There came a point when Liz Toliver couldn't sit still any longer. She had never been very good at sitting stillâthat, and not talent or drive or an unhappy childhood, was what she thought really explained her successâand she found sitting still under pressure virtually impossible. She had been pacing up and down the long corridor of the hotel floor they had rented all morning. She'd put down a half-dozen half-empty cups of tea and forgotten where they'd gone. She was scared to death that she was about to commit one of the great sins in her ethical lexicon and leave a mess for the maids. It didn't matter. The world felt like a claustrophobic place, all the more because she now knew that events were going on without her. She kept getting an image of Emma Kenyon with a knife stuck out of her belly, a knife that didn't go all the way through because, in Liz's fantasy, Emma was as enormous as a circus freak. She turned on a television in one of the rooms and sat down to watch CNN. There was nothing on it of any interest. She surfed through the channels until she found some local news, and there was nothing on that, either. She had forgotten what it was like to live in a place where people did not expect fresh, up-to-the-minute, breaking news about their area twenty-four seven. Her muscles ached. She wished she were herself only five years ago, when nobody would have cared if she walked stark naked down Fifth
Avenue at high noon. Most of all, she wished she understood herself. She ought to feel vindicated. She ought to feel that she'd scored some big triumph. That was how Maris expected her to feel. Instead, whenever she could get her mind off herself, the whole thing made her tired. How could anyoneâ
anyone
âspend their entire lives in a town like Hollman?
She went to the end of the corridor and looked out. Her car was at Andy's Garage. Jimmy's car was in the parking lot, and his driver was in one of the rooms on this very floor, but that wouldn't work. Everybody in creation knew what Jimmy's car was like. There was Mr. Demarkian's car, but Mr. Demarkian had it. There was Maris's unused little rental, but Maris had that, or it was parked behind English Drugs, which came to the same thing. Liz could remember one day when she was fourteen years old, walking alone down Grandview Avenue, on her way up the hill to go to the Booklet. Belinda and Maris and Emma had been coming at her from the other direction, and when they got less than a foot and a half away, they burst into giggles and jaywalked at a run to the other side of the street. 1965, she thought. That had been in
1965
.
She went back down the corridor to the room where Jimmy had set up shop and stood in the empty doorway. He had his back to her, talking on the phone, the good black light summer wool of his city jacket making him seem just a little taller and a little thinner than he was.
Jimmy was pacing around, just as she had been. In the middle of one tour of the room, he saw her standing in the doorway and stopped.
“Just a minute,” he said into the phone. He put the receiver against his chest. “Are you okay? Do you need me?”
“I always need you. It's not important. I'm feeling a little crazy.”
“Just a minute,” he said again, but this time to her. He put the receiver back up to his ear. “Listen, I'll call you back in an hour, how's that? I know. I know. Something's
come up. It can wait, Creighton. It can certainly wait an hour. Yes. Yes. I'll talk to you later.”
Creighton Allmark was Jimmy's agent. Liz waited while Jimmy hung up the phone and came across the room to her.
“You look awful,” he said. “You really look awful. Is there something I can do?”
Liz shrugged. “The problem is, there isn't anything I can do. I've had a shower. I've played backgammon with Mark. I've played Go Fish with Geoff. I've drunk enough tea that my kidneys are floating. I've eaten half a pound of that pastry thing Ms. Hannaford brought up for me. I've talked to you. I've talked to the doctors. I've talked to the hospital. I've even talked to Mr. Demarkian. I'm going insane.”
“States of siege are sort of like that.”
“But we aren't in a state of siege, are we?” Liz asked. “There isn't anybody outside. Nobody knows we're here.”
“They will.”
“I know they will. And then we will be in a state of siege. I want to get out of here before that happens.”
“Get out how?” Jimmy looked alarmed. “You mean get out of Hollman? Mr. Demarkian explained how that wouldn't be the best idea, andâ”
“No,” Liz said. “I want to get out of the hotel. I want to take a drive. I want to do something, even if it's nothing in particular.”
“Somebody will see you. And recognize you.”
“Maybe.”
“They'll follow the car when you try to come back here,” Jimmy said.
