Danger in a Red Dress

  But if Gabriel was going to do this, he couldn’t tell Carrick that they were brothers. Not here. Not now. That would have to wait for another day.

  “I almost forgot. Here.” Carrick thrust something toward Gabriel. “Here’s Hannah Grey.”

  It was a photo, and not a good photo, either. Grainy and unflattering—her driver’s license, or maybe her nursing license. It showed a blond woman, very pale, with minimal makeup, a solemn face, and huge blue eyes.

  But Gabriel felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

  He was looking at the woman of his dreams.

  SEVEN

  The house was watching her.

  Hannah returned the breakfast tray to the kitchen and walked toward Mrs. Manly’s suite . . . and stopped in the middle of the wide sweep of stairs. She looked around, peering at the shadows, half expecting to see eyes peering back.

  The house was watching her.

  She examined the high ceiling, the cove moldings, the pictures that lined the walls. She saw nothing. She heard nothing.

  Yet the hair on the back of her neck stirred, and her heartbeat quickened.

  The house was watching her.

  For the first two months of her tenure, she had not been aware of the house as a living entity. She’d been absorbed by her patient, discovering that Mrs. Manly was easily irritated by sunlight, arthritis drugs, insulin shots, healthy food, discipline, and exercise. But summer drifted into autumn, and as September turned the leaves to gold and scarlet, Mrs. Manly became a fanatic about the plans for her Halloween party. She had stated her goal: to create an image of herself as a woman who had survived Nathan Manly’s defection and thrived.

  Hannah’s goal was a little different. She wanted Mrs. Manly to live a long life. So she had cajoled, teased, begged, and ordered her to eat better, to take her medicines, to treat her poor, racked body with respect.

  They’d come to an understanding.

  Mrs. Manly would cooperate with Hannah—to a point. And beyond that point, Hannah would not push.

  Then, in the last week, an edgy conviction had emerged and grown.

  The house was watching Hannah, and Hannah . . . was spooked.

  She hurried down the long corridor toward Mrs. Manly’s door, turned the handle, and leaped into Mrs. Manly’s room. She shut the door behind her and stood, panting, her back against the wall.

  “What’s the matter, Miss Grey?” Mrs. Manly asked crisply.

  “It’s stupid,” Hannah said.

  “I’ll tell you if it’s stupid.” Mrs. Manly stirred in her bed like a great winged bat. “What has gotten into the very sensible Miss Grey?”

  “I feel like”—The house is watching me—“someone is watching me.” Somehow that didn’t sound as ridiculous as accusing a house of malevolent intentions.

  “Maybe someone is.” Mrs. Manly waved her closer. “Hurry up. I have to visit the powder room.”

  Dealing with a lady was vastly different from dealing with Mr. Dresser. Mrs. Manly used euphemisms about her body functions; Mr. Dresser had said he wanted to piss. But in a way they were so similar; they both sought death, welcomed death, rather than a long descent into old age and suffering.

  Hannah hurried to her side.

  Mrs. Manly grunted as she fought to sit up.

  Morning was not her best time. Morning was no arthritis sufferer’s best time. With sleep, the joints stiffened and movement was slow and painful.

  Quickly, competently, Hannah massaged Mrs. Manly’s knees and hips, then pushed the wheelchair into position beside the bed and helped her into it.

  Mrs. Manly wheeled herself to the powder room and shut the door behind her, leaving Hannah to start the coffeemaker. As soon as the door opened, Hannah hurried to help Mrs. Manly get dressed. “What do you mean, maybe someone is watching me?”

  “Didn’t you know?” Mrs. Manly half smiled. “The house is haunted.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “My dear girl, as old as this house is, do you think it hasn’t seen violence? Anguish? Pain? The whole range of human emotions has played across this stage, and the house has absorbed them all.” As she spoke, Mrs. Manly’s voice dropped lower and lower. “Why do you think our Halloween parties are so successful?”

  “Good treats?” Hannah ventured.

  “There are ghosts here, my dear, and they do watch.” Mrs. Manly looked up at Hannah’s horror-stricken face and laughed. Cackled, really. “Are you susceptible?”

