A Tangled Web (8 page)

Leave me alone!
The thought was in English, not French, and as she realized it Stephanie was engulfed in a wave of terror. She jerked her hand from Max's grip and slid it beneath the coverlet; she closed her eyes and shut both men out. Their voices rumbled above her, deep and antagonistic, but it was like trains going by—trains, Stephanie thought; was I on a train? Where did I go?—a rush, a roar, with no meaning, and she lay stiffly beneath the sound, her hands clenched, afraid to move. She was alone in emptiness—-a fog, a cloud, the sky, all of space, infinity—with nothing to gaze upon or touch or grasp. She tried to think of a place where she belonged—a house, a room, a chair, a bed—but there was nothing. She tried to picture a town, a neighborhood, a street, but there was only emptiness: no scenery, no roadway, no guideposts. Only a muffling, terrifying emptiness.

Sabrina. Sabrina . . . what? What did he say my last name was? He told me, didn't he? Oh, God, I cant . . .
She began to shiver. The name Sabrina meant nothing to her, and she could not remember her last name.

“What is my last name?” she asked without opening her eyes.

“Lacoste,” said Max.

Sabrina Lacoste. And he is . . . he is . . . Max. He said Max. Max Lacoste.
Her shivering would not stop. That name meant nothing to her, either. She felt she was falling soundlessly through that terrible fog of nothingness, absolutely alone, unconnected to anything or anyone. She saw herself reaching out her hand, searching for someone to clasp it, but there was no one. Oh, help me, she cried silently, tears stinging behind her eyelids. Help me find a place to belong.

“Sabrina.” Max's voice was the only sound in the room, and she opened her eyes. He towered above her, tall and broad-shouldered, with shaggy red eyebrows and frizzled red hair. He had slightly bulging gray eyes, a heavy, sensual mouth, and large, well-shaped hands. He carried himself with purpose and moved with a restless energy that seemed to create eddies in the air around him, unsettling the room.
My husband.
The thought sank into the muffling fog, and Stephanie repeated it, trying to make it seem right.

“We'll go home soon.” His voice was relaxed; he seemed to control everything around him, and Stephanie stared at him, conscious of his strength. “I'm going to buy a house in Cavaillon.” The idea had come to him just a few minutes before; he knew the area, a perfect one for privacy, and Robert ran a Catholic school there; he would find them a house. “You'll love it; it's very beautiful and quiet.”

“Cavaillon?”

“Where we're going to live.”

“Did you tell me that, too?”

“No, why should I, in front of the doctor? No one needs to know where we're going. You'll like the town and our house; you'll be very happy.”

“I don't want to go there.”

“Indeed. Where would you like to go?”

There was a long silence. The tears came again, running soundlessly along her cheeks, wetting the pillow and disappearing
into the emptiness where she was suspended, alone. “I don't know.”

“Of course not. And in fact, where else would you go but home, with your husband, where you belong? Listen to me, Sabrina. I love you. And you love me. You belong with me, and you'll stay with me, and do as I say; that's the only way I can guarantee your safety and your happiness. Do you understand that?”

His voice pierced the thick fog that swirled around her.
Safety. Max will keep me safe.

From what? she wondered. But then it was gone, and all she knew was that she was not alone after all. Someone would be there when she reached out her hand. Max would be there. Max loved her. And Max would keep her safe.

F
or two months the hospital was Stephanie's whole world. The people she talked to were doctors and nurses and other patients in the solarium, but much of the time she was in her own room on the top floor, where Max had had her moved after the first week. At one end of the room stood a brightly patterned armchair and chaise and a low table with books and magazines, and after each of the three operations on her face, Stephanie spent the days curled up in the armchair, reading, or lying on the chaise. She would gaze for hours at the blue of the Mediterranean blurring into the blue of the sky, and at the boats moving in and out of the harbor while great gulls swooped around them in widening circles and then, with a flapping that could be heard above the creaking of the ships' masts and the boisterous calls of fishermen, flew out to sea and disappeared in the mist.

Twice a week a psychologist came to her room after Max finally allowed it. Max did not join her for any of their talks, though Stephanie often asked him to; his excuse was that he had a great deal of work to do. And it
seemed that he had: he had begun leaving the hospital as soon as she moved to her new room, at first for an hour or two, then for a whole day and, once, for almost a week.

He had put off going because he thought she would die without him there to watch over her. He had come to believe that it was only his presence that kept her alive: he had saved her when the ship exploded, and now he was saving her again, hour by hour, day by day, by willing her to live. The first time he left to go to the warehouse on the dock with the sign Lacoste et fils over the door, he had fought with himself the whole time not to rush back. But he told himself it was a weak, childish fantasy, and because he abhorred anything that was weak or recalled childish fears, he pushed the thought from him and stayed away all that day, and next morning left again and did not look back after saying goodbye.

In fact, he had to go; he had no choice. He had to know what had happened to the people on the yacht, and what the police had found. He had told the doctors that the accident had occurred in a motorboat when it struck a dock, but he maintained that fiction only within the hospital; he needed Robert, and so Robert had to know the truth.

