She stood quite still. Relief flooded through her, and the temptation to run over and capture him was almost overpowering, but she knew it was better to force him to come to her. So she waited.
She did smile—she would give him that much.
And it was all he needed. With the quick, ratlike glance to either side that is talisman of the guilty husband, he scurried across the mall walkway to her as if closing in on a piece of decayed meat. He even grinned like a rat.
“Well, hello,” he said, near enough now that she could almost feel his breath on her face. “I’m surprised . . .”
“You are? Somehow I had the impression you were waiting for me.”
“Did you?” He rolled his shoulders and started to throw out his chest, only catching himself when he saw she was smiling again. The smile gave him back his confidence. “Well, maybe I was.”
He made a little gesture with his left hand, as if dismissing the matter, and she noticed that he had taken off his wedding ring.
“Then maybe you’d like to be a gentleman and take me out for a drink. I’d invite you up to my place except . . . I live with someone.”
That struck a chord. He liked that—they were both out on the sly. He touched her then for the first time, sliding his finger around the inside of her elbow to take her arm, really enjoying himself. He was in the noose.
Predictably, he raised the stakes to dinner. For one thing he was stalling. He needed time to nerve himself up to an out-and-out proposition and, in any case, taking a lady to a motel in the early evening was bound to be a little awkward. Besides, he had to feel he had paid for the privilege. So he took her to a restaurant, well on the other side of town naturally. The sort of place where there was no risk he would run into anyone he knew.
It was clear that on a certain primitive level he had given the matter some thought. The restaurant was a steak place with a railroad theme—probably George’s idea of really elegant dining. And it was just right for present purposes. The building was actually constructed using three or four old Pullman cars welded together, so the dining areas were narrow passages with booths on either side, which afforded lots of privacy. And the parking lot was in the back, so you couldn’t be seen from the street. The parking lot was a bonus she hadn’t counted on.
Inside he recommended the roast beef and ordered a pitcher of sangria before they made their pilgrimage to the salad bar. The salads came on dinner plates and there was warm French bread. She had known it was going to be like this and had starved herself all day to be able to do justice to the food—a certain kind of man always thought of eating as foreplay and therefore liked a girl with a good appetite. Conversation was a little slow until George got around to the subject that really interested him.
“So,” he began, as if to signaling the end of some logical progression, “you’re not alone?”
“Now?” She made a show of looking around her. “I hope not.”
“No, I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean.”
For a moment she let the silence hang like a threat, and then she smiled. “He’s quite a bit older,” she went on, allowing herself a slight shrug. “He’s very good to me, but sometimes that isn’t enough.”
“Is now one of those times?”
“Looks like it,” she answered, smiling as provocatively as she felt she could get away with.
She kept him going for the rest of the meal. Once she stepped out of her shoe and ran her toes up his leg. He was so easy it was almost embarrassing.
“You want some dessert?” he asked finally.
“Not here.”
After that he couldn’t get her out of there fast enough.
There was no one in the parking lot, which was convenient. While they walked back to his car she reached inside her shoulder bag and took out a small hypodermic syringe, clutching it in her hand so that only the tip was exposed. The syringe contained two ccs of ketamine. Using her thumbnail she pushed the protective cap from the needle, letting it drop to the pavement. He never noticed a thing.
“Hey, I think someone creased your fender,” she said.
“Where?”
“Back there. See it?”
When he bent over to look she shoved the needle into the seat of his pants—he probably thought she was goosing him. He turned around and started to say something and then simply collapsed. She took the car keys from his hand, opened the trunk and hoisted him inside.
Easy come, easy go. The ketamine acted almost at once, but it would wear off quickly and she needed at least six hours. For this she had pentobarbitol—all you needed was a pharmacist with a gambling problem and you could get anything, no questions asked. She took an ampule from her purse, refilled the syringe and gave him an injection in the leg. She closed the trunk and got into the car.
They hadn’t been out of the restaurant more than three minutes.
It was tempting just to get the thing over with, but she didn’t want to go blundering in on George’s wife at eight o’clock in the evening. There were neighbors to think about and, although she didn’t plan to make a lot of noise, you never knew.
What had George planned? Dinner, a quick fuck, and then home by ten? What had he planned to tell his wife? Maybe he knew his wife wouldn’t be home to miss him. That would be inconvenient.
There was plenty of time. Half an hour later she drove by the house and established that the lights were on, which didn’t prove that anyone was inside but was at least encouraging. She would just have to wait to find out.
She drove back to her apartment, leaving the car for the moment in the basement garage. She made herself a cup of coffee and changed out of her tart’s uniform. It was ten minutes after nine. She would give it another three hours. To pass the time, she turned on the television.
Waterloo Bridge with Vivian Leigh had been on since eight. She had seen it before. She watched it for twenty minutes before she realized she was sobbing.
