The Cove

"She's a cute little chicky, Quinlan. I'll take care of her."

"I appreciate it, Marvin. She is cute, and a lot of bad people are chasing her. If you could keep an eye on her, I can wail on my sax without worry."

"Ms. Lilly is going to try to feed her, Quinlan. She doesn't look like she's had a good meal in a month.

You hungry, Chicky?"

"Not yet, but thank you, Marvin."

"A chicky with real good manners. It warms a man's heart, Quinlan."

"Amazing," Sally said and nothing more. But she was smiling. She gave Marvin a small wave.

"He'll watch over you, not to worry."

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"Actually I hadn't even thought about it. I can't believe you just spit out the truth to him."

"Ah, Marvin didn't believe me. He thought I was worried some guy would try to pick you up, that's all."

Sally looked around the dark, smoky interior of the Bonhomie Club. "It's got lots of character, James."

"It gains more by the year. I think it's because of the aging wood. That bar is over a hundred years old.

It's Lilly's pride. She won it in a poker game from a guy up in Boston. She always calls him Mr. Cheers."

"Lots of character."

He grinned down at her. "Tonight's just for fun, all right? You look gorgeous, you know that? I like that sexy little top."

"You're into jet beads, are you?" But she was pleased. He'd insisted on buying it for her at Macy's. She actually smiled. She felt good, light and easy. Tonight, she thought, tonight was for fun. It had been so long. Fun. She'd simply forgotten.

Nightmares could wait for tomorrow. Maybe when James took her home he'd want to kiss her some more, maybe even make love to her. She could still feel the warmth of his fingers on her.

"You want a drink?"

"I'd love a white wine. It's been so long."

He raised an eyebrow. "I don't know if Fuzz the Bartender has ever heard of such a thing. You sit down and let the atmosphere soak into your bones. I'll go see what Fuzz has got back there."

Fuzz the Bartender, she thought. This was a world she'd never imagined. She'd cheated herself.

She looked up to see James gesturing back at her and an immense black man with a bald head shiny as a cue ball grinning at her, waving a dusty wine bottle. She waved back and gave a thumbs-up.

Where did the name Fuzz come from?

There were only about half a dozen whites in the club, four men and two women. But no one seemed to care what color anyone was.

An Asian woman with long, board-straight black hair to her waist was playing the flute on the small wooden stage. The song was haunting and soft.

The conversation was a steady hum, never seeming to rise or to fall. James put a glass of white wine in front of her.

“Fuzz said he got the wine a couple of years ago from this guy who wanted whiskey but was broke. Fuzz got this bottle of wine in trade."

She sipped it and gulped. It was awful and she wouldn't

have traded it for a glass of Kendall-Jackson. "It's wonderful," she called out to Fuzz the Bartender.

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James sat beside her, a beer in his hand. "The wig's not bad, either. A little too red for my taste, a little too curly, but it'll do for tonight."

"It's hot," she said.

"If you can just hold out, I'll try to think of something indecent to do with that thing when we get home."

At nearly nine o'clock, he kissed her mouth, tasted the white wine, and grimaced.

"That's rotgut."

"It's wonderful rotgut. Don't say anything to Mr.

Fuzz."

James laughed, swung his saxophone case off the other chair, and wove his way through the tables to the stage.

She couldn't take her eyes off him. He hugged the flautist, then pulled a lower stool forward to the microphone. He took his saxophone out of the case, polished it a bit with a soft cloth, checked the reed.

Then he began to warm up.

She didn't know what she'd expected, but the sound coming out of his instrument would have made the devil weep. He played scales, bits and pieces of old songs, skipped from high notes to low ones, testing, soft, then

loud.

"So you're the little white girl that's hooked my Quinlan, are you?"

21

"I WON'T BE so little in another six months."

"Why's that?"

"I'm not usually so skinny. I'll fatten up."

"Maybe my Quinlan will even get you pregnant. You just watch out, Sally, all the ladies salivate while he's playing. Poor boy, he tells himself it's because of his beautiful music. And he does look so soulful while he's playing."

She shook her head, her voice mournful. "I don't have the heart to tell him it's his sexy body and gorgeous eyes. Ah, now he's playing Sonny Rollins, my favorite. Well, aren't I forgetful? I'm Lilly," the huge black woman said, grinned wide, and pumped Sally's hand.

"I'm Sally."

"I know. Fuzz told me. Then Marvin told me. They said it looks like my Quinlan has got it real bad. He's never had it even mild before. This should be interesting. Hey, you aren't planning on having your way with him and then kissing him off, are you?"

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"Kiss him off? Kiss off James?"

"What I mean is, you aren't married, are you? You're not just using my Quinlan just to take care of your needs?

I hear he's a treat in bed, so that would make sense, even though I don't like it."

"Actually, no, I'm not going to kiss him off," Sally said. She sipped at Mr. Fuzz's white wine. "I like your dress. It's magnificent."

Ms. Lilly preened and pressed her huge arms against her even more impressive breasts. The resulting cleavage made Sally stare. She'd never seen so much outside of a Playboy magazine.

"You like the white satin? So do I. I hear tell that a woman built along statuesque lines like I am isn't supposed to wear white, but hey, I like it. It makes me feel young and virginal. It makes me feel ready to go out and try a man for the first time.

"Now, you just sit here and listen to my Quinlan. That's Stan Getz he's playing now. He makes old Stan sound like a sinful angel. Quinlan's good. You really listen now, and don't just think about having your way with him."

"I'll listen good."

Ms. Lilly patted her on the back, nearly sending her face into the glass of wine, and moved away like a ship under sail to a booth that was very near the stage.

Quinlan began to play a sexy, weeping, slow blues song. It sounded like John Coltrane, but she couldn't be completely sure. It was still so new to her.

She noticed for the first time that no one was talking. There was total quiet in the club. Everyone was focused on James.

She watched at least four women get up and move closer to the stage. God, he played beautifully. His range was excellent, each note full and sweet, enough to break your heart. She felt a lump in her throat and swallowed. The song he was playing cried torrents, the notes sweeping lazily from a high register to low, deep notes that tore at the soul. His eyes were closed. His body was swaying slightly.

She knew she loved him, but she wasn't about to admit it here and now, knowing that it was his damned music that was making her feel as mushy as the grits Noelle had tried to make for her once. Men in uniforms and men playing soul music-a potent combination.

James spoke into the microphone. He said, "This one's for Sally. It's from John Coltrane's A Love Supreme."

If she'd ever doubted what he felt about her, that damned song put an end to it. She gulped down Mr.

Fuzz's white wine and her tears.

Two more women moved closer to the stage, and Sally smiled.

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When James finished, he waved to her. Then he cleared his throat and called out, "I got a request for Charlie Parker."

She listened, took a last sip of Mr. Fuzz's wine, and realized she had to go to the bathroom.

She slipped out of her chair, looked at Fuzz the Bartender, who was pointing to an open door just beside the bar. She smiled and walked past him, saying, “Can I have another glass when I come out, Mr. Fuzz?''

"You sure can, Sally. I'll have it waiting."

When she came out of the unisex bathroom, she was smiling. She could hear James getting into his next song, one she recognized, a soft, searching song she hadn't realized was blues.

Suddenly she knew she wasn't alone. She felt someone very close to her, just behind her. She heard breathing, a lot of soft breathing.

The corridor was narrow. There hadn't been any other women in the bathroom. But that was silly. It had to be another woman, she thought on the edge of her brain, her attention on the song James was playing.

But it wasn't a woman.

It was Dr. Beadermeyer. There were two men standing just behind him. One of them was holding a needle in his hand.

He took her arm with a lover's light grasp. It changed quickly enough. She felt her skin pulling and sinking in at the increasing pressure of his fingers.

With his other hand, he grabbed her jaw to hold her still. He leaned over and lightly kissed her.

"Hello, Sally. How lovely you look, my dear. You shouldn't be drinking, you know, it doesn't go well with the kind of drugs your body is used to. I watched you drinking that dreadful stuff. Why are you here? I assume that man up there making a fool of himself in this backwater hole-in-the wall is James Quinlan, that FBI agent you were with in The Cove? He's not bad-looking, Sally. Now I know he's your lover. A man like that wouldn't stay with a woman unless she delivered.

"How desolate poor Scott will be when he finds out. Let's go now, my dear girl. It's time you came back to your little nest. A different nest. This time that bastard won't come to get you." It couldn't be him, but it was. Her father was dead. Why did he still want her so badly?

"I'll hold her. Bring the needle. Let's get out of this godforsaken place."

"I wouldn't go to heaven with you."

"Of course you will, my dear girl."

He was gripping her arm hard now, pulling her back against him, one hand over her mouth. She shoved her right elbow hard into his stomach.

He sucked in his breath, and she jerked free. "James! Marvin!" Then she screamed, just once before a hand smashed down over her mouth.

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"Damn it, grab her! Gag her. Give her the shot!"

She grabbed the edge of a small table below the public telephone and gave it a shove, sending it crashing over, knocking against one of the men with Beadermeyer. She screamed once more, just a whisper of sound this time because the man's hand was hard over her mouth, covering her nose as well and she couldn't breathe. She was jerking, kicking back with her heels, feeling flesh, but still the man held her.

She felt fingers fumbling around her arm.

A needle.

He was going to shove a needle into her arm. He was going to make her into a zombie again. She kicked back as hard as she could. For an instant the man's hand loosened over her nose and mouth.

She leaned down and bit the man's hand, the hand that held that needle, and yelled again. "James!"

The hand went back over her mouth. A man was cursing, another man was jerking at her other arm, but she managed to send her left arm back hard, hitting him in the belly. The touch of the needle fell away.

She heard a thunk on the wooden floor. He'd dropped the needle.

"I should have known you two goons would fuck it up. Pick up the damned needle, you idiot. Jesus, it's dark in here, but not dark enough. I knew I should have just knocked her out. Or shot the little bitch.

Damn, let's just get out of here. Forget the needle, forget her."

It was Dr. Beadermeyer and he was furious.

Then she heard Fuzz the Bartender yelling the ripest obscenities she'd ever heard. The man released her.

She staggered, then screamed, "You've lost, you damned bastard. Fuck off and take your two dogs with you or James will kill you."

He was panting hard, enraged. "I thought it would be easy, just slip a needle into your arm. You've changed, Sally, but this isn't the end of it."

"Oh, yes, it is. I'm going to put you out of business, you Nazi worm. I'm going to put you in jail, and I hope every one of those big inmates takes a fancy to you."

He raised his arm to hit her, but his two men crashed into him as they tried to get down the narrow hallway to the exit.

"Stop it, you fools," he screamed at them. Then they were all racing toward the back emergency exit. The door pounded open, then slammed shut.

She looked up to see Marvin the Bouncer bolting toward her like a runaway train. She heard Fuzz the Bartender crashing through the tables, yelling even riper obscenities.

She realized the whole incident had taken only seconds. It had seemed longer than a winter blizzard.

She took two steps forward. She saw James leaping off the stage. She saw him pull out his gun.

She saw Ms. Lilly pick up a baseball bat and stride toward her like an Amazon angel.

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It had all happened so quickly. Yet she'd felt the fear of a lifetime. To have a needle shoved into her arm again. No, she couldn't have borne that, not again.

Then she realized that the fear was dimming, releasing her, and she shook her head.

She'd won. She'd beaten him. She wished she could have shot him. Or stuck a knife in his guts.

Marvin the Bouncer took one quick look at her, then slammed open the emergency exit door and ran outside.

Fuzz the Bartender streaked past her and out the door behind Marvin. She heard pounding footsteps.

Lots of them. She prayed they'd catch Beadermeyer.

She suddenly felt so weak she couldn't hold herself up. She sank to her knees and leaned against the wall. She wrapped her arms around her bent knees and leaned her face against her legs.

"Sally, hang on, I'll be right back." It was James running after Marvin and Fuzz.

"Well, my girl, Marvin told me that James said you had bad guys after you. I don't mind this-even though it did interrupt one of my favorite songs. What fools those guys were to try to get you here. They must have really been desperate. Either that or stupid. I'll bet stupid."

Ms. Lilly shook her head, the thick black coils of hair never budging. "You ready to get up now, Sally?"

"Is the little chicky all right?"

"Yes, Marvin, she's just catching her breath. I think she did a good job on those guys. I don't suppose you nabbed the jerks?''

"No, Ms. Lilly. We got close, but they pulled away in this big car. Quinlan put a bullet through the back windshield, but then he stopped. He said he knew who it was and he was going to get the bastard tomorrow. Then he laughed and rubbed his hands together. It was hard because he was still holding that cannon of his."

Marvin the Bouncer turned, "Ain't that right, Quinlan?"

"It was Beadermeyer, wasn't it, Sally?"

She raised her head. She wasn't hyperventilating anymore. She was feeling just fine, thank you.

Ms. Lilly grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. "There you go. Fuzz, get Sally some more of that wonderful white wine you've got stashed."

"Yes, it was Beadermeyer with two goons and a needle. I think the needle's still over there on the floor. I managed to knock it away."

Marvin gave her an approving nod. "I knew you were skinny but not helpless. That was good, Chicky."

"Thank you, Marvin. Thank all of you."

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"You're welcome," Ms. Lilly said. She turned and shouted, "Okay, everyone back to their tables.

Everything's okay now. This will teach any of you who want to screw around with Marvin that it isn't smart. They beat the shit out of the guys who were trying to mug Sally. It's all over now.

"Quinlan, get your very nice butt back up there on the stage and play me my Dexter Gordon. What do you think I pay you for anyway?"

"My music," James said. "Sally, I want you right next to the stage, all right?" But before he left, he picked up the needle, wrapped it in a napkin, and put it in his shirt pocket.

"I want to know what the bastard was going to give you. We'll take this to the FBI lab tomorrow. Come on, Sally."

"I'll bring the wine," Fuzz said.

He paced from one end of the living room to the other, back and forth. Dillon was sitting comfortably in a big overstuffed chair, hunched over the keyboard of his laptop, a Gateway 486SX Nomad called

"MAX."

Sally wasn't doing anything except watching James. "I guess I've had enough," she said finally.

Both men looked at her.

She smiled. "I don't want to wait until tomorrow. I want to get it over with tonight. Let's go see my mother. She knows what happened that night my father was murdered. At least she knows a lot more than she's told you or the police or me. I'd like to know the truth."

"Better yet," Dillon said, looking back down at his computer screen, "let's get all three of them together-your mother, your husband, and Doctor Beadermeyer. You think the time is right, Quinlan?"

"I don't know," Quinlan said. "Maybe it's too soon." He gave Sally a worried look. "You really sure about this, Sally?"

She looked strong, her thin shoulders back, those soft blue eyes of hers hard and steady. She looked ready to take on the bear. "I'm sure."

It was all he needed. Yeah, it was time to find out the truth. He nodded.

"Maybe they'll be tired," Dillon said. "Hot damn. Finally I've found it." He gave them a big grin. "I'm good," he said, rubbing his hands together. "Real good."

"What are you talking about?" Quinlan said, striding over to Dillon. He leaned down to look at the screen.

“Everything we ever wanted to know about Doctor Alfred Beadermeyer. His real name is Norman Lipsy and he's Canadian. He did go to medical-McGill in Montreal.

"My, my, he has a specialty in plastic surgery. And there's lots more. Sorry it took me so long. 1 just never considered that he'd be Canadian, not with a name like Beadermeyer. I wasn't getting into the right databases."

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He rubbed his hands together. "I found him on a cosmetic surgeons roster, along with a photo. Said he graduated from McGill."

"This is incredible," Quinlan said. "Excellent, Dillon."

"Bet your ass. Now, before we're off, let me try just a couple more things on Scott Brainerd. Where'd he get his law degree, Sally?"

"Harvard."

"Yeah, it does show him graduating Harvard in 1985 with honors. Too bad. I was hoping maybe he'd lied about that."

Quinlan said, "You're still sure, Sally? You ready to see Scott? Beadermeyer? After what he tried tonight? You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. No more. It's crazy. It's got to end. If I killed my father, I want to know. If Noelle or someone else did, then let's find out. I won't fall apart, James. I can't stand this fuzziness anymore, this constant mess of blurred images, the voices that are all melting together."

Quinlan said very slowly, in that wonderful soothing voice of his, “Before we leave I want to go over some more things with you. You up to it?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm ready. We already talked about Scott and my father." She stopped, her fingers rubbing the pleats in her corduroy slacks.

"What is it?"

"It's about my father. And my mother." She looked down at her hands. Thin hands, skinny fingers, short fingernails. At least she hadn't bitten them since she'd met James.

"What is it, Sally? Come now, no more secrets."

"He beat my mother, viciously. I caught him doing it when I was just sixteen. That was when I moved back from the girls' school in Virginia. I tried to protect her-''

Dillon's head came up. "You're saying your father, the senior legal counsel of TransCon International, was a wife beater?"

"Why am I not surprised?" Quinlan said. He sat beside her and took one of her hands and waited, saying nothing more, just holding her hand. She'd lived through that?

"My mother-Noelle-she wouldn't do anything about it. She just took it. I guess since he was so well known and respected and rich, and she was part of it, she couldn't bear the humiliation or losing all she had.

"I remember I always looked forward to parties, diplomatic gatherings-he was invited to all of them-those lavish lobbyist banquets, intimate little power lunches where wives were trotted out to show off, magazine interviews, things like that, because I knew he wouldn't dare hit Noelle then-there'd be photos taken of the two of them together. He knew that I knew, and that made him hate me even more.

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"When I didn't leave the District to go to college, I thought he would kill me. He'd really counted on my leaving. He hadn't dreamed that I'd still be at home, watching him. He actually raised his hand, but then he lowered it, very slowly.

"I'll never forget the hatred in his eyes. He was very handsome, you know, thick, dark hair with white threaded through, dark-blue eyes, tall and slender. High cheekbones, sculpted elegantly to make him look like an aristocrat.

"Actually, he's just an older version of Scott. Isn't that strange that I thought I fell in love with a man who looked like my father?"

"Yeah," Dillon said. "I'd say that's plain not good. It's a good thing that Quinlan here doesn't look like anybody except himself."

"I came home at random times. He knew I would. Once when I'd been visiting Noelle, after I left to go back to my apartment, I realized I'd forgotten my sweater. I went back into the house and there he was, kicking my mother. I went to the phone to dial 911. As far as I was concerned, it was the last straw. I just didn't care anymore. He was going to pay. You won't believe it, but my mother crawled to me, grabbed my leg, and begged me not to call the cops. My father stood there in the library doorway and dared me to do it. He dared me, all the while watching my mother sobbing and pleading, on her knees, her nails digging into my jeans. Jesus, it was horrible. I put down the phone and left. I never went back. I just couldn't. Nothing I did mattered, not really. If I was there for a while, he just waited until I left. Then he probably beat her more viciously than if I'd never been there at all. I remember I wondered if he'd broken her ribs that time, but I never asked. What good would it have done?"'

"But he didn't take his revenge until six months ago," Dillon said. "He waited-what?-some five years before he went after you."

"That's not quite true. He started his revenge with Scott. I'm convinced of that now. Yes, he was behind my marriage to Scott. There weren't any men in my life before that. I worked for Senator Bainbridge right out of college. I was happy. I never saw my parents. I had friends. I'd see my father every once in a while, by accident, and I could tell that he still hated my guts.

"I remember once at a party, I ran into my mother in the women's room. She was combing her hair and her long sleeve had fallen away. There was a horrible purple bruise on her arm. I remember just looking at it and saying, 'What kind of monster in you allows you to let that bastard beat you?'

"She slapped me. I guess I deserved it. I didn't see her again until that night I went to her for money when I was running away from you."

"You do remember actually going to your parents' house the night your father was killed?"

"Yes, but nothing else is clear. How was I sure my father was dead? I don't know. But I did know, and I guess I must have believed that Noelle finally couldn't stand the beatings any more. Yes, that's what I must have thought, although all that isn't particularly clear."