The day after Stephanie awakened, when for the first time he had let himself think of something else, he had asked Robert to go to Monaco for him; now Robert had returned, and they were to meet in a café in a corner of town where no one would know them. The newspapers had reported almost nothing beyond the bare story of an explosion on the French-registered
Lafitte
with apparently no survivors. The doctor in the hospital had said the same thing.
No survivors.
How could they know that? No one in Monte Carlo knew how many were on the ship, or who they were. The
Lafitte
was registered under the name of Max's French company, Lacoste et fils, and his crew chief signed either Max's name or his own when registering with the dockmaster. If he had signed Max's name and the police had found bodies in the water but not Max's, why
wasn't that in the newspaper stories? None of it made sense, and Max chewed on the ambiguities while Robert made arrangements to go to Monte Carlo and then was there for three days.

“Max.” Robert took his hand and held it, searching his face. “You look much better than the last time I saw you. How is the lady we took to the hospital?”

“Still there; she'll be there for a while.” They sat in a booth and the waiter brought them two beers. “I want to talk to you about her, Robert, but first tell me what you've found.”

“Yes. Well, you've read the newspapers; you know that the police reported that everyone on the ship was killed.” His gaze was fixed on Max's face. “They're not absolutely sure about you; they say you are missing and presumed dead.”

Max spread his hands. “You think I should call the police in Monte Carlo and tell them I'm alive.”

“Of course I do. Why would you not? You must have family who will worry about you—”

Max shook his head. “No one.”

“Well, then, friends. And the authorities must keep open the investigation into the explosion until they know for sure that you are alive or dead. Why would you not tell them?”

“Because it suits me right now to have people think I am dead.”

Robert contemplated him. “What caused the explosion?”

“I don't know. I suspect a malfunctioning boiler; we'd had trouble with it before.”

“A malfunctioning boiler is no reason to keep secret the fact that you are alive.” He waited. “Max, listen to me. You know very well that I cannot continue to be your friend if you are hiding a crime.”

“I am not hiding a crime. I was in a business in London that others were trying to take over. I've shut that business down, but I don't want them to know where I am.”

Once more Robert waited. “You could provide more details.”

“I'd rather not. Robert, we've been friends ever since I started my company here, over a year ago. Do you have reason to think I'm not worthy of your friendship?”

“Ah, what a cleverly phrased question. No, my friend, I have had no reason to doubt it, in our relationship. But now what you are doing goes far beyond our relationship. Pretending to be dead . . . that means you are in hiding, yes? And the lady in the hospital? She hides with you?”

“Of course.”

There was another silence. “I've overlooked much secretiveness in you, Max,” Robert said at last. “Your wariness, your caution, what I thought was your occasional prevarication . . . But the world is full of secretiveness and lying, and it does not have many men who are as good and kind and generous as you. And I like you. I suppose nothing has really changed, except that I have one more piece of information about you. You understand, however, if someone should ask me, I could not lie to keep your secret.”

“I understand that. I don't think anyone will ask you.”

“And one more thing. I will not be used by you.”

“I wouldn't do that. I think the reverse may be true, however.”

“You think I am using you?” Robert grinned. “I am using your money, which you give willingly. Men who do good works always turn to those who have money; where else would they turn?”

“Perhaps to prayer.”

“Well, yes, of course, and I do. And one of my prayers is that you remain wealthy and generous.”

Max chuckled. “You're a practical man, Robert. It's one of the traits I find most admirable in you.” He nodded to the waiter who brought two more beers. “Now tell me what else you learned.”

“Well, the bodies of the crew were found and identified,
and seven others, presumably the guests, were found and also identified. I don't understand—”

“Seven? There were nine of us.”

“The police said the ship had four staterooms.”

“One couple brought a friend; they made up a bed for her in the sitting room off their stateroom.”

“Well, they are assuming there were four couples in four staterooms, and they have accounted for three of the couples and one single woman, a Lady Longworth, who—”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“—who would have been your companion, is that right? But then, Max, I don't understand. Who is the lady we took to the hospital?”

Max was staring past Robert, his mind racing. “Who identified her?”

“Denton Longworth. Her former husband. He happened to be in Monte—”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Max.”

“Sorry.” He sat stiffly in his chair, locked in a fury of frustration. What the hell was Denton up to? He knew damn well the woman he identified was not Sabrina; why would he . . . ? Or
did
he know? One of the women on the ship had looked vaguely like Sabrina—in fact, they all had teased her for mimicking Sabrina, wearing her hair the same way, copying her makeup, buying her clothes and jewelry at Sabrina's favorite shops—but a former husband would not have been misled.

Unless . . . He recalled the scene in the water, and Sabrina's face when he held her in the motorboat: colorless, swollen, blood running from her forehead and oozing from dozens of small cuts. A man might be misled if a woman who looked vaguely like his former wife was so badly bruised or burned or cut by debris that he could not be absolutely sure. And he most definitely would assume—

“Max?”

—definitely would assume it was his ex-wife if he wanted to believe she was dead. And Denton wanted very much to believe Sabrina Longworth was dead, she and Max both, because they knew too much.

“Max? The woman who was with you . . . ?”

Max Stuyvesant missing and presumed dead. The body of Sabrina Longworth identified by her former husband.

No one would be looking for them. Max and Sabrina Lacoste, living quietly in a small town in Provence, were home free.

He turned back to the priest. “She's my wife, Robert. We were married in Cap-Ferrat the morning of the explosion. Her name is also Sabrina; it was Sabrina Robion. The other people on the ship were from London and Paris, not close friends, simply companions for a few days.”