Trace

16

Lucy looks around at the expensive weight machines and at the windows in the third-floor gym. Her neighbor Kate has all she needs to stay fit while she enjoys a spectacular view of the Intracoastal Waterway, the Coast Guard station and lighthouse, and the ocean beyond, and much of Lucy's private property.

The window in the gym's southern exposure overlooks the back of Lucy's house, and it is more than a little unnerving to realize that Kate can see just about everything that might go on inside Lucy's kitchen, dining area, and living room, and also on the patio, in the pool, and along the seawall. Lucy looks down at the narrow path that runs along the low wall between the two houses, and it is this cedar-chip-covered passageway that she believes he, the beast, followed to get into the door off the pool, the door Henri left unlocked. Either that, or he arrived by boat. She doesn't believe he did, but has to consider it. The ladder on the seawall is folded up and locked, but if someone was determined to dock at her wall and climb onto her property, certainly it was possible. The locked ladder is deterrent enough for normal people, but not for stalkers, burglars, rapists, or killers. For those people there are guns.

On a table next to the elliptical machine is a cordless phone that plugs into a jack in the wall. Next to the jack is a standard wall socket, and Lucy unzips her fanny pack and removes a transmitter that is disguised as a plug adapter. She plugs it into the wall socket. The small, innocuous piece of spy equipment is off-white, the same bland color as the wall socket, and not something Kate is likely to notice or care about if she does. Should she decide to plug something into the adapter, that is fine. It is functional when connected to AC power. She stands still for an instant, then walks back out of the gym, listening. Kate must still be in the kitchen or somewhere down on the first floor.

In the south wing is the master bedroom, an enormous space with a huge canopied bed, and a massive flat-screen TV on the wall opposite the bed. The walls overlooking the water are glass. From this perch, Kate has a perfect view of the back of Lucy's house and also into Lucy's upstairs windows. This isn't good, she thinks as she looks around and notices an empty champagne bottle on the floor next to a bedside table where there is a dirty champagne flute, a phone, and a romance novel. Her rich, nosy neighbor can see far too much of what might go on at Lucy's house, assuming the shades are open, and usually they're not. Thank God, usually they're not.

She thinks about the morning Henri was almost murdered and tries to remember whether the shades were open or shut, and she spots the telephone jack beneath the bedside table and wonders if she has time to unscrew the plate and replace it. She listens for the elevator, for footsteps on the stairs, and hears not a sound. She gets down on the floor as she pulls a small screwdriver out of the fanny pack. The screws in the plate aren't tight and there are only two of them, and she has them off in seconds as she listens for Kate. She replaces the generic beige wall plate with one that looks just like it but is a miniature transmitter that will allow her to monitor any telephone conversations that take place over this

134 dedicated line. A few more seconds and she plugs the phone cord back in and is on her feet and walking out of the bedroom just as the elevator door opens and Kate appears holding two crystal champagne flutes filled almost to the top with a pale orange liquid.

"This place is something," Lucy says.

"Your place must be something," Kate says, handing her a glass.

You should know, Lucy thinks. You «py on it enough.

"You'll have to give me a tour sometime," Kate says.

"Anytime. But I travel a lot." The pungent smell of champagne assaults Lucy's senses. She doesn't drink anymore. She learned the hard way about drinking and no longer touches the stuff.

Kate's eyes are brighter and she is looser than she was not even fifteen minutes earlier. She has left the station and is halfway to drunk. While she was downstairs, she probably threw back several flutes of whatever she concocted, and Lucy suspects that while there may be champagne in the glass she holds, Kate probably has vodka in hers. The elixir in Kate's glass is more diluted, and she is quite limber and lubricated.

"I looked out your gym windows," Lucy says, holding the flute while Kate sips. "You could have gotten a good look at anybody who might have come on my property."

"'Could' is the operative word, hon. The operative word." She stretches her words the way people do when they've left the station and are happily on their way to drunk. "I don't make it a habit to be snoopy. Have way too much else for that, can't even keep up with my own life."

"Mind if I use your ladies' room?" Lucy asks.

"Help your little self. Right down there." She points to the north wing, swaying a little on her widely planted feet.

Lucy walks into a bathroom that includes a steam shower, a huge tub, his and her toilets and bidets, and a view. She pours half the drink down the toilet and flushes. She waits a few seconds and walks back out to the landing at the top of the stairs, where Kate stands, swaying slightly, sipping.

"What's your favorite champagne?" Lucy asks, thinking of the empty bottle by the bed.

"Is there more than one, hon?" She laughs.

"Yes, there are quite a few, depending on how much you want to spend."

"No kidding. Did I tell you about the time Jeff and I went crazy at the Ritz in Paris? No, of course I didn't tell you. I don't know you, really, now do I? But I feel we're becoming friends fast," she spits as she leans into Lucy and clutches her arm, then starts rubbing it as she spits some more. "We were… no, wait." She takes another sip, rubbing Lucy's arm, holding on to her. "It was the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, of course. You've been there?"

"Drove my Enzo there once," Lucy says untruthfully.

"Now which one is that. The silver or the black one?"

"The Enzo is red. It's not here." Lucy almost tells the truth. The Enzo isn't here because she doesn't own an Enzo.

"Then you have been to Monte Carlo. To the Hotel de Paris," Kate says, rubbing Lucy's arm. "Well, Jeff and I were in the casino."

Lucy nods, lifting her flute as if she might have a sip, but she won't.

"And I was just knocking around on the two Euro slot machines and got lucky, boy did I get lucky." She drains her glass and rubs Lucy's arm. "You are very strong, you know. So I said to Jeff, we should celebrate, honey, back then when I called him honey instead of asshole." She laughs and glances at her empty crystal glass. "So we tottered back to our suite, the Winston Churchill Suite, I still remember. And guess what we ordered?"

Lucy is trying to decide whether she should extricate herself now or wait until Kate does something worse than what she is already doing. Her cool, bony fingers are digging into Lucy's arm and she is pulling Lucy's arm into her thin, pickled body. "Dom?" Lucy asks.

"Oh honey. Not Dom Perignon. Mais nort. That's soda pop, just a rich man's soda pop, not that I don't love it, mind you. But we were feeling very naughty and ordered the Cristal Rose at five hundred and sixty something euros. Of course, that was Hotel de Paris prices. You've had it?"

"I don't remember."

"Oh honey, you'd remember, trust me. Once you've had the rose there's nothing else. There's only one champagne after that. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, we moved on from Cristal to the most divine Rouge du Chateau Margaux," she says, pronouncing her French extremely well for one almost at her destination of drunk.

"Would you like the rest of mine?" Lucy holds out her flute as Kate rubs and pulls on her. "Here, I'll trade." She exchanges her half-full glass for Kate's empty one.