Deal to Die For (17 page)

Paige had felt her hand go slick on the old-fashioned phone handle. “Let me be frank with you, Mr. MacLayne,” she’d said. “Is there any indication in my mother’s will that I…” she had broken off, then finished in a rush “…that she and my father had adopted me?”

There had been a moment of silence on the other end and then a mildly astonished response. No. Absolutely not. Paige had been referred to by both her parents’ surname and her stage name, of course, but there was certainly no mention of anything like an adoption. The attorney’s voice pronouncing the word as if it were something both preposterous and shameful.

“I just wondered,” she said. “I mean, I’m not sure, but something Barbara said…” She trailed off, feeling foolish.

“I’ve handled your mother’s affairs for a number of years, Ms. Nobleman,” MacLayne said. “Our dealings are privileged, as you must know…” He paused. “But under the circumstances, I’m comfortable in saying that nothing of the sort was ever made known to me.”

Nor to me either
, she’d wanted to shriek at him, but she’d held her tongue, thanked him for his trouble, wondering at the same time how much of her mother’s pitiful estate was going to wind up in his hands and in the next instance telling herself she didn’t give a damn, he was welcome to, if not deserving of, anything he got.

She’d hung up with MacLayne, cutting him off as he was launching into an explanation of the Florida statutes bearing on inheritance and Barbara’s standing in these matters. Her whole family gone in a weekend, save for one infirm aunt in an Atlanta nursing home so senile the nurses couldn’t promise she’d understand the message, though they’d try, what did she care about how long it might take to sort out the details of her mother’s effects, and had her sister possibly made out a will, blah, blah, blah…

She’d called her home in Los Angeles twice, once hanging up before the second ring, the next time hanging on through a dozen rings, each one stabbing a little deeper as she tried to imagine Paul struggling to the phone, picking up on the very next ring, his voice sleepy, “Yeah, babe, when you coming home?” on the next, the next…She let the rings drone on until her answering machine finally reset itself. She’d hung up in the middle of her own perky recording, some mindless version of herself implying to callers just how wonderful it was to be rung up, how terrific it would be to get a message.

“We are here, Ms. Nobleman.” The voice cut into her thoughts, startling her, and she blinked herself back into the real world, where Gabriel’s Buddha smile mirrored itself to her through the reopened passage.

She glanced out a side window and saw that they indeed had come to a stop beneath the massive ficus that shrouded Barbara’s cottage. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed the turn off the busy street out front, the bumpy drive down the lane that twisted and turned through the overgrown trees and impossible tropical shrubbery.

Gabriel had turned off the engine, she realized. The heat was already seeping in through the door seals, osmosing through the very steel and glass as well, she felt. She’d nearly forgotten about that, how different the desert heat was from the tropics. She’d lived for so long in a place where desiccation was the threat, it was hard to imagine there being such a thing as humidity. But that’s what carried it, what gave the Florida heat its special character and strength: It was like some creeping dread, she thought, and when she opened her door and stepped out, a roach the size of her thumb scuttled across her shoe top and vanished just as quickly into the cover of the fallen leaves.

“OK?” Gabriel asked. He waved his hand at the cottage, deserted behind its strands of yellow crime-scene tape.

She stood surveying the place for a moment. Somehow she’d imagined police technicians still being here, tidying up, or at least some patrolman with his feet up on his dash, keeping away the curious and the ghoulish. But that had been a foolish thought, hadn’t it? Her sister had committed suicide. Who would care about the site? Who would care if Mongol hordes stormed through? What could she have been thinking of?

She gathered herself, strode through the crackling drifts of leaves toward the cottage. She brushed a veil of banyan tendrils aside, saw as she got closer that the yellow porch bulb was still burning. She saw vivid images from the night before: herself approaching that same doorway, the sudden jolt of seeing her sister’s body, that man—John Deal—kneeling beside her…and then she’d been running, sure she was about to die herself…

The screen porch door gave at her touch and she pulled it open, moved resolutely to the wooden inner door…

…she was ready, she told herself. What she would see would not take her by surprise. She would not be overwhelmed. She reached for the knob and turned. And found that the door was locked.

