Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) (14 page)

“Oh, those.” Sam shrugged. “No, we each only have one, but we don’t pay any attention to the names. We just grab the first one at hand. Why?”

“You all wear each other’s smocks?”

“Sure. One size fits all.” Sam laughed. “Why are you so interested in those ugly old things? They’re not a fashion statement, that’s for sure.”

Rachel digested this bit of information. The paint stains on Aidan’s smock meant nothing? Could have been slopped there by anyone in the art department? That seemed like good news.

“Why were you coming in the back door to the cafeteria?” Joseph asked as they neared the art building. “And how come you looked so terrified? We all thought you’d be sleeping after what happened at the mall. Aidan was really ticked that you didn’t call him to come and get you.”

Rachel didn’t want to tell them about the race down the stairwell. It was too embarrassing, now that she was convinced she’d overreacted. There hadn’t been an intruder in her room, after all, only Sam, and probably the person on the stairs really had been out for a little exercise.

“I thought the stairs would be safer than the elevator,” she answered, “and then once I got in there, it was so dark and quiet, I guess I got a little shaky and took the stairs too fast.”

“Aidan was worried about you,” Sam said. “But he couldn’t come get you because he was on his way to pick up plaster for his masks. So he sent us instead.”

They entered the dim, cool lobby of the art building. All of the work was off the walls, stacked on the floor or lying on tables. Sam glanced around. “Where did Bibi and Rudy go? They were here when we left.” She sighed heavily. “We need all the help we can get, wrapping these paintings to take to the mall.”

“Well, I can’t help,” Paloma said. “I have to go upstairs and finish a necklace I’m working on. I showed Mr. Stein at the jewelry store a sketch, and he loved it. You’ll have to get along without me. Want to come with me, Rachel?”

Rachel was about to say, I would rather do almost anything than go upstairs. I haven’t forgotten what happened to me the last time I was up there. Just then the elevator pinged and Rudy and Bibi stepped out.

“Oh, great,” Paloma said, “you guys can help Sam so I can go upstairs and work.” And before anyone could argue, she was in the elevator. Just before the door closed upon her, she called out, “Oh, by the way, good news! Milo Keith is conscious. He’s going to be okay. Ask Rachel.” Then the sliding doors swallowed her, and the elevator hummed its way upward.

Bibi turned to Rachel. “Rachel, is that true? Is Milo awake? I thought …”

“No, he’s not,” Aidan’s voice replied from the entrance before Rachel could answer. “I stopped in to see him on my way back and while I was there, he took a turn for the worse. He’s slipped back into his coma. The nurse said they can’t be sure he’ll come out of it this time.”

“Did he say anything to you while you were there?” Bibi asked. “Did he tell you what happened on that fire escape?”

Aidan shook his head. “No. And the nurse said he hadn’t said a word before this relapse.” Wrong, Rachel thought. And realized that Milo’s words to her were just one more thing that only she knew about. Her heart sank. She didn’t have the calendar page, and now she didn’t have Milo’s testimony.

She had nothing to take to the police. Nothing.

“I
’M GOING TO STICK
this in the dumbwaiter,” Aidan said, hefting the fat bag of dry plaster he was carrying, “and haul it on upstairs. How about if we do your mask tonight, Rachel? Now that the exhibit’s over, the building will be quiet. I can concentrate better when it’s quiet.”

Rachel couldn’t believe what she was hearing. A mask? He wanted to do a mask? What was wrong with him? Hadn’t she insisted she wasn’t interested? Especially not with everything that had been going on lately.

“A mask? I don’t think so,” she said coolly. “Even if I were willing to let someone pour plaster all over my face, which I’ve already told you I’m not, it wouldn’t be tonight, it wouldn’t be now, it wouldn’t even be anytime soon. I’m still shaking from that flowerpot crashing down on me. I’m far too jumpy to be perfectly still on a table, Aidan. I’d mess it up for you, so forget it.”

He came over to stand beside her. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said quietly. “That I’m ignoring what’s been happening to you. Well, you’re wrong. I’m not. But you’re safe now, Rachel. You’re with friends. I’ve been itching to do your mask ever since I first saw you, you know that.”

