Smoke in Mirrors (37 page)

She and Roberta were the only ones here. In the wake of the activity that had prevailed downstairs for the past few days, the brooding silence that welled up from the first floor had a hollow quality as if it came from a distant place that was not of this world.

The phone rang a second time. Leonora closed the little treatise on the use of mirrors as symbols in art that she
had been examining and got to her feet. She went into the small office and scooped up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Awfully quiet around here today, isn’t it?” Roberta said.

Leonora relaxed a little. “Downright spooky.”

“It’s always this way the Monday after alumni weekend. I just made some coffee. Thought I’d take a short break. Care to join me?”

The thought of drinking Roberta’s coffee made her cringe, but she needed something to help her shake off this edgy feeling.

“Thanks. I’ll be right down.”

She hung up the phone and walked quickly out into the shadows of the hall. When she started down the main staircase, the somber gloom from the ground floor seemed to rise up to meet her in a relentless tide. Mirror House was a different world today. The glitz and glamour that had prevailed on Saturday night had vanished. The time-warped quality was back.

The sensation of impending dread grew stronger as she made her way down the stairs. She was conscious of having to push herself to go down the last few steps.

This was crazy. What was wrong with her? Maybe she was coming down with something.

She needed that cup of coffee, she thought. She craved the company of another human being even more than the stimulant.

The glow of
the computer screen glinted off the lenses of Deke’s glasses. His fingers moved over the keys with the virtuosity of a wizard crafting sorcery.

“Okay, I’m in,” he muttered. He did not look up from the screen. “I’ve got Kern’s banking records. Now what?”

Thomas turned away from the window and walked back to the desk. He looked over Deke’s shoulder.

“Now we search for some kind of pattern,” he said. “Whatever Elissa Kern found that made her think her father was making blackmail payments to Rhodes.”

“I still don’t get the point of this search. Stovall told us that Kern was being blackmailed by Rhodes. It’s old news. Kern and Rhodes are both dead.”

“I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends.”

“What loose ends?” Deke sounded exasperated. “It’s finished.”

“Did I give you a hard time when you were acting like an obsessive nutcase because you wanted answers about Bethany?”

“Yes, you did, as a matter of fact. I seem to recall a lot of lectures on the subject of letting go of the past and getting on with my life. And then there were all those hints that I should talk to a shrink.”

“So now I’m the obsessive nutcase. Humor me, okay?”

“Whatever you say.” Deke went back to work on the keyboard. “But I gotta tell you, I had planned to spend today in bed working on my yoga exercises.”

Roberta was standing
behind her desk, stacking framed photographs in one of the three cartons arrayed in front of her. When she saw Leonora in the doorway she looked up with a relieved smile.

I’m not the only one who has a case of the creeps today,
Leonora thought. The oppressive atmosphere had affected Roberta, too.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Roberta said. “Please sit down.” She put aside the photograph she had been about to stuff into the carton with evident relief, and crossed the
room to the table that held the coffee things. She picked up the pot. “Thanks for joining me.”

“I’m glad you called me downstairs. I wasn’t getting much done, anyway. This place feels even stranger than usual today.”

“I agree. And I’m used to Mirror House.” Roberta poured the coffee into two cups. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come in and pack up my office today. So many years and so many memories. But it has to be done. I just wanted to get it over with, I suppose.”

“I can understand how strange it must feel to leave an office you had occupied for a long time.” Leonora sat down in one of the padded leather chairs and glanced at the stack of framed photographs on the desk. “Almost as bad as packing up a house where one had lived for several years.”

“I’ll let you in on a small secret.” Roberta set down the pot. “This office has felt more like home to me over the years than my own house. That was true even when my husband was alive, I’m afraid. Cream or sugar?”

“Neither, thanks.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You drink yours black.” Roberta picked up the two cups and carried them back to the desk. She put one in front of Leonora and then sat down across from her.

Leonora took a tiny swallow of the coffee. The bitter brew tasted more burnt than it had the last time, but who was she to judge? She hated coffee. She could manage half a cup at least.

Roberta was not a small woman. Her chair groaned beneath her weight when she sat back in it. She drank her coffee with a reflective air. “Maybe we should both go home early today,” she said. “There’s really nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.”

“That might not be such a bad idea,” Leonora said. She looked at the cartons on the desk. “Where are you going to hang all those photos?”

Roberta regarded the pictures, head slightly tipped to one side. “I’m not sure yet. I think the kitchen wall would be a good place for them. But it won’t be the same. Nothing will ever be the same. Even when you think you’ve prepared for change, it always seems to come as a shock, doesn’t it?”

Leonora thought about how her own world had changed in the past few days. “Yes. But some shocks are good for the system.”

“You may be right.” Roberta sipped some of her own coffee and studied one of the photographs with a pensive expression. “It’s too bad that George didn’t live long enough to go on this cruise. He would have loved it.”

“George?”

“My late husband. He was a tenured professor in chemistry here at Eubanks.” The lines deepened around Roberta’s mouth. “He was the stereotypical absent-minded academic. Lived for his work. If he’d had his way he would never have left his lab. He died there, you know. I often think that he would have wanted it that way. Sometimes I wonder—”

The sound of footsteps in the hall interrupted her. She looked up sharply. Leonora jumped, too. They had both assumed they were alone together in the mansion.

“Probably one of the student assistants.” Roberta put down her cup and pushed herself up out of the chair. “I made it clear that no one was expected to come in today. But you know students. You have to tell them everything at least three times before they bother to remember it. Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

She circled the desk and went out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her.

Her muffled voice was just barely audible through the panel.

“Julie, what are you doing here? I told you that none of the students were supposed to come in today . . .”

