Forth into Light (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (19 page)

He laid his head back with a sigh and looked up at the sky. Stars throbbed and whirled against his eyes. In quick succession, three of them were dislodged and hurtled blazing fireworks across the heavens. It was as unnerving as watching the Creation. He looked down at the sea, dark below him and motionless. Small islets, humped or jagged, rode on it. Opposite him, the mainland was a flowing line of dark hills. A world of beauty which stirred vague yearnings and an intimation of peace.

The soft breathing of the sea sent eddies of warm air whispering around him. He was alone between the dark sea and the blazing sky, totally alone. His mind felt quite sober, with the tired confusion of awakening. Proportion swayed and dissolved as he felt himself shrinking to the small handful of matter which was his consciousness, a poor thing, easily disposed of. He had only to get up suddenly and the very momentum would carry him over the edge. Or he could simply go to sleep in this position and he wouldn’t even have to make the choice. His body would pitch forward and over and away.

And why not? What would be lost? His life had reached an impasse; there was no way out. He had known that money had nothing to do with it, despite today’s exaggerated anxiety.

He was rather vague about the transaction he had just concluded with Mike, but the point was that money had turned up at the eleventh hour, as it generally did. When he had told Sarah he was taking the money and leaving, where had he thought he was going? Back to the States? He told himself that it didn’t matter, but he felt a hard knot of resistance in him. He could go back only when he was in complete control of the circumstances, his independence guaranteed. He would never accept Mike’s conditions, using people and being used to ends he didn’t believe in.

The yawning gulf at his feet exerted a stronger pull. Provisions had been made. He didn’t remember if there were suicide clauses in the various policies, but nothing could be proved. He often walked along here seeking a secluded spot to swim. Drunk, he could easily slip and fall.

The alternative was to stay. Stay in a place where every stone, every vista, the air itself evoked a few unthinking words spoken by an hysterical boy. The struggle of these months, as he passed through layers of pride and shock and hurt in an effort to reach the living nerve of his need and love for her, praying that it would take charge of his body, had been dishonored. He had felt at moments that he had almost reached his goal. A ravaged dream. Surely she had known or guessed, felt somehow his long slow voyage toward reunion. She could at least have waited with him. Drink had made it possible to avoid any overt rejection of her. Because their lives had always been so closely attuned to each other, she had drunk with him. Anesthetized by liquor, they had dodged the issue she had created. What more did she want? The answer to that was plain enough. Legs spread, she panted for her emptiness to be filled. Happiness? He had offered her happiness and she had rejected it in favor of a quick immediate thrill. It required too much effort to sustain happiness or to reconstruct it when it was lost.

How did one exorcize love? After all that had been done and said, it was still there, gripping him in an unrelenting, paralyzing vice. He couldn’t command his release any more than he could command his body to perform its function. He had almost fought his way back to her once; it was a struggle that couldn’t be repeated. He had reached the point he had known awaited him: if he couldn’t live with her, he couldn’t live without her. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. His mind drifted. Something about a dog. Mike’s dogs. No, a dog that talked. A dream? A dog that possessed the secret key to life but enunciated badly. What would a dog know? Mindless devotion? Wagging tail? There were no secrets, only unrecognized truths.

His eyes closed. His head slipped sideways against the wall. He slept.

Peter’s walk was jaunty, but his thoughts were troubled as he turned away from George and Joe to let them get on with their business with the police. He was worried by not finding Costa; he hadn’t realized how important it might be until a light had flashed on in his mind regarding Jeff’s visit and the odd ambiguity of his attitude toward his date with Dimitri. Had Jeff discovered that Dimitri had stolen his father’s money? It would explain the coincidence of Dimitri’s agreeing to go to bed with him on this particular night; it would be his way of keeping Jeff on his side. Jeff’s tormented manner required a more convincing explanation than sexual ignorance. Conflicting loyalties were more like it.

Peter couldn’t work out a very convincing scenario for the actual theft but it wouldn’t take a Raffles to rob George these days. By last night, everybody on the island knew that he had received the money by a bank courier. Dimitri had probably been to the Leighton house and knew his way around in it. Jeff might have caught him in the act.

