And went next door.
Chapter Ninety-six
At five past ten, Holly was waiting at the front door of 1317. She was wearing white. A simple fine wool shift dress with a scooped neckline that Jack had bought her a few months back on Rodeo Drive. Her skin was pale and smooth and taut. Her dark hair was loose and gleaming, as if she had just shampooed and blown it carefully dry for Nina’s visit.
She had spent a long time preparing.
‘Come in, Nina.’
Nina looked into the eyes of the woman who wanted to destroy her world. Grey eyes. Smug eyes.
She stepped over the threshold. The entrance hall was exactly the same shape and size as their own, but theirs was warm and welcoming, whereas this was clinical and stark.
‘Can I make you some tea,’ Holly offered. ‘Or maybe you’d prefer something stronger? I know how you enjoy a drink.’
‘I’d like to see Zoë, please.’
‘All in good time.’ Holly smiled at her. ‘How about a nice cup of breakfast tea? While we get to know each other.’
She turned and walked towards the kitchen. Nina stood very still, debating whether or not to run straight up the staircase to try to find Zoë, but in a three-storey house she might be anywhere, and Holly was hardly going to let her simply go pick up her baby and walk out with her.
She looked around. There was a large patch of discoloured parquet on the floor near the foot of the staircase. A stain that someone had very recently tried to scrub out. Nina could smell bleach, could see brush marks scratched into the polish.
Teresa came, unbidden, into her mind, together with a terrible fear.
‘Come along, Nina,’ Holly said, from inside the kitchen.
Nina pushed the fear away and followed her.
‘Have a seat.’ Holly pointed to the white chairs around the small round table.
Nina sat down, watched Holly fill a steel kettle, light the gas stove, wait for the water to boil.
‘Where’s Teresa?’ she asked.
‘Around,’ Holly answered, taking two ceramic mugs down from a wall cupboard and setting them on a counter near the stove.
Nina’s foreboding magnified.
She had to moisten her lips with her tongue before she could speak again. ‘We’ve met before,’ she said, her voice a little hoarse.
‘Twice,’ Holly said, companionably. ‘The tea won’t be long.’
‘At the bookstore in New York,’ Nina said.
‘Doubleday on Fifth.’
‘And outside the house, two weeks ago. You were getting out of a cab. You dropped your shopping bag.’
‘You picked it up for me.’
Nina said nothing for a moment, thinking.
‘And you met my sister at that hearing in LA,’ she added.
‘Phoebe. Yes, I did.’
‘And then you lured her to the house in Catherine Street.’
‘Did I?’
Holly’s eyes were calm.
Nina looked at her flat stomach.
‘You’re not pregnant,’ she said.
The grey eyes blanked a little, but Holly said nothing. The kettle boiled. She picked it up.
Nina watched as she poured steaming water into the mugs and dunked teabags into them. Red Rose teabags. Nothing fancy.
Don’t do that again, Nina. Don’t put Zoë in greater danger.
‘I’d like to see my baby soon,’ she said, softly.
‘You will.’
Holly set the mugs on the kitchen table and sat down.
Nina looked down at the table. White chipboard. Cheap, like the chairs. From the way Nick had described the Bourne family, she would have envisaged any home of Holly’s very differently. More expensive. More tasteful.
But this isn’t her home. This is just her trap.
‘Drink your tea,’ Holly said.
‘I’m not thirsty,’ Nina said.
‘Okay.’
Holly stood up again.
‘I do have something to show you.’
Nina got up quickly. Her whole body ached with her longing to see Zoë. Her whole being.
‘Not the baby,’ Holly said, reading her mind. ‘Not yet.’
Nina said nothing. She could almost feel Holly’s enjoyment, like a sick prickling under her skin. She thought, for a moment, about Nick. It was so strange – she understood more now about some of the things that he had allowed to happen, yet, conversely, at the same time, other things became even more impossible to understand.
