They’d opened the banquet room, as they did every year, to accommodate the crowd. Hot and cold hors d’oeuvres, a five-piece band with one male and one female vocalist batting out spritely holiday favorites, people standing or sitting at tables, even two or three couples dancing. He went that way because it was away from Jenna. Acquaintances spoke to him, and he spoke to them; it all ran through him like water through a colander, nothing left but a few words here and there like misty droplets. “Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la …” He finished his wine, went back for a refill. Dennis Frane came up, lingered, wandered off again. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas …” He drank the second glass of cab, much faster than he should have. Better eat something, he hadn’t had any food since lunch. But none of the hors d’oeuvres appealed to him. He looked for Bryan Collins, couldn’t pick him out, and returned to the serving counter for a third glass of cab. His head was beginning to ache a little. “Oh, you better watch out, you better not cry…”
“Cam. When did you get here?”
Jenna, at his elbow. He turned slowly, pasting on a smile. “Well, hello. Little while ago.”
“I’ve been watching for you, but I didn’t see you come in.”
“I didn’t see you, either,” he lied. Except for a smile that seemed as artificial as his own, she looked fine. Green dress, tight, showing off the deep swell of her breasts; not too much makeup, and the dark hair worn upswept, fastened with a jeweled comb, decorated with a sprig of holly. “You look festive.”
“I don’t feel festive.” She took his arm, steered him away from a laughing couple who were pushing up to the counter. “We need to talk,” she said.
“About what?”
“Not what you might think. It’s important, Cam.”
“All right. Go ahead.”
“Not here, with all these people. Alone.”
His mouth had a puckered feel; he drank more of his wine. It might have been two-dollar-a-bottle plonk instead of twenty-eight-dollar-a-bottle, award-winning cabernet sauvignon. “I think I’m free for lunch on Monday,” he said.
“It won’t wait until Monday.”
“When, then?”
“Tonight. As soon as I can get away from here. My house, you know where it is.”
The wine’s acidity had set up a burning in his empty gut. He said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jenna.”
“Don’t you? Well, I do. It’s important, Cam.”
“What is?”
“I think I can get away by eight.” She pressed something into his hand. Key. “You won’t have to wait more than half an hour, if you leave now.”
“Jenna, I don’t want to play any games with you. Can’t you just tell me—”
“At the house. Alarm’s on and the pad is just inside the door. Remember to disarm it—the code is two thousand and one. And this isn’t a game.”
“All right, but—”
“Here comes Bryan,” she said. “Half an hour,” and she moved away to let silver-haired Bryan Collins step up and take her place at Cam’s side.
He spent five minutes chatting with Bryan and somebody else who joined them, and when he managed to work free, he couldn’t remember a word of the conversation. The key felt hot against his palm as he made his way into the chilly drizzle outside. He felt silly and manipulated, like a reluctant conspirator in a game he didn’t understand.
Not a game, she’d said, but was that the truth? One last attempt at seduction? It didn’t seem like her; she was openly aggressive, not cryptic and devious. But he couldn’t be sure. The simple truth was, he didn’t know Jenna at all.
The only other explanation he could think of was the dangerous misfit business again. Nick Hendryx? Or some other phantom stalker? Her paranoia at work, if that was it.
Unless something had happened, something overt to stir her up.
I don’t want to know, he thought. Asking for trouble if I go to her place, no matter what this is all about. Stay the hell away from her!
He started the car, left the packed lot, and turned south on the valley highway. Going home. Telling himself he was going home all the way to Black Oak Road, right up to the time he made the turn and headed into the hills to Jenna’s house.
43
Across the road, parked in shadow in front of a closed-up nursery, Nick watched the silver BMW roll to the stop sign at the winery entrance. All sorts of lights on over there, building lights and grounds lights, making everything bright as day even through the light rain. Gallagher’s wheels, that BMW. He’d know it anywhere even without the WINEMAN license plate. And Gallagher alone inside. Hadn’t stayed long at the party Fenwood Creek was having. Less than forty minutes.
