No Rest for the Dead
Page 17
“Hello, Nunn.”
Nunn turned, surprised to find Stan Ballard standing beside him.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Nunn said.
“Well, a man has to be careful, don’t you think?”
“Careful about what?”
“Leaving his wife on the arm of her ex-husband,” Stan answered. “Old fires sometimes give off new sparks, right?”
Nunn shrugged.
Stan glanced around the room. “You must really be in your element, Nunn.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, you know, everyone gathered together in one place. All the suspects in the parlor.”
“Suspects?”
“Of murder most foul.” Stan smiled. “Don’t expect me to believe you’re not thinking of Rosemary’s case.”
Of course Nunn had been thinking of nothing but the murder since his arrival at the museum. He’d never been able to get it out of his mind—it had spread over his life like a stain, and even now he could feel that stain still spreading. He thought of the way those old Cold War films used to show the red tide of Communism sweeping over Europe and Asia. Rosemary’s crime and punishment was like that, he thought, a force that had engulfed his life.
“You must be reviewing the whole thing,” Stan said lightly, so that Nunn thought he was being vaguely mocked, or if not that, then reduced to a prissy little parlor-mystery stereotype, or worse, a rumpled gumshoe going over yellowing case files while his life trickled away in futile reenactments and baseless surmises. He was thinking that neither of these unflattering visions of himself was wholly inaccurate, as he watched Belle and Don McGuire arrive. Belle as beautiful as ever, the perfect California girl, Don every inch the thuggish ex-con.
“So what are you thinking, Detective?” Stan asked with a laugh.
“Actually I was thinking that that guy there once beat the hell out of Christopher Thomas.” It had come out at the trial, and briefly at the time Nunn had wondered if Don had been in some way connected to Christopher Thomas’s murder.
Stan’s gaze shifted over to the man Nunn indicated. “Who’s the girl on his arm?”
“That’s his wife, Belle,” Nunn answered. “Rosemary tried very hard to help her rise in the art world here.”
“And you think the husband might have felt that their relationship was a little too close?” Stan asked.
Nunn shook his head. “Who knows?” he answered impatiently, now tired of the little game Stan was still playing with him.
“The Shadow knows,” Stan answered with a laugh. “But the question remains.”
“What question?”
Stan’s smile slithered into place. “Who is the Shadow?”
With that, Stan stepped away, then walked over to Sarah, took her arm, and placed it in his, a gesture of possession Nunn knew he was clearly meant to see, and one that Sarah just as clearly resented. As well she should, he thought, since it was as crude as a prospector staking a claim.
Still, he found Sarah’s ultimate acceptance of the gesture somewhat painful, so that he turned from the scene and fixed his attention on Haile Patchett, who caught his eye and smiled. He’d wondered how much of anything she’d told him the other day was true.
Now in the museum she was drifting from place to place, sometimes stopping for conversation but clearly uninterested in engaging anyone for long. Something about her movements was odd, Nunn thought, purposeful, like a cat in an unfamiliar room, sniffing here, there, everywhere. Haile had always been something of a prowler, of course. Rosemary had certainly detested her, and for a moment Nunn could almost feel Rosemary at his side, watching with the same odd suspicion as Haile sauntered about. The tingling sense of Rosemary’s presence beside him was strange, but then that was the way it worked with a haunting case: it was like a body that never cooled.
And Rosemary’s never had.
The Shadow knows.
This time it was Rosemary’s voice, rather than Stan’s, and Jon felt an odd quiver because he had heard it so distinctly, a whisper, or perhaps a hiss, Rosemary’s angry ghost.
For a moment, he surveyed the “shadows” that surrounded him and it occurred to him that Stan, arrogant bastard that he was, had been right. Jon had come to this service not to remember Rosemary in death but to return her to his life, not to memorialize but to resurrect her. Perhaps all the debts he’d incurred in pursuit of her were now demanding to be paid no less adamantly than Rosemary’s ghost had suddenly demanded to be heard.
Without realizing it, he suddenly whispered her name: Rosemary.
In his imagination, all movement abruptly stopped, and slowly, as if controlled by invisible strings, each head turned to face him: Stan, Haile, Justine, Tony, Sarah, Belle, Don, even Rosemary’s own children, all of them now peering at him coldly, with their lips tightly sealed.
21
DIANA GABALDON
The door of Justine’s office opened with a loud click, but nobody was around to hear it. An attendant was guarding the roped-off ramp to the lower exhibit galleries, but Haile had gotten rid of him by telling him a locked car had its lights on in the parking lot—having made sure on her way in that there was a locked car with its lights on. By the time the attendant checked out the car for a license number, came in, went upstairs, and found the owner, she hoped to be done here and gone.
She could count on ten minutes clear, she thought, and with luck it would take no more than half that.