He slept with this.
‘This is something else,’ Holly went on. ‘Something Nick did. That I think you should see.’
She sat down again.
‘It’s sad about Teresa,’ she said.
‘What about Teresa?’ Nina asked, thrown, still standing.
‘Losing her this way.’ Holly paused. ‘I’ve come to know her quite well.’ She ran her right index finger round the rim of her mug. ‘Which is why I say it’s sad.’ She lifted her chin and looked up into Nina’s face. ‘But I’m sure you’re going to be far more concerned with helping Nick than worrying too much about Teresa.’
Helping Nick.
Nina’s heart was beating much too fast.
Holly stood up again. Moved slowly to her right, towards what, in 1315, was a utility room. ‘That’s why I’m going to show you this little problem first,’ she said, ‘before I outline my proposals for helping Nick. All right with you?’
‘All right,’ Nina said, bewildered.
‘Come on then.’ Holly beckoned to her, smiling, like a confidante. ‘I can’t explain how I’m going to help Nick until you know what we’re up against, can I?’
Nina didn’t move.
‘But I am going to take care of him, Nina. You don’t need to worry about that.’ Holly slipped her right hand into the hip-level, right-hand pocket of her dress and took out a small key. ‘How could I not help him, when he’s been everything to me all my life?’ Her eyes were suddenly tender. ‘Brother. Best friend. Lover.’
Nina took one step towards Holly and stopped. Her legs were jelly. She felt nauseous and deeply afraid.
‘Come on, Nina.’ Holly held up the key. ‘You have to come up close, or you won’t be able to see.’
Nina followed her through the open door.
The room beyond was much the same as her own. Plain wall cupboards, a door that, presumably, opened onto a similar walk-in larder. Washing machine, drier. Chest freezer. A few cardboard boxes from supermarkets and grocery stores. Washing powder, softener, Chlorox bleach, rolls of paper towel. Vacuum cleaner.
Holly was about a foot away.
‘I’m always going to be there for Nick,’ she said, softly. ‘You have to know that, Nina. Some things are just meant to be.’
She turned to the freezer and Nina saw that the lid was padlocked.
Her heart gave another of those odd, warning thuds in her chest, and her palms began to sweat.
Holly fitted the key into the padlock. Nina noticed, irrelevantly, that her nails were painted soft red, matching her lipstick, and that one of them was filed much shorter than the others, as if it had just been broken and repaired.
‘And now that he’s the father of our child,’ Holly went on, still in that quiet, calm, almost gentle voice, ‘what else can I possibly do but stand by him?’ She looked up at Nina. ‘You should be able to understand that, more than most.’
The padlock was open. Holly unhooked it, turned around and laid it on top of the drier, then turned back again and gripped the lid of the freezer with both hands.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Just a minute.’
The father of our child. Our child.
Nina stood transfixed. She felt the way she thought small animals must feel at night when they halted in the middle of a highway, trapped in the beam of car headlights. Paralysed.
Holly was putting on gloves. The kind of fine plastic gloves people with skin allergies used around their kitchens. The kind that looked a little like the latex glove
s surgeons and gynaecologists wore.
Oh, God.
Nina stared at the freezer, and a sudden madness shoved violently into her mind, surged through her veins and arteries, through her limbs and up into her brain, pumped brutally by her out-of-control heart.
Zoë.
‘Oh, dear God,’ she said, out loud.
Holly glanced at her. She smiled again, reassuringly.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’ll be fine.’
She gripped the freezer lid again and raised it until it rested against the concrete wall behind it.
‘Come closer, Nina,’ Holly said, still gentle, still soft. ‘Don’t be scared. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’
If it’s Zoë, I will kill her.
Nina stayed where she was, the madness still surging.
I will kill her every way there is to kill.
‘Nina, come on.’ Holly was a little firmer. ‘Come see what Nick did.’
I will kill her, and then I will die.
