SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (43 page)

Sherilee was turning into an old, and not-very-much-requested hooker, having to take her trade from the street. But when Son first began going to her, she had been young, supple, and eager to please him. She did what was asked. She didn't question or show any disgust. Despite her age now, Son was not put off. He too was aging, his hairline receding, his jowls sagging a little more each year, the spare tire around his belly going as soft and cushiony as a feather mattress. He and Sherilee suited one another. He'd never start over with a young prostitute, one he'd have to teach the ropes. It was Sherilee all the way. They were like an old married couple. He might be a traveling-salesman husband, she his devoted and willing wife.

Except that he paid her. And he never spent the entire night in her bed.

She met him at the door of the deteriorating house she had bought with savings ten years before, when it looked quite a lot better—just as the two of them had—and stood aside as he strode into the dim entrance hall. She wore a thick quilted pink bathrobe that looked snagged all over the fabric, some of the quilting coming loose, threads hanging. She was freshly bathed—he could smell the Irish Spring soap she used—and her hair, just now showing silver at the crown, hung damply around her shoulders.

She was black. Not brown or cream or mocha, not high yellow, either. She was black as a midnight with no moon or stars, her skin reminiscent of those crude African carvings that were all the rage in the Sixties. Her forehead was wide and shiny, her eyes like black olives. She had full, purple-gray lips that sat in a pout on her face unless he asked her to smile. She never smiled on her own. She had said once, “What's to smile about? I got this life and it ain't got a happy goddamn smile in it.”

Son led the way down the hallway to the door that opened into her bedroom. He didn't relax until she had entered behind him and closed the door. There were no other inhabitants in the house, but he didn't like the door standing open, it made him feel vulnerable, as if someone might be spying. He checked the windows, saw the curtains were closed tightly, the shades drawn behind the curtains' sheer length.

He turned to her clothes closet, a walk-in one with mirrored sliding doors. He slid one side back and stepped inside the huge space. She already had the overhead light on for him in there. For the shape of the house and the smallness of her bedroom, the closet was out of proportion and well-built. A client had built it for her, taking over a bath and a portion of the hall to enlarge it to her specifications. It was twelve feet wide and twenty deep. Along each side of the closet hung her costumes. On the floor were arranged a multitude of shoes, from black patent-leather Baby Janes with straps, to white satin spike heels. Above the clothes ran a shelf down each side, and on these twin shelves were her hats, wigs, rolled belts that reminded Son of coiled snakes, corsages, veils, and other accessories that fit with her various costumes.

It smelled different in here compared to the bedroom and the rest of Sherilee's house. It smelled of cedar and lace, of leather and brass. An orange pomander hung from a ribbon in the center of the closet giving off hints of cinnamon and clove. The closet was a veritable potpourri of scent.

Son went to the back left of the hanging clothes and found first the dress. It was long, mid-calf, and flowered in an old blue and maroon print you did not see in fashion today. It had a long waist and a high collar of delicate lace. The bosom was pleated and would balloon over Sherilee's large, full breasts. It came with a fabric belt of the same print as the dress. He took it down from the hanger and laid it carefully over his arm.

He searched among the pairs of shoes for a match. “There,” she pointed out, coming to him. “Those will work.”

She was right. They were black and high-topped, button shoes with a small heel favored in the early part of the century. He lifted them and set them into her waiting hands.

“Wig?” she asked, raising one plucked eyebrow.

“Yes.” He reached overhead to the shelf for a gray wig cap of curls.

He sat on the side of the bed, hands folded, while she dressed for him.

She completed the picture by donning the wig, tucking her still damp hair beneath. She pointed to her dressing table where there were myriad cosmetics.

He shook his head no.

She took on an imperial attitude, moving around the room fussing with bottles and jars on the dressing table, closing the closet door, her black old-fashioned shoes tap-tapping every step she made. She completely ignored Son.

“Tell me what to do,” he said finally, tiring of watching how she moved, though she did it as well as any actress who knew her craft, stiffly, like a woman fighting with arthritis.

