The Hamlet Trap (22 page)

Slowly she nodded. “You're the Magician,” she whispered.

“That's right,” Charlie said gently. “I'm the Magician who knows all and can do all. I've told you the true story, haven't I?”

“You got some of it wrong.”

“Just small details. You write autobiography, don't you? Your play
The Climber
is your story, that's why it's so powerful. It speaks the truth. Gray recognized it. The others did too and were afraid and tried to reject it.”

“Yes, they tried that,” she agreed. “People are afraid of the truth, you know?”

“I know they are. What did I get wrong in the story?”

“Laura asked me to go walking. She still didn't know who she saw that night, you know? Just a poncho. But I knew they'd make her remember. They can do that. Focus on one detail and everything around it, and then on another, and pretty soon you have the whole picture, you know? Or she would have seen me run sometime and that would have given her another piece of the picture, or something else, you know?”

Constance felt faint from the abrupt release of tension. It had grown almost tangible in that office over the past fifteen minutes or so. Now it vanished. She could sense Gus Chisolm folding mentally, and before her eyes Ro seemed to shrink a little, to relax a pose that had grown unnatural. At the same moment, she became aware of harsh breathing behind her, on the other side of the office door that was still open a few inches. She moved away from it and pulled it open wider. Ginnie and Gray stood there. Ginnie was ashen, and Gray only slightly less pallid.

Ro took a step toward Ginnie, his hand outstretched. She flinched away from his touch.

“I'm calling Draker,” Gus Chisolm said hoarsely. As he dialed, he watched Ro Cavanaugh walk from the office out of sight. No one made a motion to stop him.

“Let's all sit down,” Constance said wearily. “Sunshine, are you all right?”

“Oh yes. But she—” She nodded toward Ginnie. “She'd better get a drink of water or something, you know?”

Constance glanced at Ginnie and nodded. She was wide-eyed, ghastly pale, staring as if in shock. Constance took her by the arm and moved her to a chair. Ginnie made no resistance.

“Will you tell us about it all?” Charlie asked Sunshine easily. “Starting with Peter Ellis, that night?”

Sunshine gave him a close look and protested gently. “It started with my play, you know? Gray and I produced a masterpiece, you know? I just wanted to look at it that night, read it again. That's when Peter comes into it. He said, ‘What are you doing in here alone? Is Ro here?' And he handed me Ginnie's sketchbook.” She paused and smiled. “But you'll have to wait and read it in my new play. They'll let me write a play, won't they?”

“I'm sure they will,” Constance said, and she released Ginnie's arm. It was going to be a long night, she thought, after leaving Ginnie. She had better put on some coffee or something.

Gus spoke briefly on the phone and hung it up, scowling at Ginnie. “How long were you out there?”

“They just arrived,” Charlie said lazily. “I heard them come in. Isn't that right, Gray?”

After a moment Gray nodded. His color was coming back; it seemed almost as if his face had been that of a sleeper and only now he was awakening. He went to stand by Ginnie's chair and put his hand on her shoulder. “That's right. We became alarmed when Ro didn't show up at the restaurant. I thought his battery might be dead again. We checked his apartment and then came over here. Didn't we, Ginnie?”

Ginnie looked at Constance, who was watching her with great kindness and warmth. Her gaze traveled to Charlie, who looked relaxed and even sleepy. He nodded very slightly, or, she wondered, had she imagined a nod? She could feel Gray's hand on her shoulder squeezing too hard, hurting her. She remembered dashing from the restaurant, finding Gray beside her, Gray driving over here. She felt distant, far away from this whole scene, numb. Watching Charlie, as if seeking a clue about what she should do next, she nodded, then moistened her lips and tried to speak. When nothing came out, she nodded again, and lowered her gaze to her hands in her lap. It started with the new play, she told herself. That's when the nightmare began, with Sunshine's new play.

