Wicked is the night

by Catherine Mulvany

  “None.”

  “Maybe I should have taken the same route. One of my single guests cornered me, trying to get me to agree to give him a private guided tour of the falls. Ha! Like that’s going to happen.”

  “Who is this guest? Would you like me to teach him some manners?”

  Britt laughed. “I can take care of myself, Marcello. Besides, you’re the invisible man, remember?”

  The road up the mountain to Granite was little more than a series of tight switchbacks that had Marcello, in the backseat, regretting his second cinnamon roll. When Britt finally stopped, he all but catapulted from the SUV, gulping the fresh mountain air in an attempt to settle his queasy stomach. He was so busy trying not to vomit that it took him a second or two to realize where they were.

  They stood in a small glade surrounded on three sides by towering pines. The fourth side sheered off in a tumble of rock, providing for a spectacular view of Midas Lake far below. Marcello would not swear to it, but he thought he could make out a corner of the lodge. “What a lovely spot.”

  “I’ve always thought so.” Britt spun in a slow circle, her arms outstretched, as if to embrace the sky, the trees, the wildflowers, the simple stones that marked the graves scattered across the old cemetery.

  “‘John Kinsey Reynolds,’” he read aloud from the nearest moss-covered headstone. “‘Born May 4, 1831. Died September 30, 1857. Killed by a claim jumper. May he rest in peace.’ What is this claim jumper?”

  “A thief,” she said. “And a murderer, who killed poor John Kinsey Reynolds for his gold. I’ve always wondered what happened to the claim jumper, whether he got away with his crime or ended up dangling from a rope. I guess it was pretty lawless around here in those days. Could have gone either way.”

  “Not entirely risk-free these days,” he said, thinking of the gash on his head, the burns on his chest.

  “Still,” «;Ste dshe said, “I love it here. I grew up in this part of California. Did you know that? I went to college in Colorado Springs, lived in Vail for a while, but eventually moved back here. This area—Midas Lake, Granite—has been home to my family for generations.”

  “You have ancestors buried in this graveyard?” Marcello asked.

  She nodded. “At least one that I know of, William L. Rittenhouse, a great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side.” She paused. “But he’s not the one I come to visit.”

  Something in her voice sent a chill down his spine.

  “I make the pilgrimage faithfully three times a year: Mother’s Day, Christmas, and October 17.” Britt was smiling, but her eyes were so sad that Marcello could feel her pain as a tightening in his chest.

  “Why October 17?” he asked, though he was afraid he was not going to like the answer.

  Britt took his hand and led him to the far side of the small glade, where one grave stood at a short distance from the others.

  “Samantha Leigh Halston. October 17, 2004,” he read aloud.

  “My daughter,” Britt said quietly. “Born and died the same day.”

  “Halston?”

  “Samantha’s father. My husband. Ex-husband. We divorced within a year of her death.”

  “I am sorry,” he said.

  “My fault,” she admitted, “though at the time I blamed Jared for everything—Samantha’s death, our marital difficulties. It’s no wonder he couldn’t handle the strain. I acted like a crazy woman, either screaming, sobbing, and throwing things, or locking myself in the bedroom for days at a time.”

  “Grief affects us all in different ways.”

  “Yes, but most people don’t go to the extremes I did. I was both unreasonable and inconsolable. Even my parents got fed up. Eventually, Jared filed for divorce. And I blamed him for that, too.”

  “He should have been more understanding.” Marcello yearned to put a comforting arm around her shoulders, but in her present frame of mind, he was not at all sure how she would react. “You were grief-stricken.”

  “That’s what I told myself,” Britt said flatly. “And it was true, but only a part of the larger truth.” She met his gaze straight on, and the pain reflected in her eyes made him ache for her. “I was also drowning in guilt, guilt I wasn’t honest enough to acknowledge. Publicly, I blamed Jared and the doctor, the nurses, the hospital. But deep down, so deep I didn’t even realize the feelings were there until almost two years after Samantha’s death, I blamed myself. If only I’d eaten more vegetables. If only I had exercised less. If only I’d listened to more classical music. If only I hadn’t forgotten my prenatal vitamins the day she was born. If only, if only, if only…”

  “You did nothing wrong,” he said.

