Damage Control (16 page)

Welles stood. “You truly must stop apologizing. The comfort of a beautiful woman is to be treasured.” He winked. “Like sugar in tea.”

She laughed lightly and took his hand. “Thank you, William.”

She started across the room, then stopped with a peculiar thought. “You said that you created your pieces with a specific individual in mind, and yet you said this earring could belong to me. How can that be so?”

“Because the person for whom I created it is very much like you. She loved what you loved and is unhappy for the reasons you are unhappy.”

Dana stepped closer, the realization making her light-headed. “You remember her, don’t you?” she said softly.

“Oh, yes,” Welles said. “I do remember her.”

A
N HOUR LATER,
Welles walked Dana to the door, accompanied by Freud. The cat, Leonardo, had retreated beneath the blankets. “Freud will see you safely back to your car,” Welles said.

Dana nodded and stepped outside. The air had chilled. She wrapped her arms around her. The drive back would be cold. She felt the need to make contact with Welles and bent down to kiss him lightly on the cheek. When she did, Welles placed a hand on the back of her arm and handed her a small brown sack.

“Tea,” he whispered. “Drink it every day with sugar until it is gone.” Then he lowered his eyes, stepped back, and softly closed the wooden door, leaving Freud to escort her back to the Jeep.

30

T
HE DRIVE DOWN
the mountain in the fading light had required all of her powers of concentration. When Dana returned the rental car at the airport, she failed to recognize the woman behind the counter as the same attendant who had greeted her that afternoon until the woman expressed surprise that Dana was leaving so soon. Uncertain how much time she would need on the island, Dana had purchased a one-way ticket. Now she thought it was a mistake. She wanted nothing more than to get off the island, but the woman behind the Hawaiian Airlines ticket counter simply shook her head: The flights out that evening were sold out, most overbooked.

“It’s an emergency,” Dana pleaded. “It’s imperative that I get home tonight.”

The ticket agent suggested she buy a ticket on a morning flight, then wait to go standby if a spot opened on a flight that evening. The chances were not good, but it was the best the agent could offer. Dana bought a ticket; then, no longer feeling safe, decided it was better to remain in a public place than a hotel room. She sat in the Hawaiian Premier Club, sipping a vodka and orange juice while listening to a computerized voice call out the numbers of flights departing and arriving. Her attempts to reach Michael Logan at work were unsuccessful.

Sitting by a plate-glass window, Dana watched a plane taxi in the fading daylight and thought of the odd little man who lived on the mountain and what he had told her. The feeling that Welles had somehow expected her grew stronger, as did her feeling that Freud had allowed her to walk through the tunnel because it was inevitable she would do so. But how could Welles have known? It was impossible. And yet… She removed the earring from her pocket, rolling it in the palm of her hand. She had been mesmerized by its beauty—guilty of what Welles had found so distasteful that he had stopped designing jewelry. She had focused on its monetary value. Now she saw the earring differently, and it brought a profound melancholy. Welles had chosen the blue stone not for its beauty but because it reflected the sadness radiating from a young woman’s eyes. The diamond drop beneath it represented one of many tears that woman had and would shed—a woman, Welles had said, who was much like Dana.

“Why design it at all?” Dana had asked. “Why create a piece that represents sorrow and pain?”

“Because to not create it would have made me just as blind. To see the world and those who live in it is to see the good as well as the evil. We cannot see beauty if we do not see what is ugly. We cannot feel joy if we do not feel pain. We cannot smile if we do not cry.”

The earring’s owner had turned to James Hill for comfort. How else could it have found its way into his home? Dana closed her eyes to the enormity of the implication. Her rational side—the side she cultivated as a lawyer—tried to dispute Welles’s recollection of the young woman. Yet each time she tried to convince herself he was mistaken, she knew he wasn’t. The pieces of the puzzle suddenly slipped into place, and the picture they created explained James’s guarded protection of his personal life—the remote cabin in Roslyn, and why Laurence King and Marshall Cole would rob the home of a man who had already sold everything he owned. King and Cole had not chosen James Hill. James Hill had been chosen for them.

