“Ask away.”
“Where did I take a nude picture of you?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Well…the bedroom, of course.”
He started to pounce on her response, then stopped. They had taken some photos in his bedroom, but he had destroyed those long ago. “Outside, I mean.”
“Outside? Let me think. Oh. Fall Creek Falls State Park? In Tennessee?”
He couldn’t speak. No one else knew about that. No one.
“My God,” Eve said softly. “You don’t still have that picture, do you?”
He pushed on, his face uncomfortably warm. “How many men did you sleep with before me?”
“Two.”
“Why did you have to leave Alaska the year you won the pageants?”
“Because I threatened your Alaskan girlfriend.”
“I didn’t have an Alaskan girlfriend.”
“French girlfriend, then. Or French Canadian or whatever the slut was.”
Real anger in her voice, enough to send a chill down his back. “What else did you do to her?”
“I put sugar in her gas tank and stranded her on the tundra. She nearly froze to death.”
He shook his head. Eve’s cadence and pronunciation were nothing like those of the woman on television. But for the timbre of her voice, she could be Mallory. “How did you get back to the lower forty-eight without the police getting you?”
“I chartered a private plane.”
“What kind?”
“Um…a Piper Saratoga.”
Confusion settled over Waters like a fog. Some of these details he may have confided in Cole, but not all. Close to desperation, he searched his mind for something that no one but Mallory could possibly know.
“What did we do behind the stables at David Denton’s party?”
“You didn’t do anything.” Eve’s voice sultry now. “I went down on you.”
He could go no further.
“Johnny, I want to see you.”
“No.”
“I know you want to see me. You wouldn’t have called if you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Ask me more questions, then. Anything. Eventually you’re going to believe me, because there’s nothing I don’t know.”
He sat silent for half a minute, listening to her breathing. “How did you try to kill me?”
He thought the phone had gone dead.
“Johnny…I’m so sorry for that.”
For the first time, he sensed evasion. “How did you try to kill me?” he asked in a harsher voice. “What did you use? You don’t know, do you?”
“The first time? A gun. The other time, your car.”
He was gripping the phone so hard his hand hurt. Cole knew about the time with the car, but not about the gun. No one knew about the gun. The phone squawked on the desktop, and he realized he had dropped it.
“Johnny? Are you there?”
“Here.”
“I want you to meet me somewhere. You know where Bienville is, right? The antebellum home? The Historic Foundation owns it, and it’s for sale. I can get the key. I’m going to be there in twenty minutes, waiting for you.”
“I’m not coming.”
“I’m leaving now. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
“Eve—”
She had rung off.
He sat numb at his desk. She had answered so damn quickly. Any hesitation could be attributed to surprise. Mallory herself might have paused in the face of some of those questions. Waters looked back at the television, where Eve was concluding her presentation. He could not put that face and body with the voice he had spoken to on the telephone.
He didn’t know what to do. He did know that the last thing he should do was drive across town to Bienville. With anxiety turning to panic in his chest, he picked up the phone and called Linton Hill. Rose answered. In a barely controlled voice, he asked to speak to Lily. He didn’t know what he was going to say to his wife, only that he needed to hear her voice.
“Lily gone with her walking group,” Rose replied. “And she left her cell phone right here on the counter.”
Waters hung up and went to his drafting table. The wavy substructure lines and numbers on the map looked as foreign to him as they would to a layman. He turned away and began pacing out the perimeter of his office. The room was more than a thousand square feet, but today it felt like a cage.
Opening a subtly concealed door, he stepped out onto his balcony and inhaled the cool air blowing up off the river. He looked south toward the bend that led to Baton Rouge and New Orleans, then north up the stretch that led to Memphis and St. Louis. He could see Weymouth Hall from here, an antebellum mansion with a widow’s walk sitting on a promontory a mile upriver. Across the street from Weymouth Hall stood Jewish Hill, and under the oaks below that hill lay Mallory’s grave. Mallory’s corpse.
