Midnight Voices (14 page)

CHAPTER 16

“Your mother’s getting old,” Caroline sighed as she handed Ryan one of the shopping bags filled with fabric and wallpaper samples, paint chips, and catalogs that were heaped around her feet, immobilizing her to the point where she couldn’t even get out of the taxi. “Take some of these, okay? I’m stuck.” Ryan pulled two of the bags out of the cab, and Laurie got three more, and finally Caroline had enough room to escape the confines of the car’s tight backseat. As she paid the driver, she decided that maybe next time she’d take Tony’s advice and simply call his car service.

Their
car service, she reminded herself. This morning, when she and the kids had set off on their shopping expedition, the idea of hiring a car for the day had seemed like a ludicrous expense. And through the morning, when the weather had been perfect, she’d thought she’d been right. But after lunch the day had heated up and the air had turned humid, and the shopping bags they were all carrying had gotten heavier and heavier. Finally, when they all knew they couldn’t carry the bags even one more block, she’d given up and hailed a cab, and spent the long crawl through rush-hour traffic wishing she’d taken Tony’s advice. Compared to the cramped Chevy, a Lincoln Towncar would have seemed like heaven. But they were home now, and Rodney was helping Ryan and Laurie get the overflowing bags into the building, and even though she was almost exhausted from the shopping expedition, the worst of it was over. All they had to do now was decide what they liked best.

Maybe the worst wasn’t over after all, she reflected, remembering the number of times either she or Laurie had declared something “perfect” only to find something better in the next shop. Even Ryan had changed his mind three times, shifting from western décor (morning) to
Star Wars
(afternoon) to “wouldn’t it look neat to have stars on the ceiling that glowed at night?” (the cab ride home).

“Can I take my bags up and show them to Rebecca?” Laurie asked as the elevator jerked to a stop at the fifth floor.

“Just make sure you’re back in an hour. Dinner’s already going to be late.” A moment later—with all the bags except Laurie’s strewn around the elevator, she was fumbling for her key when the door to the apartment opened and Tony appeared, surrounded by the smell of food cooking.

“You look like you could use some help.” A few minutes later the shopping bags were inside, Ryan was upstairs in his room, and she and Tony were in the kitchen, where she sat at the kitchen table with a glass of Fume Blanc while Tony tended the various pots that were on the stove, and the two ovens, both of which were being used.

“I must have died and gone to heaven,” she said, gazing at the kitchen that, except for the pots that were actually being used, was spotless. When Brad cooked—and spaghetti had tested the outer limits of his culinary skills—the kitchen was always a disaster, which he’d invariably left for her to clean up. “What on earth have you been cooking? And how are we supposed to eat all of it?”

“Escargot followed by poached salmon for us. With a Caesar salad, summer squash, and couscous in a light curry.”

“For us? Don’t the kids get to eat?”

“Macaroni and cheese for Ryan. I’ve never met a kid yet who was crazy about poached salmon. I figure Laurie can have her choice.”

“And no mess.”

Tony shrugged. “It’s just as easy to clean it up as you go along. So how did it go? Everybody happy?”

“Do you hear anyone complaining?” She started to get up. “The least I can do is set the table.”

“Done,” Tony told her. “We’re eating in the dining room—no point in having all this space if we don’t use it. Sit, relax, and be waited on. We’ve got about half an hour.”

“I’d better call the Albions. I told Laurie to be back in an hour.”

Tony shrugged unconcernedly and refilled her wineglass. “Let her have a good time. Everything will hold. We should still have plenty of time.”

Caroline cocked her head, frowning uncertainly. “Time? For what? For dinner?”

Now it was Tony who looked puzzled. “My board meeting?” When Caroline still appeared mystified, he tilted his head toward the calendar that was held to the refrigerator door with a magnet. “The co-op board?” he asked. “On the calendar? Nine o’clock? Tonight?” He chuckled softly. “And here I thought I was being so helpful, putting the calendar out where you couldn’t miss it.” He pulled the sheet of paper out from under the magnet and handed it to her. “Maybe we’d better find a better place for it.”

“Or I’ll just remember to look at it from now on,” she said, staring at the entry for nine o’clock that night.

