Mind Games (47 page)

‘Just the same.’ Dora wasn’t giving way. ‘What she did was sneaky.’

‘What did she do?’ Grace wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

‘That’s just it – I can’t tell you.’

Grace was confused. ‘You’ve lost me, Dora.’

She saw a patient expression come across Dora’s face. The older woman often ended up being that way with Grace when it came to discussing computer-related matters.

‘I can’t tell you what she did because she gave it a password.’ Dora took Grace’s silence to mean that she hadn’t understood. ‘You know about
passwords,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘We’ve used them on confidential files.’

Grace did know all about passwords. She had persuaded Dora, some time back, to let her have a small notebook containing the passwords for any files she might need to access in her absence.
They’d argued about it for a while. There was no point having passwords in the first place, Dora had pointed out, if they were going to leave them lying around for anyone to pick up. Grace
had said that she hadn’t planned on leaving them lying around. Dora told Grace she should put them in her safe. Grace said that she didn’t have a safe. Thinking back, Grace remembered
that she’d had to get as far as reminding Dora that while confidentiality was a matter of real importance, nothing in her files had any bearing on national security. Finally, Dora had handed
over the notebook.

Grace knew about passwords.

She remembered Sam telling her about Cathy’s password-protected journal entries. The ones they had persuaded themselves might have been doctored by John Broderick.

‘Did she give the file a name?’ she asked Dora, quietly.

‘Every file has to have a name.’

Grace wasn’t in the mood for tutoring.

‘What name does this file have?’ she asked, a tad too crisply.

She knew what Dora was going to answer before she opened her mouth.

‘
My Journal
,’ Dora said..

Sam called less than an hour later, asking if Grace and Cathy might feel like going to the show that evening. He always referred to it that way; it might be opera, he said, but
any opera company that would have
him
singing a major part
definitely
put on shows, not performances.

Grace told him she was snowed under, which was fine because she’d already happily sat through two shows since the first night, and so she knew Sam wasn’t going to be upset.

‘I don’t suppose Cathy would want to come,’ he said.

‘I think Cathy’s all opera’d out,’ Grace said apologetically.

‘Any chance of getting together after the show?’

‘I don’t know. I have a headache building, and by the time I’ve finished doing my paperwork . . .’ Grace let the sentence trail off.

‘You okay?’ Sam sounded concerned.

‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Call me when you’ve taken your last curtain call. Maybe I’ll feel better.’

‘Don’t worry if you don’t. I’ll call anyway.’

Grace wasn’t certain why she hadn’t said anything to him about the computer thing. Probably for the same reason she hadn’t yet told him about Harry being out on the
parapet.

She didn’t want to have to think about it.

She wanted to bury her head in the sand until she knew it was all innocent and meaningless.

The journal entry was probably entirely meaningless. Cathy had, after all, kept a legitimate journal for a long time, under that simple, no frills heading. It had only been those incriminating
entries that she’d denied creating.

And that password.

Grace remembered that one without checking in any notebook.

She waited until after Dora had gone for the day and Cathy had gone out for a run. She went into the study and closed the door, leaving Harry standing guard outside. She sat
down at the desk, reached for the switch, and turned on the computer.

She waited while it went through its opening convolutions. Dora had trained it to move through its incomprehensible (to Grace) pre-op checks without operator assistance, so that when she was the
one using it she could just switch on, wait a few seconds, and get right to work.

It was ready for her now.

Grace pressed the F-key that Dora had taught her was the fastest route for commencing a file retrieval. Dora had not said which directory the entry had been filed under and Grace had not asked
for the information.
SUNDRIES
seemed the most likely port. She pulled the directory down onto the screen.

It was there.
MY JOURNAL.

Grace asked the computer to open the file. As she had known it would, it refused to do so. Instead, it asked for the password.

Grace took a deep breath. She felt shaky.

She typed it in.

H-A-T-E.

And hit the return.

And wished she hadn’t.

Grace closed down the computer, found Harry still waiting outside the door, went and poured herself an early glass of wine.

She needed it.

She took it out on deck, kicked off her loafers, sat on the edge, Harry up close, dunked her feet into the water and took a drink.

She was disturbed. No two ways about it.

Putting aside all other considerations – for a while, at least – she was greatly disturbed by what Cathy had written about Dr Parés. Grace had become aware that the doctor had
been exerting considerable influence over Cathy during her last weeks in prison, but it had seemed, on the whole, to have been such a
beneficial
influence that she’d seen no good
reason to intervene.

Not that anyone would have listened to her if she had tried to.

Grace drank a little more wine, and thought about getting in touch with Parés, but then she began to wonder what she would say if she did reach him. She did not, for one thing, want to
risk antagonizing a man who might, at this still crucial time, be in a position to influence the State Attorney or a judge, or – if things did become worse again – a jury. And
Parés had written one of the reports that had contributed to getting Cathy out of prison and into Grace’s care.

Conscious that Cathy was likely to get home any time, Grace began trying to analyse what she’d written in her journal. Was it really so disturbing?

Know your enemies.

Parés’ advice, apparently. And under the circumstances, maybe not such bad advice at that. A teenager accused of monstrous crimes, locked up in a potentially dangerous environment
with adult offenders of all kinds, would almost certainly have been well advised to recognize who was an enemy and who was a friend.

Certainly not a good enough reason to get on the phone to Eric Parés and give him a hard time.

Grace moved on to what she knew had troubled her – shocked her – the most.

The fact that Cathy still didn’t know whether to trust her or not.

That she might still, beneath her increasingly easy exterior, be uncertain about Sam, was not all that surprising. He might be on suspension, but that had come about because of Sam’s fears
for Grace, not because of his doubts over Cathy’s guilt. He was, no matter what, the man who’d brought her in. Sad, but true.