She began to rub her temples with the palms of her hands. "No, I don't know, James. I think I remember screams, I think I can see a gun, but nothing else, just these images. And maybe blood. I remember blood. But my father? Dead? Was Noelle there? I just can't swear to anything. I'm sorry. I'm no help at all."

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But Quinlan wasn't worried. He looked over at Dillon whose fingers were tap-dancing on his laptop, nary a furrow of worry on his brow. He knew that Dillon was hearing everything they said. He also knew that Dillon wasn't worried either.

Quinlan had pulled this off before. They had lots to work with. Sally was ready.

He said slowly, more to himself really, so she would get calm again, "So your father bided his time."

"Yes. It wasn't until after we were married that I found out my father was Scott's boss. He'd never told me what firm he was with. He was vague and I didn't really pay attention. It was all downhill from there, once I found out."

Quinlan paced his living room, not nervous pacing, just rhythmic strides. Dillon worked MAX's keyboard. Sally rubbed the dust off the small rubber tree that sat in a beautiful oriental pot next to the sofa.

Quinlan stopped. He smiled at Sally. "I think it's time you made some phone calls, Sally. I think it's time we get the gang together and do some rattling. We'll see what falls out." He handed her the phone.

"Mom, then Scott, then Beadermeyer."

22

"You WANT TO know what's driving me crazy?" Dillon said, looking up from the keyboard and stretching his muscles. “I want to know why Beadermeyer is still after you. It was your father who had you put away there. He's dead. Why the hell would Beadermeyer care anymore? Who's following in your old man's footsteps? You said Scott had to be in on it? But why would he care now? Wouldn't he just want that divorce so he could get on with his life? You sure you're up for this, Sally?"

"Yes, I'm up for it. In fact, I can't wait. I want to spit in Beadermeyer's face. As for why they took me again, I've thought and thought, but I can't think of a decent reason. Now let me make those calls."

She took the phone and dialed. There wasn't any wait at all. "Mom? It's me, Sally. I wondered if I could come over. I need to talk to you, Mom. Yes, right now. Is that all right?"

Slowly, she pressed the off button. She started to dial Scott's number. Quinlan lightly touched his hand to hers and shook his head. "No, I think your mom just might get the other players there."

"He's right," Dillon said. "If she doesn't, then we'll talk to her alone. We need to anyway. We need to know exactly where she stands in all of this mess."

"James is right," Sally said and swallowed hard. "The others will be there. But know this-she was protecting me. I'd bet my life on it."

He wanted to hug her, but he didn't. He watched her blink back the tears and swallow until she had control again. Sally had guts. She also had him.

He said, "Okay. Let me make some phone calls, then we'll get this show on the road."

Thirty minutes later James tapped the griffin-head knocker of the St. John home.

Noelle St. John answered the door herself. She was wearing a silk dress in a pale blue. Her hair, blonder Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

than Sally's, was twisted up in a neat chignon. She looked elegant, tense, and very pale. She hesitated a moment, then held out her arms to her daughter. Sally didn't move. Noelle St. John looked as if she was ready to burst into tears. She lowered her arms to her sides.

She said quickly, her words running together as if she couldn't get them out fast enough, "Oh, Sally, you've come. I've been so worried. When your grandparents called me I didn't know what to do. Come in, love, come in. We'll get this all straightened out." Then she saw Quinlan in the shadows.

"You."

"Yes, ma'am. May I come in as well?"

"No, you may not. Sally, what's going on here?"

"Sorry-no me, then no Sally."

She looked from Sally to Quinlan, shaking her head. She looked confused.

"Noelle, it's all right. Let us in."

She was shaking her head, back and forth. "But he's FBI, Sally. I don't want him here. He was here before with another man, and they searched the house looking for you. Why would you want him with you? It doesn't make sense. The last person you want around you is a cop. He's lied to you. He's manipulating you. He's just making you more confused."

"No, Noelle, I'm not confused at all about this."

"But Sally, when your grandparents called me, they told me he was right behind you and you claimed you knew he would be. You said he was smart. But they said you wanted to escape and go into hiding. You said the same thing to me. Why are you with him? Why do you want to be with him?''

"He caught me. I'm an amateur and he's not. And trust me, you want him with me, too." Sally took a small step forward and lightly laid her fingertips on her mother's arm.

"That's me, ma'am, real smart. Special Agent James Quinlan. I'm pleased you remember me."

"I wish I didn't remember, sir," Noelle said. She looked back over her shoulder. James smiled, knowing now that there was someone else in the living room. Scott Brainerd? Dr. Beadermeyer? Or both of them? He sure as hell hoped both of them were. "Both of us or neither of us," he said. "It's chilly out here.

Make up your mind, ma'am."

"All right, but I don't know why you're with her. You've no right, none at all. Sally's my daughter, she's ill, the FBI can't hold her since she's mentally unstable, nor can the police. She's my responsibility, I'm her guardian, and I say she's going back to the sanitarium. It's the only way she can be protected."

"All that?" James said, looking amazed. Noelle looked at him as if she'd like to smack his face. "She doesn't look unstable to me. I'll bet she could withstand being beaten with rubber hoses, even having her fingernails yanked out. There's not an unstable cell in Sally's brain."

"She's been very ill for the past six months," Noelle said, as she stood back.

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They walked past her into the foyer. There were fresh flowers on the beautiful antique table with the large gilded mirror hanging over it. There had always been fresh flowers in that hideous oriental vase, Sally thought, usually white and yellow chrysanthemums.

"Come along into your father's study, Sally. Let's get this over with. Then I'll make certain you're safe again."

"Safe again?" Sally whispered. "Is she nuts?"

Quinlan hugged her quickly against him, and when she looked up at him, he winked at her. "Don't worry."

"Well, well, what a surprise," he said when he saw Dr. Beadermeyer standing by the fireplace. He'd studied the man's photo so many times he felt as if he'd interviewed him, even though they'd never met in the flesh before. Was he the bastard who'd struck him on the head at The Cove? He'd find out soon enough.

He turned to the other man. “And this, I take it, is your husband, Sally? That famous deal-maker, Scott Brainerd? Who worked for your father? Who probably married you because your father ordered him to?"

"Her name's Susan," the man said. " 'Sally' is a little girl's name. I never liked it. I call her Susan." He took a step forward, then stopped. "You're looking a bit on edge, Susan, and no wonder. What are you doing with him? Noelle just told me he's an FBI agent-"

"Special agent," Quinlan said, wanting to goad this damned man until he gnashed his teeth. "I've always been a special agent."

"He caught up with her," Noelle said, "and he brought her back. I don't know why he's here, but we must convince him that since Sally isn't well, she wasn't responsible for killing her father. We can protect her.

Doctor Beadermeyer can take her back to the sanitarium and keep her safe."

"Since Father's dead," Sally said, staring her mother right in the eye, “that raises a whole lot of questions.

For example, since he's no longer with us, then who will come and beat me and fondle me and humiliate me every week?''

Her mother stared at her, her mouth working, but no sound came out. Her face was leached of color.

She looked sick now, and uncertain. "Oh, God, no, Sally, that's not possible. Your father and Scott and Doctor Beadermeyer, they all told me every week how well you were doing, what fine care you were getting. No, this can't be true."

"She shouldn't speak of her dead father like that," Dr. Beadermeyer said.

"He's right. This just proves how ill she is," Scott said. "She's making this up. Amory beat his own daughter? Fondled her? That's crazy, she's crazy, she just proved it."

"It's classic," Dr. Beadermeyer said from his staged pose by the fireplace. "Some patients fantasize so strongly that they begin to believe what their minds dredge up. It's usually things that they've always wanted, deep down.

"Your father was a handsome man, Sally. Girls have sexual feelings about their fathers. It's nothing to be ashamed of. The only reason you fantasize that he's come to you is because you wanted it so badly. The Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

beating part, the humiliating part, is just so you can forgive yourself for these feelings by making yourself helpless so that you couldn't prevent it."

"What a bunch of shit," Quinlan said. "You're Doctor Beadermeyer, I take it. Such a pleasure to finally meet you."

"Sorry I can't say the same about you. I'm here to take Sally back with me, and even though you're FBI there's nothing you can do about it."

"Why did you try to kidnap her from the Bonhomie Club three hours ago?"

"Alfred? What's he talking about?"

"A mere misunderstanding, my dear Noelle. I found out where Sally was. I thought I could simply take her with no fuss, no bother, but it didn't work out."

"It didn't work out?" Sally repeated. "You tried to kidnap me and shove a needle in my arm, and all you can say is it didn't work out?"

He merely smiled at her and shrugged again.

"He brought two goons with him, Noelle," Quinlan said. "All three of them grabbed Sally when she came out of the bathroom and tried to give her a shot." He turned back to Beadermeyer. He wanted very badly to wring the bastard's neck. "We nearly got you, you miserable excuse for a human. At least you have to have your rear window replaced."

"No problem," Beadermeyer said. "It wasn't my car."

"What is going on here?" Scott said. "Noelle told me that Sally escaped. Now she's with an FBI agent.

Doctor Beadermeyer told me Sally met this man in this hick town in Oregon and they're lovers. That's not possible. Sally, you're still my wife. What's going on here?"

Quinlan smiled benignly at all of them. "Why don't you just consider me a sort of lawyer for her? I'm here to see that you don't run all over her or that the good doctor here doesn't try to shove another needle into her."

He eyed Scott Brainerd. Tall, slim, beautifully dressed, but that handsome face of his looked haggard.

There were dark circles beneath his eyes. He didn't look happy about any of this, and more, he looked scared. He should. Quinlan could tell that he wasn't carrying a gun. He was nervous, part of him always moving, his hands fidgeting. He pulled a pipe out of the pocket of his lovely English jacket. A shoulder holster would ruin the line of that jacket. The bastard.

Quinlan said nothing more, just watched him light his pipe. He imagined that he used the delay to good advantage when he was in negotiations. It also gave his hands something to do when he was nervous or scared shitless.

"You're the man who took Sally away from me, aren't you? You're the one who broke into the sanitarium?"

James smiled at Beadermeyer. "Yeah, right on both counts. How are the German shepherds? They're fine dogs, both with a taste for good raw steak."

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"You had no right to break into my facility. I'll sue your butt off."

"Just be quiet, Alfred," Noelle said, "and you too, Mr. Quinlan. Sally, why don't you sit down? Would you like a cup of tea? You look exhausted. You need to rest. You're so thin."

Sally looked at her mother and slowly shook her head. "I'm sorry, Noelle, but I'm afraid you'd let Doctor Beadermeyer drug the tea.''

The woman looked as if she'd been hit. She looked frantic. She took a step toward Sally, her hand out.

"Sally, no, I'm your mother. I wouldn't hurt you. Please, don't do this. All I want is what's best for you."

Sally was shaking. James took her arm in a firm grip and led her to a small settee. He stayed close to her, knowing it was important for her to feel him beside her, feel the warmth of him, the solidness of him. He put his hands behind his head and eyed them all from beneath his lowered lashes.

He said to Scott Brainerd, who was now puffing furiously on his pipe, "Tell me about how you first met Sally."

"Yes, Scott, do tell him," Sally said.

"If I do, will you tell him to get the hell out of our lives?"

"It's a possibility," Quinlan said. "Tell you what I can promise for sure. I won't throw Sally in the slammer."

"Good," Noelle said. "She needs to be kept safe. Doctor Beadermeyer will see to it. He's promised me he would."

Their litany, Quinlan thought, their damned litany. Was Noelle a part of this? Or could she be this gullible? Couldn't she really see Sally? See that she was perfectly all right?

Scott began to pace, looking at Noelle, who was staring intently at her daughter, as if to read her thoughts, then at Beadermeyer, who was lounging in his large wing chair, trying to copy the damned agent.

"I met her at the Whistler exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. It was an exciting evening. They were displaying sixteen of Whistler's Japanese paintings. Anyway, Sally was there partying with her friends, like she always did. One of the Smithsonian lawyers introduced us. We talked, then had coffee. I took her to dinner.

"That's how it began, nothing more, nothing less. We discovered we had a lot in common. We fell in love.

We married."

Beadermeyer rose and stretched. "Vastly romantic, Scott. Now, it's late and Sally needs her rest. It's time for us to leave, Sally."

"I don't think so," Sally said, her voice as calm as could be. James felt the shaking in her arm. "I'm twenty-six years old. I'm perfectly sane. You can't make me go back with you. Incidentally, Scott, you didn't tell James why you neglected to mention that you worked for my father until after we were married."

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"You never asked, did you, Sally? You were caught up with your own career, all your fancy parties and wild friends. You didn't really care what I did. You never asked, damn you."

"I asked, but you never came right out with it. You told me it was a law firm and left it at that. I remember asking you, but you wouldn't give much out, ever."

Quinlan felt the ripple beneath the flesh of her hand. He squeezed slightly but kept quiet. She was doing just fine. He was pleased and optimistic. He was fast getting the measure of all three people. Soon, he thought, soon now.

Sally paused just a moment, then said calmly, "I certainly didn't care after I found out you were having an affair."

"That's a lie! I wasn't having an affair. I was faithful to you. I've always been faithful to you, even during these past six months."

Noelle cleared her voice. "This is leading nowhere. Sally, you're saying that you're sane, that indeed your father abused you in the sanitarium-''

"So did Doctor Beadermeyer. He had this creepy little attendant called Holland who liked to bathe me, strip me, fix my hair, and sit on the side of my bed just staring at me."

Noelle turned to Beadermeyer. "Is this true?"

He shrugged. "Just a bit of it. She did have an attendant named Holland. He's gone now. Perhaps once he might have been out of line. These things happen, Noelle, particularly when a patient is as sick as Sally is. As for the rest of it, it's just part of her illness-the delusions, the dark fantasies. Believe me, just as you believed your husband and Scott. Scott lived with her. He saw the disintegration. Isn't that right, Scott?"

Scott nodded. "It was frightening. We're not lying, Noelle."

Noelle St. John did believe them. Quinlan saw it on her face, the look of new resolve, the new certainty, the profound pain she felt.

She said to her daughter, "Listen, Sally, I love you. I've loved you forever. You will get better. I don't care what it costs. You'll have the best care. If you don't like Doctor Beadermeyer, then we'll find you another doctor. But for now, please, go back with him to the sanitarium so you can be protected.

"You were judged mentally incompetent by Judge Har-kin. You don't even remember the hearing, do you? Well, no wonder. You were so ill, you just sat through the whole thing, didn't say a thing, just stared straight ahead. I spoke to you, but you just looked through me. You didn't even recognize me. It was horrible.

"I'm your guardian now that your father is dead. Both Scott and I are, as a matter of fact. Please trust me, Sally.

I only want what's best for you. I love you."

Scott said, "Mr. Quinlan, you could hold her for a day. maybe, but that's all. The judge has already ruled that she isn't responsible for her actions. You can't do anything to her. No one would consider having her Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

stand trial for the murder of her father."

She kept her head, though Quinlan knew that shook her. This was some group. He still couldn't make up his mind about her mother. She seemed so sincere, so caring, but... Now they seemed certain she'd murdered her father? It was almost time for him to intervene, but not just yet.

Sally said, raising her hand to stem her mother's words, “Noelle, did you know that Doctor Beadermeyer kept me drugged all the time? That's why I don't remember the hearing. I told you that my father came and beat me twice a week, but did you know that Doctor Beadermeyer watched? Oh, yes, Doctor, I know about that two-way mirror. I also know you let others look through the door window when my father was fondling himself while I was lying naked on the bed."

She jumped to her feet, and Quinlan was sure she was going to attack Beadermeyer. He lightly touched her arm. Her muscles were frozen. She yelled, "Did you enjoy it, you filthy slug?"

She whirled around to face her mother. "I don't remember the hearing because he kept me drugged up so I wouldn't fight him or any of his keepers. Don't you understand? There was no way in hell they could let up on the drugs. I would have blown them out of the water. Did you also know that sometimes my father would have him lighten the dosage so I'd be more alert when he came to abuse me? That's right, Noelle, believe it. My father, your husband. I'm not lying to you. I'm not making this up to defend my shattered ego. My father was a monster, Noelle. But you know that, don't you?"

Her mother screamed at her, "No more of that, Sally! No more of your crazy lies. I can't stand it, I just can't."

Scott Brainerd shouted, "That's right, Sally. That's more than enough. Apologize to your mother for those horrible things you're saying about her husband."

"But they're all true, and you know they are, Scott. Father couldn't have had me committed without your being in on it. Why did you want me put away, Scott?''

"It nearly killed me to have you committed," Scott said. "Nearly killed me. But we had to. You were going to harm yourself."

To Quinlan's relief, Sally actually managed to laugh. "Oh, that's really good, Scott. You're a wretched liar. Now, Noelle, when my father was beating me, or just holding me down while he stood over me, he'd laugh, tell me how he finally had me right where he wanted me, where I deserved to be.

"Goodness, I remember it all now. He said it was his revenge for all the years I tried to protect you, Noelle. He said being in this nice place would keep my mouth shut about the other, but I don't know what he meant by that."

"I do," Quinlan said. "We'll get to that later."

She smiled at him and nodded, then turned back to her mother. "Did he tell you how much he hated me?

But I guess locking me away wasn't enough for him. I guess he wasn't beating you enough, Noelle, since he had to come and beat me as well. Twice a week. Like clockwork. He was a man of disciplined habits. I was so drugged I sometimes didn't even know, but Holland, that pathetic little creep, he would say, 'Yep, every Tuesday and Friday, the old guy's here to knock you around and beat off.'

"Of course, I do remember many of the times, particularly when they lightened the drugs. It pleased Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

him-to know I knew it was him and I was helpless to stop him doing anything he wanted to do."

Noelle St. John turned on Dr. Beadermeyer. "She is sick, isn't she, Alfred? This can't be true, can it?

And not just Amory, but Scott too. Why, he's sworn to me that she's very ill. Just as you have."

Beadermeyer shrugged. It was the man's favorite response, Quinlan thought. "I think she believes what she's saying is true. She really is very ill. Because she believed he did this to her, she had to murder him to assuage her own guilt. I told you how she managed to hide the sedatives beneath her tongue and escape the sanitarium. She came straight here, like a homing pigeon, took her father's gun from his desk, and when he came in, she shot him. You heard the shot, Noelle. So did you, Scott. By the time I got here she was standing over him, watching the blood leak out of his chest, and all of you were just staring at her. I tried to help her, but she turned that gun on me and escaped again."

Quinlan sat forward on the sofa. Ah, now it would come out. It was time. None of this surprised him. In a few minutes it wouldn't surprise Sally either.

Beadermeyer turned to Sally, and his voice was gentle as a soft rain on the windowpanes. "Come, my dear, I'll protect you from the police. I'll protect you from the FBI, from the press, from everyone. You must leave this man. You don't even know who he is."

"Susan," Scott said, "I'm sorry for all this, but I know you couldn't help yourself. All those delusions, those dreams, those fantasies, Doctor Beadermeyer told us you had. You did shoot Amory, you had the gun in your hand. Noelle and I saw you holding that gun, leaning down over him. We just want to help you, protect you. We didn't tell the police a thing. Doctor Beadermeyer left before they even came. No one accused you. We've been protecting you all along."

"I didn't kill my father."

"But you told me you didn't remember anything," Noelle said. "You told me you were afraid I'd done it and that was why you ran away. To protect you, I made the police suspect me, acted as guilty as I could, even though I hadn't killed him. What saved me was that they couldn't ever find the gun. Neither Scott nor I ever told the police that we were practically witnesses to the shooting. In fact, Scott didn't even tell them he was here. That made me a better suspect. They couldn't find you. The police are certain that you know I did it and that's why you ran. But I didn't, Sally, I didn't. You did."

"And I know she didn't, Susan," Scott Brainerd said, his pipe dangling loose in his right hand, cold now.