Jealousy.
A motive as old as history.

And Dana had the only piece of evidence to prove who had killed her brother.

But you’re not the only one who knows who it belongs to or who designed it.

The realization of her mistake came abruptly. Blinded by her desire to know who had killed her brother, she had not thought through her actions. Now the blindfold had lifted, and the light brought a sense of trepidation. She had used a credit card to purchase her airline ticket and to rent her car. No one had to follow her to know where she was going. All they had to do was consider her actions to know she had the earring. Why else would she have flown to Maui, the home of a man who had designed it ten years earlier? Why else but to find out if Welles still recalled the earring’s owner?

She grabbed her purse, ran from the club, and hurried down the corridor toward the airport entrance. The woman behind the car rental-counter looked wide-eyed when Dana stepped up to the counter.

“I need a car,” she said, pulling out her wallet.

A
FTER THE SAME
routine, Dana was speeding along the highway. She contemplated calling the Maui police, but what would she tell them? What evidence did she have that William Welles was in danger? What questions would that provoke about her being on the island and asking his whereabouts? She began to climb the switchbacks. With the sun having set below the ocean’s horizon, the temperature continued to drop as she gained altitude. Her hands felt numb gripping the steering wheel. The ascent up the narrow road was more difficult to navigate under the cloak of night. Darkness made everything look foreign. The lava rock formed shadowed lumps and bumps in the Jeep’s cone-shaped lights. She looked for her markers and tried to gauge her distance carefully. Her only solace was that at night she would see headlights of any cars approaching.

As she drove through Kahakuloa, she tried not to rush, tried not to panic. It would do her and Welles no good if she drove herself off a cliff. She searched for the Bellstone but sensed she’d gone too far. She knew it when she arrived at the intersection of the road with State Route 30.

“Dammit. ” She made a U-turn and headed back.

31

T
HE GLASS WINDOW
of William Welles’s helmet reflected the pinpoint blue flame at the tip of the welding rod in a bright white light. He soldered the joint with precision, a surgeon sewing a thin white line. The ceiling fans spun freely. The furnace burned a white-hot fire. When he had attached the strip of metal, he turned the knob on the pipe, shutting off the flow of gas feeding the flame. It extinguished with a small pop. He flipped up the welding mask, then removed it and wiped the perspiration from his brow on the back of his sleeve. He stepped back to consider his piece, seeing mostly flaws, as always. And yet he knew it was finished. He had no more time to devote to it.

He placed the welder’s gun on the wooden table and removed his gloves. Freud sat in the corner of the room, head resting between his front paws. Leonardo had curled into a ball on the pile of blankets. Welles bent to open the door of the stove and inserted two pieces of dry wood. “There is no reason to hide,” he said.

The blond man stepped into the room from the shadows of the doorway. The flames reflected shades of orange and red in his eyes and flickered shadows across his face. Freud did not stir.

“We have been expecting you.” Welles reached for the kettle on the stove.

“You’ve been expecting me?” A smile creased the man’s lips.

“Yes.” Welles filled the kettle with water and placed it on the back burner. He looked up at the man. “Someone like you.”

The man looked around. “Then why are you so unprepared?”

Welles shuffled to the shelf and reached for the tea. “Unprepared? To the contrary, we are quite prepared. One’s destiny is one’s destiny, should one choose to accept it. I have chosen to accept mine and have for some time.”

The man looked at Welles with curiosity. “And what is your destiny?”

Welles raised the knife from the butcher block and whacked a slice of lemon, the knife embedding in the wood with a thud. He did not answer.

“The woman was here,” the man said. “Did she show you the earring?”

