced toward him as if to strike him, but he stopped when Trey took a step in his direction, holding his cane like a weapon.
“You can go straight to hell, old man,” Trey said, glaring at his father with pure hatred in his eyes. “You and Mother dear never gave a damn about me. All you cared about was your social standing and prestige. I was an accident, but you graciously allowed me into your lives as long as I didn’t fuck up. But I did fuck up, didn’t I, Mother?”
Victoria watched the scene in horror. Trey’s eyes had taken on the glint of a madman. His face was filled with anger so vile it appalled her. What was going on here?
Her father went for the phone. “I’m calling the police,” he said. “Sorry, Delaney, but your son is no longer welcome in my house.”
Trey threw his whiskey glass at Victoria’s father, who ducked barely in time. The fine crystal shattered against the wall. “Don’t touch that phone. This is a family affair, is it not? We wouldn’t want our dirty laundry hung out for the rest of the world to see, now would we?”
Victoria knew he’d hit a nerve with both her parents. They deplored public exposure. No police would be called into this domestic dispute.
“Trey, please,” she said, finding her voice at last. “Come on, let’s just go.”
But he ignored her. He strode to where his mother, for once, stood speechless. “You don’t like me, do you, Mother dear? You never have. But you know what? You made me what I am. It’s your blood that taints my veins and drives me to the work I must do.”
Marilyn turned a ghastly white. “Don’t, Trey. Don’t…”
Victoria frowned. What was he talking about?
Trey took his mother’s wrists in his hands. “What, Mother? What don’t you want me to do?”
Victoria had never seen Marilyn Delaney reduced to the quivering, frightened woman she was at the moment. “Don’t do this to yourself,” she said after a moment. “Don’t do it to us. We never meant to hurt you, James.”
“James!” He spat the name as if it were poison. “You didn’t even have the decency to give me a name of my own.” He released her wrists. “I despise you, Mother. I hope you rot in hell.”
His anger seemed dissipated, at least for the moment, and Victoria tried again to undo the horrible mistake she’d made in bringing him here. “Trey, let’s go.”
Her voice at last seemed to penetrate the insanity that had come over him. His eyes shifted to her.
“I told you not to bring me here.” Something in the way he looked at her filled her with misgiving. But she did not look away.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a mistake. Let’s go,”
Outside, Victoria reached into her purse for her keys, but Trey snatched them from her. “Get in,” he ordered. “I’m driving.”
Knowing he’d had ample to drink, Victoria hesitated. “I’d better drive, Trey.”
He grabbed her roughly by the arm, opened the passenger door, and threw her down on the seat. “I said get in.” She barely pulled her legs inside the car before he slammed the door.
“Trey,” she said, touching his arm when he got behind the wheel. “This is dangerous.”
He glared at her, his lips curling into a vicious smile. “You have no idea just how dangerous.”
He peeled away from the house, and the car fishtailed around the curve at the end of the drive. Victoria screamed. “Stop it, Trey. Don’t take your anger out on me.”
He didn’t answer. Neither did he slow down. At the corner where the private drive intersected the lane, he turned left instead of right.
“Where are you going?” But she already knew. There was only one other house on that lane. His parents. Victoria’s stomach knotted. Something terrible was going on between Trey and his parents, something deep and dark and secret. Something that had caused him to go over the edge.
She wished she’d brought her gun, for friend or no friend, Trey was clearly dangerous. But the only weapon she had was her cell phone. Quietly, she reached inside her purse and felt for the number pads, hoping the roar of the engine would drown the tiny beeps when she dialed 911.
“Trey, let me go,” she called out moments later, hoping she’d dialed correctly and that someone on the other end of the line was listening. “Stop this car right now. Heritage Lane was never meant for fast traffic. You’re going to kill us.”
“Not us, sweetheart. Just you.”
Victoria hadn’t thought she could be much more frightened, but her fear turned to terror as she suddenly realized Trey’s anger went far deeper than a temporary fit against his parents. If she wasn’t able to calm him, she fully believed he might kill her.
“Trey, don’t do this. Let me help you.”
“What? You think I need counseling? Been there, done that.” He drew the car to a screeching halt in front of the looming mansion where he had grown up. “My dear parents threw me into a private mental hospital after Meghan died. You never knew that, did you? All that story about me taking off for the wild west was just so much bu
llshit. She and Father didn’t want their friends to know about their lunatic son.”
“Why did they do that?” Victoria asked, astonished.
“Because,” he said, twirling the knob on his walking stick as if he were unscrewing it, “I came home all bloody that night.” He pulled the knob away from the cane, and with it came a long, slender knife. The steel of the blade glinted in the moonlight.
Victoria drew in a sharp breath. She didn’t know what he was talking about, or why he had pulled a knife on her, but she wasn’t about to hang around to find out. She jerked the door open and tried to run, but Trey was faster. He tackled her and knocked her to the ground. His face was in hers, his body pinning her to the pavement.
“Trey, get off me,” she yelled, pushing against his chest. But he was much larger and more muscular than she.
“I fucked up that night.” He was breathing heavily as he spoke the words next to her ear. “I fucked up the whole thing with Meghan. I loved her, but she wouldn’t have me. Not after you told her to ditch me.”
“I never…”
“Oh, yes, you did. Meghan had told me she would marry me. Did you know that, Tori? She promised me. She even fucked me to seal the promise. Bet you didn’t know that, did you, Miss Prude? Well, she did. She fucked me a lot. Until you told her to leave me. It’s all your fault she died, Tori. All you fault!”
“No!”
“Yes. If you hadn’t interfered, she would have been safe with me, instead of running off to meet her lover. What was his name? Ferguson?” In the moonlight, his eyes glittered with malice.
Victoria’s heart slammed furiously against her ribs, half in fear and half in shock at what he was telling her. What did he mean, he came home all bloody that night?
“She was a whore,” he went on. “Nothing but a bloody whore who thought she was too good for me. Just like you think you’re too good for me. But I got even. Oh, yes, I got even. And I’ll get even with you, too, for betraying me.” He rolled off her but kept a tight grip on her wrists and brought her painfully to her feet.