Now You See It (22 page)

“A
soupçon
of arsenic in my tea each day. A smidgen of it in my soup, my wine, my salad dressing.

“Just enough to keep me functioning, but weak enough so she could get control of the act. Dispose of my resistance without actually becoming a murderess.”

He shouted at her suddenly, making me twitch.

“That’s what you planned, wasn’t it?” he said. “You stupid bitch! You’d have to have a live-in pharmacist to manage that! You were
killing
me, pure and simple!”

He shuddered again. “Control,” he murmured. “Control.”

The keystone of our professional and personal life
.

How many times had I drummed
The Delacorte Motto
into his head?

“Do you understand now why I did it,
Padre?”
he asked, his voice controlled now.

I understand but can’t condone
, I thought.
You could have told the authorities. Poisoning is still a punishable crime
.

But that was overlooking pride, and pride’s need for revenge.

And, being honest with myself, I could not say that, had the same thing been done to me in every respect, I would not have murdered for revenge also.

Like Adelaide, my Cara was an angel.

Had I been married to Cassandra, though …

I was taken from my darkened fantasy by Max’s voice.

“Well, now you know,” he said. “I regret, more than I can say, that you may have lost respect for me. But I do not regret the elimination of this adulterous, covetous, murderous
bitch.”

Pushing to his feet, he walked to the fieldstone wall and pushed in the stone.

The machinery hummed, the freezer area began to close.

As it did, he glanced at it.

Stiffening with surprise, he started forward, then abruptly turned back and pushed in the stone again.

The machinery reversed itself; the freezer area began reopening.

Max moved over to it and stared at Cassandra.

What had he seen?

She hung motionless, her face a rigid, gray-white mask.

Max put on his glasses to look at her more closely.

What had he seen?
My heartbeat slowly, heavily, was picking up momentum.

Max put his face closer to Cassandra’s.

An icy hand clamping hard over my pulsing heart.

And Max recoiling with a gasp of shock.

Cassandra’s right hand had twitched
.

“No,” said Max. I doubt if he was aware of speaking as he stared at her.

The hand was still. Cassandra hung immobile.

No
, I thought, my mind-voice like my son’s: incredulous, denying. It had only been a physical reaction. An involuntary muscle spasm caused by the contrast in temperatures between the room and the freezer.

It had to be.

Max swallowed dryly. Leaned in closer. Time stood still.

“If she isn’t dead yet,” he muttered.

He grimaced in fury.

“That idiot, Brian! If he’s bungled
this!”

Outside, the storm was increasing now, the sound of rainfall like that of heavy wind. The room was sunless, filled with shadows.
Turn on the light
, said a voice in my mind. A voice I hadn’t heard for almost seventy years, that of a frightened boy.

Max was leaning in close. He
had
to know; I saw that. Closer and closer. He was very near the corpse’s face now.

A strangled gasp tore from his throat as Cassandra’s right hand, like a bloodless spider, jumped up, clutching at his jacket lapel.

I felt paralyzed by more than stroke effects now. I felt paralyzed with horror.

Max was slowly being drawn toward the corpse’s face. Closer.

Closer.

Hitchingly, Cassandra’s head raised up.
No!
a voice screamed in my mind.

Eyes staring, a gagging rattle in his throat, Max gaped at her.

The gray hand pulled him closer. Closer. Now his face was only inches from hers.

His breath choked off (with mine) as Cassandra’s bloodshot eyes sprang open.

For an instant, they were staring at each other (as I felt death by shock approaching).

Then, with a demented cry, Max yanked back, tearing free of the leprous hand.

He lost balance and staggered backward, crashing down with a cry of pain as his elbows struck the hardwood floor.

A frozen observer, I watched in terror.

Cassandra had begun to twitch, her mouth working like that of a fish out of water.

Max tried to stand, but couldn’t.

He pushed backward, staring at her.

Cassandra began to thrash against the rope like a frenzied animal.

Max watched, openmouthed, moans of impending madness pulsing in his throat.

The storm was increasing, thunder exploding in the sky, the darkened room sporadically illuminated as though blazing floodlights were being turned on, then off, lighting the hideous sight of Cassandra, eyes mad, pitching back and forth against the ropes.

Max tried again to stand. His legs would not support him.

Suddenly, he cried out, horrorstruck, as the rope pulled loose from one of the hooks and Cassandra’s body flung forward, toppling from the freezer area onto the floor in front of Max. He jerked back with a hollow cry.

He had to stand or lose his mind. Straining every muscle, he pushed up to his knees, then wavered to his feet.

He had barely made it when Cassandra, her face a stiffened, frost-caked mask, lurched clumsily to her feet and came at him.

Crying out again, Max twisted around and staggered toward the entry hall, barely able to move, his balance failing.

He reached the door and fell against it, turning the knob with a shaking hand.

The door was locked.

With a sob of mindless dread, he jerked around to face her.

She was walking toward him like a poorly controlled marionette, her movements jerky, her head flopping from side to side.

The storm was at its peak now, thunder crashing deafeningly, lightning bleaching the frozen whiteness of Cassandra’s face, her staring and unblinking eyes.

Shrieking with dread, Max lurched to his right to avoid her clutch, barely capable of movement.

He could go no more than several yards.

There, he collapsed to the floor, crying out in pain and horror.

He tried to stand, but couldn’t.

Glassy-eyed, he lay on his back as Cassandra moved at him, expressionless and staring.

Max had trouble breathing. He made choking noises in his throat as he gaped up at the hideous figure looming over him.

