Sleep No More

Chapter 14

“John? Is this John Waters?”

Waters blinked himself awake and found the phone in his hand. Lily was gone, the bed was a wreck, and daylight shone around the edges of the drapes.

“This is Waters,” he mumbled. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Tom Jackson, John.”

He instantly came to full alertness. “What can I do for you, Tom?”

“Sounds like I woke you up.”

Lily’s clock radio read 9:15 A.M. Waters was usually in his office by 8:30. “I had a headache last night. Guess I overslept.”

“Sorry. Look, I have another question for you.”

“Shoot,” said Waters, remembering Penn’s warning: The police have another lead. Caitlin’s source thought he heard your name come up…

“We got a lady says she saw you and Eve Sumner going into the driveway of Bienville two days in a row the week before the murder.”

Waters waited for more details, but Jackson offered none. He swallowed hard.

“That’s right,” he said, as the skin of his face seemed to tighten around his skull. “Is that a problem?”

“Well,” said Jackson, “last time I talked to you, you didn’t seem like a big fan of Ms. Sumner. You went down to her office to give her an earful after she tried to sell your house out from under you. That’s what you said.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’m sort of confused, John. What were you doing with her at Bienville a few days after that? And not once but twice?”

“She was showing me the house. Simple as that.”

Silence. “You in the market for a new house? You already got a pretty nice one.”

“Bienville has a lot of architectural significance.”

“I don’t know too much about that kind of thing. Is Lily interested in it too?”

A flash of the knife. Tom Jackson was quicker than he liked people to think. “Here’s the thing, Tom. I’ve been thinking about buying it as a surprise for Lily. She thinks it’s too expensive. And it is expensive. But I’ve had a good couple of years, even though the oil business as a whole is in the toilet. And I knew if I just went ahead and did it, she’d love it. You know what I mean?”

“I can’t really say I do, John. That’s thirty years of my salary.”

Jackson had already checked the price of the house. “Well, that’s why I kept quiet about it, anyway. I didn’t want anyone knowing I was looking at the place. You know how this town is. People hear I’m looking for an antebellum home, every realtor in town is calling me, and my wife knows about it by dinnertime.”

“Now that I understand,” Jackson said. “But why’d you pick Eve Sumner to show you the place? She’s not the realtor for the Historic Society.”

Waters thought fast. “To be honest, I felt bad about raising hell at her office. She was nice that day, and I felt guilty later. I figured a commission like that would more than make up for it.”

“I see.” The detective covered his phone and said something unintelligible to someone else. “What did you think about Eve as a person?”

“Very professional.”

“People say she could get a little unprofessional with certain male clients.”

“Cole told me something like that. But she was totally professional with me. I did notice she had the equipment for what you’re talking about, though.”

“That’s the damn truth,” Jackson said in an unguarded moment. “In the right outfit, she was something to see.”

Any outfit, Waters thought, recalling how Eve had looked dancing gloriously naked in the parlor of Bienville.

“John,” Tom said in a quieter voice, “this is you and me, right?”

“Right.”

“Did you tap that stuff out on one of those afternoons? I wouldn’t blame you a bit, if you did. I just need to know.”

“Hell no. I’m married, man.”

“So were a lot of guys who spent time with Eve. That doesn’t seem to stop too many people these days, men or women.”

“You’re right. But it does me.”

More silence. “John, I’m going to ask what I asked you the other day. And I want you to think before you answer, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Did you have any other contact with Eve Sumner that I should know about?”

Waters let some time pass, as if he were thinking. “No,” he said at length. “Nothing I can think of.”

“Okay, then. I appreciate your time.”

“Sure. Still no prime suspect?”

“With this gal, it’s more a process of elimination than a search. You know what I mean?”

“I hear you. Good luck, Tom.”

“Yeah.”

Waters hit the disconnect button with a shaking finger. Then he pulled Penn Cage’s phone number from his memory and punched it into the keypad.

