Dearly Beloved (16 page)

And if that’s the case, then sooner or later, he’s going to show up again.

When—
if—
he does, Liza plans to be ready for him.

The way she was ready for Albie, and all the others before him.

Men.

If there’s one thing Liza knows how to handle, it’s a man.

She learned young. As a teenager, she realized she could wrap her father around her little finger. All she had to do was make him feel special. The disgusting, slobbering drunk actually believed her when she told him she loved him, that she thought he was the best daddy in the world.

She wonders what he thinks now. . . .

Now that she hasn’t seen him in over ten years.

She walked out of that Brooklyn apartment on the morning after her high school graduation, and she never looked back. Never made an effort to contact him, to let him know where she was or why she had left. Never bothered to find out, in all these years, whether he was dead or alive.

She doesn’t care.

At least, that’s what she tells herself.

Leaving wasn’t something she’d planned to do. Not until she’d marched into the auditorium in her cap and gown and looked toward the spot where her father should have been sitting. It was empty.

And he’d promised. He’d
promised
he’d be there for her, that afterward, he’d take her to White Castle and let her have as many greasy little hamburgers as she could eat.

She had known where he was instead that day, where he always was when she needed him. At the run-down bar a few blocks from their building.

How many times had Liza, as a child, gone in there looking for him?

How many times had she found him, with bloodshot eyes and reeking of liquor, slumped on a stool in the corner of the bar? How many times had he already been passed out when she arrived so that the bartender would have to round up two volunteers to carry him home as little Liza led the way through the seedy neighborhood to their dilapidated building?

Well, she was through. She wasn’t going to show up at the bar in her cap and gown, demanding to know why he hadn’t shown up to watch her receive her diploma, why he’d allowed her to be the only person in her class who had no one in the audience. Who had no one, period.

Even now, ten years later, Liza feels tears welling up at the memory of that horrible day.

But the next day—the day she left—well, that was the best day of her life. Because that was the first time she’d realized she didn’t need that lousy excuse for a father.

That was the day she’d marched into realtor George Vlapos’s office clutching the classified section of the
Times
in one hand and her imitation Chanel purse in the other. Inside the purse was the several hundred dollars she’d just received from a pawnbroker. She’d sold him her mother’s wedding and engagement rings.

She’d always known where her father kept them—in the small wooden box on his dresser, along with a lock of his own dead mother’s hair and a faded photo of his former wife holding newborn Liza.

Through all the bad times, all the times when there was no food on the table and no heat in the tiny apartment, all the times when her father was desperate for a drink but couldn’t even afford cheap wine, those rings had been in that wooden box. Liza had often wondered why he didn’t just take them out and sell them.

Deep down, though, she really knew why.

Maybe she felt the same—that as long as the rings were there, a part of her mother remained. A part of the family they had once been.

The pawnbroker was a shifty-eyed slob who had terrible b.o. and leered at Liza over the counter of his shop. He’d snatched the rings in his grubby hand and held them up to the light, then offered a fraction of what Liza knew they were worth. But she didn’t care. She needed money, and she needed it fast. Money, and an apartment.

But George Vlapos didn’t want to let her rent one of his apartments without references and a security deposit of a month’s rent. Unless . . .

Unless what?
eighteen-year-old Liza had asked eagerly, sensing a loophole.

There was a loophole, all right. All she had to do was go out to dinner with the swarthy, leering realtor. And, over dinner, she understood the rest of it.

All she had to do was sleep with George Vlapos, and she’d have her apartment.

It was surprisingly easy.

She hadn’t let herself think of it as losing her virginity. She hadn’t let herself think about it at all, once it was over. Once she had her own apartment—a shabby studio in Hell’s Kitchen, but it was
hers
—she hadn’t ever looked back.

And she hadn’t dealt with George Vlapos again . . . at least, not until he tried to raise the rent. When he did, she slept with him again, and her rent remained the same.

Men,
Liza thinks now, stretching and getting off the bed.
They’re all the same. And I know exactly how to handle them.

