The Night Visitor (21 page)

Junior’s eyes again met Rory’s for a second or two, but then moved away from her.

Tom went to Rory and put his hands on her shoulders, “Rory, it’s time to go.”

She shrugged him off.

“Rory, I don’t think he even knows you’re here.”

“He knows I’m here.” She climbed onto the bed until she was straddling Junior on her knees.

Tom grabbed her around the waist and started to lift her off.

Keith yanked back the privacy curtain. “What’s going on? You’re not here to see Mr. Patyk. I’m calling security.”

Tom pulled Rory from the bed. “That’s not necessary. We’re leaving.” He set Rory on her feet. “See? Everything’s okay.”

“You better not have taken pictures of him.” Keith went to Junior and checked him over. “You okay, man?”

Junior became agitated, swimming his arms and legs and bowing his spine, occasionally looking at Rory’s face.

Keith said, “You guys are upsetting him.”

“Junior’s in pain,” Rory said.

“Excuse me?” Keith glared at her. “He’s not in pain. We make him very comfortable.”

“You need to do more.” Rory pushed back her hair. “His lower back aches. The bedsores hurt him terribly, and his lungs are raw.”

Keith said, “Just go and don’t come back.”

Tom squeezed Rory’s hand.

“Keith, we apologize for sneaking in,” Rory said. “I’m an old friend of Junior’s, and I didn’t know if I could get in to see him. We’re sorry if we caused any trouble.”

Tom circled his arm around her shoulders. “Sweetheart, let’s go.”

“Can I say goodbye?” Rory asked.

Keith wavered and then relented. “Go ahead.”

Rory went to Junior’s bedside and caressed his face. He became still. The creases between his eyebrows calmed and his expression of distress faded.

Rory looked at him for what was likely the last time.

Yes, my love. Two hearts are better than one.

* * *

Driving back to the villa, Tom was quiet. Rory knew what that hard line of his jaw meant. “I understand if you’re angry.”

“We’re lucky they didn’t call the police.” After a pause, he said, “I’m not mad. I’m just worried about you.”

There was another painful silence.

Tom said, “Is it resolved? Are you through?”

“What do you mean by ‘through’?”

“Is the connection broken? Are you free of him? Will you get well now?”

She blew out air through her lips.

“Ro?”

“I don’t want to lie to you, Tom, but you don’t understand anything I’ve said, so it’s pointless to talk about it.”

He took the freeway off-ramp to go to the villa, turned onto a residential side street, and pulled to the curb. “Rory, we’re going to be married. We’re going to spend our lives together. You can’t shut me out like this.”

“I have to.” She met his eyes in the dim light of the car’s instrument panel. “I’m sorry, Tom, but that’s how it has to be.”

44

Rory and Tom didn’t say another word until he’d pulled into the villa’s circular driveway. He cut the engine and went around to help her out of the car, but she was already standing on the cobblestones.

“Rory, let me help you upstairs.” By the way she looked at him, he felt a tightness in the pit of his belly that they were over. He was glad when she took his arm.

The last dinner party guests had left and the villa was quiet.

At the doorway to her suite, Rory seemed impatient for Tom to leave, as if he were a tedious first date she was trying to get rid of.

“Promise me you’ll go straight to bed?” he said.

“I will. You need to get a good night’s sleep too.”

Her new businesslike way of speaking to him cut him to the core.

“Thank you, Tom. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She gave him a peck on the lips and closed the door.

He returned to his car. Before he climbed inside, he took a moment to reflect while looking at the city lights.

“Thomas.”

He turned to see Evelyn on the porch, leaning against the stone balustrade. Her cigarette tip brightened and dimmed in the darkness.

Tom hesitated, delaying the conversation that he knew was inevitable. He walked from the driveway and climbed the broad stairs to the porch.

“Hello, Evelyn.”

“Yes, I’m smoking again.” She smelled of alcohol, cigarettes, and a trace of Anya perfume. She dragged on the cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke. “First cigarette in twelve years. Found these in the kitchen. Virginia Slims. Guess our cook thinks they make her look stylish.” She laughed hoarsely.

She was drunk.

“Even when Anya was murdered, I stayed off tobacco. But this, Thomas, this is going to undo me.”

