by Lauren Carr
The man and his dog stayed up late into the night watching a horror movie in the home theatre. The feature about a war between werewolves and vampires was already on when Mac had arrived home to find Gnarly with an open bag of popcorn, which he had stolen off the kitchen counter. Mac rooted for the vampires while Gnarly howled his allegiance to the werewolves.
The triumph of the vampires over the werewolves was a hollow victory without Archie sitting next to him covering her eyes during the gory parts, or better yet, burying her whole face against his chest while he held her, at which point the scent of her perfume would excite his senses.
Funny how you don’t notice how much someone’s scent excites you until it’s replaced by dog breath.
The next morning, Mac woke up on the sofa when Gnarly alternated between licking his nose and pawing at his hand. The two of them had been up so late that Gnarly missed his six o’clock morning patrol of the Point.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Mac dragged himself up the stairs with one hand on the banister while Gnarly guided him with the other until they made their way to the deck’s doors, where the dog suddenly jumped on the doors with both front paws pounding. His urgent barking seemed to bounce inside of Mac’s head like a ping pong ball.
“What’s your problem?” he demanded to know. But Gnarly wasn’t sticking around to answer. As soon as the door was open, he shot out like a bullet, across the deck, down the steps, and around the corner of the house. His barking sounded like a battle charge.
The bright morning sunlight momentarily blinded Mac, while at the same time the chilling autumn breeze that swept in off the lake sent a shock through his body that woke up any part of him that hadn’t been awakened by Gnarly’s barking.
Archie was his first vision of the day.
As always, she was barefoot with her toes dressed up in bright red polish that matched her floor-length silky bathrobe.
“Rough night?” she asked him.
“What’s his problem?” Mac asked.
“It’s not his fault. Otis keeps provoking him.”
“Who’s Otis?” Mac looked around off the deck in search of another dog. Gnarly’s barking could now be heard at the front of the house.
“That big fat squirrel,” she answered. “You can’t miss him. He’s the biggest squirrel on the Point. Otis keeps coming up onto the deck and shaking his fat butt with his bushy tail at Gnarly. He’s begging for a fight.”
Though he could see that she was serious in her version of the war between the dog and squirrel, Mac couldn’t help being amused. It sounded like an animated movie. To him, it was simple. Gnarly was territorial and couldn’t stop barking at everything that moved on the Point.
“This squirrel actually has a name?” he asked.
“Everyone has to have a name.”
Usually, she would come in and they would share a cup of coffee. If he was lucky, she would prepare breakfast.
This morning, she made no such movement. Instead, she gazed at him with emerald eyes that didn’t look angry, but sad.
Mac wondered, as he often did with women, if he had done something to offend her. Maybe he hurt her feelings when he laughed about Gnarly and Otis.
“I’m surprised Gnarly’s barking didn’t wake Christine up,” she said.
“Why would it? What makes—”
Christine’s car. It’s still in the driveway. Archie must have seen it when she came home.
He asked, “Do you think Christine spent the night here?”
“Yeah.”
“No, no.” Taking her hand, he led her inside. “Want some coffee?”
In his haste to get breakfast, Gnarly plowed into her, causing her to fall against Mac when the three of them squeezed through the open doorway. While he fed Gnarly, she prepared the coffeemaker and pressed the button to grind the beans and brew a pot of coffee for the two of them.
After Mac told her about the scene that Christine had caused in the lobby of the Spencer Inn, she asked, “Why did you take her up to the Inn instead of letting her stay here? It isn’t like you don’t have enough room.” She collected the cream and sugar for their coffee.
“Would you have wanted her to stay here?” After Gnarly attacked the food in his bowl, Mac took two mugs from the cupboard. He paused to watch her reaction.
“Spencer Manor is your home. You can let whoever you want to stay here.” Those beautiful emerald saucers seemed to bore into him.
“I asked if you wanted her to stay here.”
Each one dared the other to say what was on his or her mind.
The only sounds in the kitchen were the churning of the coffeemaker and Gnarly devouring his breakfast. When he was finished, the German shepherd sat between the two of them and licked his chops while looking from one of them to the other as if to ask what was going to happen next.
“I’m going to step out on a limb here,” Mac announced.
“You first.” Leaning back against the counter, she looked as if she was bracing for him to punch her.
Crossing his arms across his chest, he leaned against the kitchen table. “If the situation was reversed, and it was your ex-husband—”
“I don’t have an ex-husband.”
“Imagine you did,” he said. “If you had an ex and he came here, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with him spending the night under the same roof as you—even if nothing happened between the two of you.” He plunged on. “The cottage is yours. Even if it legally belongs to me, Robin said that you can live there as long as you want. That makes it your home. Since it’s your home, you can invite whoever you want to spend the night with you, but…”
“But…”
He hated that but.
Haven’t I said enough? I told you that I don’t want you having other men around. What more do I have to say?
“You were upset because you thought Christine had spent the night with me,” he came back at her. “Why were you upset about that?”
There. Let’s put it back on you.
