The Dead Room (13 page)

Good old flesh-and-blood Joe.

And Leslie.

Leslie, who had thought Joe was him. Did they really look that much alike? Or, rather, had they once resembled each other so much? Maybe. Those closest seldom saw it.

Joe…and Leslie.

They were just going to dinner. And Joe was a good guy. Not slimy. So…He had to let her go. Not that dinner meant that anything was going on, at least not right away.

Besides, maybe they needed time together to discover the truth that had eluded them all.

The living and the dead.

 

They managed to secure an outside table. The street was closed to traffic, and the weather was unbelievably balmy, a promise that summer was coming. Joe had known Rudolfo, the owner and host, for years, and he was complimentary to Leslie without being smarmy. They had a bottle of his best Chianti and an antipasto of cheeses, meats and marinated vegetables almost immediately, and Leslie proved that she was definitely hungry. They both ordered the chicken
francese,
and then she sat back, her head cocked at an angle, and smiled.

“So tell me about your case. Is it the girl whose picture was in the paper?”

“Yes. Genevieve O'Brien.”

“Do you think…?”

“That she's alive?” he finished. “I don't know. I certainly don't believe she just took off without telling anyone. First things first—the police had done their homework. I went over it, and there's absolutely no sign of her turning up anywhere else.”

Leslie considered that fact. “She's rich, right?”

“None of her funds have been touched.”

“Scary,” she said. “And sad,” she murmured, lifting her wineglass and taking a sip. “I'm sure lots of people disappear and never show up again. I mean, think of the places people can dispose of bodies. Swamps, deserts…oceans.”

“This is New York City,” he said.

“Rivers, landfills, a city beneath the city.”

He frowned, realizing that he hadn't really thought about that last possibility. He leaned back, staring at her. “Brilliant.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “I just happen to know that…well, there's a city beneath the city. In a lot of neighborhoods, the way that the streets have been built up, you can be in a basement looking out at what once was street level. And then there are old foundations, old tunnels…all kinds of unknown underground places. Plus, even though the city's mainly built on granite bedrock, loose earth shifts. I learned that looking for graves. In fact, in many old graveyards, the coffins have shifted until there's actually nothing—or at least not the right something—beneath the headstones, and you're walking on graves no matter where you go. Over time, when the earth is soft, when there's rain, construction, vibrations from the subways…well, things shift.”

“Creepy,” he said.

She smiled, shaking her head. “Not if you're in my line of work.”

Their food came. They chatted about the neighborhood for a while, about how so much of Little Italy was being absorbed by Chinatown, but that was New York for you, always changing. New groups of people came in on a daily basis. Some people liked it, some people continued to hate foreigners, even though they themselves had been the foreigners of a previous decade or century.

“This is a land of promise, but sometimes that scares people, so they ignore what bothers them, whatever messes up their pretty picture,” he said. “That's one of the problems with the missing prostitutes. Getting people to care. A lot of the people have a tendency to think that women like that deserve what they get.”

“Jack the Ripper went after prostitutes, and it was one of the biggest scandals in Victorian London,” she pointed out.

“Because people were horrified by the gruesome brutality of the crimes. Here, people are just disappearing. No bodies, no horrifying details in the tabloids. And these days we're far more accustomed to serial killers—and so far, no one's even proved that we have one.”

“Do you think that Genevieve O'Brien's disappearance is connected to the missing prostitutes?” she asked.

“The last person I've found who'll admit to seeing her is a prostitute. She was trying to help a lot of the working girls. Actually, I'm surprised Robert hasn't asked for your help yet. According to him, you have a gift for finding…people.”

She sighed, setting down her fork. “Robert told you that?”

“I read it. This evening's paper has an article about you.”

Her eyes widened. “No.”

“Yes. You're credited with waltzing in and immediately making an important discovery at the dig. The reporter brought out the fact that you'd homed right in on a missing homeless man a couple of years ago.”

She looked upset. “Damn.”

“Well, do you have a special gift?” he asked teasingly.

She wasn't amused. In fact, she seemed to be even more irritated. “Logic,” she said briefly. “I was told the man's habits and something about his past. He was found in an old subway tunnel. Simple deduction.”

She had suddenly grown almost hostile, but he asked his next question, anyway. “But even before that…you were known for having an instinct for finding graves.”

“A feel for history. Did you want coffee?”

The question was abrupt. He was intrigued, but he followed her lead and changed the subject. When Rudolfo came to ask how their dinner had been, Joe had a question for his old friend, too. “Rudolfo, could you use another waitress?”

Rudolfo looked back at him skeptically, then groaned.

“Well?”

“Actually, yes, I could use a waitress. A good one. A good girl.”

“Can I send someone around to see you?” he asked.

“Send her next week. Monday. If I like her, she's hired. She's got to be a good girl.”

“She will be, or I swear…I'll wash dishes for a week.”

Rudolfo sniffed. “I have a very good dishwasher. The mechanical kind.”

Joe grinned. “Okay, so I'll bus tables and man the steaming monster, how's that?”

