David nodded agreeably.
“Now we’ll see what’s what,” she said, getting down to break.
Andrea’s play picked up noticeably, but David won the next two games anyway.
“Hmm,” she said, shaking her head thoughtfully. “Let’s see how good your nerve is, Fast Eddie. A thousand?”
David laughed. “Carry on.”
The next game was a close one, but he won it. The one after that was Andrea’s. Easily.
“Now I’m finding my stride,” she said. “Let’s make this a real test. Five thousand.”
Smiling, David shook his head and laid his cue on the table.
“I tell you what,” Andrea said, “I’ll take Dudley as a partner. You against me and Dudley for five thousand.”
David gave the grinning Navajo a speculative glance. Even if Dudley was as good as Andrea, he wouldn’t be ready to play at their level in a single game.
“All right. Provided he shoots second.”
“Agreed.”
Rolling his eyes comically, Case went to pick out a cue from the rack.
David broke, sinking the eleven ball. He followed that with the nine, then missed on the ten. Andrea looked over the table, chalking her cue. Then she got down and pocketed the two ball, the seven, the four, and the three. The six wobbled against the sides of a corner pocket and drifted away.
David dispatched the fourteen, but left himself blocked behind a cluster of solids. He managed a shot on the thirteen but couldn’t do anything with it.
Case came to the table with a straight shot on the six ball, worried over it through a full minute, and miscued, hitting nothing.
“I told you I was lousy,” he said, straightening up. Andrea spotted the four ball.
David now had a clean shot at the thirteen, and he sank it. Then he turned to his last two balls. The fifteen was going to be a problem, lying dead against the cushion and blocked by the eight and the six. With one of his best shots of the evening, he simultaneously put away the ten and sent the cue ball backtracking to clear away the block on the fifteen.
Andrea applauded ironically.
The fifteen, however, was still dead against the cushion. The angle made a bank shot unpromising and he decided to nudge it gently into the corner along the cushion. Unfortunately, his nudge was too gentle and the ball rolled to a halt at the very lip of the pocket.
“Too bad,” Andrea said, hefting her cue.
The need for pretense gone, she approached the table decisively and, moving from shot to shot without hesitation, sent the balls scurrying into pockets like a bunch of terrified mice. It was all over in under two minutes.
On her last shot, the cue ball, after downing the eight, drifted down the length of the table and insolently tapped David’s fifteen into its pocket.
“I told you, man.”
David nodded, stunned. “Very educational. And if I’d won I would’ve been properly hooked.”
The Navajo chuckled.
Andrea was racking her cue. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m ready for bed.”
“At least you’re a good winner,” David observed.
Andrea smiled. “Only second-raters gloat. See you in the morning.”
Case said good night and followed her downstairs.
David, his adrenalin still flowing, went back to the bookshelves looking for something to read himself to sleep with. After a few minutes he decided to stick with the Sendak.
Opening the door to his room, he paused, blinking.
A flickering circle of candles had been arranged on the floor, but this wasn’t what drew his gaze.
In the center of the circle stood a slender, life-size female figure in profile, in a typical art deco nude pose: arms outstretched to the sky, head thrown back in ecstasy, back arched gracefully, toes just touching the ground. Then with a jolt he realized what he was seeing and the heavy book fell to the floor, forgotten.
It wasn’t a statue, it was Marianne. And she wasn’t standing, she was hanging—unconscious, her wrists roped together and strung up to one of the ceiling hooks.
“Jesus God,” David whispered, every muscle in his body jumping almost beyond control. She’d been hanging here in the candlelight since before dinner:
Something wonderfully ingenious.
He approached on rubbery legs, horrified and almost unbearably aroused, and stood before her trying to subdue the storm of emotions that had burst within him, trying to bring his wildly shaking hands under control. He swallowed, his eyes fixed on her tiny breasts, made even slighter by being stretched taut, her nipples pink and pathetically vulnerable.
It’s a project. You’ll like it.
With an effort, he tore his eyes away and began to work clumsily on the knot at her wrists but soon saw that he’d never get it untied with her dead weight pulling it tight. But if she were awake …
“Marianne,” he whispered. But he knew he didn’t want to rouse her—didn’t want to meet her eyes.
He cast his mind around the room, frantically looking for knives, razors. Then he hurried over to the curio cabinet and pulled out the exquisite Lalique mermaid dreaming in her cloud of crystal bubbles.
Andrea de la Mare: Andrea of the Sea.
Holding the edge of the plate in two hands to keep that much of it intact, he smashed it against the floor and hurried back to the hanging girl. Even with her weight holding it taut, he had to use one hand to hold the rope steady while he sawed with the other, so that, when it finally parted, she slumped to the floor before he could catch her. She lay face down in a twisted sprawl, her bound hands drawn up protectively under her chin, her boyish rump against his shoe.
We’ll have that skirt up now, my girl.
Without hearing himself, he groaned.
