The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (14 page)

BOOK: The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

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Most of the men were, as her father would have put
it, guys with two last names. Like Prescott Thornton
and Hadley Peale. They wore paisley-patterned dinner
jackets with Bermuda shorts. Susan tried to imagine her
father here. If the other guests saw him wading ashore
they would probably evacuate the island.

Their stay at the club, like most things involving
Paul, was almost perfect in every way. They went scuba
diving—her first time—and snorkeling. He taught her
to sail a
S
unfish
, which she picked up quickly, and they
sailed to a private cove, with boxed lunches and wine,
where they swam naked and made love. They played
three sets of hard tennis every day. The games were
close but Susan had the edge and she took every match
but one, which, to Susan's mild surprise, seemed to please Paul very much.

Almost perfect.

There was only one odd incident. On the morning of
their final day. They were at breakfast, intending to play
tennis afterward, when Colin came to their table and
told Paul there was a phone call for him. There was
something in Colin's eyes. That unspoken communica
tion again. Paul excused himself and followed Colin.
Susan got up and returned to the bu
f
fet for another
sausage. From that angle, she glanced out toward the
pool area and saw that Paul and Colin had stopped,
nowhere near the office phone, and were talking qui
etly. She could not see Paul's face but he must have
been angry because Colin seemed to be calming him.
When Paul returned to the table he said he had a few
calls to make, just routine business, and suggested that
she go over to the courts by herself where she'd surely
find a pick-up game. Whatever was happening, Susan
decided not to pry.

She did find a decent game with one of the Pamelas.
Afterward, she changed into her swimsuit, Paul no
where in sight, then spent another hour by the pool
working on her tan. Lunchtime approached, with still
no sign of Paul. There was a main lounge on the second
floor of the clubhouse, octagonal in shape and o
ff
ering a
360-degree view of the club grounds. Susan went there,
hoping to spot him. On her second pass of picture win
dows she saw him. He was walking toward her, still in
his tennis whites, from the direction of the beach. An
other man, much older, was walking with him. The
older man was surely not a guest because he wore a dark
business suit and street shoes. Whatever they'd been
talking about, the discussion seemed to be over as far as
Paul was concerned. But the older man was pressing,
arguing.
They walked nearer. With the sea breeze behind
them, Susan could pick up a few words. She heard
Paul.
And
damn it.
And
tolerate.
Yes. Something, something,
and he won't
tolerate
it.
It has to stop, Paul. It has to
end.
Paul ignored him. He kept walking.

Paul's manner seemed to infuriate the older man. He snatched at Paul's arm. Paul caught his hand, not
roughly, and, still holding it aloft, stepped closer so that
their faces were only inches apart. Whatever Paul was
saying to him, the older man's face turned ashen and his
knees began to buckle.

A sound below her. Susan stepped nearer the win
dow. There was another man there. Another dark suit.
This one was much younger, about Paul's age except
that his hair was thinning. He was moving toward Paul,
one hand unbuttoning his jacket. Paul's head turned at the second man's approach. His
eyes
flashed…not a warning exactly. It was more of a
you can’t be serious
.
The
balding man hesitated. Then he backed away, once
more out of sight. Paul took no further notice of him. He
released the older man's hand but took his arm and
guided him up the path. Susan heard him say, “You
won't come here again, will you?”

“I will go wherever I. . . .”

“Never again, Palmer. Not even as a paying guest.”
Susan stepped back from the window. She wandered
through the empty lounge for several minutes, gather
ing her impressions of what she'd seen and heard. She
had, at last, seen Paul angry. All it took, apparently, was
a violation of his privacy . . . of the sanctity of his is
land retreat. She could, she supposed, ask him about it
at lunch. He would understand that she didn't mean to
eavesdrop. It was probably nothing. Some business ri
val, some old grudge. Or perhaps she'd better say noth
ing. Wait for him to bring it up.

He stood up, smiling, as she approached their table.
His face betrayed nothing. Pouring an iced tea into her
glass, he asked about her morning. She described her
game, then mentioned the panoramic view she'd just
enjoyed from the room above them.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Pretty, isn't it?” He left the lure
untaken.

There was movement out toward the office. A group
of men walked past the lobby entrance to the dining
terrace. Colin and two large Bahamians were escorting
the two men in dark suits toward the driveway. After a
moment, she heard the slam of station wagon doors.

“Who was that man?” Susan asked, gesturing with
her head.

Paul shrugged.

