Grace of Monaco, and Thomas Wolfe.
By the late sixties, The Blue Lady no longer drew the rich and famous. It had become a tourist hotel of old- fashioned, shabby grandeur. Then in the summer of 1970 three murders took place in and around the resort. 'The Blue Lady Murders' enjoyed short-lived notoriety and although police caught the killer, business abruptly ceased. The hotel closed and shortly afterward a fire completely destroyed it. Miraculously the dance pavilion survived. For over twenty years it had sat empty, a crumbling monument to long-dead nights of glamour and good times.
Natalie stopped a few yards from the pavilion, gasping for breath. She looked up at the clouds turned slightly yellow by the crescent moon. The slanted roof of the pavilion bore a film of dark mold. From photos she knew hundreds of tiny white lights had once decorated trees in front of the pavilion. But that had been long before she and Lily, as teenagers, occasionally broke into the pavilion to smoke forbidden cigarettes and collaborate on atrocious musical creations they hoped one day to play for adoring fans.
How blithely they had walked up the steps and in the darkness picked the padlock on the front door. She didn't remember ever worrying about getting caught.
A sharp bark came from the portico in front of the pavil ion. Natalie strained her eyes and made out a dark shape. ' Blaine!' she called again. Another bark. 'Come here!' The dog sat firm. 'Oh for heaven's sake,' Natalie muttered, stalking toward the portico.
As she neared the dog, Blaine began to make an anxious chuffing sound. Natalie paused. 'What is it, girl?' she asked as if the dog could answer. Blaine stood and turned in a circle, then scratched at the pavilion door.
Natalie slowly approached the dog. Blaine looked at her, then at the door. Her leash trailed out to the side and Natalie picked up the loop. Then she glanced at the door. A new padlock hung open.
Natalie stood still and listened. Nothing but the sound of distant wind chimes tinkling in the breeze. With the lock open, silence was not a good sign. Maybe someone was hiding inside, trying to be quiet.
Or maybe someone was hurt. Blaine scratched at the door again and this time it opened slightly. Someone had closed it so lightly the latch hadn't caught. Blaine pulled forward. Then Natalie heard a tiny, high-pitched cry.
Good lord, she thought. Could someone have crept into The Blue Lady just as she and Lily used to do and gotten hurt? After all, the place was a wreck.
Natalie started inside, then hesitated. There had been a murder last night. Maybe she should go home.
But if she simply walked away, deserting someone who might be hurt, she would never forgive herself. And she wasn't defenseless-she had her gun. She had to at least give the pavilion a cursory scan.
Inside, the dance room looked cavernous. 'Is anyone here?' Natalie called. Not a sound. She flicked the beam of her flashlight around. Only a few tables sat on a dusty floor. 'Do you need help?'
She stood still, barely breathing. Silence. Maybe she'd only heard a bird that had flown in when the door was open and been trapped. Time to go, she told herself, but she couldn't leave just yet. She hadn't seen this place for years.
She and the dog walked across the floor, Blaine 's nails clicking on the wood. Beautiful wood, once highly varnished to facilitate the smooth moves of dancing feet. Grandmother St. John had told her all about The Blue Lady where she and Grandfather had spent so many hours of their youth. Natalie closed her eyes and in her mind the room filled with people, the men in formal black, the women in a rainbow of satin with gardenias pinned to their hair. She pictured her grandmother-an elegant woman with dark hair, flashing green eyes, and a taste for fine champagne-dancing to the sounds of big bands.
Natalie opened her eyes and the opulent scene vanished. Once again she stood in a big, empty room filled with dust and ghosts and the sound of dark, cold water lapping against rotting pilings.
A thud of her heart reminded her she was still winded from running. All the exertion after a raging panic attack had left her drained and she suddenly felt woozy. The room spun. She sat down on one of the chairs near a wall and drew a slow, deep breath. Then another. She frowned. What did she smell? Roses? Impossible. She wore no cologne. Imagination, she told herself. She'd been thinking of Grandmother who wore an expensive rose-based perfume. But no rose perfume lingered in the lonely pavilion. Only the memory of a beautiful woman dead over ten years.
A few more slow, deep breaths and she'd be ready to head for home, she thought, glancing around the room. Windows lined the pavilion, providing a panoramic view of the lake. She knew soft blue lanterns once hung around the structure. The slightest breeze sent them dancing, turning the lake water into a rippling sapphire fairyland. Now only a yellowish glow from the sodium vapor lamps in the parking lot of a nearby convenience store struggled through the filmy, flyblown windows.
She darted the flashlight beam around again. Overhead soared a high cathedral ceiling. In the center hung a huge, mirrored ball.
Natalie started. She'd never seen it except in pictures. In all the years she'd come here, it had been covered in burlap.
Now the ball glittered, reflecting the room in a hundred prisms of polished glass. Freshly polished.
'Is anyone here?' she called again, this time her voice not so strong.
'Na-ta-lie?'
Natalie stiffened. Blaine 's ears lifted and she turned her head to the right.
No one.
But it had been a woman's voice-young, clear, delicate. A familiar voice. The voice on the phone this afternoon.
No, no that couldn't be, Natalie told herself sternly. She was deeply shaken by the murder, by her dream, by the phone call, by the eerie atmosphere of this place. The voice existed only in her mind.
But Blaine 's head had turned.
I must have made a sharp movement, Natalie thought. I startled her and she instinctively lifted her ears and turned her head.
'Na-ta-lie. I know you hear me. Can't you see me?'
Natalie jumped. Blaine lunged, but Natalie clutched the leash. If the dog found the voice, the dog would die. She didn't know how she knew, but she did.
'Who's there?' Natalie could not get an exact fix on the voice although Blaine pulled toward the end of the room with the dais where the bands had once played 'String of Pearls' and 'Take the A Train.'
'Aren't you going to answer, Na-ta-lie?'
Blaine pulled harder. Natalie shot the flashlight beam around the room. Cobwebs. Dust. Mildew.
The highly polished mirrored ball.
'Who are you?' Natalie asked, trying to steady her voice. She wouldn't run. She sat against a wall. Someone might be trying to lure her into the open.
'I'm Tamara.'
Natalie's breath came hard and fast. 'Stop it!'
'Their throat is an open tomb.'
'You said that earlier on the phone. What are you talking about?'
'Romans, chapter three. It's about bad people. So many bad people in the Bible!'
Freezing water seemed to run down Natalie's back. That voice. So like Tamara's, so lost, so sad. And so frightening. She felt as if she were spiraling down into another world- a world of shadows and voices and bone- chilling cold.
The voice rose. 'I want you to be with me, Natalie. And you will. Even if I have to kill you.'
As Natalie's fear intensified, so did her instinct for self protection. In one smooth movement she lay the flashlight on her thigh, reached into her windbreaker pocket, and withdrew the gun.
'I'm armed,' she said loudly, although her voice cracked. 'Do you hear me? I have a gun and I will use it.'
'You can't kill someone who's already dead.'
A whisper of movement. Blaine growled, then barked ferociously. Natalie held tight to the leash as the flashlight dropped to the floor. She couldn't see, but she could hear something coming closer…
She aimed and fired.
