Fury and the Power

by Farris, John

  Then he saw the message that had been left for him on the chalkboard mounted on the wall by the refrigerator, Things To Do Today.

  Upstairs, Ed, and make it snappy!!

  His heart lurched; the skin on his forearms crept coldly and made livid wormlike ridges, as if he were breaking out in hives. His throat closed when he looked up at the ceiling in response to a muted spectral thumping.

  Ed's bedroom was above the kitchen. He grabbed the tool closest to hand, a meat tenderizer with studded metal plates on the mallet head. A glance at the space where the cordless phone was plugged in, but only the recharger remained on the wall. The other phone was, of course, beside his bed.

  Parquet steps to the second floor of the duplex condo, the staircase lined with framed photos of his departed parents—as teenagers during the last Great Depression; as newlyweds far from St. Joe, Missouri, in even more turbulent times, his father wearing the uniform of an officer in the Army Air Corps; and posed, finally, white-haired, in a tenderly lit portrait for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Ed had not known until he was well into his thirties that his parents were first cousins. A subject no one in the family, those survivors who knew about it, had ever touched on. No matter; he cherished them still, and sometimes reflected on the passion that had made it unbearable for them to ever be apart, fortunate to have had each other in spite of the inevitable censure and muted scandal back home. Memories—trampled on, despoiled by an intruder in his home. Nearing the top of the stairs, Ed got his voice back, more or less.

  "Whoever you are! I have studied aikido for five years! I won't hesitate to use what I know to defend myself!"

  He paused, eyes on his bedroom door a few feet away. The meat-tenderizer mallet raised in his right hand like a Vandal's mace.

  "I want you to come out now with your hands on the top of your head!"

  Thump. Thump. As if someone was—but he couldn't be sure. The sound seemed, however, unthreatening. A helpless kind of banging. On the concave walnut headboard of his bed? It also had been his parents' bed. He had been conceived there, probably, had first lain in the bed beside his mother when he was two days old. Ed had tears in his eyes, but he was furious. Edmund Ruddy was not someone you could push around and expect to get away with it.

  He stood back from the door, reached out for the cut-glass knob with his left hand. Turned it, pushed the door open with a cautious foot. Light from the hall illuminated the inside of his bedroom like a torch in a cave.

  The figure on the bed leaped out at him in shadowy relief. It was a woman, bound hand and foot and with a wide, soiled, double layer of adhesive tape across her mouth. She wore a flashy aluminum-gray jogging suit with red piping. She was pushing strenuously against the headboard with the top of her head, nostrils pinched and white as she sucked in air. Her hair was so short she appeared to have a crew cut. The bumping of the headboard against the wall beneath a small Winslow Homer seascape (it had been in the family for eighty years) was what he was hearing. Her eyes were tightly closed, face a mottled red and glistening with perspiration.

  Edmund Ruddy switched on the overhead lighting fixture, bringing new definition to familiar things. He was alert for further surprises, someone else lunging at him from the closet or bathroom. Heartbeat at full acceleration. But what caught his eye was a white business envelope that was cheerily pinned to the jacket of the jogging outfit with one of those ready-made Christmas wrap bows, green with twinkly threads of gold.

  "Stop that!" Ed said sharply.

  Her eyes opened and she looked toward the doorway. Probably she saw more of the meat tenderizer in his hand than she did of his face. She shook her head furiously, now fighting the tight cords holding ankles and wrists together and to the bed frame on either side.

  It occurred to Ed that she assumed he was there to silence her with the mallet. But the glimpse he'd had of her eyes and that curt headshake, accompanied by a clenching of jaw muscles, were images that bolted at him from the mists of thirty-odd years ago. No one else like her, ever; one reason why he had gone unwed until, really, it was too late to think about—

  "Oh, dear God! Betts? Betts Burkhalter?"

  PART TWO

  MAKING FRIENDS WITH DEATH

  THE DEVIL IS ANY GOD WHO BEGINS TO EXACT OBEDIENCE.

