Dead Dogs and Englishmen (24 page)

Jeffrey didn't call by
dinnertime so I microwaved a frost-covered frozen dinner and sat down with Cecil's manuscript. It took almost more than I had in me to open the folder and pull up the first page.

The first few of the next ten chapters followed the boys, Nelson and Tommy, as they made their way around the British countryside, stealing and running, thinking of themselves as Gypsies. There was almost an air of Tom Jones to it—fun, escapes, country girls gulled by city boys. Plenty of sex now. At least more sex than murder, which I welcomed. In the next chapters things changed again for our Tommy, the boy with the mutilated hand. He was in his twenties and living in Liverpool. Nelson was there, with him, but almost pushed to the background as Tommy claimed he was in love. In love with a wealthy, shy woman.

I read slowly, feeling I was heading into something so terrible I didn't want to know. Liverpool, not Bristol. But still, a wealthy woman.

What was Cecil doing to me? A deliberate game—paying well to keep me silent as he relived what amounted to a confession? He knew I'd met Courtney, knew she suspected him of murdering her mother, a wealthy woman. I sat back and let the manuscript pages settle in my lap. I prayed the story didn't go where I feared it was headed. If it did—I had a responsibility, not to myself and a paper I'd signed, but to Courtney James; maybe even to my own sense of decency.

I looked back at the kitchen clock. Not a word from Jeffrey. He'd promised he would be there. I went to my corner desk and dialed his cell number. The phone rang on and on until Jeffrey's recorded voice answered, telling me to leave a message at the beep.

I let k.d. lang lull me softly, but unsuccessfully, into a safer world. I had Sorrow at my feet, snoring and blowing out his jowls. But the house around me felt foreign and closed in. It wasn't possible to take a deep, freeing breath. I sat as if frozen, listening to a creak from one of my two bedrooms; the refrigerator start with a sudden whirr; Sorrow's nails scratch as his legs pumped in what must have been a dream of running. Small sounds grew huge. They rippled through the house. There was the feel of a breathing malevolence as everyday things joined in against me, seeming to hover just beyond the circle of my reading lamp.

I got up and went to the door. I pulled the gauzy white curtain aside and flipped on the outside light, expecting someone there looking back at me. The porch was empty. My car was in the driveway, shining an odd yellow in the bright light. A skunk skittered back up the brick walkway and off into the dark. Not a single other movement.

I went back to the couch, checked my watch again—ten-twenty—and vowed I would finish the last of this manuscript tonight. Jeffrey would be there soon. Morning would be …

I had no idea what morning would be if Jeffrey finally showed up.

I let my mind sink back to England, and a young man who didn't marry the wealthy woman after all. He didn't kill her either, which I found reassuring. I told myself maybe I could even like this guy—he was charming now, seeming to go out of his way to be polite and kind to women. As if I was in the hands of a magician, I forgot he was a cold-blooded killer and let my mind tag along with him, enjoying time at the races as he bet and won on horses, as he schemed his way into circles of wealth, and seemed soon to be welcomed into manor homes and posh parties. He wooed the rich and lonely older women he called his “Swans, my beautiful swans,” while he laughed behind their backs with Nelson; while he and Nelson schemed to steal their jewelry and take off for the Continent.

“Maybe this time—hey, what'cha think—maybe France?” Nelson said as the two young men sat together in the filthy back booth of a seedy pub.

“I've always wanted to go to France,” Tommy said. “The women there look so
…
so needy.”

As I read on, it turned out their next stop wasn't going to be France after all. I would probably never get to know what that next stop was. Cecil had made a mistake. The last of his chapters weren't in sync with the others. At first I thought I'd missed somet
hing, or I wasn't getting the structure of the book. Finally I
figured out he'd given me work that belonged much farther along in the narrative. Tommy was now Tom. He was in Bristol. Nelson was nowhere in sight. Tom, now much older, maybe in his early forties, was the picture of loneliness, sitting at a sidewalk cafe having afternoon tea. He noticed a lovely woman at another table, sitting by herself. Tom, being Tom, he took in the clothes she wore. She could have bought them in France, or even Milan. At a very expensive boutique. She had long slim legs, blond hair, and a big diamond on her right hand. The left hand was empty—so not married or, at least, not married at the moment.

I read through Tom's detailed assessment of the woman. He might have gotten older but he hadn't changed. He was a jockey figuring the value of a winning horse. I began to get the queasiest of feelings in my gut.