At a quarter after midnight George’s garage door went up. The opener had been in his glove compartment. It wasn’t the ideal arrangement, since his wife would be able to hear the car coming in, but that was better than leaving it out on the street with George still in the trunk. Besides, the outside doors would probably have deadbolts whereas the door from the garage wouldn’t. She would just have to take her chances with Mrs. Tipton.
She drove in and let the garage door go all the way back down before she got out. She had a Walther PPK/S automatic with a clip full of .22-caliber hollow points, which would do the job nicely at close range and had enough frame weight to keep the noise low—outside the house you probably wouldn’t even be able to hear it.
She let herself in with George’s keys.
“All right, George, where the hell have you . . .”
Mrs. Tipton was coming out of the bedroom when she died. She turned left into the hall, heading toward the kitchen, which connected with the garage, when a single shot entered her left eye. She dropped to the floor, probably without even seeing who had killed her, and did not move. The bullet fragmented in her brain without making an exit wound, so there was very little mess.
She was wearing a filmy white negligee which normally reached all the way to the floor but was now bunched up around her thighs. Had she had plans of her own for this evening? Her murderess now crouched beside the body, the tips of her fingers pressed against the throat. For a second or two she fancied she could still detect a pulse, but very quickly there was nothing.
There was a workbench in the garage and in a drawer she found a roll of duct tape. When she opened the trunk of the car George was beginning to stir. Okay. Another twenty ccs of pentobarbitol and he was quiet again. She rolled him over and bound his wrists together behind his back with the duct tape.
She had just finished when she heard a thin wail coming from inside the house. Her heart almost stopped until she realized it was the baby. A timely reminder—there was still that to be taken care of.
. . . . .
George Tipton’s first conscious sensation was the nasty taste in his mouth. It was bad enough that he felt a marked inclination to vomit, but he was distracted from this when a strong, white light shone on him, making his eyeballs feel as if they had dried up in their sockets. The light was exquisitely painful. When he tried to raise an arm to shield his face he discovered that his hands were tied behind his back.
It was only then that it occurred to him there was something wrong. He had been on a date, and now . . .
“Sit up, George,” a voice said. “Just throw your legs over the edge there. You can do it.”
It was a woman’s voice, but not one he recognized. He couldn’t see anyone behind the blinding glare of the light.
He tried to do as he was told. Only on the third attempt was he able to pull himself up, and then he hit his head. He was sitting in the trunk of a car and the edge of the lid had grazed him above his left eyebrow. Christ, it hurt. It felt like it was bleeding.
The light was only a flashlight. He figured that out when the woman set it down on the ground, apparently so he could see her.
She was Annie.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for you to come around,” she said. “It’s almost four-thirty in the morning. Another half-hour and we wouldn’t have had a chance to talk.”
They were outside somewhere—in the woods it seemed like. It was very quiet. He thought he could smell water.
He tried to pull his hands free, but they were really tied tight. He couldn’t feel his fingers at all.
“Where are we?” he asked. It was a stupid question, but just then it was all he was up to.
“We’re on the shores of Lake Hartwell, in South Carolina. The lake is just behind you, but you can’t see it from here. There’s a little bluff that drops right off into the water. It’s about twenty-five feet deep just there.”
“How did we get here?”
“We drove. What did you think?”
She had a delicious, sexy laugh. Any other time it would have thrilled him, but just then the sound hurt his head.
“We made a stop along the way,” she went on, “but we aren’t more than an hour and a half from your front door.”
She was crouched on the ground about fifteen feet in front of him. That allowed him to see her whole in the narrow arc of the flashlight, which was probably the point. It also allowed him to see the pistol she held in her hand.
His mind, as it cleared, was capable of grasping the logic of the situation: they were somewhere deep in the boondocks, his hands were tied behind his back, and she had a gun. She had brought him here to kill him. Oddly, the only emotion he could bring to that conclusion was astonishment.
“My front door . . .” he repeated. Somehow the phrase made him uneasy. “What’s going on? Annie, what’s going on?”
She shook her head, and her perfect blond hair moved as with its own life. Even at this extremity he could not help but be struck yet again by her beauty.
When she smiled at him it was like a promise of forgiveness.
“You don’t remember my real name? You don’t remember me at all?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ten years ago, in Connecticut. You used to climb over the wall to come to me.”
“I’ve never been near Connecticut.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She stood up, which had the effect of making her invisible above the waist. When he couldn’t see her face anymore he was stabbed through with fear, as if she had abandoned him to death. “Nothing about you matters anymore, George. All your little sins will be erased.”
“You’re crazy.”
“So I’ve heard.”
She laughed again, only this time it sounded like no human laughter. Yes, absolutely—she was going to kill him.
She raised the pistol and pointed it at his head. He could just see her white forearm, and then the hand, and then the gun, as if she had lowered them into a pool of light for his inspection. And then she seemed to think better of it and let her arm drop. Perhaps she had only meant to frighten him, to make him realize how precarious his hold on life had become. It worked.
“Oh Jesus,” he sobbed. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus . . .”
“You can forget about Him too, George. He won’t be interested. You’ve been a bad boy.”