Rudolfo pointed a finger at him. “You will work for me. Like a green immigrant. I'll work you hard.”

“It's a deal.”

Rudolfo sniffed and left them.

Leslie stared at Joe, smiling again. “You're going to get a prostitute to work here, aren't you? Do you do that often?”

“I believe in this woman,” he said simply.

She touched his hand where it lay on the table. “We can try, but we can't always change the world, you know.”

He felt a stirring, which he firmly banished. “Let's just say I'm doing this one for Genevieve,” he told her.

She nodded, a small smile curving her lips. Her brilliant gaze met his. She did understand.

Lord, it would be easy to fall in love with this woman.

As Matt had.

Back at Hastings House, he walked her to the door. He was surprised when she walked in and left the door open, letting him follow. In the foyer, she turned to look at him. “I find it very hard to accept that what happened was an accident.” She hesitated. “Matt was writing about the missing prostitutes, you know. Trying to arouse public awareness and sympathy. I'd really love to know more about the gas lines and how the explosion might have been rigged.”

“Well, it's impossible to discover anything now,” he said.

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeated, grimacing as he stared at her.

“Why?”

“Leslie, haven't you noticed? Everything in the house has been redone to work with electricity. There are no more gas lines.”

“Oh,” she said, flushing. “I hadn't noticed.”

He frowned suddenly. “Leslie, don't go sharing your suspicions with everyone, all right?”

“I haven't, not exactly, but…”

“Please. Just don't.”

“You're suspicious, too.”

“And investigating is what I do for a living.”

“But I can help.”

“Oh?”

“I have…instincts, sometimes. Look, I just don't like to be laughed at, and I hate it when people call me the psychic. I'm not psychic. But I know…things, sometimes. Please, will you let me help? Even with your missing girl?”

He felt his heart pounding.

If it means spending time with you, you bet. Oh, you bet.

No, she was Matt's fiancée.

But Matt was…

Dead.

“Sure, we'll talk,” he said. He extended his hand to shake hers good-night. All she needed was Matt's trusted cousin turning into a lech.

But damn, he was only flesh and blood.

Stop.

Forgive me, Matt. God help me, I'll keep my thoughts to myself.

“We'll talk,” he repeated. “But if you want to help me, you have to promise you'll be careful about what you say—and what you do.”

“Cross my heart,” she swore with an enchanting smile.

“All right, then. Now,” he said, glancing at his watch—almost eleven. “I'm getting out of here. You can still get a good night's sleep.”

“Sure. Thanks. How do I reach you?”

He gave her a card. “Call me anytime.”

She smiled.

“What?”

“People seem to think I'm like a hothouse flower. I get that all the time, mostly because people are worried and want to take care of me. But…well, I
will
call you.”

“Good night, then. Lock up.”

“You bet.”

“Set the alarm.”

“Oh, yeah. It's state-of-the-art.”

He forced himself not to look back as he exited the house.

 

Upstairs, television on, back in her nightgown, Leslie walked to the window, almost expecting to see a man leaning against the lamppost.

But he wasn't there.

She smiled. She felt better for having met Joe, though she still couldn't believe he had startled her so badly that she had passed out. But for a minute…just for a minute…she had thought Matt was back. In the flesh.

No, Matt was only in her dreams.

Was Joe right, though? That the explosion hadn't been an accident? The idea had certainly occurred to her time and time again that Matt had been targeted.

And what about Genevieve O'Brien? Could she possibly help Joe find her?

She was excited at the thought, though also a bit chastened by the thought that the only people she'd found to date had been dead.

“Hey,” she commanded herself. “Get back to reality here. You still have work to do at the dig.”

And she did. She was going to find Mary's grave, then see to it that mother and child were reburied together.

With that thought uppermost in her mind, she climbed into bed to watch the news. She saw her own face on the screen and watched in morbid fascination as a reporter came on to talk about her apparent ability to find bodies, an ability, the reporter claimed, that predated the death of her fiancé and her own terrible ordeal following the explosion at Hastings House.

Luckily, nothing was said about her living there now. People were still keeping mum on that subject.

As soon as the report was over, she found a station that was showing repeats of
Gilligan's Island
and watched the adventures of the seven castaways until she felt herself drifting off at last.

She turned off the television, then lay awake wondering whether Matt would come to her in her dreams again.

She kept opening her eyes, looking into the shadows, willing him to appear.

Nothing.

At last she drifted to sleep.

And then he came.

Once again, she knew she was asleep, that she was dreaming. But it didn't matter, because he was there. Long and hard and lean, as vital as he had been in life. He touched her, stroked her. She
felt
his fingers on her naked flesh, followed by the brush of his lips, as real as his kisses had ever been.

A caress down her spine…

Liquid fire on her breasts…

Pressure, thrusting, enfolding arms…

He whispered, “I love you so much, Leslie…. Oh, God, Leslie…”

She wanted the soaring, the hunger, the yearning…the passion, the tenderness and the volatility…to go on forever.