Valentine (12 page)

The pause after this compelled her to interject. “What do you mean, ‘in a manner of speaking’? He’s—he’s not dead, is he?”

“No,” Barney replied. “Not exactly—but he might as well be, far as you’re concerned. He’s in a sort of hotel outside Cleveland. A big, gray, concrete hotel, with bars on the windows.”

She stared out the back window above her writing desk, assimilating this. “Oh.”

“Yeah, seems he got married
again
, if you can believe it. The first wife gave me the number. Rich lady in Cleveland. Teenage daughter. ’Bout a year ago, he—well, let’s just say he likes ’em young, but I guess you know that.”

She swallowed, thinking of the charges she was going to press, dropped at her mother’s request. “Jill?”

“Yes, Barney. I’m here.”

“Charming fellow, this Brian Marshall. The girl was fifteen at the time of the incident. Marshall got loaded one night, and came at her in her bedroom.
She struggled, and Marshall beat her up. Broke her nose and two ribs. She’s okay now, according to her mom. Anyway, she divorced him, and he’s doin’ three to five in the state pen. So I called the warden there. I had to fax a copy of my license to them before they’d talk to me, but then I explained your situation, and the warden’s secretary told me what I wanted to know. Seems he got in a fight a couple of weeks ago, and he’s in solitary until further notice. No privileges, including mail privileges. There’s no way those cards came from him.”

Jill thought a moment. “Could he have bribed someone to mail them? A guard, or another prisoner . . .?”

Barney Fleck’s loud laugh erupted in the receiver. “Honey, it’s a cinch
you’ve
never been inside! He’s in
solitary:
he’s in a dark little room, with food shoved through the door three times a day. Once every three days, they hose him down. That’s it. He’s a ‘short eyes,’ a child molester. The guards hate him, and so do the other felons. Besides, the postmarks on the two cards are from New York, not Ohio. He’s not Valentine.”

She took a long, deep breath, resigning herself to the seemingly irrefutable fact. “Okay. Thank you for finding out so quickly.”

“Hey, it’s my pleasure—and it’s your nickel. Now, what’s all this new information you have for me? Do you still need my services?”

She was silent a moment, remembering that cold night in Vermont sixteen years ago: the screams, the crashing sounds, the incongruously beautiful music, and the blood on the wall of Belinda Rosenberg’s dorm room . . .

“Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, I still need your services.”

“Wait a sec,” Barney said. “Let me get a pen. . . .”

He brought a mug of coffee with him down the stairs from his apartment, and entered the dark studio on the ground floor. He groped for the switch on the wall beside the door with his free hand, and the rows of long halogen tubes on the ceiling hummed, flooding the cavernous room with brilliant light. The twelve brightly colored paintings appeared before his eyes, and for several moments he stood in the doorway staring, a slow sigh escaping from his lips.

It was eleven o’clock. He’d slept late this morning, and he had things to do today. But he spent that quiet last hour of the morning moving slowly around the studio, spending long, contemplative minutes before each panel, absorbed in thought. With the exception of Jill, these paintings were currently the most important things in his life. Soon the show would open at Henry’s gallery, and whatever followed, whether praise or damnation—or, more likely, something in between the two—it would be another step
on his road. The journey he’d planned for years now, at the end of which was his eventual recognition and acceptance as an important artist. If he became rich or famous, or both, that would be very pleasant, too. But it wasn’t his main concern. Respect: that was the word that summed up his principal goal.

He arrived at last before the final painting in the series, the big canvas he’d completed just two nights ago.
Life
. And life it was, he mused, staring at the bold, powerful splashes of bright color that swept across the surface of the canvas. It almost appeared to move, to vibrate. He nodded slowly to himself: he had very nearly captured the image in his mind, the wild, pulsating motion he saw on the streets of this city every day. The energy that was everywhere, in every living thing. At the same time, however, a small part of him mourned the fact that the image in his mind would not—could not—ever fully be captured by him with acrylics and brushes and canvas stretched on frames.

Oh, well, he told himself as he gazed at his newest creation, I came as close as I could. I can’t ask for more than that. Michelangelo, Monet, Picasso: they could do it. Not I; not yet. But someday . . .

He smiled at his own hubris. Then, feeling a need to celebrate this accomplishment before him, he immediately thought of Jill. Yes, he decided. Yes. We’re
having dinner tonight, and I know just what to give her. . . .

With that, he ran back upstairs for his coat. Then he went out into the snowy daylight, smiling. Thinking of Jill, he didn’t even feel the cold.

A valentine card, Jill thought. The three girls had sent her to deliver Victor Dimorta a valentine card. It amazed her, now, that she hadn’t thought of it before. Why hadn’t she? Then, in a rush of memory, she knew.

Even now, try as she might, she could not form a clear mental picture of Victor Dimorta’s face. He had been tall, she remembered, and pale and lanky. And rather greasy: greasy brown hair; shiny, acne-scarred face; oily hands. Other than that, nothing. A blank. She couldn’t remember his eyes, or his voice, or anything else about him. She had blocked the whole thing out.

This reminded her of her other mental block, the traumatic incident with her stepfather. She went into the office and over to the telephone.

It was just after one o’clock now, Jill noticed, and Dr. Philbin was probably in a session with a patient. There was no receptionist for the time being: she wasn’t surprised when she got the doctor’s answering machine. Jill waited for the beep and left her message.

Coming back into the living room, she looked down at the yearbook on the coffee table. She smiled, remembering her triumph with the three senior girls and the new self-confidence born of it. She searched the yearbook for any photographs of Victor Dimorta, but found none. Then she closed the book, returned it to the shelf in her office, and called Nate. He wasn’t in, so she left a message on his machine reminding him about dinner tonight. Her second attempt at cooking for him, she thought. I’ll roast that chicken I bought by mistake the other day. . . .