Alone in the office Leonora looked down at her unfinished coffee. She had wanted the warmth and the caffeine, but the taste was so bad it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to drink it. She did not think that she could manage another sip of the dreadful stuff. But she did not want to be rude.

She contemplated the potted plant in the corner for a few seconds and made her decision. The palm looked healthy enough to withstand a dose of caffeine.

A wave of dizziness crashed through her when she got to her feet. Alarmed, she grabbed the edge of the desk. She wondered if she was about to faint. But that was ridiculous. She had never fainted in her life.

The disorienting sensation passed. When the room steadied around her she walked slowly and carefully to the palm and dumped the remainder of the coffee into the pot. It vanished into the dark soil.

When she turned around, the room wavered a little at the edges. The angles straightened in the next instant, but she did not find that reassuring. Something was wrong with her. She was ill.

She had to get home. Maybe call a doctor. No, that wouldn’t work. She didn’t know any doctors here in Wing Cove. She would call Thomas.

Yes. That was the answer. Call Thomas. He would take her to a doctor.

First things first. She needed her car keys. They were in her satchel. The satchel was in the library.

Okay. That was easy. Go upstairs to the library and get the satchel.

Step One, go through the door.

What was it about that door, anyway? Then she remembered what Roberta had said that first day when she had given her a tour of Mirror House.

My door is always open.

But Roberta’s door was closed now. She noticed that an antique mirror hung on the back.

It was an eight-sided, convex mirror framed in heavily worked, badly tarnished silver. Dragons, griffins and sphinxes cavorted and writhed at the edges of the dark glass. A phoenix decorated the top.

Late eighteenth century, probably, Leonora thought. She was becoming a real expert, thanks to all the time she had spent in the library upstairs.

She had seen this mirror illustrated in some book. She just couldn’t quite remember the title.

The room wobbled a bit.

She moved unsteadily to the desk and leaned on it, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

When the world was stable again she found herself gazing into the old mirror.

And quite suddenly, through the growing fog that was creeping through her mind, she remembered where she had seen a picture of this particular mirror.

Page eighty-one of the
Catalog of Antique Looking Glasses in the Mirror House Collection
.

It occurred to her that when Roberta was seated at her desk with her door closed the old looking glass would reflect her image.

The face of a killer.

That was the message that Bethany, hallucinating wildly from the effects of the drugs, had tried to leave behind when she had circled the drawing in the catalog.

The room blurred again.

Drugged. She had been drugged. Just like Bethany. Just like Meredith.

She breathed deeply. The lines and angles of the room steadied again. She walked very carefully around the desk. With luck Julie would still be here. She would ask her to drive her home. Roberta would not be able to stop both of them.

She did not look into the depths of the convex mirror when she reached the door. She was afraid of what she would see. She got the door open and went out into the hall.

There was no sign of Julie or Roberta, but she heard voices somewhere in the distance, coming from the front hall. Too far away. She could not understand what was being said.

But there was no mistaking the faint sound of the mansion’s front door closing.

Julie was gone. Despair threatened to freeze her right where she stood. It would be so much simpler to just sit down here in the hall and close her eyes.

You can’t sleep yet.

Of course she couldn’t just sit down and go to sleep. What was wrong with her? She had to get out of here. She had only swallowed a few sips of that drugged coffee, not the whole cup. She could do this.

Think.

Okay. There would be no help from Julie. That meant she had to get herself out of here.

Keys. She needed the keys to her car.

She pushed through the panic and started down the corridor toward the main staircase.

Footsteps echoed in the distance. Roberta was returning to her office.

Hurry. Need to hurry. The library. Keys in the library.

She was on the staircase now. One foot in front of the other.

The risers were uneven. Some steps were too high.
Others were too low. She gripped the banister with both hands and used it the way a mountain climber used ropes to haul herself up the face of a steep cliff.

“Leonora?” Roberta’s voice came from downstairs. “Where are you? I see you finished all of the coffee. You must be feeling quite woozy by now.”

Time was running out. Roberta was searching for her.

She made it to the top of the staircase, but she had to stop for a few seconds to get her bearings. The hall of dark mirrors had become a wormhole, a twisting path into another universe. Panic injected a dose of adrenaline into her bloodstream.

Forget the wormhole. Don’t think about the world on the other side of the mirror. You’re not going there. You’re just here to get your car keys.

“It’s all right, Leonora. I’ll take you home.”

The killer was on the staircase now.

She staggered forward along the shifting hall. A reflection flickered in one of the dark looking glasses on her left. Her own face? Or one of the trapped ghosts laughing at her?

No such thing as a ghost in a mirror. You’re a trained librarian. You don’t believe in ghosts. And you didn’t drink all of the damned coffee. Keep moving. You stop, you die.

Resolutely she kept her eyes on the floor, counting doorways, not looking in any of the mirrors. The library was the fourth door on the left. She remembered that very clearly.

“I’m sure the hallucinations are very bad by now, Leonora.” Roberta spoke from the top of the staircase. “I gave you a very large dose and the drug acts very swiftly. My husband invented it shortly before he died, you know.”

Don’t listen. Count doors.

“Dear George. He was really quite brilliant. But he never saw the full potential of his creation. I did, of course. I had to get rid of him. But first, I made him write down the formula. Quite simple, really, when you have the correct ingredients. Why, you can whip it up in your own kitchen.”

She tried to tune out Roberta’s voice. She had to concentrate on counting doorways.

Number two.

Number three.

Desperation turned her stomach to ice. The library was too far away. She would never make it before Roberta caught up with her.

She staggered past the third door. It was getting harder and harder to avoid looking into the mirrors. And she was getting tired. So tired.

An image glittered briefly in the gilded looking glass on the right. Unable to resist, she looked into its depths. She could not make out the reflection in the dark glass, but she heard words in her head. Words from a dream.