With an Extreme Burning

SIX

It was five-thirty when Cecca drove up Rosemont Lane and turned into the Mallory driveway. She hesitated as she got out into the thinning afternoon heat, wondering again if she should have called first. But Dix's message had been as urgent-sounding as it was succinct: “I need to see you right away. Call or come up to the house—please, Cecca. I'll be home all day.” He hadn't left the time of his call; it could have been anytime after noon, when she and Amy had left for the tree farm. Monthly Sunday meal with her folks—“dinner,” Ma called it, even though they sat down at the table promptly at two o'clock. Ritual, but usually a pleasant one. Not so pleasant today though. The heat, and Pop's wearying new litany of complaints: getting old, useless, couldn't use his hands because of the arthritis, couldn't even get an erection anymore (this in front of Amy, who'd thought it was funny), might as well die and get it over with. And he was only sixty-eight! And now this urgent message from Dix, with the distraught edge to his voice. She couldn't imagine what had prompted it. Something else for her to worry about, no doubt, whatever it was. Sometimes she felt like an emotional sponge, soaking up other people's problems as readily as she soaked up her own, absorbing and then squeezing them out as if they were her own. “Why do you care so much about other people?” Chet had asked her once, seriously—a legitimate question coming from him, because the only person he cared about was himself. “I was born with a Mother Teresa gene,” she'd said. It was as good an answer as any.

She rang the doorbell three times without getting a response. She went to the garage; he wasn't there, but his Buick was. Out by the pool? She made her way down the side steps and around onto the rear terrace.

She heard him before she saw him. He was in the pool, swimming laps in a kind of frenzy: head down, eyes shut, arms and legs pummeling the water into a froth. Not really swimming, she thought as she watched him; it was as though he were trying to rid himself of some inner turmoil. It added to her feeling of concern. The man struggling in the pool wasn't the Dix Mallory she knew—the gentle, controlled one. Even Katy's death hadn't altered those qualities; he'd been the same man at the funeral and downtown yesterday. What could have happened to change him so radically in twenty-four hours?

He didn't realize she was there until she moved to the pool's edge and shouted his name. Then he stopped beating the water, caught the lip, and lifted himself out. He stood beside her, dripping, round-shouldered with fatigue, working to get his breathing under control.

“Amy and I were out at the farm,” she said. “Didn't get home until a little while ago.”

“Thanks for coming.”

He reached for the towel draped over one of the outdoor chairs. Cecca could see the strained muscles rippling in his arms and legs as he dried himself. And noticed, in spite of herself, how trim he looked in his swimsuit, the flatness of his belly.

“How long have you been in the pool?” she asked.

“A while. Too long, probably.”

“You look exhausted.”

“That was the idea.”

“Dix, what is it? What's happened?”

“In the house. I've got something to show you.”

He led her inside. Upstairs in the living room he said, “I'll go put on some clothes. Make yourself a drink if you want one.”

“No. Unless you do …”

“I'd better not.”

Waiting for him, she prowled the room. It was the first time she'd been there since the accident, and it felt odd. Katy's house, Katy's pride and joy—a legacy now. Blue and white decor, lots of crystal and cut-glass accessories, all chosen by Katy to her tastes. Her paintings on the walls, the huge dominating one she'd called “Blue Time”: rectangles and rhomboids in various shades of blue, splotches of white, three little dollops of yellow. Abstract Expressionism. She'd thought Jackson Pollock was the greatest of all American painters. Yet her own work was more in the style of Mark Rothko, whom she'd also admired—simple, sensuous color shapes rather than explosions of color. Rothko had once said that his paintings were façades, telling little but just enough about his perception of the world and his own life. “It's the same thing with my paintings,” Katy had been fond of saying. “Façades, little snippets of the real Katy Mallory.” And when someone had asked her what the snippets were, a wink, a grin, and: “That's for you to figure out, sweetie.”

Cecca had always liked this room, the house, but today it depressed her. Her mood, coupled with Dix's. She sat down on the blue brocade couch. She was staring out through the tall windows, watching a small plane circle for a landing at Los Alegres Airport across the valley, when Dix came down from the bedroom.

He'd put on slacks and a pullover, run a comb through his brown hair. His shoulders still wore their burden of fatigue. His jaw was set tight; she could see ridges of muscles at the corners of his mouth. He looked grim. Worse than he had the day after the accident. He had something in one hand, but his fingers were closed tight around it and she couldn't quite tell what it was. A box of some kind?

