Whispers. Part 49

"Are you going to be nice?"

"Yes."

"Do you live alone here?"

"Yes."

"No husband?"

"No."

"Boyfriend?"

"He doesn't live here."

"You expecting him tonight?"

"No."

"Are you lying to me?"

"It's the truth. I swear."

She was pale under her dusky complexion.

"If you're lying to me," he said, "I'll cut your pretty face to ribbons."

He raised the blade, put the point against her cheek. She closed her eyes and shuddered.

"Are you expecting anyone at all?"

"No."

"What's your name?"

"Sally."

"Okay, Sally, I want to ask you a few questions, but not here, not like this."

She opened her eyes. Tears on the lashes. One trickling down her face. She swallowed hard. "What do you want?"

"I have some questions about Katherine."

She frowned. "I don't know any Katherine."

"You know her as Hilary Thomas."

Her frown deepened. "The woman in Westwood?"

"You cleaned her house today."

"But ... I don't know her. I've never met her."

"We'll see about that."

"It's the truth. I don't know anything about her."

"Perhaps you know more than you think you do."

"No. Really."

"Come on," he said, working hard to keep a smile on his face and a friendly note in his voice. "Let's go into the bedroom where we can do this more comfortably."

Her shaking became worse, almost epileptic. "You're going to rape me, aren't you?"

"No, no."

"Yes, you are."

Frye was barely able to control his anger. He was angry that she was arguing with him. He was angry that she was so d.a.m.ned reluctant to move. He wished that he could ram the knife into her belly and cut the information out of her, but, of course, he couldn't do that. He wanted to know where Hilary Thomas was hiding. It seemed to him that the best way to get that information was to break this woman the way he might break a length of heavy wire: bend her repeatedly back and forth until she snapped, bend her one way with threats and another way with cajolery, alternate minor violence with friendliness and sympathy. He did not even consider the possibility that she might be willing to tell him everything she knew. To his way of thinking, she was employed by Hilary Thomas, therefore by Katherine, and was consequently part of Katherine's plot to kill him. This woman was not merely an innocent bystander. She was Katherine's handmaiden, a conspirator, perhaps even another of the living dead. He expected her to hide information from him and to give it up only grudgingly.

"I promise that I'm not going to rape you," he said softly, gently. "But while I question you, I want you to be flat on your back, so that it'll be harder for you to try to get up and run. I'll feel safer if you're on your back. So if you're going to have to lay down for a while, you might as well do it on a nice soft mattress rather than on a hard floor. I'm only thinking of your comfort, Sally."

"I'm comfortable here," she said nervously.

"Don't be silly," he said, "Besides, if someone comes up on the front porch to ring the bell ... he might hear us and figure that something's wrong. The bedroom will be more private. Come on now. Come on. Upsy-daisy."

She got to her feet.

He held the knife on her.

They went into the bedroom.

Hilary was not much of a drinker, but she was glad that she had a gla.s.s of good whiskey as she sat on the couch in Joshua Rhinehart's office and listened to the attorney's story. He told her and Tony about the missing funds in San Francisco, about the dead ringer who had left the bizarre letter in the safe-deposit box--and about his own growing uncertainty as to the ident.i.ty of the dead man in Bruno Frye's grave.

"Are you going to exhume the body?" Tony asked.

"Not yet," Joshua said. "There are a couple of things I've got to look into first. If they check out, I might get enough answers so that it's not really necessary to open the grave."

He told them about Rita Yancy in Hollister and about Dr. Nicholas Rudge in San Francisco, and he reconstructed his recent conversation with Latham Hawthorne.

In spite of the warm room and the heat of the whiskey, Hilary was chilled to the bone. "This Hawthorne sounds as if he belongs in an inst.i.tution himself."

Joshua sighed. "Sometimes I think if we put all the crazies into inst.i.tutions, there'd hardly be anyone left on the outside."

Tony leaned forward on the couch. "Do you believe that Hawthorne really didn't know about the look-alike?"

"Yes," Joshua said. "Curiously enough, I do believe him. He may be something of a nut about Satanism, and he may not be particularly moral in some areas, and he might even be somewhat dangerous, but he didn't strike me as a dissembler, Strange as it might seem, I think he's probably a generally truthful man in most matters, and I can't see that there's anything more to be learned from him. Perhaps Dr. Rudge or Rita Yancy will know something of more value. But enough of that. Now let me hear from the two of you. What's happened? What's brought you all the way to St. Helena?"