Penn gave Waters a cup of coffee and led him out to the backyard. Today he did not pull weeds from his flower beds. He sat on a wrought-iron bench, crossed his legs, and sipped his coffee.

“If the police were going to call you in for questioning over this,” he said, “Tom wouldn’t have questioned you on the phone.”

Waters paced the grass in front of the bench. “I’m not sure he bought my explanation.”

“He may not have. He may think you were screwing her, in which case he won’t let this drop. But unless they find something else to support this, you’ve probably got at least a few days’ grace. I’ll tell you something else encouraging. They must not have found anything in Eve’s house that incriminates you. If they had, they would already have searched your house and office.”

Waters stopped pacing, relief washing over him like a cool balm.

“So,” Penn said. “You told me you needed to talk about something else. Something disturbing.”

“Yes.” Waters sat on an iron chair opposite Penn and set his coffee mug on the ground. “Lily wasn’t herself last night.”

Penn drew back his head as if he sensed where Waters was going. “What do you mean?”

“I mean in bed. She was totally out of character. She was very aggressive, and she did things she’d never done before.”

Penn shrugged. “Sometimes women do that. Didn’t you tell me that Eve’s death had made Lily more aware of your marital problems?”

“Yes. She said she was going to make an effort.”

“There you go. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“You know women don’t go from sexual dysfunction to supreme confidence overnight. But that wasn’t all. When Lily was in the bathroom before we made love, I walked over to look at her. She couldn’t see me. She was looking into the mirror like she hardly recognized herself. And then she twisted a lock of hair tight around one finger and pulled it out into a curl.”

Penn shook his head. “This is nuts. You think because Mallory twisted her hair, and because you saw Eve do it a few times, that Mallory’s soul is now in your wife?”

“I know you’re not open to-”

“I’ve seen Caitlin twist her hair a hundred times.”

Waters waited a moment before continuing, in the hope that Penn would really listen. “I’m sure you have. It’s a basic human gesture, okay? But in Mallory, it was a precursor to her cutting behavior. It’s called trichotillomania. She pulled it very hard. So did Eve. And now Lily.”

“Even in this fantasy universe of yours where the laws of physics are suspended, how could Mallory’s soul be inside Lily?”

“I told you how Eve said it worked. Through sex. Eve died while we were having sex, Penn. Or soon after. And the next day I was totally disoriented. I had blackouts I remember absolutely nothing about.”

“And that’s exactly what I’d expect from a man who believed he’d just committed murder.”

“That same day, I made love with Lily. She climaxed, and after that I was fine. But then she spent half the next day sleeping, and then started acting like a totally different person.”

Penn got up from the bench and motioned for Waters to follow him along one of the paths through the large garden area formed by his and Caitlin Masters’s yards.

“There’s one other option, John. I hesitated to mention it when we first spoke, but now…”

“This isn’t the time to pull any punches.”

Penn met his eye. “Remember you said that.”

“Tell me.”

“Lily could be involved in this thing. She could have been in it with Cole from the start.”

“What? That’s insane.”

Penn nodded and kept walking. “I’m sure you’re right. I thought I should mention it.”

“Why?”

The lawyer looked almost apologetic. “If you were to be declared incompetent by a court, or sentenced to prison for murder, Cole’s corporate power would be enhanced, but his ability to turn that power into ready cash would be limited.”

“He could sell a lot of equipment on his own.”

“Yes, but the real money in your company is in oil production. Correct? The monthly runs, and the reserves you hold. I assume those are worth millions of dollars?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m sure you’ve held on to a lot more production than Cole has.”

“Yes.”

“You see what I’m getting at?”

Waters did. “It would take Lily’s help for Cole to sell off my existing production.”

“I know this is a painful line of thought, but we have to look at the facts. Last night, Lily acted in a manner that furthered your belief that Mallory Candler has somehow returned to haunt you. What logical explanation could there be for that? Does Lily have any romantic history with Cole?”

“No.”

