Strong 03 - Twice (27 page)

“It’s okay. I promise,” he said, not knowing what she was feeling but understanding that she needed him to comfort her. “I swear it’s all okay.”

She looked up at him and in her eyes he saw such a painful combination of fear and love that it awoke a powerful longing within him. He regretted deeply the lecture he’d delivered when they’d returned to the apartment about her carelessness for her health and safety. Even in the darkness of the room, he could see the purple and black of the bruise that dominated the right side of her face.

“I love you so much,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You were right … about everything.”

He pressed his mouth to hers, wanting to be gentle but overwhelmed by a sudden hunger for her, which he felt returned in her kiss. She knelt before him on the bed now. He touched the slope of her shoulder and the curve of her bare breast. He touched the line of her jaw. She moved in closer, running her hand down his chest, over his tight abs, then stroking him as he grew hard in her hand. Then she leaned in to take him into her mouth. He lay back, her tongue, the wet walls of her mouth sending a shock of pleasure through him.

She slithered up his body and he felt every inch of her slide along every inch of him in a current of taut and silky flesh. Then she straddled him and took him inside of her with a moan. He placed his hands on the fullness of her hips and held her as she rocked, her movements slow, sensual. He felt weak with pleasure, as the rhythm of their bodies became more intense.

She threw her head back slightly as he pulled her closer, took her breast in his mouth and teased her nipple with his tongue. Her breath came in soft low moans. He knew her body so well, he could feel her coming to climax, every nerve ending in his body alive with the heat of wanting her. Then he came deep and hard inside of her.

“Lydia,” he whispered, her name sounding like a prayer as she came for him, pulling him deeper inside of her.

S
he lay beside him, back to his front, her body curved into his, his arm draped over her. He breathed in the lavender scent of her hair.

“I need you to promise to take better care from now on,” he whispered.

“I promise,” she answered, trying to push away the memory of her dream and be in the present, feeling the warmth of him beside her.

He moved the hair off her face and touched the bruise there, then kissed it lightly.

She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again, his breathing had sunk into the rhythm of sleep. She turned so that she could look at him. She observed every detail of his face, loving the tiny lines around his eyes, the fullness of his mouth, the small star-shaped scar on his right cheekbone. She watched him like this for she didn’t know how long until sleep came for her as well.

T
o her obvious disappointment, Ford had dropped Irma off at her Central Park West apartment building. He was flattered by Irma’s subtle advances and not a little attracted to her, but he was and
maybe always would be in his heart still married to Rose. Still, Irma had awoken a terrible restlessness in him and he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned lazily above him. He thought of Rose, wondering where she was, how he might reach her, what he would say if he had her on the line.

He had the television turned on but the sound muted; it was something he did when he couldn’t sleep, when he was missing his wife. It made him feel less alone. Something on the screen had attracted his attention and he turned his head to see Fran Drescher being interviewed by David Letterman.
The Nanny
, he remembered, was a show that Rose had liked. The thought brought Geneva Stout to his mind, reminded him that he’d wanted to have another conversation with her. Then it occurred to him that he hadn’t seen Geneva the day they’d interviewed the twins.

He thought back to the night of the murder. After the paramedics had taken Julian Ross from the duplex, Ford had interviewed the live-in au pair. She was young, he remembered, twenty-one or twenty-two, soft-spoken, and very upset by the events of the evening. She’d been pretty in a dark, exotic way, with full lips and almond-shaped eyes. He remembered thinking the name sounded off, bringing to mind a busty Swedish girl with silky blond hair. Geneva clearly didn’t have a Nordic bone in her body, with café au lait skin and a bolt of shiny black curls that spilled across her shoulders and down her back.

She’d been sleeping, she claimed that night, and had seen nothing. Ford had no reason to suspect otherwise, since her room was in the back of the first floor behind the kitchen, far from the entrance and master bedroom in the palatial duplex. He’d given her his card, asked her to call if she thought of anything that might help him, and told her she’d probably be hearing from him.

He leaned over, looked at the clock, hesitated, and then picked up the phone anyway.