"I met her in the hallway, and we came into the living room together. You were there, leaning over him, the gun in your hand. You have to go with Doctor Beadermeyer or else you'll wind up behind bars."

"Ah, yes," said Quinlan. "The good Doctor Beadermeyer, or should I call you Norman Lipsy, from the fair nation of Canada to our north?''

"I prefer Doctor Beadermeyer," the man said, with exquisite calm. He lounged more comfortably in his chair, a man without a care, relaxed, at ease.

"What's he talking about?" Scott said.

"Your good doctor here is a fake," Quinlan said. "That little hideaway of his is nothing more than a prison where he keeps folks that family or others want out of the way. I wonder how much money Sally's father paid him to keep her? Maybe you know, Scott? Maybe some of it was your money. I'll just bet it was."

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"I am a doctor, sir. You are insulting. I will sue you for libel."

"I have been to the sanitarium," Noelle said. "It's a clean, modern facility. The people there couldn't have been nicer. I didn't get to see Sally simply because she was so ill. What do you mean, people pay for Doctor Beadermeyer to hold their enemies prisoner?"

"It's true, Mrs. St. John, the simple truth. Your husband wanted Sally out of the way. Was it his final revenge against her for trying to protect you? I'll bet that's sure one part of it."

Quinlan turned to Sally. "I think you might have wasted your time protecting your mom, Sally. It seems to me that she would just as soon throw you right back to the hounds."

"That's not true," Noelle said, twisting her hands now. "Don't believe him, Sally."

Quinlan just smiled at her. "In any case, your husband, Mrs. St. John, paid Norman Lipsy here a ton of money every month to keep his daughter drugged to her ears, to let him come visit his little girl and abuse her. Oh, yes, he did abuse her, humiliate her, treat her like a little sex slave. We have a witness."

23

DR. BEADERMEYER DIDN'T change position or expression. Scott actually jumped. As for Noelle, she turned as white as the walls.

"No," she whispered. "A witness?"

"Yes, ma'am. FBI agents picked up Holland. Just before we came here, they called. He's singing, Norman. His little lungs are near to bursting with all the songs pouring out of his mouth.

"It's not just Sally who was kept there. There's a senator's daughter. Her name is Patricia. Doctor Beadermeyer gave her a lobotomy-and botched it, by the way."

"That isn't true, none of it."

"Now, Norman, the FBI will be at the sanitarium shortly with a search warrant, and they'll go through that office of yours like ants at a picnic lunch. All your dirty little secrets will be out. I have a friend at the Washington Post. All the world will soon know your secrets. All those poor people you've kept at your prison will be free again.

"Now, given all this, Noelle, do you still want to put any stock in this guy's word?"

Noelle looked from Quinlan to Dr. Beadermeyer. "How much did my husband pay you?" It was suddenly a new Noelle-straight shoulders, no longer pale and fragile-looking, but a strong woman whose eyes were narrowed now, whose jaw was locked and hard. He saw rage in those soft blue eyes of hers.

"It was just for her care, Noelle, nothing more. Her case is complex. She's paranoid schizophrenic. She's been mentally ill for some time. We tried a number of drugs to relieve her symptoms. But we were never fully successful. This thing she dreamed up about her father-it gave her enough to focus to escape and come to kill him. It's that simple and that complex. I did nothing wrong.

"This Holland-poor fellow-I took him in. He's very simple in the head. It's true he attended Sally. He was very fond of her in his moronic way. Only a fool would believe anything he said. He'd say whatever Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

anyone wanted him to say. They'll realize quickly enough that he'll say anything, just to please them."

"For someone who's not a shrink, you're not bad, Norman," Quinlan said.

"What do you mean he's not a shrink?" Scott said.

"He's a plastic surgeon. He deals with the outside of the head, not the inside. He's a fake. He's a criminal.

And he watched your husband hurt his own daughter. I have no reason to lie to you, Mrs. St. John."

"Bastard," Dr. Beadermeyer said. "All right, Noelle, if you no longer believe me, no longer trust my word, then I won't take Sally back with me. I'll leave. I've got nothing more to say. The only reason I came here was to help Sally."

He took a step forward, but Quinlan was up in an instant. Three steps and he had Dr. Beadermeyer's tie in his fist. He said very softly, right in his face, “Who is paying you to hold Sally now that her father's dead? Scott here? If so, why? Why was she put away? It wasn't just revenge, was it?" Quinlan knew, but he wanted to hear it out of Beadermeyer's mouth.

"Noelle is paying me only for her regular treatment, the same as I've always received."

"Bullshit. Who's paying you? You still want to lie, do you? Well, I'll be able to tell you, Mrs. St. John, exactly the amount your dear husband was paying this little bastard, just as soon as the FBI finishes going through all his crooked little books."

"I'm calling my lawyer. You can't do this. I'll sue you, all of you."

"If Mrs. St. John was paying you just for Sally's care, then why did you come to The Cove, knock both Sally and me on the head, and haul her back to your sanitarium? Did you bill Noelle for the airfare? And your little excursion to the Bonhomie Club with those two goombas- will you send Noelle a bill for their services? How about that rear window I shot out? Don't you bill for overtime, Norman? No comment this time? Don't you even want to insist that you're such a dedicated doctor that you'll do anything to help your poor patients?" Quinlan turned to Noelle, who looked as if she'd love to have a knife. She was looking at Dr. Beadermeyer with very new eyes. "When I got to Sally in the sanitarium she was so drugged it took more than a day to clear her out. That sounds like great treatment, doesn't it, Noelle?"

"Oh, I believe you, Mr. Quinlan. I believe you now."

Dr. Beadermeyer just shrugged and looked down at his fingernails.

"Maybe," Quinlan said, "it's Scott here who wants his wife kept under wraps?''

"That's ridiculous," Scott Brainerd yelled. "I never did anything, just told her father how worried I was about her."

Noelle said very calmly, "No, Scott, that isn't true. You're lying as well. All of you lied to me. If it had been just Amory, I wouldn't have bought it for a minute, but no, all of you were just like this Greek chorus, telling me the same thing over and over until I believed you. Goddamn you, I believed you! I allowed you to put my little girl in that goddamn institution!"

Quinlan quickly stepped out of the way when he saw her coming. She dashed to Beadermeyer and slammed her fist into his jaw before he even had a chance to twitch.

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He reeled back against the mantelpiece. Noelle stepped back, panting. "You bastard." She whirled around to face Scott. "You vicious little shit, why did you do this to my daughter? How much did my husband pay you?"

Sally rose from the sofa. She walked to her mother. She put her arms around her. "Thank you," she said against her mother's hair. "Thank you. I hope I can hit Beadermeyer myself before this is all over."

Sally wiped her damp hands on her pants legs. She felt such a surge of relief that it made her mouth dry.

She actually smiled as she said to Scott, "I'm divorcing you. It shouldn't take long, since I don't even want my poor ivy plant that's probably already dead anyway. My lawyer will serve the papers on you as soon as I can arrange it."

"You're fucking crazy. No lawyer is going to do a thing you say."

"If you take another step toward her, Brainerd, I'll just have to kill you. That or I'll let Noelle at you.

Look at poor Norman, his lip is bleeding. You know, I like the thought of Sally as a widow."

Quinlan walked calmly up to Scott Brainerd, pulled back his fist, and rammed it into his stomach. "That's for Sally, Noelle, and me."

Scott yelped, bent over, breathing like he'd been shot, his arms clutching his middle.

"Sally," Quinlan said, rubbing his knuckles, wanting to hit Scott Brainerd again but knowing it wouldn't be smart, "one of my sisters-in-law is a lawyer. She'll handle the paperwork on the divorce. Severing ties with this slug shouldn't be difficult. It takes six months. Maybe I should kill him. You want to try running away, Scott?"

"Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you guys, the FBI is also all over the private books in Amory St. John's firm.

They've been doing that for a while now. That's the real reason the FBI is involved in the first place. It's all delicate stuff, so that's why we've kept it under wraps, but there's no reason for you not to know.

"Selling arms to places like Algeria, Iraq, and Libya- well, we do tend to frown on stunts like that. And that's got to be the other reason, Sally, that your father and your husband locked you away. They must have believed that you would say something incriminating, something to prove that they were traitors."

"But I never saw a thing, never," Sally said. "Is that it, Scott?"

"No, damn you. I didn't have a thing to do with that."

"And her father manipulated you into coming on to Sally, into marrying her?"

"No, that's not true. All right, so I did agree to have her put away. That's because I believed she was sick."

"Why did you believe I was sick, Scott?"

He didn't say anything, just waved his pipe at her. "You weren't a good wife. Your dad swore to me that your career was just something for you to do until you got married. He said you were just like your mother, a woman who really wanted a husband to take care of and children to look after. I wanted a wife to stay home and take care of me, but you wouldn't do it. I needed you there, to help me, to Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

understand me, but no, you never stayed there for me."

"That doesn't make her sick, Scott," Quinlan said.

"I refuse to say anything more about it," Scott said.

"Why am I not surprised that he was a traitor?" said Noelle. "But I'm not. Then maybe one of his clients murdered him. Maybe it wasn't Sally after all. Such a pity it wasn't Scott who murdered him. That's what you were, isn't it, Scott, you pathetic jerk?"

Good, Quinlan thought, she was trying to explain her husband's murder another way. He was pleased.

He said, "That's what he was, Mrs. St. John. Now, you said you walked in here with Scott and found Sally literally standing over him with the smoking gun."

Noelle was frowning, her mouth working. She was thinking real hard. "Well, yes, but she said that she'd heard the shot and come running. She said she had picked the gun up. She said she was here to get money from me and leave."

Quinlan pulled a folded piece of paper out of his breast pocket. He unfolded it and scanned it. “This is your statement to the cops, Noelle. No mention of Sally. Too bad a neighbor reported seeing her running from the house. But you tried, Noelle, you tried.

"Were you really with Scott that night? Did you really run in here with him to see Sally over your husband's body?"

Scott threw his pipe at the fireplace. It fell with a loud crack against the marble hearth. "Damn you! Of course I was with her! I was with her all evening."

Scott was still rubbing his belly, and that made Quinlan feel good. That damned bloody little worm. He turned back to Noelle.

"I'm pleased you tried to protect Sally. But I did wonder if you weren't in it along with these other sterling characters."

"I don't blame you," Noelle said. "I'd think I was a jerk too. But I'm not. I'm just plain stupid."

Sally smiled at her mother. "I'm stupid too. I married Scott, didn't I? Just take a good look at him."

Quinlan said, "Listen, Noelle. Only a real bad person would turn on her daughter after what she tried to do for you since she was sixteen. She was just a girl, and yet she tried to protect you. I want you to tell me this isn't true. Tell me you didn't kill your husband. Tell me you didn't kill that monster who'd been abusing you."

"I didn't kill him, I didn't. Oh, God, you believe me, don't you, Sally? You don't believe I killed your father, do you?"

There was no hesitation. Sally took her mother in her arms. "I believe you."

"But there's so much more, Sally," Quinlan said, his voice soft and smooth, the promise of truth in that voice.

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"It's time now to get it all out. I want you to think back now. Look at Noelle and think back to that night."

Sally drew back, her eyes on her mother. Then, slowly, she turned to Quinlan. "I now have a clear picture of my father, lying right over there, blood all over his chest. I'm sorry, James, but I don't remember anything else."

"Your mother said you had a gun. You don't remember taking the gun with you, Sally?"

She started to shake her head, then she stared down at her brown boots.

Quinlan said, "It was an antique Roth-Steyr pistol your father probably bought off an old English soldier from World War I. It has a ten-round clip, ugly devil, about nine inches long."

"Yes," Sally said slowly, moving away from him, walking toward the spot on the floor where she'd found her father's body, right in front of his huge mahogany desk. "Yes, I remember that pistol. He was very proud of it. The English ambassador gave it to him back in the 1970's. He'd done him a big favor.

"Yes, now I can see it clearly. I remember picking it up now, holding it. I remember thinking it was heavy, that it weighed my hand down. I remember that it felt hot, like it had just been used."

"It is heavy. The sucker weighs a bit more than three pounds. Are you looking at it, Sally?"

She was standing there, apart from him, apart from all of them, and he knew she was remembering now, fitting those jagged memory pieces together, slowly, but he'd known she could do it.

"It's hot, Sally," he said. "It's burning your hand. What are you going to do with it?''

"I remember that I was glad he was dead. He was wicked. He'd hurt Noelle all those years and he'd never paid for it. He'd always done exactly what he'd wanted to do. He'd gotten me. There'd never been any justice, until then.

"Yes, I can remember that's what I was thinking. 'You're dead, you miserable bastard, and I'm glad.

Everyone is free from you now. You're dead.' "

“Do you remember Noelle coming in? Do you remember her screaming?"

She was looking down at her hands, flexing her fingers. "The gun is so hot. I don't know what to do with it. I can see you now, Noelle, and yes, there's Scott behind you. But you have your coats on. You weren't here at the house, you'd been out. Just Father is here, no one else.

"You started screaming, Noelle. Scott, you didn't do a blessed thing. You looked at me like I was some sort of wild dog, like you wanted to put me down."

"We thought you'd killed him," Scott said. "He wasn't even supposed to be at home that night. He was supposed to be in New York, but he came back unexpectedly. You grabbed that gun and you shot him."

But Sally was just shaking her head, looking not frightened but thoughtful, her forehead furrowed. "No, I remember that when I got here I tried the front door. I didn't expect it to be unlocked, but it was. Just as I turned the knob, I heard a shot. I ran into this room and there he was, on the floor, his chest covered with blood.

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"I remember-" She paused, frowning ferociously. Then she pressed her knuckles against her forehead.

"It's so vague, so fuzzy. Those damned drugs you gave me- God, I could kill you for that."

Quinlan said, "He's in so much trouble now, Sally, that killing him would be letting him off lightly. I want to see him spend all his money on lawyers. Then I want to see him rot in prison for the rest of his miserable life. Don't worry about him. You can do this. It's all vague, but it's there. What do you see?''

She was staring down at where his body had sprawled, arms flung out, his right palm up. So much blood.

There had been so much blood. Noelle had laid a new carpet. But there'd been something strange, something she couldn't quite put her finger on, something...

"There was someone else there," she said. "Yes, there was someone else in the room."

"How did you get the gun?"

She said without hesitation, "It was on the floor. He was bending down to pick it up when I came into the room. He straightened up real fast and ran to the French doors."

She turned slowly and looked at the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave onto a patio and yard. There were high bushes and a fence between this house and the one next door.

"You're sure it was a man?"

"Yes, I'm sure. I can see his hand opening the handle on the French doors. He's wearing gloves, black leather gloves."

"Did you see his face?"

"No, he-" Her voice froze. She began to shake her head, back and forth, back and forth. "No," she whispered, looking toward those French doors. "It's not possible, it's just not possible."

"You see him now, Sally?" Quinlan's voice was steady and unhurried.

She looked at James, then at her mother, at Scott, and finally at Dr. Beadermeyer. She said, "Maybe they're right, James. Maybe I am crazy."

"Who was he, Sally?"

"No, no, I'm crazy. I'm delusional."

"Who was he?"

She looked defeated, her shoulders bowed, her head lowered. She whispered, "He was my father."

"Ah," Quinlan said. Everything was falling neatly into place, though not yet for the others.

Noelle whispered, "Your father? Oh, Sally, that's impossible. Your father was lying dead on the floor. I saw him, I went down on my knees beside him. I even shook him. It was your father. I couldn't be wrong about that."

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Scott waved his pipe at her, shaking his head, saying, "She's bloody crazy, crazier than we thought. Your father's dead, Sally, just like Noelle said. I saw him dead too. Don't forget there were the two of us."

Dr. Beadermeyer said, "It's all right, Sally. It's another symptom of your illness. Will you come with me now? I'll call your father's lawyer, and he can come and make sure this man doesn't take you to jail."

Quinlan let all their voices float over him for a moment. He stood up and walked to Sally. He took her hands in his. "Well done," he said, leaned down, and kissed her.

"You bastard, that's my wife! I don't want her, but she still is my wife."

He kissed her again. "Everything makes sense now." He turned to Dr. Beadermeyer. "Now it all fits.

You're a plastic surgeon, Norman. You must be very good at it. Where did you find the man whose face you reworked into Amory St. John's?"

"You don't know what you're talking about. The murdered man was Amory St. John. No one doubted it.

Why should they? There were no questions."

"That's because there was no reason to doubt it. Why would anyone check dental records, for example, if the wife of the deceased identified the body, if the face on the body looked like all the faces on all the photographs on the desk? It does bother me though that the medical examiner didn't see the scars from the surgery. You must be very good, Norman."

"God, did you really do that, Doctor Beadermeyer?" Scott said. Did you really plan with Amory St. John to kill another man and have him take Amory's place? Was he planning to leave me to take the fall?

Dammit, it's the truth, isn't it? I'd be the one blamed because he was supposedly dead. And I didn't do all that much, I swear. There was Sally, but that was necessary because we knew she'd read several short messages that I'd forgotten were in my briefcase. There wasn't any choice. I went along with him because I had to."

Quinlan hit him again, this time in the jaw. He rather hoped he'd broken it.

Beadermeyer looked down at Scott, who was now lying on his side, unconscious. "What a piece of nothing he is, but that's not my problem. Now, Quinlan, all this is nuts. Amory St. John was the one who died. I've had enough of this. I'm sorry, Sally. I've tried to help you, but now I just don't care. I'm leaving."

"When the devil leaves hell, Doctor Beadermeyer," she said. "That's when I'd go with you."

"Best you find another comparison, Sally," Quinlan said. "I know for a fact that the devil roams all over the world. We've got two of his little minions right here. So Sally's father is still paying you. That surely answers the rest of my questions."

"I'm leaving," Dr. Beadermeyer said and walked toward the door.

"I don't think you want to leave just yet," Dillon said, stepping into the room.

"When that worm wakes up I want to hit him," Noelle St. John said. "Well, maybe I won't wait." She walked over to Scott and kicked him in the ribs. "As for you," she said to Dr. Beadermeyer, "if only Mr.

Quinlan will give me a rubber hose, I'll work you over but good. What all of you did to my daughter-Jesus, I'd like to kill you."

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"I'll make sure you get that rubber hose, Noelle," Quinlan said.

"I'm going to sue all of you. Police brutality, that's it, and libel. Just look at poor Scott."

Sally went over and kicked Scott in the ribs. Then she walked into her mother's arms.

24

DILLON NODDED TO Quinlan and smiled at Sally. "That was well done. Quinlan's good at helping people remember."

He turned to Dr. Beadermeyer. "I don't think you want to leave just yet. I've got lots more buddies coming any minute now. And they're all special agents, which means they can shoot off the end of your pinky finger at fifty yards and make you sing out every secret you've had since you were two years old.

They're really very good, so it's best that you just stay put, Doctor Beadermeyer." Noelle was staring at Dr. Beadermeyer. "I hope you rot in the deepest pit they can find to throw you in. Now, you miserable ass, where is my husband? Who was the poor man both of you murdered?''

"That's an excellent question," Quinlan said. "Tell us, Norman."

It happened quickly. Dr. Beadermeyer pulled a small revolver out of his coat pocket. "I don't have to tell you anything, you son of a bitch. You've ruined my life, Quinlan. I have no home, no money, damn you, nothing. God, I'd love to kill you, but then I'd never know peace, would I?"

They heard several car doors slam. "It's too late to whine, Norman," Quinlan said. "Now you're going to the slammer. You might consider cutting a deal. Tell us where Amory St. John is hiding. Tell us the name of that guy whose face you rearranged. Tell us the whole sordid story." "Go to hell, Quinlan."

"Not for many years yet, I hope," Quinlan said. "So it was Amory St. John who was continuing to pay you to keep Sally a prisoner. Was it indeed her father who followed her to The Cove and peered at her through her bedroom window that night? Were you with him? Did the two of you knock us out and take Sally back to your wonderful sanitarium? Yeah, that sounds right. It was Amory St. John on the phone to his daughter, his own face staring in at her through the bedroom window."

