I have them seated facing the Villays at my end of the table. Allen presides over the other end, holding his mouth at an odd angle while Andre sucks down Jack-and-Gingers and boasts to the Rangles. From time to time he touches Dani Rangle’s bare arm and she giggles.
After the main course is taken away, there is a lull where the conversation fades to a murmur.
I clear my throat and say, “Billy, question for you. What’s the statute of limitations on murder?”
Billy’s eyes are pale green and set in a round red Irish face. He looks me over.
“That depends on how well you know the DA,” he says with just a hint of a long-lost Brooklyn accent. “Just kidding. There is no time limit on prosecuting a murder. It’s the only crime that doesn’t have one. Why?”
“Bert thinks this place has a ghost,” I say. “And he says that the spirit will be restless until someone is punished. Ridiculous, I know, but I’m in a bind. Bert is the best man I’ve ever come across and I’m pretty fond of this place.”
“What? You got a clairvoyant or something? Tarot cards?” Billy asks, dabbing his lips with the napkin.
“Not far off,” I say, looking around the table. The others have stopped talking now and their eyes are on me. Villay tugs at his necktie. His wife is stiff and pale in her black dress.
“I don’t believe it, but Bert,” I say, nodding toward the dim corner of the dining room where he stands in a suit, watching the help, “comes from a long line of Akwesasne medicine men. He told me the first day I showed him this place that there was a ghost. I had a good laugh, right, Bert?”
Bert steps into the light with half his face covered by the shadow of his nose and his eyes narrow canyons of darkness. He grunts and nods, then like distant thunder, he says, “My grandmother always told me that the wings of the dark spirits brush the lips of the medicine man and his line. And when I came to this place, I felt that on my lips.”
“Yeah, I saw a psychic one time on the witness stand,” Billy says with a mischievous smile. He takes a sip from his wineglass. “Didn’t go over too good, but a medicine man? That might work.”
This brings a laugh from everyone, even the Villays, and the tension evaporates. While the moment is calm, I excuse myself and go upstairs. I know from the Hewlett Harbor maid whose toothbrush is whose and I slip quickly into the Villays’ bedroom, where I put the right drop on each. Their room has been soundproofed, but for good measure I go through the other rooms, applying more drops from the red vial on other toothbrushes.
By the time I get back, dessert is being served and the first fat drops of rain tap intermittently against the windowpanes.
“Please. A toast,” I say, raising my wineglass. “To health, happiness, young love, and the Russian stock market.”
This brightens everyone except Allen, who stares passively at me. I make a point to grin at him, until finally, he smiles back. Glasses clink together and everyone drinks. I nod to the girls who wait like Bert in the shadows of the long room. They step out and refill everyone’s glasses. Rangle is half in the bag and now he stands up.
“I have a toast,” he says, bowing his head toward Andre so that the dark auburn flap of his hair falls sideways off the top of his bald head. “To the czar and all his offspring.”
Andre looks at him, puzzled, then smiles, although I don’t believe he understands who the czar is. We all drink to the czar and Rangle sits down with a satisfied look on his face that quickly melts under his wife’s glare.
When Dani giggles and leans toward Andre, he kisses her ear. Allen slams his fist down on the table, jarring the china and tipping over his half-empty wineglass.
“Keep her,” he says, and marches out of the room with his head high.
Andre and Dani burst out in giddy laughter. Rangle shows all his teeth and his wife looks like she ate a bad piece of fish. I signal the girls again and they pour more wine.
“A final toast,” I say, rising to my feet. “To domestic felicity.”
They all stare at me blankly, but raise their glasses just the same and empty them. I take a sip, look at my watch, and suggest after-dinner drinks on the back porch for those who haven’t had enough. I then thank them all again for coming, excuse myself, and wish them all a good night.
50
ALLEN IS DOWN AT THE LAKE. I can see his shape lit by the low-voltage lights along the shore. The rain is still falling in random bloated drops. Allen appears not to mind as he casts stones from the beach into the rippling black water.
“I’m sorry,” I say, toweling off a lounge chair beside him before I sit down and put up my feet.
Allen is silent. A sliver of the orange moon peers through the trees on top of the far hill before disappearing into the bank of clouds. Over the hissing of the wind in the trees I can hear the crunch of Allen’s feet on the beach. He throws half a dozen more rocks into the water before raising his voice above the wind and saying, “What made you invite that asshole anyway?”
“It’s really not Andre’s fault,” I say. “He is what he is and I have a business deal with him and Rangle. To tell you the truth, I think it gives you a good out.”
“Who says I want an out?” he says, turning to face me. A drop of rain strikes his cheek and he wipes it away.
I fold my hands together.
“Allen,” I say quietly. “That’s a rocket ship bound for space. You want to be on it because it’s fast and sleek and exciting. But whoever mounts that baby is going to burn up as soon as they leave the launching pad. You know that. I know you know…”
“What did you… plan it or something?”
“Of course not,” I say. “But I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t stop it, and that’s because you’re my friend.”
“So what,” he says with a small smile, looking up at the dark sky then back at me. “I owe you two lives now?”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I say.
“I feel like I do,” he says, “even though I wanted to punch you in there.”
“Violent,” I say, skipping a rock of my own without getting up from my seat.
“That’s my father’s side,” he says. “To hear him tell it, I’m practically a clone. It makes my mom and me laugh.”
“Pretty crazy about your mom, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “Dani Rangle is a long way from her. I’ll have to remind myself of that for the next one.”
“Well,” I say, rising from my seat and looking up. “Time for bed.”
“Good night,” Allen says.
“As your mom would say, don’t forget to brush your teeth,” I tell him, and he laughs.
I watch him from my bedroom as the tempo of the rain picks up. I lose his shape for a moment in the mist rising from the water. Then his rain-soaked shape appears from the gray and the back door slams shut. Thunder begins to crash and the blackness is shattered by white bursts of light. The trees bow down and one of the old spruces cracks like a cannon.
I listen to the storm rage and wait until after midnight before I sit down with a mug of green tea and start up the computer. The Villays are snug in their bed under a blue light occasionally lit bright by flashes of lightning outside. Christina’s mouth is open, her arm flung over her forehead. Villay himself is tossing and turning, muttering to himself, whining like a feverish child. His eyes are open, but stare blankly at the ceiling.
I split the screen so I can see the images projected onto the ceiling and Villay at the same time, then I start the sequence, just the way Chuck showed me. The instant Villay sees the image of his first wife’s face he shrieks like a sorority girl. His head twists from side to side, but his eyes seem frozen on the image, his body pinned to the bed.
In an eerie voice, the computer-generated image of Villay’s first wife begins to moan and shriek and it rises on the back of the howling storm outside, flailing above it then sinking back as if she were drowning all over again.