The Hellfire Club

collected as gathered. The FBI men followed Nora with blank eyes. She glared at Mr Shull. He blinked. Without altering her expression, Nora turned around and took in the room. It seemed at once charged with the presence of Natalie Weil and utterly empty of her. Mr Shull and Mr Hashim had been right: they were standing in a museum.

'Natalie make any phone calls that night?' Davey asked.

Fenn said, 'Nope.'

It occurred to Nora as she tagged along into the kitchen that she did not, she most emphatically did not, wish to see this house, thanks anyhow. Yet here she was, in Natalie's kitchen. Davey mooned along in front of the cabinets, shook his head at the sink, and paused before the phonographs pinned to a corkboard next to the refrigerator. For Natalie's sake, Nora forced herself to look at what was around her and recognized almost instantly that no matter what she did or did not want, a change had occurred. In the living room, a blindfold of habit and discomfort had been anchored over her eyes.

Now, blindfold off, traces of Natalie Weil's decisions and preferences showed wherever she looked. Wooden counters had been scarred where Natalie had sliced the sourdough bread she liked toasted for breakfast; jammed into the garbage bin along with crumpled cigarette packets were plastic wrappers from Waldbaum's. Half-empty jam jars crowded the toaster. Smudgy glasses smelling faintly of beer stood beside the sink, piled with plates to which clung dried jam, flecks of toast, and granules of ground beef. A bag of rotting grapes lay on the counter beside three upright bottles of wine. Whatever Norman Weil and his new wife were drinking on the deck of their beach house in Malibu probably wasn't Firehouse Golden Mountain Jug Red, $9.99 a liter.

Blue recycling bins beside the back door held wine and Corona empties and a dead bottle of Stolichnaya Cristall.

Tied up with twine in another blue bin were stacks of the of Time, Newsweek, Fangoria and Wrestlemania.

'I wish my men looked at crime scenes the way that you do.'

Startled, Nora straightened up to see Holly Fen leaning against the open door of the hallway.

'Notice anything?'

'She ate toast and jam for breakfast. She was a little sloppy. She lived cheap, and she had kind of down-home tastes.

You wouldn't know that by looking at her.'

'Anything else?'

Nora thought back over what she had seen. 'She was interested in horror movies, and that kind of surprises me, but I couldn't really say why.'

Fenn gave her a twitch of a smile. 'Wait till you see the bedroom.' Nora waited for him to say something about murder victims and horror movies, but he did not. 'What else?'

'She drank cheap wine, but every now and then she splurged on expensive vodka. All we ever saw her drink was beer.'

Fenn nodded, 'Keep on looking.'

She walked to the refrigerator and saw the half-dozen magnets she remembered from two years before. A leering Dracula and a Frankenstein's monster with outstretched arms clung to the freezer cabinet; a half-peeled banana, a hippie in granny glasses and bell bottoms dragging on a joint half his size, an elongated spoon heaped with white powder, and a miniature Hulk Hogan decorated the larger door beneath.

Holly Fenn was twinkling at her from the doorway. 'These have been here for years,' she said.

'Real different,' said Fenn. 'Your husband says you don't think Mrs Weil is dead!'

'I hope she isn't.' Nora moved impatiently to the corkboard bristling with photographs. She could still feel the blood heating her face and wished that the detective would leave her alone.

'Ever think Natalie was involved in drugs?'

'Oh, sure,' Nora said, facing him. 'Davey and I used to come over and snort coke all the time. After that we'd smoke some joints while cheering on our favorite wrestlers. We knew we could get away with it because the Westerholm police can't even catch the kids who bash in our mailboxes.'

He was backing away before she realized that she had taken a couple of steps toward him.

Fenn held up his hands, palms out. They looked like catcher's mitts. 'You having trouble with your mailbox?'

She whirled away from him and posted herself in front of the photographs. Natalie Weil's face, sometimes alone, sometimes not, grinned out at her. She had experimented with her hair, letting it grow to her shoulders, cropping it, streaking it, bleaching it to a brighter blond. A longer-haired Natalie smiled out from a deck chair, leaned against the rail of a cruise ship, at the center of a group of grinning, white-haired former teachers and salesclerks in shorts and T-shirts.

Some drug addict, Nora thought. She moved on to a series of photographs of Natalie in a peach-colored bathing suit lined up, some of them separated by wide gaps, at the bottom of the corkboard. They had been taken in the master bedroom, and Natalie was perched on the bed with her hands behind her back. Uncomfortably aware of Holly Fenn looming in the doorway, she saw what Natalie was wearing. The bathing suit was one of those undergarments which women never bought for themselves and could be worn only in a bedroom. Nora did not even know what they were called. Natalie's clutched her breasts, squeezed her waist, and flared at her hips. A profusion of straps and buttons made her look like a lecher's Christmas present. Nora looked more closely at the glint of a bracelet behind Natalie's back and saw the unmistakable steel curve of handcuffs.

She suppressed her dismay and stepped toward Fenn.

'Probably this looks wildly degenerate to you,' he said.

'What does it look like to you?'

'Harmless fun and games.' He moved aside, and she walked out into the hall.

'Harmless?'

Nora turned toward the bedroom, thinking that maybe the Chancels had a point after all, and secrets should stay secret. Murder stripped you bare, exposed you to pitiless judgment. What you thought you shared with one other person was… She stopped walking.

'Think of something?'

She turned around. 'A man took those pictures.'

'Kind of a waste if her sister took them.'

'But there aren't any pictures of him.'

'That's right.'

'Do you think there ever were?'

'You mean, do I think that at some point he was on the bed and she was holding the camera? I think something like that probably happened, sure. I took your picture, now you take mine. What happened to the pictures of the man?'

'Oh,' she said, remembering the wide gaps on that section of the board.

'Ah. I love these little moments of enlightenment.'

This little moment of enlightenment made her feel sick to her stomach.

'I'm kind of curious to hear what you know about her boyfriends.'

'I wish I did know something.'

'Guess you didn't notice the pictures, last time you were here.'

'I didn't go into the kitchen.'

'How about the time 'I don't remember if before that?'

' I don't remember if I went into the kitchen. If I did, I certainly didn't see those pictures.'

'Now comes the time when I have to ask about this,' Fenn said. 'Did you and your husband ever join in your friend's games? If you say yes, I won't tell Slim and Slam in there. Got any pictures at home with Mrs Weil in them?'

'No. Of course not.'

'Your husband's a good-looking guy. Little younger than you, isn't he?'

'Actually,' she said, 'we were born on the same day. Just in different decades.'