“Get up and make that bed.” She was in character, her eyes flinty and unyielding. Her hands rode her hips just beneath the belt.

“Don't spare me anything,” he instructed, standing to do as she ordered. “If I don't do it right . . .”

“You will do it right, my man. You will do it right, or I will strip your hide to the bone, do you hear me? Answer if you hear me, none of that mumbling and lollygagging the way you always do.”

“I hear you.” He had his back to her, trying to straighten the sheet. His tone had softened considerably. She was in charge now. He was free of responsibility; he need not do anything except what she told him to do. But he understood he must do it with infinite care and always be courteous.

“That's not how you make the spread lay. Take it off and do it again. Tuck it beneath the pillows. No! Fluff those pillows first, you stupid idiot!”

He peeled the plain white comforter from the bed and fluffed the pillows. He tucked the spread under them.

“That's better. That's much better.”

He turned, head down in submission. “What are you waiting for?” she asked and his head snapped up. “Go to the kitchen and bring the tea things.”

He hustled to the closed door and let himself out. In Sherilee's kitchen he almost lost the illusion. There were roaches here that scuttled across the dirty counter and the tea bags were crumpled in their box where she'd accidentally set a five-pound bag of sugar on top of the container.

He heard her calling imperiously from the middle of the house as the teapot heated. “If you don't hurry, I won't be responsible for my actions. Son? Do you hear me or are you deaf?” Sherilee was allowed to call him Son. In her house, that's who he was.

He answered her and hurriedly poured the water over two tea bags in the chipped china teapot. He arranged it all on a Hanna-Barbera-cartoon tray —the cups, the saucers, the sugar, the cream, the spoons—and he moved like a butler to her door again. “It's done,” he reported, elbowing open the door, stomaching the tray before him.

She was at the side of the door, peering down her strong, wide nose at him. She stood a good three inches taller than he and used that superior height during these scenes where she must dominate. “Is it hot?” she asked. “I didn't hear the kettle whistling. Did you even heat the water?”

He ducked his head as he set the tray on the bedside table. “I think it's all right.”

She sniffed and arched her neck just a few centimeters. “I'll trust you this one time.”

He poured their tea and they drank, Sherilee standing over him, sipping delicately from the cup. When the teapot was empty, she ordered him to take it back to the kitchen.

When he returned to the bedroom he knew what he would find. She was out of the dress, the shoes kicked off her bare feet, and she lay naked, pinned, legs spread, in the center of the made bed.

His lust was overpowering. She had done her part so well, excelled, actually. His erection throbbed and jittered as he flung off his clothes and jumped on top of the compliant woman. She was purple in more places than her lips, and he settled there, suckling her. She did not move or moan or show any response. If she did it ruined it for him. No matter what he did, how he tried exciting her, she lay wooden, her face a weathered black stone. When he couldn't withhold orgasm any longer, he straddled her body and rode her mercilessly, the covers bunching, the pillows falling to the floor, the headboard of the old wooden bed knocking crazily against the wall.

When he finished, slathered in their sweat, he slid off her and onto the floor, onto his knees. His head was buried in the mattress, his hands clenched over his scalp. He wept while she patted him, smoothing his hair down with her palm, shushing him the way she might a baby.

Exhausted, he stood and left the room for Sherilee's bathroom next to the kitchen, where he showered a long time. Tears, sweat, illusion and sickness all washed down the drain.

Dressed again, hair combed neatly, he met her in the hall by the front door. He handed over a hundred-dollar bill. She opened the door and he vanished down the steps into the night.

On Saturday nights he slept the sleep of the dead and the grateful. He never once woke on a Saturday night wondering if his mother needed him, if she were still breathing, if she might have died while he wasn't watching.

Not until morning did he wake, refreshed, ready to face another predictable week of torment.