With the last of his strength, he summoned forth a shriek of maddened fright, then lay there mutely, staring up at Cassandra, beyond response.

She stopped and looked down at him.

Thunder detonated. The room was blanched by lightning.

Then the hall door was unlocked, and Cassandra entered.

You’ve read the phrase:
His brain reeled
, haven’t
you?
It’s a literal description, friends.

My
brain reeled. The world had been upended. I could not think, only stare. Blankly.

As she’d come in, Cassandra had said (to Cassandra!), “That’s enough.”

And the corpse had looked around.

“That’s
it?”
she said. “You didn’t give me much time.”

“There was enough,” said living Cassandra.

“For you, maybe,” responded corpse Cassandra.

And pulled off her wig.

Brian in white makeup.

Max, unable to move, stared up at Brian.

As Cassandra exploded at her brother.

“What the hell was the idea of leaving me unconscious on the floor like that?” she demanded.

My brain mumbled
What?
Hadn’t that been Brian made up as Cassandra?

Brian had exploded back at his sister.

“What the hell else could I do?” he cried. “Obviously, he put too much drug in that dart. I
tried
to bring you around, but I couldn’t!

“And there was
no time!”
he ranted on. “I had to hide Harry in the cellar underneath the burial-case apparatus! Put that rubber mask over his head! Telephone the Sheriff! Make sure you were ready! Get into makeup and your clothes again! Be ready to be hanging in that goddam freezer! I hardly had all afternoon, did I?”

She did not relent.

“I thought Harry was really dead!” she raged.

“Why?”
He looked confused. “You knew Max’s plan! I told you every bit of it!”

“Well, I didn’t know
that!”
she responded. “I thought—”

He cut her off, twisting around to look at me. “Can’t we take him out of here?” he asked.

“Forget him!” she snarled.
“He’s a cabbage!”

“He’s a helpless old man!” Brian cried.

“Wrong!”
she said. “He’s a goddam encumbrance, and I can’t
wait
to get him out of here!”

(Merci,
Cassandra. Stay as sweet as you are.)

“Jesus God,”
she muttered angrily. “I had to go through that whole fucking charade thinking all the time that Harry was really dead.”

Her voice was loud again.

“It threw me off completely!” she stormed. “It was a
nightmare!
I did
everything
wrong! If it hadn’t been for Max’s failing eyesight and hearing—”

Brian scowled.

“What the hell’s the difference?” he said. “All’s well that ends well, right?” His tone was bitter.

Cassandra regarded him tensely, then managed to control her temper.

With a forced smile, she moved to him and kissed him several times on the lips, her hands on his cheeks.

They were not sisterly kisses.

Which, doubling my bafflement, added (in a moment’s time) an entirely new dimension to the lay of the land (if I may so refer to my daughter-in-law).

“Fool,”
she said to him in a chiding voice.

She slapped him lightly on the cheek.

“Now put him in the freezer, then get out of here.”

He blew out a surrendering breath.

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured sadly.

Cassandra frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Everything is peachy.”

“You’re not going to fall apart on me
now
, are you?” she asked. She gave him a Cassandra look.

“No, I’m not,” he murmured.

“Well, do what you’re told, then,” she said.

“Sure.”

She smiled and kissed him again.
Definitely
not a sisterly kiss.

Or a sisterly clutch at his groin.

“Tonight,”
she said.

Oh, what a tangled web
, I thought as Brian turned away from her, Cassandra laughing softly.

He knelt beside Max and started to lift him up. Max’s weight was dead, his limbs completely flaccid.

What have they done to him?
I wondered.

“I can use that champagne now,” Cassandra said.

She crossed to the bar as Brian, grunting from the effort, managed to lift Max to a standing position and began to half-drag, half-lead him toward the freezer.

He’s still alive
, I thought.

But completely helpless.

At the bar, Cassandra twirled the champagne bottle in the bucket, lifted it out and tore off its metallic neck wrapping.

Then she stopped and looked at the bottle.

Made a sound of grim amusement.

“What?” gasped Brian, using every bit of his strength to get Max to the freezer.

“If we could drug his private-stock brandy, chancing that he’d drink it of his own accord—as Harry did with the Scotch—how do we know Max didn’t do the same thing with this bottle of champagne—so
conveniently
placed in the ice bucket? He could have used a hypo-needle, just as we did.”

She dropped the bottle into the wastebasket.

“Good try, Max,” she said.

The woman has no trust in anyone
, I thought.

Opening the doors beneath the bar, she lifted out a new case of champagne and tore it open, removing one of its bottles. Tearing off its metallic seal, she started to thumb out the cork.

“Better to drink safe champagne on the rocks, eh
Padre?”
she said mockingly to me.

If I could only move
, came the thought.
I
would
be able to kill
.

Hearing the pop of the cork and the brief gush of escaping liquid from the bottle, Brian looked around.

“Celebration time,” he said glumly.

“Of course, love,” she answered. “We have a lot to celebrate.”

“Of course,” said Brian.

“Oh, cheer up, for Christ’s sake,” Cassandra told him, pouring champagne into a glass of ice cubes.

Lifting the glass, she jiggled it for several moments, then drained it; sighed.

“Not as good as chilled,” she said, “but it’ll do.”

Brian had Max to the freezer now and was putting him inside.

I watched, in pain.

“You really think he poisoned that champagne?” he asked, breathing hard.

“He could have,” she answered, pouring herself a second drink. “He always planned ahead.”

“What a twisted mind you have,” he muttered.