Aidan would have argued further, but Samantha interrupted, “Aidan, we’ve got all of these paintings and masks and sculptures to wrap and pack to take to the mall.” She smiled at Rachel. “You can help.”

“Sure,” Rachel agreed.

Aidan shrugged and moved to the dumbwaiter, pulling on the ropes to haul the bag of plaster up to the tenth floor. Rachel and the others tackled the artwork. Paintings had to be labelled with the artist’s name, then wrapped in white plastic and tied with twine. The few works of sculpture had to be handled even more carefully, packed in boxes layered with shredded paper to prevent breakage.

It was a slow process. The light streaming in the windows faded as they worked. They were only half-finished with their task when Rachel glanced over her shoulder toward the front door and was surprised to find the campus completely wrapped in darkness.

“If we don’t speed this up a little,” Bibi commented as she worked at Rudy’s side, “the mall’s going to be closed before we get there. Why isn’t Paloma helping?”

“She’s upstairs working on a necklace,” Rachel said.

“Well, I never volunteered to take her place,” Bibi complained. “I’m not even an art student. Rudy, go up there and drag her down here.”

He was back in five minutes. “Not up there,” he said cryptically, and went back to work.

Rachel looked up from the painting she was wrapping. “She has to be up there. We would have seen her if she’d come back down.”

Rudy shrugged. “I looked in all the studios. It’s dark up there, and quiet. No one home.”

No one stopped working, and no one seemed the least bit concerned about Paloma.

“Hey, guys,” Rachel said softly, “considering what’s been going on, don’t you think that when someone isn’t where they said they’d be, maybe we should check it out? Why don’t we take a break and go find Paloma? Make sure she’s okay. I’m not going upstairs alone, so one of you has to come with me.”

“You’re right,” Aidan agreed. “I’ll go with you.”

His voice was calm, unperturbed, but Rachel’s fingers shook as she wrapped slick white plastic around a good-sized painting. None of them had as much reason to be concerned about Paloma as she did. Until they’d seen the note that came with the watercolor, they hadn’t believed Ted’s death and Milo’s fall had been anything but accidental. Even now, Rachel knew they weren’t totally convinced the note hadn’t been a prank. She could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices. They were staying with her now because
she
was afraid something bad was going to happen, not because
they
were.

She hurried to finish wrapping the painting. It was one of Joseph’s, his favorite, a landscape showing a red barn and a golden hayfield in the distance. She stood it up on end to wrap the white plastic around it. But as she brought the wrap around to the back of the painting where she planned to overlap it, one edge caught on something and stuck.

Rachel sat up straight and looked over the top of the painting for the problem.

There was an envelope, fastened with silver duct tape to the back of the canvas. A white, letter-size envelope.

Any other time, Rachel would have either left the envelope in place and wrapped over it, or she would have called Joseph over to ask if he wanted the envelope removed before the painting went to the mall.

She did neither. Because … because this was anything but an ordinary day.

Rachel turned the painting around to face her, using it as a shield from the others, and yanked the envelope free.

Picked at the flap. It wouldn’t open. She reached down and picked up the X-Acto knife she’d been using to slice the twine, and slit the flap.

Pulled out two letter-size sheets of white paper, folded in thirds.

She unfolded them.

They were drawings. In charcoal. Sketches, really. Sketches of …

Of a figure drowning in a tumultuous sea.

Of another falling down a steep flight of stairs.

In both drawings, the mouth was open in a silent scream, the eyes wide with terror.

There was no background in either-sketch. No choppy sea. No stormy sky. No vase. No flowers. Nothing but two separate sketches of two separate tragedies.

Rachel stared down at them. Here, then, was proof that someone, somewhere, had actually drawn the images she had seen in two oil paintings. Images that no one else had seen. She hadn’t imagined them, after all. They were real.

The drawings were dated. Aidan had told her they always dated their work. The dates told quite clearly that the pictures had been drawn prior to the attacks.

Rachel sank back on her heels, the drawings in her lap. What were these sketches doing taped to the back of Joseph’s canvas? What did they have to do with him?

She should show the drawings to all of them, to prove that she knew more about art, after all, than they’d thought. But what about Joseph? He must have forgotten where he’d put the sketches. It would be foolish, even crazy, to let him know she’d found them. Rachel lifted her head. Joseph was off to her left, busily wrapping. Samantha was with him, holding a finger over the twine so Joseph could tie a sturdy knot.

