Rising from his chair, Dad reached out one bone-dry hand and let it rest a moment on his son's shoulder, just a light tap that stood for a kiss. And now he took his leave of this ridiculous party for a dead cat. That last sentiment was conveyed by the subtle shake of the head as he walked toward the door. His hand was on the knob when he spoke again without turning around, and this was one of his longest speeches. "The day of the funeral, you asked me about Johanna's gravestone. Well, it was finally installed. I went out there this morning to make sure they did a right job of it. They followed the attorney's instructions – the ones she gave him the day she died." And now he quickly departed, sparing himself the emotional response of a simple thank you from his son.
The stone had not yet been carved on the day when Jo had gone into the ground. A wooden marker had sufficed for the burial. Riker had been told that a more permanent monument had been ordered by the recent codicil to her will. And this had been more evidence of a suicide planned in advance of the Reaper knocking on Jo's door.
He kissed his last hope good-bye.
Thanks to the concussion, his memory of that night had ended on the wrong side of Jo's door. He could not recall breaking it down. And now he knew that his father had not been privy to any more evidence beyond the reports and statements.
Riker could not stop thinking like a cop, even on this his day off. Why had his father, the miser of words, found it necessary to repeat the gravestone story? And why did the old man prefer his own fable to the truth? Both father and son had reviewed the same evidence.
But only his father had seen the instructions for the stonecutter.
Had Jo left a sentimental passage on her tombstone, some message the old man had mistaken for Riker's but actually meant for another man? On his black days, Riker believed that Jo had died for the love of Timothy Kidd, that she had always planned to kill herself to end the grief and buy a little justice for a dead man.
On his good days, all he had left was pain.
Mallory slumped down behind the wheel of her car and waited for Riker to emerge from the apartment building. She knew it would not be long. He had been too eager to end the only party he had ever given, the dead-cat celebration.
She passed some time studying the pocket watch handed down from her foster father. The cover bore a gold engraving of an open field beneath a heaven of roiling clouds; a lone figure, bent and bowed, was walking against the wind. Once it had conjured up memories of home and the people who had loved her. That old connection was lost to her now, for every time she looked at the watch, she thought of Johanna Apollo.
Everything had changed.
Mallory looked up to see Riker standing at the curb, waving one hand to stop a taxicab. She put her tan sedan in gear and edged out into the street, following at a distance of several car lengths. When the yellow cab stopped at an intersection, she saw Riker's arm extend from the rolled-down rear window, holding out money to buy a bouquet of flowers from a sidewalk vendor. The red roses could only be intended for a woman.
She followed his cab across the bridge to Brooklyn, and now she knew where he was heading, for that way lay the cemetery. Twenty minutes later, the cabbie left his passenger at the gate. Mallory took her own time finding a parking space some distance away. She had no fear of losing him among the many paths that wound through acres of grave sites.
When she found him again, his body blocked her view of the tombstone. From her hiding place behind a larger monument, Mallory could only tell that the grave marker had been recently installed. The workmen's tracks had disturbed a light covering of this morning's snow.
Riker's felt hat went flying off in a strong gust of frigid air. When he dropped his bouquet, the wind took his roses, too, nudging them along the cold ground, picking at their petals – destroying them. And what damage had Dr. Apollo done to Riker? Had the woman left some little bomb of words engraved in granite? He was bending, folding, as if the doctor had reached out from the frozen ground and gutted him.
Mallory had said nothing to alter his theory of the murder-suicide as a long-planned event, nor had she discouraged him from casting himself in the role of an unwanted intruder on that scene. In her rationale, Riker would not grieve if Johanna Apollo had never been his to lose. But now that plan was unraveling, and her frustration was escalating by the second, for there was no way to get even with the dead.
She need not have worried that Riker would catch her watching over him. When he finally turned around, he was as good as blind, tears blurring his eyes and streaming down his face. After he had disappeared over the rise of the gravel path, an angry Mallory approached the gravestone to see what the dead woman had done to him. But there was nothing written there that could break a man in half, no words at all beyond the doctor's name and the dates of her life and death.
Understanding came swiftly as a hammerfall.
The man had come to a boneyard, of all places, looking for love, and he had gone away without it. Johanna Apollo had died for him, and, for a little while, something very rare had belonged to Riker – until Mallory had destroyed the only evidence.
In her own inimical, violent style, her own version of remorse, she slammed one closed fist down on the gravestone, wanting the pain, wanting to feel something. Mallory turned toward the path, intending to hunt Riker down before he reached the gate. She planned to hurt him with the certain knowledge that Johanna Apollo had loved him more than her own life. This fresh agony would be her gift to him – all the details of the altered crime scene.
But she could not move.
It was as if a wall had suddenly sprung up about her, surrounding her with invisible bricks of irony. Riker would never believe her – not her, a liar and a manipulator extraordinaire, though he would nod and smile, thanking her for her trouble. Then he would pour himself a shot of bourbon, dismissing her gift as some new trick to fix him one last time.
Riker had lost everything.
A family of four came along the path, crunching gravel underfoot and bearing flowers for a nearby grave. They gave a wide berth to the young woman who stood there so quietly, all of them believing that her sorrow must be recent and profound. The mourners departed. Night fell. And Kathy Mallory was left in the cold company of stone.
The marker was a plain one of deep red granite, and its only ornament was modest. The flower carved within a heart was not a rose, nor any bloom that one could readily identify. It was small, not much to look at – a common pimpernel.
Carol O'Connell
Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.
At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.
Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.
