She turned around, and looked at Michael. She banged the door shut behind her.
“Where’s my Aunt Viv?” Michael asked.
“She can’t save you, big boy,” Mona said. “She’s out in Metairie comforting Gifford’s other kids, with Aunt Bernadette.”
“Where’s Eugenia?”
“Would you believe I poisoned her?” Mona walked past him back down the hall, and into the library.
He followed her, adamant and full of righteous speeches and declarations. “This is not going to happen again,” he began, but she shut the library door as soon as he was inside, and she threw her arms around him.
He began to kiss her, his hands sliding over her breasts, and down suddenly to lift the cotton skirt. “This cannot happen!” he said. “I’m not going to let you. You’re not even giving me a fifty-fifty-”
Her soft sweet young limbs overwhelmed him-the ripe, firm feel of her arms, of her back, of her hips beneath the cotton. She was fiercely aroused, aroused as any grown woman he’d ever made love to. He heard a small sound. She had reached over and snapped the lock of the library door.
“Comfort me, big man,” she said. “My beloved aunt just died. I’m really a wreck. No kidding.” She stepped back. There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes. She sniffled, and looked as if she might break down.
She undid the buttons of the cotton dress, and then let it slip down around her. She stepped out of the circle of glowing fabric. And he saw her snow-white brassiere with its full cups of expensive lace, and the soft pale skin of midriff above the waistband of her half-slip. The tears spilt down again as they had before, her soundless crying. Then she rushed at him, and locked her arms around his neck, kissing him, and slipping her hand down between his legs.
It was a fait accompli, as they say. And then there was her faint whisper as they snuggled together on the carpet.
“Don’t worry about it.”
He was sleepy; he listed; he didn’t fall deep; he couldn’t; there was too much right there before his mind’s eye. He started humming. How could he not worry about everything? He could not close his eyes. He hummed and softly sang.
“Violetta’s waltz,” she said. “Just hold on to me for a little while, will you?”
It seems he slept, or sank into some sort of approximate peaceful state, his fingers on her sweaty adorable little neck, and his lips pressed to her forehead. But then the doorbell sounded, and he heard Eugenia in the hall, taking her time to answer, talking aloud as she always did, “On my way, I’m comin’.”
The report had been delivered. He had to see it. How to get it without revealing the sleeping child on the rug, he didn’t know. But he had to see it. It hadn’t taken a half hour for that file to get here. He thought of Rowan and he felt such dread that he couldn’t form words about it, or make decisions, or even reflect.
He sat up, trying to regain his strength, to shake off the languor of sex, and not see this naked girl on the carpet asleep, head cradled on a nest of her own red hair, her belly as smooth and perfect as her breasts, all of her luscious and inviting to him. Michael, you pig, that you could do this!
There was the dull vibration of the big front door slamming shut. Eugenia passed again, steady tread, silence.
He put on his clothes, and then combed his hair. He was staring at the phonograph. Yes, that was exactly the one he had seen in the living room, the one which had played for him the ghost waltz. And there sat the black disk on which the ghost waltz had been recorded many decades ago!
He was confounded for a moment. Trying to keep his eyes off the gleaming child, pondering and wondering that for a moment he had gone calm in the midst of all of it. But you did this. You could not stay at top pitch every moment. And so he thought, My wife may be alive; she may be dead; but I have to believe she’s alive! And she’s with that thing. That thing must need her!
Mona turned over. Her back was flawless and white, her hips for all their smallness proportioned like those of a little woman. Nothing boyish about her in her youth; resolutely female.
Tear your eyes off her, man. Eugenia and Henri are both around somewhere. You are pushing your luck. You are asking to be bricked up in the cellar.
There is no cellar.
I know that. Well, then the attic.
He opened the door slowly. Silence in the big hall. Silence in the double parlor. But there was the envelope on the hall table-where all mail and deliveries were placed. He could see the familiar embossed name of Mayfair and Mayfair. He tiptoed out, took the envelope, fearful that any moment Eugenia or Henri would appear, and then he went into the dining room. He could sit at the head of the table and read the thing, and that way, if anybody went near that library door, he could stop them.
Sooner or later, she would wake up and get dressed. And then? He didn’t know. He just hoped she didn’t go home, that she didn’t leave him here.
Rotten coward, he thought. Rowan, would you understand all this? Funny thing was, Rowan might. Rowan understood men, better than any woman he’d ever known, even Mona.
He switched on the floor lamp by the fireplace, then sat down at the head of the table and removed the packet of Xeroxes from the envelope.
It was pretty much what they’d told him.
The geneticists in New York and Europe had gotten a bit sarcastic about the specimens. “This seems to be a calculated combination of genetic material from more than one primate species.”
It was the eyewitness material from Donnelaith that killed him. “The woman was sick. She stayed in her room most of the time. But when he went out, she went with him. It was as if he insisted she go. She looked sick, very sick. I almost suggested that she see a physician.”
At one point, in Geneva, Rowan was described by a hotel clerk as being an emaciated woman of perhaps 120 pounds. He found that horrifying.
He stared at the Xeroxes of the forged checks. Forgery! It wasn’t even good. It was a great old-fashioned Elizabethan hand, by God, like something out of a parchment document.
Payee: Oscar Aldrich Tamen.
Why had he chosen that name? When Michael looked on the back of the check he realized. Fake passport. The bank clerk had written down all the information.
Surely they were following up that lead. Then he saw the law firm memorandum. Oscar Aldrich Tamen had last been seen in New York on February 13th. Wife reported him missing on February 16th. Whereabouts unknown. Conclusion? Stolen passport.
He slapped shut the manila folder. He put his hands up and leaned on them, and tried not to feel that little twinge in his heart, or to remind himself that it was very small, the pain, no more than a little nag, and he’d had it before, for years, hadn’t he?
“Rowan,” he said aloud as if it were a prayer. His thoughts went back to Christmas Day, to that last glimpse of her when she had torn the chain off his neck, and the medal had fallen.
Why did you leave me? How could you!
And then a terrible shame came over him, a shame and a fear. He’d been glad in his selfish little heart when they told him that demon thing had forced her, glad the investigators thought she was coerced! Glad that this had been declared in front of proud Ryan Mayfair. Ah, this meant his wily bride had not cuckolded him with the devil! She loved him!
And what in God’s name did this mean for her! For her safety, her fate, her fortune! Lord God, you selfish and despicable man, he thought. But the pain was so great, the pain of her going that day, the pain of the icy water of the pool, and the Mayfair Witches in his dream, and the hospital room, and the pain in his heart when he’d first climbed the stairs-