The chicken could feed three, at least: that’s what gave her the idea. She went into her office and called her agent. The phone was answered on the second ring.

“Mary Daley.”

“Hi, Mare, it’s Jill.”

“Jill! This is so weird: I was
just
about to call you! ESP time. How’s my favorite client?”

“Okay, I guess. Listen—”

“You guess? What the hell does that mean?”

“Well, I—”

“You’re not sick, are you?”

“No, I’m fine. Listen, I know it’s short notice, but how’d you like to come over for dinner with Nate and me tonight?”

There was a pause on the line, followed by the
suspicious Irish lilt. “Is this a McDonald’s thing or a Chinese takeout thing?”

Jill laughed in spite of her trepidation, happy for a sane friend. “Neither. I’m roasting a chicken.”

“I
beg
your pardon?” Now both women were laughing.

“Didn’t know I could cook, did you? Just ask Nate. I made dinner for him the other night, and it was so successful I decided to repeat my triumph. Are you free?”

“I’m free, but am I
game?
Oh, well, sure, why not. I gotta see this with my own eyes. My bestselling author goes domestic. And we can kill two birds—chickens?—with one stone. I was about to call you because I just got an advance copy of the
New York
magazine article. It’s running in two weeks, and if all goes well you’re on the cover. How do you like that, cover girl?”

Jill blinked. She had to think a moment before she remembered it. The interview and photo session here in the apartment had been a mere three weeks ago, just after the new year. But now it seemed long ago. She’d smiled for the camera and given light, witty replies to the journalist’s list of stock questions. She barely remembered what she’d said.

“Oh, wow!” she said. “That’s terrific! Bring it with you. Come on over after work. We’ll have Bloody
Marys and wait for Nate to arrive. There’s—there’s something I want to discuss with you.”

“Something
is
wrong, isn’t it?” Mary said.

Jill was choosing an answer when the intercom buzzer sounded from the living room. “I have to go. Just come over when you close. I’ll tell you all about it then.”

“Okay. . . .” Mary’s voice indicated that it was anything but okay.

Jill hung up quickly, before her friend could say more. She hurried to the speaker next to the front door. “Yes?”

It was a young man’s voice, with a definite Hispanic accent. “Delivery for Jillian Talbot.”

She felt a sudden stab of fear, and it took her a moment to catch her breath and reply. “A delivery from whom?”

There was a pause, accompanied by a rustling of paper. “Uh, Nate. The order form says, ‘To Ms. Jillian Talbot, from Nate.’ ”

Relief. She let out her breath, felt her pulse returning to normal. Even so, the self-defense class kicked in: don’t ever buzz strangers into your building. Go to them. “Okay, I’m coming down.”

Two minutes later she was peering through the locked glass entry door at a tall, skinny, reasonably attractive Hispanic boy, perhaps seventeen. Under his open, snow-flecked leather coat he was wearing
a green T-shirt with a faded logo,
Posies
, on his left breast. He held a large, long white box in his arms. His eyes were closed, and he swayed slightly in time to the music flooding into his ears from the headphones of the Walkman clipped to his belt. She smiled at the sight of him; a perfectly normal boy doing a perfectly normal thing. She opened the door.

“Hi,” he said, jerking the headphones from his ears. The tinny, muffled sound of Gloria Estefan filled the foyer. He handed her the box and extended a small clipboard and pen. “Sign here, please.”

She signed, thanked him, and closed the door. Back in her apartment, she placed the box on the coffee table and leaned down, untying the green ribbon at the center. She lifted the lid and found a dozen long-stemmed red American Beauties nestled in green tissue paper, a tiny envelope lying on top of the stems. Oh, Nate! she thought, staring down. She set the envelope aside on the table and reached down to gather the flowers up into her arms. So lovely, she thought, so lovely!

As she bent her head to bury her nose in the petals, something rather large and rather heavy came loose from its hiding place among the stems. It brushed against her just below her breast before dropping like a stone to land with a soft thud at her feet. She moved the bouquet aside and looked down.

It took a moment to register. When the message
made its way from her eyes to her brain, she threw her hands in the air and jumped backward, tumbling back across the couch behind her, gagging. The roses, no longer held, sailed slowly down to crash, a dozen silent, blood-red explosions on the carpet.

Dr. Philbin said good-bye to her last client of the day, closed and locked the basement entrance door behind him, and headed upstairs to her kitchen for a long-overdue cup of coffee. As she waited for the water to boil, she looked at her watch twice. She had plenty of time to relax before dinner with her daughter and grandson.

Taking her mug in hand, she wandered back downstairs into the office to check her answering machine. Three messages, she noticed. Her daughter, confirming dinner at six o’clock. Mrs. Schwartz, canceling her appointment for tomorrow afternoon: something about visiting relatives. Then came the final message. She sank into her leather-padded desk chair, sipping the strong, hot coffee as she listened.

“Dr. Philbin, it’s Jill Talbot. I’ve been thinking about what you said, about, you know, Victor Dimorta. I think you may be onto something, but—well, I’ve got a problem with it. I think maybe we should do what we did about my stepfather, when I couldn’t really remember everything that happened. I think maybe you should hypnotize me. . . .”

The sign above the door of the shabby little shop on Fourteenth Street was festooned with crudely painted daisies with the name,
Posies
, splashed across the center in looping green letters. It stood on the teeming, snowy block among discount electronic stores and cheap clothing outlets. Several rather bedraggled-looking floral arrangements crouched dimly on the other side of the grimy plate-glass window. Barney Fleck reached forward to open the glass door for her, and the two of them entered. The cheerful clanging of a little bell attached to the top of the door announced their arrival.