Past Perfect (38 page)

I couldn’t get over those alligator shoes. I couldn’t imagine anyone, other than a committed animal-rights type or a billionaire with incurable bunions, who would voluntarily give up a pair of Manolos like that. Okay, I had an overactive imagination; that’s how I made my living. There could be an innocent explanation. Assuming the Manolos belonged to Lisa, maybe she’d brought an overnight bag to Maria’s house. Say there had been an argument. Lisa stomped off and Maria, in a rage, tossed the bag. As I recalled, Lisa’s clothing size had probably been a six, and Maria’s was double that, and even the most optimistic I’ll-start-Weight-Watchers-Monday type wouldn’t have kept the clothes. But even a nonfashion person in these label-conscious times would have had trouble chucking those shoes.

But a noninnocent explanation seemed more likely to me. As I’d seen, Maria was tough stuff. And if she was suspicious of her friend Lisa? It’s one thing to be a suspicious regular person—third-grade teacher, Pizza Hut franchisee. It’s another to be suspicious when you’d spent a good part of your life as an insider in a totalitarian state that dealt with annoyances by exterminating annoying people.

And what about Lisa herself? Did she have a conscience? Who knew? There might have been something within her that made her hesitate to kill a friend, if friendship can actually exist between two such defective people. Damn, it’s hard putting a gun to a girlfriend’s head and pulling the trigger, she might have confided. She could even have disclosed what happened to Dick Schroeder and Bernard Ritter to Maria, either voluntarily or under duress.

Where did I fit in? The more I considered it, the less I believed that Lisa had called me that day to set me up as a murder victim. I had written the report on the three Germans, but I’d never met them. There would have been no way I knew they’d blackmailed Ben. So I wasn’t an imminent danger, just a possible glitch. Also, Ben wouldn’t have ordered my death because any homicide investigator would recognize that the only curious part of my life had been when I had worked for the CIA, and he had been my boss there. No, that would be too close for comfort for him. Most likely he had dispatched Lisa to find out what I knew.

How come she hadn’t followed up? She was pressed for time; she still had to get to work on Dick Schroeder. Or maybe Ben had decided getting me to talk was too chancy. It could start me remembering what I’d once forgotten. Lisa might have picked up the phone on her own, though. Either she got discouraged or Ben ordered her to leave me alone.

A crash. I heard a crash in the distance, and then almost immediately a scream. All I could imagine was that it was Maria tripping over all that awful, turned-over outdoor furniture. Broken neck, I thought, CAMERA MOVES IN. ECU HEAD AT UNNATURAL ANGLE, EYES STARING AT NOTHING. The next instant, a long and vicious curse. I couldn’t tell if it was in English or German because she was too far away. And then a coughing fit, surprisingly deep and barking and long-lasting. The next thing I heard were clanks of metal. I hoped it was just that she was getting up, or righting the chairs, and not assembling an AK-47.

I’d been bent over, hiding in the thicket for so long I was afraid that if she found me and commanded Stand up or I’ll shoot, I wouldn’t be able to. She’d shoot me through the bushes. Would she leave me there, the way she’d left her breakfast dishes? Or would she pull me out and risk scratching her arms? Maybe she had gloves that went above her elbows, like on those debutantes in 1930s movies, so it wouldn’t be so hard.

If she had killed Lisa, where had she put her?

Almost dark. What time could it be? Around eight-thirty? Was there a difference between Florida and New York sunsets because New York was farther north? It was then that I realized I hadn’t heard her calling me since a few minutes after the crash, the cursing, and the coughing. How long had that been? Awhile. That was all I knew, but because I hadn’t been able to see my watch in the thicket, I had no way of telling whether Maria had been silent for five minutes or half an hour. But I thought the violently bright light had been softening when that happened, that time before dusk that’s referred to in scripts as magic hour. Now it was so near dark that the branches all around me were an out-of-focus haze instead of individual sticks.

This would be my only chance to move. If the branches within inches of my eyes weren’t clear, in moments I wouldn’t be able to see a thing. Getting out could be treacherous if Maria was around. I had to stay silent but fighting my way out of the thicket—the brush and rattle of thorny branches against each other —could give me away. But maybe she had gotten hurt when she’d fallen, even a little bit, and decided to go inside and clean her wounds.

