Now You See It... Part 63

"Salud, Great Delacorte/' he said. "You should have given me more credit than you did."

"Get out of here and change," Ca.s.sandra told him.

Now You Sen h... 203

"Yes, ma'am."

Turning on his heel, he crossed to the entry hall and left.

I watched Ca.s.sandra as she gazed at Max.

Is this the end, then?

Of me as well as Max, it occurred to me. She'd want me out of the house now. Out of her life.

More than likely, out of the world.

What was one less vegetable to her?

Now she spoke- Did it bother her that I could hear-or did she want me to hear?

Maybe my presence didn't even occur to her as she spoke to Max.

"You should have given him more credit," she said.

She shook her head in disbelief.

"Did you really think he'd help you murder me?

'7ust because you had those forged checks?

"The way he feels about me?"

She drained her gla.s.s and sighed with pleasure, smiling.

Lewdly, let me make it dear.

"But then, you never knew about that, did you?" she said. "Never knew it wasn't only Harry I was 'bedding,' as you so slyly put it."

She made a sound of contempt.

"I had no intention that you'd know, of course," she told him.

Returning to the bar, she poured her gla.s.s full of cham- pagne again. And I began to feel a kind of dark peace, knowing that Max and I would soon be free of this defile- ment.

nother sound of contempt from Ca.s.sandra now, this one more intense.

''You were so certain it was Brian imitating me in order to fool the Sheriff," she said.

"True, the poison had weakened your eyesight and your hearing.

"But it was more than that. We both know that, don't we?

"It was your ego.

"Your d.a.m.ned, incredible ego.

"You'd planned it that way. Ergo, it must be happening that

way.

"The Great Delacorte never makes a mistake."

A scoffing laugh-

"Even though I gave myself away a dozen times," she continued, "lost control completely when I saw that G.o.d- dam shrine to G.o.ddam Adelaide."

She pointed a shaking finger at him.

"You can bet your dying a.s.s I'll soon get rid of that," she told him fiercely.

Now You SeeH... 205

She shook her head, amused again.

"You didn't notice it." she said. "Even though I had to wear a wig over a wig over my hair. My G.o.d.

"Even though I had to wear a pair of falsies over my own taped-down t.i.ts."

She glanced at me, grinning. "Sorry, Daddy," she said.

"Didn't mean to offend."

She looked back at Max again.

"I couldn't have been more transparent," she said. "But you were sure that it was Brian, so you saw Brian, you heard Brian."

She hissed. "Idiot," she muttered.

She glanced at me again. "Your son is an idiot!" she cried.

"Padre."

She walked over to the freezer, taking the bottle and gla.s.s with her.

"Sorry your little plot didn't work," she said. "But, the well-laid plans-" Smiling, she took a long sip of cham- pagne.

"And now the final phase of my scenario," she went on.

"Maximilian Delacorte-the Great-takes a trip to the Caribbean to recover from an illness which was ruining his career; lots of witnesses to that.

"He charters a yacht, starts drinking heavily, then one night falls overboard and disappears."