  “Are you kidding? When I was a kid, I saw Ghost-busters and I didn’t sleep for weeks.” Hannah spoke lightly—but she wasn’t joking.

  “Oh. Dear.” Mrs. Manly tried to quash her amusement. “I was merely kidding about the ghosts.”

  “Good.” Because Hannah didn’t know which was worse, that the house was watching her or ghosts were. Hannah poured Mrs. Manly a cup of coffee.

  As she handed it to her, Mrs. Manly said softly, “Yet there are other secrets, more deadly than mere ghosts.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “I fear you must. It is your punishment for the unfailing integrity you’ve shown.” But Mrs. Manly appeared to abandon that train of thought, and waved at the three-foot-wide bookshelf nestled into one corner. “This morning, I’d like you to dust my books.”

  The deep, rich mahogany shelves had been placed at a forty-five-degree angle to the walls. They rose from the floor to the twelve-foot-high ceiling, and had been carved into a series of Celtic knots, making the whole piece a beautiful, intricate piece of nineteenth-century art.

  Hannah frowned as she approached. A very grimy piece of art. “I’ll speak to the housekeeper. This hasn’t been cleaned for months.”

  “It hasn’t been cleaned since Torres died. I don’t allow just anyone to dust my books.”

  Hannah had worked with eccentrics before, and for all that Melinda Manly was agoraphobic, she operated in a remarkably normal range. But to be fussy about who dusted her books?

  “I trust you to do it.” Melinda Manly smiled into her mug.

  Hannah found one of the cheap towels she kept on hand for cleanup, dragged the library ladder into place, climbed up to the top shelf, and set to work. The Celtic decorations had been twisted by the woodcarver into faces with eyes that stared, and gargoyles with knowing grins. She had thought the house watched her; this bookcase really did keep watch.

  Hannah pulled out each title, wiped it off, and set it aside. Variety and age varied, hardcovers and well-read paperbacks mixed, and chaos reigned. She dusted the shelves. Then as she replaced the books, she asked, “Are these your favorites?”

  “Yes. Old friends, most of them.”

  Hannah flipped through The Iliad. “Do you read Greek?”

  “And Latin. I attended Wellesley and my father insisted on a traditional curriculum, without merit in the job market. He was old-fashioned. He thought I would marry as soon as I graduated. Instead I waited for my prince charming . . . and we all know how that turned out.”

  It was the first time Mrs. Manly had referred to the scandal that had driven her to hide, to never step foot outside for fifteen years.

  “I do know.” Hannah paused delicately, then ventured a question. “But I don’t understand. How could you . . . ?”

  “How could a woman like Melinda Balfour, a woman who can trace her ancestry back to the Mayflower, and her family fortune back to the original land barons, stay married to a man who had humiliated her over and over again, with one woman after another? Is that what you’re asking?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s what I’m asking.”

  “It’s easy enough. Nathan could charm the birds out of the trees. He certainly charmed me.” As if the aches and pains of her age and arthritis overwhelmed her, Mrs. Manly slowly adjusted herself in her chair. “When I met him, he was twenty-three, brash, absolutely gorgeous, a prodigy on the stock market. I thought he was a genius. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world to catch him. I didn’t realize that I hadn’t caught him—he’d caug
ht me. My father tried to tell me . . .” Her breath rasped in her throat. “Father said I had never been attractive, and that I was old. Ten years older than Nathan. He said Nathan only wanted me for my money.”

  Every word painted a picture of impending disaster.

  “Of course, he was right.” Mrs. Manly’s mouth puckered, and the dark hairs in her mustache bristled. “Right about all of it. Nathan knew money. He loved money. But I thought he loved me, too, so I trusted him with my fortune, my virtue, and my family’s reputation. He destroyed them all.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “And my pride. I trusted him with my pride, too, and that fell first and hardest. But it didn’t matter, because Nathan took my money and built a company with it, a successful company that impressed even my father. Then . . . I couldn’t conceive, and there was never a doubt whose fault it was.”