“Didn't I see you talking to him just a while ago?”

“On the beach, you mean.” Paul didn't hesitate.

“Yes. He seemed upset.”

Paul chewed and swallowed. “It wasn't much of a
conversation. He wanted to discuss some old business. I
didn't.”

“What has to stop?” She asked it less casually than
she'd intended.

He hesitated for the briefest moment but his expres
sion gave away nothing. But in that moment she had a
sense that his mind had traveled to the upstairs lounge and was replaying whatever words might have been
heard from there.

“Susan,” he put his fork down. “What you saw was an
intrusion that I'm trying to forget. If it's important to
you, we'll discuss it. But this has been such a great week
end that I'd. . . .”

“It has,” she told him, “and it isn't.”

Not the intrusion, anyway. She was less curious
about those two men and why they'd come than about this new Paul Bannerman she'd seen. This new Paul
could, with a few words, make one of the men turn pale
and, with a look, the other back away. But that aside,
Paul was right. The weekend had been wonderful. She
was not about to let a single minor blemish drop a cloud
over it.

Another time.

CHAPTER
5

In Westport later that evening, as the
PAN AM
flight from Nassau was passing the Carolina coast, Dr. Stanley
Gelman stepped out onto the second floor veranda of
the New Englander Motor Inn. There was no move
ment in the parking area below him, only a cold, wind
blown rain that swept across it in silvery waves. Still, he
wished there had been a side exit.

Pulling his tweed hat lower over his brow and bunching his coat collar over his cheeks, he stepped
from the veranda's cover and hurried down the exposed fire stairs toward the dark Buick Regal that he'd parked
rear-end in, so his license plate would be concealed.
Keys in his left hand, he unlocked the door, then paused
for a moment to cool the palm of his right- hand by
holding it flat against the Buick's roof. The palm, still hot
and tingling from the spankings he'd administered, was
soothed at once. But he held it there a few moments
longer. He could still hear the woman's cries, muffled by
the pillow in which he'd told her to bury her face. He could hear the odd hooting sound she made as he'd entered her savagely from the rear. And the agonized
gasps as he seized her tightly bound wrists and jammed
them up high between her shoulder blades. Mrs. Kitsy Sweetzer. A ridiculous name. An absurd woman. His
breath was coming fast again.

Dr. Stanley Gelman dried the hand against his coat
and slipped behind the wheel. He scanned the parking area one more time before starting the engine. Still no one.
Putting the Buick into gear, he coasted quickly to
the nearest exit and blended into the traffic of the Post Road. His face was glowing. He could feel it.

Gelman was home in five minutes. His house, a red-,
wood contemporary set on a wooded lot off Bayberry. Road, suited the twice-divorced psychiatrist nicely. It
was private, not easily seen from any neighbor's win
dow, it contained every personal comfort he desired,
and it was not unduly ostentatious. His income, even
after the amount his ex-wives extorted from jt, would
have permitted a considerably grander home. But let
those two greedy bitches see any show of affluence and
they'd be on the phone to their lawyers. His patients were another problem. The patients of a psychiatrist,
unlike the clientele of an investment counselor, con
sider it unseemly if he appears to profit too greatly from
their incapacity to manage their lives.

Stanley Gelman reached to his car visor and touched
the remote unit of his automatic garage-door opener.
His headlights washed over a Mercedes 380SL that he
used when driving anywhere outside Westport. He
tapped the unit once more and the door slid down be
hind him. On the doorway leading to his kitchen was a
small box resembling the face of a Touch-Tone tele
phone. He tapped out the digital code that disengaged
his security system and unlocked the door. He pushed it
open, his mind already on a long, hot soak in his Jacuzzi
and wrapping his still-smarting hand around a tall, cold
vodka tonic. His body was beginning to itch from the
touch and smell of Kit
s
y Sweetzer.

Outside, in a cul-de-sac almost directly across Bay
berry Road from Stanley Gelman's driveway, a man and
a woman sat watching his movements through the
streaked windshield of a Subaru station wagon. The
woman was small, no more than five feet two, and
weighing less than a hundred pounds. Her hair was
brown, with a reddish tint, worn in an elfin cut that
made her seem even tinier. She was dressed in jeans
and a sheepskin jacket trimmed with fur. Her skin was
pale but unlined. She could pass for thirty in an advanta
geous light, although she was well into her forties. Her face might have been called pretty except that her eyes were so quick, so intelligent and direct that superficial
observations tended to be discouraged.