She turned to see Gabriel at the porch steps behind her, staring in at her from behind the disks of his glasses. His smile had faded at last and he seemed only curious at her intent. She came back outside, walked around the back of the cottage, tried a door that apparently led to a kind of pantry off the kitchen. The knob gave in her hand, and for a moment she thought she was in, but the door groaned inward a fraction, then stopped. She cursed silently, and swung away from the door in frustration, stopping short when she saw that Gabriel had followed, and stood watching her with the same detached curiosity. She gave him a look, then turned back to a window, tested it with her fingers. It was one of the crank-up–style windows indigenous to Florida, four wide panes that opened out horizontally like airplane flaps when you turned the handle inside. Maybe if you pulled hard enough, she thought, the force would get the crank spinning on its own, and she actually thought she felt the bottom pane give with her effort…but then her fingers slipped loose abruptly and she staggered back from the side of the house.

“You forgot your key?” he said at last.

She glanced up at him, her lips nursing a nail she’d torn loose. “I don’t have a key,” she said, hesitating. “It’s my sister’s house.”

He raised his head as if that explained everything. “You want to go in?” he said.

It took her a moment to understand. It was an invitation, not a question. “Yes,” she said finally.

“Come on,” he said, motioning her to the front of the house.

She followed him onto the screen porch, stood as he tested the front door for himself. He gave her a look, then withdrew his wallet from his jacket pocket, found something she couldn’t see, and turned back to the lock.

“I should tell you something,” she said.

Gabriel paused, cast a glance over his shoulder. “Your sister,” he said. “Maybe she doesn’t know you are coming.” When she hesitated, he shrugged. “It is all right with me.”

She stared at him, jimmying the lock, annoyed that he’d taken her for some kind of interloper. She took a breath, then blurted it out. “My sister’s dead,” she said. “She shot herself in there, last night. That’s what all the yellow tape is about.”

Gabriel raised his head in acknowledgment, but he did not turn to her. She might as well have told him her sister was on vacation.

“You still want to go in?” He was still working on the lock.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I just wanted you to know. It’s not very pretty.”

“It is all right,” Gabriel said, nodding. He turned away, did something sudden with his hands. She heard a clacking sound, then a shuddering noise as the heavy door swung inward, and she was in.

***

She’d prepared herself for the sight of the bloodstains, which had dried and darkened into streaks that might have been something else if she willed it so in her mind. But she hadn’t been prepared for the smell. The police had switched off the groaning wall-unit air conditioner before they’d left, had cranked every window in the place down tight. What hit her as she moved inside had the force of a blow: the air, cooking for hours without release, was laden with heat and moisture; the odor that it carried was a mixture of aging plaster and paint, damp plasterboard, sodden carpet, bug spray, and sour milk, all of it underlain by the rancid tang of something left standing too long in the sun.

She reeled backward, out of the doorway, staggered out into the yard to heave until her stomach was empty, and still she could not rid herself of the feeling that she’d breathed her sister’s very essence inside herself. When she was finally able to straighten, she saw that Gabriel was still standing inside the screened porch, his hands folded before him, watching with his implacable gaze.

“Maybe you want to go home now,” he suggested. His voice seemed muffled, slightly distorted by the screening.

She shook her head, rummaged briefly in her purse for a handkerchief, finally gave up and wiped her chin on the back of her hand. Her legs were still trembling, but her stomach had calmed and she willed herself to move back onto the porch.

“I’m all right,” she said, brushing by him. She was ready when she entered the cottage this time. Although some of the pent-up heat seemed to have escaped through the open doorway, she held her breath as she made her way across the room, intent on reaching the air conditioner before her resolve gave out. She randomly punched unlabeled buttons on the ancient wall unit until it finally groaned into life, then stood there, her face close by the dusty vents until the air that issued was cool against her cheeks and she felt that she could breathe again.

