Jenna stared at him open-mouthed. His words seemed to reverberate inside her head. My God, she thought. My God! She snatched up her martini, drained it at a gulp.
“I waited for him out there that night.” Still in that low, fierce whisper. “In clear weather he always went for a walk alone along the bluff before going to bed — you told me that. You also told me you had a concert date with your friend Ellen that night, so I knew you wouldn’t be home. I slipped onto the grounds and hid in the shrubbery by the stairs. And when he came by I grabbed him and shoved him down.”
All she could think of to say was, “You must be mad.”
“Mad for you, yes. So now you see how much I love you, why I can’t and won’t let you go.”
Jenna struggled again to free herself. When he still wouldn’t let go she scratched her nails across the back of his hand, not quite hard enough to draw blood. That made him release her. She pushed back from the table, started to rise.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“Where do you think? The police.”
“No, you’re not. Sit down, Jenna.”
“I don’t want anything more to do with you—”
“Sit down, I said.” Harshly, much more harshly than he’d ever spoken to her before.
Heads and eyes turned their way. To avoid a scene, she sank back into the booth.
“You wouldn’t get rid of me by going to the police,” Clayton said, leaning forward and whispering again. “You’d only end up hurting yourself. Turn me in and I won’t deny that I did it. But I’ll tell them it was your idea, that we planned it together.”
“No! You wouldn’t do that—”
“Oh yes, I would. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep from losing you.”
“They wouldn’t believe you.”
“I’d make them believe me. I’d be very convincing. We’d both go to prison.”
“Prison!”
“So there’s only one thing you can do and that’s to marry me, let me take care of you for the rest of our lives.”
Emotional intensity caused the blue eyes to bulge and glisten; ridges of muscle showed whitely along his jawline. She had never seen him like this before. She’d been so sure she knew him, so sure she could handle this situation, so sure of herself...
“Well?” he said.
“I... I can’t think straight right now. I need time to come to terms with this. Please, Clay.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know. A day, two days...”
“No. Take the rest of today, that’s long enough.”
There was no use arguing with him. Despite their lowered voices, some of the other diners were still casting glances in their direction. “All right. I’ll come to your place tonight—”
“No, I’ll come to yours.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea...”
“I do. I want to see the house we’ll be living in together.”
Jenna drove home in an angry half-daze. Thinking over and over: What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
Adam had always called their property “the Burroughs estate,” though the term was a little on the grandiose side. An eleven-room house on two well-and-scaped bluff-top acres that overlooked the ocean and a strip of rocky private beach some sixty feet below. He’d been a successful developer, rich by his standards if not quite by hers. She had already arranged to put the property on the market as soon as Adam’s will was probated, which should be fairly soon, and if it could be sold at or near the asking price, she stood to clear more than a million dollars after the agent’s commission. Investments and liquid cash accounts amounted to another million or so, all of which she also stood to inherit. Two and a half million dollars was more than enough to finance a permanent move to Europe, years of first-class travel, and a luxurious lifestyle. That had been the plan, such a wonderful plan. Now...
What am I going to do about Clayton?
She put her BMW away in the garage, went into the house to change into more casual clothes, then made her way through the rear garden and down the long sloping lawn to the path that stretched along the bluff top. The path was set back some distance from the shrubbery-bordered edge, so there was no danger to anyone walking along the flagstones — even at night, as long as one carried a flashlight as Adam always had. The only perilous spots were the short sandy strip that sloped off to the stairs leading down to the beach, and the stairs themselves — closely set wooden risers cemented into the steep bluff face. Handrails on both sides made descent and ascent safe enough on clear, dry days. No one, not even Adam, had the poor sense to venture down the steps at night or in rain or fog.
But what Adam had liked to do on his nocturnal walks, especially on moonlit nights, was to detour to the narrow platform at the top of the stairs and stand there looking out over the ocean. Flash beam and/or moonshine lighted the way, so there was no risk in doing this under ordinary circumstances.
Under ordinary circumstances.
Jenna picked her way down the sandy strip to the platform. The day was windy; white-crested waves broke over the rocks below, sending up great fans of froth and foam. Very pretty effect, but she had no interest in the whitewater view today. She knelt and carefully examined the bottoms of the support posts for the railings on both sides.
No marks had been left by the woven vines she’d looped and tied very low around the posts, then concealed with leaves and twigs — the wirelike strand that had tripped Adam as he stepped onto the platform ten nights ago and sent him hurtling downward to his death. She’d made sure of that when she returned from the concert and discovered his body, by removing all signs of the deathtrap before calling nine-one-one. Still, she’d felt compelled to go over the area once more, to reassure herself that there were absolutely no traces.
Damn that crazy, possessive fool Clayton and his false confession! Everything had gone so perfectly according to plan until he’d sprung that lie on her. The police hadn’t suspected Adam’s fall was anything other than a tragic accident, the result of age and carelessness. Even if they had, her concert alibi was unimpeachable. All that had remained for her to do before she set off on her new life, she’d thought, was to end the affair with Clayton. How could she possibly have foreseen that he’d claim to have murdered Adam, and worse, much worse, threaten to tell the police it was her idea if she didn’t submit to his demands?
Jenna shivered as she stood up, and not just from the chill of the sea wind. Quickly she made her way back to the flagstone path, then up to the house. Inside she poured herself a large snifter of brandy, sat with it in the Frenchprovincial living room.
Marry Clayton! No way was that going to happen. She’d never felt anything for him other than sexual desire, never thought of him as anything more than a temporary diversion. Her mistake was in misjudging the intensity of his feelings for her, the extent of his possessiveness. Now that she knew what he was really like under that naive exterior, the lengths to which he was willing to go to hold onto her, he’d become as repellent as a bug under a rock.
Yet she couldn’t just walk away from him now. God knew what might happen if she tried. As obsessed with her as he was, he might even go to the police himself and carry out his threat to blame her for his fantasy crime.
There was only one thing she could do, then.
She would have to kill him.
The prospect was distasteful, but no more so than her decision to end her stifling marriage to Adam. It was a simple matter of doing what was necessary in order to survive and survive securely.
The question was how to do it. Not with a knife or gun or blunt instrument; she was not a violent person, couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Poison? No. An accident of some kind... that was the best, the safest way. Not the sort of accident she’d arranged for Adam, of course, but one equally clever and with absolutely no risk of her being suspected. She’d done it once, she could do it again. All she needed was a little time to work out the details.