Bannerman's Law (23 page)

“
No. Why do you ask
?”

“
Because you got quiet, just like that, when I told you
about the policeman who came yesterday
.”

“
It's nothing
.”
Molly tried a reassuring smile.
“
Given
what we
...
were, the authorities are conce
rn
ed that we
might interfere. That's all
.”

D
iDi
looked into her eyes. She saw them waver.
“
I'll help you any way I can
,”
she said.
“
But I wish you'd be
honest with me. That man who came yesterday. You don't
think he was a policeman, do you
.”

Molly drummed her fingers.
“
No. I don't
,”
she said
finally.
“
And the man who called was not an FBI agent
.”

“
And the one who called Mr. Benedict
?”

“
He wasn't a policeman either
.”

“
How could you know that
?”

“
Because both the police and the FBI showed up this morning at Lisa's apartment. We had to produce identifi
cation. The police had no need to ask George Benedict
who I am
.”

Didi stared at her.
“
Molly
.
.
.
what's going on here
?”

”
I don't know. Truthfully
.”

“
Am I in danger? Truthfully
?”

Molly rocked her head sideways, a gesture of uncertainty. She flicked a finger toward the IBM machine.
“
Someone, not the police, seems very interested in how
much you know. Whatever it is, I sure don't see anything
in here that's worth
.
.
.
” Molly stopped herself.

“
Killing for
.”
DiDi completed the thought.
“
But you
think someone did
.”

Molly grimaced, then shook her head slowly.
“
The two
might still be unrelated
,”
she said.
“
But just in case, I'd
keep plenty of people around me if I were you. Don't go
anywhere alone, not even to the Benedict house. When is
the service, by the way
?”

“
This Thursday, ten o
'
clock, Saint Paul's Episcopal
Church in Sherman Oaks. How can I help in the
meantime
?”

Molly picked up a yellow pad on which she'd listed
three names. D'A
r
conte, Nellie Da
m
eon, Sur La Mer.
“
Find out all you can about these. What's the name of
that professor
?”

“
Stanley Mecklenberg. Or I could research it myself
at the
...
”

Molly shook her head.
“
Do it by phone. Don't be seen
looking up these names in a library. And if that same man
or anyone else comes back asking you questions, say that
you gave me a package Lisa left with you. Say that I
asked if I could use your computer and then, afterward,
acted very strangely but wouldn't tell you what was in the
package. Say I took everything with me back to the Bev
erly Hills Hotel
.”

DiDi made a face.
“
In other words, I'm supposed to set you up
.”

Molly frowned.
“
If someone got in here
,”
she asked,
“
past Kevin, and came at you with a knife, what do you
think you'd do
?”

”
I
.
.
.
don't know. Scream, I guess. Try to run
.”

“
What do you think I would do? What would Ca
rl
a
do
?”

DiDi hesitated, only brie
fl
y.
“
Stick it up his ass
?”

Molly blinked.
“
Why would you say that
?”

“
Lucky guess. But I hear you
.”

“
Call your professor
.”
Molly nodded toward the exten
sion on DiDi's desk.
“
Is that on the same line
?”

“
No. It's mine. Private
.”

“
May I make a long distance call? I'll pay for it
.”

“
To Westpo
r
t by any chance
?”

Molly didn't answer.

“
It's on the house
,”
said DiDi Fene
r
ty.

Nellie's gift to the Weinberg
s—s
ome time to them
selve
s—w
as not entirely unselfish. She wanted to try, just
once more, to go back to the day when her daughter
was born.

But the scenes, as before, came in fragments. And they
were always changing. Even the babies kept changing.
One time it would be a son and the next it would be a
daughter. Or one time she would be allowed to nurse the
infant and the next it would be taken from her, forever,
before she'd had a chance to hold it.

The yachtsman, Harland, had told her that there were
four babies in all. She still had trouble believing that. She
was reasonably sure of only two. There was the little girl
with the strawberry birthmark. Nellie had kept her the
longest. She had nursed her. She remembered the red hair, grown long enough to be tied with a little green bow. And
then one day she was gone.

She was also quite sure of the boy. He was the first.
His hair was dark. He cried a lot. And he hurt the most
when he came. She seemed to remember that they thought
she might die. She remembered a man's voice saying,
”I
need that baby. Save her if you can, but I want that baby
.”
The voice, and the face peering down at her, was that of
Vittorio D'Arconte.