Tony’s eyes clouded. “You didn’t make any other plans, did you? I can probably get out of the meeting—”

Caroline shook her head. “It’s fine.” Getting up, she put the calendar back on the refrigerator, then went and slipped her arms around Tony’s neck. “Just a matter of getting used to living with someone else,” she murmured, nuzzling his neck. “Except for the kids, I’m a little out of practice.”

Tony’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her closer. “Maybe I should dump the meeting anyway,” he whispered. “Right now, I’m not even sure I want dinner.”

Caroline pulled away. “Now, now. You said everything would hold, but I’m not sure it would hold that long. And there’ll be plenty of time after your meeting. And after the kids have gone to bed. So let’s see if you hold as well as dinner.”

Everything did hold. For an hour. And it might have held longer, had Caroline thought before she’d spoken. But by the time she realized her mistake, it was too late. “Isn’t this incredible?” she asked as they went into the dining room. The table was set with sterling silver and linen napkins, and a pair of candelabra added to the glow of the chandelier whose crystals refracted a soft light throughout the room. The food was on the table, the salmon perfectly poached, the macaroni and cheese browned and still bubbling. “Tony did it all. Can you believe it?”

In an instant Ryan’s expression clouded. “I hate macaroni and cheese,” he announced.

“Then you can have some fish,” Caroline replied, glancing quickly at Tony. “You can have anything you want.”

“I want spaghetti,” Ryan said. He turned toward Tony, and when he spoke again, Caroline could hear the challenge in his voice. “My dad made the best spaghetti you ever tasted.”

Caroline opened her mouth to say something, but Tony spoke first. “I wish I’d gotten to try it. And how do you know you hate my macaroni and cheese when you haven’t even tried it?”

“I know,” Ryan insisted. He turned to his mother. “Do I have to eat this?”

Caroline hesitated, then made up her mind. It was now, or never. “Yes,” she said. “You do. You at least have to taste it.” For a second she thought he was going to refuse, but then he picked up his spoon, reached out and plunged it into the macaroni and cheese, blew on the steaming spoonful of pasta, and finally stuck it in his mouth.

“There. I tasted it, all right? And I hate it.” Getting up from the table, he walked out of the dining room and slammed the door behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Caroline said, getting to her feet and starting after her son, but once again, as he had in the kitchen, Tony stopped her.

“I’ll take care of this,” he said quietly. “It seems like I’m the one he has a problem with, so I’m the one that had better go talk to him.”

Without waiting for a reply, he followed Ryan out of the dining room. Heading up the stairs, he walked down the hall to Ryan’s closed door, and knocked softly.

No response.

He rapped harder. “May I come in?”

A single muffled word came through the thick wood: “No!”

Tony tried the knob, found the door locked, and reached into his pocket. A few seconds later he twisted the key in the lock, opened the door, and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

Ryan glared at him from the bed. “This is my room,” he said. “You can’t come in here.”

Tony moved across the room. “This may be your room, but this is my apartment, and I shall go where I please.” His eyes locked onto Ryan’s, and his voice took on a hard edge. “And perhaps your father allowed you to act this way, but I shall not.”

“I don’t have to do what you say,” Ryan said, but the tremble in his voice betrayed the fear that was suddenly building inside him.

Tony Fleming sat down on the bed and laid his hand heavily on the boy’s shoulder. “You and I,” he said so softly that Ryan had to strain to hear his words, “can get along very well. I like you, Ryan. I really do.” His fingers tightened on Ryan’s shoulder the way they had earlier clamped onto his wrist. His voice dropped even lower, and his eyes bored into the boy’s. “But I do not like the way you are behaving. I do not like the way you’re talking, either to me, or to your mother.”

“I don’t have—” But before he could finish what he was saying, Anthony’s fingers closed even tighter, turning Ryan’s words into a squeal of pain.

“You have to do exactly what I tell you,” Tony instructed him. “Whether you like it or not, I am your stepfather, and you are living in my home. You can make this a good thing for yourself, or a bad thing for yourself. But you are not going to do anything—or say anything—that is going to upset your mother. Is that clear?”

A shiver went through Ryan as he looked up into his stepfather’s eyes. They had gone dead flat, and something about their emptiness frightened him far more than anything Anthony Fleming had said. He nodded mutely.

