Chasing Venus (14 page)

As if sensing that it
was time to move the conversation to safer ground, he brought up another topic,
and Annie played along.
 
But even as
she did so, her mind rebelled against his advice.

Not every man was
Philip, that was true.
 
But she’d
made one mistake with her ex that she vowed never to repeat: she had ignored
every warning sign.
 
When Philip was
self-absorbed or demeaning, she’d dismissed it all as fleeting bad temper.
 
She was already in love and didn’t want
to believe that image of him.
 
So
she ignored everything she didn’t like.
 
She simply pretended it didn’t exist.

Reid Gardner had set
off warning bells the very day she met him.
 
There was no doubt he had an agenda: to
try to nab the killer of the mystery writers.
 
Now she was a prime suspect.
 
Suddenly he’s chasing her out of
churches and showing up on her doorstep, even though she lives hundreds of
miles away?
 
Suddenly he’s possessed
by the desire to get to know her better?
 
How naïve could one woman be?

No, from here on out
she would use her head when it came to her heart.
 
She would not fool herself.
 
Not again.

They finished their
meal and cleared the table, less chatty than they had been all day.
 
Annie thought maybe they were talked
out.
 
Or maybe Michael knew that his
advice had disturbed her.
 
She was
sure of that when she was saying good night and suddenly he grasped her hand.
 
“Remember what I told you, Annie.
 
I want you to be happy.”

That prospect seemed a
ways off.
 
“I know.”

“Give him a
chance.
 
He may surprise you.”

That she wouldn’t
promise.
 
Or dare to believe.

She left the main house
through the kitchen’s sliding glass door and stepped onto the patio.
 
In the barbecue, the mesquite coals had
disintegrated into ash but their smoky scent lingered.
 
The air was chilly and the moon nearly
full, lighting the yard with a silvery glow.
 
Her leather mules slapped on the stone
path, illuminated by tiny lights set every few yards apart.

She entered the
guesthouse relieved she had unpacked earlier.
 
It wasn’t very late but she was
exhausted—no doubt the cumulative effects of champagne, very little sleep
the last two nights, and major anxiety.
 
It didn’t take long to wash her face, take off her clothes, and slip
beneath the plump duvet, the sheets deliciously cool against her skin.
 
She felt cocooned in heaven.
 
Her eyelids drooped and soon sleep took
her.

*

Annie never figured out
what awakened her.
 
A noise, a bump,
she couldn’t trace it.
 
But all at
once she was upright, fully alert, her heart thumping and her breath coming
fast, as if she’d been running in a dream and tricked her body into believing
the exertion.
 
For a few moments she
remained still.
 
Moonlight snaked
through an opening in the curtains, slicing a thin white line across the
hardwood floor.
 
She leaned over to
see the digital clock on the bedside table.
 
It was off for some reason, the bright
red numerals vanished.

She frowned.
 
Had they taken a power hit?

She got out of bed and
donned the capris and tee shirt she’d worn earlier.
 
For a reason she couldn’t name she was
reluctant merely to throw on a robe.
 
She poked her toes into her mules and opened the guesthouse door, then
stood on the threshold and peered at the main house.
 
All its windows were dark.

Her ears pricked, seeking
sound.
 
Nothing.
 
Just the ocean a block away, the
ceaseless ebb and flow of the surf.

Her feet began to move
along the path toward the house.
 
No
little guiding lights now; they were extinguished.
 
She reached the patio and squinted
through the sliding glass door into the kitchen.
 
All looked as it had before, the
champagne flutes drying on the rack by the sink, the dishcloth neatly folded in
thirds and hanging on the oven door.

She stared at the
oven.
 
Its digital clock was off,
too.
 
She glanced next door, where
the bluish glow produced by a television flickered in an upstairs window.

So if there was a power
hit, it hadn’t affected the whole neighborhood.
 
Just Michael’s property.

She paused, unsure what
to do.
 
She knew she could go
inside.
 
The alarm hadn’t been set
that night; Michael wanted her to be able to access the main house at any hour.

She wanted to go
in.
 
She found herself unwilling
simply to turn around and go back to the guesthouse.
 
She wouldn’t wake Michael if she went
inside; by now he’d be upstairs sleeping.
 
She found the small key to the sliding door where he always left it, in
a chipped terra cotta pot behind the barbecue.
 
She made a mental note to remind him not
to leave it there anymore.
 
These
days it was too dangerous.

The door slid back and
Annie stepped into the kitchen.
 
She
walked toward the light switch on the backsplash near the sink and flicked it
on.
 
Nothing.

She flicked it on and
off a few times more.
 
Still
nothing.

That didn’t mean
anything.
 
Power hits happened.
 
She even knew where the circuit breaker
was, outside not far from the barbecue.
 
She could go re-set it right now.

But that might wake
Michael.
 
A lamp might turn on, or a
radio or something.
 
She didn’t want
to startle him.

Her feet led her
forward, into the short hall past the half bath and toward the living
room.
 
At the room’s entry she
paused, struck by another oddity.
 
Michael had closed all his shutters?
 
She didn’t know him to do that.
 
Yet both sets of big paned windows were
shuttered, allowing no light to pass through.

It was very quiet.
 
She could hear the thud of her own
heartbeat in her ears.
 
