Trust Me (23 page)

“Unbelievable,” Carly said. “What about the old guy, Jack?”

“He died almost ten years ago. We were never really friends, but I respected him. And I made sure that his investment in me
paid off. He spent the last years of his life relaxing at home with his grandkids while I turned his business into the biggest
chain of electronics stores in the Northeast.”

He nodded slightly, to himself, as if he was confirming it.
He has a right to be proud
, Carly thought. Alan Tremayne had started with everything and turned it into nothing. Max Giordano had done the opposite.
“Max, do you remember when you came storming into my clinic and I told you—very self-righteously, I’m afraid—that I hoped
you hadn’t missed your chance to know your grandfather?”

His pale gray eyes narrowed. “Yes. Why?”

“Because now I also hope that Henry will have a chance to know you. I think that he would consider it an honor to call you
his grandson.”

Max’s mouth compressed, and he looked away. “We’ll see.”

Carly reached out and put a gentle hand on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat under her fingers, and he tensed as she
touched him. He glanced back, his eyes meeting hers, then he reached up and took her hand away. He held it for a moment, looking
down at it, running his thumb over her palm as if he could read her future there. Then he exhaled and released her.

“I should go,” he said abruptly, and stood up.

“Now?” Carly was dismayed. “But you said that you wanted to talk to me.”

He shook his head and picked up his suit jacket. “It’s nothing. Another time.”

“Are you sure?” Carly stood up, too. She thought about throwing her body between Max and the door, then decided that it might
make her look desperate. Which she was, but she didn’t want him to know that.

She was able to keep herself under reasonable control until she heard the sound of Max’s car pulling away from the curb. Then
she picked up the spoon he had been using, and—suddenly empathizing with Edie—flung it at the wall. “Damn, damn, damn!”

The spoon clattered to the floor, leaving a sticky chocolate mark on the plaster. Carly looked unhappily at it. “It’s nothing?”
she exclaimed, out loud to the empty room. “Nothing? What does that mean?
What
is nothing?”

The room did not answer. But there was a growling, scrabbling sound coming from her bedroom, and Carly thought of the beautiful
wooden armoire that her parents had given her for her college graduation.

“Okay,” she muttered, and walked toward the kitchen. Because of Edie’s habit of bringing in strays, she had started keeping
a stock of veterinary supplies at home. She had everything that she needed to do a basic physical exam, including the standard
vaccinations.

“Nero, my friend,” she said. “Tonight is your lucky night. For lack of anything better to do, Dr. Martin is going to give
you a rabies shot.”

W
hen Max arrived at the mansion on Wednesday evening, Carly’s white van—her official house-call transportation— was parked
in the driveway. It was quiet in the front hall, and the absence of a mob of dogs skidding forward to greet him suggested
that either they were still outside or they were currently being fed. The living room held the usual assortment of dozing
cats, some of whom glanced disinterestedly at him from their spots on the velvet-upholstered furniture. One yawned. Max ignored
them right back. It wasn’t that he disliked cats, he thought, it was just that he didn’t particularly like them. It seemed
to him that an animal ought to show some gratitude for being housed and fed in royal style, but they seemed to expect it as
their due. A dog like Lola at least made an effort to be friendly. When you scratched her head in just the right spot, she
would gaze up at you so adoringly that you felt as if you were the greatest person on earth. He reminded himself that he didn’t
particularly like dogs, either. But he could understand why some people did.

He heard the muffled sounds of Carly and Pauline talking in the kitchen, and the accompanying clatter of dishes suggested
that it was feeding time. Instead of walking down the hall to join them, he stood, arms folded, contemplating the staircase.
The front hall was dim, even in the yellow light from the grand chandelier. It was a funeral parlor atmosphere, Max thought
suddenly, with distaste. He walked over to the row of tall windows and began to pull open the heavy velvet drapes.

Warm evening light flooded the hall and the living room, illuminating the wooden paneling and the rich colors of the carpets.
In the sunshine, the rooms appeared shabbier than they did in the forgiving incandescent glow. The fabric on the chairs was
threadbare and faded, and although the total effect was that of genteel disrepair, the house suddenly seemed less grandly
intimidating.

The cats, annoyed by the disruption, turned as one to glare at him as he walked back through the living room toward the staircase.
The huge Persian carpet in the front hall was one of the only things not diminished by the natural light; on the contrary,
the soft pinks and purples of the intricate design seemed to glow. Max looked down at it, impressed. His own tastes tended
toward the modern, but a piece like this showed by example why so many people were fanatical about antiques.

He frowned as his eyes picked out a discolored spot. It was irregular, about the size of a silver dollar, and it could only
be the place where Henry’s head had been lying when Pauline had found him. Max squatted for a closer look. Pauline had done
an admirable job of getting the blood out of the fragile wool, but you couldn’t use strong cleaning agents on a carpet this
old and valuable, and the shadow of the bloodstain remained. It was only evident in the light, and even then, only if you
were looking for it.

Max ran his hand over the spot, feeling the soft nap of the carpet as he glanced around, searching for the mysterious blunt
object. At that point, he would have given his fortune for a decorative bell, or an urn filled with carved fruit, casually
placed by the side of the staircase. Anything, he thought, to avoid having to conclude that Henry’s “accident” had not been
an accident at all. But there was nothing in the hall to set his mind at ease.

The problem with the idea of someone silently creeping up behind Henry and hitting him in the head, Max thought, was that
it was almost impossible to creep anywhere silently in this house. He walked slowly forward, and—as if in agreement—the wooden
floor creaked loudly under his weight. It occurred to him that he had never asked Carly whether Henry was hard of hearing.
If so, then it might have been possible for someone to catch him unawares.