Evelyn shook a fresh cigarette from the pack and lit it off the spent one, which she dropped to the ground and mashed with her shoe. “My nightingale and my sunflower. How blessed I was to have two exquisite girls as different as night and day.”

She cupped her fingers around the base of a brandy snifter sitting on the balustrade and sipped the last of a dark spirit. Her eye makeup was smeared. “Tom, there was a time when my life was perfect. When I had everything. I mean
every
freaking little
thing.
Now it’s crumbling around me and I don’t know where or how it ends.”

She wobbled as she reached down and picked up a bottle of B & B from the ground near her feet. He saw a spiral notebook on the balustrade. Loose pages were crammed under the cover.

Evelyn rambled on as she poured liquor into her glass. “The girls’ father told me to have an abortion. He was and still is a big star. Married. Told me he’d ruin my career if I said the baby was his.

“An actress having a baby out of wedlock wasn’t accepted then like it is now. Hell, now it’s fashionable. I secretly had the twins and told Mr. Big Actor that he needed to help support them. A subtle threat of blackmail and he helped me get work. I didn’t leave my girls with strangers. They were well taken care of by family. Anya and Rory were always my top priority.”

Tom knew that Rory had a different take on what had happened. She suspected that her mother had intentionally gotten pregnant by the big star and used her leverage over him to advance her career.

“I only wanted the best for them. Isn’t that what every mother wants for her kids? Especially her girls. The best. Then it all goes to hell. Just ripped from my hands.” She snapped her fingers.
“Poof.”

Tom picked up the notebook. He flipped through the pages, not believing what he was seeing. He carried the notebook from the shadowy porch to the top of the steps, where there was more light.

“I found that in Rory’s rooms,” Evelyn said.

Tom was spellbound looking at Rory’s prescient drawings of Junior’s hospital room, which she claimed to have just visited for the first time.

Evelyn walked to look over his shoulder. “Strange drawings, beautifully rendered. But how? Rory can’t draw to save her life.”

Tom turned the pages. “There has to be a logical explanation. People who suffer brain trauma sometimes have strange things happen to them. Their personalities change, they—”

“They don’t pull out hunks of their hair, gouge their skin with their fingernails, count obsessively, and suddenly develop artistic talent, do they?” Evelyn yanked the notebook from his hands and flung it off the porch. It landed in a bed of azaleas, the loose sheets of stationery fluttering down.

“Tom, where did you take her tonight?”

He took a deep breath and told her everything, starting from the night of the ball, through her hospital stay, her visit to Anya’s home and grave, and what had happened tonight with Junior.

Afterward, Evelyn said, “Tom, what are we going to do? She’s getting worse every day.”

“Tonight she told me something even more disturbing than what’s already gone on, if that’s possible.” Tom huffed out a laugh and ran his hand over his face. “I can’t believe I’m talking about this…insanity, like it’s real.”

“Go on.”

“She said that Junior knew what Danny was planning the night of the ball and he tried to warn her.”

“He
told
her this?”

“Not told. Communicated. Using the language of the mind, of the heart.”

“That’s nuts.”

“Junior is dying. He wants to die with his reputation restored. With the world knowing that he didn’t murder Anya. Rory wants to fulfill his dying wish because…” Tom could barely get out the words. “Because she still loves him.”

“Did she tell you that she’s still in love with him?”

“No. She didn’t have to. I can see it in her face and her attitude toward me.”

“Oh, Tom.” Evelyn reached to stroke his arm.

He smiled sadly.

“And we’re supposed to stand by and let this happen?” Evelyn began pacing in the darkness. She returned to face him. “Tom, I think this psychosis of Rory’s—in my opinion, that’s what it is—results from her guilt.”

“What do you mean?”

She grasped his hand. “Junior was charged with Anya’s murder, but I’ve always wondered if…”

He pulled away. “You can’t be serious.”

Evelyn threw up her hands. “I’m looking for a logical explanation. How do we know that Rory never visited Junior’s hospital room before tonight?” Her voice wavered. “Rory’s always been emotional and impulsive. She was always jealous of Anya. If she’d found out that Anya and Junior were betraying her…Maybe her brain injury brought things to the surface.” Evelyn pressed her hands to her mouth as a sob erupted.