Hilary and Tony took turns recounting the events of the past few days.

When they finished, Joshua stared at Hilary for a moment, then shook his head and said, "You've got a h.e.l.l of a lot of courage, young lady."

"Not me," she said. "I'm a coward. I'm scared to death. I've been scared to death for days."

"Being scared doesn't mean you're a coward," Joshua said. "All bravery is based on fear. Both the coward and the hero act out of terror and necessity. The only difference between them is simply that the coward succ.u.mbs to his fear while the person with courage triumphs in spite of it. If you were a coward, you would have run away for a month-long holiday in Europe or Hawaii or some such place, and you'd have counted on time to solve the Frye riddle. But you've come here, to Bruno's hometown, where you might well expect to be in even more danger than you were in Los Angeles. I don't admire much in this world. but I do admire your s.p.u.n.k."

Hilary was blushing. She looked at Tony, then down at her gla.s.s of whiskey. "If I was brave," she said, "I'd stay in the city and set up a trap for him, using myself for bait. I'm not really in much danger here. After all, he's busy looking for me down in L.A. And there's no way that he can find out where I've gone."

The bedroom.

From the bed Sally watched him with alert and fear-filled eyes.

He walked around the room, looking in drawers. Then he came back to her.

Her throat was slender and taut. The bead of blood had dribbled down the graceful arc of flesh to her collarbone. She saw him looking at the blood, and she reached up with one hand, touched it, stared at her stained fingers.

"Don't worry," he said. "It's only a scratch."

Sally's bedroom, at the rear of the neat little bungalow, was decorated entirely in earth tones. Three walls were painted beige; the fourth was covered with burlap wallpaper. The carpet was chocolate brown. The bedspread and the matching drapes were a coffee and cream abstract pattern, restful swirls of natural shades that soothed the eye. The highly polished mahogany furniture gleamed where it was touched by the soft, shaded, amber glow that came from one of the two copperplated bedside lamps that stood on the nightstands.

She lay on the bed, on her back, legs together, arms at her sides, hands fisted. She was still wearing her white uniform; it was pulled down demurely to her knees. Her long chestnut-brown hair was spread out like a fan around her head. She was quite pretty.

Bruno sat on the edge of the bed beside her. "Where is Katherine?"

She blinked. Tears slid out of the corners of her eyes. She was weeping, but silently, afraid to shriek and wail and groan, afraid that the slightest sound would cause him to stab her.

He repeated the question: "Where is Katherine?"

"I told you, I don't know anyone named Katherine," she said. Her speech was halting, tremulous; each word required a separate struggle. Her sensual lower lip quivered as she spoke.

"You know who I mean," he said sharply. "Don't play games with me. She calls herself Hilary Thomas now."

"Please. Please ... let me go."

He held the knife up to her right eye, the point directed at the widening pupil. "Where is Hilary Thomas?"

"Oh, Jesus," she said shakily. "Look, mister, there's some sort of mix-up. A mistake. You're making a big mistake."

"You want to lose your eye?"

Sweat popped out along her hairline.

"You want to be half blind?" he asked.

"I don't know where she is," Sally said miserably.

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not lying, I swear I'm not."

He stared at her for a few seconds.

By now there was sweat on her upper lip, too, tiny dots of moisture.

He took the knife away from her eye.

She was visibly relieved.

He surprised her. He slapped her face with his other hand, hit her so hard that her teeth clacked together and her eyes rolled back in her head.

"b.i.t.c.h."

There were a lot of tears now. She made soft, mewling sounds and shrank back from him.

"You must know where she is," he said. "She hired you."

"We work for her regularly. She just called in and asked for a special clean-up. She didn't say where she was."

"Was she at the house when you got there?"

"No."

"Was anyone at the house when you got there?"

"No."

"Then how'd you get in?"

"Huh?"

"Who gave you the key?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah," she said, brightening a bit as she saw a way out. "Her agent. A literary agent. We had to stop at his office first to get the key."

"Where's that?"

"Beverly Hills. You should go talk to her agent if you want to know where she is. That's who you should see. He'll know where you can find her."

"What's his name?"

She hesitated. "A funny name. I saw it written down ... but I'm not sure I remember it exactly...."

He held the knife up to her eye again.