Justine, bless her heart, had left a small lamp on in her office. Great! No fumbling around in the dark.
Haile scanned the office, her fingers itching with acquisitiveness, trying to decide where to start. Her eyes fixed on Justine’s desk. As good a place as any. She walked over noiselessly and carefully opened one of the side drawers. There had to be something here, something she could use to get what she wanted from Justine.
22
PETER JAMES
Away from the hubbub of conversation, the silence in this room felt intense, and the strong, sterile smell of polish was intense too. Haile’s nerves were popping and she had a faint throbbing, like a pulse, in her ears; she was nervous as hell. But she was here, ready.
Then she heard voices approaching. She froze. It sounded as though they were just opposite the door to the office.
Jesus, who was it?
She held her breath.
She tried to calm herself. It was probably just a couple of guests who had slipped away from the reception in the observation room of the tower, giving themselves a tour. They must have been staring at a painting that she’d seen and thought it might have been hung upside down. She caught a snatch of their conversation.
“It’s revisionist postmodernist,” one of them said. “Definite juxtaposition of Klimt and Chagall, you know what I’m saying, with a surrealist—or is it closer to Dada?—overlay. You wouldn’t perceive that in any visual context, but to me it’s there like a kind of metaphorical palimpsest.”
That old museum curator, Alex something-or-other. Haile remembered how much Christopher had resented him.
She waited until their voices drifted farther down the hallway, then took a deep breath and tried to focus on what she was doing, but her nerves were shot to hell, her eyes leaping erratically around the room. It was spare and minimalist, glass table, white furniture and blinds, bare wooden flooring. She looked at the prints and paintings hung on the walls, then the small, precious-looking objets d’art that sat on the flat surfaces. She looked down at the desk.
It had to be in here somewhere.
But where?
She noticed a tiny bronze statuette near the desk lamp and slipped it into her handbag—shit, this whole world could have been hers, a thought that kept recurring as she stood at Justine Olegard’s desk.
A small vase of flowers sat on it, a framed photograph of Justine, ten years or so back when she looked a little like Whitney Houston, but she’d put on weight since then and her pretty face had filled out. It made Haile glad.
Then it was snatched away from her, and she went straight back to who she had always been, Haile Patchett, trailer trash from Brooksville, Florida—Home of the Tangerine! Only now she was a decade older, on a downward spiral, making money as an escort, pickpocketing her clients—her tricks—when she could, funding a constant and ever more expensive battle to keep her looks. How long would she be able to maintain the image before the cracks became too large to conceal?
She continued fishing through the desk’s middle drawer. It was full of papers. For a successful woman, Justine was pretty disorganized. But underneath all that was a file. Haile pulled it out, placed it on top of the desk, and opened it.
Then she heard the creak of the door and a furious voice behind her. “Just what the hell do you think you are doing?”
Justine Olegard.
Shit!
Haile grabbed the file and held it to her chest.
“I asked you a question.” Justine glared at her. “What are you doing in my office?”
“Nothing.” Haile shrugged.
“Nothing? What’s that in your hand?” Justine stepped forward and put out her hand. Haile held on to the file, refusing to let go. She couldn’t let Justine have it. Not now, not after all she’d done.
Justine lurched forward, trying to grab it out of Haile’s hand. “Give me that!”
Haile quickly moved back and stumbled, dropping the folder and its contents. She managed to avoid falling by grabbing the edge of the modernist coffee table, knocking over books and a small ceramic sculpture of a tall, thin, elongated man, which skidded to the floor and shattered.
Justine stood still for a moment, then said quietly “That was a Giacometti study. It’s priceless.”
She dropped to her knees and started picking up the broken shards, practically in tears. “Just get the hell out of here,” she said, shaking her head.
Too many people here. Too much stuff. Too many memories banging around in her head and none of them good. Belle had been trying her best, but she didn’t really do crowds; big gatherings made her nervous. She preferred the peace and quiet of her studio, the isolated life of an artist. She looked around: faces, so many of them familiar, but all of them were in little groups talking, and right now she didn’t have the energy or the courage to interrupt them.
Belle drained her wine, put down the glass, and scanned the crowd for the one man she was looking for. Tony Olsen. She walked directly over to him and said, “Mr. Olsen, I need you to do something for me.”
Olsen smiled. “Of course, Belle. Anything.”
“I need you to open the case housing my painting… Rosemary’s wishes.”
“Why would you want me to do that?”
“Please, Mr. Olsen. I promise you’ll understand as soon as you open the display case.” He stood a moment as if considering what to do, then Belle watched as he located Alex Hultgren and walked out of the room with him. A few minutes later both men reappeared and together with Belle went to the small oval room where Waves 27 hung.
Olsen unlocked the display case and opened the glass door.
“Please take the painting down, Mr. Olsen.”