Soon Tom was sitting with the woman. They laughed and her eyes shone. They moved on to dinner, where he listened as she talked about her recent loss. Her husband, Phillip, had been killed in a plane crash. He'd worked in international trade. Tom thought hard and put the woman's value in the thousands of pounds, maybe even up to a million. The smell of a rich woman triggered something in his head.
His senses reacted—nose, eyes, ears—to her upper-class accent. Then other parts of him. He leaned forward to enjoy his hard-on. So much better than sex—this homing in on a woman standing between him and what he needed
…

I set the manuscript aside for just a minute. Something in his writing, in the character himself, made me feel dirty, as if just by
reading this stuff I betrayed me and all the other women in the world. But I didn't have a choice: stop, or go on. Something I needed
to know was buried here. Maybe even a message Cecil was sending. As I sat in my own safe living room I could almost hear him whispering.

I read on: Tommy put his head closer to the woman's and listened hard, smiling when a smile was called for, expressing sym
pathy when that was needed. He made all the right moves. He made
her laugh. Lines that creased her forehead disappeared. He watched
her face relax and congratulated himself on a truly remarkable talent
with women.

_____

The next day he was on the way to her house, to meet the woman's daughter, though she assured him she'd never done anything like this before—bringing a stranger home.

“But you know me so well. From that first moment, didn't you feel we'd known each other always?” That line worked before. Tom wasn't above pulling out the tried and true. Women were all emotions, he knew. The right word, at the right time, and he'd be in her bed before he'd barely kissed her, maybe settled into her home, taking care of her, making her laugh, bringing her back to the world of the living. He would tell her how beautiful she was and take her chin in his hand and kiss her slowly.

At lunchtime he arrived with a huge bouquet of flowers. He was there, she'd said, to meet her daughter, a girl who needed cheering as much as she did. Poor thing—left with no father when a girl most needs a man in her life—her teen years.

“She can hardly wait to meet you.” Amanda beamed at Tom when she opened the huge front door of the mansion on Church Road, in Sneyd Park. She was dressed in a pale blue silk dress with marquis-cut diamonds at her ears. Her soft, pale hair was piled on her head and caught there, loosely, with mother of pearl combs.

The mansion awed him. Riding up in the taxi he'd smiled broadly as he paid the driver, making the tip as small as possible. Best neighborhood in all of Bristol. The house must have cost
…
he stood looking up at the white stuccoed walls and deep-set windows. He tried estimating its worth in his head, vowing to check out prices later. Green and leafy Sneyd Park. He'd only driven through once before, thinking then how this was where he truly belonged.

“Courtney will love you. You're such a joy, Tommy.” Amanda put out her hand to draw him into the grand hall. “You're so much like Philip. I haven't laughed and been so relaxed in months, the way I was with you yesterday. I feel so fortunate
…
”

The daughter's name wasn't lost on me. Another bit of poetic license? Use what you know? Maybe, maybe, maybe, I told myself. Or more. How could I be sure of anything? I was through the looking glass, into that place I went myself, into fiction, where nothing was ever as it seemed, where all was made up to fit a storyline.

But this … ?

What I held was just a story … just a story. But filled with facts from outside the fictive world. There was a friend … There was a daughter named Courtney.

I almost didn't dare to read on, but nothing would have stopped
me either.

In the next chapter Tommy was in Cannes, enjoying an afternoon aperitif on the balcony of his room overlooking the Mediterranean. There was a phone call …

“Amanda! No! Oh, good Lord. But how
…
I'll get the first plane back
…
”

Tommy put the phone down, bowed his head over it, and began to laugh until he choked. He did a little dance around the ornately decorated room and chortled, “Has there ever been a friend such as mine? Ever, in the world?” He thought, if only he could have been there … The basement of that great house would have been perfect—but not with that ugly daughter around.

That was enough for me. I was being challenged. Maybe it was to see if I'd tell others, or keep it to myself. Maybe this was a new game, even more dangerous. Maybe I was Cecil's new Lila.

Or maybe Dolly was right. Too much imagination.

At midnight I tried
calling Jeffrey again. No answer. I left another message demanding to know where the heck he was and when he was going to get to my house. I hung on to the phone even after the machine clicked off. I needed to talk to him. I'd made a decision. I was going to show him a copy of the manuscript. Dolly too. I didn't know if they'd get it right away. If they'd understand what this man was doing; what he was saying in his book.

And maybe Courtney. She needed to know.

Ideas and memories buzzed in my brain. Hadn't Jeffrey said Cecil was out of town the day Amanda slipped into a coma? And he was in plain sight when Lila was shot.

