Mirror Image (4 page)

“Aren't you going to ask me how my vacation went?” she said eventually, not looking at him as she unpacked the rest of her clothes, dropping them in a pile on the floor beside the laundry basket.

“You left the front door open,” he said shortly.

“Oh. I thought I'd locked it.”

“There's little point in having a twenty thousand dollar security system installed, if you're going to leave the door open.”

“It wasn't twenty thousand dollars sweetheart…”

“That's not the point,” he snapped. “You left the fucking door open.”

“I forgot.”

“Why didn't you just hang a notice on the door, please come in and rob us, oh and take your time.”

“I'll do that next time.”

“Jesus, Celia!”

Celia dropped a bag onto the bed and snapped the catches. “I forgot. All right, I had a lot to carry in. I was in a hurry. I'd been on a plane for just over five and a half hours, and then I sat on the freeway for another hour. I was tired. I felt dirty. I wanted a shower, OK.” They glared at one another across the expanse of the king-sized bed.

Finally, Jonathan shrugged. “OK,” he said tiredly. “You could have come home for the funeral,” he said softly, realizing that this was at the heart of his anger.

“It would have been awkward.”

“He was an employee … a friend.”

“He certainly wasn't my friend!” Celia snapped. Tony Farren had had little time for Celia and her fashions and moods, and hadn't bothered to hide his distaste. Their aversion was mutual. She disliked him; she detested the very thought of him working on her property and in her guesthouse. “He was an employee, in fact he was nothing more than a glorified handyman!”

Frazer allowed the rage to engulf him, paradoxically enjoying his anger. “Let me tell you something,” he said icily. “Tony Farren is the reason Frazer Interiors is as successful as it is today. When my father opened the antique store, Tony Farren helped build the business, he became known for his expertise, and then when I inherited the business and turned it into a design store those clients followed Tony. I am very thankful that he stayed with me, turning the cheap antiques I bought into antiques of value so you … so I … so we … could send our daughter to the best schools possible, so we could afford the luxury lifestyle we have, and so you could take your fucking vacations whenever you felt like it. He is the only reason we survived!” He turned and hurried from the room before she could see the tears in his eyes, realizing he was saying to her all the things he should have said to Tony.

Everything he said had been true.

Maybe he had overemphasized the case for Celia's benefit, but it was still true. Frazer Interiors had survived because of Tony Farren's reputation, skill, and knowledge; it wasn't going to close up tomorrow because he was gone, but there would be a difference. He'd had the gift of taking trashy bits of junk and turning them into antiques—and an antique is in the eye of the beholder.

And now he was dead.

Killed by a fucking mirror.

With the rage still bubbling inside him, leaving him cold and empty, he stormed out to the guesthouse. The mirror stood in the center of the floor, outlined in the late afternoon light, the glass a milky-pale, non-reflective sheet.

Frazer grabbed a hammer from the workbench and stood before the mirror, chest heaving.

Killed by a fucking mirror. He raised the hammer and approached the glass.

It was worth twenty thousand dollars. At least.

The thought stopped him cold.

Breaking it would give him a great deal of satisfaction; help work off some of the anger he felt at Tony's needless death. But the need was there to strike out, to hit something, hurt something. OK. So perhaps he had a just reason for arguing with Celia; she'd been in the wrong. She should have come home for the funeral, three lousy days wouldn't have made much difference to her vacation. She should have parked the car properly; she should have locked the front door behind her.

But that didn't make him any more in the right.

They had been married for twenty years; he should have become used to her ways by now.

He raised the hammer again; surprised to find that he could barely see himself in the glass. He reached out and rubbed his finger down the length of the mirror: it came away encrusted with thick sooty grime.

He looked at the hammer in his hand. And then allowed it to fall to the floor.

Break the mirror and what would he achieve? It would give him a momentary satisfaction … and he would lose twenty thousand dollars or more. And the first person that would call him a complete fool would be Tony Farren.