So who in God’s name was waiting for him at Bienville?
He put the photos and newspapers back into the portfolio and locked it in the bottom drawer of his desk. Then he took his keys from his pocket and walked to the back stairwell of the office. Sybil gave him a questioning look, but he said nothing.
He couldn’t even manage a lie.
chapter 8
Sited on half a city block on the north side of town, Bienville was a world unto itself. The foundation of the Greek Revival mansion had been laid into a hill twenty feet above the street, and high stucco walls rising from the sidewalk presented a blank face to passersby. Only a narrow gravel drive that tunneled off Wall Street through thick foliage led up to the terraced gardens behind the mansion, a sun-dappled world of spreading oaks, shrubs, azaleas, jasmine, and banana trees.
Eve’s black Lexus was parked near an opening in the garden wall. Waters pulled his Land Cruiser in behind her, blocking her exit, and walked through the gate. To his right rose the rear elevation of the mansion. Its scored concrete walls were relieved by jib windows, and its steeply sloped roof had several chimneys. To his left lay intricate gardens laced with brick walkways and shadowy paths, the centerpiece a fountain surrounded by statuary inspired by German fairy tales. The frozen figures of boys and girls had nothing in common with the stone angels from the cemetery; they captured an elusive quality of childhood, wonder mixed with boredom, a feeling that time had no meaning beyond the present moment.
As Waters approached the house, something made him look up. Through one of the jib windows, he saw the silhouette of a standing woman. She leaned forward and spread her palm against the pane like a starfish. His heart stuttered. Through the distorting blur of the century-old glass, she could be Mallory Candler. Her palm left the pane, and a forefinger pointed downward. A door stood immediately below the window, one of three in the back wall of the house. When he looked back up at the window, the figure had vanished.
He walked to the door, then hesitated with his hand on the knob. He felt like a man walking into a brothel, or a hospital, or a monastery. Once he walked through this door, he would never be the same. Some part of him even feared that he might not come out again.
The knob turned in his hand, and he jerked back his arm. He half-expected the door to open, but it remained closed. After several moments, he turned the knob and pushed open the door.
It led to a narrow, carpeted staircase. Looking up, he saw Eve Sumner standing at the top of the steps. Gone were the navy skirt suit and heels. She wore a bright yellow sundress that looked like something a St. Croix islander might wear. Her feet were bare, and her hair was tied back with a ruby scarf, exposing her fine neck and jaw. Waters was sure he remembered Mallory wearing a dress exactly like it on their Yucatán trip. Eve did not speak but watched him intently. She was waiting for him to enter on his own.
He stepped over the threshold.
“I’m glad you came,” she said, her eyes suddenly bright with tears. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
He closed the door behind him.
r /> She lifted a hand and beckoned him up the stairs.
As he ascended, he took in details of the room that served as a backdrop to her stunning figure: fourteen-foot ceilings, massive crown moldings, a carved medallion above the chandelier.
“I’m not sure why I came,” he said, reaching the top step.
She took his hand in hers, and he realized she was shaking. “You don’t have to be sure. Just be here.”
Waters looked around in wonder. The mansion was furnished with period antiques, giving him the feeling it was 1850 and that the owners had simply gone out for a carriage ride. To his left stood a massive, coffin-shaped piano, a Broadway from England, he guessed. Six doors led off of this central room, some to bedroom suites, the others to a kitchen, a marble-floored foyer, a dining room.
“We’re alone,” Eve said. “I have the only key.”
He looked at her.
“Come with me, Johnny.” She pulled him toward a half-open door. Through it he saw a short corridor, and beyond that a bedroom furnished with two tester beds. He pulled back against her hand, stopping them by a grandfather clock that stood beside the door. The heavy chimes in the clock gonged softly from the impact of their feet on the hardwood.
“Do you want to talk some more?” Eve asked, looking nervous.
“I don’t know.”
She blinked, her dark eyes still moist. “Do you want to kiss me again?”