Then people started to move again. Constance began to make coffee. Gus Chisolm muttered something about too damn much coaching. Gray drew the other straight chair close to Ginnie's and sat down. He did not touch her. Charlie relaxed in one of the easy chairs and Sunshine on the couch, where she sat gazing at the ceiling with a dreamy expression. They waited for Draker to arrive. No one spoke until Sunshine said softly, “Amanda White will play the part of the brilliant young playwright.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Draker was as furious
as Charlie had expected him to be. His thin face was livid; a tic jumped in his cheek, and his hands clenched and sprang open spasmodically. Wired too tight, Charlie decided judiciously. He said, “I borrowed a key from William and asked Gus to come along just to keep it clean. I wanted another look at the layout of the office here. When I heard someone coming, naturally I ducked out of sight.”

Draker snapped at Gus. “Where were you? Why'd you get mixed up in it?”

Gus sighed mournfully. “Just like he said. He asked me to come along just in case he stumbled over something, to make it legitimate, so you wouldn't claim he salted the mine while your back was turned. I was in Juanita's office with Constance when we heard the stage door open and close. We waited until Ro came into the office here. When he left again to let Sunshine in, I ducked in here and Constance waited outside the door.”

Draker examined Constance's bright-eyed face and turned away in disgust. “And how'd you just happen to be here?” he demanded, trying to pierce Gray with his hard stare.

“Ginnie and I were supposed to meet Ro for dinner. When he didn't show up, I thought his battery had died again. We came back to pick him up.”

All according to plan, Constance thought, when Draker sent his deputies to pick up Ro and finally turned to Sunshine. Charlie was the best director yet, she knew. Together they had worked on this particular play all weekend. Now he had given them all their cues and was content to let them take it from there, improvise as much as they had to, as long as they stayed within his guidelines.

“What happened here tonight?” Draker snapped at Sunshine. “Why did you come?”

Sunshine was still looking at nothing in particular with a dreamy air. “To tell Ro about my new play,” she said almost inaudibly. “I'll show you.” She got up and moved toward the door. A deputy also moved to block her exit. She ignored him, turned to gaze about the room with a rapt expression. Slowly she walked to the bookshelves, trailed her fingers over some of the books, then went on to the desk. Gus moved out of her way, as he might have done for a sleepwalker.

Sunshine began to speak in her soft, gentle voice. “She knows her books will be there among the others soon. She has reached the first rung and the rest of the steps will be easy now. She sits down to read her own work one more time, and he, the angel of death, enters. He is dressed in black, a black cape, black to the floor, the Shadow of Death. Always there is the Shadow that would drag her back down, but this time she has the courage and the resolve to confront him and to defeat him.” She had picked up a sheaf of papers, and put them down again to reach out for an imaginary object. She pantomimed picking it up.

“Lieutenant,” Constance said then very firmly, “I think Gray should take Ginnie home.”

“By God, so do I!” Gus said heavily.

Brusquely Draker made a motion to his deputy. He did not shift his gaze from Sunshine as Gray and Ginnie left together. Ginnie walked steadily, her back very rigid.

After they were gone, Sunshine acted out the rest of that night when Peter Ellis caught her in Ro's office. She needed little prompting as she went directly to the scene with Laura. “She is looking for the final release, the final freedom. The cards told her: Death in water. Danger in water. Dreams and illusions, fantasies lead to danger in water. Still she seeks her angel of destruction to walk with by the water. ‘Ro will make a deal,' she says, feverish, hysterical, wanting only release, the release her angel can offer, no one else. I'll tell him I'll swear I saw someone else leave the theater,' she says, throwing little stones into the water. ‘He'll have to fire Gray. Not right now, next month. He'll make a deal like that, won't he? Won't he?' Throwing stones into the water, the roar of the water all around, white water racing away with its secrets. ‘If he won't,' she says, throwing the stones, I'll leave tomorrow. I won't come back. He'll understand the risk to Ginnie, won't he?' Throwing stones, not looking at her angel of destruction. Her finest scene, pale face, drawn, Camille seeking release.”

Sunshine had left the desk, was standing at the end of it, gazing down at the floor as if watching the tumbling, swirling water. She bent down and picked up an invisible rock, raised it over her head, brought it down, and then let it drop.

“And the water takes away the ultimate secret, hissing, roaring, hiding all things.”

