"You turned into a semi-retarded idiot with her?"
He laughed. "I never thought of it quite like that, but yeah, I guess I did, in my own way. Just like Murphy has in his way. Like Doug did in his way. And Alan. But from what I can see, each of Eve's relationships reaches a point where something blows. With Alan, it was when he found her in the sack with his father. With me, it was the business with my bureau drawers. With Doug . . . I don't know. With him it might've been different because he had buffersâhis affair with Lucy, his passion for archaeology, even his wealth. Murphy won't be that lucky, because he's too vulnerable."
As though his fate were sealed.
They rounded a curve. Although it was too dark now to make out the Scirocco, she saw headlights turning right about a half mile ahead. "Isn't the old Pleskin place just up ahead?"
"Yup."
"Then I think that's where they turned off."
He continued for a mile, passing the turnoff, then hung a left down a dirt road. They bounced to the bottom of the shallow hill, into a holt of pines. Just beyond them was a sliver of a beach bordered by thickets of sea oats, silhouetted against the reflection of starlight from the water. The air in here was quiet, almost preternaturally still.
"We're going to walk back?" she asked.
"I need to get some things from the trunk." He turned off the engine and stepped out. He turned a few minutes later, the pouch hooked to his belt, a windbreaker hiding the .357 tucked into a shoulder holster.
"I suppose you were a good Boy Scout, huh?"
"Actually, I was more interested in Girl Scouts."
"This is surveillance, not war, you know."
"I hate surprises," he said, and started the car again.
The turnoff to the old Pleskin place wasn't much of a road. Over the years, the wilderness had claimed it. They bounced through potholes and puddles, and the humus smell of the air reminded her of a primeval forest. The braided branches of the numerous banyan trees on either side of them had grown together overhead and created a kind of tunnel through which they drove.
A quarter of a mile in, Kincaid veered right through the trees and stopped. "I don't think the car'll be visible here."
They got out and started through the trees, staying off the road but paralleling it. Old man Pleskin had bought these ten acres of land in the early fifties. He had lived here alone, supposedly studying the wildlife. Over the years, numerous stories had grown up around himâthat he communed with panthers, killed raccoons and squirrels for satanic rituals, that he was actually a former Nazi. He became, before his death in 1961, a legend, the equivalent of an island ghost story.
The truth about Pleskin had come from her father, who knew him through the bookstore. According to him, the old man belonged to a secret society which was the ultimate doomsayer group. These folks allegedly had the inside dope on how and when the world was going to be annihilated, and had pinpointed forty safety areas in the world where you stood a good chance of surviving almost anything. Tango was one of them. The group, her father said, had never stated exactly how the world would go, but Pleskin had decided the threat was nuclear, and had dug a bomb shelter under the farm house.
The "inside dope" had always sounded a little fishy to her, considering Tango's locationâninety miles from Cubaâand since when did an island survive anything?
When Pleskin died intestate, the county had assumed ownership of the property. There'd been talk for a while about turning it into a resort, but the environmentalists had gotten up in arms about it. The last she'd heard, the property was for sale.
They reached the edge of the trees and crouched. Then was enough starlight to see the small clearing that separated the farmhouse to their right from the spavined barn across from it. Murphy's Scirocco was parked in front of the farm house, the trunk yawning open. The windows on either side of the farmhouse glowed with light, revealing the multiple cracks and fissures in the glass. The door stood partially ajar. It was so still, Aline could hear something being moved around inside the house.
"What now?" she whispered.
"We wait."
They stretched out on their bellies in the leaves. The thick fragrances of jasmine and pine inundated her as she rested her chin on her folded hands and kept her eyes glued to the farmhouse door.
Three years ending like this, with me spying on Murphy
. And despite everything that had happened, she couldn't quite vanquish the feeling that she was betraying him. If she blew the whistle on them, would she be doing it because Eve had killed her husband or because she'd stolen Murphy? Suppose Eve was innocent? Suppose her only crime was that she'd been born gorgeous but poor and had used her looks to claw her way out of poverty?