He flashed back to the cemetery, to the kiss that had thrown him twenty years into the past. “I’ve thought about it. The way you kiss. It’s…”
“Just like her. Is that what you were going to say?”
“Yes.”
“Think of it that way, if it makes it easier. Right now I don’t care. Just kiss me again.”
Even as he shook his head, he moved forward. She dropped his hand and touched his face, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, his lips. Her fingertip opened his mouth, and then she parted her lips and softly pressed her mouth to his. A shock like a static discharge went through him, leaving him tingling as the pressure of her lips increased. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, cautiously exploring. She bit his lower lip, tugging insistently, just as she had at the cemetery, letting him know the kiss was only a beginning, the opening movement of a symphony they both remembered. Or so she wanted him to believe. And God help him…he almost did. The desire she’d awakened yesterday had wound itself to an unbearable tension. He wanted Eve Sumner as he had not wanted a woman in more years than he could remember. He slid his hands up to her face and held her cheeks, searching her eyes for…what?
“Who are you?”
She didn’t blink. “You know.”
He shook her with sudden violence. “What do you want?”
“You, Johnny. That’s all. I want you. Right now.”
Her hand slid below his belt and gripped him with painful force. Had she done anything else, had she followed a subtler line of seduction, he would have repulsed her. But her animal directness—so unfamiliar to him now—shattered the cerebral restraint of loyalty to legal vows that had not been honored in this way for too long. All thought, all doubt flew out of his head. He bunched the yellow sundress in his hands and yanked it up over her hips. She wore nothing underneath. As he stared, she held her arms straight up, and he slid the fabric right off her.
She stood before him without a hint of self-consciousness, the way Mallory had at the falls, letting him absorb all of her. Then she pulled him to her and kissed him again, her hands working frantically at his clothes until he stood naked before her.
“In there?” he asked, nodding to the bedroom.
She shook her head and pulled his hand down, and he knew then that she’d been ready for some time. When her arms slipped around his neck, he slid his hands beneath her hips and simply lifted her onto him. There was momentary resistance, then none. They gasped and clutched each other like climbers caught in an ice storm, clinging together for warmth. He did not move within her; holding her suspended as she shivered around him was almost more sensory input than he could stand. After a time, a strange purring sound began in her chest. As it built slowly, another, deeper sound blended with a ululation in her throat, creating a strangely haunting music; it was the chimes of the grandfather clock vibrating in sympathy with their moving bodies, the waves transmitted through the seasoned floorboards. The quivering in Eve’s body suddenly focused in the pit of her belly, then radiated out through her limbs like the seizure of some hill woman about to speak in tongues. When the trapped cry finally burst from her throat, Waters’s legs trembled violently, and his vision went black as all the frustration and regret of the past four years poured into her. She was still screaming when his legs gave way, and he flung out his arms to break the impact of the floor.
They lay two feet apart, panting like winded sprinters stunned to find themselves naked together. The clock chimes still clanged on their chains, sending resonant waves through the room. Waters looked down at his hand as though at the hand of a stranger. But it was his hand, unchanged. After twelve years of fidelity, he had finally yielded to this ancient impulse, and the sky had not fallen. The earth had not opened at his feet.
Eve sat up and took his hand. She did not speak, but simply pulled him to his feet and led him down the corridor to the bedroom, where she drew back the covers on one of the three-quarter beds, gently pushed him under the sheet, and slid in beside him.
He lay on his back, looking up at the gathered fabric of the canopy, which radiated from a central circle like the rays of the sun. The light in the bedroom had a fluid consistency, as if a golden liquid were being filtered through the heavy lace curtains. Eve lay close and warm along his left side, for the bed was too small for them both.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. “Are you thinking about your wife?”
“No.”
She kissed his shoulder. “What, then?”
“This. It’s insane. The whole thing.”
“You’re wrong. This had to happen. It was always going to happen.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“I know. Johnny…look at me. Did you feel me?”
He refused to look at her. “I don’t want to talk about Mallory.”