Tom pulled her close and she sobbed into his shoulder. He thought about Rory’s rage at Anya’s grave. He’d seen her anger take control of her before. He’d attributed it to her artistic temperament and deep-seated issues from being abandoned by her mother.

Evelyn patted his arms and smiled. He let her go. She reached into the bodice of her dress, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.

His face was grave. “Evelyn, I refuse to believe that Rory would kill anyone.”

She blew her nose. “There’s one thing I know for sure. We have to do something, because Rory is slipping away.”

* * *

Upstairs in her rooms, Rory sat in the darkness. The doors to the loggia were open. It was a fine night. One of those Southern California nights when the coolness settles like a mist. A desert night, when the flora and fauna that had been hiding from the daytime heat and glare come out, safe now, safe in the cool darkness.

Before, she’d felt lost, without direction. Now her spirit soared. She felt like having sex in a graveyard, dancing at a rock concert, running naked through a meadow, kissing a stranger, kicking ocean foam with her bare feet, free-falling into a lake. Living.

They’ve found your drawings, Junior. They’re going to try to keep us apart. They will never keep us apart.

45

The waiting room was full of women, many in various stages of pregnancy. They didn’t give Henry Auburn much more than a glance, probably assuming he had accompanied his wife to her appointment with the OB-GYN.

The door to the inner office opened and a receptionist stuck out her head. “Sir.”

Auburn followed the receptionist inside, passing a wall blanketed with hundreds of snapshots of babies. The front office staff glanced up, waiting until he was out of sight before urgently whispering to one another.

The receptionist led Auburn to a spacious, traditionally decorated office where a trim, deeply tanned man with silver hair and dressed in a shirt and tie was reviewing a file.

“Hello, Detective. I’m Dr. Templeton.” He stood and extended his hand across the desk. “Have a seat.” He sat down again himself and resumed reviewing the file. “Sorry to keep you waiting. We had to go to our storage area where we keep our inactive files.”

“Not a problem.”

Templeton closed the file, took off his reading glasses, and put them into his shirt pocket. “May I ask what’s so important about Anya Langtry’s medical history that you felt it merited obtaining a search warrant?”

“Was Anya pregnant at the time of her murder?”

“Detective.” The doctor enunciated the three syllables, his voice dropping with the last one. “What significance could that possibly have at this point?”

“Doctor, I will take Anya’s file, but maybe you can tell me the information so that I don’t have to decipher your handwriting.” Auburn smiled amiably.

Templeton retrieved his glasses and opened the file. “Anya last visited my office on September twentieth five years ago. I believe that was about a week before she was murdered. Tests confirmed that she was approximately seven weeks pregnant.”

“Was she happy about the pregnancy?”

“She was elated.”

“Did Anya’s mother or sister know?”

“The mother-to-be usually has definite ideas about when and how she wants to announce the good news, particularly as it concerns first babies.”

“What about after Anya’s murder? You still didn’t tell her mother or sister?”

“That would have been a breach of patient-doctor confidentiality.”

“Doctor, you’re close with the Tates, but all this time you’ve kept Anya’s pregnancy a secret? Even from the police?”

“Detective, if I’ve read this warrant correctly, you’re authorized to see information contained within Anya’s medical file. I’m not about to be quizzed by you about my personal conversations. As far as the police go, you’re the detective. You could have asked for Anya’s medical records back then. I assume an autopsy was done. Why wasn’t the pregnancy discovered then?”

“It wasn’t.”

Templeton said, “Perhaps Anya lost the baby.”

“Did she schedule a follow-up appointment with you?”

He put on his glasses again and looked at the file. “I made a note that I wanted to see her in four weeks. I don’t know if she actually scheduled an appointment. Our appointment records go back only two years. Is there anything else? I have patients waiting.” He stood and picked up Anya’s file.

Auburn took it. “Thank you for your time.”

46

“I heard your dinner party was highly dramatic.” Graehme took the eight-by-ten glossy of Evelyn’s latest promotional photo that she’d just autographed, waved the ink dry, and set it on a growing pile.