"It's all a lie, all of it. I'm leaving now. Come here, Noelle. I don't think anyone will shoot if you're with me."

Sally said, "My father must have been furious when I saw him run out of this room. He would have thought I'd shout it to the world. That's why he wanted you to keep me in the sanitarium."

"Don't be ridiculous, Sally," Dr. Beadermeyer said. "You're crazy. You escaped from a mental institution.

Even if you'd spouted all this out as soon as the cops got here, no one would have believed you, not a single soul."

"But it would have raised questions," Quinlan said. "I would have wondered and chewed on it. I'm a real FBI nerd when it comes to things like that. I wouldn't have let it go. Sally's right. That's why you and her father wanted to keep her locked up. She was out of the way permanently. And her father still believed she knew he was a traitor, or at least suspected that he wasn't a solid citizen."

"Shut up. Come here, Noelle, or I'll shoot your bloody daughter."

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"How much money are we talking here, Norman? A couple million? More? It just occurred to me why you wanted Sally so badly. She was your insurance policy, wasn't she? With her, you didn't have to worry that

Amory St. John would kill you. Of course, he could have killed Sally too, but that would have raised questions inevitably.

"No, better for him to just keep paying you off until he came up with a bright idea to rid himself of you.

Have I gotten anything wrong, Norman? I love real-life wicked plots. Novels can't even come close."

Dr. Beadermeyer waved the gun. "Come here, Noelle."

Scott stirred on the floor, shook his head, and slowly sat up. He moaned and rubbed his ribs. "What's going on here? What are you doing, Doctor Beadermeyer?''

"I'm leaving, Scott. If you want to come along, you can. We've got Noelle. The cops won't take a chance of shooting because they just might hit her. Come here, Noelle." He pointed the revolver at Sally. "Now."

Noelle walked slowly to where he stood. He grabbed her left arm and pulled her tightly against him.

"We'll just go out through the French doors. Nice and slow, Noelle, nice and slow. Ah, Scott, why don't you just stay put? I really never liked you, always thought you were a no-account worm. Yes, you just stay here."

"What you're doing isn't smart, Norman," Quinlan said. "Believe me, it isn't smart at all."

"Shut up, you bastard." He kicked open the French doors and pulled Noelle through them. Quinlan didn't move, just shook his head. Dillon said, "You did warn him, Quinlan."

There were voices, two shots. Then dead silence. Dillon ran outside.

"Noelle!" Sally ran through the open French doors onto the patio, yelling her name over and over.

They turned to see Noelle stumble toward her daughter. The women embraced.

"I love happy endings," Quinlan said, "Now, Scott, why don't you tell us which woman is your lover-Jill or Monica?"

"Neither, damn you. I'm gay!"

"Jesus, that's a kicker," Quinlan said.

Dillon came back in. There was a huge grin on his face. "Poor old Norman Lipsy just got a nick in the arm. He'll be just fine."

"I'm glad about that," Quinlan said.

"Scott is gay, James?" Sally stared at her husband. "You're gay and you married me?"

"I had to," Scott said. "Your father's ruthless. I'd done just a little fiddling with some clients' accounts, but he discovered it. That's when he got me into the arms deals and told me I had to marry you. He also paid Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

me, but believe me, it wasn't enough to bear you for those six months."

Quinlan laughed and pulled Sally against him. "I hope this doesn't depress you too much."

"I think I'll kick up my heels."

They heard Dr. Beadermeyer cursing outside, then moaning, complaining loudly that his arm was bleeding too much, that he'd die from blood loss, that the bastards wanted him to die.

They heard Dillon laugh and say loudly, "Justice. I do like to see justice done."

Sally said, "There's no justice yet. James, where is my father?"

He kissed her on the mouth and hugged her. "We'll check first to see if his passport is gone. If it isn't, we'll have him soon enough."

"Another thing," Dillon said, "where is that bloody Roth-Steyr pistol?"

"I remember running after my father out the French doors. I threw it in the bushes."

"The cops would have found it. They didn't."

“Then that means her father saw her throw it away and doubled back to get it," Quinlan said. And he smiled. "That pistol ID's him better than fingerprints."

"That poor man Doctor Beadermeyer operated on. I wonder who he was?"

"I don't think we'll ever know, Sally, unless Beadermeyer talks. He was cremated. Damnation, all the clues were there, staring me right in the face. Your father had made out a new will about eight months ago, specifying that he wanted to be cremated immediately. Norman Lipsy was a plastic surgeon. You were certain it was your father on the phone. I should have believed you, but I truly believed that what you heard was some sort of spliced tape recording of his voice. We'll get him, Sally. I promise."

Quinlan took her home and made her promise to stay there. He had to go to the office and see how the investigation was going.

"But it's after midnight."

"This is a big deal. The FBI building will be lit up from top to bottom, well, at least most of the fifth floor."

"Can I go with you?"

He pictured thirty men and women all talking at the same time, going over reams of paper, one group reviewing what they'd recovered from Amory St. John's office, another group delving into Dr.

Beadermeyer's papers.

Then there was Dr. Beadermeyer to interview-ah, he wanted to get Norman in a room alone, just the two of them and a tape recorder and go at it. He nearly rubbed his hands together.

"Yes," he said, "you can come, but agents will latch on to you and question you until you want to curl up in the fetal position and sleep."

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"I'm ready to talk," she said and grinned up at him. "Oh, James, I'm so relieved. Scott is gay and my mother wasn't in on anything. There is someone here for me besides you."

Marvin Brammer, assistant director and head of the Criminal Investigative Division, wanted her examined by FBI doctors and shrinks.

Quinlan talked him out of it. Sally didn't get to see him do it, but she just bet he was very good.

She ended up talking at length to Marvin Brammer. He, without realizing it, was positively courtly with her.

By the end of the hour-long interview, he'd gotten even more details of that night from her. Brammer was one of the best interviewers in the FBI, an organization known for its excellent interview skills. Maybe he was even better than Quinlan, but she doubted if James would admit that.

When she came out of Marvin Brammer's office, Brammer behind her with his hand lightly holding her elbow, there was Noelle sitting in the small waiting area, asleep. She looked young and very pretty. She looked, Sally thought, just like she should look. But she was worried about her father. What if he got to Noelle again? What if he got to her? She'd said all that to Mr. Brammer, but he'd reassured her again and again that they would have guards on the two of them. There was no chance Amory St. John would get near either of them. Besides, he couldn't imagine the man being that stupid. No, everything would be all right.

"That's my mother," Sally said. "Isn't she beautiful? She's always loved me." She gave Brammer a smile that would have disarmed even a more cynical man.

Brammer cleared his throat. He ran his fingers lightly through his thick white hair. The word was that his interview skills had increased exponentially when his hair had turned white overnight after a shoot-out five years before in which he'd nearly been killed. You looked at him and you trusted him.

"From what Quinlan told me-he insisted on talking to Scott Brainerd-it seems that Scott did indeed embezzle client funds on a very small scale. But your father caught him, and that was it. He did some of your father's dirty work, so your father really had him. Ah, you were right, he did have a lover, a guy named Alien Falkes, in the British embassy. I'm sorry."

"Actually, all of this comes as quite a relief. I'm not hurt, Mr. Brammer," she said, and it was true. "I'm just surprised by all of it. I've really been used, haven't I?"

"Yes, but a lot of people are used every day. Not as grossly as you've been, but manipulated by those who are more powerful, those who are smarter, those who have more money. But as I said, that won't be a problem anymore, Mrs. Brainerd."

"Call me Sally. After all this, I don't think I ever want to have the Brainerd name attached to me again."

"Sally. A nice name. Warm and funny and cozy. Quinlan likes your name. He said it was a name that made him feel good, made him feel like he'd always get a ready smile, and probably a good deal more, but he didn't add that. Sometimes Quinlan has discretion, at least when he's on the job-or rather, when he's talking to me, his boss."

She said nothing to that.

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Brammer really didn't know why he was doing it, but this thin young woman who'd been through more than her fair share for a lifetime, who didn't know the first thing about getting information out of people, had made him spill his guts-and she hadn't said a thing.

Actually, he wanted to take her home with him and feed her and tell her jokes until she was smiling and laughing all the time.

He said, impelled by all the protective instincts she fostered in him, "I've known Quinlan for six years.

He's an excellent agent. He's smart and he's intuitive. He's got this sort of extra sense that many times puts him nearly in another person's head-or heart. Sometimes I'm not sure which. Sometimes I have to rein him in, yell at him because he plays a lone hand, which we don't like to have happen. Bureau agents are trained to be team players, except for those in New York City, of course, and Quinlan down here at the Metro office. But I always know when he's doing it, even though he thinks he's fooling me.

"He also has this knack for making people remember things buried deep in their brains. He did that with you tonight, didn't he?"

"Yes. But, on the other hand, Mr. Brammer, you got even more out of me."

"Ah, but that's just because Quinlan opened the spigot, so to speak. Now, in addition to being one of the best agents in this office, he's a very talented man. He plays the saxophone. He's from a huge family sprawled out all over the East Coast. His father retired two years ago, one of the best chiefs the bureau has ever had. His first wife, Teresa, was a big mistake, but that's over with. He hunkered down for a while, rethought lots of things, and then he came out of hibernation, and he got well. Now he's met you, and all he can do is smile and rub his hands together and talk about the future. Treat him well, Sally."

"As in be gentle with him?"

Marvin Brammer laughed. "Nan, beat on him, give him a run for his money, don't let him pull any of his smart-ass pranks on you."

"Pranks?"

He gave her a surprised grin, then just shook his head. "You haven't known him all that long. You'll see, once you're married, Sally. Maybe even before you're married. Quinlan's daddy was just the same. But Quinlan has something his daddy didn't have."

"What's that?"

"You," Marvin Brammer said. He touched his palm lightly to her cheek. "Don't worry, Sally. We'll get your father, and he'll pay big time for what he's done. Quinlan was talking a mile a minute to bring me up-to-date. He told me about your father calling you twice and his face appearing in your bedroom window when you were staying at your aunt's house in this small town called The Cove. Of course, he thought it was someone mimicking your father, that or a spliced tape. He said you knew it was your father. And that scared you. He told me he'd never doubt you about anything again. Now, Sally, let's get honest here. It's not just the murder of that unknown man, it's not just what he did to you, although that turns my stomach-it's the dirty dealings he's been pulling for several years now, the arms sales to very bad people. The feds will chew him up for that, and that, naturally, is why we got involved in the first place after his murder. I'm sorry he had to be your father. We believe that's another reason he Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

locked you away in Beadermeyer's sanitarium. He did believe, according to Scott Brainerd, that you had seen some compromising papers. You don't remember seeing any papers that could have implicated your father in the arms dealing?"

She shook her head. "No, really, Mr. Brammer. But you do believe this was one of the reasons my father had me admitted to Doctor Beadermeyer's sanitarium?"

"It sounds probable. The other thing-the revenge angle-it seems reasonable, but frankly I don't think it's enough of a motive in itself. No, I think it was a bunch of things, but primarily that he knew Scott was losing you, and thus he, Amory St. John, was losing control. And he believed you'd seen some incriminating papers about the arms deals. There's more than enough there, Sally. What was uppermost in your father's mind? I don't know. We'll never know."

"You don't know how much he hated me. I'll bet even my mother believes it's enough of a motive."

"We'll find out when we catch him," Marvin Brammer said. "Then we'll make him pay. I'm sure sorry about all this, Sally. Not much of a decent childhood for you, but there's rottenness in some people, and that's just the way it is."

"What will happen to Doctor Beadermeyer?"

"Ah, Norman Lipsy. If only we'd thought to put Dillon on him earlier. That man can make a computer tap-dance. We all laugh that he's not a loner like Quinlan because he's always got his computer tucked under his arm, a modem wrapped around his neck like a stethoscope. He can get into any system on the planet. He's amazing. We kid him that he sleeps with the bloody thing. I think that even if someone gave him a turn-of-the-century telephone, he could invent a modem that would work. Agents in the bureau don't have partners like cops do, but Quinlan and Dillon, well, they always do well together.

"Good Lord, why'd I get off on that? You wanted to know about Norman Lipsy. He'll go to jail for a very long time. Don't spend any time worrying about him. He refused to say a thing. Said that Holland was a moron and a liar. But it doesn't matter. We've got the goods on him."

She shivered, her arms wrapped around herself. He wanted to comfort her somehow, but he didn't know what to do.

He said, "Believe me, Lipsy is going down hard. We don't as yet know all the people he's holding there against their will. Our people will interview each one, look at each one's file, speak to all the relatives. It'll shake out soon enough. I think when it's all over, lots of very rich, very famous folk aren't going to be happy.

"Also, Lipsy's an accessory to murder. He's gone for good, Sally. No need for you to worry about him."

Jesus, what had that man done to her? He couldn't imagine. He really didn't want to be able to.

When Quinlan walked up, his eyes alight with pleasure at the sight of Sally, all skinny and pale, her hair mussed, her own eyes bright with the sight of him, Marvin Brammer wandered back into his office thinking that he couldn't remember the last time he'd talked so much.

She would pry every secret out of Quinlan and he wouldn't even know what she was doing. Better yet, she didn't even realize the effect she had on people.

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Good thing she wasn't a spy, they'd all be in deep shit. He was also mighty relieved that her mama hadn't been in on the nastiness.

25

QUINLAN BROUGHT HER home, to his apartment, to his bedroom, to his bed, and now he was holding her, lightly stroking his hand up and down her back.

She was so very thin. He could feel her pelvic bones, the thinness of her arms through her nightgown. He had the urge to phone out for Chinese food-lots of sugar in Szechwan beef and pot stickers-but he decided he'd rather be doing what he was doing. Besides, he'd already stuffed her to the gills with spaghetti, lots of Parmesan on top, and hot garlic bread that wasn't nearly as good as Martha's.

"James?"

"You're supposed to be asleep."

“Mr. Brammer was very nice to me. He told me a thing or two about you, too."

Quinlan stared at her. "You're kidding. Brammer is the biggest closed-mouth in the FBI. If they gave awards for it, he'd win hands down."

"Not tonight. Maybe he was tired or excited, like you were. Yep, he told me lots of things. You've got a big family. You're a lot like your father, just for starters."

This was interesting. Quinlan cleared his throat against her hair. "Urn, was all he talked about-it was all the case and the players?"

"Most of it, but not all." He felt her fingers playing over his bicep. He instantly flexed the muscle. A man, he thought, he was just a man who wanted his woman to know he was strong. He nearly laughed aloud at himself.

"What was the 'not all'?"

"You. He told me about you and your father and Dil-lon."

"Brammer and my father go way back. I wish you could have known my old man. He was a kick, Sally.

I wish he hadn't died-just last year. It was a heart attack, all of a sudden, so he didn't suffer-but still, he was only sixty-three. He'd make you so mad you wanted to punch his lights out and then in the next second you'd be clutching your stomach, you'd be laughing so hard."

"A lot like you. That's what Mr. Brammer said."

She was caressing his bicep again. He flexed again. A man was a man. He guessed there was just no getting away from it.

"He also said that you liked to play a lone hand but that he always knew what you were doing even if you would swear he didn't know a thing."

"I wouldn't doubt it, that old con man. He's got moles everywhere."

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"Maybe now he's got a mole who's living with you."

"That's okay," Quinlan said and kissed her.

She was soft and giving, but she wasn't with him, not yet, and he couldn't blame her at all for that. He said against her warm mouth, "There's only your father left, Sally. We'll get him. He won't get away.

There'll be a huge scandal, a big trial. Can you deal with that?"

"Yes," she said, her voice suddenly very cold and hard. "I can't wait, actually. I want to face him down. I want to tell the world how he beat his wife. I want to tell the world what he did to me. James?"

"Yeah?"

"Was there another woman in my father's life? Someone he was going to leave the country with?"

"Not that we know of, but that's a good thought. We'll have to keep an eye on it. It's early, very early.

As I said, we have people going through every scrap of paper in your father's house and at his office.

Everything will be scrutinized.

"You ain't seen scrutiny until you've seen the FBI do it. As for our Norman Lipsy, the plastic surgeon, he won't be going anywhere even with the best lawyers he can buy. He'll be questioned by agents until at least next Wednesday. It doesn't mean a thing that he hasn't talked yet. He will. Already they've found more than enough evidence to convict him on innumerable counts-kidnapping, collusion, conspiracy, that's just the beginning. Now, Sally, you're still withdrawn from me. What is it? What's going on?"

"James, what if I was wrong? What if I was still drugged up so that I saw things that weren't really there?

What if it wasn't my father running out those French doors? What if it was someone else? What if I didn't see anybody? What if I did shoot him and all the rest-well, it's games being played in my mind."

"Nah," he said and kissed her again. "Not in a million years. If there's one thing I know, it's crazy. You aren't crazy. I'll bet you don't even get PMS."

She hit his arm-he flexed the muscle-and she giggled.

"Now that's a wonderful sound. Just forget all that crazy stuff, Sally. You saw your father. There's not one single doubt in my mind or in Brammer's mind or in Dillon's or, I'll bet, in Ms. Lilly's, when we tell her.

"Your father must have stopped, seen you throw that prized pistol of his away and gone back to get it.

That in itself is convincing, don't you see? If he didn't go back for the gun, then where is it? When we find him I'll bet you a Mexican meal at the Cantina that he's got that Roth-Steyr."

She leaned up and kissed his mouth. “Goodness, I hope so. You were so sure I'd remember."

"I prayed harder than I did when I was seventeen and afraid Melinda Herndon might be pregnant."

"I'm so glad I didn't shoot him, regardless of the fact that I would have liked to. I wonder where he is."

"We'll find him. His passport's gone. The agents had Noelle go through his safe at home and his safety-deposit boxes. Chances are he took off to either the Grand Caymans or Switzerland-they found some bankbooks from both places. We'll get him. It won't take long."

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She was quiet, utterly still against him. He liked to feel her push against him, he liked her touching him. He was still on an adrenaline high, but she had to be exhausted. She'd been through quite an experience. He sighed. He settled for a light kiss on her mouth. "You ready to sleep now?”

"I have this feeling, James," she said slowly, her breath warm against his neck. "It's weird and I can't explain it, but I just don't think he's gone anywhere. That is, I don't think he's left the country. He's here, somewhere. I just can't imagine where. We don't have a beach house or a mountain cabin that I know of."

"That's interesting. We'll ask Noelle tomorrow. Now come on, Sally, I'm supposed to be the one with the famous intuition, the hyper gut instinct. You trying to show me up?"

Quinlan shifted his weight. He was still wearing his pants and shirt. He wished he wasn't wearing anything.

Sally was in one of her new nightgowns, a cotton thing that came nearly up to her chin and went down to her ankles. He wished she wasn't wearing anything either. He sighed and kissed her right ear.

He wished all the adrenaline in his body would clear out. He was high and horny. To distract himself, he said, "I forgot to tell you. I got a call from David Mountebank-you remember the sheriff, don't you?"

"He's very nice. He took care of you." He felt her fingertips lightly touch where the stitches had been in his head. "Hardly even a ridge now."

"Yes, well, he still hasn't got a clue about the two murders, and yes, Doc Spiver was murdered, no doubt about it. He wants FBI help, officially, and he'll get it since we're talking about interstate shenanigans.

He's convinced everybody that the older couple-Harve and Marge Jensen-were killed around there and that all the other missing folks are linked together as well. There'll be agents up from the Portland office, and I'll be there from the Washington office. They'll crawl all over that damned town."

She was kissing his neck, her fingers lightly tugging on his chest hair. He said slowly, "I'm going, Sally.

