Dark Homecoming (14 page)

I
n the servants' washroom, the door locked securely behind her, Rita wrapped the necktie tightly around the little wooden doll.

A part of her thought what she was doing was utterly and ridiculously mad. She had never believed in such things before. She had told Jamison he was crazy to talk about ghosts and devils. But then Jamison had been killed for such talk . . .

Rita thought back to the day she first came into this house. She'd answered an ad she'd found online, looking for a chambermaid. Mrs. Hoffman had interviewed her, looking her up and down with those creepy eyes—the only part of her face that ever moved. Rita had felt as if the older woman was peeling off her clothes with her eyes—her clothes, her skin, seeing right into her soul. Rita had shivered. At the end of the brief interview, she was given the job.

Rita had been thrilled, because she'd really needed the job. She was saving to move out of her parents' house and go back to school. She'd started beauty school a year earlier, but had had to drop out when her father lost his job and could no longer help her pay tuition. How Rita ached to live on her own, to have her own life.

But the life she observed at Huntington House had made her want a very special sort of existence—one that no job as a cosmetician would ever give her.

Very quickly Rita had spotted the way Mr. Huntington looked at her. When he was around his wife, he seemed very much in love—completely devoted to Dominique, in fact—but when she wasn't around, David's eyes wandered. Rita saw how he looked at her, and she learned how to hold his gaze for that tenth of a second longer than was acceptable. Finally, one day, in the solarium, as David sat reading and Rita watered plants, she'd deliberately brushed past him, stumbled just a bit, and nearly fell into his lap. He'd responded by kissing her. Dominique was away for the day, on another plastic surgery adventure, and they'd had the rest of the afternoon to themselves. Rita had never known such lovemaking. She had decided then and there she would not only be David's mistress, but she would someday be his wife as well.

Oh, yes—she wanted everything that Dominique had. She wanted everything that vain, imperious woman lorded over her. Rita wanted her clothes and her cars and her spending allowances. But she wanted her husband, most of all. And Rita would love David in a way that Dominique had apparently been unable to do.

Rita could see that something had been missing from the Huntingtons' marriage. When they were together, David had refused to ever let Rita speak his wife's name—almost as if he could not speak it himself. At first, Rita had thought he was simply guilt-ridden about the affair; as time went on, however, she discerned something else was going on. David never spoke Dominique's name around her because he
hated
her—he was desperately unhappy being married to her. Yet for some reason he could never bring himself to admit that to Rita, always changing the subject when she tried to bring it up.

So when word came that Dominique had been washed overboard on their yacht, and no amount of plastic in her body had kept her from drowning, Rita hadn't felt in the least bit regretful. The woman had never been kind to her. She'd snapped her fingers and expected Rita to come running. She'd kept David on a short leash—while at the same time, flirting outrageously with every male member of the staff. How the bellboys and chauffeurs had been dazzled by her. Rita wouldn't have been surprised if Dominique had been carrying on affairs with all of them. She was simply a horrible woman, and Rita was glad she was dead.

Finally David was free! But he had left the house in such a miserable state—after tearing up the gardenia plants in the garden because he wanted no memory of Dominique in the house. But if hated her so much, why had he been made so distraught by her death? He hadn't loved her. All that attention he gave her in public was just a show. It couldn't have been real—not with the way that David brought such passion to his relationship with Rita. Rita believed deep down in her bones that David was glad that Dominique was dead. But for whatever reason, he'd left Huntington House for all those months after her death—and when he came back, he brought that little drip of a new wife with him.

It made no sense to Rita.

That was, it made no sense until after Jamison was killed. It was the only answer. All the talk she'd heard ever since coming to this house—all the talk of witchcraft and black magic—must be true. It was the only thing that could explain David's attachment to Dominique. He was under some kind of spell. When Dominique wasn't around, David could break somewhat free of it, and find some moments of true happiness with Rita. And when Dominique died, he had been shattered—almost like an alcoholic who suddenly gives up alcohol cold turkey.

But who had put David under the spell? It might have been Variola, on Dominique's order. Variola had never possessed any particular love for Dominique, so no doubt she was being paid to cast her spells. And Rita suspected Variola wanted to continue that profitable enterprise by keeping her hold over David. That's what had caused him to act so uncharacteristically and so impulsively and marry some cheap little dancer he'd met on a cruise ship. Rita didn't think little Liz knew that her husband was under a spell, or that he'd married her only because Variola had directed him to do so. She suspected that Variola would make her schemes and her demands known to the new mistress of the house in time. Then she would go back to controlling the house once again and enjoying whatever forms of payment she received.

