The Dark of Summer

her from here on out — and I'll be damned glad to get this over with a day early.”

“You think she'll crack tonight?” he asked.

“With what Penny is going to do to her?” Elaine asked. “There just isn't any doubt, so far as I can see. She's on the verge of a complete breakdown already. She hasn't the will power to refuse a sleeping pill any more, and she seems even anxious to sleep. With tonight's little show, she's going to lose what control she has. By the end of the summer, you'll have been appointed to manage her trust.”

“I think so too,” he said. “Well, you get back to her, while I tell Groves what's going on.”

“Then you can be ready tonight?” Barnaby asked.

Penny Groves stubbed out her cigarette and said, “I'm ready right now, as far as that goes.”

“Nervous?”

Groves answered for her: “Penny and I are professionals; we're never nervous about a performance.”

“Good. Tonight, then.”

Elaine came back into the room and dropped the bottle of sleeping pills into the pocket of her bellbottom slacks, the top still screwed on tight. She fluffed Gwyn's two pillows, straightened the covers and said, “Now, you try to rest, dear.”

Gwyn looked at the bulge in Elaine's pocket made by the medicine bottle, looked at the empty nightstand and said, “But don't I get a sleeping pill to help me?”

She could feel the dreams receding, growing cold, streaking out of her reach…

“Dr. Cotter said that you're not to have too many of them,” Elaine said, making up a convenient lie.

“One more won't hurt.”

“Doctor knows best.”

“But I can't sleep without them.”

“Just rest, then, dear.”

“But—”

“Really, Gwyn, it'll be best to wait until tonight, at bedtime, before taking another. Now, if you close your eyes and don't worry yourself about the pills, I'm sure you'll doze off.”

Gwyn was not so certain about that. She was so exhausted that her weariness was no longer a contributing factor to her sleep, but an obstacle to it. Her eyes, though gritty and burning with fatigue, would not stay shut, but popped open like shutters if she hadn't the tablet to help them stay down.

“Oh, by the way,” Elaine said, “Will and I are supposed to go out this evening, for a dreadful little business dinner with associates. It's not going to be much fun, so if you—”

“Oh, no!” Gwyn said, rising up onto one elbow. “Don't stay at home because of me. You've done too much of that already. Besides, I'm feeling much better than I was.”

“You haven't been hallucinating again, have you?” Elaine asked, delicately. “No — ghosts?”

“None,” Gwyn said, forcing a smile. That wasn't too much of a lie, really. In two days, the only encounter she'd had with the ghost was the short visitation the night before, when it had attempted to get her to take an overdose of sleeping pills. Her visions were tapering off.

“I thought you hadn't,” Elaine said. “But I wanted to hear it from you before I decided whether we should leave the house tonight. Well, if you're sure you'll be okay, I'll tell Will not to cancel out on the dinner.”

“I'm fine,” Gwyn assured her, not feeling fine at all. However, now her ailments seemed physical more than mental, and she could cope with that— she thought.

“Also, if it's okay with you,” Elaine said, “I'll tell Grace to make you a supper that can be heated, then give her and Fritz the night off so they can take in a show they've been wanting to see.”

“I'll do fine on my own,” Gwyn said.

“Oh, I wouldn't leave you entirely alone,”

Elaine said. “Ben will be in the house. He'll look in on you from time to time, and he can give you your sleeping tablet around eleven.”

In the downstairs study, when he had finished talking with Penny and Ben, William Barnaby removed one of the watercolors from the wall, revealing a small safe, which he opened with a few deft twists of the combination dial. Inside the safe were a few important papers, most of which were only duplicates of others he kept in a safety deposit box downtown. There was also a savings account passbook and a neatly bound bundle of cash.

He took out the passbook first and looked at the bottom figure: $21,567. It was a pitiful amount, for it represented the last immediately available funds of what had once been a multi-million dollar fortune… So much money had gone down the drain in the last decade or so. Of course, he and Elaine enjoyed living high; but there had also been a few real estate deals that hadn't panned out like he'd thought they would. He had almost a million tied up in seafront property now, of course. But unless he was able to get the money to develop that land as he intended, he would lose considerably when he resold it.

Angry and nervous, he shoved the passbook into the safe again, took out the bundle of cash. It contained slightly more than seven thousand dollars in small bills. He peeled off two thousand dollars to pay Morby, thought a moment and then added another five hundred as a bonus. Morby might be expecting an extra thousand, but he wouldn't turn the job down if he got only half that much.

Barnaby returned the remainder of the cash to the safe, closed the small, round metal door, spun the dial, tugged on the chromium handle to be sure that it was locked, lifted the watercolor from the floor and hung it where it had been.

He went to the bar cabinet behind his desk, got out a bottle of Scotch whiskey and poured himself a double shot: neat, with no ice and no water. He drank it down fast, for he needed the boost it gave him. It was a busy afternoon — and it was going to be an even busier evening…

The rest of that day passed slowly for Gwyn. She dozed off and on, for ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch, waking each time with a start, not knowing what had frightened her, never fully recapturing her pleasant dreams of a life that never was and could never be. She tossed and murmured when she slept, skirting those desired dreams, coming even closer to horrid nightmares. When she was awake, her bones ached, and every joint felt arthritic. Her eyes were too tired to allow her to read; thus, the minutes ticked by in agonizing half-time.

She thought of asking for a pill again, but she knew that Elaine would say no. And she knew, too, that so much medicine, so much unnecessary sleep, was not good for her. Yet, she desired it…

Hour by hour, her nerves grew more frayed.

She began to think of Ginny again.

The ghost…

Her naps became fewer and farther between, only five minutes long now, and always turbulent. Each time that she woke from one of them, she remembered every detail of the mini-nightmare that plagued her. It was always the same one: she was by the sea, with the dead girl, being dragged into the crashing waters against her will, too weak to resist, too weak to cry out, most assuredly doomed…

BOOK FOUR

EIGHTEEN

A few minutes past eight o'clock that evening, Ben Groves knocked on Gwyn's bedroom door, then shouldered it open, bringing her supper on the familiar sickroom tray.

She sat up, aware that she was not looking her best, and she brushed self-consciously at her tangled yellow hair.