Her sister had spent her teenage years educating herself in the mind’s darker recesses, struggling to understand madness and evil. Annie had never wanted to understand. She had wanted only to escape life’s horror. In gardens and nurseries and florists’ shops, she did.
It took her years to realize that she loved flowers less for their beauty than for the simple fact that they could not hurt her.
Even a tame dog could bite. A kitten could scratch. A loving father…
But flowers were safe, always.
Almost in Erin’s neighborhood now. The older, more crowded part of town was receding, replaced by newer shopping plazas on larger lots. Developments of tract homes and condos occupied curving mazes of side streets with ersatz Spanish names. The mountains slouched on all horizons, their outlines sharp against a sky scudded with shredded-cotton clouds.
Pantano Fountains, Erin’s place, glided into view. Annie parked outside the lobby and walked briskly to the front door.
She fingered the intercom, buzzed Erin’s apartment. No reply.
Fumbling in her purse, she found the set of duplicate keys Erin had given her. Opened the door, entered the lobby.
The manager was on duty in her glass-walled office, talking on the phone, her words muted by the glass. A white-haired lady with a proud, lined face; Annie had met her several times when visiting Erin on weekends.
What was her name? Mrs. Williams. Right.
Might be necessary to talk with her later, but for now Annie simply sketched a wave through the glass as she hurried to the elevator. She pressed the call button, and the doors parted at once.
As she was traveling to the top floor, she realized suddenly that she should have checked the carport to see if Erin’s Taurus was in its reserved space. That way she would already know if Erin was home.
But of course Erin wasn’t home. She hadn’t answered the intercom, after all.
Unless she couldn’t answer.
A seizure would pass in a few minutes, Annie reminded herself. And it wouldn’t be fatal.
But suppose Erin had been in the shower when she collapsed-suppose her prone body had obstructed the drain, and she’d drowned in six inches of water. Suppose…
The elevator let her off on the penthouse floor. She ran for Erin’s apartment, propelled by panic.
At the door she hesitated, then knocked loudly.
“Erin?”
No response.
She inserted the key-no, wrong, that was the lobby key, try the other one. Got the door open finally and peered in.
Again: “Erin?”
Still nothing.
Slowly she stepped inside.
The lights of the apartment were off, the windows darkened by drawn curtains with blackout liners to hold back the desert sun. She found the wall switch and brightened the living room. It looked orderly and normal, almost magically clean, as always-and Erin was nowhere in sight.
From the bedroom, a faint sound. Music. Some classical composition. Rippling piano keys and a weeping violin.
Annie darted into the bedroom, briefly thrilled by hope-a thrill that died when she found the room similarly unoccupied, the clock radio on the nightstand playing to no audience.
The alarm feature was set to switch on the radio at 7:15. Apparently there was no automatic shut-off. Strange, though, that Erin hadn’t turned it off herself before leaving.
The bed was unmade, another oddity. Erin, the neatness freak, invariably fluffed her pillows and smoothed the bedspread upon arising. Loose, tangled sheets were not part of her world.
Her purse was gone, but nothing else of value that Annie could see.
In the bathroom, she found the shower stall dry. She fingered the towels on the racks. They were dry, too.
Into the kitchen, where a few plates soaked in the kitchen sink under a lacy film of liquid soap. Dinner dishes, streaked with tomato sauce and spotted with the remnants of salad greens. No cereal bowl, no spoon.
Den, balcony, hall closet-nothing. No signs of intrusion or disturbance, no furniture or valuables missing, and no Erin anywhere.
She’d left no note, and the only messages on her answering machine were from Marie at the clinic, asking Erin where she was.
Still no answer to that question, and now Annie was finding it harder to shake the cold fear that clutched the base of her spine.
Erin had to be all right. Annie simply wouldn’t permit her to be injured or sick or-worse.
“It’s not allowed,” Annie said softly, as if in challenge to the empty rooms around her. “You hear me, Erin? You’re not allowed to be in any trouble.”
There was still the parking lot to check. Annie locked the apartment and descended to ground level.
At the side of the building, under one of the carports, she found Erin’s assigned parking space. Empty.
The Taurus was gone. Erin had left.
In the strong sunlight Annie stood unmoving, oblivious of heat and glare, thinking hard.
The bed had been slept in, and her purse taken. Presumably, Erin had gone to work as usual.
But why had she been in such a hurry? Why hadn’t she found time to shower, eat breakfast, make the bed, even switch off the radio?
There was another possibility. Suppose a patient had phoned her in the middle of the night with an urgent problem. It happened. Erin would have gone to her office for an unscheduled session. That scenario would fit the facts quite well.
But where was she now?
Had she been in an accident on the way to or from the office? Jumped by a mugger? Attacked by her own patient?
Crazy, she thought as she went back inside the building. Just crazy to think that way.
Mrs. Williams was off the phone by now. She rose from behind her desk, uttering the first syllable of a welcome. The greeting died when she saw Annie’s face.
“Miss Reilly. What’s the matter? Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
Reflexively, Annie smiled. She wondered why her mouth would do that when she knew of no reason to be cheerful.
“Oh, no,” she said in a light tone that matched her careless grin, “nothing’s wrong, except Erin’s sort of hard to find today.”
“Hard to find?”
“You haven’t seen her, have you?”
“Why, no.”
“Her car’s not around. She’s not at work. It’s funny, isn’t it?”
Annie knew it wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t erase the witless smile of denial from her face.
Mrs. Williams seemed to see beneath that smile. “Maybe you ought to telephone the police.”
“The police. What for?”
“See if there’s been any problem. A traffic problem. You know.”
Accident, she meant to say, but couldn’t. Annie nodded. “Yes. I guess I should do that.”
Mrs. Williams took out a phone book and found the number of the police department’s Traffic Enforcement Division. Annie was about to dial when she realized she couldn’t remember Erin’s license plate.
“We have it on file,” Mrs. Williams said, opening a cabinet drawer. “Have to ensure that our tenants park in their reserved spaces.”
Annie reached a traffic-division sergeant, who took down the car’s make, model, and license number, then put her on hold. She waited through an interval of silence, shifting her weight and wishing she could make her damn mouth shed its idiot grin.
You are no good in a crisis, Annie, no good at all.
If this was a crisis. But it wasn’t; it couldn’t be.
In her mind she heard the sergeant’s voice, oddly tentative. Ms. Reilly? I’m sorry, ma’am, but your sister was in a crash earlier today… Hit by an oncoming truck, a Mack truck, big one… She’s dead, ma ‘am.
She’s in a coma, ma’am.
She’s paralyzed, a quadriplegic.
She’s -
“Hello?” The sergeant again. The real sergeant, not her fantasy tormentor.