He said as he sat down across from her, “There's something I have to know, Cecca. I need you to tell me the truth—the complete and honest truth. Will you do that?”

“If I can. Of course.”

“Was Katy having an affair before she died?”

“… An affair? Dix, what on earth?”

“Was she?”

“I don't think so, no.”

“You don't think so? You're not sure?”

“She never said anything to me about an affair.”

“You were her best friend.”

“Yes, but she didn't confide everything to me.”

“To Eileen, then?”

“No. There was a private side to Katy, you know that. Parts of herself that she never shared with anyone … any of her friends, I mean.”

“Not with me either. I thought I knew her so well, but now …” He shook his head. “She could've kept it a secret,” he said. It wasn't a question.

“She could have, but that doesn't mean she did.”

“Did you suspect she was cheating? Any suspicion at all?”

“No.”

“Something she said you could interpret that way now?”

“No. Not to me.”

“Eileen? Somebody else?”

“Oh, she said something once that Eileen … well …”

“What was it?”

“I don't remember exactly. I didn't believe it—you know how Eileen exaggerates—so I didn't pay much attention.”

“Try to remember.”

“It … something about having too much excitement in her life. It could have meant anything. Or nothing.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of months ago.”

“And Eileen thought it meant Katy was having an affair.”

“She took it that way, yes, but—”

“She tried her damnedest to find out, I'll bet.”

“Without any success. Katy laughed it off.”

“But she didn't deny it?”

“For heaven's sake, Dix, what's this all about? Why do you think Katy had a lover?”

“A man told me she did,” Dix said. “In detail. Plenty of graphic goddamn detail.”

“What man? Who'd do an ugly thing like that?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know who told you?”

“A voice on the phone. An anonymous caller who claimed to be Katy's lover. At first I took it for a filthy lie—”

“Oh my God,” Cecca said.

“What's wrong?”

“Anonymous caller, you said. Only that one call?”

“No, several. They started right after the funeral. Just breathing, then he'd hang up.”

“When did—” The words caught in her throat. She coughed to loosen the constriction. “When did he tell you all that about Katy? What day?”

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday. Was that the first time he spoke to you?”

“Yes, why?”

“Unnatural voice, like a computer's?”

He sat forward jerkily. “Jesus … not you, too?”

“For about the same length of time. Nothing but breathing until yesterday afternoon.”

“What did he say to you?”

She told him.

He said, “But there was nothing to it, nothing wrong with Amy.”

“No. But I was half frantic until she came home. Dix … do you think he's dangerous?”

No response. He was looking at her, but there was a remoteness in his eyes, as if he were seeing something—or somebody—else.

“Dangerous,” she said again. “More than just a telephone freak.”

“I don't know,” Dix said slowly. “In any case, he may not be a liar where Katy is concerned.”

“You don't believe he really was her lover?”

“I didn't until this morning.”

“What happened this morning?”

“He left a message on my machine, telling me to go look in the mailbox. I found this. He must have put it there sometime during the night.”

He opened his fisted hand, extending it so she could see that what he'd been gripping was a small white jewelry box. She took it, lifted the lid.

Frowning, she said, “Katy's favorite earrings.”

“Made especially for her. No other pair like them.”

“But how could he—?”

“She was wearing them the night she died.”

“She … oh no, you must be mistaken.”

“I wish I were,” he said. “She had them on when she left here that night.”

Cecca shook her head: confusion, dismay.

“They should be lumps of metal, melted and fused by the heat of the fire. The only way he could've gotten them is if he were with her before the accident.”

“She could have lost them—”

“Both? And he just happened to find them? No, Katy must have given them to him for some reason. Or else he took them from her.”

“Even if that's true, it doesn't have to mean they were lovers. There could be another explanation.”

“The only one I can think of is a hell of a lot worse.”

“What …?”

“That her death wasn't an accident.”

She stared at him. “What do you— Suicide?”

“That's the first thing that occurred to me. An affair that had gotten out of hand, guilt, depression … I thought it might be possible.”

“But now you don't.”

“Now I don't. There was that private part of her, yes, but I can't make myself believe it was that bleak. She loved life too much to give it up voluntarily. She was full of life. You agree with that, don't you?”

“Yes.” She made herself take a long, slow breath before she spoke again. “You mean murder, then. You think Katy could have been murdered.”

“I didn't say that's what I thought. I said it's a possibility that occurred to me. I shouldn't have mentioned it.”

