Across the street, out past the sea wall, the moon sailed in and out of ragged scraps of cloud. By its fitful light I could see the dark ocean undulating as if it were a sea beast plagued with bad dreams. A gusty wind blew the rain in little flurries against the windshield, and I shivered, vowing to get my heater fixed before winter.
As I sat in the driveway, idling my motor and my brain, a light went on in an upstairs window, and a curtain was twitched aside. That looked promising. I switched off the motor and waited for lights to come on downstairs. When they did, I sprinted from the car to the front door. Never let it be said that a little inclement weather can deter me. No sirree.
“Caitlin,” Alison said with evident pleasure. “I thought you wouldn’t make it tonight.”
“Surprise,” I said, my teeth chattering. For someone who had just been rousted out of bed, she looked wonderful. She had pulled on a blue and gray tartan robe over a pair of pale blue pajamas. Her hair was a little tousled, and the dark smudges under her eyes gave her a vulnerable, waif-like look that I found immensely touching.
“Come on in,” she said, smiling.
I did, and stood shivering a little in the front hall while Alison locked the door.
“You’re frozen,” she said. “Come on into the living room. I’ll build up the fire, and you can make your report.” She looked back over her shoulder and grinned. “Isn’t that what detectives do? Report to their clients?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
I stood uncertainly in the middle of the floor, looking at the piles of paper on the round brass coffee table. It must be hard not to be able to carry forward the work you believe in, I thought. Well, maybe I could get CLAW off Alison’s back and let her get back to work.
“What have you been up to?” I asked.
She stirred around the embers and tossed a log on the fire, closing the screen, and brushing off her hands. “I’m planning how to resurrect Ninth Life,” she told me. “We need a new Executive Committee. I’ve been going through the roster of members, trying to decide who to approach.”
“What about Ian?” I asked, suddenly recalling I hadn’t seen his motorcycle in the driveway. “He seems a natural. Is he staying?”
“He’s a very steadying influence,” she said. “I hope he stays. But he’s awfully pessimistic. I just . . . don’t know.”
“Where is he?”
She shrugged. “Out somewhere. He comes and goes at odd hours. Also, he’s been drinking too much.”
I thought about the chat I had had with him in the Dog and Pony and felt disappointed. A steadying influence, eh?
“And what about you?” I asked. “How have you been?”
She put her hands in the pockets of her robe. “Oh, all right, I guess. I just won’t let myself believe the end of Ninth Life is around the corner.” She looked at me gravely. “I’m counting on you, Caitlin.”
“I know,” I told her.
She sighed. “Listen, can I get you something? Coffee? Tea? A drink? Maybe something to eat—there’s a tray of cheese and crackers and fruit one of the local Ninth Life members brought over. I really didn’t feel like having any of it earlier.”
“Sounds great,” I said honestly. “And some Scotch if you have any.”
“Sure,” she said. “Come on out to the kitchen and help.”
She carried the tray, a couple of paper plates and napkins, and I brought Scotch and glasses. We deposited everything on the coffee table.
“Okay,” I said, piling a Carr’s Water Cracker with a redolent mound of Stilton, “time for my report.” I munched a little, organizing my thoughts, then began. “I have a plan,” I said. “A friend of mine at Channel Twenty-two has agreed to air a tape of whatever I can get showing what’s happening at Living World.”
She gasped. “Caitlin! That’s wonderful. But . . . how will you get the tape?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure, yet,” I said, “but I’m going to Living World tomorrow. I’m posing as a television reporter interviewing Maleck.”
“My God,” she said. “You do move fast. But you realize of course, that you won’t be shown anything useful. You’ll get the white glove tour—all the skeletons will be hidden away in the closet.”
“I know,” I told her, “but after I leave Living World at least I’ll know where the closet is.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then the import of what I had just said hit her. “Caitlin, you’re . . . you’re going to break in. Make the tape yourself!”
I said nothing, piling a Digestive Biscuit with rat trap cheddar.