“Well?” She shot a glance at the man with the curly
gray hair who sat at the wheel. “What do you think?”

“He seems to be alone in there,” he answered. Dr.
Gary Russo, M.D., surgeon,
Johns Hopkins class of 1955,
saw that Gelman had passed through what looked like a
living room, dark except for the spill of light from the
kitchen, and flipped on the lights of a bedroom or bath
room. He lowered his binoculars to wipe away some condensation from the inside of the windshield. He
raised them once more. Gelman was returning to the
kitchen. He was reaching into a cabinet and now he was
pausing at the door of a copper-colored refrigerator.
“Looks like he's making a nightcap. How long do you
think we should sit here?”

“Until Billy shows up.” Carla Benedict gestured to
ward his mobile phone. “Or until Molly calls to say he's
back at Mario's.”

Gary Russo smacked his lips irritably. It could be a
long night, and he was already feeling pressure from his
bladder. The reference to Mario's, a bar directly across
from the Westport commuter station, seemed to make it
worse. He could always get out
and step behind a tree, he supposed. But if old Billy McHugh was anywhere
close by, he just might pick that moment to make his
move.

“How well do you know this Gelman?” Carla Bene
dict asked.

“Just by reputation. A real sleaze
ball.” He'd heard stories about Dr. Stanley Gelman almost from the day
he'd opened his own cosmetic surgery practice three
years earlier. All of them from other doctors, none for
attribution. God knows Gelman wasn't the only shrink
around who went beyond supportive hugs and hand-holding. But Gelman was much worse than most be
cause the line on him was that he fundamentally de
spised women. Dried-out Barbie dolls, he called his
Westport patients. Self-absorbed whiners. Whenever he
had a patient who was at all attractive, and at all unsure
of it, sooner or later he'd plant the notion that the acid
test of her sexual allure would be a private evaluation by
her therapist. How else could he offer remedial advice?
Perversely, there were stories of marriages he'd de
stroyed by advising female patients to cut off sexual
contact entirely. There were worse stories. He would
suggest to certain of his patients that the key to sexual
liberation was to go and seek sexual adventure wher
ever they could find it. Try the delivery boy. The meter
reader. A black man. Try two, even three men at a time.
Then try a woman.

The urgent call from Molly Farrell, once she men
tioned Gelman's name, had not surprised Dr. Russo in
the least. A woman, a regular at Mario's off the 5:44
from Grand Central, divorced, fairly attractive, nor
mally well-behaved if she stayed within her limit of
three whiskey sours, had suddenly and most awkwardly
begun
propositioning some of the male commuters at the bar. Uncle Billy, which was what nearly all the
Mario's regulars called the popular bartender, gently took her drink from her hand and led her back to the
office for some strong coffee and a good talking-to.

There, to his horror, the woman made a pathetic and
near-hysterical attempt to seduce him as well. He ran
back into the restaurant, where Molly Farrell was in the
process of serving a table of six, and nearly wrenched
her arm dragging her back to the woman in the office.
The woman, by this time, was sobbing out of control. It
took a full twenty minutes, with both Molly and Billy sitting with her, holding and stroking her, for the halt
ing details of her treatment at the hands of Dr. Stanley
Gelman to emerge. Billy McHugh listened, his own eyes
moist. He stood up, kissed her lightly on the forehead, then turned and left the office. Because Billy had been
better these past three or four months, Molly assumed that he'd returned to his place at the bar. She made the
woman stretch out on the office couch and covered her
with a coat. By the time she turned out the light and
stepped back into the restaurant, Billy McHugh was gone. She hurried out the door and, seeing nothing of
Billy, crossed to the public phone on the Westport sta
tion platform.

Three hours had
passed since then. It was more than
enough time for Billy McHugh to have picked up his tools, get into his working clothes, and locate Stanley
Gelman. Russo had very mixed feelings about trying to
stop him this time. If anyone ever deserved Billy, it was Gelman. But Russo had made a promise and he'd do his
b
est to keepit.He
owed
at
least
that
much
to

Paul
Bannerman.

·

“Where would you look for Gelman?” Carla Bene
dict touched his arm. “If you were Billy, I mean.”

“I'd have to start right here.”

“Then what? What if he wasn't home?”

“I'd stay right over there.” He pointed through the
windshield. “Back in those trees. Sooner or later
Gelman would pop that garage door and I'd go right in
behind him.”

“But Gelman just popped it. Why wouldn't Billy
have done that, too?”