Sleep No More (23 page)

“The police have a new lead. They’re keeping quiet about it, but Caitlin has a source inside the department.”

“And?”

Penn grimaced. “The guy thought he heard your name mentioned.”

“Shit.”
A wild, unreasoning fear hit Waters in the bowels. “Was he sure?”

“Nothing’s sure yet. I don’t know what they have. Do you have any idea what it could be?”

Waters thought of the week at Bienville, then the nights at the Eola. “I don’t know. Maybe someone saw us, but we didn’t see them?”

“That may be it.”

“I’ve always been worried about Eve’s house. She’s bound to have had stuff about me in there.”

“Well, until we know something for sure, you should sit tight and stay calm. Go back over everything and try to anticipate the situation.”

Waters’s face suddenly felt cold.

“What is it, John?”

“I just talked to Cole, like you said to. Confronted him.”

“And?”

“He told me he knew I was with Eve at the Eola.”

Penn’s eyes narrowed to slits. “How could he know that?”

“He was coy about it. Said he followed me for a few days. But I think that was bullshit. I can’t see him doing that.”

“No. If he knows, it’s because Eve told him you would be there.” Penn tapped the steering wheel. “What if she called him to come up after you passed out, thinking he was going to do something to
you?
When in reality he was going to kill her all along, and frame you.”

Waters shook his head. “Cole couldn’t do that.”

“Are you so sure? What did he say about selling the pumping unit?”

“He admitted it. He’s up to his eyeballs in debt. To bookies, Vegas casinos, everybody.”

Penn turned up his palms, as if this proved his case.

“Did you find out anything about Mallory’s diaries?” Waters asked, wanting to change the subject.

“As a matter of fact, I did. I talked to Mrs. Candler for quite a while. I told her I was thinking of doing a nonfiction book about Natchez, and naturally I’d want to include a chapter on our second Miss Mississippi. I got a good bit of information out of her before she got suspicious.”

“Such as?”

“About a year ago—sometime around her husband’s death—some of Mallory’s things disappeared from their house.”

Waters felt a strange premonition, but of what, he wasn’t sure. “Like what?”

“Mallory’s diaries, for one thing.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. Also some jewelry, all Mallory’s. And some personal things of Mallory’s that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but her.”

“What do you think?”

“That tells us that someone has been planning this scam on you for over a year. They broke into the Candler house and took personal things that would help authenticate Eve’s story.”

“How could they take things that no one would know were important but Mallory?”

“John, they were taken from her room. Obviously she had saved them for some sentimental reason. My guess is that if you hadn’t swallowed Eve’s story so quickly, those little items would have started making appearances in your life. On Eve’s arm, or in her purse, maybe.”

Waters felt a strange lightness in his limbs. He leaned back in the seat, unable to believe what he was hearing.

“I’ve been thinking about what you told me about Mallory cutting herself,” Penn said. “You said you didn’t believe her when she told you that her father had sexually abused her.”

Waters nodded.

“Well, I’ve been asking questions about her family. Nobody could be very specific, but I got the feeling that Ben Candler was a little strange where sex was concerned.”

“How so?”

“A little pervy about young girls. He made inappropriate comments sometimes. He and his wife apparently had a nonsexual relationship. That’s the gist, anyway. The mother had an affair at some point, but when it threatened Ben’s political career, she ended it.”

“Political career? Shit, he was only a state representative.”

“Ben Candler took that very seriously, as you know.”

“Oh, do I. He liked to give you the impression that if the country went to DEF CON Three, he would be making the critical decisions about launching nuclear missiles.”

“You got it. And he held that job for six terms.”

“Old Ben knew how to kiss ass.”

“Yes, he did.”

“I’ll tell you this,” Waters said. “When I visited Mallory’s grave after the soccer game, I noticed two things I didn’t tell you. They didn’t seem important then. Her father is buried next to her. He has a small, cheap gravestone. And it was defaced, like someone had taken a crowbar to it.”

“Ben Candler only died about a year ago,” Penn said. “So Mallory couldn’t have defaced the stone. It could be his wife, I suppose. Or someone else he sexually harassed.”