  Hannah could almost feel the pain rolling off Mrs. Manly in waves. “Fault isn’t the word for it. Saying a woman can help it if she’s not fertile is as ridiculous as saying a woman gets pregnant only when she enjoys it.”

  Hot with fury, Mrs. Manly turned on her. “Even my father said it was my fault. Because obviously Nathan had what it takes to create a baby. He screwed all those girls, fathered all those bastards—” As if she remembered Hannah’s objection to the word, she stopped herself.

  But Hannah heard her heavy breathing, saw the way she gritted her teeth and held herself so stiffly. Hannah slid down a step, started on the next shelf, and said gently, “At least he acknowledged and supported the children. At least he was honorable enough to do that.”

  “Nathan wasn’t being honorable.” Mrs. Manly wheeled herself to her night table, slammed open a drawer, pulled out a snowy-white handkerchief, and blotted the sweat from her upper lip. “He didn’t know the meaning of the word. He was strutting like a bantam cock, crowing and smug. He had sons. Lots of sons.”

  “But you did conceive.” Hannah slid down another step. She wasn’t done with the second shelf from the top, but Mrs. Manly’s appearance alarmed her.

  The woman was red-faced, almost apoplectic. “After years of hell, of taking hormones to stimulate my ovaries to produce eggs. Do you know what happens when they do that to you? Weight gain, abdominal pain, nausea . . . not to mention I miscarried twice. I spent the pregnancy on complete bed rest. And do you know what I got for my pains? Carrick.” She spat the name. “My son, Carrick.”

  Well. That answered any questions Hannah had about the relationship between mother and son. “Did . . . did Carrick’s birth make your husband happy?”

  “Yes. But then, he always was jubilant when one of his children was born. Another son to prove his manhood . . .” The bright red color receded from Mrs. Manly’s face, and she smiled, a superior lift of her lips. “After Carrick, there were no more sons for him.”

  “What?” Hannah stood perched on the ladder, and stared at her employer.

  “Not long after Carrick was born, Nathan was walking through Central Park, returning from his girlfriend’s house. Right there in broad daylight, he was mugged and beaten. One testicle was crushed beyond repair; they had to amputate. The other . . .” Mrs. Manly tsked in mock sorrow. “When he recovered, he discovered he was no longer the man he had once been.”

  Had Hannah imagined it, or had Mrs. Manly just obliquely confessed to arranging the beating of her own husband?

  “He changed then. He didn’t have the affairs, but he didn’t stay home, either. He visited his sons. He spent time at the business he’d built in Pennsylvania. And he started looking beyond . . .” Mrs. Manly was looking beyond, too, staring into space as if she could see her absent husband. She whispered, “I should have seen it coming.” She switched her attention to Hannah so swiftly Hannah’s head spun. “Bring me Ulysses by James Joyce.”

  Hannah gaped at her.

  “Hurry, girl. We haven’t got all day. It’s on the fourth shelf, the middle shelf, a leather-bound hard-cover, tan with black lettering.”

  Hannah searched. “You like Ulysses?” She found it jutting out from among the paperbacks, put her finger on the spine, and tugged.

  Nothing happened.

  “I read it in college lit.” Hannah tugged again. “Personally, I found it one of the most obvious attempts of an English teacher to get his students to commit suicide from sheer boredom.”

  “Grip it and pull,” Mrs. Manly directed.

  Hannah wrapped her hand around Ulysses and pulled. The book popped loose with an audible sproing . . . and the wall moved.

  No, not the wall, the bookcase. Hannah jumped back. She stared as, slowly, the polished wood, the heavy tomes, the gargoyles swung on a pivot to reveal a black hole behind the wall. Hand over her heart, she said, “My God. There is a secret passage.”

  “Yes. There is. How did you hear about it?” Mrs. Manly asked.

  “Carrick said there was rumored to be one, but that he’d never found it.” Hannah slid a foot inside, then her head, then her body and looked around.

  She stood on a narrow landing, with stairs going up one way and down the other. Light slipped in from some unknown source—an unseen window, or a skylight—and illuminated dust and cobwebs. Across the way, another part of the wall was cut at a forty-five-degree angle.