Cathy’s uncertainty about
her
was deeply upsetting.

And above it all, of course, was the fact that with Grace, and with Sam, Cathy had apparently been acting out a role. Pretending to trust them.

She was, after all, capable of deceit.

Absently, Grace ruffled the fur on Harry’s head and he pressed closer.

‘That leaves the big question, doesn’t it?’ Grace told him softly.

Had the events of the past few months made Cathy that way? Or had she been like that before Marie’s and Arnold’s deaths?

Big question.

Cathy came home about ten minutes later, flushed and with eyes sparkling, greeted Grace and Harry with breathless enthusiasm, drank three glasses of bottled water and went
upstairs to shower and change.

Grace cooked comfort food that evening. Pasta with her own home-made clam sauce. If Sam had been there, she would have opened a bottle of wine, and Lord knew she was tempted to use another glass
or two for anaesthetic purposes, but instead she toughed it out and drank Coke with Cathy.

‘Are you okay?’ Cathy asked her once, just after they’d started eating.

‘I’m fine,’ Grace told her. ‘A little tired, maybe.’

‘Did you work hard?’

‘Very.’

‘How was Dora?’

‘Same as usual.’

‘Glad I wasn’t around?’ Cathy pulled a face. She’d told Grace before that Dora didn’t trust her. She had, of course, been right.

Know your enemies.

Sam called just after ten-thirty. He sounded exhilarated.

‘Only another two shows,’ he said.

‘You’ll miss it.’

‘You bet I will.’ He paused. ‘You’re beat.’

‘Afraid so,’ Grace said.

‘Cathy okay?’

‘Fine. She went for a long run, seemed to enjoy it. We ate pasta and watched a movie and now we’ve both gone to our beds.’

‘Which movie?’

Grace frowned. ‘I can’t remember.’ She honestly couldn’t. ‘Tom Cruise was in it, but I think I fell asleep about five minutes in.’

‘You really are beat.’ Sam sounded sympathetic.

‘And you’re ready to party, aren’t you?’ She felt horribly guilty. ‘Oh, Sam, I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘For being such a drag.’

‘Not exactly the word I’d use to describe you, Grace.’

She could not tell him what she really felt guilty about. She would tell him – she knew she would – but tonight she just wasn’t ready.

‘Sure I can’t come over?’ he asked. ‘Stroke your hair while you sleep?’

Grace was more than sorely tempted.

‘My headache’s still nagging at me,’ she said. ‘I think I’m ready to sleep now.’

‘Okay,’ Sam said. ‘Sweet dreams.’

‘You, too, when you come down.’

‘Oh, I’m already down, baby. Opera used to be the only thing that could get me high as a kite.’ Sam paused. ‘Now it’s you, Gracie.’

Grace remembered quite liking it when she’d heard Teddy’s friend Ramon calling her that. She liked it even better coming from Sam.

She told him goodnight, watched Harry burrow down as usual near her feet, then turned out the light and lay still in the dark. Thinking, of course. Mulling it all over. The
thing with Harry on the balcony, and the journal.

She was only just beginning to allow herself to acknowledge the worst aspect of all concerning the latter.

The fact that Cathy was still using the same password.

The ugly word they’d hoped had been part of Broderick’s creation.

Grace thought she would never go to sleep.

And then she was gone.

She dreamed she was back in Hayman’s guest room and that he was in the room again, standing in the dark looking at her.

Grace woke up.

It wasn’t a dream.

Except that it wasn’t Hayman.

It was Cathy staring down at her.

Grace sat up. ‘Cathy, what’s wrong?’

She didn’t answer. Grace fumbled for the light switch, turned it on. Cathy blinked, but didn’t say anything. At the end of the bed, Harry was still lying down, but he was alert, ears
cocked, eyes darting between Grace and Cathy.

‘Cathy, why are you in here? What’s the matter?’

Slowly, very slowly, Cathy shook her head, and then, still not saying a word, she turned around and walked towards the open door. Grace watched her turn right, heading for her room; her heart
pounded as she got carefully out of bed and followed.

Cathy had got back into her bed and was lying down, eyes closed, lids fluttering slightly. Rapid eye movement. Breathing even.

She was asleep.

Which seemed to indicate that she’d been sleepwalking.

Grace knew better than to wake her now. As quietly as possible, she crept back through the door and closed it. And went back to her own bed.

‘Cathy’s a somnambulist, Harry,’ she told her wise old dog.

He grunted.

Grace lay back against her pillows.

She was remembering Frances Dean telling her, a few days after her sister’s and brother-in-law’s death, that she’d woken one night to find Cathy staring down at her. Two weeks
later, Frances had been dead too.

Grace didn’t know if that meant a damned thing.

Except that she had read about cases where murderers had claimed that they’d been sleepwalking.

‘For crying out loud, Lucca,’ she muttered harshly.

Talk about the power of imagination.

Except that if it was all just her imagination working overtime, why the
hell
did she feel what she was feeling?

Afraid.

Grace called Sam just after six a.m. and arranged to meet him for breakfast at eight-thirty. It was Teddy’s morning to clean the house, so she had no qualms about telling
Cathy that she had to leave her and go out on an appointment.

Not too many qualms, anyway.

Sam had suggested meeting in the Garden Café at the Sheraton, Bal Harbour, just across the Concourse on Collins. Grace’s first, instinctive reaction had been to feel that it was too
pleasurable a location for the meeting she had in mind – but then she remembered that she’d let him down the night before,
particularly
by not sharing the truth with him, so
she kept quiet and figured it would be a miserable enough breakfast, so maybe a waterfall and tropical garden wouldn’t hurt.