And yes, Brammer knows I'm going. He thinks it's a good idea. He wants me to talk to Amabel. We all want to know how she fits into all this. And, believe me, she's got to fit in somewhere. I think you should consider coming with me, Sally."

He had weighed the danger of her being in that small little town on the Oregon coast against the danger of her remaining here, without him, her father still at large. No, he wanted her with him. It was the only way he could protect her. There'd be enough agents hanging around The Cove, no one would have a chance of hurting her.

"How could she be involved, James? She loves me, doesn't she? She took me in. She-"

"Don't turn blind on me now. She's involved. When she told David and me how you would probably run because you were scared, well, then 1 was as sure as I could be that she was involved. How deeply, we'll find out."

"I've got my mother back now. I'd sure like to have Aunt Amabel, too. I'm praying really hard that she isn't involved."

"Not only do you have your mama back, you've got me, and you'll never lose me, I swear it. And you'll have all my family. They're obnoxious, loving, pains in the butt, all in all a great family. Now, if Amabel is somehow involved with all this, we'll deal with it, you and I together."

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He felt her palm slide down his chest, felt her fingers slip inside his shirt to caress him. He nearly bowed off the bed. No, she was exhausted, he couldn't let her do this, not now, not tonight.

He'd made up his mind. No way was he going to rush her on this. He shook his head and said, "Sally, are you certain?"

"Oh, yes," she said and kissed his chest. "Let me get this shirt off you, James."

He laughed. He was still laughing when her mouth was on his belly, then lower, closing over him. He moaned and jerked with the power of it. He didn't think he'd ever stop moaning, stop wanting, until he was deep inside her. That was what he wanted more than anything, to be deep inside her and for her to accept him completely, to love him, to shout it to him, and to the world.

And when he was deep inside of her, he knew it was right, better than right. She was his lifeblood, his future. It was about the best thing he'd ever managed in his life.

She whispered against his chest, "I love you, James." He was shaking, heaving over her like a wild man, but she was just as wild, and that made him even wilder.

A man, he thought just before his body shattered into orgasm, a man needed to belong as much as a woman. A man needed to be desired, to be cherished, as much as a woman.

When she bit his neck, then cried out, he knew everything would be just fine. "I love you, too," he said, his breath warm in her open mouth.

Life, he thought, just before he fell into a deep sleep, was weird. He'd gone to The Cove to find a crazy woman who could have murdered her father.

Instead he'd found Sally.

Actually, life was dandy.

26

THE DAY WAS warm, the air salty with the ocean spray, the sun high overhead. The Cove had never looked more beautiful, Quinlan thought, as he helped Sally out of their rental car.

"It's a picture postcard," she said, looking around. "There are the four old men playing cards around the barrel. Look, there are at least six cars parked in front of the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop. There's Martha coming out of the Safeway with two sacks of groceries. There's Reverend Vorhees walking with his head down like he's got to tell someone that he's sinned badly. How could anything bad happen here?

It looks perfect. All calm, nobody running around waving an ax, yelling, no kids ruining buildings with graffiti."

"Yeah," Quinlan said. He was frowning.

"What's wrong?"

He just shook his head. His intuition. She poked him in the ribs. He grabbed her hand and said only, "It's too perfect. Why is that, I wonder? How did it get to be so perfect? Look at all that paint, Sally. It's Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

fresh. Nothing's run-down. Nothing's old. Everything is in tip-top shape.

"But enough of this postcard place. We're meeting David and two FBI agents from the Portland office over at Thelma's at two o'clock. It's just about two now."

"I'll meet them and then go to Amabel's house, all right?" He looked worried, and she punched him again on his arm. "Do you think she's going to lock me in a root cellar? Don't be silly, James. She's my aunt."

"Okay. I'll be along as soon as I can. Make sure Amabel knows that."

David Mountebank looked tired. He looked harassed. When he introduced Quinlan to the man and woman agents, he didn't sound like a happy camper. He sounded like he was being bossed around, which occasionally did happen when the feds came in and treated the local law as yokels. It had happened a lot in the past, but not as much now. He sure hoped that wasn't the case here. In the sixteen-week training program at Quantico, agents were told never to usurp local prerogatives.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe David was just depressed about these killings. He knew he'd be as depressed as hell. Corey Harper and Thomas Shredder didn't look too happy either. They all shook hands and sat down in Thelma Nettro's parlor. Martha came in and beamed at them. "Sally. Mr. Quinlan.

How nice to see you again. Now, would everyone like some coffee? And some of my special New Jersey cheesecake?"

"New Jersey cheesecake, Martha?" Quinlan asked as he kissed her cheek.

"It's better than any cheesecake from New York," she said and gave Sally a brief hug. "You folks just get on with your business. I'll be right back."

"How's Thelma doing, Martha?" Sally asked. "She's primping right now. Not for you, Sally, but for Mr.

Quinlan. She even had me go out and buy her some pumpkin peach lipstick, if you can imagine." Martha tsked and left the large parlor.

"I'd like to get to work here," Thomas Shredder said with just enough impatience in his voice to make Quinlan want to loll back, lock his arms behind his head, and take a snooze, just to aggravate him.

Shredder was about thirty, tall and lanky, and very intense, one of those men Quinlan tried to avoid like the plague. They made him nervous simply because they never laughed, wouldn't know a joke if it bit them, usually saw the forest but never the individual trees.

As for the woman, Special Agent Corey Harper, she hadn't said anything yet. She was tall, with light hair and very pretty blue-gray eyes. She also looked eager, sitting on the edge of the sofa, her notebook on her knee, her ballpoint pen poised above an open page. She looked as if she hadn't been out of Quantico for very long. He'd bet the Portland office was her first assignment.

"Corey told me all the excitement you had back in Washington," David Mountebank said, ignoring Thomas Shredder. "Jesus, that was something. You okay, Sally?"

"Yes, fine now. They still haven't caught my father, but James promises me they will. It's just a matter of time."

Quinlan thought that Thomas Shredder was going to explode. He smiled at the man and said, "I came here looking for Sally. I was a private investigator-that was my cover-hired to locate two old people who Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

disappeared over three years ago in this area. And that was true. These folk did disappear in this area.

Funny thing was that when I started asking questions, bad things started happening. Sally, tell them about the woman's screams."

She did, leaving out the fact that Amabel hadn't believed it was really a woman screaming.

"We came across a woman's body the following morning when we were walking down the cliffs,"

Quinlan said. "She'd been murdered and thrown off the cliffs. Not a very nice thing to do. It's difficult not to believe that this was the same woman Sally heard screaming on two different nights. She must have been held prisoner somewhere close to Sally's aunt's cottage. Why was she being held prisoner? We have no idea. Now, I'm willing to wager the farm that the murders are tied directly to these missing folks."

"Yes, yes, we know all this," Shredder said, and he actually swatted at Quinlan as if he were a fly to be removed from the bread.

“We also know your opinion about this so-called tie-in. However, as yet we don't have any real proof that there is a tie-in. What we've got is two murders, one a longtime local in Doc Spiver and the other a woman from the subdivision, not at all local in the same sense. What we need is a tie-in between the two of them, not between them and the disappearance of these old folk over three years ago."

"Well, then," Quinlan said, "David, why don't you bring me up-to-date. What have you done since I flew home last week?"

Shredder interrupted, his voice fast and sharp, "Sheriff Mountebank didn't do much of anything. Ms.

Harper and I have been here since Monday, not long enough to solve the crimes yet, but we're getting close, very close."

Corey Harper cleared her throat. "Actually, David had collected interviews from just about everyone in town. They're very thorough, but no one could tell him much of anything. Everyone is shocked and very depressed about the deaths, particularly Doc Spiver's."

"We've already started to repeat the interviews," Thomas Shredder said. "Someone must have seen something. We'll get it out of them. Old people have difficulty remembering unless they're prodded just right. It takes special training to learn just how to do it."

"Nah," Quinlan said. "I did it perfectly even before my training. Another thing, David knows all these people. He'd know when they were lying and what about."

"That remains to be seen," Shredder said. Corey Harper looked embarrassed.

Martha appeared in the doorway, a huge tray resting on her arms.

Quinlan got up and took it from her. "He's such a nice boy," she said to Sally.

"Right there, Mr. Quinlan. Yes, that's right. Now, I know you don't want me listening to all this important talk, so I'll just leave you with everything. You'll manage?"

"Yes, thank you, Martha," Quinlan said. "How's Ed?"

"Oh, that poor man. Thelma just won't leave him alone. Now she's accusing him of compromising me on the kitchen table, and she's going to buy a shotgun. He's in the hospital right now having tests for that Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

prostate of his. Poor man."

Thomas Shredder looked at Corey Harper, then at the tray. She bit her lip and began to place cups on saucers. Quinlan grinned at her and began to do the same. Sally poured a cup and said, "Cream, David?"

Thomas Shredder sat there while everyone served each other. Quinlan gave him a big grin and pointed to the last cup on the tray. "Help yourself, Thomas. Ah, best hurry-I bet these New Jersey cheesecakes are going to be inhaled."

"My, this is beyond delicious," Corey Harper said and took the last bite of her slice of cheesecake.

"James and I want to ask Martha to come back to Washington with us," said Sally. "She's the best cook I know. Her pasta makes you weep."

Quinlan knew that Shredder was going to blow up any minute. Well, he'd pushed the ass far enough. He said easily, "Forget the interviews, Thomas. We need to come at this from another angle. I know it sounds weird that the missing persons would have anything to do with the two murders, but the thing is that up until about the time Marge and Harve Jensen disappeared, The Cove was a run-down old shanty of a town. No paint on anything, potholes in the road, fences falling over, even the trees sagging, all the kids gone, just old people left, living on Social Security. My question is, why is The Cove so different now from what it was three years ago? Why did everything here begin to wake up about the same time that Harve and Marge disappeared?"

"My God," Corey said. "I didn't realize the timing."

"I did," David said, "but I never questioned it, Quin-lan, for the simple reason that it was common knowledge that Doc Spiver had come into a lot of money right around then. Since he didn't have any heirs, he invested the money and used all the proceeds to improve the town. But you don't think so, Quinlan?"

"I think it's worth checking into, closely. I remember you telling me that in Doc Spiver's will he left his estate to the town and it amounted to about twenty thousand dollars. If he was that low, then the town would start sliding again, really soon, don't you think? Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

"I'll call Dillon-he's a computer nerd at the bureau- and get him going on it. Tell me which bank and the account number, David. Sally and I will be staying here. Just give me a call, and I'll get to Dillon."

"Is that Dillon Savich?" Corey Harper asked, looking up.

"Yeah, he's a genius with a computer, but don't tell him that because he'll just think you're sucking up."

"I know. I did tell him that when I was in training at Quantico. He gave a couple of great lectures, and yeah, he probably did think I was sucking up."

"I've never heard of Dillon," Thomas Shredder said. "Who cares about a computer nerd? They're fine in their place, but this is the real world. What we do here is what really counts. Let's get back to why we're here in this godforsaken place."

David said slowly, “Regardless of whether or not the missing persons are somehow involved in these murders, what you're implying in a very subtle way is a tough pill to swallow, Quinlan. I've known these people most all my life. They're a bunch of tough old birds, they've had to be to survive all the economic Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

disasters we've had. Jesus, just realizing that one of them is a murderer curdles my breakfast. More than one of them murderers? No way."

"It's more than a tough pill," Thomas Shredder said with a goodly dose of sarcasm. "You're paranoid, Quinlan. That's nuts."

Quinlan just shrugged. "This town looks like a Hollywood set. I remember that was my first thought when I came here. I want to know why and how that happened."

"All right, we've got a lead," David said, leaning forward, "I'm going to check more closely into Doc Spiver's bank account. Now, I've gotten together all the accounts for all the missing persons reported in this area for the past three years." David drew a deep breath. "There's about sixty."

"Jesus," Corey Harper said.

"James is wrong about this," Sally said. "My aunt has lived here for more than twenty years. She couldn't be part of a murder conspiracy of this magnitude. She couldn't."

"I hope I am wrong, Sally," he said as he took her hand. It was cold. He poured her some coffee and put the fragile china cup between her hands to warm them. "But there's lots of questions here. I can't think of another way to go on this."

"I can't either," David said.

"Well, I can," said Thomas Shredder, rising to stand in front of the fireplace. He struck a pose, looking like Hercule Poirot ready to deliver his solution. All he needed was a mustache to twirl.

"I hope this is good, Thomas," Quinlan said. "We've paid our admission. Now on with the show."

"Pinning these murders on several of the townspeople just doesn't make sense. As to tying it to all David's missing persons, let's just forget about that."

"But, Thomas," Corey began, but he raised a hand to silence her.

"It's a theory, nothing more. What we've got is solid fact. Let's get specific. I looked into Reverend Hal and Sherry Vorhees. They've lived here for twenty-seven years, true, but before that, they were in Tempe, Arizona. They had two little adopted boys. The two little boys ended up dead within a year after they came to the Vorheeses. One fell out of a tree and broke his neck. The other one got himself burned to death when he turned on the gas stove. Both were accidents, at least that's what was reported and accepted. Everyone felt real bad about it, said the Vorheeses were the nicest people, and he was a reverend, and why would God take both their children? "But there were questions. It seems a couple of other children had accidents during the time the Vorheeses lived there. Then the Vorheeses left and came here. There weren't any more children. Who the hell knows?" He waited for applause and he got it.

"That's something," David Mountebank said. "Good going, Thomas. You got any more?"

"There's also some history on Gus Eisner, the old guy who fixes everything on wheels in this town. Turns out his wife, Velma, isn't his first wife. His first wife was murdered. He was accused of the crime, but the DA never had enough evidence to bring him to trial. One month later Gus marries Velma and they move here. From Detroit. Hell, we've got to check on every single soul in this town. Corey's checking on the Keatons."

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"Yeah, you're right. We've got to check on all of them," Quinlan said, at which the other man stared at him, utterly surprised, a flicker of pleasure in those dark eyes of his. "I hope it's one or the other. But it still doesn't feel right."

"Look, Quinlan," Thomas Shredder said. "Since the doctor was murdered, we looked all through his background."

"Well, Thomas," Corey Harper said, interrupting him, "actually David ran all the checks on him."

"Yes," David said, sitting forward. "He came here in the late forties with his wife. She died in the mid-sixties of breast cancer. They had two boys, both dead now, one in Vietnam, the other in a motorcycle accident in Europe. There was a rich uncle who died. That's all I could find out, Quinlan."

"We'll see, won't we? If the money didn't come from Doc Spiver, then it had to come from someplace else."

An ancient throat cleared in the doorway, grabbing their attention.

"Well, now, you're back, Sally, and you, Mr. Quinlan. I hear from Amabel that the FBI has nearly everything cleared up back in that capital of ours, that foul den of iniquity." She paused a moment, shaking her head. "Goodness, I'd sure like to visit there."

Thelma Nettro had opened the door and was standing there, leaning on her cane, beaming at all of them, the pumpkin peach lipstick smeared, some of it on her false front teeth.

"Hello, Thelma," Quinlan said and rose to go to her. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. "You're looking like a French model. How's tricks?"

27

"YOU'VE GOT A smart mouth on you, boy," Thelma said in high good humor. She patted Quinlan's cheek. "Help me to my chair and I'll tell you all about my tricks."

Once Quinlan had her settled, she said, "Now, what's this I hear on CNN-that Sally's father killed a man he'd paid some plastic surgeon to make look like him? He locked you up, Sally? Then he skipped out?"

"That's about it, Thelma," Sally said. "My father is still free, more's the pity, but they'll catch him. His face has been all over the TV. Someone will spot him. He didn't leave the country, his passport isn't missing."

"He could have gotten another passport," Thomas Shredder said. "That's never a problem."

"Shit," Quinlan said. "Excuse me, Thelma. I didn't think of that. You're right, Thomas."

"I've heard worse things than a little shit in my lifetime, Quinlan. So, you got some more FBI agents here.

You want to solve those murders, huh?'' "Yes, ma'am," Corey Harper said. "We all thought Doc had killed himself, but that woman from Portland said it wasn't so."

"The medical examiner," David said. "I was lucky she's so well trained and was available. Otherwise it might have passed as a suicide."

"Poor Doc," Thelma said. "Who'd want to stick a gun in his mouth? It isn't civilized-you know?"

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"No, it isn't."

"As for that young woman with the three children, well, that was a pity too, but after all, she wasn't one of us. She was from that wretched subdivision."

"Yeah, Thelma, she lived all of three miles away," Quinlan said, seeing his irony floating gently over Thelma's head. "Fact is, though, she did die right here."

Quinlan sat himself back down beside Sally on the brocade sofa. When he spoke again, Sally immediately recognized that voice of his, low and soothing, intimate. That voice would get information out of a turnip. “Now, did you ever meet that rich uncle of Doc Spiver's, Thelma?"

"Nope, never did. I don't even remember where he lived, if I ever did know. But everyone knew about him and how he was older than God and how if we could just hang on a bit longer then he'd croak and Doc would get the money.

"Of course, I have money, but not as much as that rich uncle had. We were all afraid that the old codger would use it all up on nursing homes, but he just died in his sleep, Doc said, and then Doc got that big fat check. More zeros than anybody in this town had ever seen before, I'll tell you."

"Thelma," David said, "do you know of anyone in town who could have met this uncle?"

"Don't know, but I'll find out. Martha!"

The screech hurt Sally's ears. She winced even as she smiled because Corey had jumped and dropped her pen and notebook.

"Healthy set of lungs," Quinlan said.

Martha appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.

"What are you making for dinner, Martha? It's getting on toward four o'clock."

"Your favorite eggplant parmigiana, Thelma, with lots of Parmesan cheese on top and garlic bread so snappy it will make your teeth dance, and a big Greek salad with goat cheese."

"The uncle, Thelma," Quinlan said easily.

"Oh, yes. Martha, did you ever meet Doc Spiver's rich uncle?''

Martha frowned deeply, then slowly shook her head. "No, just heard about him for years. Whenever things were looking real bad, we'd talk about him, discuss how old he was, what kind of ailments he had, try to figure out when he'd pass on. Don't you remember, Thelma? Hal Vorhees was always telling us we were ghouls, that it surely had to be a sin to discuss that poor old man, like we were holding prayer meetings for him to die."

"We were," Thelma said. "I'll bet Hal did a little praying when none of us were around. Well, I wasn't praying for myself because I wasn't poor like the rest of the town, but when Doc got that check, I was shouting along with everyone else."

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"You've lived here since the forties, haven't you, Thelma?" David asked.

"Yes. I came here with my husband, Bobby Nettro, back in 1945. We already had grown kids, and we were rattling around in that big old house in Detroit. Came out here and decided this was the place for us." She gave a lusty sigh that sent a whistling sound through her false teeth. "Poor Bobby, he passed on in 1956, right after Eisenhower was re-elected. He died of pneumonia, you know.

"But he left me well off, real well off. I got Martha to come live with me in the late sixties, and we did just fine. She was teaching school down in Portland, and she didn't like it, all those hippies and drugs and that free love. Since I knew her mama before she passed on, I also knew Martha. We all kept in touch. But you know, Quinlan, I did fail her mama. I still can't find Martha a husband, and I promised her I would.

Lord knows, I've been looking for more years now than I've got teeth."

"You don't have any teeth, Thelma," Martha said. "Why don't you just chew on that nice pumpkin peach lipstick and think about that eggplant Parmesan?''

"Well, I used to have a healthy set of choppers. I'll tell you, Quinlan, it don't seem to matter how horny she gets and how much she sticks her bosom out there for the old codgers to ogle. Now, take poor Ed-"

Martha rolled her eyes and left the room.

"Well, actually, could you tell us about your kids, Thelma?" Quinlan asked.

"Two boys, one died in the war-the Big War, not Korea or Vietnam. The other one, well, he lives back in Massachusetts. He's retired now, has grown-up grandkids, and they got kids, and that makes me so old I can't bear to think about it."