But she had killed Cooper. Aline was sure of it. Yet, even as she thought it, tentacles of doubt threaded through that certainty, mocking her.
But if she hadn't killed Cooper, then who had? Waite maybe, who was dead. Then who killed WaiteâCavello?
Someone was coming through the front door now. Even if she hadn't known who was inside the house, she would've pegged this tall, dark figure as Murphy. His long stride and the slight stoop to his shoulders gave him away. She would've known him anywhere. He stopped at the Scirocco's trunk, reached in, and returned to the farmhouse carrying two bags. Next, Eve came out, her strides shorter, smoother, slower, as if she'd never been rushed for anything in her life.
Helloooo, Eve.
Then, as though she'd heard Aline, she stopped and glanced around. Aline flattened her cheek against the leaves. Kincaid had done the same thing, and they stared at each other, their faces so close that if she tilted her head up just a little, she would be able to kiss the tip of his nose.
"What's wrong?" Murphy's voice.
Aline peered back toward the farmhouse just as Eve said, "I thought I heard something."
"You're just jumpy. C'mon, let's get the rest of this stuff unloaded."
As they reached the trunk, Eve said something Aline couldn't hear. Murphy replied. Now they seemed to be arguing about something. Eve remained where she was and Murphy strolled past her with two more bags and vanished into the farmhouse. She leaned against the side of the car. She lit a cigarette. She made no move toward the trunk. The faint smell of the smoke reached Aline.
"Eve, are you going to get those last bags?" Murphy called from inside the house.
"Get 'em yourself."
He came outside and stopped at the front of the car. "What the hell's eating you?"
"Nuthin'. I'm having a cigarette. Y'mind?" A low, pouty voice now. She was still leaning back into the car, facing the trees.
"Suit yourself." He swept past her, retrieved a couple of more bags from the trunk, carried them into the farmhouse. Eve continued to stand there, smoking. When Murphy returned, he was carrying a lantern. He set it on the roof of the car, then turned Eve around so she faced him. Up until now, Aline had felt as if she were watching a shadow play, in which the action took place behind a scrim lit up from behind. Now, with the lambent light of the lantern spilling over the edge of the roof onto Murphy and Eve, there was a disturbing reality about it all.
"You having second thoughts?" he asked.
She dropped her cigarette, bowing her head as she did so and grinding her heel against the butts. "No. There're just some things I gotta take care of."
"Like what?"
"Business."
"What kind of business?"
"Things. Jus' things, that's all. Nuthin' for you to worry about." She stepped past him and opened the passenger door. "Better put out that lantern."
Murphy caught her arm. "Don't jerk me around."
"Let go of my goddamn arm, Murphy."
He did.
Then, as if to reward him, Eve pressed up against him, slid her arms around his neck, cooed, "No one's jerkin' you anywhere, sweetie," and kissed him. No, Aline thought, she didn't just kiss him. She seemed to devour him, grinding her pelvis against his, Murphy's hands at her tiny waist, gripping it, then sliding upward, up under her arms until she lifted them and he drew her blouse over her head. Her breasts sprang free, soft cool moons in the lantern's light which Murphy's hands cupped and caressed, which his mouth sought. They parted slightly and Eve slid down the zipper of his jeans.
She didn't need to watch this, thank you very much, and started to rise, but Kincaid stopped her. He whispered, "No. We've got to check the barn and house when they leave."
She settled back against the leaves but kept her forehead resting against her arms. She heard grunts, a moan, and waited for the flurry of aches and stings, bitterness and anger, the recrudescence of her Murphy disease. But what she felt was a twisted curiosity, a need to see for herself what happened between them sexually.
Aline raised her head from her arms. Eve was leaning into the side of the car, head bowed forward so her hair fell like a curtain around her face, hands against Murphy's shoulders as he knelt at her feet, peeling off her shorts. He was naked from the waist down, his buttocks white and damp in the dark. Eve lifted one leg, stepped out of her shorts delicately, dropped her head back, breasts thrust upward against the lantern's glow, the light painting her chest and belly in pale gold. Murphy hoisted her up onto the hood, and she stretched out, legs still hanging over the side but spreading widely, invitingly, and he stepped between them.
