"Don't worry," she whispered, leaning forward as if to follow him. "Gwen didn't breathe a word to anybody. It's their secret – hers and the famous surgeon's."
"No!" D'Anton almost shouted. "It wasn't me "
Her eyes narrowed in disbelief.
"You never saw me, did you?" he demanded.
"I didn't need to," she said, in her normal voice now. "Who else could have been here, driving your car?"
D'Anton exhaled slowly. "There's only one other person who drives that car."
"Julia? You can't be serious."
He turned away, clasping his head as if he was trying to keep it from exploding.
"You know how vicious she can be," he said. "I suspected it first when that girl, Katie, disappeared. I think there've been others. She's trying to compete with me in some insane way. Taking out her rage. It's been absolute hell to live with, but I didn't know what to do. Just hoped to God I was wrong."
His body sagged, hands falling to his sides.
"I think she murdered Eden," he said.
Abruptly, Gwen laughed, a sound that rang wildly out of place in the stillness.
"Tell the world that if you want, Welles," she said. "Gwen knows the truth." She slid off the desk and moved toward him, slowly and seductively, all full-grown woman again.
"You don't have to hide anything from her anymore," she said softly. "She knows you're the master sculptor. You're driven to push beyond the limits. To see how far you can take the living flesh, toward perfection."
"I'm not hiding anything. Haven't you heard what I've said?"
"But you have to remember, you owe everything to Gwen," she said. "It was her face, her body, that the world saw, with your name hooked to them. And you are going to keep her the way she was. She's done aging."
D'Anton's forehead furrowed in bewilderment. "What are you talking about? No one stops-"
She slapped his face, a hard stinging blow.
"She's going to make the Monks problem go away," she said. "And then, things are going to be like they used to be. You're going to make her perfect again, an inch at a time. From now on, she is what you do"
D'Anton looked into her impassioned eyes, his skin prickling with the realization that he might have thought the wrong woman was insane.
He said, with a quaver in his voice, "Was it you who killed Eden?"
"Eden's gone. Now there's just Gwen." She leaned close, all softness again, breasts against him, lips at his ear. "She'll take care of you, much better than Eden ever would have. And she'll keep faith, to the death."
D'Anton was starting to understand that the beauty he had created was making him a prisoner.
Then he thought he heard a stealthy sound coming from the hallway that led to the procedure rooms.
Chapter 30
Outside the windows of Larrabee's office, the sky was starting to lighten into dawn. Guido Franchi, Larrabee's detective friend from the SFPD, was sitting at the kitchen table across from Monks. Franchi was a big black-haired man with a drooping mustache, a heavily lined face, and skeptical eyes that were bleary from his being called out at five o'clock on a Saturday morning. They watched Monks steadily.
"So, let me make sure I got this right," Franchi said. "You left there naked, after having sex with this lady? Your clothes are still there?"
Monks had his hands pressed against his face, forefingers massaging his temples.
"I know how it sounds," he said.
"You admit you could have imagined the part about her trying to drown you? What with the drug, and all?"
"I don't think so. But it's possible."
Franchi leaned back in his chair, turning his mug of coffee in both hands, as if trying to warm it through friction.
'That doesn't give me much to work with," he said. "Right off, there's a jurisdiction problem. If she's still up in Marin, it's their case. If she came back to the city, I could pick her up for attempted murder. But how the fuck am I supposed to do that, when my only witness admits he was stoned out of his skull?"
Monks was still shaky, and he felt like there was grit floating around in his brain, but the drug seemed to be gone from his system now.
"I don't have any measure of how far gone I was," he said. "Either of you ever tried it? Ecstasy?"
Franchi shook his head. "Too New Age for me."
"Iris brought some home a couple times," Larrabee said. "It's great for in the sack, but it does twist your head around. What I'm wondering about, Carroll, how could she have known about the scarf? Or Martine?"
Monks had been wondering that, too. More and more, he was fearing that he had hallucinated the whole thing.
"Sorry," he said. "I feel like an asshole, believe me."
"I'm not worried about you feeling like an asshole," Franchi said. "I'm worried about me fucking around with a guy like D' Anton, and coming up empty." He stood and poured more coffee. "You got anything to eat?" he asked Larrabee. "Sweet roll, something like that?"
"Bagels."
"Terrific. My stomach starts acting up if I don't get something in it. Any advice, Doc?"
"Go easy on the coffee. Try Tagamet."
"Yeah, that's pretty much what my doctor said. But I keep forgetting." Franchi stepped to a window and stared out, scowling.
"If it's true, that Katie Bensen was killed, and Roberta Massey almost was," Franchi said, "was Ms. Bricknell the one who did that, too?"
Monks shook his head. "I can believe she slipped something in my drink," he said. "Tried to drown me. Maybe even poisoned Eden. But not that she cut the skin off a woman's face."
But he knew he could be wrong.
"What about that nurse she pointed out? Who's so jealous of D'Anton?" Larrabee asked.
"She'd have the skills," Monks said. "So would D'Anton, or other clinic people."
"All right, we'll run NCIC checks on all those employees," Franchi said, turning back to the room. "Eden's boyfriend, too. Somebody might have a sheet. Let's locate D'Anton, and let's pick up Gwen. You said she's got an apartment here?"
"That's what she told me," Monks said. "I don't know the address. She might have stayed in Marin, too."
"You call her there," Franchi said. "Don't say the cops are in this yet; that might spook her. If she's gone, try and find out where she is. If she's there, play it like she was right, you lost your head, you want to come talk to her, some bullshit like that."
"Tell her you want your clothes back," Larrabee said. Both detectives looked amused. Monks was not.
The directions Gwen had given him to the party, with the house's phone number, were still in the Bronco. He went down to get them, hobbling on his scratched and bruised feet.
When he came back, Larrabee had popped bagels out of a toaster oven and put them on a plate.
"There's cream cheese," he said. "Sorry, no lox."
"I'll make the call first," Monks said.
Larrabee turned the telephone's speaker on. The two detectives stood listening, chewing quietly, while Monks punched the number.
It rang several times before a woman's voice answered. She was very irritable, and she was not Gwen.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" she snapped. "Who is this?"
"It's Dr. Monks. Mrs. D'Anton? Julia?"
"Yes?" Her tone made it clear that identifying himself had not gained him any points.
Franchi made a cutting motion across his throat with his forefinger. They did not want Julia D' Anton to know that she was on the suspect list, too.
Monks nodded. "I need to find Gwen," he said.
'Then I suggest you call someplace she is, instead of someplace she's not."
"Where's that?" Monks said quickly, worried that she would hang up.
"How should I know? You were her date."
"Her apartment in San Francisco?"
"I'd say that's likely," Julia said. "Although maybe with somebody else. Did you disappoint her?"