  “I never told Carrick about it. By the time he was old enough, I didn’t trust him.” Mrs. Manly’s voice sounded nearer, much nearer.

  Hannah turned to face her. “There’s another entrance across the way?”

  Mrs. Manly sat in her wheelchair. “Bright girl. In the bedroom next to mine, there’s another bookcase. Every bookcase that leads to the passage is set at an angle, and somewhere on the shelves, there’s a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce. Remove that, and it opens.”

  Diabolical. Mrs. Manly was diabolical. “Where does the passage go?”

  “It leads from the attic to the basement, and from there, into a cave and onto the beach. Pull Ulysses loose, and you can step inside, shut yourself in, and escape.”

  Hannah pushed the bookcase shut and replaced the book in exactly the right spot. “Escape what?”

  “Whatever monster is chasing you.”

  Hannah remembered all the things Carrick had done and said, all of the trials Mrs. Manly had suffered, and she felt dread creep up her spine on tiny spiderlike feet. “So there actually are secrets?”

  “Some I know. Others I only suspect.” Mrs. Manly pushed herself toward the door. “But I know we’ve got trouble, girl. Big trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The house is watching us.”

  Gabriel caught a glimpse of movement on the monitor. In the corridor outside Mrs. Manly’s room, two figures, the young woman and the wheelchair-bound elderly lady, maneuvered their way into the elevator and disappeared.

  He turned to the next monitor. The elevator door opened on the ground floor, and they exited. Hannah Grey grasped the handles of the wheelchair and pushed Mrs. Manly into the dining room. Another monitor picked them up as she settled Mrs. Manly into her place and went down the stairs toward the kitchen.

  He’d placed cameras well. He had a complete view of the corridor, a solid view of the foyer, the elevator and dining room.

  While Mrs. Manly and Hannah Grey were occupied, he needed to organize one more very important camera setup.

  Gathering his equipment, he sprinted out of the bedroom he occupied in the north wing, and headed for Mrs. Manly’s suite. Before they returned from breakfast, he would have everything in place.

  He intended to watch Hannah Grey every minute: while she worked, while she slept, while she was at leisure, and while she plotted. He intended to listen in on every conversation, monitor every phone call, learn what she liked and what she hated, who her friends were and why she had collected so many enemies. When he was through with Miss Hannah Grey, he would know everything about her—and she wouldn’t know he even existed.

  EIGHT

  Hannah ate breakfast and worried.
br />   Should she leave Balfour House? As Mrs. Manly had promised, she made her call to the New Hampshire governor. Hannah had been cleared of all wrongdoing and her accreditation had been reinstated. If she could quit this job now, she could walk away from Mrs. Manly and never look back. And she should.

  But she owed Mrs. Manly. More important than that, she would leave the old woman alone, with the Balfour Halloween party half planned and a son who grew increasingly troublesome. Mrs. Manly never backed down from a fight, but their arguments left her weary and sad.

  Had there been a brief time when Hannah had admired Carrick Manly? She barely remembered that now; now she wondered why he thought his mother knew anything about his father ’s fortune, what he expected to gain from the knowledge . . . and what he would do to get his hands on the information.

  If Hannah were smart, she would run. She would save herself from this house of secret passageways, with eyes that watched and judged and criticized. She’d already learned the hard way what happened when she stayed with a patient in a dysfunctional family situation. The reward of knowing she was doing the right thing wasn’t worth the trouble afterward. Not even Mr. Dresser ’s inheritance had eased the anxiety and heartache of losing her reputation as a nurse and a woman, and the worst part was—it was her own fault. She should have kept her mouth shut about being friends with old Mr. Dresser.

  She looked up at Mrs. Manly.

  The old woman’s broad jowls sagged, her small mouth turned down, and she ate with an intensity that made the silver fork clatter against the thin china.

  Mrs. Manly wasn’t lovable. She wasn’t kind. Right now, Hannah was probably the only person in the world who even liked her. Yet Hannah couldn’t abandon her to a government inquest, a humiliatingly public rehash of a lousy marriage, and a bevy of accusations that could, all too easily, result in prison time.