She licked
her lips, suddenly dry.
 
Her palms,
in contrast, were moist.

“Michael?”
 
She spoke in a half whisper, not really
expecting a reply.

Tentatively she edged
further into the room, her hands outstretched so she wouldn’t bump into any
furniture.
 
Her right mule stuck on
the hardwood and her foot slipped out of it, setting down on the floor.

It was sticky.

The air smelled
different suddenly.
 
Heavy.
 
Leaden.

She lurched forward,
losing her other mule in the effort, aiming for the closest shuttered
window.
 
Sticky, sticky, all the
way.
 
She jerked the shutter open,
nearly knocking a lamp off a table, and moonlight beamed onto her face.
 
She turned around.

Blood.
 
Pools of it, spatters of it, streams of
it.
 
Walls, floors, furniture.
 
She raised her eyes.
 
Ceiling.

Oh my God, no ..
.

In front of the
fireplace, in the center of hell, Michael.
 
Gaping huge hole where his throat should be.
 
Body tilted grotesquely, partly off his
wheelchair but not quite.
 
Head
thrown back, eyes frozen forever staring to the left, mouth open in a silent
scream.

Blood all over him,
black now, black as death.

She ran toward him,
slipping, falling to the floor, knees in the stickiness, both hands too.
 
She scrambled to her feet.
 
She reached him, shut her eyes,
whimpered, opened them again.
 
He
was still there.
 
Hell breathed here
on earth, here in this living room.

“Michael?”
 
It was a sob, a moan, no longer a name.

“Michael?”
 
Louder, still no answer.
 
Nevermore an answer.

Trembling, panting,
clutching his hand—it was still his hand even though it belonged to this
horribly mutilated shell of him—rocking back and forth, “Oh my God,” such
meaningless words, such meaninglessness everywhere.

A crashing sound behind
her.
 
She jolted to her feet and
spun around.

A second later she
realized what had made the sound.

The lamp.
 
The lamp fell
.

The brass lamp near the
front window had pitched over.
 
She’d probably knocked it off kilter when she opened the shutter.

What do I do now?
 
What do I
do?

Trembling, she stared
at the lamp, the ivory silk of its shade resting in a puddle of blood.
 
Already a crimson stain was seeping into
the elegant fabric, like a cancer claiming one innocent cell after the next.

It was grotesque, as
was everything else in the room, the gracious living room that had morphed into
a torture chamber.

Michael
…
 
Reluctantly
she turned back around to face him, hoping the image would be different this
time.
 
It wasn’t.
 
The nightmare continued to spool out in
unrelenting horror, Michael as still as a shipwreck, his body twisted, she
noticed now, as if he’d attempted to get away.

Stop shaking,
she ordered herself.
 
Yet she couldn’t stop.
 
She tried; she failed.
 
What
do I do now?

Poor Michael.
 
He’d been so afraid, though he’d tried
to hide it.
 
This poor vulnerable
man … She hoped he hadn’t suffered but knew that he had.
 
Maybe it hadn’t been for long.
 
Maybe at the very end he’d seen Renee’s
face and been delivered …

She started to
sob.
 
What do I do now?
 
How
senseless it all was!
 
All this time
the cops had been questioning her, digging frogs out of her back yard and
analyzing them, while the killer jeered at their stupidity and stalked his next
prey.

And I was right here
.
 
The realization froze her.
 
She’d been so close.
 
If
she’d woken earlier, come into the house sooner …

Maybe I could have saved him.

Or maybe I would have been killed, too
.

She squeezed her eyes
shut, wrapped her arms around her body to try to stop the trembling.
 
In the distance a siren wailed.
 
Annie listened to it fill the hollow
night, its arcing sound rising and falling.
 
A second siren picked up the strident
refrain, then a dog joined the chorus with a low baying howl.

Maybe they’re coming here
.
 
The idea relieved her.
 
She
took a deep breath and took a few unsteady steps toward the front door.
 
Michael could be tended to, returned to
some dignity, sprung from this hellhole.
 
Then a new realization hit and she halted, her outstretched hand inches
from the doorknob.

What will they think when they find me here?

Slowly she turned her
hand palm up and gaped at it as if it belonged to a stranger.
 
It was smeared with blood, as were her
bare feet and her tee shirt and, she was sure, her face.
 
Anyone would think she was the torturer,
the wielder of the knife, a modern-day Lizzie Borden who in a fit of rage had
killed someone she used to love.

They already suspect me.
 
And now here I am.

With the slashed body of the latest victim.

At any moment the
police might show up, surround the property to pounce on her, maybe even tipped
off by the killer.
 
It was possible.

There was no time to
waste.
 
She couldn’t erase her
presence here; that was hopeless.
 
Her DNA was everywhere, a road map to her identity.
 
And so many people had seen her with
Michael in the little downtown the day before.

The sirens
receded.
 
Apparently they were
summoned to another catastrophe.
 
Annie turned again to face the accursed tableau.
 
She told herself it was no betrayal to
leave Michael like this.
 
She had
little choice.
 
She told herself she
would have time to mourn: she would have a lifetime.
 
But still she felt like a traitor as she
tiptoed past him, taking time only to mouth a sobbing prayer for
godspeed
.