Waters nodded, but that wasn’t what he was thinking. “I’ll tell you something else. It stunk by his grave.”

“What do you mean, stunk? Like what?”

“Urine. Like an animal came there every day and pissed on his grave.”

Penn looked incredulous. “I can’t see prim old Margaret Candler driving to the cemetery to piss on her husband’s grave every day.” He shook his head and laughed. “Maybe once a week, though.”

“Mallory would,” Waters said quietly.

“Mallory would what?”

“Go there every day and piss on his grave. She’d do it rain or shine for ten years. That’s the way she was.”

“Was,”
Penn echoed. “That’s the operative word there, John. Focus on the present, all right?”

“Something’s been bothering me, Penn.”

“Jesus. Are you starting with the supernatural stuff again?”

“You tell me. One of the things that convinced me Eve was really Mallory was her scars. I didn’t tell you that before for fear you’d think I was crazy. Eve Sumner had cutting scars beneath her watch, and also on her inner thighs, just the way Mallory used to. And they weren’t all new. She’d been doing it for a long time.”

Penn was staring at him with worry in his eyes.

“And the night she died,” Waters went on, “she asked me to cut her during sex. She was really upset, and she wanted to be cut, just like Mallory did sometimes.”

Penn took hold of his wrist. “John, listen to me. They got those details from Mallory’s diaries. They had to.”

“You’re telling me Eve Sumner mutilated herself to convince me she was Mallory? And for a long period of time? Do you really think that’s possible?”

“People are quite capable of maiming themselves in pursuit of a goal, John. In the nineteen-fifties, inmates at Angola Prison slashed their Achilles tendons to draw attention to their plight. They permanently crippled themselves. What’s a few cuts on the surface of the skin compared to the money involved in this case? And we know from the break-in at the Candler house that they were planning this scam for at least a year.”

Waters pondered this in silence. He wanted to believe Penn, but his memory of Eve’s desolate face as she begged him to cut her was too vivid to call a lie.

“Stick to realities,” Penn urged him. “Things still look good for you. If the police had something concrete, they would already have brought you in for questioning. If they do call about questioning you, refer them to me. I’ll try to arrange for it to take place in a law office downtown. I don’t have one, but I can borrow a friend’s.” He squeezed Waters’s knee. “You just keep cool.”

Waters nodded.

“Get some sleep if you can. Play with your kid. Bring her over to play with Annie.”

“I will.”

He shook hands with Penn and got out. The owner of the music store was standing in the display window, looking right at him. As Penn’s Audi pulled away, Waters waved, then got into the Land Cruiser and drove out of the lot. Home was only a few hundred yards away, but as he neared it, he felt suddenly sure that he would find the police waiting when he arrived. He closed his eyes and thanked God that Annelise was spending the night away from home, and would not have to see him led away in handcuffs.

The driveway was empty.

The house felt empty too. Without Ana clattering around and Rose clanking utensils in the kitchen, Linton Hill seemed like a museum.

“Lily?” he called.

No answer.

He went into the den and sat on the sofa. For once, the remote control was actually on the table beside him. He switched on the TV and clicked up to CNN. The local news out of Jackson always had murders to report, and he didn’t want to see anything about murder. The images on CNN weren’t much better, though, war casualties overseas. Wherever you went, death was news.

“I thought I heard you come in.”

Waters looked over his shoulder, and his mouth fell open. The woman standing in the doorway was his wife, but she looked as though she had stepped out of a time machine. Her shoulder-length blond hair had vanished. Now cut boyishly short, with only a few locks curling around the neck, it looked the way it had when Lily first moved back to Natchez, and was still in her athletic phase. Tight slacks, drop earrings, and a deep V-neck blouse made the transformation complete.

“Wow,”
he said. “You cut your hair.”

She smiled. “I had them lighten it a bit too.”

“You look ten years younger.”

“Was I that bad? You look like you’re in shock.”

“Did you run again?”

Lily walked into the room and spun before him like a runway model. “Actually I slept most of the day. I was really tired. But after going to the salon, I felt better. What about you? You look exhausted.”