Nina stepped up to the freezer and looked down.
Not Zoë.
It took a few seconds to comprehend. Frost had settled over Teresa. Over her black hair and her blue blouse and her unnaturally folded arm. The frost had coated Teresa’s bloodied cheek and her nose and what had been her right eye in pink fuzz.
‘Looks like fur, doesn’t it?’ Holly asked Nina.
She put her right hand into the freezer and pulled something out.
‘This is the knife,’ she said, and showed it to Nina. ‘Recognize it?’ She paused. ‘It’s Nick’s. From his studio. It has his prints all over it.’
Nina tore her eyes away from the freezer and looked at the knife. She didn’t remember it. She started to speak, but no words came. Her lips felt rubbery, her tongue felt thick. A strange, ugly moan emerged from her throat.
‘Had a bit of a shock?’ Holly asked, kindly.
Nina reached out her hand towards the wall to help her to stay upright, but it touched the freezer instead and she snatched it away as if it had burned her. A little of the numbness went away.
‘I expect you’d like to see our daughter now?’ Holly said.
Our daughter.
‘Would you like that, Nina?’
Hold on. For Zoë.
Nina nodded.
‘Yes, please,’ she said.
She followed Holly out of the room, through the kitchen, through the hall and up the staircase. Past the second floor and on to the third.
To a white door with a pale pink teddy bear painted on it.
Holly opened the door.
‘Come in,’ she said.
There was a beautiful, draped crib in the centre of the room.
Zoë was lying on her back.
She was asleep. Her breathing was light and soft and even. Her little cheeks puffed out gently with her breaths as they often did when she was peacefully sleeping.
Thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you, God.
Nina ached to sweep Zoë up out of the crib, to hold her close.
‘Isn’t she perfect?’
Nina looked away from the crib up to Holly’s face.
The proud mother.
Relief gave way to rage.
And then fresh terror.
Holly was still holding the knife. Still wearing gloves. She was not wielding it as she might have brandished a weapon. But she was still holding it. And she had already murdered with it once.
Hold on, Nina. You have to wait. For the right moment.
Nina looked back down at Zoë. At her child.
The madness had all gone now. Her mind was perfectly clear.
She stood very still.
And waited.
Chapter Ninety-seven
All the champagne brunches organized by the balloon companies are finished now. I got to two of the groups myself in time to check every woman and man; paranoia had me thinking Holly might even have pulled a swift sex change, and whatever the firms’ representatives had told me, I couldn’t help fearing that she might also have found a way to smuggle Zoë on board with her.
Seems I was wrong.
I’ve talked to just about everyone I could find who was connected to this morning’s hot air balloon rides. I’ve driven them nuts, and I know they think I’m one brick shy of a load, but I don’t care about that. All I care about is that neither Holly nor Zoë seems to have been anywhere near Napa today. Nina and I have been perfectly suckered in by that psychotic bitch.
So, at eleven-oh-three, I’m well on my way back home.
Listening to rock on KFOG to keep my own motor running.
They’re playing the number from Tommy where the Acid Queen sings about what she could do with the child, given just one night.
Holly has already had our daughter for more than a night.
God help us all.
‘If Zoë isn’t in Napa, where is she?’
Nina asked me that question last time we spoke, and I still don’t have any more of an answer than I did then.
But I do have another question, also unanswerable as yet, and all the more terrifying for it.
Aside from the pleasure she might have gotten out of torturing me and Nina, exactly why did Holly want to get me out of San Francisco this morning?
Fresh suspicion bursts through me as fast and menacingly as a newborn John Wyndham triffid.
I turn off the car radio and, for the first time in a while, take note of my whereabouts. I’m back on Highway 37, not too far from the Golden Gate Bridge. I could be home in twenty minutes or so, traffic permitting.
But all my instincts are bawling at me to call Nina now.
I might have been faster just staying on the road than looking for a phone.