It didn’t quite hang together, but it was more convincing than casting Costa as the culprit. If Costa knew or suspected, he would be the last person to help George unravel the mystery. Costa’s fundamental kindness would impel him to protect George from making any disagreeable discoveries about his son. Peter felt confident of being able to worm it out of Costa, equally confident of being able to handle Dimitri and Jeff thereafter.

When he reached the
quai
, he turned toward home but after a moment circled around and headed in the opposite direction. Dimitri might be at his bar; a chance word might help fix or dispel his suspicions.

In this pre-drink hour before the sun finally released the port from its punishing glare, there weren’t many people about, but he kept a lookout for the girl of noon. He very much wanted to see her again. Unless she left on the afternoon boat, he was bound to run into her sooner or later.

Sooner.

She was just rounding the turn in the
quai
that would bring her straight toward him. Here she was, moving closer with the serenity of beauty. He could see now that she had the kind of figure he liked a girl to have (boyish, of course, he thought with a smile) with slim hips and breasts that didn’t strain exaggerately at the patterned shirt she was wearing but nestled, round and firm, within it. His pace slowed and he adopted a collision course.

Her head was turned inland, the exquisite profile lifted, the lips slightly parted as if she still expected a kiss (he touched his own lips with his tongue as he looked at them), apparently searching for something among the shops and taverns that fronted the harbor. She kept glancing in front of herself to make sure of her footing.

They were within speaking range when her glance included him. He could look her full in the face at last. Her eyes were as beautiful as he had known they would be, exquisitely shaped, dark, velvety, with long lashes. His heart gave a leap as he realized that her glance wasn’t sliding past him noncommittally, but that their eyes were holding. A slight smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She was going to speak to him! He wondered if she was going to ask him for a light. His answering smile became a grin.

They came together as if they knew each other. He found it difficult not to kiss her immediately on her expectant mouth.

“You
are
Peter Mills-Martin, aren’t you?” she asked Stunningly. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

The accent was unmistakably American but there was none of the harshness in her voice which he regretted with so many of his compatriots. Now that she was in front of him, he saw that she wasn’t a girl but a young woman in the full bloom of beauty, probably in the late twenties. No untouched virgin. He felt a blithe stirring in his loins. “I’ve been
dying
to meet
you.
” He smiled delightedly and nodded down the port. “I saw you this morning. I’ve been thinking about you ever since. How do you know my name?”

“That’s a long story. I wonder——”

“The longer the better.” Peter took her arm and turned her around and led her back toward Dimitri’s bar. “Let’s see if we can find a long drink to go with it.”

“Don’t you want to know who I am?” She looked up at him with amusement but no flirtatiousness in her lovely eyes.

“It doesn’t matter so long as you look the way you do.”

She laughed with composure. “My name is Judy Menzies.”

A very down-to-earth name for such a glamorous creature. “You don’t look like a Judy. Miss or Mrs.?”

“Miss.” She shot him an easy, knowing smile. “A female on the loose. Be careful.”

“I’ll be very careful not to let anyone else get you.” He had already come to the conclusion that her beauty masked a shrewd and businesslike nature. Although she didn’t look it, he had already revised her age upward to the early thirties. She had an air of cool, experienced competence, as well as a sensible awareness of the potency of her looks that took her out of the twenties.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“Just since this morning. It’s extraordinarily beautiful. Actually, I came to see you.”

“What a wonderful idea. Are you an art collector?”

“In a sense—for the time being.”

“I can’t wait to hear all about it.” He led her into the shade of the
Meltemi’s
awning. The place was deserted. He called through the door into the dark interior and a homely young man appeared. Dimitri permitted no competition on the premises. They settled on ouzo. “With ice,” Peter ordered. Dimitri somehow provided ice cubes, although the island’s electricity was shut off for most of the day. They sat in Dimitri’s comfortable outdoor chairs. The proprietor’s absence absolved Peter of giving any more thought to the money mystery. Instead, he admired Judy Menzies’s pretty legs as she crossed them. He looked at her hands and saw that they were shapely and delicate. Everything about her delighted him.