“You are, aren’t you?”
“Well, not completely by myself—after all, we want the tape to turn out. My role will be more that of executive producer. But, yeah, I’ll be there. And here’s a new wrinkle,” I told her. “The deadline has been moved up. I learned from CLAW—quite inadvertently, I might add—that the little shindig they plan to hold at Living World will be Friday night. Not Saturday.”
“But Liz gave me her word!” Alison was indignant.
“Yup.”
“Damn her!”
“You can say that again.”
She turned to me, her eyes angry. “But it’s impossible. You’ll never do it in time.” Thwarted, disappointed, she aimed her anger at me. “Dammit, Caitlin!”
I swallowed the last of my cracker, took a sip of Scotch, and clasped my hands in front of me. I understood what she was saying. But I thought I ought to set her straight. “We’re not beaten yet,” I told her quietly. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t lie down and die when things get tough. I believe in redundancy. The videotape isn’t our only hope. I’ve got several plans underway, and a whole bunch of people helping me. It gives us an edge, Alison. That way if one plan bombs, well, there’s still hope.” I shrugged. “So the deadline has been moved up. So what? We’ll all just work a little faster.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry. I should have known you had contingency plans. That you’d know how to allow for emergencies like this.” She looked up at me and smiled. “Tonia said you were extremely resourceful. It’s just that, forgive me, I’ve never known anyone like you.”
Anyone like me. I wondered what that meant. I waited for her to continue.
“You’re so . . . direct. Nothing seems to daunt you. You figure out what you want, map out three different ways of getting there, and attack on all fronts at once.” She shook her head. “You’re amazing.”
“Please,” I said, more than a little embarrassed. “We’re not home free yet. Let’s wait until Friday before you get too excited.”
“All right,” she said, her eyes silver in the firelight, an unreadable expression on her face.
I sighed, sorrier than hell that I had to break the mood. But it was late, I was tired, and I had one more thing to report. “Now,” I said, “about Mary.”
“What have you found out?” she asked eagerly.
“The night she tossed the film and the cat into the dumpster—Sunday—I saw a light-colored late-model car follow her out of the parking lot. After I heard about her accident, I remembered that car. Today I got into the Police Impound Lot and examined her car. There was a long smear of light yellow paint on the fender. She’d been sideswiped. Probably run off the road.”
Alison pressed her lips together tightly.
“Tomorrow, I plan to get a look at the car that sideswiped her.”
“At Living World.”
“Right. Probably no one’s done anything yet about the dent in its bodywork. Or the VW’s paint which is undoubtedly in the dent. As well, I got the first three letters of the license plate on Sunday. If the paint and the license match, I’m turning the evidence over to a friend of mine who’ll see it gets to Metro. I’ve made an inquiry about her blood alcohol count, too, and if she hadn’t been drinking—and she sure hadn’t when I talked to her—I think there’s enough evidence to open an investigation. For murder.”
“Murder,” she said, as if she’d never r
eally understood the word until now. “If we can tie Evan Maleck to Mary’s murder, well, that will be the end of it. Of him and of Living World. Finally.” She looked at me, her eyes flinty. “We’d have them! Not even Maleck could run away from something like that.”
I didn’t want to disillusion her, but I wanted her to face facts. “There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in what you’ve just said. Justice moves slowly, and sometimes—” I grimaced, “it doesn’t move in the ways you or I might expect. Justice is a disappointing mistress. I know—I served her for seven long years. That’s why, now, I prefer to be more . . . self-sufficient. To have lots of irons in the fire. Waiting for justice can be a lot like waiting for the Second Coming.” I smiled, trying not to make more of this than I needed to. “You know—praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”
“You’re right,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. I saw the sparkle of tears on her eyelashes and resisted the impulse to brush them away. Not now, I told myself. Do your job. Concentrate.
“Well,” I said heartily, “end of report.” I looked wistfully at the remnants of the cheese tray and stood up. “If I’m to be any good at all tomorrow, I’d better drag myself home to my bed.”
