“I didn’t kill that girl.”
Duncomb put his face up close to the professor’s. “Do you really think that matters?”
“She wasn’t even drugged,” Blackmore said. “Not like the others. Not like Lorraine. If anyone ever saw it, they’d see that Olivia knew what she was doing. She consented. She did.”
“It amazes me someone can rise to the level you have, teaching at a place like Thackeray, and be so astonishingly stupid,” Duncomb said. “All that girl ever had to do was threaten to tell anyone what we’d been doing, and we’d have all been finished. If all we did was lose our jobs, we’d have been lucky. We should have made sure she was drugged. She’d have forgotten the whole thing. The truth is, we got lucky when someone killed her. We’ve never had to worry she’d talk about that night.”
Blackmore eyed Duncomb fearfully.
“I’ve always wondered if it was actually you,” Blackmore said. “That you made it look like the work of some random maniac. I don’t think there’s much you’re not capable of.”
“You don’t know anything,” Duncomb said.
“I know getting mixed up in all of this... that it was a mistake. The fucking lifestyle, it was enough for Georgina and me, for Adam and Miriam. But for you and Liz, it wasn’t. You had to up the ante. Bring in some young stuff. College girls. Invite them to dinner with some famous cult writer, slip a little something in their drink, make them part of the show. We should have fought you on it, but at the time... I won’t lie. I liked it. It made me feel... omnipotent. That we were capable of anything, that rules didn’t apply to us. That other people existed for our pleasure. That’s what you and Liz did to us. That’s the kind of people you made us. You made us depraved.”
“Oh, please.”
“Maybe that’s why that screen came down on Adam and Georgina. Some kind of divine retribution. They got what was coming to them, and we’re next.”
“You’re losing it, Peter.”
“I’m seeing clearly for the first time in years,” he countered. “I see what you and Liz have done to us. You’ve poisoned us. You connecting with Liz, what are the odds two people that twisted would end up together?”
Duncomb gripped Blackmore by the shoulders. “Peter,” he said firmly, “you need to stop talking about this. Especially to anyone else. Because I swear, I’ll put a bullet in your head just as fast as I did to Mason Helt.”
Blackmore blinked several times. He swallowed, hard. “I need a drink.”
“Sure, get yourself one. I have to call Miriam back.”
“Miriam,” Blackmore said under his breath. “She didn’t keep Adam interested enough. If she had, he wouldn’t have been with Georgina. It’s her fault.”
“Jesus, just get a drink.” Duncomb got out his phone while Blackmore slunk off to the kitchen. He tapped the screen, put the phone to his ear.
“Christ,” Miriam said. “I’ve been waiting.”
“The cop left, and then I had to calm Peter down.”
“I was trying to tell you, before you cut me off.”
“Trying to tell me what?”
“The disc isn’t missing,” she said.
“What?”
“The Fisher one, and any of the others with special guests. Adam got rid of them.”
Duncomb felt an almost euphoric wave building up inside him. “He did?”
“He hated parting with them, but he knew it was a risk to keep them. He destroyed them months ago.”
“God, Miriam, that’s the first bit of good news in some time.”
“So me being alive, that’s not?”
“We’ve been going out of our minds here looking for that one disc and—”
“All right, fine. I hear you.”
“I’m sorry about Adam, Miriam. It’s horrible.”
“Enough,” Miriam said. “I have... I have things to do.”
She ended the call.
Duncomb slipped the phone into his pocket, made two fists, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “Yes!”
When Duncomb went into the kitchen to share the good news, Peter Blackmore was gone.
Miriam, sitting on the edge of the bed in the playroom, set down her phone on the satin sheet. She pulled herself up onto the mattress, drew the slippery covers around herself, making them into an icy cocoon. She brought her knees up to her chest and gave herself permission to cry.
Except the tears would not come.
She knew she should feel something. Anger? Sorrow? Outrage? Grief? And yet she wasn’t sure that she felt any of these things. The only emotion she could identify at that moment was relief.
It seemed so strange to her, of all the things she could feel.
But that was what she felt. Relief. And maybe... freedom? Was that it? She was free of Adam and all his bullshit. Free of that ex-wife of his who could never keep her nose out of their affairs. Who was always e-mailing or calling Adam on the phone. She’d never really let go, that one.
Free also of Lucy, and her disapproval. Miriam knew Adam’s daughter had never liked her. And she’d be free of that weird kid of hers. Crystal. All the time drawing her little comic books. But Adam liked — God, even loved — his granddaughter, so what could Miriam do? Let the little kid come over whenever Lucy needed a babysitter, that’s what. Adam would always make sure the sliding bookcase was locked into position before Crystal came over. She was already a strange kid — imagine how much weirder she’d have been if she’d found her way into the playroom.
With her husband dead, Miriam could sever all ties to Lucy and Crystal. She’d sell this house, sort out Adam’s estate, move the hell out of Promise Falls. Someplace warmer. The winters here were a bitch. Four feet of snow last year. Who needed that? She was thinking she’d relocate to San Diego or Los Angeles with whatever money the estate left her.
Miriam hoped there was enough to help her start over. Adam had been overly concerned about financial matters in recent months, but secretive about how close to the wire things were. He’d been desperate to get a new book contract.
Suddenly, she did begin to cry. Perhaps it was the uncertainty of her inheritance that tipped her over the edge.
She made huge racking sobs. She buried her head into a pillow and moaned as if she were a wounded animal.
It wasn’t just grief. It was relief. The chance to start over. It had overwhelmed her.
After several minutes, the sobs ebbed. Exhaustion was moving in. For a while, perhaps as long as half an hour, she drifted off.
She woke with a start, took a second to realize where she was. While this was a bed she was on, it was not, typically, one she’d ever slept in.
It was time to go upstairs, go to sleep in their — her — bedroom. She could start sorting things out tomorrow.
The truth was, she did not like this room, this playroom. There had been some amusements here, to be sure, but she’d had enough.
Miriam threw back the covers, slipped her legs over the edge of the bed, touched her toes to the shag carpeting.
Someone was standing in the doorway.
“Jesus!” Miriam said. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“I rang the bell.”
“I didn’t hear it.”
“I let myself in. Found you down here. I was watching you.”
“Get out. I’m sick to death of you. What the hell do you want?”
“What do you think? I’m guessing you know.”
“Just get out.”
“He said if something ever happened to him, I was to come here. That he’d leave something for me. He told me where to look.”
“What? In here? Some gold-plated dildo?”
“Not in here. I think you know. I think you have it.”