“She was three years behind Cole and me at St. Stephens?”

“She was a freshman when you guys were seniors.”

“Did she and Cole ever date?”

“Not at St. Stephens.”

“What about Ole Miss?”

Waters felt strangely uncomfortable. “They did have a few dates there. Two or three. We always laugh about it when it comes up. Lily despises Cole.”

“Let’s talk about Ole Miss for a minute.”

“There wasn’t anything to that, Penn. Nothing sexual, anyway.”

The lawyer didn’t look convinced. “Cole doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d spend much time with a girl who didn’t put out in college.”

Waters felt his face coloring.

“I’m not trying to piss you off, John. I’m trying to make you look at things objectively.”

“I hear you. But I really think Lily would have told me if she’d slept with Cole.”

“Women are funny about their sexual pasts. So are men, for that matter. They say that when a man gives you his number of conquests, you should divide by three, and when a woman does, you should multiply by two.”

Waters tried to think about it without emotion. “Okay, what if they did sleep together in college? What you’re suggesting now is that they’ve revived that relationship, and they’re using their knowledge of my past to drive me insane or send me to prison. That’s crazy.”

“It may sound crazy. But you find yourself in extraordinary circumstances. So extraordinary that you’ve attributed them to a supernatural cause rather than face potentially painful facts.”

“We don’t have any facts. Only circumstances.”

“Highly suggestive ones.” Penn stopped beside a complicated wooden play set, reached over his head, and closed his hands around a horizontal ladder. “You have to be strong, John. Your freedom is at stake. Maybe even your life.”

“I know it is. I don’t want to lose my wife and daughter.”

Penn dropped his hands from the ladder, sat in a swing, and looked up at Waters with sadness in his eyes. “You’re still not grasping what I’m telling you. You may already have lost your wife. I want you to drop all your preconceptions and try to answer a truly terrible question.”

“I’ll try.”

“Is it possible that Lily hates you? Secretly, I mean.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Waters was stunned by the anger he felt at his old friend. Penn seemed to be trying to make him suffer as much as he could, and for no good reason. “You’ve got to tell me why you asked that.”

Penn swung slowly back and forth. “I’ve been trying to look at this situation without making any assumptions whatever. Just analyzing what’s happened so far. And I’ve tried to think like a woman. Perhaps a mentally disturbed woman.”

“You mean Lily?”

“Yes. Does Lily know about Mallory’s abortions?”

Waters thought about it. “I told her about the first one. To explain Mallory’s fixation, you know? Why she was a threat.”

“Could she know about the second one as well?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did Cole know about both abortions?”

“Yes. What the hell are you getting at?”

“Your wife lost two children to miscarriages. One was very traumatic. I think it’s possible that Lily blamed you for those miscarriages. Not in some vague subconscious way, but very specifically. That she believed you caused them, and that she hates you for it.”

“Why would she blame me for that?”

“In a state of grief and clinical depression, she might be quite capable of deciding that her miscarriages were some sort of karmic payback for Mallory’s abortions. You basically forced Mallory to kill the children you conceived with her, and Lily might think you were owed some sort of divine punishment for that.”

Waters was outraged by the suggestion. “That’s the most twisted thing I’ve ever heard!”

“But not outside the realm of what a grief-stricken mother might seize on as a reason for her suffering.” Penn stopped swinging, his eyes somber. “Tell me the truth. After Lily lost those babies, did you never feel-even for a moment-that what you had forced Mallory to do was somehow the cause of it?”

Waters stood with his mouth open. Though he wanted to deny it, he could not.

“Guilt is a powerful thing, John. Especially in a man like you, with a highly developed conscience. I know, because I’m the same way.”

Waters walked over and sat in the swing beside Penn. He had to cling to the chains to hold himself steady. “If your goal was to blow my mind, you succeeded. I’m willing to consider your theory. You say Lily and Cole are in this together. Sleeping together. But Lily doesn’t even like sex. After she lost those babies, we basically went without it for four years.”