He turned away and stopped at the door, glancing back at the mirror. He'd clean it up and sell it—cheaply, just to get rid of it.

As he closed the door, colors, like oil on water, ran down the surface of the glass.

 

7

T
HE INSISTENT
high-pitched bleeping woke him close to three in the morning.

Jonathan Frazer rolled over, arms flailing blindly, assuming it was the alarm clock … and then suddenly snapped awake.

The alarm!

He sat up quickly, rubbing sleep from his eyes, then slid from the bed, naked, shivering in the early morning chill. He blinked at the white rectangular plastic box by the bedroom door, the high-pitched noise ringing in his ears. The monitoring device kept track of the sophisticated alarm system that girded the house and the guesthouse. The small LCD panel illuminated a pale green, the words “Guesthouse” blinking on the screen. It looked as if the guesthouse was in the process of being broken into. The alarm was a silent one, there were no loud, outside jangling bells—Celia didn't want that—but the alarm panel bleeped in the bedroom alerting them that there was a problem.

Jonathan punched in the distress code to turn the irritating noise off. He knew the local police department would have already been notified.

Wasting no time, he slipped on a pair of dark jogging pants and a black sweater, then pushed his feet into house slippers. Ignoring the advice of the alarm company—
if the alarm goes off, do not, under any circumstances, investigate yourself
—he raced down the stairs, heart pounding. He stepped into the kitchen and stopped. Ducking down below the level of the windows, he moved cautiously to the glass paneled back door and peered out across the tiled patio to where the guesthouse was barely visible through the trees.

Light flashed, flickered, died.

Shit: there was someone there!

At the back of his mind he had half hoped that it was a false alarm, although the alarm company guaranteed that the system was self-regulating, incapable of going off for no reason. Now, he stood in the kitchen, beginning to shiver with nerves. The cops would be—
should
be—here at any moment, but whoever was in the guesthouse could be long gone by then, taking goodness knows what from inside. And there were some very valuable pieces in there that were easily portable: gold coins, watches, silver spoons.

There was a set of kitchen knives on a rack to the left of the sink, each knife secured to the stand by a magnetic strip, naked blades gleaming dully in the gray light. He pulled off the longest, a heavy eight-inch butcher's knife, and hefted it in his hand, wondering if he would have the nerve to use it. Wondering if he would have the nerve to even open the kitchen door and step out into the night!

Realizing with a wry smile that he was merely making excuses for not going down to the guesthouse to investigate, hoping the cops would arrive, Frazer stooped down and undid the bolt at the bottom of the door. He pulled back the top bolt and quietly turned the key, and then cracked open the door. The wash of chill night air was a shock. He shivered and was unsure if it was the night or the adrenaline buzzing through his body.

Clutching the knife like a talisman, he stepped out onto the patio, the leather soles of his slippers squeaking on the path. He moved quickly onto the grass by the sprinklers. The garden was cold, and his suede slippers were quickly soaked. The chill air bit through his sweater, and by the time he reached the stand of trees that partially hid the guesthouse from the main house, he was shivering uncontrollably.

He crouched in the bushes for what seemed like a long moment, berating himself for his cowardice: his father might have been a war hero, but his son certainly hadn't inherited any of his father's characteristics. For him, something heroic was selling the most expensive chandelier in the store.

Something fell inside the guesthouse with a dull clanking, the sound abruptly spurring him into action. Switching the knife from his right hand, he wiped his sweating palm on the leg of his pants and then gripped the knife tightly again.

Keeping on the grass, he darted from bush to bush, moving up to the guesthouse, checking the windows on this side of the building. They were all screened, alarmed, and none of them had been broken. Maybe the thief had come in through the skylights … but as he rounded the corner he discovered that the guesthouse door was wide open.

The door was secured by three heavy mortise locks, one at top and bottom, one in the middle. The hasps were sunk into concrete and not the frame of the door, and the door itself was two and a half inches thick, an ornate Spanish colonial door that Jonathan and Tony had found at an estate sale.