He heard footsteps coming down the hall from the kitchen, then Carly’s voice.

“Hello?” she called. “Is someone… oh, Max. I didn’t know you were here.”

“The drapes,” Pauline exclaimed, bringing up the rear. She looked disapprovingly at the drawn-back velvet and the tall, bright
windows. “That sun will fade the furniture. I’d hate for it to be ruined while poor Henry is away.”

In Max’s opinion, it was already too late for the furniture. Also, he thought, any man who really cared about his upholstery
would not keep twenty-three cats.

“Now, look at that,” Pauline said disapprovingly, as she saw some specks of dust exposed by the sunlight. She hurried into
the living room to fuss over the polished wood.

“Did Henry have a hearing problem?” Max asked Carly.

She shook her head. “Not that I know of. Why?”

“Hearing problem!” Pauline said indignantly from the other room, demonstrating that she had no such handicap. “Mr. Max, why
would you think a thing like that?”

Since Pauline was addressing him, Max turned to her. “Has anything been removed from this area in the past few weeks?”

“I remove the cats every day,” Pauline said, casting a dark look over the assemblage of felines. “Every single day. But
someone
always forgets to keep the hall door closed, and so they come right back. It doesn’t seem right to me to have cats in the
front parlor. There really should be one nice room for guests.”

She flapped her hands ineffectually at the cats. Max saw a furtively guilty expression cross Carly’s face.

“Well,” Carly said, weakly. “I’ll… remind the teenagers about that. They can be a little forgetful.”

“Very forgetful,” Pauline said.

Max cleared his throat. “I’m talking about something that would have been on the floor near the base of the stairs. Something
that was there on the night of the accident but isn’t there now.”

“What kind of thing?” Pauline looked blank.

“Something about the size of a tennis ball but hard. Or something that has a piece like that attached to it. A sculpture.
Or a doorstop. Or a rock.”

Sudden comprehension registered on Carly’s face, but she said nothing. He saw her glance curiously around the entry hall.
Pauline continued to stare at him as if he had gone crazy.

“A rock?” she repeated disdainfully.

“What about cleaning equipment?” Max did not personally own a vacuum cleaner, hadn’t used one in ten years, and didn’t even
have a clear idea of what one looked like, but a machine like that might have some kind of protrusion, and if it had been
at the foot of the stairs, maybe Henry had tripped, fallen, and hit his head on it…

“I do not leave cleaning equipment lying around the house,” Pauline said, with finality, and Max had no doubt that it was
true.

“Well,” he said, “if you think of anything—”

“I’m sure that I’ll let you know if I do.” Injured dignity suffused the housekeeper’s voice. “But I’ll tell you right now,
Mr. Max, I do not leave
anything
lying around. Anywhere.” She shot a final disgusted look at the reclining cats and marched off toward the kitchen.

“Max,” said Carl from behind him, “look at this.”

He turned. She was kneeling on the carpet, about halfway between the foot of the stairs and the front door, staring down at
something. He joined her in two quick strides. Crouching down beside her, he saw it immediately: a rusty spot the size of
a pencil eraser. Blood.

This spot had not been washed out, and the carpet fibers were stuck together with the dried substance. It was almost camouflaged
by the floral design. Without the improved light, it would have been invisible. Even so, it took sharp eyes to pick it out
from a standing position.

“What the hell… ?” Max said in a low voice. There was no reason why a bloodstain should be there, more than ten feet from
where Henry had fallen. He ran his hands all around the area, feeling for another rough spot, searching with his eyes for
another stain. He found nothing.

One single drop. Not a spray, or a smear, but a round drop, as if it had fallen from a height. It was the kind of mark that
you would leave every few feet if you cut your finger, then hurried, bleeding, to the kitchen for a bandage. Not a lot of
blood, but Henry’s injury had produced only a small cut on his scalp, despite the damage it had done to his skull. Max’s heart
was pounding. He crawled forward, toward the front door, scanning the carpet, and a few feet farther along, he found another
drop.

The front door was just ahead, and he rose quickly to his feet and reached for the handle. He pulled open the door and stepped
outside, with Carly right on his heels.

Outside the door, the flagstone path was bordered by low ornamental hedges and manicured camellia bushes. Nestled into the
greenery, flanking the front door, were the two stone gargoyles, their wide-fanged mouths stretched into grimaces that could
be either snarl or grin. They sat on their haunches, their tails tucked up behind them, as if they were ready to spring on
any unwelcome visitor. Their tails tucked up…

Max swore under his breath. The creatures had been carved with long, swishing tails ending in improbable forks, but the sculptor
had attempted to capture a sense of motion by depicting the appendages as if they had been frozen midlash. The result was
a protrusion from each gargoyle’s backside that resembled the bobbed tail of a Rottweiler. Rounded, fist-sized, and at the
height of Max’s shin, that lump of stone would deliver a terrible impact to any person unlucky enough to slip and hit his
head on it.

Carly saw what he was staring at and made a soft sound of surprise. “He fell out here?”

Max turned to face the front door, calculating the trajectory of a falling body. If Henry had been standing a few feet in
front of the door, in the middle of the walkway, and somehow lost his footing, he could indeed have fallen backward and struck
his head against one of the gargoyles. He knelt to examine the statue on the left. There were no marks anywhere on the stone,
and he was about to turn to check the other statue when, suddenly, his eye caught something. He sucked in his breath in a
sharp hiss.

“What?” Carly was hovering over him, trying to see.

He pointed. “Blood,” he said. “On the camellia.”

It was a small spatter, but it was unmistakable: dots sitting darkly on a few glossy leaves, almost at ground level. The position
of the plant, behind the statue and under the eaves of the house, had protected it from the light rainfalls of the past few
weeks.