Nick had watched him drive in. Parked here over an hour, since he’d followed the Bailey woman from the winery to her house and back again. She’d gone home to change for the party, different outfits going and coming. Spotted him on the return trip, he’d made sure of it. Second time this week he’d made sure—goose her a little more, turn up the heat on Gallagher through her. She must’ve told him about it by now. Over there at the party, maybe. Now it was time to shift back onto his tail, show himself to Gallagher, too, at some point. See where he was headed now, then decide.
Nick waited until the BMW was a few hundred yards down the highway, rolled out behind it. Gallagher wasn’t in any hurry, but he wasn’t poking, either. Slowed down through Fenwood village, sped up again once he was on the other side. Going home?
No. Turning off on Black Oak Road.
Heading for 4100 Madrone Way. Finally connecting with his piece on the side. Him leaving the party first, then her following a little later. Keep tongues from wagging, that way.
Fine. Perfect.
Nick swung off onto Black Oak. Smiling as his lights burrowed ahead into the dark.
44
A clutch of seconds after Cam pulled into Jenna’s driveway, the headlights that had been behind him threw the wet pavement, the flanking oak trees, into bright relief and then funneled past without slowing. He couldn’t tell what kind of car it was or how many people were inside; it was merely a quick-moving shadow, rain-blurred behind its lights. One of Jenna’s neighbors. Somebody with no interest in him at all. Christ, but she had him spooked again.
He tried to even his breathing, relax his body, as he went the rest of the way up the drive. The tension remained. Blood beat in his temples in a steady rhythm; his stomach still burned from the acidity in the wine.
Two night spots were mounted on the front wall of the redwood-and-fieldstone house, another on the attached garage, laying patches of misty brightness across a paved parking area and the upper end of the drive. He parked the car as close to the house as he could without blocking the garage. Raining harder now; he ran to the door.
Inside, a blinking red light drew his attention to the alarm-system pad, and he remembered Jenna reminding him to disarm it. What had she said the code was? For a few seconds his mind was blank. Come on, before the damn thing goes off! Two thousand and one, that was it. The movie, the millenium, easy number to keep in your head—most people’s heads. He punched out the four digits. The red light winked off, and a steady green one came on.
He shucked his trench coat, hung it in the hall closet. He’d been here twice before, once with Hallie for a dinner party shortly after Bryan Collins hired Jenna away from a Silverado Trail winery, the second time earlier this year, by himself, for an afternoon wine-and-cheese party. Small, two bedrooms, one of which she’d turned into a home office, but a pricey hunk of real estate nonetheless. Bryan paid his management people top salary, as he could afford to do, given Fenwood Creek’s growing reputation and annual volume of sales.
There was a wet bar on the far side of the living room. Jenna wouldn’t mind if he helped himself to some of her gin. He found a bottle of Beefeater’s, but when he opened it and caught a whiff of the content it nearly made him gag. Pour even a short one on top of the red wine, no food, and he’d be dr
unk or sick or both when she got here. And he still had a long drive home on a rainy night.
Common sense, Gallagher. In this, in everything you do here tonight.
He screwed the cap back on the Beefeater’s, went to sit on a white leather sofa. The decor was mostly white or off-white—carpet, white-washed brick fireplace, alabaster sculptures, marble-topped tables. Virginal. He wondered if Jenna had decorated it this way as a kind of private joke, or if that was how she saw herself, as a chaste person underneath the earthy, sexually aggressive exterior. Or, Lord, maybe she just liked white.
Five minutes. Ten. He could feel himself growing more and more wired; only the throbbing in his head, the fiery hurt in his stomach, kept him from making another trip to the wet bar.
He sat listening to the rain and the heavy thud of his pulse. Trying not to think. Trying to sit and wait patiently.