He doesn’t look like a killer, Rachel thought as she slowly refolded the drawings, slipped them back inside their envelope, and thrust the envelope into the shoulder bag lying at her feet.

But then, Rachel Seaver had never met a killer before and therefore couldn’t be a good judge of exactly what one should look like.

She tried to picture Joseph inside that long, black-hooded cape, diving toward Ted on the riverbank, shoving Milo down the fire escape. There was something not quite right about the image.

Rachel couldn’t take her eyes off Joseph. The possibility that all this time when she’d believed that she was safe, here in the art building with friends, the killer had been only a few feet away from her, chilled her to the bone.

Joseph? A killer? But he looked … he looked so normal!

“We’re done!” Samantha said triumphantly, turning away from Joseph. “That’s it. Everything is wrapped or boxed.” She groaned. “Now all we have to do is load up all this stuff.”

“You said we could look for Paloma,” Rachel reminded her. She should do something about Joseph. She should make them all aware of the danger in their midst. But how? The first and most important thing was to get Joseph out of the building.

“Oh, sure. Of course. But listen, we don’t all need to hunt for her, right?”

“Sure,” Rachel said. “Joseph and Rudy can start loading and the rest of us can hunt down Paloma.” She had no qualms about leaving Rudy alone with Joseph. Rudy could take care of himself.

“Good idea,” Aidan said, as Joseph and Rudy moved to pick up several wrapped paintings.

“We should split up,” Bibi suggested. “Sam and I will take the studios on the ninth floor, Rachel and Aidan the tenth.”

Splitting up wasn’t at all what Rachel had had in mind. “No, wait!” she hissed, afraid Joseph would hear her. “I need to talk to all of you. When Joseph leaves …”

But Bibi and Samantha had already pushed the button to close the doors.

Rachel heard laughing behind her. Thoroughly annoyed with Bibi, she turned around.

Joseph, hefting a handful of paintings, stopped laughing when he saw the look on Rachel’s face. “Better get up there,” he said, nodding toward the elevator. “Time’s running out.”

It sounded perfectly innocent.

But Rachel couldn’t help wondering if his words held a message, just for her. A reminder that this Sunday was flying by at astonishing, terrifying speed.

And that this Sunday was supposed to be her last.

T
HE MINUTE THE DOORS
closed, Aidan began pressuring Rachel about the mask. “When we find Paloma,” he said, one arm wrapped around her shoulders, “we’ll send them all off to the mall. We’ll have the place to ourselves and we can take our time with the mask. Come on, Rachel, we’re not going to have another chance like this again.”

Rachel pulled away from him. “I already told you, I’m not going to do it.” She reached around to her side for her shoulder bag. When she showed him the sketches Joseph had made, he’d forget all about the mask.

But all her hand found at her side was the edge of her T-shirt. The shoulder bag wasn’t there.

Rachel sagged against the wall of the elevator. She knew exactly where the purse was. She had left it lying on the floor. Right where Joseph could see it … pick it up … look inside to see whose it was … and find the envelope. He would open it, see the sketches, know that Rachel had found them. And that she now knew the identity of the deadly artist.

She had to get to that purse before Joseph did. “Aidan, stop the elevator.
Stop
it!”

Aidan’s handsome face reflected his annoyance with her over her refusal to do the mask. “Stop it? This is not a bus, Rachel. You can’t just get off anytime you want. I pushed ten, and ten is where the elevator will stop.”

“Then press another button!” she shouted. “I have to get off!” Without waiting for Aidan to act, Rachel lunged forward and stabbed the button that said four.

“All right, all right. You don’t have to get off. I’ll stop bugging you about the mask.”

The elevator shuddered to a halt.

Rachel dove for the doors. “It’s not the mask. I’ll meet you upstairs. I’ll explain then.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Aidan said.

Rachel knew he was annoyed. She also knew there was no time to explain now. She had to get downstairs. She ran for the stairway door. The thought of another stairwell made her stomach turn over, but waiting for the other elevator would take too long.

It wasn’t as if she’d be downstairs alone with Joseph. Rudy would be there. Anyway, she was just going to grab her purse and run for the stairs.