Welles dropped a slice of lemon in the cup and pinched a spoonful of tea, the last of the bag, into a small strainer. “I said I knew that you would come. I did not say I had any interest in speaking with you. Why do you delay that which we both know you will do?”

The man removed the gun from the pocket of his jacket.

“This piece is yours.” Welles gestured to the sculpture on the table.

The man considered it. “A gift? And I brought nothing to carry it in.”

Welles smiled. “You will carry it with you. And in
your
hour, you will see it clearly, for it is your destiny, and it will bring a pain unlike any that man could inflict in death. Yours shall be an eternal pain.”

The man snickered. “Aren’t you a strange bird,” he said, and pulled the trigger.

Freud rose slowly from his bed and walked to where his master lay bleeding. He licked at Welles’s perspiring face, then whimpered and lay down beside him, curling into a ball.

The man stepped forward. There was no reason to check for a pulse. One shot was all he ever needed. He considered the metal sculpture and its lack of shape or form. “Art to some, junk to others,” he said. Then the metal strips seemed to move, blending together like molten metal. The kettle on the stove whistled, distracting him. When he looked back at the sculpture, he saw a bridge. Though he could make out no human form, in his mind he saw himself standing on it, suspended over what at first appeared to be water but, he realized quickly, was something altogether different. The jagged pieces of metal were not the gently lapping waves of the ocean. They were not waves at all. The bridge traversed a valley of fire, the flames wicking up to burn his flesh and to torment him.

Then the bridge collapsed.

32

D
ANA DROVE SO
slowly, she was certain a car would come around one of the switchbacks at any moment and rear-end her, pushing her off the cliff. She knew she had again missed the road to William Welles’s home when she saw the village below her. Growing more frustrated, and feeling she was running out of time, she backtracked again, one eye on her rearview mirror, one eye searching the edge of the road. This time she saw the boulder, though it looked different at night. She squeezed the Jeep down the narrowing passage. When she neared the clearing, she turned off the headlights and plunged the car into total darkness. She shut off the engine and allowed the car to coast forward beneath the sculpture, which now stood like a darkened monolith.

She stepped quietly from the car, leaving the door open, hearing only the wind. The gate to the tunnel was open. She couldn’t recall whether she had shut it but thought she had. This time there was no comforting light to pull her through the cylindrical tube. She took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and walked into the darkness, brushing her hand against the edge of the concrete tunnel for balance despite her own revulsion. As she neared the end, the darkness shaded a navy blue, and she emerged to a sky pocked with stars. Freud did not emerge from the shadows to greet her. At the bottom of the stairs, the wooden door was open a crack. It made her stomach flutter. Despite the cool temperature, she felt herself perspiring. She pushed open the door, the room sweeping into view. She saw no sign of Leonardo or Freud, and their absence made her heart pound still faster. The stucco walls in the sitting room reflected the flickering light of two candles. The ceiling fan turned slowly. She walked into the kitchen. The wall became a burnt orange from the glow of the stove. She smelled the faint odor of lemon and licorice. The cleaver was embedded in the woodblock, a lemon split in half near a full cup of tea. Dana put her hand on the mug. It was cold to the touch. The sculpture on the counter, the one Welles had been working on earlier, appeared to have collapsed. She heard a dog whimper and stepped around the counter.

Freud looked up at her from beneath sad eyes and whimpered again. Near him lay Leonardo, neither far from the body. Dana felt pain grip her chest. She brought a hand to her mouth, stifling her sobs as she knelt down and touched William Welles on the cheek. But for the hole in his head, he appeared to be asleep, even the hint of a smile on his lips. She took out her cell phone, then stopped herself. What would she say? Why was she at Welles’s home, all the way from Seattle, flying on a one-way ticket?

She dropped her phone back in her purse, stood, and removed the meat cleaver from the block, starting back across the room toward the door. Halfway across she stopped and looked back at Freud and Leonardo.