Come on, Jenna. Come on, come on, come on!
45
Parked and waiting again. This time on a muddy turnout next to a creek, fifty yards or so on the downhill side of the Bailey woman’s driveway. Relaxed. Telling Annalisa inside his head, “Prod him tonight, get him worked up and worrying, then back off again. Stay away from him and the bimbo until after Christmas. It’s like catching a trout, baby. Set the hook, yank him, let him have some slack, yank him again, watch him wiggle and squirm, then reel him in.”
One pair of headlights passed, but they were high-set, and he knew it was a pickup or a four-by-four, not the white Lexus. Ford Bronco, right. Twenty minutes. Rain stopped, but the wind kept whacking around in the trees. Half an hour. She was taking her time getting here to meet Gallagher. Probably couldn’t get away from the Christmas party. Somebody important at the winery, Ms. Jenna Bailey. Product manager. What did a product manager do? Had something to do with sales, like Gallagher and his company had something to do with sales. Perfect match. Sell each other a bill of goods, manage the hell out of each other’s products every chance they got.
Thirty-five minutes, and here came another pair of lights up Madrone Way from Black Oak. Passenger car lights this time. Nick watched them grow and spread, glaring like a couple of searchlights. Brights on. Far reach of them gleamed off the wet metal of the Mazda’s hood while the other car was still better than a hundred yards downhill. Another few seconds, and the car’s speed slackened all of a sudden, and right after that there was a splash of red in the darkness behind the beams—brake lights. They went off again quick, but then, with maybe fifty yards separating him and the one coming, the brake lights flashed again. Driver braked hard that time because the headlights wobbled as the car slid a little on the slick pavement—
Lights veered toward him, straight across the road toward the Mazda.
Nick tightened up behind the wheel. First thought: Shit, not another drunk. Second thought: Cop? By then the other car was off the road and plowing to a stop a few feet from the Mazda’s front bumper, high beams turning the misty windshield into a silver-flecked blaze. He threw an arm up to shade his eyes. Through the glare he saw the driver’s door open, somebody come out fast and run around between the two cars.
Bailey woman.
Coattails blowing in the wind, hands in the coat pockets, face twisted into an angry grimace.
Last thing he’d expected. Supposed to see him sitting here and drive on past, all worried and scared, and instead here she was, bearing down on him like Rambo’s sister. He should’ve started the engine, backed up and driven away and left her standing there stewing. But he didn’t think of that in time, not until after she was at his window. She thumped on the glass with a closed fist, leaning down so her face, a white-streaked blur, was peering in at him. Still time to get out of there, but he just sat still. That was his first mistake.
Second mistake, reflex, confusion, some damn thing, was opening the window. Soon as he did that, and she was looking at him square on, eyes black and shiny-hot in the light glare, she took her other hand out of the coat pocket and showed him what was in it.
Gun.
Little flat automatic pointing into his face.
“All right, you bastard, I’ve had all I’m going to take of you stalking me,” Spitting the words like a cat spits. “Get out of that car and do it quick or I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead and claim self-defense.”
46
More than twenty minutes of waiting now. And the acid burning in his gut seemed to be getting worse. He shoved up from the sofa, feeling shaky, sweaty all of a sudden, and walked slowly into the kitchen for a glass of water. The first wave of nausea hit him as he reached the sink. Belly roiling, he stumbled into the nearby guest bathroom. Had just enough time to drop to his knees in front of the toilet before the wine came up in a thin, sour spurt like diluted blood.
He was weak and dizzy when he finished. He pulled himself up over the vanity sink, washed his face with cold water. It didn’t help. Roaring in his head—it felt huge, balloonlike, as if it were expanding and contracting like something attached to a bellows. He staggered out of the bathroom, made it back to the sofa before the pain erupted. Bright, stabbing pulses down through his sinus cavities and into the backs of his eyeballs.
Migraine.
Bad one.