  —John Cooper Powys

  Chapter 22

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  OCTOBER 19

  2:00 P.M. PDT

  They had been in Las Vegas barely long enough to unpack in their room at the Brazilian-themed mega-resort called Bahia, and already Lewis Gruvver's girlfriend Charmaine was complaining.

  "Lewis, you're on vacation! I thought we were in Las Vegas to have fun."

  "We are, baby. Cornell and Lourdes are taking us to dinner at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant. It's up the Strip there in the Paris Hotel. Then we have tickets to see 'Legends of Doo-wop' at the Riviera."

  "Le Tour Eiffel," Charmaine said. She was a senior at Clark Atlanta University, majoring in computer science. But she had taken two years of French and was in the habit of repeating something he'd said in the Gallic language. Working on her accent. Gruvver had been going with her for three and a half months and still found this cute. Other quirks he just put up with. He was willing to put up with a lot from Charmaine. Most of her complaints were concluded with an appealing smile. She was beautiful as well as smart, cool as chocolate mint, and so graceful she could slip between the drops of a spring rain. She put on blue jeans like a snake getting back into its skin.

  Wearing only bikini briefs for now, Charmaine was riffling through an entertainment guide she had picked up in the room, which was furnished in blond bamboo, decorated in shades of orange, pink, and pistachio. There were two large paintings of parrots over the bed. The room was about as restful as a pinched nerve.

  "'Elvis Presley in concert'? Thought the man died."

  "He did. Now he's a legend. That's an Elvis impersonator you're looking at. It's kind of a new-age art form."

  "Are all the entertainers here legends?" Charmaine said, turning more pages.

  "Guaranteed." Lewis was changing out of the jeans and sweatshirt he'd worn on the flight from Atlanta, which had arrived late. He checked the time, then chose a light blue shirt with a button-down collar to go with his dark gray summer suit.

  "I hate it you're going off and leaving me. Why can't I go too?"

  "It's business. Unofficial, but still business."

  "Police business?"

  "Yeah." He leaned toward Charmaine and kissed the bridge of her nose. "While I'm gone you can visit the spa."

  "The one where it said in the brochure they have a 'Zen relaxation and meditation chamber'?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Charmaine tossed the entertainment weekly on the double bed and looked out the window. From the fifteenth floor the view north took in the faux skyscrapers of New York New York, Bellagio, and Caesars Palace on the west side of the Strip. To the west, where the sky was the color of a molten steel ingot at two in the afternoon, there was a desert mountain range that she whimsically saw as a scarred, miles-long, burnt-out dragon. Near the highest peak, where she would have expected the dragon's eye, she saw instead something like a million-carat diamond embedded in a blue fold halfway to the blazing sky.

  "Lew, what's that way out there?"

  He paused while buttoning his shirt and looked over her bare shoulder.

  "Couldn't say for sure, but it might be the Lincoln Grayle Theatre."

  "Le théâtre du Grayle." Charmaine turned and brushed a cheek against his. One hand groped playfully behind her to his trouserless lower half.

  "Sure you need to go someplace?" She closed her eyes and sighed for emphasis. "What I have here is a part of you that wants to stay in this hotel room with me."

  "We got three whole days yet. Promise you, I'm back in an hour. Okay, fifty-nine minutes. Ohh, now. Easy."

  "Easy? You're the one taught me to play the meat flute. I was pure as granny's boiled milk 'til Le
wis Gruvver showed up in my life. Now look how shameless. I just want to practice practice practice all the time."

  "My sweet Lord! Fifty-eight minutes, and I don't lie."

  "Well… maybe I'll just go down to the pool for a little while, save that spa for when I'm needin' a real tune-up."

  "Now you're talking."

  Charmaine mercifully let him go and rummaged through her carry-on for a swim ensemble, holding up a couple of bikinis for his approval. Gruvver could've put her entire bikini collection in his wallet.

  "What did you say Cornell was to you again?"

  He quickly finished dressing. "My half brother. From Chicago. He works undercover for Gambling Control, and Lourdes, she's a shop steward in the Culinary Workers' local. They've done real well for themselves. Four-bedroom house with a black-bottom pool. We'll be over there Saturday for a western-style barbecue. Lourdes says ordinary hotel maids were earning thirty large a year in Vegas until the economy tanked and some of the hotels here started goin' under."