And if it wasn't Variola who cast the spell, then it must have been Mrs. Hoffman, but had she truly learned enough of Variola's black magic to keep David under such control?

Rita looked down at the vodou doll in her hands. She didn't trust Variola, but she believed the chef when she said that she wanted Rita as her ally. She suspected the two women, Variola and Mrs. Hoffman, were in a struggle for control of Huntington House. Whoever controlled David, of course, won. And what better way to control David than to reignite his affair with Rita? Quite possibly, Variola was using Rita as a weapon in her fight against Mrs. Hoffman. But her reasons didn't matter. Rita had the doll. She was going to use it.

And soon she would have David back in her arms.

“You're missing me, aren't you, David?” Rita said, looking down at the little doll.

Its painted red eyes stared up at her.

Rita tightened the silk necktie even more. If the doll were human, it would be struggling to breathe.

“You need to come home, David,” Rita said. “You are filled with thoughts of me, aren't you? Remembering the way I kissed you. The way we made love to each other. You are filled with thoughts of my face. You are overcome by my scent. You want me. You need me. You must have me.”

She loosened the tie, then tightened it again.

“You are coming home, David. You are getting on an airplane and coming home to me. It is
me
you yearn for. Me. Say my name.
Rita
. David and Rita.”

She lifted the doll from its little coffin and cradled it at her breast.

“You are coming home because the spell is broken, and you no longer love that silly little twit you married. You are coming home to tell Liz that your marriage was all a mistake and you want a divorce.”

She kissed the doll's little painted mouth.

“You want a divorce and you want to marry me.”

She replaced the doll in its box.

“Once the spell is broken,” Rita whispered, “you will see that you truly love me. This is not an enchantment to make you love me, David. You already love me deep in your heart. It is merely a spell to free you so you can embrace your own true feelings.”

She tightened the necktie once more, choking the little doll.

“Come home, David,” Rita purred. “Come home.”

T
he day was bright and sunny, without even the slightest shred of humidity. Liz strolled across the green manicured lawn of the Flagler Museum, exulting in being out of the house for the first extended period since she'd arrived. How beautiful Palm Beach was! How marvelously lush and green and balmy. And how marvelous was her tour guide: her husband's handsome, charming brother, Roger. Liz felt as if she were a bird, freed at last from its cage—and she was enormously grateful to her liberator.

“This beautiful mansion,” Roger was telling her, “was given by Henry Flagler, one of the founders of Standard Oil, to his wife as a wedding present.”

Liz gazed upon the tall white columns that fronted the mansion. “Was she happy here? His wife?”

Roger shrugged. “That much I don't know. But who wouldn't be happy in a place like this?”

Liz looked again at the mansion glittering in the sunlight, the tall palm trees swaying gently around it, the bright red bougainvillea popping out everywhere.

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “One can be unhappy even in the most beautiful of places.”

Roger smiled kindly at her. “I know what you're thinking. You're thinking of another young wife given a mansion to live in when she married a rich man. A wife named Liz.”

She smirked. “How'd you guess?”

“Liz, you will be happy in Huntington House. I promise you. Once David comes home, everything will be different.”

How kind his eyes were. Roger looked so much like David, but the kindness . . . that was different. Had Liz ever seen kindness in David's eyes? She thought she had, when they'd first met on the ship. But maybe all she'd seen then was grief—his terrible sadness over losing Dominique—and she'd mistaken that vulnerability for compassion. Because the David she'd been speaking with on the phone—indeed, the David her husband had become the moment they arrived at Huntington House—had shown not a smattering of kindness or compassion. All he'd demonstrated to Liz was impatience and annoyance.

Roger had come for dinner the previous night. How they'd laughed. For the first time since she'd come to that house, Liz had laughed out loud and easily. Roger told her tales of his boyhood—when he was constantly showing up to elegant, snooty parties thrown by his parents dressed in T-shirts and flip-flops. David, of course, had obediently worn the requisite suit and tie, but Roger—the bohemian, the artist—was always dropping canapés on the dresses of society ladies and winking at their daughters.

Then he started in on the stories of setting up his art gallery, and how he outraged Palm Beach society with his irreverent exhibitions of art from the inner cities. Once he hosted a performance artist who got naked onstage and covered herself in chocolate and invited patrons to lick it off her. The police had closed down the show after complaints that it was obscene. Roger had fought the closing in the courts and won. “I'm always upsetting apple carts,” he told Liz, and she had spied the way Mrs. Hoffman had pursed her lips when she overheard the remark. Mrs. Hoffman, Liz realized, didn't like Roger. That made Liz like him all the more.