“Maybe that should tell you something.”

“Like what? That she’s sleeping with my best friend? A guy whose sexual habits she despises?”

“After Lily lost the baby, were you patient with her about resuming sex? Very careful and considerate?”

“Of course!”

“Maybe that wasn’t what she needed. Maybe that made her think about it too much. Maybe she needed someone to just take her and be done with it.”

“No way.” Waters struggled to control his temper. “That’s not Lily. I know my wife.”

Penn reached out and touched his shoulder. “None of us really knows anyone. Not even our own parents or siblings. And last night, Lily showed you that she has a lot more sexual knowledge and skill than you ever suspected.”

“This is bullshit.” Waters got out of the swing and kicked it against a wooden post. “I can’t even remember what it felt like to be normal!”

“The normal man is a fiction,” Penn said. “There is no ‘normal.’ Not for women either. Your life is on the line now, John. You have to face reality, no matter how terrible it might be.”

Waters had heard all he wanted to. He got out his keys and started walking back toward the house.

“Where are you going now?” Penn called.

“The office. I want to talk to Sybil.”

“About Cole and Lily?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Be careful. Call me if you find out anything important. And let’s talk later today in any case.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Don’t forget.”

Waters gave him a dispirited wave and walked around the side of the house to the street.

Sybil Sonnier walked into Waters’s office wearing a Black Watch skirt and a forest-green blouse. He had buzzed her the way he normally would, and she stood waiting as though expecting a request for photocopies. He wasn’t sure how to begin. He’d never gotten to know Sybil very well, and her mood had not been the best for some time. As the silence dragged on, her dark Cajun eyes widened, and she gave him a look like Am I in trouble?

“Is this about my work?” she asked finally, making Waters realize he’d been sitting there like a department store mannequin.

“Not exactly.”

He motioned her to the oxblood chair across from his desk. She folded her skirt over her knees and sat primly on the edge of the seat. Looking at her shapely calves, Waters knew his partner would not have been able to resist at least trying with her. But Sybil was no schoolgirl. She was twenty-eight and divorced, and Waters had seen her angry enough times to know she could handle herself.

“It’s actually a personal matter,” he said. “Do you mind if I ask you a few personal questions?”

Her cheeks pinked, but she shook her head.

“I’m worried about Cole,” he said, and waited for a reaction.

“I am too,” she said.

“May I ask why?”

“I think he’s in trouble. Bad trouble.”

“Do you have any idea what kind?”

“Money trouble.” Sybil looked suddenly self-conscious, or perhaps she was just being cautious. She might think her job was at stake. She was paid much better than most assistants in town, mostly for her discretion in business matters.

“What makes you say that?”

“I spend half my time telling his creditors he’s working lawsuits in Memphis or New Orleans.”

This shocked Waters. “I’m sorry, Sybil. I didn’t know you were having to cover for him to that extent.”

She shrugged. “I figured it went with the job.”

“It doesn’t. Though I’m sure Cole appreciates it.”

She closed up then, with a hard tightening of the skin around her lips and eyes.

“I didn’t mean to suggest-”

“I know,” she cut in. “But that’s what this is about, isn’t it? You want to know if I’m sleeping with him.”

Waters started to deny it, then gave up. “Sybil, if you’re having a relationship with Cole, it’s unprofessional and dangerous for the company. But you’re both adults, and that kind of danger is the least of our problems right now.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

She nodded, and something seemed to come loose inside her. “I’m really scared, John. I think he owes some Vegas loan sharks. I’m from South Louisiana, and I know what they do to you when you don’t pay your debts.”

“I can tell you really care about him. I care about him too. May I just ask you what I need to?”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you having sex with him?”

She averted her eyes for a moment. “Not now,” she said finally. “But I was. Until about a month ago.”

Until just before I saw Eve at the soccer field, Waters thought. “What ended it?”

“I’m not really sure. I think it may be the trouble he’s in. I don’t think he’s sleeping with anyone else.”