D.M. Yates will be no different.

If
D.M. Yates is really the one who had summoned her here.

And if not . . .

If Albie, or one of the others, thinks he can get back at her this way . . .

Well, Liza will show him that he can’t get the best of her.

Just as she had shown her father.

T
he shiny black sedan pulls to a stop in front of the last house on the seaside road—a massive Victorian that sits at the tip of the rocky ledge that juts into the ocean.

Sandy stares up at it through the rain-spattered window as the driver turns off the engine and gets out. The house has a classic scallop-shingled mansard roof crowned by an iron-railed widow’s walk. Its shuttered double windows are tall and narrow with curved tops. The lamplit ones on the third floor are dormered and the shades are partly lowered, giving the eerie appearance, Sandy thinks, of lidded eyes glowing from beneath a dark hood.

There’s a somber air about the place, and Sandy shudders inwardly as she stares up at its silhouette against the stormy night sky.

This isn’t what she pictured when she imagined Ethan Thoreau’s home. A mansion, yes—this creepy gothic monstrosity, no.

The chauffeur puts up his black umbrella, opens the back door, and offers a gloved hand to help her out.

Sandy wavers for only an instant before placing her fingers in his leather grip.

He holds the umbrella over her head as they hurry through the driving rain up the wooden steps of the porch that runs the length of the house. He turns the knob on one of the double doors and pushes it open. Sandy steps inside, vaguely wondering why it isn’t locked, then realizing that there probably isn’t much crime on the island. And what burglar would want to come out in this weather?

The door closes behind her, abruptly shutting out the roar of the storm. She turns and sees that maybe she was wrong about crime on the island. Looking out of place on the old-fashioned door panel is a shiny silver deadbolt, the kind that, once it’s locked from the inside, requires a key to open it again.

Her father wanted to put one of those locks on their front door back in Greenbury after someone broke into one of their neighbor’s homes.

But Angie had talked him out of it, saying it would be a fire hazard.

“What are you talking about?” Tony had asked. “We’ll just leave the key in the lock all the time so that if there’s a fire, we can get out.”

“If the key’s in the lock, the burglar can just break the window, reach in, and unlock it anyway,” Angie had argued.

They’d settled for a sturdy chain instead.

But in Ethan Thoreau’s house, Sandy notices, the double doors don’t have windows and the key is sitting in the inside lock.

She wipes her feet on the mat beneath her feet and looks around. She’s standing in a dimly lit entrance hall that rises two stories with a sweeping wooden staircase that leads to a second-floor hallway lined with closed doors. The decor is formal and old-fashioned with dark, heavy drapes over the windows and a tapestry-style carpet on the floor. The dark woodwork is elaborately carved, and the wallpaper is a deep maroon brocade that’s illuminated in patches where gaslight sconces dot the walls.

“Wait in there,” the chauffeur says, and Sandy turns to see him pointing at a room that’s through an archway to the right.

She nods and heads in that direction, again feeling an elusive pin prick of
déjà vu.

Frowning, she steps into the room and sees that it’s a parlor filled with heavy, old-fashioned furniture along with more dark brocade wallpaper, more sconces, more dark woodwork.

She spots a gilt-framed painting hanging over the fireplace and is moving closer to inspect it when she hears a telltale
click
from the foyer.

She knows what it is even before she peeks over her shoulder and sees the chauffeur moving away from the double front doors.

The key that had been in the shiny silver lock is gone.

And Sandy realizes, with a pounding heart, that she’s locked in.

Chapter 6

J
ennie looks up from the magazine she’s been trying to read, startled by a knock on the door of her room.

Must be Jasper Hammel.

She’d told the man, when she’d returned from the beach, that she wasn’t interested in coming down for dinner.

Oh, but you must,
he’d said, his mustache twitching.
I’m making my special rock cornish game hens.

She’d insisted that she had a stomachache and wasn’t hungry, but he’d just smiled and said she’d probably feel better later.
I’ll see you in the dining room at eight-thirty,
he’d said.