Sally smiled as she stood up and walked over to kiss Thelma's soft, wrinkled cheek. "I'm going to see Amabel now, Thelma, but James and I will be staying here in the tower room."

“You still taking advantage of him, huh, Sally? Poor little boy, he doesn't have a chance. The first time I saw the two of you together I knew you'd have his pants off him in no time at all."

"Thelma, have a piece of my New Jersey cheesecake."

Thelma turned to frown at Martha, who had just come back into the room with another tray of her cheesecakes.

"You're such a prude, Martha, such a prude. I'll just bet you're frigid and Ed has to beg you for every little favor."

"I'll see you later," Sally said, grinning back at the two dumbstruck special agents from Portland, James, and David Mountebank.

"I'll be along shortly, Sally," Quinlan said. He was already asking Thelma more questions when Sally went out the front door of Thelma's Bed and Breakfast.

The day was beautiful, warm, just a slight nip in the air, the salty tang swept in from the ocean soft as a bird's wing on her face.

Sally breathed in deeply. Sherry Vorhees was standing in front of the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop.

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Sally waved, and Sherry waved back. Helen Keaton, whose grandmother had invented the ice cream recipe, came out of the shop behind her, looked over at Sally, and waved herself. Such nice women.

Surely they couldn't know anything about the murders or those missing people.

"Our flavor this week is banana walnut cream," Helen called out. "Do come and try it with your Mr.

Quinlan. My granny didn't exactly make it, but I like to try new flavors. Ralph loves the banana walnut, says it's so good it's got to be real bad for you."

Sally remembered that Ralph Keaton was the undertaker. She saw old Hunker Dawson, the World War II veteran, who always wore his two medals across the pocket of his flannel shirts. He hiked up his baggy pants and yelled, "You're famous, Sally Brainerd. We didn't find out until after you'd left that you were crazy. But now you're not even crazy, are you? I think the news media were pissed about you not being crazy. They like crazy and evil better than innocence and victims."

"Yeah," Purn Davies called out, "the media all wanted you to be crazier than a loon and out offing folk.

They sure didn't want to report that you weren't crazy. Then, though, they got your daddy."

"I'm glad they finally did," Sally called.

"Don't you worry none about your daddy, Sally," Gus Eisner yelled. "His face has been shown more times than the president's. They'll get him."

"Yeah," Hunker Dawson yelled. "Once the media get their hooks in him all right and proper, they'll forget everything else. They always do. It's always the grossest story of the day for them."

"I sure hope so," she yelled back.

"My wife, Arlene, was wavering on her rocker," Hunker shouted matter-of-factly, tugging on his old suspenders. "Wavering for years before she passed over."

Purn Davies yelled, "Hunker means she was a mite off in her upper works."

"These things happen," she said, but probably not loud enough for them to hear her.

The four old men had suspended their card game and were all looking at Sally. Even when she turned away, she knew they were watching her as she walked down that beautiful wooden sidewalk, the railing all fresh white paint, toward Amabel's cottage. She saw Velma Eisner, Gus's wife, and waved to her.

Velma didn't see her, just kept walking, her head down, headed for Purn Davies's general store.

Amabel's cottage looked fresh as spring, with newly planted beds of purple iris, white peonies, yellow crocus, and orange poppies, all perfectly arranged and tended. She looked around and saw flower boxes and small gardens filled with fresh flowers. Lots and lots of orange poppies and yellow daffodils. What a beautiful town. All the citizens took pride in how their houses looked, how their gardens looked. Every short sidewalk was well swept.

She wondered if The Cove now had a sister Victorian city in England.

She thought about what James had said about all those missing people. She knew the direction of his thoughts, but she wouldn't accept it.

She just couldn't. It was outrageous. She stepped onto Amabel's small porch and knocked on the door.

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No answer.

She knocked again and called out.

Her aunt wasn't home. Well, she'd doubtless be back soon.

Sally knew where she wanted to go, had to go.

She stood in the center of the cemetery. It was laid out like a wheel, with the very oldest graves in the very center. It was as well tended as the town. The grass v/as freshly mowed, giving off that wonderful grass scent. She laid her hand lightly on top of a marble headstone that read: ELIJAH BATTERY

BEST BARTENDER IN OREGON

DIED JULY 2, 1897

81 RIPE YEARS

The lettering grooves had been carefully dug out and smoothed again. She looked at other headstones, some incredibly ornate, others that had begun as wooden crosses and had obviously been replaced many times. Those that hadn't weathered well had been replaced.

Was nothing in this town overlooked? Was everything to be perfect, including every headstone?

She walked out from the center of the cemetery. Naturally, the headstones became newer. She finished with the 1920's, the 1930's, the 1940's, all the way into the 1980's. The planners of the cemetery had been very precise indeed, working outward from the middle so that if you wanted to be buried here in the 1990's, you'd be nearly to the boundaries.

She found Bobby Nettro's grave, on the fourth circle out from the center. It was perfectly tended.

As far as she could tell, they'd kept to this wheel plan since the beginning. There were so many graves now. She imagined that when the first townspeople decided to put the cemetery here they'd considered the plot of ground they were setting aside to be immense. Well, it wasn't. There was little space left, since the west side of the cemetery was bounded by the cliffs, and the east and north were bounded by the church and someone's cottage. The south nearly ran into the single path that led along the cliff.

She walked to the western edge of the cemetery. The graves here were new, as well tended as the others. She leaned down to look at the headstones. There were names, dates of birth and death, but nothing else. Nothing clever, nothing personal, nothing about being a super husband, father, wife, mother.

Just the bare information.

Sally pulled a small notebook out of her purse and began to write down the names on the headstones.

She walked around the periphery of the cemetery, ending up with a good thirty names. All the people had died in the early to late 1980's.

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It didn't seem right. Thing was, this was a very small town, grown smaller with each decade. Thirty people had died in a period of only eight years? Well, it was possible, she supposed. Some kind of flu epidemic that killed off old folk.

Then she noticed something else and felt the hair rise on her arms.

Every one of the headstones bore a man's name. Not a single woman's name. Not one. Not a single child's name. Not one. Just men's names. On one of the graves, it just said BILLY with a date of death.

Nothing more. What was going on here? No women died during this period of time, just men? It made no sense.

She closed her eyes a moment, wondering what the devil she'd discovered. She knew she had to get this list to David Mountebank and to James. She had to be sure that these people had lived here and died here. She had to be sure that these people had nothing to do with all the reported missing folk. The thought that there might be a connection made her want to grab James and run out of the town as fast as she could.

She shook her head even as she stared down at one headstone in particular. The name was strange-Lucien Gray. So it was an odd name; it didn't matter. All these names were legitimate, they had to be. These were all local people who'd just happened to die during this eight-year stretch. Yeah, and only men died. She found herself looking for Harve Jensen's grave. Of course there wasn't one. But there was that one headstone with Lucien Gray scripted on it. It looked very new, very new indeed.

She was beginning to sweat even as her brain raced ahead.

No, no. This town was for real.

This town was filled with good people, not with evil, not with death, more death than she could begin to imagine.

She put her notebook back in her purse. She didn't want to go back to Amabel's cottage.

She was afraid.

Why had that poor woman whose screams she'd heard on two different nights been taken prisoner in the first place?

Had she seen something she shouldn't have seen? Had she heard something she shouldn't have heard?

Why had Doc Spiver been murdered? Had he killed the woman and someone else in town had found out about it and shot him so there would be a kind of justice?

She tried to empty her mind. She hated to be afraid. She'd been afraid for too long.

28

SHE STOPPED AT the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop. Amabel wasn't there, but Sherry Vorhees was.

"Sally, how good to see you. You here with that cute Mr. Quinlan?"

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"Oh, yes. Can I try the banana walnut?"

"It's yummy. We've sold more of this flavor in a week than any other in the history of the store. We have so many repeat customers now-coming in regularly from a good fifty-mile radius-that we might have to hire on some of those lazy old codgers out there playing cards around their barrel."

Velma Eisner came in from the back room, which was curtained off from the shop by a lovely blue floral drape. She snorted. "Yeah, Sherry, I can just see those old coots selling ice cream. They'd eat it all and belch at us and try to look pathetic."

She turned to Sally and smiled. “We discussed having the men involved. Of course, they'd grouse and complain and say it was women's work. But we decided to keep them out of it just so we'd be the ones bringing in all the profits."

"You're probably right," Sally said and accepted her ice cream cone. She took a bite and thought her taste buds had gone to heaven. She took another bite and sighed, "This is wonderful. I wonder if Helen would marry me."

The women laughed. Sherry said, "We've come a long way since we used to store ice cream in Ralph Keaton's caskets, haven't we, Velma?"

Velma just smiled as she took $2.60 from Sally. Sally took another bite. "I went to Amabel's cottage, but nobody's home."

Helen came in from the back room. "Hi, Sally. Amabel went down to Portland."

"For art supplies and shopping," Velma said. "She'll be back in a couple of days, she said. Probably by Friday." "Oh."

She licked at the ice cream, felt the taste explode in her mouth, and closed her eyes. "This has to be more sinful than eating three eggs a day."

"Well," Helen said, "if you eat just one ice cream cone a week, what does it matter?'' She turned to say to Velma, "I saw Sherry eat three cones last Tuesday." "I did not!"

"I saw you. They were all double dip chocolate." "I didn't!"

The three women started sniping at each other. It was obvious they'd been doing this for years. They knew each other's red buttons and were pushing them with abandon. Sally just watched, eating her banana walnut ice cream cone. Velma had the last word. Before Sherry or Helen could pipe up, she turned to Sally. "No, we won't let the men get behind the counter. They'd eat everything."

Sally laughed. "I'd be as bad as the men. I'd eat the entire stock in one morning." She finished her cone and patted her stomach. "I don't feel quite so skinny now." "Stay here, Sally, and you'll look all pillowy and comfortable like us in no time," Sherry Vorhees said.

"I was admiring the town," Sally said. "It's so beautiful, so utterly perfect. And all those flowers, every spring flower that will bloom is out and planted and wonderfully tended. Even the cemetery. The grass is mowed, the head-stones are well cared for. I was wondering if you ever forgot anything at all that would make the town look even more perfect?"

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"We try to think of everything," Helen said. "We have a town meeting once a week and discuss improvements or things that should be repaired or brought up-to-date."

"Whatever were you doing in the cemetery?" Velma asked, as she wiped her wet hands on her apron, the same cute blue floral pattern as the drape.

“Oh, just wandering around after I realized that Amabel wasn't at home. I noticed something kind of unusual."

"What was that?" Helen asked.

For a moment, Sally wondered if she shouldn't just keep her mouth shut. But no, these women were sniping at each other about ice cream, for God's sake. They knew who had died and when. They'd tell her. Why not? There was nothing frightening going on here. “Well, there were about thirty graves on the perimeter of the cemetery. All those people died in the eighties. All of them were men. There was nothing special on the headstones, just a name and dates of birth and death. The other headstones have personal stuff. There was one in particular, just said BILLY. I just thought it was strange. Maybe everyone got tired of being personal. So many men died, not a single woman. You must have been surprised at that."

Sherry Vorhees sighed deeply and shook her head. "A terrible thing it was," she said. "Hal was so depressed that we lost so many of the flock in those years. And you're right, Sally, it was all men who died. All different reasons for their deaths, but it still hurt all of us."

Helen Keaton said quickly, "Don't forget that quite a few of those deaths came from folk living in the subdivision. Their relatives thought our cemetery was romantic, set near the cliff as it is, with the sea breezes blowing through. We let them bury their dead here."

"Did that poor woman Mr. Quinlan and I found at the base of the cliffs get buried here?"

"No," Velma Eisner said. "Her husband was a rude young man. He was yelling around that we were somehow responsible. I told him to look at our muscles and do some thinking. As if we could have had something to do with his wife's death. He stormed out of here."

"He didn't even buy an ice cream cone," Helen said. "We had vanilla with fresh blueberries that week.

He's never been back."

"Well, that wasn't very nice of him," Sally said. "I've got to go now. Thank you for the ice cream." She turned at the door. "I didn't see Doc Spiver's grave."

"He isn't there," Velma said. "He wanted to be cremated and sent back to Ohio. He said there was no way in hell he was going to let Ralph Keaton lay him out."

Helen Keaton laughed. "Ralph was put out, I can tell you."

"No, Helen," Sherry said. "Ralph was pissed. Put out is something you are when Ralph doesn't throw his shorts in the hamper."

The women laughed, Sally along with them. She walked straight across the street to Thelma's Bed and Breakfast.

Sherry Vorhees flipped the curtain back down on the windows of the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop.

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She said to the two other women, "There are three FBI agents in town and Sheriff David Mountebank."

"Those big shots should keep everyone safe," Velma said.

"Oh, yes," Helen said, taking a swipe of ice cream on her fingers and slowly licking it off. "Safe as bugs in a miner's winter blanket."

Quinlan finally hung up the phone. "It took a while to read out all those names and dates. Dillon's right on it. Finding out the stats on all those guys will be a piece of cake for him. He'll get back to us soon."

Sally said slowly, "I told the women at the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop that I hadn't seen Doc Spiver's grave. They told me he'd been cremated and sent back to Ohio."

"Interesting," Quinlan said and picked up the phone again. "Dillon? It's Quinlan again. Find out if a Doc Spiver was cremated and sent back to Ohio, okay? No, it isn't as important as the other names, just of interest to Sally and me. Supposedly Doc had no relatives alive. So why would they cremate him and not bury him here in their own cemetery?

"Now, don't say that. It isn't polite. I bet Sally heard that. Yes, she did, and she's shaking her head at your language."

He was grinning, still listening. "Anything else? No? All right, call us as soon as you've got something.

We're staying here for dinner and the evening." When he hung up, he was still grinning. He said to Sally,

"I love to hear Dillon curse. He doesn't do it well, just keeps repeating the same thing over and over. I tried to teach him more vocabulary-you know, some phrases that connected a good number of really bad words, animal parts, metaphysical parts, whatever-but he just couldn't get the hang of it." He gave her some examples, adopting a different pose for each example. "Here's the one that Bram-mer does best, but only when he's really pissed at one of the agents."

She rocked back on the bed, she was laughing so hard. Then she sobered. Laughing?

"Stop it, Sally. It's fine to forget. It's great to hear you laugh. Keep doing it. Now that I've taken care of all of your lewd instincts, let's go have Martha's cooking."

It was a feast, better than Thanksgiving, Corey Harper said. Martha brought in a huge platter with a pot roast in the center, carrots, potatoes, and onions placed artistically around it. There was a huge Caesar salad with tart dressing, garlic bread that indeed made your teeth snap, and for dessert, an apple crisp.

And there was eggplant par-migiana on the side. Thelma hadn't waited. She'd wanted her eggplant at four-thirty.

Martha appeared at just the right times to refill their wineglasses with the nicest Cabernet Sauvignon anyone had tasted in a long time.

She clucked primarily around the men, encouraging them to eat, until finally Quinlan dropped his fork, sat back in his chair, and groaned. "Martha, any more and God will strike me down for gluttony. Just look at David-his shirt buttons are about to pop off. Even Thomas, who's skinny, would fill out in no time here with you. Since I'm polite, I won't refer to how much the women poked down their gullets."

Sally threw the rest of her garlic bread at him. She turned to a beaming Martha. "You said apple crisp, Martha?"

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“Oh, yes, Sally, with lots of French Vanilla ice cream from the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop."

They had coffee with amaretto, a treat from Thelma- who was eating in her room since Quinlan had worn her out earlier with all her talk, or so she claimed according to Martha. Actually, Thelma had to sleep off all that eggplant parmigiana she'd eaten.

After Martha returned to the kitchen, Sally told Thomas Shredder, Corey Harper, and David Mountebank, who had easily been persuaded to return for dinner and another conference, about the cemetery.

Quinlan said, "I called Dillon. Knowing how fast he is, I'll probably hear back from him tonight. If it's something weird, I'll wake all of you up."

"I don't know if anyone will be able to wake me up," David said, as he sipped at his coffee. “Forget the coffee as a stimulant. This is the best Amaretto I've ever tasted. I'm already feeling like I want to put on my jammies. I hope my girls don't try to climb up my body when I get home. With luck, Jane will already have them in bed."

Sally didn't say anything. She hated Amaretto, always had. She'd taken one drink, then discreetly poured her coffee into Quinlan's cup while Corey Harper was telling a story about a guy in training school at Quantico who'd arrested some visiting brass by mistake after a bank robbery in Hogan's Alley, the fake USA town set up at Quantico for training. The biggest of the brass had thought it a great exercise until one of the trainees had clapped handcuffs on him and hauled him off.

Quinlan promised he would call if Dillon found out anything urgent. But he couldn't imagine waking up even if the phone rang off the wall.'

"I think you're tipsy," he told Sally as he held her up with one arm and unlocked the tower room door with the other.

"I'm tipsy?"

"I think Ms. Lilly would get a kick out of seeing you now."

"Next time I see her, I'll have to tell her that even though I was tipsy I had your pants off you in record time."

She was laughing so hard that when she jumped on him, he wrapped his arms around her back and brought her down to the bed, on top of him. He was kissing her, his breath warm with the tart taste of Amaretto.

"For a small favor I won't tell Martha what you did. You know, pouring your Amaretto in my coffee cup.

Now, what's this about getting my pants off?"

She tried to give him a sultry look. He nearly doubled over laughing. Then she touched him and he groaned, his laughter choking in his throat. His eyes closed, his neck muscles convulsed.

"Jesus," he said. He began kissing her, his tongue in her mouth, and she loved the feel of him, the taste of him. His hands were on her bottom, strong hands kneading her, pressing her against him. He was hard as the bars on her windows at Beadermeyer's sanitarium. Oh, God, why had she thought that?

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She felt a shiver of cold. No, that was just a horrible memory that belonged in the past. It couldn't touch her now. She kissed him again. His mouth was slack. He wasn't so hard now against her belly. He wasn't rubbing his palms over her buttocks.

She lifted herself on her elbows and stared down at him, preparing to see him wink at her, preparing to have him toss her over onto her back.

"James?"

He smiled vaguely at her, not moving, not winking, nothing. "I'm tired, Sally," he said, his words soft and slurred. "Aren't you?"

"Just a bit," she said, leaned down, and kissed him again. Suddenly he closed his eyes, and his head fell to the side.

"James? James!"

Something was wrong. He wasn't teasing her. Something was very wrong. She pressed her fingers to the pulse in his throat. Slow, steady. She flattened her palm over his heart. The beat was solid and slow. She lifted his eyelids and called his name again. She slapped his face.

No response.

He was unconscious. The damned coffee had been drugged. She'd had just a single sip of it, thank God, and that's why she was still conscious. There was no other explanation. She tried to pull herself off Quinlan, and she did manage it, but her arms and legs felt soft and wobbly. Just one drink of that amaretto was doing this to her?

She had to get help. She had to get to Thomas Shredder and Corey Harper. They were staying here, just down the hall. Not far, not far at all. Oh, God, they'd drunk the coffee too. And so had David, and he was driving. She had to see if Thomas and Corey were unconscious. She had to go to their rooms and see. She could make it.

She fell off the bed and rolled. She lay there a moment on her back, staring up at the beautiful molding that ran around the edge of the ceiling. There were even Victorian cherubs at each corner, naked, holding up harps and flowers.

She had to move. She got herself up on her hands and knees. What room was Corey Harper in? She'd told her, but she couldn't remember. Well, it didn't matter, she would find both of them. Their rooms had to be just down the hall. She crawled to the door. Not far at all. She managed to stretch up and turn the knob to open the door.

The hallway stretched forever to her left, the lighting dim and shadowy. What if the person who had drugged the coffee was waiting in those shadows, waiting to see if someone didn't succumb to the drug, waiting to kill that person? She shook her head and managed to heave herself to her feet. She made her feet move, one step at a time, that was all she needed to do, just one foot in front of the other. She'd find Thomas and Corey. Finally, a door appeared on her left-number 114. She knocked.