“Good.” Tony Fleming’s hand dropped away from Ryan’s shoulder. “Then let’s go back downstairs, and enjoy our dinner.”

Understanding that his stepfather’s words were not a suggestion but a command, Ryan got up from the bed and followed Tony Fleming back to the dining room. But for the rest of the evening, he spoke not another word.

“Did you have a good talk with Tony?” Caroline asked as she said goodnight to him a couple of hours later.

Ryan wanted to tell her exactly what had happened, wanted to show her where his stepfather’s fingers had dug into his shoulder. But even as the words formed in his mind, he remembered the strange dead look he’d seen in Tony’s eyes, and knew he would tell his mother nothing. “Yes,” he whispered. “It was okay.”

“Then everything’s fine,” Caroline said, bending down and kissing Ryan’s forehead.

The light clicked off.

His mother left the room.

And Ryan was left alone in the dark, certain that despite his mother’s words, everything was not fine at all.

CHAPTER 17

The man across the street from Andrea Costanza’s building was almost invisible in the darkness of the unlit doorway of a small cutlery shop that had closed hours earlier, its windows protected by roll-down shutters, its door by a heavy iron accordion grille that was securely fastened with a heavy padlock. The street was quiet—no one had passed by in the last fifteen minutes, and only a single taxi had appeared, dropping its fare three doors down, then continuing on its way. Several times the man had left the doorway to walk along the sidewalk, checking the building from every angle.

An old building, eight floors.

No doorman.

An outer door leading to a vestibule where there was a bank of mailboxes, a panel of buttons, and a small speaker.

No security camera, at least not that he could see.

According to the panel of buzzers, Andrea Costanza lived on the fifth floor, in Apartment E.

He’d watched the building for half an hour. No one had entered; no one left. Then, in the space of ten minutes, seven people had arrived: two couples, then three single people. All of them had pressed a buzzer about a third of the way down the panel.

Ten minutes later, the man crossed the street, pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, entered the vestibule and quickly punched four of the buzzers.

As the speaker crackled to life and an annoyed voice demanded to know who was there, the inner door buzzed and the man pulled it open and stepped through. A moment later it closed behind him, cutting off the sound of the voice that was still crackling through the speaker.

Ignoring the elevator, the man found the staircase and started upward. Coming to the fifth floor, he paused, listening. He could hear nothing.

He opened the fire door a crack, and listened again.

Still nothing.

He opened it a little further, and peered out. The corridor was empty.

The man could count six doors from where he stood, but the identifying letters on them were invisible. He would have no choice but to leave the shelter of the stairwell, even if only for a few seconds. But still he lingered, like a skittish animal that senses danger nearby, but can’t quite identify its source. He was just about to slip out into the hallway, when suddenly he froze. For a second he wasn’t even sure why he’d stopped, but then he heard it—a faint clanking sound. A second after that, he knew what it was: the elevator. Fading back into the stairwell, he pulled the door nearly shut, and waited. The sound grew louder, then suddenly stopped. He could hear the door being opened, but it was muffled enough that he knew the elevator had stopped on another floor.

A moment later the sound started again, and began receding as the elevator began its descent back to the lobby.

Now!

The man pulled the fire door open, slipped through, and moved quickly down the hall. Apartment E was the third one down, on the backside of the building.

Perfect.

Less than a quarter of a minute after he’d left the fire stairs, the man was back in their shelter, and once again climbing. When he came to the top he paused again, this time to pull a black ski mask from the pocket of his coat. Pulling the ski mask on, he opened the door and stepped out onto the roof.

Andrea Costanza glared at the screen of the little notebook computer she’d set up on her kitchen table. She’d already called Nate Rosenberg three times, and he’d walked her through all the steps that should have gotten her connected to her computer at the office, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t make it work.

“Do you want me to come over?” Nate asked the last time she called.

“No, I don’t want you to come over,” Andrea replied more harshly than she should have. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at me, and I’m mad at that quack you seem to think so highly of, and I’m really, really mad at this dumb computer. I’m sure it’s something perfectly simple, and I’ll feel like a complete idiot tomorrow when you show me what I’m doing wrong. I think I’m just going to give it up, turn on the TV, and veg out for the rest of the evening. See you tomorrow.”