The only way in was with two keys.

And the only people with keys were Tony and himself … and then he abruptly realized he hadn't gotten Tony's keys back yet. OK. So maybe a friend of Tony's? Maybe friend wasn't the right word. He knew Tony preferred the company of younger men. Possibly one of his men friends who knew what he was doing and where he worked had found the keys among his possessions and had just taken advantage.

Jonathan Frazer stood beside the door, listening intently, but he could only hear his own thundering heartbeat. Finally, he pushed it open with enough force for it to slam back against the wall and simultaneously slapped at the light switch.

The guesthouse blazed alight, all twenty-two recessed lights illuminating the entire length of the room.

“Who's there?” He was surprised at how calm his voice sounded.

Something fell to the floor at the far end of the room.

“I know you're there. I can see you,” he lied. “Now come out.”

Two lights above began buzzing, flickering annoyingly. Something moved at the corner of his vision and Jonathan whirled, knife upraised … and the lights above his head exploded with a bang!

Frazer screamed with fright, then pain as tiny slivers of glass rained down on top of him. And then, one-by-one, in a long series of rattling detonations, the rest of the lights exploded down the length of the room. The air was suddenly rank with acrid fumes and the brittle stench of electricity. A single light remained at the far end of the guesthouse, and it was buzzing furiously, flickering on and off, strobe-like.

Frazer staggered to his feet, turned—and screamed aloud!

There was a figure facing him: tall, pale, gaunt, hollows where the eyes should have been, a disembodied face. Frazer brought up his arm, thrusting the knife forward … and the figure copied him, producing a knife of his own. He waved the knife left to right, and the figure moved with him.

The wave of relief that washed over Frazer almost made him light-headed. He was facing the mirror. He was looking at himself in the fucking mirror!

He'd hardly recognized himself in the dirty glass: his face appeared positively skull-like, and he looked as if he hadn't slept for a week! With the light at the far end of the room now flickering madly, he put his back to the glass, and looked out across the clutter. It had been a mistake to come in here, he knew that now. He should have waited outside and kept the burglar trapped inside.

There!

A shape. Tall, dark, directly ahead and to his right, moving along a collection of consoles and coffee tables.

The shape moved and, in the flickering strobing light/dark reduced his movements to slow motion.

At that moment, the final light at the end of the room exploded, a hand dropped onto his left shoulder, long hard fingers biting deeply into his flesh. With a scream of absolute terror, Frazer leapt forward … and in a blinding flash of light found himself facing a slavering nightmare: long yellow pointed teeth, huge golden eyes, the entire face covered with long coarse hair. The creature howled at him, fetid breath washing over him, making him gag.

“Freeze … drop the weapon … I said drop the weapon.”

The cool, neutral voice cut through his terror. Raising both arms Jonathan opened his right hand, the knife clattering on the concrete floor as it hit.

“Put your hands behind your head, spread your legs,” the voice said more forcefully.

Jonathan Frazer opened his eyes. Strong hands gripped his arms, forcefully pulling them down and behind his back. He felt the coldness of metal on his skin as both wrists were handcuffed.

Police.

The police had arrived. He tried to form words, but his tongue felt huge in his mouth.

Jonathan was pulled outside and shoved against the exterior wall, the right side of his face pinned against the stucco as the officer patted him down. He fished something out of Jonathan's back pocket. Then he was spun around and Jonathan found himself squinting at the stark white light from the officer's flashlight.

“Sorry, Mr. Frazer.” The officer handed Jonathan back his ID. “That was a stupid thing you did going in there. You could have been hurt by either them or me! And, I could arrest you for brandishing a weapon,” the police officer added with a quick grin as he undid the handcuffs.

“I know, I just…”

Jonathan found himself looking at the impassive faces of two hefty looking officers. To the side on a short leash, panting and salivating, head cocked to one side, regarding him quizzically was an enormous German shepherd.