It’s eight-twenty now, according to the travel alarm on the nightstand.

Sighing, Jennie rises from the wingback chair by the fireplace and goes to answer the door, prepared to be rude if she has to be. After all, the whole point of this weekend was to relax, not to be bullied into joining strangers for dinner and conversation.

Throwing the door open, Jennie opens her mouth to speak, then clamps it shut again when she sees who’s standing there.

“Hi, Laura.” Liza Danning tosses her blond hair over her shoulder. She’s taken it out of the French twist, and it falls past her shoulders in straight, silky strands.

“Hi.” Jennie wonders what she could possibly want.

“What are you doing?” Liza peers over Jennie’s shoulder into the room.

“Reading.”

“What?”

“I’m reading.” Jennie idly notices that Liza’s black sweater is cashmere with velvet trim and part of an expensive fall designer collection. Laura has one just like it, and she splurged more than a week’s pay to buy it. Of course, then she couldn’t come up with her half of the rent and Jennie had to cover her, as usual. And though that was a few months ago, Laura still hasn’t paid her back—as usual.

“No—I meant, what are you reading?” Liza asks.

“Oh . . . just a magazine.
Country Living
.”

“Oh.” Liza wrinkles her nose. “I’m not really big on this country stuff. In fact, I’m going nuts out here. There’s absolutely nothing to do.”

“What about your business meeting?”

“Oh. That.”

“What’s wrong?”

Liza shrugs. “I just haven’t heard from the guy I’m supposed to meet yet, that’s all.”

“Well, the weather isn’t that great.” Jennie glances toward the window, which is rattling from the fury of wind and rain outside. “Maybe he couldn’t get here.”

“You mean to the island? He lives here . . . supposedly.”

Jennie frowns. “What? You don’t think he really does?”

“I’m not sure. Who knows?” Liza throws her hands up and shakes her head. “But anyway, I wondered if you wanted to come down to dinner with me.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“I know, I wasn’t either.” Liza lowers her voice. “He’s a little too weird for me.”

Jennie doesn’t ask whom she’s talking about. Obviously, she isn’t the only one who’s put off by Jasper Hammel.

“But,” Liza continues, “I’m starving. And I refuse to go down there alone. I bumped into that other person who’s staying here, Sandy something-or-other, going into the bathroom a few hours ago, and she was getting ready to go out for the night.”

“Well, as I said, I—”

“You’ve got to eat. And you have to admit, whatever he’s making smells pretty good. Come on.”

Jennie hesitates. On the one hand she isn’t crazy about Liza’s tone, which isn’t so much cajoling as it is commanding. On the other, she isn’t thrilled by the thought of spending the entire evening alone with her magazine—and her memories.

“Okay, I’ll come down with you,” she tells Liza, who promptly looks relieved and flashes a smile that actually seems genuine.

“Thanks, Laura. I appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Jennie gestures at the room behind her. “I’ll just comb my hair and meet you—”

“That’s okay. I’ll wait here for you.”

Liza’s already past her, walking into the room and glancing around. “It’s so frilly,” she says with a look of distaste. “Like the one they stuck me in. Only mine’s done in pink, not purple.”

“Uh huh,” Jennie says, watching Liza pick up a gold-rimmed porcelain bud vase, examine it briefly, and plunk it back down on the piecrust table by the bed.

“You know,” Liza gestures at the lilac-printed wallpaper, “this light color purple is the exact same shade as your eyes.”

“I guess.”

“That’s kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Jennie says again.

Liza turns to meet her gaze directly, her own eyes sharp and narrowed. “Does this place give you the creeps?”

“You asked me that before, when we were in town.”

“I know. I’m asking you again. Because it seems even creepier now that it’s dark out and the storm is going full force.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Jennie lies.

“Well, it bothers me. I can’t wait to get off this island and back to civilization.”

Not knowing what, if anything, to say to that, Jennie goes to the dresser and runs a brush through her hair, conscious of Liza watching her. She sets the brush down and picks up a cherry-flavored Chapstick, running it over her dry lips.