Night Hunter (8 page)

Then again, perhaps she was overreacting. They received crank calls all the time. It was her job to deal with them, so why was she making a big fuss over this one? Because, she realized, the subject was much too close to her.

Regina patted Donna’s shoulder. “Gotta go. I’m late.”

Ten minutes later Regina pulled up to the curb in front of the apartment house behind Kristy’s white Rabbit convertible. The top was down and there was no one inside. The dashboard clock read 4:18. Kristy was probably waiting inside the vestibule. They would have to remember to get the other key from Mrs. Szabo today.

The vestibule was empty. Regina used her key to open the door into the building’s wide hall. She climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door to their apartment was ajar and the beat of rock music pounded out into the landing.

Regina pushed through the door, hurried inside, and jabbed at a button on the radio to silence it. She called out to Kristy.

“
Hi, Mom. In here,” Kristy called back from another part of the apartment, her voice echoing through the empty rooms.

Regina found Kristy and her best friend, Sonya, in the smaller of the two bedrooms. Both girls, still wearing their calico waitress uniforms, had books on their heads and were gingerly crossing the room like tightrope walkers.

“
Are you trying to get us thrown out before we even move in? The door’s open and the radio’s blasting through the place. This is supposed to be a quiet—”

“
The door was closed, Mom,” Kristy cut in, letting the book drop into her outstretched hands.

“
O
pen.”

“
I know it was closed because John shut it himself when he went out.”

“
Who’s John?”

“
John Davie. He’s the guy who let us in.”

“
He let you into the building?”

Kristy nodded. “And into our apartment.”

“
How the hell does he have a key to our place?” Regina asked, beginning to feel something between anger and fear.

“
He’s on good terms with the landlady. I think he’s the grandson or nephew or something like that. He gave me the key.”

“
Oh.” Regina felt her muscles unbunching in degrees.

“
He’s really hot looking. He’s about this
tall ...”
she raised a hand several inches above her own head, “and he has dark hair and light blue eyes.”

“
And there’s this groove in the center of his chin,” Sonya interjected.

“
A cleft,” Regina corrected.

“
More like a groove,” Kristy said. “He’s got a rad form too.”

“
Yeah? Does he go to school around here?”

“
He’s old, Mom.”

“
How old?”

“ ‘
Bout your age,” Kristy said, and throwing her arms up over her face as if to ward off a blow, she giggled.

“
Cute.”

“
I gotta go. I’m working the split shift. Love your new place, you two,” Sonya said, hurrying out.

“
Let’s get to work.” Regina took a tape measure from her purse and stepped to the window.

After measuring all the windows they moved into the living room and stretched the tape across the wood floor.

“
It’ll fit.” Regina was referring to the new cranberry area rug. “Corbin’s is delivering the furniture tomorrow.”

“
This is so much fun,” Kristy said. “Mother and daughter decorating together. It’s a first.”

Regina was as excited as her daughter. When she’d married Leo, he was already established in the big Victorian house in Berkeley with his beloved antiques. She’d sold it all with no remorse, and mother and daughter, sharing a wild compulsion to go light and bright, gravitated to a contemporary décor.

Regina looked around the sunny room with its gleaming hardwood floors. Funny, she thought, how one could live in darkness, like a mole, and be perfectly content. But now that she had seen the light, so to speak, she wondered how she had managed to exist in such drab surroundings all those years. She couldn’t wait to move into the new apartment, with the new furniture, and towels and potholders and ... and new
everything.

“
Mom?”

“
Hmm?”

“
Can we discuss the model search?”

Regina felt herself sink back into darkness.

“
I know it was wrong not to tell you. But I was afraid you’d say no. C’mon, Mom, let’s talk about it, okay?”

Regina sat beside Kristy on the windowsill, her hands hanging limp between her legs. “Why do you want to do this, Kris?”

Kristy shrugged. “To see if I’m pretty enough.”

Kristy had been born beautiful. Even in her gangling, orthodontal stage, she had been exceptional. She was tall, five foot nine, with a slim, near-perfectly proportioned body. Her shoulder-length, sandy brown hair shone with natural ash highlights. Kristy had inherited her father’s light gray eyes. Her full, wide mouth was like her mother’s. Strangers on the street stared openly as they passed, some stopping to compliment her. Kristy would blush and laugh self-consciously. She didn’t have a conceited bone in her body.

“
I would have expected a better reason than that from you. Kris, you’re beautiful. So there, now you know.”

“
Mother,” she said in exasperation. “You did it when you were my age. What was your reason?”

Regina stared out the window and said nothing.

“
Wasn’t it fun?” Kristy prompted.

“
There were problems.”

“
What kind of problems?”

“
Weird things. Some serious, some not.”