I could have stayed there debating myself, but then some large birds flew overhead. They weren’t anywhere near as loud as geese. But just for an instant they were squawking enough that while it wasn’t camouflage, it was all I had.

Going into the thicket hadn’t been this terrible. I clawed my way out, my head down, my eyes squeezed shut. I could feel thorn after thorn seeking my skin, piercing it, then slicing, not letting go until I pulled away. One dug into my neck right under my chin and kept cutting as I moved forward, all around the side.

I was out! I touched my neck and looked at my hand. A line of blood, but not the jugular. I was not going to bleed to death—unless something wrong had just come up with my clotting factor. Okay, I had to get to my car because I’d left the keys in there, as well as my handbag, which had my cell. I guess I was doing an On your mark, get set when I realized she might have gone to my car and taken the keys and my handbag too. Had I left the car door open? All I could remember was grabbing my tote because it had the raisins and nuts and telling myself, I’ll just take a quick look around.

Decide! Of course she had gone into the car! She said she’d checked my pocketbook. And the minute I went to the front of the house, she’d see me and— So dark. Any minute she’d turn on the outside lights. I looked around. Trees. Nothing. More trees. Down the hill, the toolshed. She’d probably looked in there already. Go! I couldn’t, not right then, because I had been bent over so. Standing upright enough to try to make a run for it made me groan in pain.

A light came on in the house somewhere on the first floor, and the glow lit the kitchen and the breakfast nook. Hunched over, I seized the moment to dash down the hill to the toolshed. I yanked at the door and it gave a nasal whine of protest. I tried again. Locked. So I ran behind it, praying that since I was on an even lower level, she wouldn’t be able to see me from the house. I could wait there. Maybe the moon would rise. Then I could … I had no idea what I could possibly do.

Anyway, that’s where I am now, behind the toolshed, sometimes sitting, sometimes leaning against the rough wood wall. Mosquitoes and gnats are having a banquet on the blood from my scratches. The jumbo-size insects prefer to dive-bomb and make their own puncture.

Behind me, there’s some water feature. A koi pond? No, fish would probably go belly-up from the heat before the day was out. A puddle from a semitropical rainstorm? A swamp? Alligators! I can’t believe it’s taken me all this time to think about alligators, especially after seeing Lisa’s shoes! And I also absolutely cannot believe I once read somewhere what to do if you think an alligator is going to attack you. Now I can’t remember if it’s stay still or back off slowly or run as fast as you can.

Why hasn’t she turned the outside lights on? Can it be that her life is as bad as her kitchen and that burned-out bulbs weren’t replaced?

Some things sliding across the tops of my feet feel like something other than insects, but I can’t even think about what they could be. Whatever energy I have left I’m spending smacking them away. Mortal peril is one thing. Revolting, abominable-beyond-all-imagining animal life is another. It’s so hard keeping control and not screeching with revulsion. I’m scared that as the night goes on, I’ll let my defenses down for a second and feel something unspeakable, like a bat alighting on top of my head, and I will scream so loud and long in horror that she’ll know my precise location.

Oh God, the outside lights just came on. She’s back, searching. A flashlight is beaming a V of illumination that I can see moving side to side. The central part of the backyard is lit, so she’s heading toward the side, to some trees. I guess she’s planning to search the entire part of her property that’s dark with her damned high-beam flashlight. She’ll walk slowly, methodically, and eventually she’ll come to me.

What is Adam going to think when he keeps calling my cell, then the hotel, and I don’t answer? Oh, she went to a movie? How long have I been here now? I should have done something smart, like sing the score of Grease or Annie in my head so I would know, well, it’s been … however long a musical score is, forty-five minutes, an hour. Then I could say to myself with some confidence that it’s three in the morning and sunrise is a couple of hours away.

She’s coming closer. Close enough that I can hear her cough. Then a big-time sniffle. If she has allergies, why doesn’t she carry tissues? Is she so crazy she can’t think to blow her own nose? Will she come behind the toolshed? Does she know right behind it is some kind of water? She could tell herself that I wouldn’t be hiding submerged in a swamp. Maybe she won’t say that because it isn’t a swamp after all, that thing less than a foot behind me. Just a puddle from after a hard rain.