“I did this,” she said. “I brought this here.” She walked back, picked up Leonardo, and gently grabbed Freud by his collar. “Come on.” He resisted. “Come on, boy,” she said. The dog rose and padded forward at her side. He stopped at the door to look back at his master, then shifted his gaze and looked up at her as if to ask what would become of them.

“I’m sorry,” Dana said. “I’m sorry I brought this to you.”

She closed the door behind them and continued to coax Freud forward, her senses now on full alert. At the tunnel, Freud hesitated. It gave Dana pause, but it was the only way back to her Jeep. “Come on, Freud,” she whispered. “We can do this.”

The dog turned his head to look behind them. Then he started to growl, low and deep in his chest. Dana looked over her shoulder but saw nothing. The dog looked at her as if telling her to run. Then he pulled from her grasp and rushed into the foliage barking and snarling.

Dana clutched Leonardo to her chest and ran into the tube, struggling in her leather shoes, feeling them sliding on the slick surface. A couple of times she felt herself nudge the wall and corrected her angle. Running blind, she had to fight her instinct to stop, feeling that she was about to hit something impenetrable. Her breathing became more rapid. The sensation that someone was chasing her drove her forward, Leonardo bouncing against her. She burst from the tunnel as if emerging from deep water, gasping as she rushed across the clearing. She dropped Leonardo into the backseat, hoping he would not jump out. Then she opened the driver’s door and pulled herself in using the steering wheel. Her hands shook so violently, she had trouble finding the teeth of the ignition. She forced herself to concentrate, inserted the key, and started the engine. Then she threw the Jeep into drive and made a circle around the sculpture. As she passed the tunnel, a shadow burst from the darkness and leaped for the back of the Jeep, making it in one bounding leap.

Freud.

W
HEN THE STATE
road signs indicated she was off the county road, Dana felt a wave of relief. She had been certain that a car would appear behind her, bumping her on the decline until she lost control. She punched the accelerator, speeding along the highway until she saw a gas station. She pulled off and asked the attendant for a phone book.

“What you looking for, lady?” the man said with a Hawaiian accent.

“I need a kennel,” she said. “I have to go out of town unexpectedly, and I need someone to watch my animals until I can make it back.”

The man told her he knew of a kennel not far from the airport. They found it together in the phone book. Dana called and asked the woman not to close before she arrived. The woman told her it was not a problem, the kennel was behind her home. Twenty minutes later, Dana pulled up to a piece of property with two cars parked on the lawn beneath swaying palm trees. Lush tropical foliage obscured a mostly cinder-block house. The woman who came to the door assured her Leonardo and Freud would be well taken care of. The kennel behind the woman’s home had a large fenced area where Freud could get exercise. Still, Dana couldn’t shake the feeling she was putting him into a prison.

“I don’t know for certain when I’ll be back to get them,” she said, handing the woman a credit card.

The woman smiled to reassure her. “No problem. They’ll be here.”

Dana hugged Leonardo and heard him purr against her face. She handed him to the woman and knelt down and cradled Freud’s face in her hands. He looked at her with sad eyes, the skin above them furrowed.

“Don’t worry, boy,” she said. “I’ll be back to get you. I won’t forget you, Freud.” She rubbed his head and pulled it close to hers, feeling the warmth of the dog’s face against her own, and kissed his head. Then she stood and started for the Jeep, fighting the urge to look back.

Dana drove from the kennel and stopped at a pay phone in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. She called the police and told them William Welles was dead. Then she hung up and drove back to the airport. Once inside the terminal, she made her way to the gate. The ticket agent advised her that they had taken no standby passengers on the earlier flights. The last flight from the island to Seattle was a red-eye, leaving at midnight. They would call standby passengers when the plane was about to depart.

Dana took a seat in the terminal, waiting and watching the people around her. An hour later, the passengers boarded the plane, and she began to mentally prepare herself for a long night in the airport.

Then the ticket agent looked over and gestured her to the counter. “Must be your lucky day,” he said. “You got the last seat.”