Killed on the Rocks Page 5

  His voice was a harsh whisper. “You just stay away from my father,” he said. “You stay away from him or I’ll kill you.”

  He pulled his finger loose and ran upstairs. I stood there rubbing my chest for a minute or so, then smiled and said good night to everybody, and went up to my room.

  6

  We work while you sleep.

  —Taystee Bread commercial

  TWO A.M., MAYBE A little after. Spot was snoring away in the corner. I was lying there in the dark. I’d given up trying to sleep. I always have trouble sleeping the first night in a strange bed, anyway. Tonight, at least, there were things to think about to pass the time.

  For instance, I asked myself, of all the stupid things I had done on behalf of the Network, had there ever been one stupider than this trip? After long and intense consideration, I finally had to answer no.

  This is what comes, I told myself, of perceiving Tom Falzet as a human being. You wind up snowed into the middle of nowhere with a bunch of very strange people. I didn’t know about treachery or death, but if anybody wanted corroboration of the madness angle, I was willing to cosign the next anonymous note.

  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been sort of warned. Gabby Dost had told me his wife was “into astrology” and that his son was “sensitive.” He hadn’t said anything about Jack Bromhead’s liking to dress for a private dinner as if he were off to ride the bull at Gilley’s, but what the hell.

  I decided Dost himself probably wasn’t wrapped too tight, since it was obvious that only a maniac would want anything to do with the TV business. I ignored the voice in my skull asking what that said about me.

  My job was supposed to be to find out enough to make up my mind whether anybody associated with Dost might have sent the letter to try to break up the merger. Considering the way Barry Dost had reacted over the mere fact (as far as I could tell) that his father refused to spit when my name was mentioned, I was really looking forward to asking him if he knew anything about an attempt to mess up his father’s business plans.

  I decided to tackle him first tomorrow. Then, when he screamed, and people were asking me why I had to break his finger, I could ask them all at once.

  Spot raised his head and got noiselessly to his feet. He ran over to the bed and poked me with his muzzle. I scratched his ears and whispered “good dog.” Spot grinned (Samoyeds always grin) and pranced to within five feet of the door of the room, where he crouched, ready to spring.

  I groped the floor for the pair of gym shorts I run around in before I go to bed. I had trouble finding them. Spot didn’t growl or yip, so there was no immediate emergency I’d have to face naked. I cursed silently, rolled until I could get my head over the edge of the bed, found the shorts. As I put them on, I thought that while the Sloans were paying to have Spot taught to go through this whole routine to detect intruders when you’re staying in a strange place (Jane used to travel with a lot of jewelry, you see) they could have trained him to retrieve enough clothing for decency on his way to wake you up.

  I heard voices outside, a man and a woman, furtive maybe, but not menacing. I was about to stick my head out to see who it was, since furtiveness was something I was here looking for, when there was a knock on the door.

  I opened up a crack and peeked out. Wilberforce stood there fully dressed, down to hat and tie, with his overcoat and gloves on. Behind him stood Carol Coretti. She’d thrown her coat on over a dark blue nightgown. She had untied sneakers on her feet.

  “What’s this?” I asked. “Making a break for freedom?”

  “Don’t be a fool, Cobb, we wouldn’t get a mile in this snow.”

  I looked at Carol Coretti, who was laughing only with her eyes. You must get ą lot of practice doing that when you work for a boss who has no sense of humor.

  I needed a distraction to keep from laughing in Wilberforce’s face. Fortunately, he provided it.

  “Get dressed, Cobb,” he said.

  “Where are we going?”

  He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Away from these rooms,” he said. “Outside.”

  “Do I get to ask why? And why are we whispering?”

  Wilberforce answered both questions at once. “I dislike talking in front of a stranger’s electronic equipment, no matter how innocent it seems.” He leaned close to me and whispered more quietly. “Miss Coretti has brought me some most disturbing news, and I think you should hear it.”

  “Outside?”