She heard the sound of the latch closing and turned to see that Gabriel was inside now, holding his undertaker’s pose by the doorway. “I might be a while,” she said. “It’s all right if you want to wait in the car.”

He answered with a shrug, his heels moving a fraction wider as if he’d settled into a position of rest. Although the room was gloomy, he was still wearing his sunglasses and she found herself revising her image as she regarded his massive, inscrutable form: not an undertaker so much as a palace guard. So be it, she thought. Despite his oddness, it was not the worst thing in the world, having someone with her in this dreadful place.

She found her way into the tiny kitchen, glanced about. There was a green-flecked Formica table with one matching chair, a gas range with a chipped top, an incongruously new refrigerator beside it. The counter held a toaster, a blender with a cloudy glass container, an empty plate with a few crumbs scattered on it.

Paige moved to the sink, splashed some water on her face, rinsed the sour taste from her mouth, dried herself on a dish towel that carried the scent of old food and grease. She felt her stomach start to rise and turned back to the tap quickly, rinsed her face again, let the water drip from her chin this time until she found a roll of paper towels tucked under one of the wooden cabinets.

There was a small window over the sink that gave a view out onto a back porch, a smaller version of the type that served as an entryway to the front of the house. She could see furniture stacked out there, a mahogany bed frame, a matching dresser, a chest of drawers, all of it carrying heavily carved rosettes and scrollwork that she suspected were really molded of plastic. There was a pale green sofa with a matching easy chair upturned on top of it, along with a Naugahyde recliner, its webbing frayed and dangling. A sheet of milky plastic that she supposed had covered the couch and chairs had worked loose and had come to rest against the screening, where a corner of it flapped in a listless breeze like a signal from a lost and dismal world.

Paige gripped the edge of the counter, fighting for strength. There had been times, years ago, shortly after she’d left home, when she was still struggling for parts, still wondering where her next month’s rent was going to come from, still wondering what on earth a little girl from Florida was doing thousands of miles from home, pretending to be a grown-up actress in the most ruthless town on earth; those were times when, friendless and essentially alone, she’d felt a similar desolation and despair. But she’d been young then, and even in her darkest moments she’d been buoyed by the mindless optimism of her youth, by the gut-level understanding that she was following her dreams.

But what on earth, she wondered, was going to get her through this? Staring out at that pathetic clutter of furniture that constituted her mother’s “personal effects,” she felt suddenly depopulated, abruptly and utterly defenseless, as though everything that might have lent her strength or comfort had been taken.

Then something happened. She felt a wetness growing at her hips and glanced down at the counter, where she saw that water she’d spilled from the tap had collected in a pool. If she hadn’t been standing up against the countertop, it might have simply dripped on over the edge to the floor. As it was, however, she stepped back from the sink to stare at the broad band of wetness that had wicked up from the counter into the fabric of her khaki slacks.

“Shit, shit,
shit
!” she hissed, snatching another wad of paper towels. She was well into blotting herself dry before she realized how much better she felt.

Anger
, she thought, remembering the same buoyant moment she’d felt earlier, in the car with Gabriel. She vowed to make a note this time. If anger was the tonic it seemed to be, then she was going to stay pissed off for a very long time. She wadded the towels, tossed them into the sink, and strode back through the ruin of the living room, her jaw set. Her pants were going to dry, she was going to get through this, and she was going to find out once and for all if there was any truth to what her sister had said.

She cast Gabriel a dark look as she passed, but whether or not he registered it was impossible to tell. For all she knew, he was asleep behind those obsidian lenses.

She tried the tiny closet near the entrance, found it empty except for a raincoat, a faded golf umbrella, and a nylon wind-breaker with a wrinkled hood slung over its shoulder. She swung the closet door back and moved down the musty hallway that led off the main room toward the back.

The first door she tried led into what must have been Barbara’s bedroom. It was a small room, as airless as the rest of the house, but a window gave onto a pleasant if shadowy view under the spreading branches of the huge ficus in the front of the place. She struggled with the window crank, wondering if the thing were locked somehow, until she put both hands on it and the panes sprung loose with a popping sound.