“Caitlin,” she said, “there’s one more thing.”
“Oh?”
“When Judith was here today, when she was struggling with what she had to tell me, she said something very odd.”
“Tell me.”
I saw Alison take a deep breath. “She said, ‘You’ll never forgive me if I don’t tell you about Mary. But if I do, you’ll never forgive me either.’ Then she said just one more word.”
“What word?”
“Just ‘Liz.’ Nothing more. She started crying then, and ran out of the house.”
I sat back down thoughtfully. Liz, eh? And Judith was worrying about forgiveness. I thought I knew what they added up to. I looked over at Alison, not wanting to say this. But it had to be said. “I think Living World planted a spy on you,” I told her, not knowing any way to make it easier. “And I think that spy was Liz. I believe she betrayed Mary to Living World and that Judith came to know about it. And now that knowledge is eating Judith up.”
Alison just looked at me, appalled. Then she shook her head. “Liz betraying Mary—that makes sense if she was planted on us as a spy. But what about the rest of it? She started CLAW.”
I massaged my eyes, trying to force my tired brain to work. “Let’s try to think this through. So she started CLAW. So what? All CLAW will do is stage some sensational event and alienate everyone who values private property rights. Living World will end up looking like the good guys.” I got up and began to pace. “The woman is like a loose cannon. She’s setting up a whole lot of people to take a fall. If she succeeds, she’ll have single-handedly set your cause back years.”
There was a tiny something that wasn’t quite right about this, but the more I talked, the tinier it got. Yeah, the whole thing made a certain kind of sense. Living World couldn’t answer Ninth Life’s accusations directly, so they had to be indirect. Make an end run. Hamstring them. Plant a spy. A fifth columnist. Liz.
“Now what?” Alison asked.
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “I’ve already had a go-round with Liz. But now I don’t feel so bad that she couldn’t be appealed to. Of course she couldn’t—she’s playing for the other team.” But then I realized that I knew someone who wasn’t. Well, not completely, anyhow. Someone who was so consumed with guilt about what she knew that she had come to Alison wanting to confess. Judith. The weak link. And weak links could often be broken. “Say, do you know where Judith and Liz are living now?” I asked.
Alison shook her head. “No.”
My heart sank. Of course not. That would have been too easy.
“But Judith left me her phone number.”
“She did? Do you have it?”
“Yes. It’s in the kitchen.”
I stood up. “May I have it?”
“All right,” Alison said and preceded me to the kitchen. She copied a number from a notepad by the phone and handed it to me. “But you still don’t have the address,” she said. “And I’m sure the number is unlisted.”
“I can get it,” I said. This would take Francis all of thirty seconds. And cost me another hundred. But I thought it could be useful. Useful in what way, I wasn’t sure. What would I do with the address, anyhow? Wait for Liz at her house, truss her like a chicken and lock her in a cupboard until Saturday? It wasn’t a bad idea but I didn’t think it would help. Liz, too, would have set wheels in motion by now, and I was willing to bet that they would roll along quite nicely without her. Still, I wanted that address. “I’ll think of something to use it for,” I told Alison with more confidence than I felt.
She walked me to the door, and I turned to face her in the narrow hall.
“Be careful,” she said, her eyes worried. Suddenly, unbelievably, she stepped toward me and put her arms around my waist. “I’m frightened, Caitlin,” she said. “The idea of betrayal, it . . . scares the hell out of me.”
My arms came up around her of their own accord. Her head, I noted, fit just under my cheekbone, and her hair, which was tickling my nose, smelled like summer.
“You feel so solid and substantial,” she told me, holding me tightly.
“Er, well, yes . . .” I muttered, patting her shoulder, then smoothing her hair.
She sighed, and moved her head so it fit more neatly under my cheekbone. That was fine. It was her hands which had moved inside my jacket and up under my turtleneck which were giving me fits. My stomach felt as though the bottom had fallen out of it, and I realized that my mind was well on its way to being a perfect blank.