She stood with her head bowed, as if waiting for applause. She was an incongruous figure in a long skirt, her slip showing beneath it, her hiking boots, the many layers of shirts, sweatshirts.

For a long time no one moved or spoke. Finally Draker said in a voice thick with anger and disbelief, “You killed her because she saw you leave the theater the night Ellis was killed? You killed him because he found you in here?”

She looked at him with a sad, sweet smile and shook her head. “I am the conduit for the light of truth, you know? A lens that magnifies the truth for others to understand and grasp. Gray understood my play. If she took him away, no one would have defended it, you know? He”—she nodded toward Charlie—“understands a little bit. But not like Gray does. Gray will always be my director, you know?”

Soon after that, Draker sent his deputies away with her, and then he turned on Charlie. “You won't get away with it! This is a setup from beginning to end! You stage-managed this whole charade and you know it and so do I! And you helped him!” He turned on Gus with a furious look.

“All's I know is that that woman just confessed to two murders,” Gus said quietly. “Two people threatened her and she killed them both. That's enough for me.”

“And you,” Draker snarled at Constance, “gave her a couple of lessons in the nut department. It won't work!”

She did not look away, did not make any response, and suddenly he was again reminded of his Aunt Corinne, who also had regarded him as if he were a curious specimen. He broke the gaze.

“Lieutenant,” Charlie said, not unkindly, “shut up and I'll tell you what I have. Okay?” Abruptly Draker sat down on one of the straight chairs. “I smelled blackmail from day one,” Charlie said. “And Sunshine lied about a number of things. She said Laura had made up her mind about something when Laura was still undecided. She said she was rewriting her play again after it had gone into the promptbook. She said she never told people bad things, when, by God, she was a vulture, a harbinger of evil. She would have killed anyone who walked through that door the night Ellis caught her in here. But there's no proof. And Laura's death. No proof. So I got her over here with Ro just to get them talking. I lured Ro over with a play he believed she had written, and I waited to see if he would call her for a meeting. He did. I wanted to force Ro to admit she was blackmailing him. From blackmail to murder, that's not such a great step, but without that admission from Ro, there was nothing. No place to get a wedge in. And she had to believe I had proof, just to get her talking. She thinks you lifted fingerprints in the bathroom, off the promptbook, here and there around this room. And Ro thinks she wrote the play that was delivered to him this afternoon.”

“And not a shred of proof,” Draker muttered with bitterness.

“She isn't likely to renege,” Constance said. “She's the star of her own play now.”

“What does she have on Ro?”

“You'll have to ask him,” Charlie said blandly, and they all became silent, thinking, considering. No one made a motion to leave. Not yet, Charlie thought. They were still waiting for Ro.

When Ro walked out of the theater, he paused only a second to look back at the building, then went home. Inside his apartment he took the play from his pocket and began to burn it one page at a time. Now he understood that Sunshine had not written it; Charlie had. Bait, he thought, watching the paper char, the edges curl, then erupt into flames. Bait for him? Or for Sunshine? He was not certain; it no longer mattered.

He waited until the ashes were cold to scatter them; he mounted the stairs and walked the length of the hall, examining each painting in turn. He lingered before the Kandinsky, even touched it lightly, then moved on, making a circuit of his apartment, touching an object here and there, shifting something now and then. Finished, he stood in the doorway and surveyed the living room and nodded. Then he went outside and got in his Fiat. The motor came to life instantly at his touch. Good little car, he thought, in spite of his neglect. He drove slowly through the town, past the Elizabethan Theater which he admired and did not covet, past the wooden bridges in the park, up to Park Drive on the ridge, down past Ginnie's funny little house, and then he headed out of town.

He drove on a dirt road. This was where they used to come for fresh eggs, back a mile or two. Ashland was to his left, perfectly raked up the mountainside, all the lighted eyes watching his performance, center stage, alone on stage. He opened his window all the way, crediting the cold air with the burning in his eyes.

