If Looks Could Kill (36 page)

She didn't have a choice. The afternoon had been an unproductive one. After making her pilgrimage to the bank, she'd only had time to run Louise and Weird Allen on the computer, coming up empty on both of them. No wants or warrants, no records, no problems with money or medicine that she could find.

Mac had been frustrated that she hadn't run Dinah. She couldn't. Not until she talked to her. Not until she tracked her down. Dinah hadn't been at work today, either, and people in the industry were wondering. Chris was afraid.

Garavaglia hadn't been any better, although Chris had actually ended up liking him enough to trade filthy jokes. Mac had spent most of the interview with raised eyebrows. Chris hadn't been surprised, especially after her performance earlier. But Mac didn't know how ruthlessly she could close off questions. He didn't realize that the only way she'd ever learned to cope with the impossible was to go on the offensive.

A water-stained, battered manila envelope still waited on her desk to go through. Mac still had to be told. She could only do it on her own terms. And that meant helping Garavaglia. It meant working the computer for Mac. It meant sneaking in to get information Mac wasn't privy to.

Tonight she focused her attention on Victor. Poor, sweet Victor. Chris despised herself for preferring him to be the murderer instead of Dinah.

Instead of herself.

So, when opportunity knocked, she opened the door. With a lock pick.

Success. The lock eased around. Chris made one more check of the quiet neighborhood before pulling the kitchen door open and slipping inside.

Somewhere a clock ticked. The refrigerator Victor's mother had served him Jell-o from hummed contentedly in the dim room, and one of the cats Eloise had managed to foist off onto Victor sidled up to check out the newcomer. Chris took her bearings in the familiar kitchen decorated in early fifties and headed on into unknown territory.

She knew the first floor very well. Overstuffed, drab furniture, plastic runners on the carpet, framed samplers with pithy little sayings to ensure a good life, like "Penny wise, pound foolish," and "You're never alone when you have a friend." Or a dummy, Chris thought.

The home was pure Victoriana, with glossy woodwork, a wonderful staircase that led up from the front door, and high ceilings with plaster molding. Mrs. Marshall had effectively robbed the house of its personality, though, selling off her parents' furniture and installing her own avocado-green couches with plastic doilies and original pine veneer entertainment system. Victor, being the dutiful son he was, kept everything just the way she'd left it. Chris couldn't really complain. She'd picked up one of his grandmother's chifforobes from a local antique dealer.

She felt guilty creeping up those stairs. Victor was as innocent as Abel, genetically unprepared to battle with the cynicisms and distrust of his neighbors. That was why Lester hung around. Dummies could say things a polite young man couldn't. Sometimes Chris wished she had something so safe to hide behind.

She didn't need to have a guidebook to tell her which room had been his parents'. She was sure it hadn't been changed since the day Heilerman's had rolled old Phyllis out.

Victor's room was the one with the biography of Charlie McCarthy and the posters of Rockefeller Center. Chris checked drawers, dreading the sight of a coin, of rings. Surreptitiously wishing for it. Instead she came up with spare dummy parts, a lot of neatly folded underwear and a Kermit the Frog piggy bank filled with pennies.

Victor's decorating taste had been arrested right around freshman year of high school, and his reading taste completely nonexistent. Chris stood in the middle of that room and realized that she learned more from Lester than she could from the items in this room.

Even so, she walked back out into the hallway and headed for the next room, checking her watch to make sure the Reverend Bobby Rayford was still exhorting the faithful.

It was such a quiet house. Dead, as if the air itself hadn't moved in thirty years. As arrested as Victor. Chris fought a shiver of distaste, and realized that she was glad she hadn't known his mother all that well. She probably would have ended up pissing her off, too.

Well, might as well get this over with. Chris had to try and get through to Dinah again. She had to do some more work on the computer.

Please let someone else be doing this, she prayed, although to whom she wasn't sure. Let me find proof someplace so I'll know for sure. Please don't let me be sliding away again.

Chris opened the next door and looked inside.

It was too dark here, even with the hall light on behind her. She couldn't see a bed or dresser, just a lot of floor space. The last thing she needed to do was flip on a light. Somebody on the block would see it and break up the evening service with a call to arms within five minutes. Chris pulled out her pen-light. Flicking it on, she swung it carefully upwards.

And saw someone in front of her.

"Shit."

Her heart slammed back into overtime before she realized she was looking at herself. Her first reaction was that she'd just managed to shine her light on a mirror. Then she swung the beam a little to the left and came up with herself again. And again.

Instead of slowing, her heart sped up.

"Oh, Victor, no."

It was a shrine. One entire wall had been covered in corkboard, and that covered in photos and articles about Chris and her work. Victor even had a shot of the Edgar Award on her shelf, taken by itself so that it looked as if it sat on his. There were copies of
The New York Times
list with her book on it, dust jackets, reviews, commentaries.

And there were books.

Chris came to a second, sick halt. There weren't just C. J. Turner books on the wall. There were copies of every one of Jacqueline Christ's books there. Well-read, well-loved originals, as carefully arranged as the mysteries. And beyond that, the press on Jacqueline.

Chris stood where she was, shaken by what she saw.