Seeming to have seen the invisible ball tossed into Archie’s court, Gnarly turned his gaze from Mac to her.
“Because I was jealous.”
Mac waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “Of what?”
Now her hands were on her hips. “Christine kicked you out of your home. She and her lover conspired to wipe you out. They stripped you of everything and then she had the gall to come here to ask you to take her back. When I came home last night and saw her car here, I thought—” She clenched her jaw shut.
“You thought I had taken her back,” he finished for her.
“Meanwhile…” Seeming to change her mind about what she was about to say, she turned her attention to the coffee. She took the pot from the burner and filled both of the mugs.
Mac stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms about her waist. “Meanwhile, you’ve been here for me,” he whispered into her ear.
Saying nothing, she nodded her head.
He kissed her ear. “I’m sorry I’m not good at saying how much people mean to me. But you do mean a lot to me. I missed you last night.”
Suddenly, her arms were around his neck and her mouth on his.
He welcomed the return of her scent and her taste as he held her against him. It was as if she didn’t want to lose the chance to have him now that he offered the opportunity.
With no clear memory of the last time that he had felt wanted by any woman, Mac had forgotten the joy of the touch of feminine hands on him. He gasped with shock and pleasure when he felt her fingertips and nails on his back when she pulled him to her.
The bongs of the grandfather clock in the foyer chiming the eight o’clock hour brought Mac to his senses with a jolt.
“No,” he gasped out while pulling away from her. Apologetically, he unwrapped her arms from around his waist.
“No?” she whimpered.
“I have to go.” He kissed her fingertips. “I’m meeting Christine for breakfast at nine o’clock.”
Not wanting to let her go, he clung to both of her hands in his while begging for her to understand. “I have to talk to her. I couldn’t last night because she was so inebriated. She’s been asking the kids for money from their trust funds, which since I’m the trustee I won’t let them give her, which makes her mad at them. Tristan refuses to talk to her anymore because she’s drunk all the time. I’m going to talk to her about going into rehab and I have to do it at breakfast before she starts drinking again.”
He pressed her fingers to his lips. He wished that this had been another time, another day when neither of them had any responsibilities calling them away. He wanted to spend the whole day alone with her and no one else, to get to know her in ways that he had only been imagining for a long time.
“Later?” he whispered to her.
The sadness in her eyes was replaced with an invitation. “Hurry back.”
“Oh, I will.” He brought his lips to hers. “I’ll be back by lunchtime. I’ll have Antonio prepare a special lunch for us and bring it home. Cheese and fruit—”
“Strawberries dipped in chocolate?” Her eyes lit up.
The grin on her face melted his heart. “Strawberries dipped in chocolate it is.”
“And we’ll eat them in the Jacuzzi together.” Like a child excited by the prospect of a dream come true, she clapped her hands.
“Together.” He kissed her one last time before going upstairs to prepare to meet his ex-wife.
* * * *
It took every fiber of Mac’s being to force thoughts about his and Archie’s plans for later out of his mind and replace them with the matter awaiting him at the top of the mountain.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had visions—in reality they’d been fantasies—of this moment. He’d rehearsed them in his mind more than once ever since discovering Christine’s affair with Stephen Maguire.
Every vision contained a common thread. Christine would realize that while her lover had looks, position, prestige, and wealth, it was her devoted husband who’d always been there for her. Upon making this realization, she would beg for him to take her back and Mac would take much relish in saying, “No, no, no, and hell no. You made your bed, baby, now lie in it.”
Then he would leave her on her knees, tearing at her clothes, and beating on the ground with her fists in anguish.
Now that the opportunity had presented itself for him to live out his fantasy, Mac didn’t have the heart to bring it to life. Christine’s pitiful condition had sucked the joy out of his vengeance. She had already made her bed and not only lain in it, she had made a full-fledged nest out of it.
Mac couldn’t leave the mother of his children there.
His private table was waiting for him in the corner of the Inn’s restaurant. As soon as Mac walked through the cut glass doors, Antonio, the host on duty, whipped a fresh pot of coffee from the burner and took it to the table to fill his cup.
“Will Archie be joining you this morning, Mr. Forsythe?” With a snap of his fingers, Antonio signaled for a server to fetch a basket of hot croissants for Mac’s table.
“It’s Faraday,” Mac replied. “No, another friend is visiting from out of town. But I do have a special lunch order that I’d like for the kitchen to prepare for her.”
“If it’s for Archie, then it won’t be anything less than special.” Antonio announced before hurrying to the kitchen to put in Mac’s order for their romantic lunch.
While Mac watched for Christine, or Stephen Maguire’s entrance into the restaurant to flaunt his blue blood among the common folks, the servers continued waiting on other customers. Seeing their nervous glances in his direction, he noted that he still hadn’t gotten used to being the boss. His employees’ anxiousness made him uncomfortable.
During his career as a homicide detective he had en-countered many powerful people who delighted in crushing those who worked for them. Mac wanted so much to not become one of “those bosses”.