“Maybe,” Liz said again.
“Besides”âJimmy took a deep breathâ“what would you take a drive in? Your car isn't here. Mine is too recognizable. Taking that would really be psychotic. And you couldn't rent one, not from here, not now. If you tried it, we'd be inundated in no time flat.”
“She's got a car,” Liz said.
“Who's she?”
“Bennis Hannaford. She's got a tangerine-orange Mercedes
two-seater. Parked in this parking lot. I know. We talked about it.”
“Well,” Jimmy said. “That's not exactly being inconspicuous either, is it?”
“Maybe not. But it would at least get me out of here. And I do have to get out of here. I know what you're saying. I've seen it happen to other people, the Clintons during the impeachment, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg right after John Kennedy disappeared in his plane. I know what you're trying to say. But even Caroline Kennedy went out for a bike ride. She didn't stay indoors for the whole week until the reporters went away.”
“When she did go out for a bike ride, she was followed by camera crews in vans,” Jimmy said. “I know you're feeling shut in. I'm just trying to counsel something like prudence. You said yourself that Demarkian was asking you about where you were when this latest murder happenedâ”
“It wasn't a murder. It was an attack. She's still alive.”
“Attack, whatever. You said yourself he was asking about where you were. And you know you were here, in full view of everybody, for the whole time. And you know that means that you're going to be off the hook, probably sooner rather than later. So if you'll justâ”
“If they don't arrest somebody for this crime,” Liz said carefully, “the tabloids will pin it on me, forever, and it won't matter at all that I couldn't have committed the attack on Emma Kenyon. The legitimate press will pin it on me, too, they'll just be more polite about it. You know all that as well as I do.”
“The police usually do catch murderers,” Jimmy said.
“I know. On the other hand, I also know that the police in this town consist of exactly two men, one of whom I have known since birth. And he was nobody's Einstein even then.”
“They have the state police in on this as well. And Demarkian.”
“I know. I know.” Liz walked over to Jimmy's window
and looked out. There was more parking lot on this side of the building. The hotel seemed to have been set down in a vast sea of parking lots. “Take me seriously, for a moment. I have to get out of here for a little while. I'm really beginning to lose control. And that won't be any good for any of us.”
“You won't lose control, Liz. You never do.”
“You know,” Liz said, “that's not true. I did when Jay died. I didn't lie down on the floor and roll around and kick and scream. I looked all right. But I didn't work at all for nearly two years, and that in spite of the fact that my financial world was collapsing and we lost the house and had to live in that god-awful cabin and one Christmas there wasn't a Christmas. And none of that picked me up and got me moving again.”
“Something did.”
“Yes. Something did. But it was mostly time. I do lose control of myself. I do. And I do make an idiot of myself. I do handle things badly. I do. I just want to get out and ride around in the air for a little while. Is that really too much to ask?”
“I don't know,” Jimmy said. “Ask the guys who are trailing you. What is it exactly that you want to do?”
“I thought I'd run downstairs and see if Bennis Hannaford would give me a ride into town. Either that, or let me borrow her car, but I wouldn't let anybody borrow a car like that from me. Tangerine-orange. She must have had it custom-painted.”
“I think it's really odd that you and Bennis Hannaford get along so well.”
“Why? You fell in love with both of us.”
“I fell in love with Julie and you can't be in the same room with her without spitting nails. You going to tell the boys you're going?”
“No. You tell them. I don't want them asking to come with me. They're probably as stir-crazy as I am. And relax. She may turn me down.”
“Lately, I don't have that kind of luck.”
He came over to her and kissed her, seriously, the way he did when he couldn't wait for them to get into bed. Then he leaned back and smiled at her, as if it had been a joke.
“No harm in trying,” he suggested.
She pecked him on the cheek and went out of the room. She saw Mark and Geoff sitting on the floor of one of the rooms in front of a television set, blasting away on another video game. She went to the end of the corridor and out onto the landing and down the stairs.
As soon as she was moving in the stairwell, she knew she had made the right decision. She already felt a million times less tense than she had. Her muscles were already beginning to unkink. She went through the fire doors at the second floor and out onto Bennis's corridor.