“
Like what?”

“
Oh, Kris ...” Regina sighed.

“
Tell me. Please.”

“
Well, the first night there was a banquet for all the contestants. Everyone who ate the seafood salad got food poisoning. I was one of them. During the swimsuit competition one of the girls passed out on the runway, fell off the platform and broke her arm in two places. Another girl overdosed on some sort of drug and nearly died. The list goes on.” Regina paused. “And then there was Corinne.”

“
That could never happen again, Mom.”

Regina looked at her daughter and marveled at her beauty—innocent beauty, the purest kind. “How deep into this are you?”

“
Sonya and I made the first cut.”

“
What’s it about?”

“
The winner will promote tourism for the city for one year. Billboards, TV flyers, magazines. She’ll represent San Francisco and all its splendor. Besides, five thousand dollars, a contract with a top model agency, and a new car is nothing to scoff at, Mother.”

“
Five thousand?” Regina asked, surprised.

“
And a car. That’s only the beginning. There’s the money earned on appearances, modeling assignments and commercials,” she said. “It’s not as if I’m asking to do porn or even a nude layout in a girlie mag.”

“
I know, but ...”

“
Mom, you take things too seriously. Being attractive isn’t a handicap. And no matter how much you try to camouflage what
you
have under those guerrilla fatigues and this...” Kristy flipped a frizzy lock of her mother’s hair, “it’s still very obvious.”

Regina allowed herself a quick smile before becoming somber again. She picked at a loose thread on her skirt. “The Miss Classic contest was jinxed, and, well, I have this bad feeling.” She thought of Corinne and what the acid had done to her beautiful face, and then she thought about the crank call she’d received less than two hours ago. But most crucial of all was the gut feeling she had about the whole affair. Something in the back of her mind screamed
danger.
Something she just couldn’t ignore.

“
Feelings are just that
—feelings.
Unless you’re psychic ...” Kristy let the words off.

Regina sighed. “Yes, of course, you’re right.” They sat without speaking for several moments.

“
Mom, it’s not going to happen again.”

“
I’ll make a deal with you,” Regina said, pushing away from the windowsill. “Take a couple of days to think about what I said, and if you still want to go through with this, then ... well, you have my blessing.”

Kristy stood and gave her mother a hug. “Thanks, you wonderful, adorable mother.”

It was obvious to Regina that Kristy’s mind was already made up. Well, it hadn’t killed her, so she guessed it wouldn’t kill her daughter.

CHAPTER 12

Falwell stared down at the dead eyes of the long-legged beauty and grinned maliciously#!@#?&.

“
Ah shit,” John hissed in disgust.

Everything he’d written that day had the ring of a damn clichéd, two-bit detective novel. He lifted his fingers from the computer keyboard and brusquely scraped a mound of red pistachio shells into the waste basket.

John Davie struggled with his fourth suspense novel. His first manuscript had sold to a small press, then died. His second had been published, but despite a rather handsome advance and decent reviews, sales had not been as great as he hoped. The advance on his new novel,
False Lead,
to be released next month, had been in the high five digits
. This novel, the one he was working on, was to be the blockbuster. He’d written an explosive beginning and the end was equally volatile, but the middle, like the center of a doughnut, was missing.

His fingers poised over the keyboard like predator claws, waiting. The blinking cursor was impatiently prompting him to write something—anything. He leaned forward and meticulously pecked out with a forefinger, in caps, FUCK YOU, then highlighted it in yellow. Rapid-fire now, with both hands on the keys, he repeated the two words across the page until they begin to run together. A series of low creaks overhead made him pause. He dropped his hands to his sides, tipped his chair back, and looked upward.

The new tenants, mother and daughter, were up there doing “getting ready to move into a new apartment” things.

He groaned. His concentration was shot. Anything he wrote that afternoon would be forced and stilted. He shut down the computer.

A door softly closed above, John rose and moved to the front window. Directly in front of the white VW Rabbit was the tan station wagon. Minutes later he watched mother and daughter cross the walk to the cars. They stood talking, unknowingly allowing John an opportunity to study them. His attention kept returning to the mother.

In spite of the loose, layered clothing, the lack of makeup, and the uninspiring hairdo, she had a certain air about her. John felt that her obscureness was merely a masquerade. She was a very alluring woman.

Where the hell had he seen her before?

He watched them until they entered their respective cars and drove away, his brain still searching for an answer. Forget it for now, he told himself, it’ll come. He leaned his head against the window sash and let his mind drift. In an instant, like a multicolored collage, he saw slick images of another striking woman, though this one had blond hair and bright blue eyes. Darlene. Beautiful, sensual Darlene. Fashion model, wife, and mother, dead these past seven years. Time heals all wounds.