When Antonio asked if he wanted to go ahead and order, Mac checked the time on his watch. It was twenty minutes after nine o’clock. Assuming Christine had overslept, he used his master key card to take the elevator up to the penthouse.
“Christine!” Mac called out while pounding on the door when she didn’t answer after his second knock. “Wake up. It’s time for breakfast.”
“What the hell is going on?” The door across the corridor, which had a Do Not Disturb sign hanging on it, flew open.
Mac’s apology for the disturbance was cut short by the shock of seeing the short, squat, bald-headed man standing naked before him. As bald as the top of his head was, his face was covered in a thick gray beard that went down his barrel chest and stomach and the rest of his exposed body.
“Don’t you know that people are trying to sleep?” the naked man asked in a European accent so thick that Mac could only decipher his demand by piecing together what words he understood and the context of the situation.
Mac found his voice. “I think my—” He stopped when he caught himself starting to call Christine his wife. “My friend was supposed to meet me for breakfast. I guess she slept in.”
“Why don’t you try calling her instead of standing here pounding on the door like some heathen?” the naked man suggested. “All this noise and interruptions. If it isn’t the maid with towels, it’s someone playing horror movies, and now we have—”
“Omar!” A woman came into view from the sitting room behind the bald man. “Who are you talking to out there?”
Mac saw that the tall red-headed woman was as naked as her companion, though notably more attractive.
“Some heathen trying to wake up the people in the suite across the hall,” he called back to her. Based on how he had left the door wide open, he didn’t seem to care if Mac saw her unclothed.
“Well, if I were you I’d hurry up. The clock is ticking and my twenty-four hours is up in two.”
With the eagerness of a boy being told that this would be his last chance to kiss his date good-night, he slammed the door shut.
Using his key card, Mac let himself into Christine’s room.
At first, the silence in the suite made Mac think that Christine had sobered up and, realizing how foolish she had behaved the day before, left to return home. Then, he realized that her car was still at Spencer Manor.
The suite was too quiet.
It was possible for Christine to have left through the lobby to take a cab to the manor to get her car while he was waiting for her in the restaurant. Mac hoped that, if that was the case, she wouldn’t run into Archie. If so, he was glad he wouldn’t be there to witness the scene.
The empty room service tray was a clue that Christine had taken his advice to have dinner sent up. Not seeing any dishes, a quick check told him that she’d had the presence of mind to put her dirty dishes in the kitchenette’s dishwasher and run it. During his check inside the dishwasher, Mac noticed two plates and two wine glasses.
It was a dinner for two.
“No, Christine,” he murmured. “You didn’t.”
He noticed the first blood splatter on the wall as he rounded the corner into the sitting area.
That splatter was followed by another, then another, then a smear and a pool of blood.
In the middle of the sitting room, Mac first saw the leather shoes covered in blood. As he stepped into the room, he saw the rest of the body lying behind the coffee table, which had been overturned in the mêlée.
Christine, what have you done?
The blood that saturated the carpeting soaked into the knees of his pants when he knelt to press his fingertips against the neck that had been sliced open.
“Oh, Christine, no.” Mac tasted his tears in his mouth.
Anger welled up inside him when he looked at the once handsome face of the man who twelve months before had been his enemy.
“Why did you come up here?” Mac yelled at the dead man. “She said she was going to kill y
ou. You heard her. She swore. Why didn’t you stay away, you bastard?”
Emotion overrode decades of police training that had become second nature to him. If he had been one of the detectives who had worked under him before he retired, Mac would have raked him over the coals for not leaving the suite immediately and containing the crime scene.
With the back of his hand, Mac slapped the dead man’s body, getting more blood on his sleeve and hand. The body didn’t move in response to his slap. Rigor mortis had already set in.
She killed him last night.
With the sound of his heartbeat racing in his ears, Mac climbed up to his feet to go in search of clues to his ex-wife’s whereabouts.
At the door to the master bedroom, his detective training kicked back in. Stephen Maguire had been stabbed several times.
Where’s the murder weapon?
Mac guessed that she had put it in the dishwasher when she washed the rest of the dishes to get rid of the evidence.
Using a paper towel from the kitchenette in order to not disturb evidence on the door handle, he went into the master bedroom.
He was surprised to find her blood-soaked clothes scattered on the floor around the bed. Her suitcase rested on the luggage stand.
“Christine,” he called out. “What happened?”
With no other place to search for her in the suite, Mac threw open the bathroom door.
The room shone like it had never been touched by human hands, or live ones.
He found her naked in the bottom of the shower tub. Her damp blond hair was plastered to her head and neck.
Mac pressed his fingers against her neck to check for a pulse. There was none.
Like Stephen Maguire, her body was stiff.
Suddenly, all the wounds from the past were gone. Once again, she was his wife, the girl he had felt honored to have gone out with him. The girl he had protected and taken care of. The girl he had loved.
Holding her cold body, he rocked her in his arms while searching for any sign of life, and finding none.
While wiping her hair from her face, his fingers found a deep bloody gash at the back of her head at the base of her neck. He looked up at the towel rack in the shower above.