She watched the door numbers pass by and stopped at 223. She knocked on the door and waited, patiently, while somebody came up close and probably looked through the spy hole. Then the door locks turned over and the door opened on Bennis Hannaford, looking disheveled and just out of the shower in a clean green robe.
“You want to borrow the car,” she said, holding up a set of keys on a plastic key ring. It was one of those fish with feet with the word “evolve” printed inside it.
“Do you always give the keys to your car to strangers?” Liz said. “And how did you know I wanted to borrow the car?”
“I knew because you asked me thirty questions about it when you were down here before. Besides, I've been claustrophobic in my life. I know the signs. And no. I don't loan the car to strangers. I don't loan it to anybody. I figure, at the moment, that I'm loaning it to Jimmy, and I owe him a little.”
“Well, I'd like to hear about
that
.”
“Maybe we'll skip it. Do you want these?” Bennis jangled the keys in the air.
Liz took them, and looked at them, and then looked up. “Listen,” she said, “come with me. I mean it. I don't want to talk to Jimmy, and I don't want to talk to the boys, and
God only knows I don't want to talk to the police or the reporters or even to Mr. Demarkian. But I could use someone to talk to.”
“Someone you don't know?”
“Maybe. But not any somebody.”
“Are you all right?” Bennis said.
“No,”
Liz said furiously. “No, I'm not. Deep down, in the pit of my stomach, I have this awful sick feeling that I've been a complete idiot nearly all my life. I've based everything I've done, everything I've feltâI've based it all on a delusion and it's all my fault. It's been my delusion. Nobody lied to me. Nobody tried to confuse me. The truth was right there in front of my face all along and I just chose not to see it. Oh, Christ. Am I making
any
sense at all?”
“No,” Bennis said, “but you've convinced me. I'll drive. Why don't you come in and sit down for a minute while I put something on. Do you know where it is you want to go?”
“Sort of.”
Bennis made a little grunting noise and disappeared into the room's bathroom. Liz came in and shut the door behind her and went over to the window. There was more parking lot out this side, too. At least, with Bennis Hannaford, she wouldn't have to listen to a lecture about how she shouldn't be spending her timeâright this minute, under the circumstancesâlooking for Maris Coleman.
It had seemed to Maris Coleman that the best possible course of action would be silence, and that the best possible way to maintain silence would be to disappear for a few hours. When she'd gotten back to town from the Toliver house, she'd gone up to Belinda's apartment dreading the kind of conversation she was going to have to have to keep Belinda happy, but she'd only been happy herself for a moment or two. After that, she'd started flipping back and
forth through the channels on Belinda's cable system, getting nowhere. It was like that old joke:
fifty-two channels and nothing on
. There
was
something on CNN and the twenty-four-hour news shows, but not nearly as much as Maris would have liked. For the moment, the legitimate press were being very careful about what they said about Betsy Wetsy's involvement in Chris Inglerod's murder, and what coverage there was of the case seemed to focus on the return of Chris's husband Dan from his convention in Hawaii. What was really disturbing was the fact that CNBC seemed to be treating Chris's death as if it were an attempted attack on Betsy, gone wrong, making Betsy look like a martyr or a victim, not like somebody who could have been responsible for a woman being eviscerated on her lawn. Local news was nonexistent. It wasn't the hour for it. They were showing syndicated episodes of Maury Povitch and Sally Jesse Raphael and Ricki Lake. The Cartoon Channel had cartoons. Comedy Central had reruns of
Saturday Night Live
shows. Court TV was broadcasting a drunk driving trial in North Carolina. Maris paused a little on that one to listen, but she couldn't understand much of what was going on.
When the commotion started up Grandview Avenue, she went out and tried to blend into the crowd around the door to Country Crafts. It took her a while to figure out what was going on inside, and to hear the story of Peggy Smith Kennedy and her “near
coma
” as one woman put it, while another corrected that to “near
catatonia
, poor dear, it must have been such an awful thing to find.” The crowd was full of reporters, some of whom knew her, and that was the last thing she wanted at the moment. She wasn't ready to talk to the
Enquirer
, or the
Star
, and she had a feeling that they would not be ready to talk to her. The big prize now would be Emma, who had survived being cut in the belly with something that sounded like a Saracen's sword. She wanted to make sure she hadn't made some kind of terrible mistake. That was why she hung around in the rain only long enough to find out what had happened, but not so long that
the crowd started to thin out and leave her stranded.