“Where’s the nanny, Ms. Ross?” asked Ford into the phone.

“Detective McKirdy, it’s after midnight,” said Eleanor, indignant.

“The nanny, Geneva Stout. She was there the night of the murder. But she wasn’t with you when we interviewed the twins this evening.”

“Well, naturally, she quit, Detective. Wouldn’t you?”

“Where did she go?”

“How should I know? I didn’t hire her. Only Julian would know that … and she doesn’t even know who
I
am at this point.”

“Do you know how long she worked for the family?”

“I’m not sure. A year, maybe eighteen months … Why is this relevant, Detective?”

“Thank you, Ms. Ross, sorry to disturb you.

“Huh,” he said aloud after hanging up the phone.

Other than the name, nothing else about her had set off any alarms. He’d asked to see ID and she’d provided him with an NYU student ID and a New York State driver’s license, both with the Rosses’ address as her own. He knew he’d written down both her student ID and driver’s license numbers. He’d run them through first thing in the morning. Even though she’d left the Rosses’ employment and Eleanor was right about that, why wouldn’t she? he figured she’d be easy enough to find.

He’d need to check his notes again and then look through the papers at the Stratton-Ross home, see if there was another address for her. It was probably nothing, but now that the twins were part of the equation he had a strange feeling that maybe Geneva Stout, someone who’d been intimate with the children for more than a year, had more to contribute to his investigation than he’d originally thought.

After talking to Eleanor, he lay still for a few more minutes. Then with the remote he switched off the television and closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would come, that he wouldn’t lie awake watching the hours pass, thinking of murder and lost love.

“
N
ice face,” said Craig from his seat behind the reception desk as Lydia and Jeffrey pushed their way through the glass doors. As tall and thin as a reed, Craig slumped at the desk gripping a tattered copy of
Neuromancer
. He pushed aside the curly blond hair that fell over his round spectacle lenses and looked at Lydia quizzically.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“You should see the other guy,” answered Lydia with a half smile she didn’t feel.

“Where’s Rebecca?” asked Jeffrey.

“I’m filling in. She called in sick. Flu,” he said. “She sounded like you look, Lydia.” A boyish smile broke his long, narrow face and saved him from the barb she was about to toss back at him.

“Thanks. Thanks a lot,” she answered as she stepped into her office. At the door, she paused a second. Something felt off. She looked around the room, saw nothing unusual, and decided she was just being paranoid. She shed her coat, though she knew they’d only be there for a short time, draped it over the sofa, and sat at her desk. She pulled a compact from her bag and gazed at herself in the mirror for the hundredth time since she’d gotten out of bed.
A face only a prizefighter’s mother could love
, she thought. She snapped the compact closed and booted her computer.

“Was someone in my office?” she heard Jeffrey ask Craig over the intercom.

“Not that I know of,” he answered. “Why?”

She got up and walked across the hall to Jeffrey’s office. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. My computer is on, my day planner is open. It’s just not the way I left things,” he said with a frown.

“Maybe Rebecca was looking for something?” she offered, knowing even as she spoke that it wasn’t Rebecca’s style. Everything would have been left exactly as she found it. Rebecca was precise, effective, and compulsively neat. Her appearance was always perfect; her work was always exceptional. In fact, Lydia couldn’t remember a time when Rebecca had called in sick before today.

“Hm,” said Lydia.

“What?”

“Let’s get her on the phone.”

“Why?”

“Because I had a feeling someone was in my office, as well.”

“Something missing?”

“Nope. Just a weird feeling,” she said thoughtfully. She walked back to her office and stood in the doorway. The space was pretty sterile because of Lydia’s compulsive need to carry things with her everywhere she went and because she really considered her office at the loft to be her workspace. Still something seemed different.

“I got the machine. Left a message for her to call,” said Jeffrey, coming up behind her. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Lydia nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” The uneasy feeling in her gut said something else. It was a feeling that stayed with her as they headed out the door, on their way to get some answers from Eleanor Ross.