He'd insisted that Liz finally get a tour of her new city, and he told her he'd be back to pick her up in the morning. He arrived bright and early, and Liz was ready for him. They'd sped all over town in Roger's black Porsche Carrera, the top removed, the wind in her hair. Liz had loved everything she'd seen. The white, sandy beaches and the crashing blue surf. The tall silver buildings glistening in the sun. The trendy shops along the palm-shaded downtown streets. The fabulous MarA-Lago, once the home of Marjorie Merriweather Post. And finally the Beaux-Arts architecture and exquisite furnishings of the Flagler Museum.

“Come here,” Roger said suddenly, grabbing Liz's hand and tugging her away from the mansion. “Over here—look at this! One of my favorite things in all of Palm Beach.”

Not far away stood an enormous, strange, and beautiful tree covered in white flowers. It looked like something out of a children's book, with its peculiar, twisting branches stretching into the sky. Behind it glittered the towers of the city. Liz was entranced.

“It's called a kapok tree,” Roger told her. “It's one of the biggest specimens around.”

Still holding her hand, he pulled her close to the tree, where they stood within the enclosure of one of its gargantuan roots, dwarfed against its trunk.

“This is magnificent,” Liz said. “I've never seen anything like it.”

Roger was looking into her eyes. “And I've never seen anything like you,” he said. “Just getting you out of that house—wow, I can see the way your eyes suddenly sparkle!”

Liz blushed, glancing away.

From there it was on to the luscious Pan's Garden, where exotic flowers grew in clusters and bright orange butterflies danced around a statue of the god Pan playing a lute.

“It's so beautiful here,” Liz gushed. “Everywhere we've been today—everything has been so beautiful.” She laughed. “So much more color and style and fragrance than my hometown of Trenton, New Jersey.”

“I'm sure there's beauty there, too,” Roger said, as they strolled down a path lined with bright orange birds of paradise. “Especially if you come from there.”

“Okay, mister, you can turn off the charm,” Liz said, laughing some more. “I like you. You've won me over!”

“I'm glad, Liz, because I like you, too.” He smiled over at her, and once again he looked so much like David. “I'm glad we're part of the same family now.”

Liz nodded. She tried to say something, but the words didn't come. She wasn't sure just what to say.

“Ah,” Roger was saying. “And here we come to my favorite part of the gardens.”

They turned down a quiet path overhung in places with bougainvillea, bright red against the sharp blue sky. Roger gently placed his hand on Liz's shoulder.

That was when she caught the fragrance.

Gardenias.

She saw the flowers then, growing on bushes along the sides of the path, delicate white blossoms amid the deep, emerald green leaves. The scent was almost overpowering.

Liz stopped walking.

“What's the matter?” Roger asked her.

She looked at him. She couldn't bring herself to say what she was thinking, but finally she saw understanding flicker across his face.

“The gardenias,” he said. “Oh, I'm sorry, Liz . . . I didn't think . . .”

“It's all right,” she said. “It just brought me back to the house, that's all. Made me think about that place after forgetting about it all day.”

“Look,” Roger said, “let's take another path . . .”

“No, that's crazy. I can't run away from a scent! Gardenias are beautiful and they smell so wonderful . . . almost otherworldly in their sweet fragrance. Let's keep going, Roger.”

“That's the girl.”

“Really,” Liz said as they resumed their walk. “I'm over all that silly nonsense. I had a good talk with Variola yesterday.”

“Oh, really? The chef?”

“Yes. She's a very kind woman. I think we'll be friends.”

Roger smiled at her. “Well, I'm delighted. I guess I never thought Variola was the type to be . . . all that welcoming.”

“She was very happy to include you for dinner last night,” Liz pointed out.

“You're right. She was.” He smiled again. “What did the two of you talk about?”

“I confided in her some of my silly ideas. Did you know some of the servants talk about ghosts and witches?”

Roger nodded. “Oh, they always have. Dominique encouraged such talk. And so does Variola, I must admit. But you couldn't really have been thinking that there was something supernatural going on at the house?”

“Oh, I let myself get freaked out about silly things. Like the fragrance of gardenias and the occasional sound of footsteps when no one was around. They sounded like they were coming from inside the walls.”

“Sounds like something out of
Jane Eyre
.”

“And then Dominque's portrait . . . the way the thunder had clapped just as Thad tried to take it down and then the way he had fallen, almost as if she hadn't wanted him to do it.” Liz laughed. “A hyperactive imagination, I guess I could say I had.”