“Just worried,” he said, searching for some excuse. “The EPA won’t tell us a damn thing.”

“Screw the EPA.” Lily smiled again. “As soon as I start rubbing your shoulders, you’re going to forget all about those tree-hugging fascists.”

Waters couldn’t believe his ears. Lily hadn’t sounded this carefree in ages. She was wearing a little eyeliner and shadow too, he noticed. She hadn’t overdone it, but there was enough to give her an air of mystery.

She walked behind the sofa and said, “Turn off the news and put on some satellite music. Atmospheres or something.”

Waters fiddled with the remote, and soon the soothing sounds of a well-played acoustic guitar filled the room.

Lily laid her hands on his shoulders and began a soothing massage. She started with gentle pressure, but before long her fingers were digging into the muscle fibers of his neck, working out the tension that had been building there ever since he left Eve lying dead in the Eola Hotel.

“God, that feels good.”

“Don’t think,” she said. “Clear your mind.”

Her command was impossible to obey, but he tried. Lily thoroughly massaged his neck and scalp, then moved to his face. She worked the tension out of muscles he never knew he had: below his eyes, over the joint of his jawbone, below his nose, around his mouth. He jumped when her fingers slid into his mouth and began to rub his gums and upper palate, but it felt so good that he laid his head back and gave himself to it. When Lily flattened the pad of her thumb against his back teeth and pushed down, the sensation was amazing.

“Let go, baby,” she murmured. “Don’t fight it.”

The sensuality of her fingers inside his mouth aroused him. After a couple of minutes, she removed her wet fingers and slid them down into his shirt. His nipples constricted at her touch. She played there for a few moments, then leaned over him and slid both hands down to his lap.

“God, Lily….”

“Shhh.”

She unbuttoned his trousers and slid her hands inside, working on him with shocking directness. Then she climbed over the back of the couch and knelt before him.

“Close your eyes.”

He didn’t want to, but he obeyed. What followed was a selfless application of attention so focused that it pointed up everything Lily had neglected to do for the past four years. Longer, really. Even before losing the baby, this act for Lily had always been a brief stage of foreplay. She would touch and kiss him there, but it was never an end in and of itself, simply a prelude to intercourse. She didn’t seem to understand that what made the act so arousing was the complete focus of effort where it was most needed, with every movement assuring him that contact would never be broken or even lessened in intensity unless it was to heighten his reaction and magnify his final release. But by her actions now, Lily made it clear that she had understood this all along. Had it not felt so wonderful, Waters would have brooded over the fact that his wife had possessed this knowledge and ability all along, yet had not used it.

“Jesus,”
he gasped.

She took his right hand in one of hers and squeezed, but she did not break contact.

“Lily, I can’t hold back….”

Suddenly he felt nothing but air on his wet skin.

“Yes, you can.”

She pulled him to his feet and ran back toward the master bedroom, pulling him behind her. “I’m going in the bathroom for a sec,” she said. “Get in bed and wait for me.”

She disappeared behind the bathroom door, leaving him alone in the room where he had known only frustration in the past. He removed his shirt and pants and dropped them to the floor. Lily would normally make a point of picking them up and hanging them in the closet when she came out of the bathroom, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t even notice today, or at least would let it go if she did.

He pulled back the bedcovers and started to get beneath them, but something held him back. He wanted to know what she was doing in the bathroom. Walking up to the half-open door, he leaned slowly to his left.

Lily was standing naked before her mirror, one breast in each hand, as though testing their weight. She smiled to herself, then ran her hands down to her hips, where a pink blemish marred the white skin over her right hipbone. Taking some makeup from a blue container by the sink, she rubbed a bit on her finger and covered the blemish. Then she surveyed herself again, turning her back to the mirror and looking over her shoulder.

Fascinated by this glimpse of his wife alone with her vanity—something he hadn’t seen for far too long—Waters took a half-step backward so that she wouldn’t catch sight of him. As he watched, she turned to face the mirror again, looking quite satisfied with what she saw. He was about to tiptoe back to the bed when Lily raised her right hand to her neck and entwined one of the newly chopped locks around her forefinger and began to twist it into a tight curl.