Penn’s theory came back to him like a knife in the belly. “Let’s change the subject for a second. Has my wife called up here for Cole lately? Or in the past few months? Or has he called her?”

Sybil looked as if something had suddenly occurred to her. “Do you think he’s having an affair with Mrs. Waters?”

“No, no. This has to do with money.”

“Oh.” She sniffed, then looked at the ceiling as she thought back. “No, I don’t think so. Wait-your wife did call for him once or twice in the past month. I just didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

“How many times did they talk, do you think?”

“Three, maybe? Four at the most.”

“Do you know what they talked about? Did you ever listen in?”

“No!”

“Did they have any other contact that you know of?”

“No.”

Waters made a mental note to request Lily’s cell phone records. “Sybil, what do you think about Cole?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Your bottom-line opinion, as a woman. Is he a good guy? A bad guy? What?”

She sighed and looked at the floor. Clearly she had spent a good deal of time pondering this question. “I’m really mad at him right now. Sometimes I think I hate him. But deep down, I think he’s a good man. I wouldn’t have slept with him if I didn’t think that. Will he ever leave his wife for me? I doubt it. But he has a good heart.”

Until this week, Waters would have agreed with her assessment. “Do you think he’d ever betray me, Sybil?”

“How? Like, do I think he’d sleep with your wife?”

“No. I mean over money. To save himself.”

“Never. He might sleep with your wife. Sex is an exception to every rule. But hurt you to save himself? No way. You have no idea how much your good opinion means to him. You’re sort of like a father to Cole, even though you’re the same age. He says you always do the right thing, and he never does. And he’s pretty close to right.”

“I don’t always do the right thing.”

“Well, nobody does, do they? But I’ve known a lot of men, and I’ve never known one like you. Your wife is really lucky. I hope she knows that.”

Waters could see how Cole could fall for this woman. The sincerity in her eyes made you want to please her, to make her feel all the happiness she could.

“Cole hasn’t come back in, has he?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think he will today.”

“Okay. Look, I appreciate your being so forthcoming. Why don’t you go home? There’s nothing going on. Take a long nap, and then get yourself a good dinner tonight. Go to the Castle, and bring me the receipt.”

Sybil gave him an ironic smile. “Wendy’s tonight. I’m too bummed out for anything else.”

He laughed with her, then motioned for her to go. “Don’t worry, Sybil. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to Cole.”

She paused by the door and nodded gravely. “I just hope it’s not too late.”

“I do too,” he said softly, after she’d gone out.

At 1:50 P.M., Waters stood on top of Jewish Hill, looking out over the Mississippi River. After Sybil left, he’d called St. Stephens to verify that Annelise was in class. Then he’d shut down the office and driven straight to the cemetery. He needed time to think before he faced Lily again, and this was the place that drew him. He hadn’t much time. Ana would be dismissed from school at 2:30, and he wanted to be there to pick her up. He didn’t want her alone with Lily until he knew exactly what was going on.

As he watched a large sailing vessel make its way beneath the twin bridges over the river, a funeral cortege pulled up to the first gate of the cemetery and turned into its new section. The new section looked like any cemetery in any town in America. The gravestones were low and the ground flat, and there were few trees to break up the view. Waters was glad he’d managed to purchase a family plot in one of the older sections, shaded by oak trees and bordered by walls and wrought iron. It probably didn’t matter to the dead where they came to rest, but for those left behind, atmosphere made a difference. He’d spent enough time at his father’s grave to know that.

About five hundred yards from Jewish Hill, a green burial tent faded by the sun awaited the funeral procession. He hadn’t noticed it when he drove up. The tent kept the sun or rain from the open grave, the coffin, and the immediate family and close relations. The cars in the procession parked bumper-to-bumper in a long line, thirty or forty of them blocking the narrow lane. The headlights were extinguished, and then dark-suited mourners emerged from the vehicles and gathered in a somber circle around the tent. Waters had been to a hundred burials exactly like this one: the same tent, the same hearse, virtually the same crowd. That was how it was in small towns.