“No wonder your imagination got the better of you, Liz. The two deaths of Audra and Jamison would have unnerved anyone who'd just showed up to live in a new place.”

Liz was nodding. “But it wasn't only that. Variola told me some other things that helped me, too.”

“Like what?”

“Like that Dominique wasn't always such a wonderful person, and that I was just as good as she was, and I shouldn't ever compare myself to her.”

Roger smiled. He stopped walking and took both of Liz's hands in hers. “Didn't I tell you the same thing?”

“Yes. Yes, you did, Roger.”

“I told you that David wouldn't want you to be like Dominique, that he would want you to be just the way you are.”

“Do you really believe that? He's seemed so impatient with me on the phone whenever I've spoken to him.”

Roger lifted Liz's left hand to his lips and kissed it. “Sweet Liz. My brother can be a boor sometimes.”

“Until he comes back,” Liz said, “I'm just so confused. I worry sometimes . . .”

“What do you worry about?”

“That I married him too quickly. It was impulsive. We barely knew each other. My mother was not happy at all. And I gave up so much . . .”

“Like what?” Roger asked, genuinely interested.

“My career. I was really hoping that once the cruise was over, I could start auditioning for musical productions. I wanted to be a choreographer. It was a dream I've had most of my life.”

“You don't have to give up your dreams just because you're married.”

“You're right. But David was so . . . oh, I don't know, so
eager
that I come here, and live here, and be part of Palm Beach society as the mistress of Huntington House.” She said the words rather pompously for comic effect.

“Once he gets back, you need to talk to him about all that.”

“That's just it. Without David here . . . I'm not sure what our life is going to be like together. I just can't picture it.”

Roger let go of her hands. “David's always been a klutz when it comes to knowing how to treat a woman. He was a fool to leave you so soon after you arrived here. If there's anything David needs to learn it's that sometimes—no, not sometimes,
most
of the time—business must come second to relationships.”

“I hope he does learn that,” Liz said.

Roger touched her cheek. “I hope he does, too.”

There was a second when they held each other's eyes. And then, from out of nowhere, a sudden black cloud appeared in the sky over them, raining down a mist on their cheeks. They had only time to look up and spot the unexpected storm before the downpour came. In seconds they were both soaking wet.

Liz shrieked. Roger whipped off his blue blazer and held it over their heads.

“Let's make a run for the car,” he shouted. “Welcome to Florida! You never know when a rainstorm might blow in!”

They ran down the path that had been turned into a river. Despite being drenched, Liz didn't mind the rain. It was warm and felt surprisingly refreshing. Liz and Roger laughed as they hopscotched through the puddles, and when Roger slipped and felt into a bed of calla lilies, they couldn't contain their hysterics. They tumbled into Roger's Porsche wet and muddy but laughing so hard tears were coming down their cheeks.

“My gallery's nearby,” Roger said as he started up the car.

The rain was coming so fast and furious the Porsche's windshield wipers could barely keep up with it. Liz's hair was dripping down in front of her eyes, and her clothes were so drenched that every move she made brought forth a sloshing sound. That only made her giggle harder. Roger called them “a couple of creatures from the black lagoon.”

They pulled up in front of the gallery. They hopped out of the car and made a mad dash for the entrance. As they tumbled through the front door, a young man at a desk looked up in surprise at them. “Karl,” Roger called. “Bring us some towels from the back room.”

The young man hurried off to comply with his employer's order. Within moments he had returned, and Liz was drying her hair with a fluffy white terrycloth towel.

“Come on inside,” Roger was saying to her. “Karl, do we have coffee brewing?”

“Yes, sir,” the young man replied.

It was only at that point, as Liz made her way following Roger across the room, that she really got a look at the art that was hanging on the gallery's walls. And what she saw nearly stopped her in her tracks.

The paintings were strange, to say the least. One was of an armless woman with a mouth open as if in a scream, standing against a bloodred background. Another was an enormous eye, filling the entire canvas. Others were of dark figures marching across bleak, gray terrain, dressed in black hoods so the viewer couldn't see their faces. Still other painting displayed hands growing out of the earth as if they were ferns.

Roger noticed Liz looking. “Not my work,” he said, as if sensing her unease. “I'm showing an artist from New York. She's very good, but rather disturbing sometimes.”

“I'd agree with the disturbing part.”

“Karl and I just hung her show. She's all the rage in the art world. Her name's Naomi Collins. Her show has its official opening next week, and she's coming down from New York to be here for it. I hope you'll come.”