The hot acid flooded her throat again. She lurched into the bathroom and moved quickly over to the commode, where she sank to her knees and vomited.
Chapter 35
On Nora’s birthday last year, her daughter had taken her to see a Broadway show. It had been a limited engagement with two big stars in the leads, so tickets had been scarce, but Dana had managed it. They’d gone into town on the train for a matinée performance, just the two of them. The play had been excellent, a revival of one of Nora’s favorites, and Dana had loved it too. Afterward, they’d returned to Long Island and driven home from the station to find Jeff waiting there with everyone she knew. Aunt Mary, her friends, her colleagues, and many of her students had crowded into her darkened living room. Dana had switched on the lights as they entered the house, and in the sudden, blinding glare, fifty laughing people in party hats had leaped out before her, tossing streamers and shouting, “Surprise!”
The light was unbearable. Vivian had redone her bathroom in shades of white and gold, and the illumination bounced back at her from every surface. She was slumped on the tiled floor, her hot cheek pressed against the freezing wall tiles, wincing at the assault on her eyes. She flushed the toilet and pressed her hands against the walls, pulling herself to her feet. Then she switched off the light and made her way over to the sink, grateful for the soothing darkness. The faint glow from the back garden shining through the pebbled-glass window above the commode was enough for her. She made out the fixtures on the sink, but she couldn’t see her reflection in the mirror above it, which was probably a mercy. She figured she must look like absolute hell.
She didn’t know how long she knelt there, being sick, but it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. As the nausea and disorientation subsided, her mind swam with images of Jeff and Dana. The birthday party-why had she been thinking of that? Oh yes: the glare. She turned on the cold water and rinsed the perspiration from her clammy face. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the water had hissed as it touched her hot skin.
Better, much better. Her stomach had settled and the room had stopped spinning around her. She found her bag on the floor and felt inside for her traveling toothbrush kit. The minty toothpaste soon scrubbed away the foul taste in her mouth, and a gargle from the tiny bottle of mouthwash did the rest. She swallowed a Zantac and turned off the tap.
She was returning everything to her bag when she heard the bedroom door open. A spill of light from the upstairs hallway lit the dark space beyond the half-open bathroom door. Viv, of course, coming to check on her. She held her breath and clutched the cool porcelain sink, waiting. If she was very quiet, her well-meaning hostess would assume the darkened rooms were empty and Nora had gone downstairs, perhaps to the kitchen. The sliver of light behind her disappeared as the bedroom door closed. After a moment, Nora heard another door opening and closing farther down the hall.
Vivian was searching for her, and she couldn’t stay in here all night. Besides, now that she was feeling better, she was actually looking forward to Claudia’s Italian meal. Bill had to get back to his office, and she would ask Vivian if she could stay the night here. After Yussuf’s words in Leicester Square this afternoon about staking out the Byron Hotel, she didn’t want to chance showing up there, even as Mme. Blanche Williams, and someone had rifled her husband’s safe house the night he’d left for Norfolk. Yussuf and his associates couldn’t be fooled forever, and she wasn’t about to tempt fate again. She’d probably used up her quota of good luck.
But now she must rejoin her friends. She shut her eyes and switched on the bathroom light, then opened them and peered at herself in the mirror. Not as bad as she’d expected-not bad at all, in fact. She was pale, perhaps, and a bit disheveled, but a comb through her hair and lipstick would make her look good as new. She did these things quickly and professionally, imagining that she was in a theater dressing room at intermission and the stage manager had just ordered everyone to their places for act two. When something resembling the usual Nora Baron finally gazed back at her from the glass, she shouldered her bag and went back through the dark bedroom to the hallway.
Bill Howard had dozed off in her absence. She glanced over as she came down the stairs and saw him slumped against an arm of the flowery chair, his head resting on it, one hand dangling down, clearly asleep. He’d been working around the clock for four days now, ever since Jeff’s disappearance, and Nora wondered if he’d had any sleep at all. She smiled at the sight of him, feeling foolish for ever suspecting this dedicated man of criminal behavior. Then she moved farther down the staircase and stopped short, three steps from the bottom, staring.
Through the archway on her right, she saw a long, slender arm stretched out across the pale green carpet of the foyer. The red silk sleeve matched the bright lacquer on the perfectly sculpted fingernails of the smooth white hand. The hand lay palm up, the shiny nails bunched together in a loose fist. When she could move, Nora rushed down the stairs and through the archway, and now she saw the rest.
Vivian lay very still on her back, one arm outflung on the carpet, the other resting on her heart. Her lips were parted and her eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling in apparent surprise. Because of the deep scarlet color of the blouse, Nora didn’t see the blood at first. But there it was, saturating the material under the pale hand, slowly spreading outward. Even in death, she had landed gracefully, dramatically.
Nora stood above the body, staring down at the staring eyes, filling her lungs to cry out, to call to Bill in the next room. But no, there was no need for that, and she knew it. She tore her gaze from her friend and went back to the archway, just to be sure.
Yes. She’d thought he was asleep, slumped over the arm of the chair, but it wasn’t sleep at all. His right arm dangled to the carpet, and beside it lay a small black gun. Judging from the blood she now saw on his shirt, the round that had killed him had struck him in the exact same spot as his wife. The gun on the floor was a revolver with no noise-reducing capability. If he’d been able to fire it, Nora would have heard the report from the upstairs bathroom. He obviously hadn’t had time to do more than draw it from the shoulder holster under his jacket; the silenced weapon had been too quick.
Yussuf? Andy Gilbert? Vivian wasn’t facing the front door; she was lying the other way. She’d answered the bell and let the person in, allowed him to walk past her into the hall, shut the door, and turned around to see the gun. Pfft. Perhaps from the living room Bill had heard the muffled sounds of the suppressed shot and his wife falling to the carpet, reached for his weapon, but the intruder had been too fast for him. He hadn’t even risen from the chair…
Nora stood in the archway, looking from one body to the other and back again, aware of the awful silence. She was also aware that her mind was working quickly and clearly. The snub-nosed LadySmith from her purse was already in her hand, raised to waist level, and her gaze now moved swiftly from the front door behind Vivian’s body (shut) to the front hall closet door (open and empty) to the powder room door (open and empty) to the dining room (empty) to the top of the staircase she’d just descended (empty) and at last to the main hallway behind her. She turned, bringing the gun up in front of her, and walked slowly toward the swinging door to the kitchen. She pressed her ear against the door, listening. Silence. She drew in a deep breath, pushed the door open, and crouched down, aiming directly into the room.