Sleep No More

Close to desperation, he searched his mind for something that no one but Mallory could possibly know.

“What did we do behind the stables at David Denton’s party?”

“You didn’t do anything.” Eve’s voice sultry now. “I went down on you.”

He could go no further.

“Johnny, I want to see you.”

“No.”

“I know you want to see me. You wouldn’t have called if you didn’t.”

“No.”

“Ask me more questions, then. Anything. Eventually you’re going to believe me, because there’s nothing I don’t know.”

He sat silent for half a minute, listening to her breathing. “How did you try to kill me?”

He thought the phone had gone dead.

“Johnny…I’m so sorry for that.”

For the first time, he sensed evasion. “How did you try to kill me?” he asked in a harsher voice. “What did you use? You don’t know, do you?”

“The first time? A gun. The other time, your car.”

He was gripping the phone so hard his hand hurt. Cole knew about the time with the car, but not about the gun. No one knew about the gun. The phone squawked on the desktop, and he realized he had dropped it.

“Johnny? Are you there?”

“Here.”

“I want you to meet me somewhere. You know where Bienville is, right? The antebellum home? The Historic Foundation owns it, and it’s for sale. I can get the key. I’m going to be there in twenty minutes, waiting for you.”

“I’m not coming.”

“I’m leaving now. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

“Eve-”

She had rung off.

He sat numb at his desk. She had answered so damn quickly. Any hesitation could be attributed to surprise. Mallory herself might have paused in the face of some of those questions. Waters looked back at the television, where Eve was concluding her presentation. He could not put that face and body with the voice he had spoken to on the telephone.

He didn’t know what to do. He did know that the last thing he should do was drive across town to Bienville. With anxiety turning to panic in his chest, he picked up the phone and called Linton Hill. Rose answered. In a barely controlled voice, he asked to speak to Lily. He didn’t know what he was going to say to his wife, only that he needed to hear her voice.

“Lily gone with her walking group,” Rose replied. “And she left her cell phone right here on the counter.”

Waters hung up and went to his drafting table. The wavy substructure lines and numbers on the map looked as foreign to him as they would to a layman. He turned away and began pacing out the perimeter of his office. The room was more than a thousand square feet, but today it felt like a cage.

Opening a subtly concealed door, he stepped out onto his balcony and inhaled the cool air blowing up off the river. He looked south toward the bend that led to Baton Rouge and New Orleans, then north up the stretch that led to Memphis and St. Louis. He could see Weymouth Hall from here, an antebellum mansion with a widow’s walk sitting on a promontory a mile upriver. Across the street from Weymouth Hall stood Jewish Hill, and under the oaks below that hill lay Mallory’s grave. Mallory’s corpse.

So who in God’s name was waiting for him at Bienville?

He put the photos and newspapers back into the portfolio and locked it in the bottom drawer of his desk. Then he took his keys from his pocket and walked to the back stairwell of the office. Sybil gave him a questioning look, but he said nothing.

He couldn’t even manage a lie.

Chapter 8

Sited on half a city block on the north side of town, Bienville was a world unto itself. The foundation of the Greek Revival mansion had been laid into a hill twenty feet above the street, and high stucco walls rising from the sidewalk presented a blank face to passersby. Only a narrow gravel drive that tunneled off Wall Street through thick foliage led up to the terraced gardens behind the mansion, a sun-dappled world of spreading oaks, shrubs, azaleas, jasmine, and banana trees.

Eve’s black Lexus was parked near an opening in the garden wall. Waters pulled his Land Cruiser in behind her, blocking her exit, and walked through the gate. To his right rose the rear elevation of the mansion. Its scored concrete walls were relieved by jib windows, and its steeply sloped roof had several chimneys. To his left lay intricate gardens laced with brick walkways and shadowy paths, the centerpiece a fountain surrounded by statuary inspired by German fairy tales. The frozen figures of boys and girls had nothing in common with the stone angels from the cemetery; they captured an elusive quality of childhood, wonder mixed with boredom, a feeling that time had no meaning beyond the present moment.

As Waters approached the house, something made him look up. Through one of the jib windows, he saw the silhouette of a standing woman. She leaned forward and spread her palm against the pane like a starfish. His heart stuttered. Through the distorting blur of the century-old glass, she could be Mallory Candler. Her palm left the pane, and a forefinger pointed downward. A door stood immediately below the window, one of three in the back wall of the house. When he looked back up at the window, the figure had vanished.

He walked to the door, then hesitated with his hand on the knob. He felt like a man walking into a brothel, or a hospital, or a monastery. Once he walked through this door, he would never be the same. Some part of him even feared that he might not come out again.

The knob turned in his hand, and he jerked back his arm. He half-expected the door to open, but it remained closed. After several moments, he turned the knob and pushed open the door.

It led to a narrow, carpeted staircase. Looking up, he saw Eve Sumner standing at the top of the steps. Gone were the navy skirt suit and heels. She wore a bright yellow sundress that looked like something a St. Croix islander might wear. Her feet were bare, and her hair was tied back with a ruby scarf, exposing her fine neck and jaw. Waters was sure he remembered Mallory wearing a dress exactly like it on their Yucatan trip. Eve did not speak but watched him intently. She was waiting for him to enter on his own.

He stepped over the threshold.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, her eyes suddenly bright with tears. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

He closed the door behind him.

She lifted a hand and beckoned him up the stairs.

As he ascended, he took in details of the room that served as a backdrop to her stunning figure: fourteen-foot ceilings, massive crown moldings, a carved medallion above the chandelier.

“I’m not sure why I came,” he said, reaching the top step.

She took his hand in hers, and he realized she was shaking. “You don’t have to be sure. Just be here.”

Waters looked around in wonder. The mansion was furnished with period antiques, giving him the feeling it was 1850 and that the owners had simply gone out for a carriage ride. To his left stood a massive, coffin-shaped piano, a Broadway from England, he guessed. Six doors led off of this central room, some to bedroom suites, the others to a kitchen, a marble-floored foyer, a dining room.

“We’re alone,” Eve said. “I have the only key.”

He looked at her.

“Come with me, Johnny.” She pulled him toward a half-open door. Through it he saw a short corridor, and beyond that a bedroom furnished with two tester beds. He pulled back against her hand, stopping them by a grandfather clock that stood beside the door. The heavy chimes in the clock gonged softly from the impact of their