It was clear that something was expected of me, something more than just sisterly pats—Alison’s hands on my back were telling me that. And I wasn’t unwilling—hell, she had been the subject of concupiscent thoughts for days now—but I wanted to know who she thought I was. Caitlin Reece? Any solid, substantial body? Or the ghost of Mary? But how could I ask the question? Fortunately, I didn’t have to.
The deadbolt turned with a clack and the front door opened suddenly behind me, whacking me smartly in the back of the head. “Ow!” I exclaimed, returning painfully to reality.
Alison jumped back, away from me, and I followed her. We both turned to look at the opening door. Belatedly I thought about my .357 reposing uselessly in its shoebox.
“Hey, it’s just me,” a voice called. Someone poked a head through the partly opened doorway, someone with dark hair that fell over his forehead in a wing. “Everything okay?” Ian asked.
“Your timing is lousy,” I told him on my way out. “But thanks.”
Chapter 11
I sank into the softness of my mattress with a grateful sigh. Pulling the comforter up to my armpits, I sipped my Scotch, then reached for the yellow tablet I kept beside my bed. It surely couldn’t hurt to do a little recapitulation, a little noting down of where I was, where I thought I was going, and how I thought I was going to get there. I scribbled “Living World” on my notepad, then yawned hugely, deciding I was too tired to do any writing after all. Well, I’d lie here and think, anyhow.
So what did I need? Some revealing video footage taken in Living World’s labs. Simple enough. A little breaking and entering should get me what I wanted. Lester and I would reconnoiter the place tomorrow, then later on at night we’d come back. I’d go in first to silence the alarms, locate the lab, and open a back door, then in would pop Lester. He’d shoot as much footage as we had time for, then we’d both beat it back to town and I’d hand over the videotape to Val. Simple, right?
I squirmed on my pillow, trying to get more comfortable. Simple? Hardly. There were about a hundred things that could go wrong. The more I thought about it, the less feasible the plan became.
I finished the rest of my Scotch, yawned again, then turned off the light. Just who was this Evan Maleck, I wondered as I slid down the inky incl
ine of sleep. What kind of creature was he? The thought of confronting someone like him, someone intelligent yet willfully immoral, made me feel ill. I’d seen my share of Evan Malecks—people who knew the difference between right and wrong and simply chose to do the latter. I wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation. Another thought nagged at me, a bubble rising to the top of memory’s pond, but it was too much trouble to try to figure out what it was. I fell into welcome darkness.
Darkness. What was I doing down here in the cellar in the middle of the night? I tried my best to remember how I had gotten here, but panic made me witless. Stumbling blindly forward, hands outstretched, I searched for the light switch which I knew must be on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. I had started to sweat, and wondered if the sharp, coppery smell was my own fear. I didn’t care. I had to have light. Light to see by. Light to help me get out of here. Before she became aware of my presence and came for me. The Dark Lady. Gibbering in fear, I found the light switch. My fingers fumbled with it, then flipped it on . . . Nothing happened.
“No!” I cried out, putting my hands over my face. Then I heard it—furtive scrabbling in the darkness behind me—the first sounds of pursuit—and fear made me reckless. Staggering forward, I cracked my shin painfully against the bottom step of the staircase. Then, on hands and knees, I scrambled upward, away from her, away from this dark place. Away.
She caught me halfway up the stairs, and I felt her icy hand close on my ankle. “Caitlinnnn,” she breathed. “At last.”
• • •
Screaming my head off, I awoke to find myself in my own bed. Teeth chattering, I snapped on the bedside light just to make sure. I threw my comforter aside, and hauled myself upright. The Dark Lady. I peeled off my sodden clothes and tossed them into the closet. Oh goody. My bête noir. I took a clean sweatshirt and sweatpants out of my bottom drawer and pulled them on thoughtfully. I hadn’t dreamed about the Dark Lady for almost a year.
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