“Oh God, don’t. Don’t . . .”
“I’d be doing you a favor, George,” she said, her voice perfectly even, as though none of this mattered to her. As though he himself were no more real than an image on the television screen. “If they ever catch you, it’s over anyway. Do they still have the electric chair around here? I forget. You murdered your wife and her little baby, George. You drove home in your car—if anyone saw anything, that was all they saw—and then you shot them both dead. With this gun. They’ll strap you down and cook you crisp as bacon, George. The best thing for you is to just disappear. The water of this lake is as cloudy as clam chowder. They’ll never find you.”
He just sat there, his legs dangling over the back bumper, weeping quietly. He was so filled with grief and fear he couldn’t sort one out from the other. Knowing that Lucille and the baby were dead only made him feel the more hopeless. Nothing could save him. He was dead.
She just stood there. She seemed to be waiting for him to compose himself. She had to wait a long time.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked finally.
“I have my reasons. Does it matter?”
He shook his head. He was quite simply too terrified to do anything else.
“Please . . .”
“Shut up, George. Get back in the trunk.” She raised the pistol again. “Or, if you like, I can kill you first and then put you inside. I don’t really care. You choose.”
He didn’t want to die. Not this very second, he didn’t. So he let himself fall backwards into the trunk.
“Get your legs in, unless you want a bullet through the kneecap. That would hurt.”
He pulled his legs inside and huddled here. It was almost as if he were taking refuge.
“Goodbye, George.”
She stepped forward and brought down the lid of the trunk with a slam. He heard the lock turn and then click shut. After a long silence, he heard the engine turn over and kick into life.
The car jolted forward so that he lurched to one side until he was almost on his knees. Then, for a few seconds, he could sense the front end sinking, as if it were following a downward arc through the air.
The impact came first and then he heard the splash. Then everything was still.
He did not start to scream until he could feel the water beginning to trickle over his face.
8
The bid on the Wyman estate was an even $6,000,000, which struck Kinkaid as a little high, especially since it had been over three years since the last serious offer, amounting to $3,700,000 from an out-of-state developer who had wanted to tear the house down and build condos. The heirs, speaking through a law firm in San Francisco, had refused even to counter.
It had been six years since Mrs. Wyman’s death and the property ate up a lot in maintenance costs and real estate taxes. Besides, $6,000,000 was $6,000,000. It might be a long time before that kind of money was on the table again.
But when Kinkaid placed his call to San Francisco he had no idea what the reaction would be. He had never met the heirs to the Wyman fortune. He did not even know their names or how many of them there were. They existed for him only as the beneficiaries of a trust administered in California, and so far at least they had displayed very little interest in the great white elephant of a house that was costing the estate some thirty thousand dollars every year it went unsold.
Getting someone on the line at a big out-of-state law office where nobody knows you—and, after three years, nobody would—was often a time consuming business. A lawyer was not a client, and people were in no particular hurry to talk to you when they didn’t know if the time was going to be billable. Yet in what was
virtually a breach of etiquette the switchboard girl didn’t even place him on hold but he found himself connected to someone named Grayson almost as soon as he gave his name.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Kinkaid. It’s a pleasure to hear from you again,” Mr. Grayson said, in the intimidating baritone of a man who has made full partner. “Or perhaps I should say, ‘good evening.’ What is it, about seven-thirty out there? You’re working late.”
Kinkaid glanced out his one and only window and saw that the light was already on above his neighbor’s back porch. From his office in some huge glass skyscraper Mr. Grayson, to whom Kinkaid was quite sure he had never before spoken, could probably see the late afternoon sun lighting up the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge—at least, it was agreeable to think he might.
“It’s one of the advantages of living above the shop,” he answered, careful to put just the shadow of a chuckle in his voice. “You of course remember the Wyman property. We’ve had another offer.”
“That’s good to hear,” Grayson answered, just a split second too quickly. “How much?”
“Six million.”
“Then I think we should accept. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes. Of course. As soon as your principals have approved . . .”
“Oh, I think you can just go ahead. You have power of attorney, if I remember correctly. I’ll consult with the heirs, of course, but I don’t anticipate any problems there. You’ll hear from me in a day or two.”
That was it. There wasn’t anymore. And it simply didn’t smell right. By the time Kinkaid hung up his receiver he was reasonably certain that Grayson had been expecting the offer and had probably already cleared it with his clients, whoever they were. There were just too many questions he hadn’t asked.
For instance, there had been no mention of the terms of purchase—the date of closing, whether there were any contigencies, whether the buyer was likely to have any trouble with the banks about a loan.
And, come to think on it, why was the buyer paying list when the property had been on the market forever? He might reasonably have assumed that the sellers were hungry and there would be some give on the price—probably a lot of give—and that he could save himself at least half a million by coming in at, say, four and then allowing himself to be screwed up to five five. Kinkaid did a fair amount of realty work and he couldn’t remember the last time a property in New Gilead had sold for list.
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