  “Outside,” Wilberforce whispered. “For a few moments. Away from the house.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If anybody sees us, we’ll just say we decided to make a midnight examination of ski conditions. Give me a minute to get dressed.”

  When I closed the door, Wilberforce was saying, “Ski conditions? The man must be ...” I never heard what I must be.

  I pulled on a sweat suit, then followed Carol Coretti’s lead with sneakers over thermal socks. I came out of my room to find Wilberforce tapping his foot and Carol looking dubious about the whole business.

  As far as I could see, we were committing no crime, not even one against hospitality. Where does it say a guest, or three guests, can’t slip out to the grounds for a midnight constitutional? This fact did not, however, keep us from shooting furtive looks over our shoulders and whispering to each other to be quiet. I started to feel like a refugee from an old Warner Bros. prison picture.

  It was cold outside, a lot colder than it had been when we’d made it from the garage to the main house. The storm had moved through. Now the stars shone bright and hard, through air that was so brittle and still it seemed to snap whenever we moved through it. Area lights reflecting off the snow were as bright as daylight.

  I looked at Wilberforce. “As long as we’re going to do this, we might as well do it right.”

  I went down the three broad steps, and soon found myself up to my knees in snow. I was lucky I didn’t fall over, because there were actually six broad steps under the snow. I considered it. If Wilberforce tried to follow me, he’d be in this thing up to his waist in no time. Carol’s legs were bare. This part of the yard was a shallow spot, shielded from some of the snow by the bulk of the detached garage. Anywhere else I tried to take them would be worse.

  It was unlikely, despite Wilberforce’s paranoia, that the house was bugged. How much more unlikely, then, that the front stoop was bugged. I climbed back up the porch and said, “This will do, I guess.”

  “Miss Coretti came to me this evening with some disturbing news, Cobb. I thought you should know about it.”

  “It couldn’t wait until morning?”

  Carol was apologetic. “I originally wanted to handle it that way,” she said, “but when I thought about it, after I went to bed, I realized there was no time in the morning I could be sure of seeing you or Mr. Wilberforce alone. There’d be breakfast, and then we’re scheduled for preliminary meetings with Mr. Dost.”

  “So she came to me,” Wilberforce said. He said it as though attractive women were constantly knocking on his bedroom door in the middle of the night. “After I had dressed and admitted her ...” he said (he wanted to make sure I knew he didn’t entertain women in his pajamas), “... When I had dressed and admitted her, and heard what she had to say, I decided you must know about it at once.”

  I could feel the moisture of my breath freezing on my upper lip.

  “So she’s already told you what she has to tell me.”

  “She did.”

  “In your room.”

  “Yes.”

  “But now we’re standing outside freezing because you’re afraid the rooms are bugged.”

  Carol said, “Oh, my God,” and laughed. Wilberforce opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before I took pity on him.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Even, if some mysterious ‘they’ knows what Carol told you, they won’t know what we decided to do about it.”

  Wilberforce nodded vigorously. “Precisely my th—that is, precisely the right ide
a. I must admit I didn’t think of it myself.”

  I liked him a lot better for making the admission, with its implied pardon of Carol for Chuckling at the Boss in the First Degree.

  “So what’s the news?”

  Carol blushed prettily. “Mrs. Dost was coming on to me.”

  “Hold it. Mrs. Dost? Aranda?”

  Wilberforce was getting impatient. “That’s what she said, Cobb.”

  “Just checking my ears, okay?” I turned to Carol. “Coming on how?”

  She was really embarrassed. “You know. Deep gazes. Body language. Touching her tongue to the middle of her upper lip. Double entendre. Leading questions. What do women do when they come on to you?”

  “It happens so seldom, I forget. When did this happen?”

  “All evening. I tried to stay away from her, when I realized what she was up to. I mean, I was shocked. I mean as a lawyer and a businessperson. Making a pass in the middle of a business conference, for God’s sake. But she was always catching my eye. She’s very good at that.”