There was no answer.

She called out, her voice only a miserable whisper, "Thomas? Corey?"

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She knocked again. Still no answer. She turned the knob. To her surprise, the door opened. It opened quickly, and she stumbled into the room, her knees buckling under her. She fell on her side.

She called out, "Thomas? Corey?"

She managed to get onto her hands and knees. There was only a single lamp burning, on top of the bedside table. Thomas Shredder was lying on his back, his arms and legs sprawled out away from his body. He was unconscious. Or he was dead. She tried to scream. She wanted to scream, but only a small cry came out of her mouth.

She heard footsteps behind her. She managed to get herself turned around to face the open doorway.

James? Was he all right now? But she didn't call out his name.

She was afraid it wasn't him. James had drunk a whole cup of that coffee. It couldn't be him. She was afraid of who it might be.

The light was dim. Shadows filled the room, filled her vision. There was a man standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets.

"Hello, Sally."

29

"No," SHE SAID, staring at that shadowy figure, knowing it was him, accepting it, but still she said again,

"No, it can't be you."

"Of course it can, dear. You'd know your father anywhere, wouldn't you?"

"No." She was shaking her head back and forth.

"Why can't you get up, Sally?"

"You drugged us. I just drank a little bit, but it must have been very strong."

"Didn't get enough, did you?" He was coming toward her now, quickly, too quickly.

"Doctor Beadermeyer got to try so many new drugs on you. Actually, I was surprised you survived with your brain intact. Well, I'll take care of that."

He leaned down, grabbed the hair at the back of her neck, and yanked her head back. "Here, Sally." He poured liquid down her throat. Then he threw her away from him, and she fell hard onto her back.

She stared up at him, seeing him weave and fade in the dim light. She tried to focus on him, watching him closely, but his features blurred, his mouth moved and grew bigger. His neck stretched out, becoming longer and longer until she could no longer see his head. Surely this was the way Alice in Wonderland must have felt. Off with her head. "Oh, no," she whispered. "Oh, no." She fell onto her side, the smooth oak boards of the floor cool against her cheek.

Her father was here. That was her first thought when she woke up.

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Her father.

No doubt about it. Her father. He was here. He had drugged her. He would kill her now. She was helpless again, just as helpless as she'd been for days upon weeks, weeks upon months.

She couldn't move, couldn't even lift a single finger. She realized her hands were tied in front of her, not all that tightly, but tight enough. She shifted her weight a bit. Her ankles were tied, too. But her mind wasn't fettered. Her mind was clear-thank God for that. If she'd been vague and blurry again, she would simply have folded up on herself and willed herself to die. But no, she could think. She could remember.

She could also open her eyes. Did she want to?

James, she thought, and forced her eyes open.

She was lying on a bed. The springs squeaked when she shifted from one side to the other. She tried to make out more detail but couldn't. There was only a dim light coming from a hallway. It looked to be a small bedroom, but she couldn't tell anything more about it.

Where was she? Was she still in The Cove? If so, where?

Where was her father? What would he do?

She saw a shadowy figure walk into the bedroom. The light was too dim for her to make out his face.

But she knew. Oh, yes, she knew it was him.

"You," she said, surprised that the word had come from her mouth. It sounded rusty and infinitely sad.

"Hello, Sally."

"It is you. I was praying I'd been wrong. Where am I?"

"It's a bit soon to tell you that."

"Are we still in The Cove? Where's James? And the other two agents?"

"It's a bit soon to tell you that as well."

"Damn you, I was praying desperately you'd left the country, that, or you were dead. No, actually I was praying that they would catch you and put you in prison for the rest of your miserable life. Where am I?"

"How poor Noelle suffered for years from that tongue of yours. You were always sniping at her, always moralizing, always telling her what she should do. You wanted her to call the police. You wanted her to leave me. The fact is, she didn't want to, Sally. Maybe at first she did, but not later. But you just wouldn't stop. You depressed her with all that criticism of yours, with your contempt. That's why she never came to see you in the sanitarium. She was afraid you'd preach at her some more, even though you were fucking crazy."

"That's bullshit. Naturally you can say anything you want about anybody now. Noelle isn't here to tell you what she really thinks of you. I'll bet you she'll be the happiest woman in Washington once she truly realizes that she doesn't have to be your punching bag anymore. I'll bet you she's already wearing short-sleeved dresses and shirts again. No more fear of showing bruises. I'll bet she'll even try two-piece bathing suits this summer. How many years couldn't she wear them? You loved to punch her in the ribs, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

didn't you? You brutalized her. If there's any justice at all, you'll pay. Too bad you didn't die."

"That's more out of you than I've heard in more than six months. You were blessedly silent most of the time during your too brief stay at the sanitarium. Too bad that Doctor Beadermeyer is out of business, thanks to that bastard Quinlan.

"Everything got so complicated, and it was all your fault, Sally. We had a lid on everything until Quinlan got you away from Doctor Beadermeyer again."

"His name's Norman Lipsy. He's a plastic surgeon.

He's a criminal. He gave that poor man your face, but you're the one who killed him. You're a filthy murderer, not just a wife beater. And a traitor to your country."

"Why do you denounce me only for my more pedestrian deeds? I did one really good thing, something I'm quite proud of that you haven't mentioned.

"I put my darling daughter away for six months. I do believe that was my favorite project in the last few years. "Putting you away. Having you under my control. Never having to see the contempt and hatred on your face when you happened to see me. God, how I enjoyed seeing you like a rag doll, your mouth gaping open, looking so stupid and vague that it wasn't even much fun watching that pathetic Holland take off your clothes and bathe you and then dress you again like you were his dolly.

"Toward the end there, I didn't even enjoy slapping you to get your attention. You didn't have any to get, and you got too thin. I told Doctor Beadermeyer to feed you more, but he said all he could do was keep you stabilized. Then you escaped by hiding the pills beneath your tongue. "To see you in my house, in my study, just after I'd shot Jackie. It was a shock."

He struck a pose she'd seen many times in her life. He propped his elbow up on his other arm and cupped his chin in his hand. It was his intellectual, thoughtful look, she supposed. All he needed was Scott's pipe and perhaps Sherlock Holmes's hat.

"There you were, leaning over poor Jackie-that greedy little bugger-then you turned and saw me, saw me as clear as day. I could see the recognition in your eyes. You picked up my gun. I'd put it down to get some papers from my desk. But then you picked it up, and I had no choice but to run. I hid outside and watched you shake your head, clearly disbelieving you'd seen me. I saw Noelle and Scott come running in. I heard her screarn and scream. I saw Scott nearly chew through that damned pipe of his.

"Then you ran, didn't you, Sally? You ran and you threw my prized pistol in the bushes. I couldn't get you then and I'll tell you the truth, I was scared. 1 had to get my gun first, though, and I did. But I'll tell you, I was worried, and I stayed worried for a long time. So what if you told the world you'd seen me, your father? If you did, even though you were certifiably crazy, they might have insisted that an autopsy be done, that dental records be compared, but you were so afraid, you just ran. You ran here, to The Cove, to Amabel.

"I didn't find out for a good four days that you'd blocked it all out. That you ran because you believed that either you'd killed me or dear Noelle had."

She was trying to take it all in, to realize that she'd never been wrong, to at last understand what this man was. She said slowly, “Quinlan made me remember. That and re-creating the scene, I guess you'd say. I saw everything then, everything."

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“I bet you want to know who the man was who looked like me. He was just a guy I discovered in Baltimore one day when I was meeting one of the Iraqi agents. He was broke, looked remarkably like me-same height, nearly the same weight-and then I knew when I saw him, just knew that he'd be the one to save me."

Why, she wondered, was he talking so much? Why was he just standing there pouring all this out to her?

And she realized then that it pleased him to brag about his brilliance to her. To make her realize how truly great he was. After all, she'd been in the dark about everything. Oh, yes, he was enjoying himself. "Jackie who?"

"You know, I really don't remember his last name. Who cares? He played his role and played it perfectly." Amory St. John laughed. “I promised him a truckload of money if he could impersonate me. I wish you could have heard him practicing my voice tones, my accent. It was pathetic, but both Doctor Beadermeyer and I told him he had a great ear, that he had all my mannerisms, that he could play me to perfection. That's what he believed would happen. He believed he was going to take my place at a big conference. It was his chance to do something, his chance to make a big score. He was a credulous fool."

"Now he's a dead fool."

"Yes."

She began to pull on the ropes ever so slightly as she said, "Doctor Beadermeyer is down, but you already know all that. He'll spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. Holland told the FBI everything.

All those people-people like me-will be let out of that prison that you call a sanitarium, like it's a resort where people go to recuperate and rest."

“Yes, but who cares about all those other people? They weren't my problem, just you. I only regret that the sanitarium will be closed down. It was such a perfect place for you. Out of the way for good. It all fell into place once I met Jackie. I already knew Doctor Beadermeyer and all about that little racket of his.

Nearly seven months ago, it all came together.

"I got you out of the way-with Scott's help, of course. He was such a miserable little fool, afraid he'd get caught, but I'll tell you, he sure liked the money he got from helping me. And, you see, I knew all about his lover. At least I made sure you didn't get AIDS. I threatened Scott that if he made love to you-if he could force himself to do the deed-then he had to use a condom. Doctor Beadermeyer checked your blood. Thanks to me, you're well. But Scott did play his part. Once he was free of you, he spent his money and dallied openly with his lover. He was a good pawn. Where was I? Oh, yes, then Jackie went under the knife, and I finalized my plans. But you had to butt in, didn't you, Sally? I had you all locked away and still you got out. Still you had to try to ruin my plans. Well, no more."

"Do you hate me so much just because I tried to protect my mother from your fists?"

"Actually not. It was natural that I wouldn't like you very much."

"It's because you believed that I'd learned about your illegal arms sales?"

"Did you?"

"No."

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"My dealings with other governments had nothing to do with it. Scott was afraid you'd seen something, but I knew you would have acted in a flash if you had. No, that didn't concern me. Fact of the matter is, you're not my daughter. You're a fucking little bastard. And that, my dear Sally, is why Noelle never left me. She tried once, when you were just a baby. She didn't believe me when I told her she was in this for life. Perhaps she thought she'd test me. She ran back to her rich, snotty parents in Philadelphia, and they acted true to form just as I knew they would. They told her to get back to her husband and stop making up lies about me. After all, I'd saved her bacon. How could she say such things about me, a wonderful man who'd married her when she was pregnant with another man's child?"

He laughed, a long, deep laugh that made her skin crawl. She kept lightly tugging on the ropes. Surely they were a little bit looser now, but she wasn't really thinking about those ropes. She was trying to understand him, to really take in what he was saying. But it was so hard.

He continued, his voice meditative, "When I think about it now, I realize that Noelle really hadn't believed me. She hadn't believed that my price to marry her, other than the five hundred thousand dollars I got from her parents, was that she stay with me forever, or until I didn't want her anymore. When she came dragging back with you-a screaming little brat-I took you away from her and held you over a big fire in the fireplace. The fire was blowing really good. It singed off the little hair you had and your eyebrows.

Oh, how she screamed. I told her if she ever tried anything like that again, I'd kill you.

"I meant it, you know. I bet you wonder who your father was."

She felt as though she'd had a ton of drugs pumped into her body. She couldn't grasp what he was saying. She understood his words-he wasn't her father-but she couldn't seem to get it to the core of herself.

"You're not my father," she repeated, staring beyond his left shoulder toward the open door. She wanted to cheer. She didn't have any of this monster's blood. "You kept Noelle with you by threatening to kill me, her only child."

"Yes. My dear wife finally believed me. I can't tell you the pleasure it gave me to beat that rich little bitch.

And she had to take it. She had no choice.

"Then you were sixteen and you saw me hit her. Too bad. It changed everything, but then I had good reason to get rid of you. Remember that last time? You came back into the house and I was kicking her and you got or. the phone to call for help and she crawled-actually crawled-over to you and begged you not to call? I enjoyed that. I enjoyed watching you simply disconnect from her.

"I kicked her a couple more times after you left. She really moaned delightfully. Then I had sex with her and she cried the whole time.

"After that I was free of you for a long while. Life was really quite good those four years you were out of my house, out of your mother's life. But I wanted to pay you back. I got Scott to marry you. That got you away for a little while, but you didn't want him, did you? You realized he was a phony almost immediately. Well, it didn't matter.

"I just had to bide my time. When I saw Jackie I knew what to do. You see, the Feds were closing in.

I'm not stupid. I knew it was only a matter of time. I'd gotten very rich, but arms sales to places like Iraq are always risky. Yes, it was just a matter of time. I wanted to pay you back for all the trouble you caused me. Those six months you were in Doctor Beadermeyer's sanitarium were wonderful for me. I Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

loved to have you beneath me, watching me fondle you, fondle myself. I adored hitting you, watching you wince in pain. But then you got away and ruined everything." He leaned down and slapped her, her left cheek, then her right cheek. Once, again and yet again.

She tasted blood. He'd split her lip.

"You fucking coward." She spit at him, but he jerked away from her in time. He slapped her again.

"I never wanted to have sex with you in the sanitarium," he said, close to her face now, "though I could have. I saw you naked enough times, but I never wanted you. Hell, Scott wouldn't even look at you. He only came that one time because I insisted. Now that little bastard will take the fall because I won't be around. Come on, Sally, spit at me again. I'm not the coward, you are."

She spit at him, and this time she didn't miss. She watched him wipe his mouth and his cheek with the back of his hand. Then he smiled down at her. She had a stark memory of him smiling down at her in the sanitarium. "No," she whispered, but it didn't change anything.

He struck her hard and she fell into blackness. Her last thought was that she was grateful he hadn't given her more drugs.

30

"WE'RE IN DEEP shit," Quinlan said and meant it, but he wasn't thinking about himself and the other agents, he was thinking about Sally. If she was here in this black hole, she was still unconscious. Or dead.

There was a grunt from Thomas Shredder and a "yeah" from Corey Harper. It was true. They were in very deep shit. It was also true that it was as black as the bottom of a witch's cauldron in this room where they were being kept.

No, it wasn't a room. It was a shed with a dirt tioor. Probably the shed behind Doc Spiver's cottage.

"Look," Thomas said, "Quinlan's right. We are in deep shit, but we're trained agents. We can get out of this. If we don't, they'll fire us. We'll lose our careers and our federal pensions. I sure as hell don't want to lose my federal health benefits."

Corey Harper laughed despite the cramps in her ankles. Her hands were okay. They hadn't tied them all that tightly, probably because she was a woman. Still, the knots were secure and weren't about to slip or slide.

"That's the funniest thing I've ever heard you say, Thomas."

Quinlan said, as he tugged at the ropes at his wrists, "One of these clowns must have been in the Navy in World War II. These ropes are very well tied, not a bit of give to them. Anybody want to try hands or teeth?"

"I would," Corey said, "but I'm tied to the wall over here. Yeah, there's a rope around my waist, and I can feel it's wrapped around one of the wall boards. And yes, it's solid. Even with big teeth and a long reach, I couldn't get to you."

"I'm tied too," Thomas said, "Damn."

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"At least everyone's alive," Quinlan said. "I wonder what happened to David?" But he was wondering about Sally. He was just afraid to say her name aloud.

"He probably ran off the road," Thomas said matter-of-factly. "He isn't here. Maybe he's already dead."

"Or maybe somebody rescued him," Corey said.

"What do you mean 'already dead'?" Quinlan said, wishing he could see just an outline of something, anything. He kept working on the ropes, but they wouldn't budge.

"Do you think they're going to keep us here for the next ten years?"

"I hope not," Quinlan said. "They're all so old they'd be dead themselves by then. I'd hate to be forgotten."

"You're not funny, Quinlan."

"Maybe not, but I'm trying."

"Keep trying," Corey said. "I don't want to fall into a funk. We've got to think. First of all, who did this to us?"

"That's pretty damned obvious, isn't it?" Thomas said. "That damned old relic. She probably had Martha bring her the Amaretto and she put something into it. I was out like a light the second I lay down on my bed."

"Where's Sally?" Corey asked suddenly.

"I don't know," Quinlan said. "I don't know."

He'd prayed she was locked up with them, still unconscious from the drug. "Everyone stretch your legs out in front of you. Let's see how big this shed is."

Quinlan could just barely touch Thomas's toe.

"Now lean to one side and then the other."

Quinlan got a pinch of Corey's blouse.

No Sally.

"Sally isn't in here with us," Quinlan said. "Where'd they take her?" Oh, Jesus, why had he asked that question aloud? He didn't want to hear what Thomas had to say.

Thomas said, “Good question. Why would they bother to separate us anyway?"

"Because," Quinlan said slowly, "Sally's Aunt Amabel is a part of this. Maybe she has Sally. Maybe she'll protect her."

Thomas sighed. To Quinlan's surprise, he said, "Let's pray you're right. Damn, my head feels like a drum in a rock band."

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"Mine too," Corey said. "But I can still think. Now, Quinlan, you think the whole town is part of a conspiracy? You think the whole bloody town has killed at least sixty people in the past three to four years? For their money? And then they buried all of them in their cemetery?"

"It shows respect," Quinlan said. "Can't you just see all those old folk, stroking their chins as they look down at an old couple they've just offed, saying, 'Well, Ralph Keaton can lay 'em out, then we'll bury 'em really nice and Reverend Vorhees can say all the right words.' Yeah, Corey, the whole bloody town.

What other possibility is there?"

"This is nuts," Thomas said. "An entire fucking town killing people? No one would believe that in a million years, particularly since most of them are senior citizens."

"I believe it," Quinlan said. "Oh, yeah, I believe it. I'll just bet it started with an accident. They got money from that accident. It gave them-or maybe just one of them or a couple of them-an idea of how to save their town. And it grew and grew."

Corey said slowly, "The way they lure victims here is that big advertising sign on the highway."

"Right," Quinlan said. "The World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop. By the way, it is the best ice cream I've ever eaten."

He had to make jokes, he had to or else he'd go nuts. Where was Sally? Could Amabel really be protecting her? He had to doubt it.

"Come in and buy your last ice cream cone," Thomas said. "That's the bottom line."

"What about that woman who was murdered? And Doc Spiver?" Corey said.

Quinlan said, even as he was working furiously on the ropes at his wrists, "The woman must have heard something she shouldn't have heard. They held her prisoner for at least three nights, probably more. She must have gotten her mouth free, because Sally heard her screaming that first night she was here in The Cove. Then, two nights later, she heard her screaming again. The next morning Sally and I found her body. My guess is they had to kill her. They didn't want to, but they did. They knew it was either the woman or them. No choice really. They killed her. They must have been pissed-they just threw her off that cliff, didn't bother laying her out or burying her in their precious cemetery."

"What about Doc Spiver?" Thomas said. "Damn, these ropes are strong. I can't get even a micron of play in them."

"Keep working on them, everybody," Quinlan said. "Now, Doc Spiver. I just don't know. It's possible he was a weak link. That as a physician, all the killing had turned him. Maybe the woman's murder was the last straw. He just couldn't stand it anymore. He cracked. They shot him in the mouth, trying to make it look like a suicide. Again, they saw it as they had no choice."

"Jesus," Corey Harper said, "do you guys know that most FBI agents never get close to the deep shit we're in now? Some of them never even draw their guns. They spend their whole careers interviewing people. I've been told that quite a few agents, when they retire, become psychologists-they're that good at getting information out of people."

Quinlan laughed. "We'll get out of this, Corey. Believe it."

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"You think you're so bloody smart, Quinlan. How the hell are we going to get free? And a swarm of little old people are going to show up any minute. Do you think they'll form a firing squad? Or just beat us to death with their canes?''

Corey said quietly, "Don't, Thomas. Let's get loose. There's got to be a way. I don't want to be helpless when someone comes, and you both know they'll come."

