A Multitude of Sins (2 page)

The path was easy. A couple of minutes.

But Jeremy wasn’t afraid of…

Oh, Lord, don’t
concentrate
on them. The clay was slick; she placed her steps carefully, occasionally reaching out for a tree branch, but only after examining it closely.

How much farther?

She wouldn’t take her eyes from the path, the hiding shadows lacing it, the dark, festering worlds under the salal. If she slipped and fell into it—fell
through
it…

She made herself stop and take a long, deep breath.

What’s the alternative to this path? The office at the shop with its door in clear line of sight through the glass-paneled front entrance to Highway 101? And the red Ford that always parked directly across the highway?

This couldn’t be explained in five minutes. The faithful watcher would wonder if she spent too long in private conversation with Mr. Conan Flagg.
She’d
found out he was a private investigator; the man in the red Ford could, too.

Or could she enter this house by way of the front door? It was only a few yards from the beach access at the foot of Day Street where the red Ford was waiting near her silver Stingray. He was bound to be suspicious if he knew she was having a long talk with Flagg in his own house.

Isadora resumed her cautious course up the path, a little calmer. Nothing like a larger fear to put a lesser one in perspective. Hold on to that. Thank God for the sunlight; it helped somehow, even if it deepened the shadows.

She’d come this far. This far on the path, this far with her diurnal and nocturnal watchers. She
knew
they were watching her, but they didn’t know she knew…

It was ridiculous; crazy. Maybe Dr. Kerr was right.

A shingled wall and the top of a glass door lurched into view through a tangle of branches; her steps quickened.

The watchers must not know she knew. If they did, they might send someone else, change the situation somehow, so she could never learn the truth, never find out why…

Something brushed against her ankle.

She heard her own choked scream as she stumbled onto the stone paving of the patio, pounding across it toward the open door. She didn’t stop until she was inside, the glass barrier closed behind her.

For some time, she stood gripping the door handle, forehead pressed to the cool glass. Probably nothing more than a tendril of vine had precipitated this panicked retreat. The fear always seemed foolish when the danger was past.

Danger. There wasn’t even that to justify it.

She remembered her father sitting down with her in earnest consultation one day. Years ago. She’d been twelve; it was…yes, at the beach house at Shanaway.

“Dore, honey, just remember, there aren’t any poisonous snakes west of the Cascades. These little grass snakes can’t hurt you. They’re probably just as scared of you as you are of them…”

She felt the aching behind her eyes. Not now. Don’t think about that now.

Then she became aware of her silent surroundings, and was both embarrassed and apprehensive. The patio was empty. So was this room. A narrow room with a disproportionately high ceiling, the west wall a solid span of glass looking out on the ocean. Straight across from her was a heavy wooden door with carved panels. It was closed.

If Conan Flagg weren’t here…

But the glass door had been open. Didn’t that constitute a message? An assent?

She squared her shoulders. That’s how she would interpret it. Mr. Flagg could argue the point if and when he arrived. He might also argue her decision to wait here in his house, but she wasn’t ready to return to the patio just yet.

She took off her sunglasses and put them in her handbag. A library. A proper library, the walls lined with shelves and solid with books except for the spaces left free to display a collection of paintings remarkable for its diversity. Her steps were silenced by a rich brown carpet that made velvet for the jewels of five Navajo rugs. There was little furniture; a desk near the patio door, a contemporary armchair and reading lamp by the windows. A very personal room, and although the decor was quite different, it reminded her of the library at…

Not
now.
Can’t you keep your thoughts away from that?

She turned, something glimpsed but not yet consciously recognized drawing her eye to the east wall; the corner at the left end of the wall. A painting hung there. The shelves were built around it to form a deep vertical niche exactly the size of the canvas.

With recognition came shock, all the more stunning because it was unexpected. She knew that painting. A life-size figure of an armored man, a knight. But the armor was of a peculiar design, equivocally anatomical; it was bone and muscle as well as armor, the head both helmet and skull, empty sockets staring out with blind sight. The psyche armored against pain in a bronzed sheath of fear.

The painting was Jenny’s.

But something more than years had come between this painting and Jennifer Hanson.

That was what made it so bewildering. It wasn’t so surprising that it was here; Conan Flagg was obviously a collector, and the early works of Jennifer Hanson could be found in many Northwest collections.

The early works.

Isadora stared at the painting, shoulders sagging. Not an hour ago, she’d left Jenny in her studio at the cottage facing a naked canvas, a palette knife in her hand, slowly, incessantly marbling the pigments into muddy grays. And she’d wondered if Jenny would get as far as daubing some of those sickly, blemished mixtures on the canvas before she wandered away to the window or down to the beach.

Where are you going, Dore? When will you be back, Dore? What about supper, Dore?

Yet she always accepted Isadora’s vague answers with an indifference that never made sense.

Have a good time, Dore.

And five, six—how many years ago?—this was an early work of Jennifer Hanson. There was power and conviction that sprang from the soul in this haunting image.

She wondered bitterly if Catharine remembered the Knight; remembered her daughter’s early works.

She turned to the wooden door. She couldn’t stay in here. Breaking and entering, invasion of privacy—she didn’t care. And where was Conan Flagg? Perhaps the open patio door was only a coincidental accident.

With the library door closed behind her, she caught her breath, finding herself in a long corridor ending in the distance with another door. That must be the front entrance. On the left, spanning half the length of the hall, was a wash of light. The living room. An intricate wooden grille maintained the semblance of a corridor.