“Dix, you're scaring me.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.” He moved over beside her, took her hand. “I think we'd better just drop this before our imaginations run away with us.”

“Random violence, is that it? Katy being in the wrong place at the wrong time?” She was trying to talk herself out of crediting it, even a little, by dealing with it directly. But the questions served only to open up her fear. “Or … somebody stalking her? The same man who … the man on the phone … if you're right about Katy, then he could be—”

“No, Cecca.”

“He could be after us, too. You, me, Amy.”

“That's what I meant by letting imagination—”

“But why us? Why would anybody want to hurt us?”

“We don't know that anybody does.”

“Those calls, the things he said—”

“—Could be nothing more than a sick game. There are all kinds of psychoses. He doesn't have to be violent.”

“Katy … the earrings …”

“He knew her, he got them from her—all right. But her death is still an accident as far as we know. The highway patrol, the county sheriff, were satisfied of that; we have to be, too. Dammit, I could kick myself for opening up this can of worms.”

“What're you saying? Just forget it?”

“That part of it, yes.”

Inside her now was a visceral sense of something unseen and terrible lying in wait for her—the kind of nameless terror she'd had as a little girl. Bogeyman in the closet, monster under the stairs. “I don't know if I can,” she said.

“You have to. We both have to. Wild speculations aren't doing either of us any good.”

“We can't just sit back and pretend none of this is happening.”

“I know that. We need to focus on identifying the tormentor, putting a stop to his damn games.”

“Tormentor,” she said. “That's the right name for him.”

Dix said, “Options. All right, we can go to the telephone company. They can trace one of his calls if they're set up for it and he stays on the line long enough. But I don't think that would work. He's too smart to fall into that kind of trap. Chances are, he makes his damn calls from a public phone anyway.”

“The police?”

“I doubt if there's much they can do without some idea of who he is. We'll have to try to find that out ourselves.”

“Us? How?”

“I've got some ideas. Are you willing?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“I don't see one for either of us. Except a stopgap measure: have our home phone numbers changed.”

“What good will that do? He could still call me at the office. Besides, a third of my business calls come to me at home. A realtor can't afford an unlisted number.”

“I see your point. But I'm still going to have mine changed. If nothing else, it may help narrow the field a little.”

“I don't understand. Narrow the field?”

“If he gets hold of the new unlisted number, keeps calling, it'll tell us he's someone we know.”

“Someone we know,” Cecca said.

“Not a friend—a casual acquaintance, a clerk or gas station attendant, somebody who took a disliking to us for some reason.”

“How would a clerk or a gas station attendant get your new unlisted number?”

Dix made no reply.

“It would have to be somebody we know fairly well in that case, wouldn't it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But probably. And I don't want to believe that anymore than I want to believe Katy's death wasn't an accident.”

An afternoon breeze had come up; Cecca could feel it wafting in through the open balcony doors, carrying the scents of pine and dry grass. Outside the windows, a hawk wheeled down and sat fluffing its wings on the electrical wires strung from the house to the pole on Rosemont. From one of the neighboring yards she heard the shrieks and laughter of children in the midst of a swim party. Normal Sunday afternoon in late summer. Small town, small-town life: familiar, comfortable. Nonthreatening. Safe. The conversation they'd just had, the revelations that had made it necessary, seemed unreal … no, surreal, like a scene in a murky avant-garde play.

How can this be happening? she thought. I don't understand how a thing like this can happen to us.

She said abruptly, “I'd like that drink now.”

“I can use one, too. Bourbon, Scotch, gin, vodka?”

“Scotch. A double, on the rocks.”

He let go of her hand—she was surprised to discover that he'd still been holding it—and stood and went into the kitchen. She sat there staring out at the valley. Then, slowly, her head moved and her gaze shifted until she was looking again at Katy's “Blue Time” painting.

Façade, she thought, little snippets of the real Katy Mallory. What had lain behind the façade, what did the little snippets mean? Smile, wink—that's for you to figure out, sweetie.

I thought I had. I thought I knew her pretty well.

Maybe I didn't know her at all.

And what if Katy weren't the only one in Los Alegres she thought she knew well who was hiding behind a façade? Darkness concealed by a smile. Evil covered by a mask of normalcy. But no façade is perfect; that was one of the first lessons you learned in the real estate business. There are always little flaws, little indications of what lies hidden, if you look for them closely enough. The naked truth is there to be figured out, sweetie, if you can stand to face it. It's all there behind the façade.