He turned her over gingerly, scooped her up, and carried her to the bed, conscious of the fragile ribs pressing into his hand and of her lolling head. Holding her hands up, he covered her with the edge of the bedspread and sat down beside her to work on the knot. It was just beginning to loosen when Marianne moaned and her eyes fluttered open. She blinked at David groggily as if unable to bring him into focus. Then memory and awareness returned, and she scrambled to push herself away from him, whimpering and struggling helplessly against the rope. Her back against the headboard, her hands drawn up in fists to cover her breasts, she gazed at him with bruised, hopeless eyes, like an animal in a trap.
“Marianne,” he whispered, nearly whimpering himself, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Her expression didn’t change.
“It’s all right,” he said gently. “I’m not a rapist, Marianne.”
Liar!
He saw that he may as well not have spoken. Her senses were clogged by pain and shock. He moved forward on the bed to take her hands, and she cringed.
“Marianne! Give me your hands and I’ll untie them. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.”
She blinked over his words for a long moment, then hesitantly held her hands out to him.
He found, after a bit of fumbling, that he had to press her hands down onto her legs so he could steady his own. His fingers seemed to belong to someone else; they moved feebly over the knot like pale, drunken spiders.
“I’ll have it in a minute,” he said.
Then, in a triumph of concentration, he forced thumb and forefinger to close usefully over a loop of rope at the center of the knot, and he tugged it free. After that it was easy. In a few seconds he had it off and was unwinding a silk scarf that had been wrapped around her wrists to protect them from the rope. When he was finished, she drew her hands back and began rubbing her wrists, never taking her eyes off of him.
“I’ll get you something to wear,” he said and went into the bathroom for his white velour robe.
She followed him with her dark, unreadable eyes as he returned and lay the robe across her legs.
“I’m sorry, Marianne. This wasn’t my idea.”
Not exactly.
He wal
ked away and began gathering up the pieces of the shattered Lalique plate. In a few moments he heard the door open and close.
When he turned back to the bed, he saw that she’d left the robe; he tore off his clothes and threw himself down to find release from his tormenting arousal.
CHAPTER 38
When Ellen got up and went into the living room the next morning, she felt an odd blend of bitterness and relief on discovering that Wolf had spoken the literal truth the day before. He’d said, “We’ll leave in the morning. We’ll be gone by ten or eleven.”
He just hadn’t specified who comprised that we. Except for her, the house was empty. She checked over her purse and suitcase, which they’d let her keep in the bedroom, and found everything intact. She tried the telephone and found it dead.
On her way out, she saw that they’d left something behind for her: a story clipped from a newspaper and tacked to the front door.
MYSTERY CAR FOUND IN MOUNTAINS
WOLCOTT—Twelve-year-old Felipe Martinez, while exploring a few miles north of his home last Tuesday, made an unexpected discovery: a 1988 Volvo sedan parked in the hills miles from any road. After overcoming some initial skepticism, Felipe led officer Dale Hoskins of the sheriff’s substation to the site on Wednesday, and the find was confirmed.
“How the vehicle got there is anybody’s guess,” Hoskins said. “I wouldn’t know how to drive it out, so I can’t imagine how anyone drove it in, but it sure is there.” He went on to say that the Volvo is in an undamaged condition and estimated it has been at the site “no more than a few days or weeks. Certainly not months or years.”
Papers found inside the car indicate its owner is an Indiana resident, but further details are being withheld until authorities there can be contacted.
Hoskins said no search of the area is planned at present. “As yet,” he pointed out, “no one has been reported missing.”
Ellen put the clipping in her purse and went outside to walk the quarter mile to the road. She’d noticed that the sparse traffic on it was generally northbound in the morning and southbound in the afternoon and evening, and so assumed there was a population center to the north, though she hoped she wouldn’t have to get there on foot. She was lucky. A young man in a pickup stopped for her after fifteen minutes and deposited her half an hour later at a car rental agency in Glenwood Springs—with some relief. A woman who has to ask which of the United States she’s in is a woman in some kind of trouble (though she hadn’t elaborated on it and he hadn’t asked her about it).
At the police station they shrugged without interest over her clipping and referred her to the sheriff’s substation at Wolcott.
Officer Dale Hoskins, a large, leathery man who looked shabby and disgruntled in the battered mobile home that served as the substation, wasn’t much more helpful. After Ellen told him as much of the story as she thought he needed to know, he confirmed that the name on the Volvo’s registration was her husband’s, but stubbornly resisted the idea that the situation called for some action on his part. David Kennesey was not, to the best of his knowledge, missing; Ellen herself hadn’t reported him as such. The fact that David Kennesey had abandoned a car in an inaccessible place was newsworthy, but not criminal. In the eyes of Eagle County it made him no different from someone who abandons a car in a church parking lot.
She asked if he would take her to the car, and he referred her to Felipe Martinez, the boy who had found it in the first place.
“Even if I took you there,” he said, “we’d have to have him along anyway. On my own, I couldn’t find the thing again in thirty years.”