I’VE GOT TO get out of here, now! I can’treally see, but at least I can feel. Well, the one thing I can see is Maria, or at least her flashlight. The beam arcs back and forth, first on the ground, then rises a few feet before she lowers it again. Not that I have any idea of what to do if I can make it back toward the front of the house, but hopefully something will occur to me along the way. That may be the wrong usage of hopefully, but I don’t give a shit.

I’m past the toolshed, climbing. I turn for a second to look behind, but there’s just blackness. Every once in a while she coughs, and a couple of times I heard her gathering something up in her throat and then spitting, loud and defiant. Maybe she thinks that will make me abandon all caution and start screeching, That is revolting! My father said he understood how much the city had changed when signs in the subway cars went from PLEASE DO NOT EXPECTORATE to DO NOT SPIT.

Still walking. What possessed me to put on sandals this morning?

Except in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, people usually didn’t get dressed assuming that later in the day a catastrophe would occur and they’d be better off with sneakers. But how could I have forgotten that in going through the metal detector at the airport I’d have to take off my shoes and walk barefoot, an experience vile beyond belief? Anyway, the soles of my sandals are completely soaked through and will probably disintegrate.

Forget shoes. What am I going to do? Make as wide an arc around her disgusting villa as possible. Somehow, find if there’s a way to check my car, see if the key and my handbag are still in it. Unlikely. How could she not take them? I’ll have to see if getting close to the car would expose me too much. I can’t see the flashlight anymore. Maybe I’m just at a bad angle. Is Maria still outside? Did she go in?

I’m in a bunch of trees. A copse? Is that the word? There’s a little more light out, but it doesn’t stop me from tripping over … What? I get up, brush off the damp dirt. But the dirt shouldn’t be this moist. Damp, yes, enough to seep into my sandals over the hours, but this place is different. A slight rise in the soil, that’s all. Just not as packed down as the rest of the ground. But my body knows what that wetness is about before my mind does. And the rise. Soil that’s been dug up. I heave, then heave again. Nothing comes up except acid. Lisa is right beneath me. How do I know? I don’t. Yet I know. I rush on, my arms flailing in front and to the sides in the blackness.

Now I can make out something: I’m about two hundred feet from the house, not that I really comprehend what two hundred feet looks like, but it sounds like a reasonable distance. I’m amazed I was able to get as far as I did when I heard Maria’s car coming up the drive. If I keep along this circle, there are a bunch of trees way behind the overturned furniture that I can hide behind. But before I come to that, there’s that frighteningly long, naked space of the backyard that except for a few tufts of dying grass is just flat, packed dirt.

Should I tiptoe or run for it? Maybe it doesn’t matter, because she’s waiting for me near the front of the house and she’ll get me the minute I come around from the side and move to my car. Even if I forget about the car, and make a giant loop, there’s no way she won’t see me.

Forget tiptoeing. I’ve lost all track of time. Assuming I get to where I can make out my car, birds could be chirping, greeting the bright morning. But I’ve got to do it. Now!

I pray it was only a piece of rotting fruit I just stepped on. But I’m not grossed out; I’m too hysterical. My heart is speeding, and it’s not from my running. Her semicircular drive, with the fountain in the center of it, is a small hill. I think I may have run a little too far. Now I’ll have to go back up, but what do I care? Is that my car? Yes. Maria’s too. In the darkness, it looms like an ocean liner beside my tugboat of a rental car. I guess you need a big car to take clients around. I can’t see her anywhere. I don’t know if that’s the good news or the bad news.

I’m so out of breath, almost to my car, trying to breathe through my nose so I don’t wheeze or pant. Crouched down now, near the driver’s door, which is the side that doesn’t face the house. Villa. What if it’s like a slasher movie and when I rise up to look inside the car window, she’ll pop up with a hunting knife? I’m not really sure what a hunting knife looks like. Move it!

They’re gone. My handbag and the car key. The buttons are down, so she even locked the car. I have to run for it. I hope I don’t collapse before I can get to the nearest neighbor’s and start screaming. What if the neighbors are away and my screaming focuses her and she jumps in her car—