He saw her again, flinching away from his touch, the way Lucy had flinched away. Just like her mother, he thought, just like Lucy. Don't let them bring it all up again, Charlie, he said under his breath. Please let it start with Sunshine and her damn play, with

Peter's death. “Please!” For a moment he thought it had started to rain, but then he knew he was weeping. The way she had jerked away from his hand, just like Lucy.

Ashland was almost behind him; soon the road would curve, go under the interstate, loop back to enter it. “Exit right,” he said. “Show's over, folks. I gave you your money's worth. I'm sorry,” he added in a whisper, and heard Ginnie's voice from the distant past when he carried her from the burning house. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she had cried over and over, and then said nothing. Nothing. And now she knew what she had refused to say then, knew what it was she had forgotten all those good years. And flinched away from his hand. He saw her flying down the hill on her bike, her cheeks flushed red, her eyes sparkling, and he smiled. She should put her models on display, they were so very good. People should see them.

There was only a quarter tank of gas. Enough. Enough. He squealed the tires making the turn for the interstate, and again when he entered it, and now the wind was a hurricane carrying him away faster and faster and faster.

The word came a few minutes after the deputies left with Sunshine. Draker talked to another man in the hall outside the office door and then returned with a venomous expression. Icily he said, “Ro Cavanaugh's dead. His car left the interstate doing over a hundred an hour. Are you satisfied? Is that how you planned the grand finale to your show here tonight?”

Charlie looked very tired. “Do you have any more questions for us?

Draker turned away and shook his head. “Tomorrow. Get out. I'll want a statement tomorrow.”

Gus left with them. On the street beside the Buick Gus said, “I was on the phone when Ro walked out, but you could have stopped him.” To his surprise it was Constance who replied.

“He knew, I imagine, that one of them had to leave, either he or Ginnie, and perhaps he felt it was his turn this time.”

Gus nodded, unhappy with it, but accepting. “See you tomorrow,” he said and left them.

Gray watched Ginnie with a growing feeling of hopelessness. She sat at the table in the kitchen in silence, staring ahead, paying no attention to him or anything he said. He had put a sandwich down before her; she had taken a bite and then forgotten about it. He could not tell from observing her how hard she was working.

She remembered the sun slanting through the window, and how, all through her life, now and then a sudden glimpse of sunlight aslant like that had filled her with inexplicable terror. She saw the image of the spilled wine, and tried to remember how many times spilled wine, water, coffee, anything that flowed over a tabletop like that had filled her with the same terror. And the guttering candle. She did not even own a candle, hated candles, in fact. She saw Peter sprawled on the floor and in another lifetime her father sprawled, and now she began to separate the two images, to put them in their own times. They kept merging, and she had to start over with minute details, like the water drops on Peter's raincoat. Gray's raincoat, she corrected. There was nothing that went with the early snapshot image, just her father on the floor, the spilled wine, the curtain blowing in the slanting sunlight. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I'm sorry.” Then she put her head down on her arms on the tabletop and she wept.

When Charlie and Constance arrived, Ginnie was wan, her eyes puffy, and that was how she should look, Constance thought with satisfaction. Completely normal.

“I'm all right,” Ginnie said. “Brenda's coming over to stay a day or two. Poor Brenda.” She almost smiled.

“I made us sandwiches,” Gray said. “We've both eaten. Is there anything else I can do?”

“Sit down,” Charlie said. “It's not over yet. Ginnie, your uncle was in a car wreck. He's dead.”

“Christ!” Gray muttered. “Jesus Christ!”

Charlie continued speaking to Gray in a practical tone, well aware that Constance was watching over Ginnie, who had gone even whiter than before. “You'll want to see William tonight, and

Eric, I suppose, line up a chain of command to keep things moving.” Gray nodded as if dazed. “Snap out of it,” Charlie said, more brusquely. “All hell's going to break out at the theater if there isn't someone on hand to keep them in line. Who's it going to be?”

“Yeah,” Gray said weakly; then he drew himself up straighter, a distant look on his face. “Yeah,” he said again, this time without uncertainty. “God, the rehearsals tomorrow! I'd better go.” He looked at Ginnie. “Don't worry about things, okay? We'll see to everything for the time being. Just don't worry.”