She’d fed Chloe, who’d expressed her usual amount of contempt for the dog food Andrea insisted on feeding her just because she happened to be a dog, and fixed her own supper, which she ate under Chloe’s accusatorial gaze, resisting the temptation to share even the smallest part of her meal with her pet.

“Feed her human food, and kill her,” the vet had warned. “Schnauzers have weak kidneys, and if you give her nothing but kibble, she’ll be fine. Anything else, and she’ll wag her tail right up until the day she dies. Which won’t take long.”

So she’d gone through the dinner ritual, with Chloe ignoring her bowl of kibble as long as there was any hope at all of begging a scrap from her mistress, then munching discontentedly while Andrea did up the dishes.

After she cleaned up the dishes, she snapped on the TV, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t concentrate.

The computer wouldn’t let her.

She shut it off and put it away, but ten minutes later she had it set up again on the coffee table in front of the sofa, and was endlessly repeating everything Nate Rosenberg had instructed her to do.

She called a help line, made her way through the endless tree that was supposed to save time, and sat on hold for forty-five minutes before finally talking to a man who quickly demonstrated that he knew even less about computers than she did.

Going back to the control panel, she stared stupidly at the icons that seemed to hold less and less meaning with every minute that went by.
Just forget it,
she told herself.
Just put it away, and do something else.
But even as she formed the words in her mind, she was already clicking on an icon, and suddenly there it was: a box asking her to enter her password.

When Chloe began whining, Andrea was so close to achieving her goal that she ignored the little dog until Chloe suddenly jumped up next to her mistress, planted her paws on the back of the sofa, and began to bark at the open window behind Andrea.

“For heaven’s sake, Chloe,” Andrea said, her eyes still fastened to the screen of the notebook. “There’s nothing out—”

But even as she spoke the words she saw a faint shadow pass across the screen, and she felt her skin crawl as she knew that there was, indeed, something beyond the window.

She started to turn, but it was already too late. A powerful arm slipped around her neck from the left, and she started to scream.

For the second time, she was an instant too late. The arm jerked her backward, forcing her against the back of the sofa, and closing her throat so quickly that the only sound that escaped was a muted gasp of surprise.

Her hands came up, her fingers closing on the arm, and she began thrashing, trying to free herself.

The arm held her fast, and she felt her lungs begin to burn.

Chloe’s barking had faded to a whimper, and she’d scuttled off the couch to cower against the far wall, her eyes fastened on her mistress, her body pressed to the floor. Andrea tried to reach out toward the little dog, but now her vision was blurring, and she felt her limbs weakening as her blood ran out of oxygen. With her vision starting to fail, she reached back, trying to gouge the face of her attacker, but all she felt was some kind of soft material.

The burning in her lungs worsened, and her arms fell away from the man’s head as all her instincts focused on escaping from the crushing pressure on her throat. She clawed frantically, scratching at the heavy material that covered the imprisoning arm, but even as she struggled, she felt the last of her strength ebbing away.

I’m going to die,
she thought. Suddenly she felt the man’s right hand on the side of her head, cupping her ear.
I’m going to die right here in—

With a quick, hard shove, the man snapped Andrea Costanza’s neck, and in an instant her hands dropped away from his arm and her body went limp.

The man held on to Andrea’s lifeless body for nearly another full minute. Only when he was certain that she was dead did he release her from his grip, and her body collapsed on the sofa like a broken doll, her arms flopped by her side, her head lolling on her shoulder. Except for the odd angle at which her head was turned, she could almost have fallen asleep.

The man, having never fully entered the room at all, eased the window to the fire escape closed, and quickly began climbing back toward the roof.

An unnatural stillness fell over the apartment, and for a long time Chloe stayed where she was, her eyes fixed on her mistress’s lifeless body. Finally she rose to her feet and padded across the floor toward Andrea. She put her forepaws on the sofa and began licking at Andrea’s hand, then climbed up to lick at her face. Only when she was exhausted from her efforts to bring her mistress back to life did the little dog finally press herself close to Andrea’s body, curl herself into a tight ball, and fall into a restless sleep.

On the floor below, the party went on, no one having seen or heard anything at all.