Oh God no not now not here—
Medication, one of the new pills the specialist had given him … he fumbled the vial out of his coat pocket, but his hands shook so badly he couldn’t get the cap off. Vertigo had him then; he fell back against the cushions. Swirling, swirling, as though he were caught in a vortex. Disoriented, couldn’t think, and the darkness closing in—
47
Nick got out of the car. What else could he do? Woman backed off as he opened the door, watching him, the little gun steady in her hand. Classy surface had rubbed off her; she was all cold, hard steel standing there. Not an ounce of bluff in what she’d said about shooting him. She’d meant every word.
“You’ve got me wrong,” he said.
“Like hell I have. What was the plan? Stalk me for a while and then break in and rape me, kill me? Or do you just get your jollies scaring women because you can’t get it up any other way?”
The plan, Nick thought, the plan is Gallagher, damn you. He said, “I’m here because I’m having car trouble—”
“Bullshit, buddy. I saw you following me earlier tonight. I’ve seen you half a dozen times, hanging around, watching me.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“What do you think? Call the police and have your sick ass thrown in jail.”
“You can’t do that. I haven’t done anything to you.”
“No? Harassment is a crime. Even if the charge doesn’t stick, they’ll have your name and address, and if you ever try anything with me again they’ll know right where to look. Or I will. I was stalked and raped once, I won’t let it happen a second time. I’d kill you or any other asshole who tried it in a New York minute.”
“Look, lady, can’t we—”
“No, we can’t. Start walking.”
“Walking where?”
“Up the road away from your car.”
He did it.
“Stop there. Keep your back to me.”
Did that, too. Behind him he heard her moving in the other direction, back to her car. For her purse and keys and to shut off the headlights—night went dark again. He listened to her walk back up behind him.
“Move,” she said. “Up my driveway to the house.”
Couldn’t let her take him into the house. Gallagher was in there, and maybe he’d talk her out of calling the cops and maybe he wouldn’t. Might just let her do it, try to get out from under that way. Run a bluff if Nick said anything about the hit-and-run. Sketch wasn’t proof Gallagher was guilty, and besides, Nick didn’t want the law to punish him. Not anymore. Justice was in his hands now, the right punishment all arranged. Spoil everything for Annalisa if he let this woman take him inside.
“Move, I said.”
He moved, but slow. Little short steps.
<
br /> “You want to get shot? You will if you don’t hurry it up.”
Widened his strides, but not by much. Head down, looking for something, anything, to turn the situation around. Low spot alongside the driveway, puddled rainwater filling it, ground on either side looked muddy. He angled that way, but not all at once.
Bimbo was closer behind him now than she had been. Not close enough for him to pivot and make a grab for her, but close enough for what he had in mind. He was going slow again, and she muttered some-thing that sounded like “Fucking bastard.” Getting impatient with him. Good. Impatience made you careless.
He was on the edge of the road when he reached the puddle. Almost to the end of it, he let his left foot slide off, splash into the water so she’d hear. Made a noise like he’d slipped and then went down sideways to one knee, putting both hands on the soft ground the way you would to break a fall. She stopped, still close—stopped and was saying “Don’t you try anything—” when he twisted up and around and pitched the handful of mud he’d scooped up.
Gob of it spattered her in the face, tore a surprised cry out of her, threw her off balance. Gun went off, pop! like a cork coming out of a bottle, but he wasn’t hit. He was onto his feet and at her by then. Slapped the automatic out of her hand, dodged a slash of her nails, punched her jaw with a short-armed right. Solid, scraped-knuckles blow, felt it all the way up his arm—made him wince because it was the first time in his life he’d ever hit a woman. She grunted, fell over backward as though her legs’d been chop-blocked from under her. Hit the pavement flat on her back, smacked-meat sound that must’ve been her head slamming into the asphalt. Twitch, jerk, another twitch, and she was still.
Nothing but the Night Page 14