“You’ve read about the Bertin art robbery, of course,” she said.

He sat up. “Funny coincidence department,” he said. “I’ve just had a letter from Raoul Bertin this morning.”

“It’s no coincidence
my
being here. I told you, I came to see you.”

“Oh, dear. Don’t tell me you’re an international art thief. I’ll never be able to turn you over to the police.”

She smiled. “I’m Timothy Thornton’s secretary.” As she spoke, she straightened her shoulders slightly and leaned forward, her head tilted, and looked into his eyes.

His heart stopped. Not even the mention of Tim’s name could divert a flicker of his attention from her. His sex did things that made him cross his legs. It was the attitude that had taken his breath away this morning. The tilt of her head, the line of her neck and shoulders, the look in her eyes, everything about her seemed to make an offering of herself, meltingly generous and unstinting. He managed to breathe again. “Who were you with when I saw you this morning?” he demanded.

“This morning? Oh. Sitting over there? Just a girl I’d talked to earlier.”

“A girl? In that case, there should be a law against your looking at people like that. You make me feel I’m the most sensational man you’ve ever laid eyes on. You looked the same way at that girl. It’s not fair.” He thought he detected a blush under her tan as she sat back in her chair. She gave her head a little toss to settle her hair back from her brow.

“You’re very disconcerting,” she said. “And quite sensational, too. But you’re right. I mustn’t go about giving people devastating looks. Nobody’s ever told me before.”

He smiled at her as he sipped the ouzo that had been put before them. “That’s better. If you stay like that, I can look at you adoringly without wanting to fall on my knees in front of you. Where were we? Timothy Thornton. How
is
old Tim?”

“Fine. The company that insures the Bertin collection is a client of his.”

“Aha, as they say in the detective stories.” Tim was a highly successful lawyer and a pillar of respectability, but twenty years ago he had almost won Peter away from Charlie. When Charlie’s marriage had collapsed, Peter had been living with Tim, had been presented with the choice, and had found it briefly difficult. Peculiar to think of having a life with Tim. He had married a very rich woman rather older than himself and kept a succession of young lovers in the deepest secrecy. He wondered if Judy Menzies knew about them. “Well, it’s nice to know you’re on the side of law and order.”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled at him enchantingly, revealing perfect teeth. “It isn’t always the winning side. The police apparently aren’t getting anywhere. I was here on vacation—at Mykonos, to be exact. Mr. Thornton cabled me asking me to go to Athens to see if I could find out anything. He has an exaggerated opinion of my abilities. I hadn’t a glimmer what he expected me to do—slouch around low bars picking up tips from gangsters? He even insisted on providing me with a yacht. For thrilling chases across the Aegean? It’s over there. The third one in from the end. That power cruiser or whatever you call them.”

Peter reluctantly stopped looking at her long enough to glance in the direction she indicated. He saw a big glittering speedboat tied up at the newly reconstructed outer mole that had been put in for yachts. He turned back to her with a laugh. “This place is mad. You never know what’s going to happen next.”

“I’ve had several long letters from the boss. He mentioned your being here. It seems that whoever took the pictures aren’t ordinary crooks. They have important connections. At least, that’s what he thinks. He has some reason for thinking they’re operating by yacht. Customs people are apparently intimidated by yachts. Anyway, there seem to be a great many of them about. The police can’t search all of them.”

“Where do I fit into this fascinating tale? Does Tim suspect me of dealing in hot pictures?”

“He said if I mentioned his name, you’d help me in any way you could.” She smiled again, this time with open delight in herself. “Funnily enough, I’ve had some success. It’s not difficult for a girl with no striking deformities to cut quite a swathe in a small town like Athens. I’ve been meeting everybody who is anybody. I’ve heard that Michael Cochran picked up some pictures while he was there. I’m not exactly trailing him but I thought it might be a good idea to talk to you while he’s here. I suppose you’ll be seeing him. He might mention having bought some pictures. You could ask to see them. You know the Bertin collection, don’t you? You could identify anything from it?”