Following his tortuous directions, which relied heavily on such things as abandoned vehicles, “a big pile of dirt,” and unfinished buildings for landmarks, Ellen found her way through a labyrinth of dirt roads to a ramshackle aggregate of adobe, wooden shed, and trailer that comprised the Martinez residence. A girl of seven or eight listened to her story at the screen door and went to get her mother, an enormous, cheerful woman who agreed enthusiastically that Felipe would be delighted to take Ellen to the car for five dollars. However, Felipe was “out somewhere” just at the moment but would probably return in an hour or two. She recommended that, since they wouldn’t get far in Ellen’s sedan anyway, she use the time to go back and rent a vehicle with four-wheel drive.
Ellen returned to Glenwood Springs, had a late breakfast, and changed into jeans in the ladies’ room. Without any expectation of reaching anyone, she called home. Then she turned in her sedan for a Jeep and drove back to Wolcott. Felipe was waiting for her, hunkered down in the dust outside the Martinez house. A slender but well-developed boy, he stood up with an air of assurance, brushed off the seat of his jeans, and regarded her with dark, somber eyes. Except for his delicate, almost feminine features, he reminded her a bit of Tim.
“Hi,” Ellen said from behind the wheel of the Jeep, “I’m Ellen. Are you Felipe?” When he nodded, she asked if his mother had told him what she wanted.
He nodded again and said—not pressing, just stating a fact—“I think it’s worth ten dollars.”
“So do I,” Ellen agreed with a smile.
Felipe swung up into the passenger’s seat with an easy grace and told her to turn right at the end of the driveway. “By the way,” she said, “the reason I’m interested in the car is that it belongs to my husband.”
“Not anymore,” the boy said promptly.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t belong to anyone now. Unless you can bring it out with a helicopter or something.”
“I see what you mean.” She asked him how close the road would take them to it.
He thought about this for a bit. “It’s about fifteen miles away, I guess. Four or five miles off the road, maybe.”
“You get around,” Ellen said, impressed.
He shrugged. “I like to walk.”
“Will we be able to take the Jeep all the way in?”
He shook his head. “Might be a way to do it. Never looked for one—no reason to.”
“How close can we get, then?”
“A mile or so.”
Looking out at the bleak, rocky hills around them, Ellen wondered how she’d stand up to a mile hike. She was wearing the walking shoes she’d brought from Runnell, but they were designed for city streets, not mountains.
“How do you think the car got up there, anyway?”
The boy was looking out of the open window on his side of the car, and for a few moments Ellen thought he hadn’t heard her question. Then, without turning, he said: “The witches put it there.”
She looked at him with a smile, thinking it was a joke. He glanced back, took in the smile, and shook his head disgustedly.
“The Anglos think we’re stupid,” he said, politely refraining from you Anglos. “The Anglos think they know everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There are witches out here. Always have been. We know it, but the Anglos know better, so they laugh.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellen said. “I didn’t smile because I thought I knew better. I smiled because I’d never heard there were witches here.”
“Well, there are,” Felipe said.
Ellen thought it was a bit unfair of him to turn sullen after she’d already admitted her ignorance.
“What do they do?”
He made a face. “They do what witches do. Witches’ business.”
Ellen decided to leave it at that. She would have had to in any case, because the boy soon directed her to leave the road, and, for the next half hour, driving occupied her full attention. As they rattled across the rocky countryside, the wheel twisted and leaped under her hands like a machine gone berserk.
“You don’t have to go so fast,” Felipe said after a few minutes.
Ellen glanced at the speedometer and saw that she was doing five miles an hour. She eased up on the accelerator and found the wheel almost manageable at two.
“We could walk this fast
,” she said.
“You think,” he replied scornfully.
This first part of the journey was a fairly steady climb in a straight northwesterly direction. At one point Ellen needed some coaxing to plunge into a dry stream bed that crossed their path, and Felipe had to get out to show her the tracks Hoskins had made, proving it could be done. At another point they came to a hill that, tracks notwithstanding, she refused to try, and Felipe guided her around it, the Jeep canted at a hair-raising angle. Other than that, it was a fairly straightforward trip.
They left the Jeep at the edge of a shelf overlooking a grim maze of hills that seemed to extend to the end of the world.
“The car’s in there?” Ellen asked.
Smiling, Felipe nodded.
“God. You say a mile?”
“About that.”
Ellen knew what a mile of city streets was. Tim’s school was a mile from their house, and she’d walked it many times. Half an hour at a leisurely pace.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Felipe said, reading her mind. “Distance flattens the hills, makes ’em look straight up and down, but they’re not. You can make it.”
Ellen sighed and told him to lead on.
Two hours later, she saw him stop at the crest of a hill to let her catch up; the palms of her hands were scraped and one knee was bruised from a fall, but otherwise she thought she was doing pretty well. At the end of an hour she’d been ready to turn back, but then she’d gotten her second wind—something she’d always thought was purely imaginary. Coming up beside him, she wondered why he was smiling. Then, looking into the bowl at their feet, she understood—and felt a chilly tingle race up the back of her neck.
There was something incredibly eldritch about finding such a homely object as a green sedan sitting in this inhospitable wilderness. It didn’t seem pathetic or forlorn, or even out of place. Rather, in some uncanny way, it made the hills seem out of place, as if they might dissolve at any moment to be replaced by a shopping mall full of cars.