She kissed his shoulder again. “All right. As long as you’re here. That’s all that matters. There’s time for all the rest later.”
All the rest. He turned onto his side and looked into her eyes. “I don’t know why I came here. And I don’t know what you’re doing. What you want out of this. You could be crazy for all I know. The things you say are crazy.”
She nodded, her eyes filled with patience. “But I’m not crazy. You know I’m not.”
He knew no such thing, but he saw no point in telling her that.
She took his hand and placed it over her breast. Her heart beat strongly beneath the swollen bosom.
“I know they don’t feel the same,” she said. “Not exactly the same. But this is a very nice body.” She averted her eyes for a moment. “Better than some I’ve known.”
He pulled his hand away. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I told you, Johnny. You’re not ready for the truth.”
“We just had sex. We didn’t use any precautions. How much crazier can it get?”
“Don’t worry about me getting pregnant. Eve had her tubes tied.”
Her use of the third person confused him; he shook his head, trying to keep his mind clear in the face of her delusion.
“And as far as other worries, I’ve been tested. Eve wasn’t very selective in the past, but I changed her. Slowly.”
“I feel like I’m on acid,” Waters murmured.
Eve giggled, an odd sound after all that had come before. “Johnny? You’ve done acid?”
“When I worked in Alaska, I did a couple of tabs. Nobody in this town would believe that, thank God.” He brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. She had very fine hair; it made him think of an animal pelt.
&
nbsp; “Mmm,” she purred.
He let his hand fall to the concave curve of her abdomen, then slid it down to the silkier hair there. She rose against his fingers, pressing into his touch. He moved his hand back up to her face and caressed her cheek.
“We’re through the looking glass,” he said. “I want to hear the rest of it. Finish the story you started in the cemetery.”
Fear flickered in her eyes. “Only if you promise not to leave. You have to let me finish.”
“Why would I leave? I’m the one asking you to tell it.”
“You’ve never heard anything like this before. It might be hard to listen to.”
“For God’s sake. Just start talking.”
She nodded hesitantly, and he lay back, letting his gaze wander along the underside of the canopy as her low voice trembled.
“I told you how it was. The rape. How at the moment I felt I was going to die, when he was strangling me and finishing, I suddenly wasn’t looking at him—I was looking at me. Mallory. I was in him, right? Looking at a woman who lay under him, not breathing. And that woman was me.”
The anxiety Waters had felt in the cemetery returned like a shadow falling over him. She spoke lunacy with absolute conviction. Yet what was the harm in listening? An absurd parallel came to him: it was 1955, she was a communist agent, and he had already slept with her. The damage was done. What difference could it possibly make if he listened to her crackpot manifesto now?
“Everything went blank after that,” Eve whispered, oblivious to his thoughts. “It was like being in a coma, I guess. Or a drugged sleep. Now and then I would wake up and see things—rooms, furniture, the interior of a car—but they were alien to me. It was like a nightmare where you’re trapped in someone else’s body. The things I saw…I eventually began to make sense of them. The man who raped me led a double life. He had a wife, a house in Marrero, a mindless job as a technician in a plant. To the people he worked with he seemed like a normal person. But inside his head, it was like…Hell. There was so much anger and pain, so much hatred. I knew all his thoughts, his memories. They would ambush me in the dark, things that were done to him as a child. It was sickening. The way he treated his wife…the way she cowered and took it. Sometimes I shut down my consciousness—went back to sleep—just so I wouldn’t have to see or feel any of it. But as time passed, that became harder to do. When I was awake, I tried to think. I didn’t understand how it had happened, but I was alive in this man. And I was growing stronger. Sometimes I’d be awake for an hour or two. And he wouldn’t know it. He didn’t remember any of it. I could tell by people’s reactions. It was like he blacked out during those times. He became terrified of the blackouts. I had no idea what I was going to do.” Eve swallowed, as though trying to keep her vocal cords working. “Then he raped another woman.”