“But I promised Rosemary it would never come down. Would you mind telling me what this is about, Belle?”
“Please. I also made a promise to Rosemary. Please do as I ask.”
Olsen carefully unhooked the painting from the wall. Belle pulled out a small Swiss Army knife, took hold of the painting, and before Olsen could object, sliced open the thick fabric backing of the frame. A Moleskine notebook fell from the interior.
“What is it?” Olsen asked.
Belle didn’t answer. She handed him the painting and opened the notebook to the first page, her hands shaking so much she could barely hold it. Then she turned pages, staring at the handwriting of her friend Rosemary Thomas, crushing away tears with her lashes.
She wasn’t even aware that Olsen had moved beside her watching as she flicked through the pages to the last entry. August 22, 2000. Ten years ago. The entry had been written the day before Belle had stood in the viewing room and had seen her friend laid out to die.
Belle had recently read that the death rows in U.S. prisons were known as cemeteries for the living. It was true. Rosemary had been dead for all of those months with the lethal-injection sentence hanging over her, as each of her appeals fell over, in turn.
Tony Olsen started making his way back to where the rest of the guests were assembled; Belle closed the notebook and followed. She couldn’t stop the pictures in her mind. Seeing Rosemary strapped down, wrists and ankles and chest, and how they had opened the curtains so that the witnesses to the execution could watch the deadly injection being administered. All of it came back to Belle now in hideous detail, the botched first attempt, those curtains being opened and closed, opened and closed, and the look on Rosemary’s face.
She could remember every moment of the long night before: Rosemary’s last night.
Rosemary had always been composed, almost regal in her bearing, but the stress had lined her face and stooped her shoulders. She’d sat in her orange prison tunic and white sneakers in the small cell, with no window and the CCTV camera ever watching her, and despite it all maintained her dignity to the very end. Belle could see Rosemary now, working away in a frenzy on the diary, writing that last entry.
When she had finished, they spoke for a while and she had held Belle’s hand, and finally she said, “Belle, let’s not talk anymore. Just sit with me.” And then: “Just make me one last promise. I want you to keep the diary. Those I’ve written about will know what it means. But I don’t want any of it coming out until after Leila and Ben are old enough. Do you understand? In my will, I’ve asked for a memorial service on the tenth anniversary of my death. That’s when I want you to read it, at the service, not before. Will you promise me that?”
Belle had promised.
Now she glanced at the diary, rubbed a finger over the leather cover and the pages as if to make sure it was real. She looked down again at the pages of that last entry. She remembered Rosemary cursing when her ballpoint pen ran out of ink and how Belle had to rummage in her purse to find another for her. Belle could see that place where it had happened, that change in color in the ink, from blue to black, now.
When she reached the reception area, she saw Tony Olsen going around the room, whispering into the ears of some of the guests. Silence took hold of the room as the chatter slowly died away. Eventually it seemed as if someone had hit a freeze-frame button on the event. Every single person in the room had stopped talking and was looking at her. Or, more accurately, at the object she was holding in her hand.
Belle looked over at her husband, Don, who was suddenly chewing the inside of his mouth, something he did only when something bothered him that he needed to think about.
Then she looked at Peter Heusen, Rosemary’s brother. According to Rosemary, he’d been on the verge of bankruptcy before her death but would benefit handsomely from her estate. Why was he looking as if he’d just bitten into a lemon? Belle wondered.
Stan Ballard, Rosemary’s lawyer and estate manager, had the face of a man who might not
make it to the bathroom in time. He kept switching his weight from one leg to another, tugging his ear, dragging a hand through his hair, adjusting his tie.
Haile Patchett and Justine Olegard had taken up positions on opposite sides of the room. Olegard had her arms folded across her chest, face stern, a mask hiding any and all emotion. But Patchett’s face seemed to have crumbled a bit, a weariness overtaking her features, mouth droopy, eyes sad, as if something inside her had let go and given up.
Belle looked from one person to another. It was like a painting, she thought, a group portrait.
Now she realized she was going to enjoy this. She felt a sudden surge of confidence. With a nod and a nervous smile she opened the diary to the pages Rosemary had written on the last night of her life.
23
TESS GERRITSEN
Belle could feel her heart thumping hard. What secrets lay inside? What Pandora’s box was she about to open? “The last entry is from August twenty-second, 2000.” She paused, looked up. “The day before she was executed.”
“Read it,” Olsen said.
Belle swallowed hard. And began to read.
I have become the invisible woman.
I don’t know the precise moment when it happened, when I began to fade from view like the Cheshire cat, my face dimming until only the ghost of my smile remains. I think it must have started soon after Leila was born. That’s when I first noticed that Christopher no longer seemed to look at me, but instead looked through me, as if I had turned transparent. Once your husband stops looking at you, you begin to feel that the rest of the world has stopped looking as well.