  "Your half bro's married to a Mexican woman?"

  "No, she's from Honduras. This knot in my tie look okay?"

  "Yes, stop fussin' with it. You calling on royalty? Les royauté?"

  "Part of the job is always to look professional. Gets them to respect you right up front."

  "Big-bucks white folks, you're talking about."

  "'Specially them," Gruvver said.

  The Spicer family, Jack and Shelley and their two young children, lived in the priciest section of Lake Las Vegas, a gated community called "Miramonte." Waterfront villas in Miramonte started at a million-five. Gruvver drove in his rental car the seventeen miles from the heart of the Strip and waited a few minutes at the gatehouse while the guard confirmed his appointment with Mrs. Spicer. Then he followed directions to a mustard-yellow house with tiled roofs that was surrounded by feather-duster palms. A sailboat was tied up at the dock below the house. Gruvver parked in the circular stone-paved drive near a garage that housed a red Humvee, a vintage sixties 'Vette, and a golf cart. He remembered to leave the windows on the rental down. It was autumn in Las Vegas, but daytime temperatures still approached ninety. He followed a serpentine walk through a grotto with an arched roof of pierced concrete to double front doors.

  A Hispanic girl in a smock took him to an interior courtyard. Large enough for a swimming pool, date palms, purple bougainvillea, a waterfall at one end of the pool. There were parakeets in a large ornate cage. The girl asked Gruvver if he'd like a drink, then served him fresh lemonade from a refrigerator concealed in a rock wall. Cool mist drifted over the courtyard from nozzles in that same wall, holding down the heat.

  Shelley Spicer was a tall, thin woman with the gloomy face of someone whose liver needs flushing. About forty, dyed red hair dark at the edges like petals of a frost-nipped rose. She came briskly out of a wing of the sprawling house as if she had another destination in mind, then detoured when she saw him, unexpectedly black and looking right at home beside her pool.

  "Mr. Grover?"

  "It's Gruvver, Mrs. Spicer," he said, getting to his feet. "Lewis Gruvver." He handed her a business card, the one that identified him as a detective but didn't mention the homicide division.

  She motioned for him to take his seat again. "I was in Atlanta once," she said, sitting on the edge of a yellow glider near him, knees together and at an angle. She looked mildly uncomfortable, as if she'd never learned to manage her height well. "For a convention. My husband is a cardiologist. The heat was just awful. You feel it more in the South, they said, because the humidity is so high most of the time."

  "Yes, it is."

  "And you're here to inquire about Lise Ruppenthal? I thought we had put that dreadful business in India behind us."

  "Yes, she's in prison, probably for the rest of her life." Shelley Spicer stared at Gruvver for a few seconds, as if she were on the brink of dismissing him.

  "I was one of the investigators assigned to the murder of Pledger Lee Skeldon three weeks ago."

  More seconds ticked by.

  "I'm afraid I—"

  "There are similarities in the attack on the guru in India and the attack on the evangelist in Atlanta. A Las Vegas hotel worker made an attempt on the life of the Dalai Lama in Los Angeles this past February. His attacker also tried to bite through the carotid artery."

  Shelley Spicer drew her thin shoulders together with an expression of distaste.

  "I hadn't heard about that." She hesitated. "But I was—I have to admit—struck by the account of Reverend Skeldon's death. Because of what I remembered about—Sai Rampa was his name, wasn't it?"

  "That's right. A holy man of great prestige. Did Lise Ruppenthal ever mention Rampa to you?"

  "Was she into Eastern religions?"

  "Not as far as I know. I'm sure she would have had books or something in her room."

  "How long did Lise work for you, Mrs. Spicer?"

  "A little over a year. I hired her to look after Jack Junior and Tracy on the recommendation of an English couple we know well. Lise had been employed by the Claringtons for several months, but because of the miserable winter weather in Liverpool she was developing serious asthma. A change to our dry high-desert climate seemed a likely remedy. She looked so wan and tired when she arrived, but there was a change for the better almost immediately."

  "Were you satisfied with her job performance?"