She paused before taking the single step down to the living-room level. On the south wall was a bar decorated with Haida motifs. At the west end of the north wall was a stone fireplace; at the other end, a pass-through into the kitchen. There was a hint of voyeurism in this secret inspection of someone else’s house that made her uneasy; something unreal and dreamlike. But no more unreal than the situation that brought her here.

Her abstracted gaze traced the spiral of the staircase to her left; the low ceiling of the hall was a balcony that must give access to the bedrooms. The living-room ceiling vaulted above it to the west wall, which, like the one in the library, was solid glass; solid sea and sky.

She almost smiled, thinking that no decorator had ever touched this room. It was immaculately kept under Mrs. Early’s aegis, but immensely cluttered and furnished with abandoned eclecticism. Mr. Flagg was definitely a collector and paintings were only the beginning.

But only one thing here could hold her attention for more than a few seconds.

A concert grand.

It was in the center of the room, turned so the pianist could look out over it to the windows. She walked toward it, drawn as if by an offered hand of solace, finding in its familiar lines a remedy.

The name over the open keyboard was Bösendorfer, and her eyebrows came up at that. She wondered how many years had gone into the warm, satin gleam of the wood; how many hands now dead had touched the yellowed ivory of these keys, and how many yet unborn would make music with this instrument crafted out of exalting genius and exacting pride.

That Conan Joseph Flagg, owner of this piano, was absent, might appear for an appointment she’d asked of him, or might
not
appear, was forgotten. The watchers, the coiling shadows on an innocent path, even the grief was forgotten.

The piano was in perfect tune. The decision to begin playing occurred with the same absence of conscious consideration that let the testing chromatics glissando into the Paderewski
Minuet in G,
shift capriciously to Saint-Saens’s
Swan,
form a collage of Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninoff; music born in the minds of men who defied mortality on barred sheets of paper and in succeeding generations of memories. In these sounds, in the intricate, instant interplay of muscle and nerve, she was out of reach of fear or even time. A familiar paradox; music exists in one dimension, time, yet obliterates it.

She didn’t know what made her stop.

She only wondered how long she’d been playing, and when she’d ceased to be alone.

He was standing by the staircase, watching her.

Her first impression was shadow; whip-lean, relaxed as a cat, flashes of bronze in the sunlight. And she didn’t recognize him.

Yet the face was quite familiar; dark skin drawn in angular contours, straight black hair, black eyes with an almost Oriental cast. But there was none of the polite friendliness a “proprietor” displays for his customers in those eyes. They were opaque as stone, yet she could all but feel the rapt tension in them, and her only coherent thought was: What in God’s name am I doing here?

CHAPTER 3

It was a short walk. A block south to Day Street, then two blocks west to its terminus in a paved beach access. The house lodged into the wooded hill south of the access was always a joy to his eye; an angular structure with great spans of glass set in slabs of satin-shingled walls.

But Conan walked past his own front door, ignoring it. The cars parked in and around the access included the usual assortment of stationwagons, VWs, and campers. A silver Stingray was the only sports car, and only one car was occupied, a red Ford.

It had the anonymous look of a rental. The driver had a similarly anonymous look; average build, indeterminate age, coloring a mean drab tan. His air of indifferent patience alerted Conan for the same reason it made him invisible to the unpracticed eye.

The sand made squeaking sounds under his rubber-soled shoes. He stayed close to the bank, absently frowning at the number of people on the beach; a preview of summer. But there was no one lurking suspiciously near the foot of the path. He looked at his watch: 4:15. Jane Doe would be waiting on the patio. Supposedly.

But when he reached the patio, it was empty. That didn’t especially surprise him, but finding the patio door closed did. If Mrs. Early had taken it upon herself to…

But the door was unlocked. His faith in his housekeeper was restored. Not, however, his faith in Jane Doe.

Music. His first angry assumption was that someone had the temerity to touch the stereo console without his permission. But when he heard the
Emperor Concerto
shift with a nice improvised chord transition into
El Amor Brujo,
he realized he was dealing with a more heinous crime. Someone had presumed not only to touch but to
play
the Bösendorfer.

His anger lasted until he reached the step down into the living room, and there died an unresolved death. He had no right to anger. This young woman belonged to that piano, possessed it as he never would; he only owned it.

He was stunned, like a skeptic in the presence of a miracle. She played with the passion generally ascribed to youth, yet with the restrained precision of a Rubinstein. It was chilling to hear her; an atavistic response to extra-human powers, witch or wizard, magician or saint.

When at length she became aware of him and the music ceased, he felt in some sense cheated, and at first he didn’t realize how badly he’d startled her. Then he relaxed into a smile.

“If you’ve come to steal the piano, take it with my blessings.”

Her eyes widened in embarrassed surprise, and he thought to himself they were exactly the same shade of sapphire blue as Meg’s.

“Mr. Flagg, I—this is really unforgivable of me.”

“Don’t apologize. This piano hasn’t enjoyed musicianship of that caliber since it’s been in my possession.”

She rose, smiling uncertainly as she started to close the cover, then seemed to remember it had been open; still a little off balance, but recovering remarkably fast. He leaned on the piano with one elbow, automatically making surface observations, noting that the gold-mounted ring was jade and possibly Imperial; the casual, off-white slacks and tunic with the matching sweater had probably set someone back several hundred dollars.

“I’m not sure I’d be so gracious if this were my piano.” She touched the keyboard reverently, smiling to herself. Her nails were unfashionably short but perfectly manicured, and Conan doubted her long, sable-colored hair ever went a week without professional care.