W
hen Lydia and Jeffrey reached the Waldorf, Eleanor and the twins appeared to be on their way out. Their luggage had been loaded onto a cart and a porter was leaving the room as Lydia and Jeffrey entered.

“Going somewhere, Ms. Ross?” asked Lydia.

“Back to the apartment. The children need to be in their home.”

“But it’s a crime scene,” said Lydia, appalled that she would even consider moving the children back to the place where their father was murdered and wondering how she was even allowed access.

“Money talks,” said Eleanor, drawing back her shoulders and jutting out her chin. “It’s up to me to decide what’s right for the children now, since there’s no one to look after them.”

“But to bring them back to the apartment where their father was—” Lydia stopped abruptly when the children entered the room.

They seemed to move as one, holding hands as they walked into the room. Their matching white blond heads of hair glowed golden in the sun that shone in from the window. Ivory skin and ice blue eyes, they looked as if they were made from light, luminous and ethereal.

“Grandma, Nathaniel can’t find Pat the Bunny,” said Lola, her voice light and musical.

“It’s on the cart headed downstairs, Nathaniel. You’ll have it before we get in the car. I promise.”

Nathaniel nodded, but Lydia could see his anxiety. The kid wanted his bunny. Lydia felt an irrational wash of anger that Eleanor hadn’t kept the bunny off the cart, knowing, as she must, that he would be looking for it.

“Who’s that?” said Lola, eyeing Lydia suspiciously.

“These are friends of mine, children. Their helping us find out who hurt your father.”

Lydia was surprised at the candor of Eleanor’s answer and couldn’t imagine what good could come of them knowing that. But the children didn’t seem upset. Both Lola and Nathaniel turned their eyes on Lydia and Jeffrey with a kind of wonder. Lydia leaned down and offered her hand.

“I’m Lydia,” she said, smiling. Each child shook her hand properly in turn. “And this is my partner, Jeffrey.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Lola wanted to know.

“He’s my partner,” she said again. It was really a more truthful answer anyway.

“Oh,” said Lola with a little frown, as if sensing the complexity of the answer but too young to really understand.

“What happened to your face?” asked Nathaniel, pointing to her bruise. “It looks bad.”

Lydia smiled at Nathaniel and then looked up at Eleanor. “Can we have a few minutes with you?”

Eleanor nodded and escorted the children from the room.

“Nice to meet you,” Nathaniel tossed over his shoulder with a little smile. He had been taught to be polite and the lesson had stuck.

When Eleanor returned, Lydia didn’t waste any more time.

“Why didn’t you tell us you had a son, Eleanor? A son who’d been committed and escaped from a mental institution; a son who tried to kill you and Julian.”

A stillness came over Eleanor. She moved over to the couch and sat unsteadily.

“My son is dead,” she said quietly.

“No, I don’t think so, Ms. Ross. I have this bruise on my face to prove it. He attacked me in the basement of your house in Haunted.”

Eleanor shook her head firmly. “Whoever did that to you, it wasn’t my son. He was found dead last year in that same house. There’s a death certificate to prove it.”

Lydia was feeling a little unsteady herself suddenly. Her face had flushed with a rush of heat and she moved to the chair beside Eleanor.

“What about your brother, Eleanor? What about Paul? Where is he?”

Eleanor shook her head again, this time slowly. She cast her eyes to the floor. A deep sadness had come over her and for the first time since Lydia had met her, Eleanor seemed human.

“He’s been missing for many years,” she nearly whispered. “I’ve
long believed him dead. He was my twin; I’d know if he was still alive.”

“There are rumors, Eleanor. Ugly ones. About you and Paul, about James and Julian.”

Eleanor slammed her hand suddenly down on the coffee table in a hard, flat slap.

“Goddammit!” she yelled. The lid that had opened in Lydia’s office flew wide and all the demons flew out. “Why do you think I took Julian and left that place? Those rumors, the curse—they plagued us. Do you know what it’s like to live beneath the shadows of others’ fear and ignorance, their voyeurism? Everyone always whispering; thinking that they know you, your family. It is a nightmare.”