"Is that some sort of weird sexual innuendo?"
"Not at all. Let's get to the phone. I sure hope she didn't think to cut the wire."
"She never went inside the cottage."
"Thank God for small favors. It's about time we got one."
Quinlan said, "Are your connections good enough to get us another one?"
"If not, I'll call my aunt Paulie. Between her and Uncle Abe, they've got more connections than the pope."
16
SHE KNEW JAMES would come here, maybe not immediately, but soon enough. She also knew she had time. Too bad she hadn't thought to pull the telephone cord out of the wall. That would have really slowed him up. But she had enough of a head start.
She pulled the Oldsmobile into an empty parking spot just off Cooperton Street. She locked the door and walked slowly, wearing James's jacket, which should make her look very hip, toward number 337, the gracious Georgian red-brick home on Lark Street. Lights were on downstairs. She prayed Noelle was there and not the police or the FBI.
She huddled low and ran along the tap line of shrubbery toward the downstairs library. Her father's office. The room where she'd first seen her father strike her mother. That had been ten years ago. Ten years. What had happened to those years? College, with nightly phone calls and more visits than she cared to make, even unexpected visits during the week to make sure her father wasn't beating her mother.
She'd sensed the festering anger in her father at her interference, but his position, more highly visible by the year, his absolute horror of anyone finding out that he was a wife beater, kept him in line, at least most of the time. As it turned out, she found out that if he was pissed off, he would beat her mother as soon as Sally left to go back to college. Not that her mother would ever have told her.
On one visit she'd forgotten a sweater and had gone quickly back home to get it. She'd opened the front door with her key and walked into the library, in on a screaming match with her mother cowering on the floor and her father kicking her.
"I'm calling the police," she said calmly from the doorway. "I don't care what happens. This will stop and it will stop now."
Her father had frozen, his leg in mid-kick, and stared at her in the doorway. "You damned little bitch.
What the hell are you doing here?"
"I'm calling the police now. It's over." She'd walked back into the foyer to the phone that sat on the small Louis XVI table, beneath a beautiful gilt mirror.
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She had dialed 9-1- when her hand was grabbed. It was her mother. It was Noelle, and she was crying, begging her not to call the police, begging, on her knees, begging and begging, tears streaming down her face.
Sally had stared down at the woman who was clutching at her knees, tears of pain grooving down her cheeks. Then she'd looked at her father, who was standing in the doorway to the library, his arms crossed over his chest, his ankles crossed, tall and slender, beautifully dressed in cashmere and wool, his hair thick and dark, with brilliant gray threading through it, looking like a romantic lead in the movies. He was watching her.
"Go ahead, do it," he'd said. "Do it and just see what your mother will do when the cops get here. She'll say you're a liar, Sally, that you're a jealous little bitch, that you don't want her to have my affection, that you've always resented her, resented your own mother.
"Isn't that why you're coming home all the time from college? Go ahead, Sally. Do it. You'll see." He never moved, just spoke in that intoxicating, mesmerizing voice of his, one that had swayed his colleagues and clients for the past thirty years. He'd kept a hint of a Southern drawl, knowing it added just the right touch when he deftly slurred the word he wanted to emphasize.
"Please, Sally, don't. Don't. I'm begging you. You can't. It would ruin everything. I can't allow you to. It's dangerous. It's all right, Sally. Just don't call, please, dear God, don't call."
She'd given her mother and her father one last look and left. She had not returned until after her graduation seven months later.
Maybe her father was beating her mother less simply because Sally wasn't coming home anymore.
Funny that she hadn't been able to remember that episode until now. Not until... not until she'd gone to The Cove and met James and her life had begun to seem like a life again, despite the murders, despite her father's phone calls, despite everything.
She must really be nuts. The damned man had betrayed her. There was no way around that. He'd saved her too, but that didn't count, it was just more of the job. She still marveled at her own simplicity. He was FBI. He'd tracked her down and lied to her.
She huddled down even more as she neared the library windows. She looked inside. Her mother was reading a book. She was sitting in her husband's favorite wing chair, reading a book. She looked exquisite. Well, she should. The bastard had been dead for a good three weeks. No more bruises. No more chance of bruises.
Still, Sally waited. No one else was in the house.
"You're sure she's going home, Quinlan?"
"Not home. She's going to her mother's house. Not her husband's house. You know my intuition, my gut.
But to be honest about it, I know her. She feels something for her mother. That's the first place she'll go.
I'll bet you both her father and her husband put her in that sanitarium in the first place. Why? I haven't the foggiest idea. I do know, though, that her father was a very evil man." "I assume you'll tell me what you mean by that later?" "Drive faster, Dillon. The house is number 337 on Lark. Yeah, I'll tell you, but not now. Let's get going."
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"Hello, Noelle."
Noelle St. John slowly lowered her novel to her lap. Just as slowly, she looked up at the doorway to see her daughter standing there, wearing a man's jacket that came nearly to her knees.
Her mother didn't move, just stared at her. When she was younger, her mother was always holding her, hugging her, kissing her. She wasn't moving now. Well, if she believed Sally was crazy, then it made sense. Did Noelle think her daughter was here to shoot her? She said in a soft, frightened voice, "Is it really you, Sally?"
"Yes. I got away from the sanitarium again. I got away from Doctor Beadermeyer."
"But why, darling? He takes such good care of you. Doesn't he? Why are you looking at me like that, Sally? What's wrong?"
Then nothing mattered, because her mother was smiling at her. Her mother jumped to her feet and ran to her, enfolding her in her arms. Years were instantly stripped away. She was small again. She was safe.
Her mother was holding her. Sally felt immense gratitude. Her mother was here for her, as she'd prayed she would be.
"Mama, you've got to help me. Everyone is after me."
Noelle stood back, smoothing Sally's hair, running her hands over her pale face. She hugged her again, whispering against her cheek, "It's all right, sweetheart. I'll take care of everything. It's all right." Noelle was shorter than her daughter, but she was the mother and Sally was the child, and to Sally she felt like a goddess.
She let herself be held, breathed in her mother's fragrance, a scent she'd worn from Sally's earliest memories. "I'm sorry, Noelle. Are you all right?"
Her mother released her, stepping back. "It's been difficult, what with the police and not knowing where you were and worrying incessantly. You should have called me, Sally. I worried so much about you."
"I couldn't. I imagined that the police had your phone bugged. They could have traced me."
"I don't think there's anything wrong with the phones. Surely they wouldn't dare plant devices like that in your father's home?"
"He's dead, Noelle. They'd do anything. Now, listen. I need you to tell me the truth. I do know that I was here the night that he was murdered. But I don't remember anything about it. Just violent images, but no faces. Just loud voices, but no person to go with the voices."