"What, dammit?" Thomas shouted. "What the fuck can we do? The ropes are too tight. They even tied us to the wall so we couldn't get to each other. We're in the dark. So what the hell are we going to do?"

"There's got to be something," Corey said.

"Just maybe there is," Quinlan said.

Sally's jaw hurt. She opened and closed her mouth, working it until the pain eased to a dull throb. She was lying in the dark, the only light coming through the open doorway from the hall.

She was alone. Her hands were still tied in front of her. She lifted her hands to her mouth and began to tug with her teeth on the knot.

She was concentrating so hard that she nearly screamed when a quiet voice said, "It's really no use, Sally.

Just relax, baby. Don't move. Just relax."

"No," Sally whispered. "Oh, no."

"Don't you recognize where you are, Sally? I thought you'd know right away."

"No, it's too dark in here."

"Look toward the window, dear. Just maybe you'll see your dear father's face again."

"I'm in the bedroom just down the hall from yours."

"Yes."

"Why, Amabel? What's going on?"

"Oh, Sally, why'd you have to come back? I'd give anything if you hadn't shown up on my doorstep that day. Jesus, I had to take you in. I really didn't want you involved, but here you are again, and there's nothing I can do."

"Where are James and the other two agents?"

"I don't know. They're probably in that little tool shed behind Doc Spiver's cottage. That's a sturdy prison. They'll never get out."

"What are you going to do to them?"

"It's really not up to me."

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"Who is it up to?"

"The town."

For a long moment, Sally couldn't breathe. It was true. The whole bloody town. "How many people has the town killed, Amabel?"

"The first old couple, Harve and Marge Jensen, the ones Quinlan was supposedly here to look for, they were both accidents. Both of them keeled over with heart attacks. We found cash in their Winnebago.

Next there was this biker. He started hitting on poor old Hunker, and Purn cracked him over the head with a chair to protect Hunker. It killed him. Another accident.

"Then the biker's girlfriend realized he was dead. Sherry Vorhees had no choice but to kill her. She slammed her over the head with an industrial blender.

"It got easier after that, you know? Someone would spot a likely old couple or just someone who looked rich. Or maybe one of the women who was working in the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop saw a whole lot of cash when the person pulled open his wallet. Then we just did it. Yes, it got easier. It got to be nearly a game, but don't misunderstand me, Sally. We always treated them with the greatest respect after they were dead.

"You've told me how beautiful the town is now. Well, it was a run-down mess before. But now, our investments are doing well, everyone is quite comfortable, and many tourists come here not just for the World's Greatest Ice

Cream but also to see the town and buy souvenirs and eat at the cafe."

"How wonderful for you. More people to choose from. You could discuss it among yourselves. Did that couple look richer than that one over there? You played Russian roulette with people's lives. God, that's disgusting."

"I wouldn't put it so crassly, but as we've gotten to be more of a tourist attraction we've been able to be more selective. But we've killed only old people, Sally. They had all had a full life."

"That biker's girlfriend didn't."

Amabel shrugged. "It couldn't be helped."

Sally was just shaking her head back and forth on the pillow, believing but still incredulous. "Jesus, Amabel, you've killed people. Don't you understand that? You've killed innocent people. It doesn't excuse anything that they were old. You've robbed them. You've buried them in the cemetery-what? Oh, I see. You buried them two to each grave. Only you used just a man's name. Does one of you have a list identifying who's really in each grave?"

"No, but we left identification on the bodies. Don't sound so appalled, Sally. We were dying here. We desperately wanted to survive. We have. We've won."

"No, everything's coming down on your heads now, Amabel. There are three FBI agents here, and Sheriff David Mountebank knows everything they know, maybe more. You kill the agents, and you'll all be in the gas chamber. Don't you understand? The FBI is involved!" "Oh, Sally, here you are, going on and on about something that really doesn't concern you. What about yourself, baby? What about your Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

father?"

"He's not my fucking father, thank God. At least I found that out."

"Good, there's anger there. I was afraid you were still trying to believe he was a nightmare come back to haunt you."

"You're saying he's here with you, Amabel? You want him here?" She knew the answer. But she didn't want to hear it.

"Of course, Sally."

She stared beyond her aunt to the man illuminated in the doorway. Her father. No, not her father, thank God. It was the bastard who'd raised her, the bastard who'd beat the shit out of her mother and locked her away in Dr. Beadermeyer's sanitarium, the bastard who'd beat her just because it pleased him to do so.

"So how does our little bastard feel, Ammie?"

Ammie? What was this?

"I'm not the bastard. You are."

"Sally, I hesitate to hit you in front of your aunt. It bothers her, even though she knows what a vicious mouth you have, even though she knows I've got to do it to control you."

"Amabel, why do you have him here with you? He's a murderer. He's a traitor to our country."

Amabel sat down beside her. Her fingertips were light and soft as they drifted over Sally's forehead, pushing her hair behind her ears, lightly smoothing her eyebrows.

"Amabel, please. When I was here before, I know it was him on the phone to me. He admitted that he'd looked in through the bedroom window."

"Yes, dear."

"Why was he here, Amabel?"

"He had to come here, Sally. He had to take you back to the sanitarium. He hoped to make you doubt your sanity with the phone calls and his face at the window."

"But how could he possibly know I was even here?"

"I called him. He was staying at a small inn in Oklahoma City. He took the next plane to Portland, then drove here. But you knew even as you asked that question, didn't you, Sally?

"Ah, but you didn't doubt your sanity at all. That was due in part to Quinlan. That man. His being here made everything more difficult. Isn't it strange? Quinlan made up that story about coming here to try to find a trace of those old folk? All he wanted was you. He didn't care about any missing old people. Just you. He thought you'd either killed your father or were protecting your mother.

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"I've always been amused by the ways of fate. Well, I'm not amused now. There are big problems now."

"Now, Ammie, do you think it was fate that brought all those nice old people here to buy the World's Greatest Ice Cream so you could then kill them and steal all their money?"

Amabel turned and frowned at him. "I don't know, and neither do you, Amory. Now, I don't care what happens to Quinlan and the others, but I don't want Sally hurt."

"He doesn't agree with you, Aunt Amabel," Sally said. "He hates me. You know he's not my father. He has no latent tender feelings for me. As for my mother, did you know that he forced Noelle to stay with him?"

"Why, of course, Sally."

Sally gaped at her. She couldn't help it. On the other hand, why was she so surprised? Her world had flipped and turned more times in the past seven months than she could cope with. It seemed she'd never known who she really was or why things were the way they were. And she'd hated her mother for her weakness. Oh, God, she'd felt contempt for her, wanted to shake her herself for letting her husband knock her around.

"Who's my father?"

"Now she wants to know," Amory St. John said, as he strolled into the small bedroom, his hands in his pants pockets.

"Who?"

"Well, dear," Amabel said, "actually your father was my husband. And yes, he was my husband before he met Noelle and the two of them fell in love-"

"In lust, you mean, Ammie."

"That too. Anyway, Noelle was always rather stupid, and Carl wasn't all that much of this earth himself.

Knowing both of them as well as I did, I had difficulty figuring out who got whom into bed. But they must have managed it. She got pregnant. Fortunately she was seeing Amory at the time, and things got worked out to everyone's satisfaction."

"Not to my mother's."

"Oh, yes, she was thrilled that she wouldn't have to abort you, Sally. She would have, of course, if it meant no husband as a cover.

"I brought my Carl out here to The Cove so he could paint and spend the rest of his meaningless little life doing landscape oils that sell at airport shows for twenty dollars, and that includes their vulgar gold-painted frames. Carl never roamed again. In fact, he begged my forgiveness, said he'd do anything if only I wouldn't leave him. I let him do quite a bit before he died twenty years ago."

"You didn't kill him, did you?"

"Oh, no. Amory did that, but Carl was already very ill with lung cancer. He never would stop smoking unfiltered Camels. Yes, it was a blessing for Carl that his brakes failed, and he died so quickly. Thank Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

you, Amory."

"You're welcome, Ammie."

"So how long have you been lovers?"

Amabel laughed softly, turning to look at the man who was standing in the doorway. "A very long time,"

she said.

"So you don't mind him beating the shit out of you, Amabel?''

"No, Amory, don't!" Amabel walked quickly to him and put her hand on his arm. She said over her shoulder, "Listen to me, Sally. Don't talk like that. There's no reason to make your father angry-"

"He's not my father."

"Nevertheless, mind your tongue. Of course he doesn't hit me. Just Noelle."

"He hit me too, Amabel."

"You deserved it," Amory said.

Sally looked from one to the other. In the dim light she couldn't see either of them clearly. Amory took Amabel's hand, pulled her closer to his side. The shadows seemed to deepen around them, moving into them, drawing them into one. Sally shivered.

"I thought you loved me, Amabel."

"I do, baby, indeed I do. You're my husband's child and my niece. And I agreed with Amory that you were better off in that nice sanitarium. You weren't doing well. He told me how erratic you'd become, how you were cheating on your husband, how you'd gotten in with the wrong people and were taking drugs.

"He said that Doctor Beadermeyer would help you. I met Doctor Beadermeyer. An excellent doctor, who said you were doing nicely but that you needed complete rest and constant supervision by professionals."

"That was all a lie. Even if you don't want to believe he's such a monster, just think about it. You've read the papers, seen the news. Everyone is looking for him. Everyone knows that many of the patients in Doctor Beadermeyer's sanitarium were prisoners, just like I was."

"Oh, baby, don't do this. I don't want to put a gag in your mouth, but I will. I won't let you talk about him like this."

"All right, but didn't you wonder about how crazy I was when he showed up here, knocked me over the head, and drugged me? When he nearly killed James?''

Amory St. John pulled away from Amabel. He walked to the bed and stood there, staring down at Sally.

"In this dim light I can't tell if you're going to be bruised or not."

"You really hit her that hard, Amory?"

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"Don't fret, Ammie. She deserved it. She spit on me. Over the years I learned exactly how hard I could hit Noelle to get a certain kind and color of bruise. But everyone's skin is different. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

"You're nuts," Sally said. "You're fucking nuts."

"I would have whipped you if you'd ever said that when you lived under my roof."

"It doesn't matter, Amory. She's frightened. She doesn't know what's going to happen to her."

Sally said, "I know exactly what's going to happen to me. He doesn't have Doctor Beadermeyer to hold me prisoner for him anymore. No, he's going to kill me, Amabel. You know that as weii, otherwise you wouldn't have admitted everything to me. No, don't deny it. You've already accepted it. But I don't really count. What will bring both of you down is hurting the FBI agents. You try killing James, and all hell will break loose. I know his boss, and you can count on it."

"They're stupid, all of them," Amory said. He shrugged. "I know things will get even more difficult, but we'll deal with it. Actually I've already set things in motion. It's true I just didn't count on that bastard getting you away from Doctor Beadermeyer again. That's what ripped it apart. All my plans, Sally, everything has had to be rearranged. It has put me out. Now I'm no longer dead, thanks to the two of you. Now I'll have to leave the country forever."

"Just try it. They'll catch you. With those arms sales to Hussein, you've got the Feds ready to tear the world apart looking for you."

"I know. Such a pity. But it will be fine. I got most of my money out of the Caymans and Switzerland nearly a year ago. I left just a bit in all those foreign accounts, just to tantalize the Feds, just so they'd realize I knew exactly what I was doing. It will make them crazy, and they won't catch me."

"James will catch you."

"Your James Quinlan isn't going to catch a cold. He won't have time before he's sent six feet under."

She felt such rage she couldn't stop herself. She heaved up, hitting him in the face with her bound fists.

Hard. He cursed, shoving her back, his own fist raised. She heard Amabel yell, "Don't, Amory!" But that fist just kept coming down, not toward her face but toward her ribs.

31

"WELL, HELL," QUINLAN said. "Sorry, guys, but the old codgers were thorough. My army knife is gone. I always taped it to my ankle. Damn."

Thomas said, “Damn is right. Corey, what are you doing? Why are you heaving around like a gutted fish?

Why are you making those weird groaning sounds?"

She was breathing hard. "You'll see. I didn't count on Quinlan finding that knife. Just wait a moment, I've nearly made it through."

"Made what through?" Quinlan said, desperately straining to see her in the darkness.

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"I was a gymnast. I have the dubious honor of being the most flexible agent to go through the program at Quantico. I'm getting my arms beneath my butt and pushing on through and in just a minute-Jesus, this is tougher than it used to be when I was younger and skinnier-" She stopped, breathing hard, straining.

"There."

She was panting, laughing. "I did it!"

"What, Corey? For God's sake, what did you do?"

"My hands are now tied in front of me, Thomas. Thank heaven they left enough leeway between me and the wall. The rope around my waist was higher than the rope tying my wrists together. Now, I'm going to turn around and untie the rope around my waist. When I'm free, I can do my feet and then get to you guys."

"Corey," Quinlan said, "if you get us out of this, both Thomas and I will recommend that you become the special agent in charge of the Portland field office. Right, Thomas?"

"If she gets out us out of this, I'll beg her to marry me and be the SAC."

"Thomas, you're a sexist. I won't ever marry a sexist."

"Corey, how are you doing?" Quinlan said.

"It's coming. The knot at my waist is pretty easy."

"Good. Just hurry."

But how much time did they have left before the old folk came for them? Where was Sally? Quinlan hadn't prayed much in his life, but he was praying now. Did Amabel have her?

"Got it! Now let me get my feet."

"Oh, shit, I hear something," Thomas said. "Hurry, Corey, hurry!"

"Don't hit her, Amory!"

Amabel grabbed his arm, jerking it away. It slammed against the bed just an inch from Sally's ribs.

He was panting. He wheeled about, his fist raised. "You shouldn't have done that, Ammie. You shouldn't have done it."

Sally reared up, yelling, "Don't you dare hit her, you fucking cretin!"

But he did, his fist hard against Amabel's jaw, knocking her against the wall. She slid down to the floor.

Sally didn't say a word. She was staring at her aunt, praying she wasn't dead.

"How could you?" She stared up at the man who had to be mad. "You're lovers. She called to tell you I was here so you could come and get me. You hit her just like you hit Noelle."

"Actually," he said, rubbing his knuckles, "it's the first time I've ever had to discipline her. She won't go Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

against me in the future now. I wonder how her skin will bruise."

No blinding light came through the door as it creaked open-just a tiny bit, then wider until all \hree of them could see the stars and the half moon.

"You awake in here?" It was an old man's voice. Which one of them? Quinlan wondered. Was there just one of them come to check on their prisoners, or more? God, he prayed it was just the one old man.

"It ain't quite morning yet, but you should be awake." "Yeah," Thomas said, "we're awake. What? You hoped you'd killed us?"

"Nah, there weren't enough of that stuff Doc had on hand to put your lights out. It would have been easier that way, though. Now, well, it ain't going to be any fun."

Quinlan nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard Corey whimper. "Oh, please, I don't feel well.

Please take me to a bathroom. Please." She was moaning quietly, very effectively.

"Oh, shit," the old man said. "It's just you, little gal?" "Yes," Corey managed to choke out. "Please, hurry." "All right. Damn, I didn't expect any of you to be sick. Nobody was ever sick before."

Corey was slumped over, straight ahead of the old guy, against the back wall. The old man opened the door wider as he came into the shed. Quinlan recognized Purn Davies, the old coot who owned the general store. He saw that Corey had her hands behind her back, as if they were still tied there.

"Please hurry," she whispered. She sounded godawful, like she would puke at any moment. Quinlan looked at Thomas and shook his head. Just as Purn Davies passed Quinlan, he whipped up his feet and kicked the old man on his thighs, knocking him right onto Corey's lap.

"Gotcha!" Corey said. When the old man began to struggle, she raised her fists and knocked him cold.

"Well done, Corey," Thomas said. "You sure you won't marry me? What if I promise to change?"

"Ask me again if we get out of this alive," she said. "Okay, guys, I'm going to untie Quinlan's wrists, then yours, Thomas. Keep an eye on the old man."

It took her only about three minutes to untie Quinlan. In another three minutes all of them were free. They rose and stretched and tried to get the blood moving back into their legs and arms. "I think I'll tie him up real good," Corey said and dropped to her knees. "Look, Quinlan, he's got one of our guns."

"Thank God," Quinlan said. He looked outside the shed. "It's near dawn. I don't see a soul. I guess they just sent him here to make sure we were still alive. Why, I don't know. There's no way they could have afforded to keep us alive, no way at all.

"Ah, look here. The old man brought us some sandwiches. They're out here on a tray. How the hell did he expect us to eat them with our hands tied behind our backs?"

"All done," Corey said, standing behind the two men. "What now, Quinlan?"

"Thomas, bar the shed door, then let's get into Doc Spiver's house and pray the phone's still connected.

We can get the cavalry here. Then we'll go find Sally."

"He's mad, Amabel, utterly mad."

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Amabel was rubbing her jaw. She looked bewildered. "He's never hit me before, never," she said slowly.

"He's always caressed me and loved me. He's never hit me. I always thought it was Noelle who brought that out in him, like she made him hit her, like she was sick and needed it."

“No, she hated it. He demeaned her, Amabel, and she stood for it all because he'd threatened to kill me if she didn't stay with him, if she didn't take his abuse. He hasn't hit you because you're not with him all that much and because if he did, you'd probably shoot him or just leave. Noelle couldn't leave. She had to stay to protect me. Now that he's got you, he'll beat the shit out of you whenever he feels like it."

"No. I'll tell him that if he ever hits me again, I'll leave him."

"You can try it, but I bet he'll find a way to keep you, just like he did your sister."

"You're wrong. You've got to be wrong. We've been intimate for twelve years, Sally. Twelve years. I know him. He loves me. The only reason he hit me tonight is because he's afraid. He's upset and worried that we won't get away. And you pushed. Yes, you made him furious. It's your fault."

"You're nuts, Amabel. Wake up. He's insane."

"Shush, Sally, here he comes."

"Quick, Amabel, untie me. We can escape."

"Now what's this? My two girls conspiring against me?"

"No, dear," Amabel said, rising to go to him. She hugged him, then kissed him on the mouth. "Oh, no.

Poor Sally thinks just because you hit me this one time you'll do it again and again. I know you won't, will you?"

"Of course not. I'm sorry, Ammie, I've been under so much stress, and you were arguing with me.

Please, forgive me. I won't ever touch you again."

"He's lying," Sally said. "If you believe him you're stupid, Amabel. Yeah, come on, you lousy human being, come on over here and hit me again. I'm tied, so I can't hurt you much. You're safe. Come on, you pitiful excuse for a man, come and hit me."

He was heaving with rage, the veins in his neck red and thick. "Shut up, Sally."

"Look at him, Amabel. He wants to kill me. He has no control. He's crazy."

Amory turned to Amabel. "I'll take care of her. I know what to do. I swear I won't kill her."

"What are you going to do?"

"Trust me, Ammie. Can't you trust me? You have for the past twelve, years. Trust me now."

"You think he won't kill me, Amabel? He's a filthy liar. Do you want to be an accessory to murder?" Her words swallowed themselves. God, Amabel was already an accessory to murder maybe sixty times over.

Maybe she'd even killed some of the people. Sally shut her mouth.

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Amory St. John laughed, low and mean. "I see you understand, Sally. Ammie belongs with me. We're two of a kind. Now, Ammie, untie her feet. I'm taking her out of here."

She couldn't stand up because her legs were numb. Amabel dropped to her knees and massaged her ankles and calves. "Is that better, Sally?"

"Why didn't you just kill me before? Why go through this charade with Amabel?"

"Be quiet, you little bitch."

"You swear you won't hurt her, Amory?"

"I told you," he said, so impatient that Sally wondered how Amabel couldn't hear it, couldn't know that he was ready to strike out. "I won't kill her."

When she could stand and walk, Amory took her arm and pulled her out of the small bedroom. "Stay here, Ammie," he called over his shoulder. "I'll be back shortly and then we'll leave."