  “I noticed.” Swell, I thought. More insanity. Falzet was going to love my report on this.

  “Carol,” I said, “think hard. Did you do or say anything that might have given Aranda Dost the idea that you’re gay?”

  She looked at me as if I had suddenly switched to pig latin.

  “Come on, it’s a simple question. Did you?”

  “But I am,” she said.

  Now it was my turn to lose the ability to understand English.

  “You are what?”

  “Gay,” she said. “Always have been. It’s no secret. I’m not especially butch or anything. But I am definitely gay.”

  There are a lot of nice people in New York who sleep with members of their own sex, and there is a special etiquette for dealing with them. When a man meets an attractive lesbian, for instance, under no circumstances is he allowed to say, “What a waste.” So I didn’t say it.

  I scratched “Ask Carol Coretti for a Date” off my “Things to Do When I Get Back to the City” list, and wondered what to do next.

  “I thought you knew,” she said. “I thought Special Projects knows everything.”

  “We only worry about things that could hurt the Network.”

  “Well, I certainly can’t be blackmailed. My parents have known for years.”

  “Then there’s no reason for Special Projects to know. But my original question is unanswered. Did Aranda have any reason to think you’re gay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I was getting exasperated. “I mean, you don’t find each other by radar, do you? There must be all kinds of subtle things, little signs you look for.”

  “Cobb,” Wilberforce said. “That was outrageous, you will apologize at once.”

  Carol was smiling. “No apology needed, Matt,” she said. “Yes, there are signs and signals, but I swear I wasn’t showing any of them. I never do, at work. Besides, I already have a special friend, and I’m not looking.”

  “I have absolute confidence in Miss Coretti,” Wilberforce said. “I have always been able to act on her word as though it were proven fact.” He let out an angry little puff of air.

  “All right, fine. I’m perfectly willing to take her word for fact. As for acting on it, what should we do?”

  “What we should do,” Wilberforce said, “is leave.”

  “You can’t even get off the porch. I agree with you that beating it has its attractions, but we’re stuck. We can either have a confrontation, or play it out. I think we should play it out.”

  Carol gulped. “You don’t mean you want me to—”

  “No, of course not. In fact, if she keeps it up and you have to slap her down, do it. I meant, act as though getting this deal worked out is the only thing on our minds.”

  Wilberforce stuck out his jaw. “I don’t like it,” he proclaimed.

  My body heat had melted the snow clinging to my sweatpants, and ice water had soaked my thermal socks. I was freezing.

  “I said, ‘Act as though.’ Pretend. Lie. You’re a lawyer, for God’s sake, you must be good at it.”

  “Why Falzet has tolerated you all these years is beyond me,” Wilberforce reflected. “I still don’t like it. First, Dost’s attorneys didn’t make it here.”

  “That could be the weather.”

  “It still leaves us no one to negotiate with but cronies and family members.”

  “They are all officers in Dost’s corporation,” Carol pointed out.

  Wilberforce didn’t even bother to say “Bah.” “Then this shockingly inappropriate advance to Miss Coretti. What can these people be thinking of?”

  I breathed on my hands and wished I’d remembered to bring gloves. I remembered Dost’s own improper advance to me. I didn’t mention it because I knew that if I did, Wilberforce would never let me get inside.

  “Okay. Now before we become a bunch of statues, anything else?”

  Wilberforce shook his head no, but Carol let me down.

  “Well,” she said, “this is just a feeling ...”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think Mrs. Dost is gay.”

  “Why not?”

  “She just didn’t seem to be. No ‘signs.’”

  “So she was coming on to you as a joke, or what?”

  “No, she meant it. She was ... excited and curious. But she was afraid. As if she’d never done it before.”

  “Seems like an unusual time and place to try a new preference, doesn’t it?”

  “Exactly. That’s why it’s so weird.”