His mouth slid over her belly, and she emitted a soft, low sound, like a hum, and then two quick cries as he burrowed his head between her thighs. Her ankles locked at his waist. His head continued to move. She groaned, she hummed, she cried out again, and then Murphy slid her closer to the edge of the hood and slammed himself inside her, using the side of the car as leverage. He turned, so he was against the car, and now Aline could see the sheen of Eve's back, her spine, the curves of her shoulders. Her legs were still locked at Murphy's waist, his hands gripped her waist, but it was hard to tell who rode who because their thrusts were violent, hard. "Now," Eve groaned, "oh God, now, Murphy, now," and suddenly Murphy's left hand smacked Eve's bottom once, twice, three times, the sound ringing out in the stillness, and her low, broken cries melded with his, and the combined sound was a mutiny, a tangled, corrupted thing that rose up against the dark, the trees, the starlit sky.
T
he Scirocco had disappeared down the road, but Aline and Kincaid remained flat against the ground, waiting to see if they would return. He rested his cheek against the back of his hand and looked at her. "Learn anything?"
"Very funny, Kincaid."
He raised up on his arms. "I didn't mean it as a joke." Aline rolled onto her side and supported her head in the palm of her hand. "Manipulative, isn't she?"
"Sex is her weapon. It's like Pavlov's old pooches. She makes you salivate and then sex is the reward."
She saw Murphy's hand with astonishing clarity, as if the memory had been branded onto the front lobe of her brain, as it struck Eve's bottom, dark against white. He had not been servicing just her, she thought. Murphy had developed a taste for Eve's kind of sex. But in just a matter of weeks?
Kincaid got to his feet, offered his hand. She grasped it, and he pulled her up and then against him. His fingers slid through her hair. His skin smelled of leaves, of pine; a wave of desire fanned out across her skin. She rocked back away from him a little and worked a twig out of his beard. "Let's go take a look."
He reached into the pouch, brought out two penlights, handed her one. Then he grasped her hand and they made their way to the farmhouse.
Weeds had pushed up through the cracks in the sidewalk that led to the front door. A carpet of periwinkles covered the ground from the edge of the sidewalk and back into the dark. The door wasn't locked. It creaked when Kincaid pushed it open with the tip of his shoe. The doorway was low, and he had to duck as he stepped inside. Aline heard something scurry for cover and was glad she wasn't wearing sandals.
They were in what used to be a living room, and the furniture in here would've been rejected by the Salvation Army. It was separated from the kitchen by a long counter, where Aline found a lantern. She lit it and held it up. Shadows ballooned against the walls. The lantern hissed. The nacreous light spread thinly, revealing an old wooden table which a roach was using as a runway, two upright wooden chairs, an old gas stove with two sorry-looking burners, a sink. But no bags.
They walked through the living room into a hail. The room to Aline's left boasted a bare mattress on a raised platform, a small wooden table, discarded cigarette packs, beers cans, cellophane wrappers. "Looks like some of the local kids have found this place." Kincaid kicked a beer can.
"Where'd Eve and Murphy stow all that stuff?" She opened the closet. It was emptier than a new refrigerator.
In the room at the other end of the hall, the only piece of furniture was a scuffed wooden dresser pushed up against the wall. On top of it were three cartons. There were also cartons and paper bags against the wall. They found household items, about two dozen canned goods, kitchen matches, paperbacks, a stack of nautical maps, packages of rice, and boxes of dried fruit that had been sealed in plastic baggies to protect against moisture and bugs. There were six-packs of juices; packets of granola bars sealed tightly in baggies and then bound at either end with masking tape, cooking oils, and six-packs of Pepsi. They found several lamps, an empty filing cabinet, posters. In the long closet, at the far end of it on an upper shelf, they found four bags stuffed with things like cards, a Trivial Pursuit game, a portable chess set, more paperback books, suntan lotion, and three gallons of water.