Twelve

Charlene Brewster wandered through the rooms of the Shoreville Mansion, committing the pattern to heart. The house was as large as a dormitory or a detention center—the way Shadow had thought of it—and there were three floors to cover, a host of rooms to invade and memorize on the mental map Charlene drew painstakingly in her mind. She could not feel secure until she knew where every hall led, what every door opened upon.

It was just past dark. A sea fog had drifted in from the restless bay over the small back sloping lawn, and now it shrouded the mansion, sheeting every window with gray gossamer that shifted if you stood and watched it touch and withdraw from the window pane like a blind phantom. There was a chill on the place that came through the marble floors into Charlene's cornflower-blue slippers as she moved as quietly as possible through the house opening doors, standing to stare and remember, closing doors, and moving on.

Once, on the ground floor, while glancing around a room with French doors (all barred—every bit of glass in the house was barred), she thought as she turned away to leave that she saw a movement outside that was human in origin, not a waving aside of the prevalent fog. She paused and looked back over her shoulder as quickly as she could, straining her neck muscles. But no one was there, just the curtain of gray that coated all the great exterior of the house. She shook her head, admonishing herself for getting spooked for no good reason, and carried on, coasting along the cold white-and-black-tiled floors to another part of the house.

In the middle section of the mansion there had been built an open area, the windows rising for two stories until the ceiling curved overhead into huge squares of green glass to block the sun. A catwalk twelve feet from the bottom floor cut through this section, connecting the front of the house with the back. On either side of the railed concrete walkway, which resounded with her footsteps as she crossed, was the realization of dreams that someone must once have had (the dead man who had locked in the boys?), dreams an architect might have thought nightmarish to build.

To her left, Charlene glanced down at the brick-lined patio surrounding an Olympic-sized swimming pool shaped like a kidney. It had water in it, but neither she nor Shadow had yet taken a swim. The water was too cold, and they did not know how to operate the heater, or how to clean the pool if it became nasty. She could hear the drone of the water pumps, and a chlorine scent that made her nose wrinkle infiltrated the air along this section of the catwalk. Around the pool sat gaily colored chaise longues and deck chairs.

Charlene suddenly thought she heard the laughter and splashing of young boys—dozens of them —and the brave, reckless yell of a diver cannonballing from the highest of the diving boards. But she knew it was not so, it was her errant imagination, the way the movement she'd caught in the glass of the room with the French doors had been.

To Charlene's right was a maze of waist-high brick planters intended for an atrium garden. But they were empty now, the dead dirt still packed tight in the metal containers that lined the inside of the brick flowerboxes. Charlene knew she should descend and walk the mazes, discover their patterns, find her way in and out of them, but that was one part of the house she really disliked. She could not make herself approach it. She tried to see it alive, with plants, and flower blooms, and hanging vines weeping moisture from the pool on the other side of the catwalk, but all she could see were the zigs and zags of the walkways, and the chilling emptiness of the planters.

She moved on, her slippers making dry little pittypat sounds on the catwalk, and beyond the pool, glancing over at the barred windows there, she thought again she saw a figure mistily brushing up against the glass then withdrawing into the cocoon of fog that licked at the house. She stopped. She took a step to the rail and placed both hands on it, holding tightly, squinting and watching to see a reappearance of the figure. It was a man, she knew that much. A woman would not have such wide shoulders or wear a dark coat and a floppy wide-brimmed hat.

“What do you want?” she called out, and her voice echoed high up to the green panels of roof glass where it left behind an echo in her ears.

The figure did not appear twice so she hurried to the other side of the catwalk, but now she was beginning to shake, and she was sure she heard the voices of the children who had attended the parties around the pool area so long ago. They laughed . . .

at her?

. . . at nothing, and their bare feet slapped against wet brick, making sounds like firecrackers popping; they joshed one another and pushed and teased and splashed the water. They lived again, doing what they had done in this house on those nights of revelry that constituted the past.

Oh God, voices were coming back, surrounding her, and Charlene had to cover her ears with the heels of her hands; she had to close her eyes against this invasion, fighting to keep it away.