She hadn't known. She'd heard Victor extol her work, defend her life-style, plead her case. She'd heard Lester excoriate any reviewer who had been less than gentle with C. J. Turner, and knew that Victor had kept her reviews. She'd even asked him for a copy when she'd lost one herself. But somehow, she hadn't seen the extent of his obsession.

She hadn't understood until she stood looking at that wall quite how lonely and afraid Victor was.

Chris hadn't cried since her eighteenth birthday. She came very close to it as she stood in Victor's house in her black clothes, with lock picks in her pockets.

She eased back out of the house five minutes later and slipped through her kitchen door, hoping that whoever was sitting in the squad car that sat out in the square didn't notice.

Victor. It couldn't be Victor. Even though he'd known. Even though he'd been carrying on a onesided relationship no one knew about.

Anybody but Victor.

Not anybody.

Chris sat down at her computer. It was time to check on Victor's past. She booted up the system with shaking hands and waited a moment while the machine whirred and blipped, her mind skimming alternative answers, her eyes drawn again to the package at the corner of her desk. It drew her like a snake. Like the sight of a disaster. She might have her answers there. It didn't mean she wanted them.

She turned back to the computer, ready to see her menu.

She didn't.

"Oh, God..."

A message. One line, no signature. None needed. Chris couldn't have mistaken the meaning or the sender if she'd wanted to.

You know me, and you can't escape me.

Chris kicked over the chair in her haste to get to her feet. "Who are you?" she demanded out loud, her voice rising. "Who the hell are you?"

She didn't bother shutting down. She just ran.

The front door was closed. Chris yanked it open, thinking only that she needed to get to Mac. To show him. To demand his help. To beg for reassurance.

"Well, it's wonderful to see you, too."

Chris almost careened right into the person on her porch. It took every last ounce of restraint in her to keep from crying out.

"Just where the hell have you been all dressed up like that?" her visitor demanded slyly.

Chris couldn't do much more than stare. "Dinah?"

Chapter 16

Chris wasn't sure just how much more she could take. Reality was shaky enough without this.

"If you showed up at my door, I'd probably invite you in," Dinah noted dryly. "But then, maybe they do things differently in this part of the galaxy... God knows they build their roads differently. I think I was almost sideswiped by a bear."

Chris still couldn't manage much more than an openmouthed stare. Comprehension would only bring more questions, and she didn't have the room for them.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she blurted out anyway, the doorknob still clutched tightly in hand.

Loaded down with Vuitton luggage, dressed for lunch at the Plaza, Dinah rested her weight on one hip and a surgically manicured hand on the other. "Well, kill the fatted calf, my children. There will be celebrating in Pyrex tonight."

"Pyrite," Chris countered.

"Whatever. It has man-eating mosquitoes. May I please come in?"

Chris mutely moved aside. Dinah handed off a shoulder bag and an overstuffed garment bag and proceeded through with the rest. Chris looked out into the street, certain she would find something following behind. Rod Serling, maybe, or the crew from "Candid Camera."

She turned back to find her agent openmouthed herself as she took in her surroundings.

"Dinah—"

Dinah's head came down and her hand went right back on her hip. "Haven't I trained you any better? How dare you mix minimalism with country kitsch?"

"What," Chris repeated, so confused she couldn't make it past the basics, "are you
doing
here? And where have you been?"

Dinah flashed her one of her shark smiles. "I am here," she announced, "to kick off the next leg in the career of the infamous Jacqueline Christ. Where I was is my business... and a certain tennis pro's. Now, where do I sleep?"

Chris's reaction was automatic. "New York."

Dinah scowled at her. "I'm disappointed. I'll admit I expected a certain amount of surprise at my generous gesture. But I was hoping for at least a little delight."

"I am," Chris retorted, her voice dying uncertainly. "Delighted, I mean. And surprised... no, I'm stunned. Dinah, this just isn't like you."

"Don't push it. I needed a change. Now, are you going to show me around, or do I call for the concierge?"

That finally got Chris to giggle, even though the sound was sharp and desperate. Dinah, here. Now. Chris gave more than fleeting thought to wonder whether she hadn't just graduated to big league hallucinations.

If she had, she was also hearing things. Knocks on the door. Another voice. Dinah must have heard it, too, because she turned right around to answer it.

"Wait—"

Too late. With the appropriate flourish, the little agent threw open the door to expose Mac standing in uniform out on the step.

"Well, well, things might just be looking microscopically better," Dinah greeted him. "Are you what they call local color?"

Chris shoved right past her to get the screen door open. Mac paused a second, obviously unsure that he wanted to jump right into this particular situation. Chris could hardly blame him.

Well, at least it proved that she wasn't hallucinating. Mac saw Dinah, too. She could tell by the look on his face.

Dinah stared way up at him and held out a hand as if they'd met at a cocktail party. "Dinah Martin," she said as he finally stepped in. "You are?"

Mac came right to attention. "Dinah Martin?"

Dinah didn't miss a beat. "If you insist," she conceded. "Except I think people are going to get us confused."

Chris couldn't take her eyes off her friend. Dinah was a character, but Chris couldn't say she'd ever seen her quite this... volatile.

"Dinah, this is Police Chief MacNamara," she finally managed. "Mac, this is my long-lost agent. Evidently she's been on the wagon train for Pyrite with a tennis pro."