  “I know that now.” She took a dee« Sh wip breath. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “No one did anything wrong. She just…died. Congenital heart defect. No way to prevent it.”

  “Britt.” He did wrap her in his arms then, holding her as she sobbed. He wished there was something he could say, something that would make her feel better, but he knew it did not work that way. There was no cure for grief. Time might dull the edges of the pain, but it never went away entirely.

  After a while, Britt regained control. She stepped back out of his arms, forcing a smile. “Sorry.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “I didn’t mean to fall apart.”

  “You have every right to mourn your loss. It is hard, I know,” he said, the image of Antonia’s pale, still face flashing through his mind, “to come to terms with the might-have-beens.”

  Tears welled up again in Britt’s big blue eyes. “I would have been such a good mother.”

  “Miss Granger is waiting for you on the patio,” Rivers informed Trick when he and Nevada returned from a frustrating visit to McKelvey Fine Jewelry on Monday morning. “Lunch will be ready shortly.”

  “This way.” Trick led Nevada through the French doors in the formal dining room out onto the stonepaved patio at the rear of the house. Great-aunt Leticia sported a glossy black wig today and oversize sunglasses reminiscent of those worn by Hollywood starlets in the 1960s.

  “Oh, good!” she cried when she caught sight of them. “You’re back! What did you find out?”

  “Nothing,” Trick told her. “It was a total waste of time.”

  “Maybe not.” Nevada took a chair across from Great-aunt Leticia at the umbrella-shaded table. “The manager promised to have his executive assistant sort through all the old records. They’re in storage, not kept on the premises,” she explained for Great-aunt Leticia’s benefit.

  “The thing is, the McKelvey family sold the shop back in the fifties,” Trick said. “The new owner kept the name, but it’s really a completely different business. The manager wasn’t even sure the old records went back that far.”

  Great-aunt Leticia nodded. “The earthquake.”

  “Actually,” Nevada said, “according to the manager, McKelvey’s came through the disaster with only minor damage.”

  “That’s predicating he knew what the hell he was talking about,” Trick said sourly.

  “Language, Patrick,” Great-aunt Leticia scolded. “There are ladies present.”

  After lunch, Great-aunt Leticia left for a meeting of her book group, and Trick went off to call Marcello, leaving Nevada to her own devices. She wandered the elegant high-ceilinged rooms of the house, admiring a chandelier here, a tapestry there. Her favorite room, though, proved to be the third-floor nursery with its magnificent old rocking horse, a bookcase full of novels like Tom Swift and His Giant Cannon«is th and A Girl of the Limberlost, and an entire wall of dolls, enough to stock a small toy store. Crude stuffed rag dolls with yarn hair bumped shoulders with fine-featured porcelain princesses dressed in satin and lace. There were realistic-looking baby dolls, jointed metal soldiers complete with swords, and her favorite, a carved wooden Indian with leather clothing and a miniature feathered war bonnet.

  She was examining a Little Lord Fauntleroy doll, whose blond pageboy appeared to have been made with real human hair, when Trick s
tuck his head in the open doorway.

  “Oh, there you are. Rivers said he thought you’d come up here.”

  “This must have been your great-aunt’s playroom when she was little.”

  “I assume so, since she was the last child to live in the house.”

  “No brothers or sisters?”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t have any siblings, either, do you?”

  “No. According to the family tree, Grangers have been notoriously poor breeders for the last hundred and fifty years. One or two children per couple at the most. Great-aunt Leticia’s branch of the family dies with her.”

  “How sad,” she said, “that she never had children. They’d have loved this room. I love this room. The dolls. The books. Talk about little girl heaven.”