She went back to Belinda's apartment and locked herself in. She threw all three of the boltsâwhatever did anyone want bolts for in a place like Hollman? Maris didn't have bolts on her apartment door in New Yorkâand went into the bathroom. As soon as she saw the sampler on the wall next to the medicine cabinet, she felt her stomach start to heave. She arched up over the toilet bowl and let it out, all at once, a thick hot stream of it that came from so deep inside her she thought she was pulling up her own organs. She had no idea what it was. She hadn't eaten anything in hours. She hadn't even had much in the way of dinner the night before, just a half a tuna-fish sandwich that Mark DeAvecca had made her. She seemed to be finished heaving. It was gone as capriciously as it had started. She stood back, flushed the toiletâshe'd clean up later, when she had a chance to relax for a whileâand washed her face.
Out in Belinda's kitchen, Maris suddenly realized that she really only had one option. She couldn't just sit in Belinda's apartment for another two weeks. She couldn't just act as if nothing had happened, and she had some repair work to do. She got a thick white coffee mug out of the cabinet and put a spoonful of Taster's Choice coffee in it. She put the little kettle on to boil and waited until it began to whistle through its spout. She filled the mug half full of water.
Then she got the Chanel No. 5 bottle out of her bag and filled the mug half full of gin. She stirred the whole thing with a spoon and took a long drink off the top of it. Her throat felt scalded. Her nerves felt calmed. She took the mug into the living room and sat down next to the phone.
Belinda was always talking about how expensive the phone calls were, but this was an emergency. Maris had to make a long-distance call, and she didn't have a calling card anymore since AT&T had taken hers away. They'd taken her Universal Card away, too, in one of those periods when Maris was having a hard time remembering anything, and didn't remember to pay her bills. Right now, though,
she did remember the number of the office and, more importantly, the number for Debra's private line. She didn't want to be stuck on the phone waiting while the others put her on hold and discussed whether Debra was willing to talk to her at all. Without Betsy in the office to rein them in, they were as likely to hang up on her as to help her outâand Betsy had not been as enthusiastic about disciplining them lately as she had been in the past. Still, Maris thought, they had to talk to her. Until Betsy told them not to, they had to.
The phone was picked up on the other end and Debra's voice said, “Elizabeth Toliver's office.”
“It's Maris,” Maris said. “And don't you dare try to lecture me. I'm a wreck. We're all a wreck. I need to know where she is.”
“You need to know where who is?” Debra said.
“Oh, cut the crap. I need to know where Betsy is, and you know it. She left me stranded out at her mother's house this morning, without a phone, without any means of transport, surrounded by hostile pressâ”
“Liz Toliver never left anybody stranded in her life,” Debra said. “Not deliberately. And especially not you. And you know it.”
Maris took a long drink of coffee. “I take it you talked to her. She knows she left me stranded. They all took off out of there and just left me asleep in the basement. Doesn't she want to know where I am?”
The pause on Debra's end was even longer than the one Maris had taken to fortify herself with gin. “She did mention that she didn't know where you were. And that she was worried about you. I don't know why. God takes care of drunks and little children.”
“I need to know where she is and I need a number where I can reach her,” Maris said. “You probably don't realize it, but there's been another one. Right down the street from where I am. I want to get out of here.”
“Another what?”
“Another murder.”
“Well, she couldn't have committed that one, can she?” Debra said. “No matter what you try to make it look like. She's been in full view of half a dozen people all day.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know who committed it?” Maris said. “I just don't want to be in the middle of it, which is what I am right now, because it happened just half a block up the street from me. I want to know where she is and I want a number where I can get in touch with her.”
Debra paused again. “No,” she said finally.
“What?”
