Beyond Midnight (43 page)

"Oh.  You
know
,
just
...
stick it somewhere,
"
she said.

Nat cocked one eyebrow, said
"
Fine with me
"
in a cool voice, and turned on his heel.

Helen grabbed two napkins, then hurried back to Peaches, who
'
d already picked up the broken glass. The nanny put the collected pieces carefully into Helen
'
s open napkins, then said,
"
I
'
m sure I got everything. I went through the grass with a fine-tooth comb, but we can put two chairs over the spot for extra insurance.
"

"
Good idea. Would you do that for me?
"
asked Helen, and she went to throw the shards somewhere out of harm
'
s way.

On her way to the kitchen she was accosted by her daughter.
"
Mom! Taste this,
"
said Becky, aiming a spoon at her mouth.

"
Becky, not now—
"

But Becky insisted and so Helen t
ri
ed the sauce. In her present mood it tasted like warm, wet chalk.
"
What about it?
"

"
Isn
'
t it fantastic? Mr. Byrne made it,
"
Becky said, dipping into her bowl again.
"
He
'
s a major hit, y
'
know. He spoons it on personally for you. Laurie
'
s already gone back for seconds. She is, like, so uncool. I mean she just hangs on him.
"

"
Is that what you ran here to tell me? That your best friend is flirting with Nat Byrne? What do you want me to do? Break it up for you?
"

"
Uh-oh.
"
Becky rolled her eyes and said,
"
Never mind. You
'
re obviously stressed out again.
"
She turned and ran back in the direction of the toppings table.

Helen had to get away. She got rid of the glass and fled to her office, where she closed the door and collapsed in her swivel chair.

Nat Byrne, with a lover of his own? Helen refused to believe it. She
'
d prepared herself for many scenarios, but that wasn
'
t one of them. His wife had been attractive, accomplished, vivacious. He had no reason to take a lover.

Using that logic, however, neither had his wife.

Maybe, in her preoccupation with her child and her pregnancy, Linda had begun to ignore him. On the other hand, he
'
d been busy with the Columbus Fund. Would he even have noticed?

He could
'
ve taken a lover in retaliation. She could
'
ve taken a lover in retaliation. They both had motive. They both had opportunity.

Helen
'
s head began to spin. She sat back in her chair, still convinced that Candy was wrong. Suddenly she remembered that the story she
'
d overheard of Linda Byrne
's affair had also been second or third
hand. Was it possible that neither story was true?

Helen knew that rumors tended to be false and that they could do terrible damage before they ran their course. But it was a fact, not a rumor, that something had gone very wrong in the Byrne marriage, wrong enough to end Linda
'
s life prematurely and to leave Nat angry and bitter about it.

It was so frustrating. The more information Helen acquired, the more confused she became. There was no light at the end of this tunnel. There wasn
't even a tunnel; only a criss-
crossing meander of allegations. Helen closed her eyes, depressed and distracted by them, and shuddered.

And shuddered again. Violently.

The room had become ice-cold. Not cool, not chilly, not even cold:
ice-cold.
A wet, dank swirl, mixed, improbably, with the scent of
Enchantra,
surrounded Helen, pinning her to the chair as firmly as a set of chains.

None of the manifestations so far had come even close to this exercise of raw, brute power over Helen. The knockings, the jiggles, the scent of perfume—even the vision itself—had not been able to paralyze Helen so completely.

Lin
da
Byrne.

She was in the room with Helen—some part of her, anyway—and Helen didn
'
t know why. Breathless, motionless, utterly prostrate under the binding spell of the
spirit's
power, Helen tried desperately to think without panic.

Her options were pathetically few. She dared not scream—not there, not then. It would be the end of her career.

Nor could Helen try ordering the ghost away, even supposing she
'
d had the nerve. People were coming and going through the building, and Helen might easily be heard. A director who talked to herself wasn
'
t much better than one who screamed at empty air.

Helen couldn
'
t even make herself open her eyes; there had been too much horror in what she
'
d seen the first time to try it again. And so she sat, chattering with fear, as the coldness ebbed and flowed over her body, like waves on a beach in May.

I
'
m so cold, so cold,
she thought, stupefied by what was happening.
I
'
m not crazy, I
'
m not; but I
'
m so, so cold.

With her eyes still closed, she sat frozen to her chair, suspended in time, until she became afraid that someone would begin to search for her. Or worse still—that someone wouldn
'
t.

Finally, desperately, she screwed up her courage and, at the risk of being heard, whispered,
"
I can
'
t help you. Wherever you are, however you got there—I can
'
t do anything. Leave me alone,
"
she begged.

"
Please, Linda,
"
she said, saying the dread name at last.
"
Leave me alone.
"
She cringed in her seat, expecting the worst.

The room got colder. Helen had never felt anything like the killing, chilling atmosphere that surrounded her. It was hard to breathe it into her lungs. When she did, it seemed to scorch the edges of her soul.

What do I do now?
she thought, feeling more and more faint.
That was the only trick in my bag. If this goes on, I
'
ll die of hypothermia, if not of fright.

"
All right,
"
she whispered, beaten down by the awesome power that held her relentlessly in its grip.
"
I
'
ll do it. I
'
ll find out
...."

Find out what? She knew now what she was destined to do.
"
I
'
ll find out why you died.
"

Suddenly the wave of cold withdrew, like a falling
Maine
tide, and she allowed herself, at last, to open her eyes.

It was over. Just like that. Helen stood up tentatively and looked around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The room was June-warm and filled with the heady scent of a desktop bouquet that Candy must have arranged for her. Helen had been so upset that she hadn
'
t noticed it when she first came into the office.

Cautiously, she tested her weight on each leg before taking a step or two. No wobbles. Good. There
'
d be no embarrassing fainting spell this time. In fact she felt oddly, remarkably invigorated—as if she
'
d just spent a weekend at a spa.

She went over to a narrow window in the corner of her office, one from which she could just catch some of the goings-on outside, and tried to make sense of the encounter.

I was tense; upset,
she reasoned.
Becky noticed it right off the bat. So
I came in here to decompress. I
fell into a deep meditation. I resolved to get to the bottom of Linda
'
s death, a concern I
'
ve had since the day she died. Having reached a resolution, I awoke from my self-induced trance. Every day, business men and women do what I did to improve their productivity. Often they pay good money in seminars to learn how.

It was all perfectly normal
, perfectly in tune with the age
.

Having convinced herself of that, Helen became eager, almost hungry, to rejoin the crowd that had gathered on the grounds of The Open Door. Almost everyone she cared about was out there: the children, their parents. Her family. Katie. Nat.

Nat.
From out of nowhere came an intensely detailed vision of him in his industrial-sized kitchen making Toasted Almond Sauce. It was a joyful, delightful thought. Nathaniel Byrne, career maniac and Fund Manager of the Year, slaving over a hot stove. Who could possibly have known?

Helen hugged the picture to her soul; it was proof, if proof were needed, that Nathaniel Byrne would never have cheated on his wife.