Toomey. That name was like a wasp in my head. Toomey. Nelson. Maybe the same boy/man/friend. This was turning into a puzzle within a riddle, wrapped in a conundrum. Too much to digest that late in the day, when I was so tired.

I shut off the lamp behind me, huddled down into the sofa, and hid in the dark. It wasn't until at least after one a.m. that I fell asleep. By three I was awake again, listening for a car in the driveway. I checked my answering machine, thinking Jeffrey had called and I'd slept right through the ringing phone. Nothing. I brought a blanket from my bedroom, lay back down on the sofa, welcomed Sorrow when he managed to crawl up beside me, and slept until morning.

At eight I called Jeffrey's cell. Nothing. I called the police station in Leetsville and got a busy signal. When I tried a few minutes later, Dolly answered.

“Jeffrey was supposed to come here last night … he thought I should have someone in the house with me … he never made it,” I blurted in one long, strung-together sentence, not bothering to identify myself.

“Yeah, Emily. He told me he was stayin' out there,” Dolly said. “I was worried maybe it was something more than just watching you. You know, you're kind of weak when it comes to guys.”

“Hey, Dolly, focus, will you? He never showed up. I tried calling him last night and again this morning. Nothing.”

“Hmm.” Dolly switched gears. “Where do you think he got to?”

“No clue.”

“Wasn't he hell-bent on getting over to that sheep ranch? Judge almost ready to sign the search warrant, is what I heard. He told those lawyers Cecil Hawke sent that this wasn't New York City where celebrities got different treatment. Lo must've known.”

“Then he's probably out there already. I mean, Jeffrey felt so strongly that he had to get on that ranch, talk to some of the workers, would he be hanging back now? Still, why didn't he call me?”

“Okay. Look.” Dolly stopped and thought awhile. “I'll keep trying to get him. What are you doing today? You shouldn't be alone.”

“I'm supposed to see Cecil at eleven. There's a ritual going on. I guess with the sheep. He thinks I'll enjoy watching.”

“You nuts? After that dead dog at your house?”

“Cecil has no reason to hurt me. I'm not, like, a wife or anything.”

“Get that jackass to go with you?”

“Which jackass?”

“Your ex, Jackson.”

“Cecil's not going to let Jack back in his house. He knows Jack had an affair with Lila.”

“Yeah, well this book you're reading for him, you said it's kind of odd? Isn't that what you said? Well, like how odd?”

“Well, like …” I mimicked her. “Like his main character's a killer.”

“And?”

“I don't know, Dolly. It sounds as if he's writing about himself …”

“And you never mentioned this before?”

“I signed a confidentiality pledge.”

“What's that?”

“That I won't talk about the work to anyone.”

“You just did. And anyway, so what? Don't you kill off people in your books?”

“But this is different. The main character might be patterned after him, after Cecil. And there's a friend …”

“Aw geez. Emily.” There was a groan in Dolly's voice. “We got enough to deal with here.”

“You don't get it. Think I should show some of the work to Courtney? See if she recognizes anything. I mean …”

“Thought you signed something that you couldn't do that.”

“I did … but …”

“Up to you, Emily. Whatever you think. I'm not much of a reader. Don't know if I'd catch what you're talkin' about.”

“Maybe I'll wait, see what he gives me today.”

“You making copies?”

I hesitated, not wanting to admit I'd already broken the agreement.

“Yes.”

“Good for you. That's the kind of brain you need if you're gonna keep writin' mysteries.” She hesitated. “Sure wish I could go with you. I can't. Cate's leavin'. I'm takin' her into Grayling to catch a bus. Actually, to tell you the truth, I'm so mad I feel like lettin' her walk the fifty miles but … guess not.”

“I'll call you when I get to Hawke's house. Just so he knows I've told people where I am. And,” I got to the biggest thing on my mind, “if you hear from Jeffrey call me there, at Cecil's. Probably something came up. Maybe he had to get back to Detroit, to his office …”

“And not let us know? What kinda cop is that?”

“Thanks, Dolly. You're such a comfort.”

“Emily,” she said before hanging up. “If you're worried there … I mean, if anything doesn't seem right to you …”

“I know, Dolly. I'll leave.”

“And about looking over that farm …”

“It's the only chance we have. Jeffrey's not around. Gotta be me.”

“You know what, Emily? Bet anything we hear from Lo today. I wouldn't worry.”

That was Dolly's tardy stab at making me feel better.

It didn't.