She had dreamed of him before that and several times
since. They were terrible dreams. It was dark, and he
would be on top of her. She could taste his breath. It stank
of wine and black cigars. She could feel him thrusting into
her. Sometimes it was not D'Arconte at all. Sometimes,
especially later, he would turn into Victor Dunville. But she soon learned that she could make either of them go
away just by thinking of Tom. She could make Tom take
their place. She could bear it that way.

It was, in any case, not really D'Arconte and certainly
not Victor Dunville. The psychiatrist said that these were
only dreams. They were the prank, he said, of a bedev
iled mind.

This was later. Years later. She still could not speak
but she could write. She could scribble questions and an
swers in her sessions with the staff psychiatrist. Her mind
had begun to clear. The psychiatrist told her that she was making fine progress. There was no longer a need, he said,
for quite so much medication.

It was true, he told her one year, that she had once
borne a child and that it was, in fact, a difficult birth. The child did not survive it. The father was one of the other
members, since deceased. She had wandered into his
rooms one night. He had taken advantage of her. By the
time the staff realized what must have happened, her preg
nancy was too advanced to be terminated.

As for the other babies she thought she remembered, they were much the same as her memories of the actor
who was known as
“
The Count
.”
They seemed real to
her, of course. But he assured her that they were not.

Vittorio D
'
Arconte, he told her, was also long dead.
He had fled to Italy, a fugitive from the law, before Nellie
had even been admitted to Sur La Mer. But justice had caught up with him. He was shot down, murdered, on a street in Naples. It was in all the papers, the psychiatrist
said. Good riddance.

There was very little resemblance, he pointed out, be
tween Vittorio D'Arconte and our own Victor Dunville. And no likeness at all in terms of character. Mr. Dunville
is a humanitarian. A healer. He has devoted himself to
restoring the minds of all who came, broken, to Sur La
M
er. Making them whole again.

He has sat with you, the psychiatrist said, on many
occasions. He has restrained you, gently, when you have become violent. He has comforted you. Because of your
condition, however, you saw this caring restraint as an
attack. You saw, through some trick of the mind, a resem
blance between Victor Dunville and a man you despised
for the ruin he brought on so many of your friends. To
you, he was Vittorio D'Arconte.

For many years she believed him. In time she wondered
how she could ever have thought that Vittorio D
'A
rconte
and Victor Dunville were the same man. If there had ever
been a resemblance, there was now scarcely a trace of it.
Mr. Dunville was older and more portly. The eyes, the
nose, even the jawline were very different. D
'A
rconte had a thin mustache and hair slicked with pomade. Mr
.
Dun
ville had been clean shaven and balding.

She had believed him about the children as well. Otherwise, where were they, he would ask. She had no answer.
The only child she ever saw back then, older than a new
born, was Victor Dunville
’
little boy, Ca
r
leton. She saw
him, from time to time, playing on the lawn. He had dark
hair. And he cried a lot. He seemed very much like the baby she remembered. But it seemed to her that if that
child had been her own, she would have some sort of fe
eling for him.
She had
none. She rather disliked him,
especially after he
had
grown to adulthood and seemed to
have been put in charge of things. If he tried to talk to her
she would blink him off. Soon, she stopped even writing.

She never quite knew what had become of Victor Dun
vi
ll
e. Ha
r
land said he died of an addiction to morphine
but Harland was always saying things. He also said
that
the psychiatrist had been murdered after a quarrel with
Ca
r
leton Dunville, and some agreed, but the new psychia
trist said he had retired to live in Hawaii. And then Carle-
ton had a son. Or at least one appeared. No one even
realized that the elder Carleton was married.

More years passed. Members came and went. Their
overall number decreased steadily. Whole floors were
given over to the
Dunvilles'
special guests. Harland said
once that there had been a war and that some of them
were German war criminals in hiding. That seemed espe
cially silly to Nellie. She imagined that the last place
where Germans would hide is in the country that de
feated them.

Harland could be quite insistent about the things he
claimed, especially where her supposed four children were
concerned. He said that he heard them cry. Well? Where
are they then? He said that they're probably Dunvilles
now. Perhaps even
D'Arcontes.
You see? There you have
it. She would have paid him no mind except for the
dreams. They came less frequently but they never stopped.
Especially about the little girl with the birthmark and the
red hair tied in little green ribbons. The one she thought
she saw again when that nice girl, Lisa, came to visit.