  "Oh, yes. Jack Junior and Tracy adored Lise. All I expect of our help is that they be clean, honest, responsible, and patient with the children, who I know can be a handful."

  Spoiled rotten, Gruvver thought with an understanding smile for Shelley Spicer.

  "I've had the devil of a time finding an au pair half as good as Lise," she continued, as if his smile were an invitation to vent. "Even the ones sent by the best agencies in Europe find Las Vegas too much of a temptation. After they've worked here two or three months—and it's the same story for our friends who also have small children—the girls quit to become cocktail waitresses. Or worse."

  "But Lise didn't stick around Las Vegas after giving notice?"

  "No. We drove her to the airport, where she caught a flight direct to Frankfurt."

  "Did she give a reason why she wanted to leave? Trouble with a boyfriend, family problem in Germany?"

  "Frankly I don't know what was in her head. And she gave no notice. She said only that she must leave immediately. Well, I'd thought—we had a better relationship than that. It was so unlike Lise. I offered to pay her twelve hundred a year more, and co-sign a note for a car of her own." Shelley Spicer massaged her throat as if swallowing hurt. "I don't think she even heard me."

  "How was she acting? Nervous, distracted?"

  "No. She was calm but uncommunicative. Up to the moment she was to board her plane. Then she threw her arms around me. I couldn't be angry with her any longer. She was—such a dear child, really. And I had a sense that—but this can't be of any help to you."

  "I'm very interested in whatever impressions you might have, Mrs. Spicer."

  "Well—this is hard to put into words. I just felt that although I was holding Lise, she wasn't there anymore. As if the Lise I'd come to know had undergone some sort of radical change of personality, literally overnight."

  "Like Jimmy Nixon."

  "Who? Oh, that was the name of the boy in Atlanta. But wasn't he insane?"

  "We'll never know. He died yesterday without having regained consciousness. Did you have any indication that Lise might be doing drugs?"

  "Oh, no! Never. And believe me, I know the symptoms. Sean McGriskin, Peggy's oldest—but that's another unhappy story."

  "After she left Las Vegas, did you hear from Lise again?"

  "I was very surprised to receive a card from her, from India. There wasn't much of a message. She had been thinking about us and hoped we were all well. Then—three weeks later, was it? That photo of her in the Sunday edition of the London paper Jack buys at Borders. The Indian police took it, I suppose. The
photo really didn't look much like her, but the name, Lise Ruppenthal, jumped out at me. Now she's in what I suppose must be a dank, vermin-ridden—Lise was always so clean and tidy." Her lugubrious eyes glinted moistly. "Sometimes, when the children were in bed and Lise was fresh from her bath, I'd drop by her room and do her nails for her. And we'd talk. She was always so grateful for the scents and oils I brought her from Neiman's. I enjoyed those times with Lise so much. I miss—"

  Shelley Spicer turned her face from Gruvver, to stanch a seep of tears with her fingertips and sniff deeply.

  "There's really nothing more to tell you; Jack and the children will be home from tennis at the club any minute now."

  Obvious to Gruvver that she didn't want a black man, even a detective, in the house when they did show up.

  "I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me, Mrs. Spicer. I was wondering, how did Lise spend her days off? Did she date anyone on a steady basis?"

  "There were young men, I suppose; none of them called for her here. Her best friend was a Danish au pair who worked for the Stockwells. Finnish or Danish. She left last month to be married. I can't recall her name. She rode a motorcycle, and was teaching Lise how to ride. I was concerned about that, but I kept mum. They often went to shows together. Rock concerts at Thomas and Mack."

  "Magic shows?"

  "No doubt. They're very popular; all of the major illusionists are in Las Vegas. Since you mentioned magic—Jack and I took Lise to see Penn and Teller at Rio shortly after she came here. She was enthralled." Shelley Spicer paused, rubbing her high forehead between the temples.

  "Lise was in the habit of keeping the ticket stubs from shows she'd seen, sticking them inside the frame around the mirror on the makeup table in her room. I was going to throw them all out after Lise left, but Tracy wanted them for a collage she was making. Tracy has considerable artistic ability for a twelve-year-old."