  Trick smiled. “Personally, I always preferred the rocking horse. She used to make deals with me. ‘Eat all your veggies, Patrick, and you can ride Pegasus.”’

  Nevada pictured a five-year-old version of Trick manfully working his way through a small mountain of spinach in order to earn the promised ride. “I bet you were an adorable little boy.”

  “If by adorable you mean impatient, stubborn, and reckless to a fault, then yes, I was extremely adorable.”

  She laughed. “Judging by those criteria, you’re still pretty adorable.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her into his arms. “Am I?”

  “Impatient,” Nevada said. “Definitely impatient.” She twined her arms around his neck. “Kiss me.”

  “No, it’s your move.”

  She smiled. “And stubborn, too.” She stretched up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. She only meant to give him a quick little peck, but his lips were so soft, so shockingly sensual that she prolonged the contact in spite of herself. And then—Nevada wasn’t sure exactly how it happened—they were lying on the rug in front of the fireplace and Trick had his tongue in her mouth and his hands up her shirt.

  Sobbing for breath, she broke the kiss. “And reckless,” she said.

  Trick’s gaze smoldered across the cleavage exposed by his wandering hands, but then the corners of his mouth twitched. “Guess I am pretty adorable.”

  She stroked a thumb along his chee« alerskbone. “And modest, too.”

  “Modesty may not be my strong suit, but I have my strengths.”

  His smile seemed to melt her bones, and even though she knew it was the height of impropriety, not to mention, stupid, all she wanted at the moment was to feel Trick inside her.

  “Just ask Marcello. He’ll vouch for me. He’s known me forever.”

  Nevada knew he was talking, but the sense of his words didn’t register. Her mind was too preoccupied with sensations and emotions to allow for rational thought. “Marcello?” she repeated, wondering idly what Marcello had to do with anything.

  “Marcello,” Trick repeated as his forefinger circled her left nipple in slow lazy strokes that seemed to sear her skin even through her bra.

  And then the lazy circles stopped. No warning. One minute she was drowning in seductive sensation, and the next, she wasn’t.

  Trick sat up. “Marcello,” he said. “Hell!”

  And a good place for him, too, Nevada thought, as she stared at the star-studded ceiling. She tried very hard to hang on to her bliss, but all those lovely tingly feelings were ebbing away.

  “Damn,” Trick said. “I promised I’d call him back as soon as I talked to you, but then I got distracted.” His finger did one more agonizingly slow circuit of her nipple.

  She pushed his hand away, covering her breasts with her hands. “Don’t start something you don’t intend to finish.” And okay, her voice held an edge of petulance, but damn it, he wasn’t playing nice.

  A cocky grin emphasized the harsh angles of his face. “Oh, I fully intend to finish, just not here and now.”

  “What’s wrong with here and now?”

  “Well, for starters, Rivers is apt to walk in at any moment. He seems to have a sixth sense about these things.”

  Nevada frowned. Trick had a point.

  “And here’s the biggie: all the condoms are in my room.”

  She shoved herself up on her elbows. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go to your room.”

  “You’re forgetting one important detail.”

  “Which is?”

  “Marcello’s still waiting for my call.”

  “So call him already.”

  “He wanted you to confirm the address I gave him.”

  “What address?”

  “The San Francisco address from your file at the Institute. I had him look it up to see if he could find out who owns the property.”

  Nevada frowned. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

  “But wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “I was just planning to find the place, see if anything about it seemed familiar, maybe stake it out, watch the comings and goings to see if anyone looks familiar.”

  “But isn’t it smarter to go in knowing as much as possible?”

  “I guess so, but—”

  “It was Broadway, right?”

  Nevada nodded, repeating the address that had burned itself into her memory. “Why?”

  “Because it’s not a house, it’s a mansion. Italian Renaissance neoclassical style valued upward of fifty million dollars. The current owner, Mitchell Harrington, is a restaurateur with a lucrative chain of upscale bistros that stretches up and down the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego. Marcello thought he must have gotten the address wrong.”