  And on that jolly note, we went inside. I went back to my room, took off my wet stuff, then ran some hot water in the tub, sat on the edge and soaked until I could move my toes again.

  Then I went to bed and thought about Carol Coretti. Women in New York frequently brown me off by saying, “All the good men in New York are gay or taken.” Now I’d run into, and felt attracted to, a woman who was both.

  I sighed, turned over, and much to my surprise, went to sleep.

  7

  ... Because this is Anything-Can-Happen Day!

  —Jimmie Dodd, “The Mickey Mouse Club” (ABC)

  I DON’T KNOW HOW long it took the screaming to wake me, but it went on for a long time even after I got out of bed.

  The noise seemed to be coming from outside the house, from in front of the house, not far from my window. I jumped into my shorts, ran to the window. Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. My teeth started chattering, but I had gotten a glimpse of what was in front of the house, and I wasn’t about to turn away.

  I couldn’t get any colder than I already was, so I pushed the foot-high pile of snow off the base of the window so I could get a better view. It was about seven o’clock, and the sun had risen high enough to see everything with perfect clarity.

  The screaming was indeed coming from the front of the house. Mrs. Norman (who would have thought a nice plump middle-aged lady like that could scream better than Fay Wray?) was standing in my tracks from last night, blasting like a factory whistle. The steamy blasts of vapor that accompanied each scream enhanced the illusion.

  Mrs. Norman was also jumping up and down and pointing to something across the snow. I looked where she was pointing and understood why she was screaming.

  There was a body out there, maybe forty yards from the house, lying on top of the snow. It wasn’t sitting on top of any crust—the top layer has to melt some first before snow can form a crust. It was just sort of floating on the soft snow I had sunk into up to my knees just a few hours before. Besides, the figure’s arms and legs had sunk in the snow.

  Unless, I thought, they’d been cut off. There was an awful lot of blood out there. From the waist up, the body was surrounded by a blotchy teardrop of blood, about three feet across at the widest part, tapering to a point two feet beyond the head.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. For that whole forty or so yards, from the house in a straight line past that one
tall pine tree to the body, there was nothing.

  The snow was smooth, white, and unbroken.

  Somebody had managed to get over a hundred feet through deep snow, and die messily, without leaving a mark.

  I went into a trance, then, as that thought got bigger and bigger and uglier and uglier. I wasn’t aware of the cold. I wasn’t aware of Spot’s whimpering beside me, trying to figure out what kind of foolishness I was up to this time. I wasn’t even aware of Mrs. Norman’s screams.

  Then they stopped, and I snapped out of it. Jack Bromhead was out there with his arm around the housekeeper, turning her away from the body and talking earnestly to her. I don’t know what he said, but it worked. Mrs. Norman headed inside. Then he started to walk across the snow.

  “Bromhead!” I yelled.

  He stopped in his tracks and turned to look at me.

  “Cobb! There’s some kind of trouble, I’m going to go see what it is.”

  “I know what it is,” I told him. “Don’t track up the snow! You got a camera?”

  “Of course!”

  “A Polaroid would be nice.”

  “Got one of those. What’s your point?”

  “The police are going to want pictures to prove we’re not crazy.”

  “The police?”

  “Unless somebody fell from a helicopter onto the front lawn, you’re damned right the police. Get the camera. And get Dost. He ought to be told about this.”

  Bromhead looked at me quizzically.

  “I know what I’m doing,” I lied.

  That seemed to help him decide. He started back in. I called to him, “Meet you at the main entrance with the camera.”

  The first thing I wanted to do was secure that front lawn in case there were any other would-be Saint Bernards in the group. I told Spot to follow me, and ran for the door.

  I ran into Roxanne Schick in the hallway. She grabbed my forearms to stop me. The sleeves of her nightgown were soaking-wet and ice cold. “Cobb, there’s a body in the snow. And blood.”

  “I know, Rox.”

  “I heard screaming, so I went to the empty room across the hall from mine to look, and I saw this person spread out in the snow.”