“No,” Debra said again. “There's no use screaming at me. I'm not authorized to give out that information. What I can do is to call her and tell her where you are and to give her the number you're calling from so that she can call you back. Then she can decide what to do about you herself. But the information you want is privileged. I'm not going to give it out unless she's given me direct instructions to give it out.”
It was obvious that Debra expected her to argue, but Maris was better than that. She knew that Debra was telling the complete truthâit was Debra's job, as Betsy's personal assistant, to guard information, even from close friends and relatives.
“All right,” Maris said. “Tell her I'm at Belinda's. That's 555â2627. She ought to know that number by now, but she probably doesn't.”
“I'll call her right away.”
“You do that.”
“I
will
call her right away, Maris. It isn't everybody who thinks her responsibilities are a joke. Sit tight where you are for a few minutes.”
Debra hung up in her ear. Maris put the phone back in its cradle and finished off her coffee. Then she got up and made herself another cup. The rain had now eased to nothing but gray and drizzle. The gin had begun to taste bitter. She went back to the couch and put her hand on the phone.
It took much longer than she had expected it to, and the longer it took the more uneasy she got. She was sure, really,
that Betsy would call her back. In spite of the craziness of the last few days, Betsy was nowhere near ready to cut her off just yet. Maris was fairly sure Betsy would
never
be able to cut her off. Even with Debra, even with Jimmy Card, even with Mark all hating the sight of her, Maris could always count on Betsy being Betsy, the same girl who had walked all the way out to the White Horse and back again, the same girl who had come when she was called to the outhouse.
Still, it was hard to wait, and she had to wait a long time. The minute hand on Belinda's clock moved five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. Maris began to be afraid that Belinda would come back before Betsy rang. The last thing she wanted was to have to have this conversation with Belinda listening in. She finished her cup of coffee. She got up and made another one. She sat down next to the phone again. She thought if this went on much longer, she would be sick again.
When the phone rang, it startled her, and she jumped. Liquid jumped out of her mug and splashed against the front of her dress. She put the mug down next to the phone and picked up the receiver with that hand. She brushed at the wet spot on her breast with the other.
“Hello,” she said.
“It's Jimmy,” Jimmy Card said. “Liz isn't here.”
“What do you mean, she's not there? She has to be there. Where else could she be?”
“I have no idea. You can ask her when she gets back. I'll give her the number. Just stay where you are.”
“Why don't you give me her number, instead, and tell me where she's at so that I can get there. It was bad enough that you left me stranded at the house when you took off this morningâ”
“We didn't do anything of the kind. You were nowhere in sight. We thought you'd gone home while the rest of us were sleeping.”
“I'll bet you didn't think anything at all. If you had, you'd have remembered I didn't have a car with me out
there yesterday. Or Betsy would have remembered it. Right now, there's been another murderâ”
“There hasn't been any murder, Maris. We already talked to the police. Mrs. Bligh is very much alive. She was attacked, but she wasn't murdered.”
“Wonderful. She'll be able to tell the police who attacked her. In the meantime, this town is full of reporters with appetites like vampires and I'm right in the middle of them. And you're telling me that Betsy isn't even where she's supposed to be, for all you know she could have been right here in the middle of town cutting up the front of Emma's disgustingly obese stomachâ”
“Don't,” Jimmy Card said.
“Don't what? Do you think I'm doing anything different from what those reporters are going to do when they get hold of this?”
“Don't,” Jimmy Card said again. “I'm not Liz, Maris. I'm not even Mark. If you try to pull this kind of crap on me, I'll take you apart at the joints.”
“Who the
hell
do you think you are?”
“I'm the man who knows how to put a stop to you. In the meantime, I'll tell Liz you called. She can call you back if she feels like it.”
He hung up. Maris sat listening to the receiver buzz a dial tone in her ear. She put the receiver back in its cradle and picked up her mug of coffee again. Coffee and gin. It was a mug of coffee and gin. Her head was starting to hurt the way it did when she was having a particularly bad hangover. Big drops of rain were dropping down from the roof gutters outside the living-room window. The apartment was absolutely silent.
Maris Coleman thought that everything would be all right if only she was able to think.