But finally I’m standing here, slipping my quarters into the slot and listening to our line ringing.
The machine picks up.
And I listen to Nina’s special message.
I put the receiver back on the cradle, and allow myself one more long, brain-bleeding moment to absorb what she has told me.
And then, for another too-long moment, I just go on standing there, vacillating like a big kid.
Someone help me.
Do I call the cops or don’t I?
Holly’s threat in her first note warned us not to.
But the acid queen has my baby and my wife now, and I can’t talk this one over with Nina, so I have to guess all bets are off. Holly Bourne was always crazy, but what she’s turned into now is a lying psychopath.
Not someone to make deals with.
Besides, I need all the help I can get.
And I need to move!
Why Norman Capelli is in his office on the Saturday morning of Thanksgiving weekend, I don’t know, but it’s one small piece of luck, and I thank God for it. I’ve been saying a lot of prayers over the last fifteen or so hours. I figured this was one time I might find out if anyone’s listening, or cares. But Capelli is on the other end of this phone line, so maybe – just maybe – someone has been hearing me.
I tell him fast.
‘You’re sure that’s exactly what she said?’ Capelli says.
Anger erupts.
‘If you don’t believe me, Capelli, call our home number and listen to the message yourself – and if you don’t believe me then about Holly Bourne, then fuck you, and if anything happens to my wife and daughter, it’ll be on your head.’
‘Take it easy, Miller,’ Capelli tells me. ‘I’ll get a car over there right away.’
‘No!’ I yell at him, almost hysterical. ‘She said in her note that if she saw so much as a uniform, we’d never see Zoë again. She said she can smell cops. Jesus Christ, Capelli, this is a hostage situation, don’t you realize that yet?’
‘Okay, okay,’ Capelli soothes me. ‘Then that’s how we’ll deal with it. But it’s going to take a little time to set things up, so I’m going to need you to stay calm—’
‘I’m not waiting,’ I cut in, gripping the receiver so hard I’m sur
prised it doesn’t crack, ‘so don’t even bother asking me to do that. I get back to Antonia Street, and I go straight next door—’
‘Don’t do that, Miller—’
‘I’m doing it, Capelli. There’s no way on earth I’m going to leave my wife and child alone with that murdering bitch one minute more than I have to.’ I almost hang up, but I give him five more seconds. ‘If your people can do something to help us – and I mean, help, not just make things more dangerous by going crazy with some SWAT team, then fine—’
‘Don’t go in alone, Miller,’ Capelli warns me. ‘You must not—’
‘I’m on my way there now,’ I override him. ‘You call my house and you listen to my wife tell you what’s going on, and then you decide if you’d do anything different if it was your wife.’
He’s still talking to me as I slam the receiver back on the hook.
And get back in the Land Cruiser and put my foot down hard.
And think about what I’m going to do after I get Nina and Zoë safely back home – dear God in heaven, if you are there, let me get them back home.
I know what I’m going to do after that.
I’m going to kill Holly Bourne.
I am going to fucking kill her.
Chapter Ninety-eight
Holly was sitting in the rocker beside the white crib in which Zoë was still sleeping, telling Nina about her plans.
‘I can’t disclose to you the details of the way I intend to handle Nick’s case. They’re not complete yet – and anyway, it wouldn’t be ethical for me to tell you. You understand that, Nina, don’t you?’
Nina was standing between the crib and the nursery door. She heard what Holly was saying, but most of her brain was engaged in assessing her chances of escaping, safely, with her baby. She was aware that Holly was confident that she wasn’t going to try to make a run for it, not without Zoë. And Holly was closer to the crib than she was.
And she still had the knife.
The knife she had used to kill Teresa.
It lay in her lap. Across the white wool dress, the nanny’s defrosted blood staining the fabric a murky rust red.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like that drink now, Nina?’
‘Quite sure, thank you,’ Nina answered.
‘You’ll let me know if you change your mind, won’t you?’
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