As he watched, a late arrival turned in through the wrong gate and began looking for a lane that would lead to the burial service. A sign on the car’s door read, SUMNER SELECT PROPERTIES. It took a moment for the significance of this to register, but as the latecomer turned and drove toward the green tent, Waters’s face felt cold.

Eve Sumner was lying under that burial tent. Cold and still with an ugly Y-incision stitched into her torso from the autopsy. She was about to be buried right before his eyes.

His first instinct was to flee. Tom Jackson might be in the crowd of mourners, watching to see who showed up at the murder victim’s funeral. Waters looked back at his Land Cruiser. Satisfied that it was parked out of sight of the burial tent, he walked over to a wrought-iron fence bordering old Jewish graves from Alsace and Bohemia and sat down against it. Anyone at the burial would need binoculars to make out his face at this distance, and sitting in front of the fence, he was unlikely to be noticed at all.

Eve’s mother and teenage son would be under that tent, grief-stricken and confused, roses and Kleenex clenched in their hands. Morbidly, Waters wondered how many men in that crowd had coupled with Eve while she was alive. It would probably please her to know they had come to her final farewell. Then again, he reflected, he might have no idea what Eve would have wanted. Because he might never have known the real Eve.

No matter how imaginatively Penn Cage twisted events to fit his logical explanations, Waters remained unconvinced. And not because of denial. No man wanted to think his wife and best friend might be trying to drive him mad. But he had not accepted Eve’s story of soul transmigration simply to avoid an unpleasant truth. He’d believed the things Eve told him because they felt true. Her intimate knowledge, the way she kissed him, her pushing of every limit in search of ecstasy, her desire to possess him totally-all these were the essence of Mallory Candler. Penn might believe Waters was enmeshed in a complex conspiracy designed to deprive him of his sanity, his freedom, and finally his money. But Penn could not know what Waters did.

He could not know that Cole, while weak where his vices were concerned, had always been a rock about the big things. Friendship. Loyalty. Fatherhood. At his core, Cole-like Waters-had struggled to live up to the John Wayne/Henry Fonda images that their fathers had revered and tried hard to inculcate in their sons. Yes, Cole might sell a pumping unit for quick cash when he was in a bind. But what he had said at the country club still resonated. I’d go down with my legs broken and a bullet in my head before I’d do something to hurt you or your family. It might be naive, but Waters believed in the ultimate goodness of his best friend. If that was stupidity, he was willing to pay the price for it.

And Penn knew nothing of Lily beyond her public face. He could not know that before she had her miscarriages, Lily had been an attentive wife and lover, but not a gifted or accomplished one. Even if she were trying to convince Waters that she was Mallory reincarnated, Lily could never separate love and lust enough to handle him in the brutally physical manner that she had last night. It simply was not in her.

Across the cemetery, the dark knot of mourners began to break up and return to their cars. Gravediggers would soon lower Eve Sumner’s body into the ground. But whatever she really was-whatever made her Eve-had vacated her body three nights ago in the Eola Hotel, if not long before. Who was the woman he had made love to for two weeks? If he was right about Cole and Lily, the answer to that question was something no one would ever believe. Not Penn Cage. Not Tom Jackson. Not anyone who hadn’t lived through what Waters himself had. Not without proof.

“I have to know,” he said aloud. “Once and for all.”

The mourners’ cars pulled out of the cemetery like a slow train with a big black Cadillac hearse for a caboose. As he watched them go, Waters knew there was only one place he could go to get the answer he needed. Home.

Walking back toward his Land Cruiser, he glanced at his watch. It was 2:24 P.M. His heart stuttered. The sight of Eve’s burial had made him lose track of time. Annelise would be dismissed from school in six minutes. Lily could be waiting in line right now to pick her up.

“Jesus,” he whispered, and he broke into a run.