  “Because I’m not the sort of person whose family lives in a mansion,” she said without rancor. She had a hard time believing that herself.

  “No,” Trick said, “because Mitchell Harrington is African American, and you’re not.” He stood. “I’m going to go call Marcello back, thank him for his hard work, and let him know it was the right address after all. And then—”

  Nevada stood. “We have sex,” she guessed.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “right after we check out the Harrington mansion.”

  Interesting, Trick thought, the way Nevada had deliberately kept steering the conversation back to sex. It was almost as if she were afraid to visit the mansion, as if she thought she might not like whatever she learned there.

  He glanced sideways at her as he navigated the steep streets of Pacific Heights. She was doing a pretty good job of feigning nonchalance, but her hands gave her away, never still, one second pressing the dash, the next fiddling with the radio. “Anything look familiar?”

  Frowning slightly, she studied the houses on both sides of the street. “No. Nothing. Well, that is if you don’t count the fact that it looks a lot like the neighborhood where your great-aunt lives.”

  “True.” He signaled for a left turn.

  “How much farther?”

  “Five or six blocks, I think.” Yes, she was definitely tense. He could even hear it in her voice now.

  The climb grew gradually steeper as they approached the crest of the hill. “No wonder it’s so pricey,” he said as the Harrington mansion came into view. “Bet you can see halfway to Hawaii from the top floor.”

  Nevada made no response. She just stared up at the graceful lines of the building, her face expressionless.

  “Still not ringing any bells?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing about it is familiar.” She turned to him with a frown. “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

  Trick parked across the street. “«str. &Wonder if anyone’s home.”

  “We can’t just go waltzing up to the door and demand to be let inside.”

  “Why not?” He got out of the Camry, then walked around to open Nevada’s door. “We’ll say we’re newlyweds. We were driving by, and you fell in love with the place.”

  “But there’s no ‘for sale’ sign.” She stepped out, and he locked the car.

  “We’re newlyweds,” he said again. “I’ll do anything to please you.
If you’re determined to have this house, then I’m going to do whatever it takes to get it for you. We’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

  “That’s ridiculous. No one’s going to buy that story.”

  “Why not?” He took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together.

  “Why not? Because who would do that?”

  “How about Trick Granger, world-famous race-car driver?” He smiled at her surprised expression. “Just because you never heard of me…”

  The temperature outside hovered at a pleasant seventy-four, but Nevada felt cold to the bone. The house didn’t spark any memories. She hadn’t lied to Trick about that. But it did evoke gut-level emotions—fear and dread.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” she protested as Trick dragged her across the street. “They’re bound to know we’re lying. What if they call the police?”

  “They won’t,” he said. “Quit worrying.”

  The climbed a flight of wide curved steps that led to an imposing entry. “But what if they do?” she persisted.

  “They won’t. Trust me.” He rang the doorbell, and the muted sound of the sonorous bonging struck fear in her heart. She pressed her free hand to her breastbone, trying to slow the flutter of her heartbeat. Her fear was irrational. She knew that. Because if she’d lived in this mansion, standing here at the entrance would feel more like coming home and less like waiting for the judge to pronounce the death sentence.

  “Nobody home,” she said, turning away. “Let’s go.”

  “Not so fast.” Trick tugged her back around to face the door and rang the doorbell again.

  As the bell faded away to silence once more, she studied the front of the building. Every window on this floor and the one above it was tightly shuttered. “I’m telling you, no one’s home.”

  “You give up too easily,” Trick said and rang the bell a third time.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna answer,” a gruff voice said from behind them.

  Nevada gave a start, but Trick turned smoothly to face the small, bandy-legged middle-aged man who stood there. With a leathery tan that contrasted sharply with a shock of gray hair and pale grape green eyes, he was dressed in khakis and work«khalea boots. He stood there frowning at them, a trowel in one hand, a galvanized bucket in the other.