Valentine (21 page)

Everyone laughed as lunch arrived before them. Belinda decided that she liked Len. He was obviously intelligent, and he seemed to be very interested in Toni. Something in their shyness with each other told Belinda that the two of them hadn’t yet become intimate. But, knowing Toni, she knew it was simply a matter of time.

When they told her about their tentative plan to ski together next Thursday, and invited her to join them, she almost said no. It was Valentine’s Day, and she figured they would probably want to be alone together. Besides, she really should think of something to do with Jake. . . .

Later that afternoon, in the ladies’ room, Toni talked her into it.

“Oh, please come with us, B’lin. He’s very nice, and all that, but he’s kind of quiet with me. Lunch today was the most relaxed I’ve seen him: I think a third party is just what the doctor ordered, at least until—well, you know. . . .”

Belinda knew. She also knew that her husband would be working on Valentine’s Day. So she’d be the “third party” for Toni and her new man, then go home and try the steak dinner again.

“Okay,” she said.

At home that night, after dinner, she told her husband about Toni’s new boyfriend and the plans for Thursday. Jake was slouched in his favorite armchair, reading—another contract or agreement, from the look of it. He uttered a small sound of acknowledgment, but she wasn’t sure that he’d heard her.

The slope was known by the regulars at the lodge as Dead Man’s Folly. It was the highest and the longest, and there were a couple of difficult passages, especially halfway down. At the end of his week’s instruction, Franz had declared him ready for it. The two men skied down the slope twice, and Franz congratulated “Len” on his expert work. He’d never had a better student, he claimed, or a faster learner.

Victor booked a room at the lodge for the evening of Valentine’s Day and made a reservation for dinner in the restaurant. He knew that he and Toni would not be having dinner there or spending the night, but the reservations were important. They would be joined by Belinda for lunch and skiing that day, and then Belinda was to discreetly disappear while he and Toni consummated their new relationship. That’s what the women thought, anyway. . . .

When “Len” suggested Dead Man’s Folly, Toni and Belinda readily agreed. And that is how he got them there after lunch on
February 14
. He waited
while a group went up on the lift and skied down, then he led the women outside. He carefully inspected the other people around: nobody else was currently headed for their destination. No witnesses. Good.

It was a beautiful day, he noted with pleasure as the lift carried them up the hill. The air was cold and crisp, and the sun bore down on the snow, making the lodge and the slopes stand out in sharp definition—a heightened realism, the phrase he’d learned in photography class in prison. A beautiful day to die.

The two women had done the trail many times before, so “Len” suggested that he should go between them. Toni first, wait two minutes, then “Len” would follow her tracks. Belinda, the best skier of the three, would follow two minutes behind him. The two-minute thing had been explained by the pro: a safeguard against faster followers crashing into slower preceders on this particular narrow, often treacherous slope.

Perfect.

Toni took off, and he waited two minutes. Then he flew smoothly down to the place that he’d chosen after his first two trips, halfway down the mountain and approximately thirty feet from a cliff edge. Over that edge was a nearly vertical, three-hundred-foot
drop into a ravine, a small canyon around the side of the mountain from the resort.

When he arrived at his chosen place, he braked, moved off the trail toward the cliff, removed his skis, lay down in the snow, and waited.

She stood at the top of the hill, counting off two minutes on her watch. As she waited, she thought about Jake.

He hadn’t forgotten their anniversary, after all. The morning after the missed dinner, he’d announced over breakfast that as soon as he could get away from the office, maybe as early as March, they were going on a two-week vacation. His plan had been to spend a week with her family in Buffalo, then a week with his folks in New York City. But Belinda had now come up with a better idea: three days in Buffalo, three days in New York—and a week in Puerto Rico, just the two of them. Neither of them had ever been there, and Jake had often mentioned a long-held desire to see the Caribbean.

She gazed down at the endless fields of snow, thinking, Puerto Rico. Yes. Swimming and scuba diving and getting tans. Dancing to salsa bands every evening on tropical verandas. Rich Hispanic food and exotic, fruity drinks. They could even try wind-surfing. Best of all, they would be together, blissfully
alone. No families, no friends, and
no
law firm. Heaven!

Her two minutes had passed, she noticed. Shaking away thoughts of palm trees and lying naked with her husband under a slow ceiling fan, she lowered her goggles over her face, planted her poles and shoved off. As she glided down the first part of the slope, the familiar thrill suffused her. This was the reason she so enjoyed skiing, this rush as she gained momentum on her way down. She giggled as the wind flew by her, thinking, We can water ski in Puerto Rico. . . .

Then, as she came around the steep curve nearly halfway down the slope, she saw something dark off to the side, at the edge of her field of vision.

Someone—Len!—was lying in the snow several yards from the trail.

When Belinda came along, he cried out in pain to get her attention. She immediately braked and came over to him. He lay still, listening to the approaching crunching sounds as she moved awkwardly, crablike, toward him on her skis. He breathed deeply, evenly, enjoying the thrill of anticipation that filled him as he waited. She arrived beside him, leaned over, and asked him if he was hurt.

He looked up into her face, now a mask of concern. Then, to her obvious surprise, he smiled. He reached
slowly into the pocket of his down jacket, pulled out the tiny cassette player, and pressed the play button.

Sarah Vaughan.

“My Funny Valentine.”

She stared down, confused, not getting it at all. In a flash, he was on his feet beside her. Even as he did so, he regretted the need for haste. He would have preferred to draw this out, to savor it, but there was no time.

“I’m Victor Dimorta,” he said. “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

If there had ever been a moment—and there hadn’t—when he had considered sparing Belinda Rosenberg, now Kessler, her next action would have changed his mind in any case. She slowly raised her gaze to stare at his face, and her voice when she spoke rang with genuine puzzlement.

“Who?”

He returned her stare, feeling his exhilaration transform into dangerous rage. It filled him, surging through his chest, hot against his cold face. He flushed with indignation.

She didn’t remember him.

He knew the importance of speed in this enterprise, but his next action was so swift and sudden that it even surprised him. He raised his fist and sent it crashing into her nose, breaking it for a second time. With a small sound more like a sigh than a cry,
she fell flat on her back. Her dark hair tumbled out the sides of her parka and the blood began to trickle from her nostrils as she continued to stare up at him, her confusion turning slowly to pain.

Victor Dimorta stared down at her, laughing. “Yeah, you remember
that
, don’t you, bitch!” Then he leaned down and shouted into her startled face. “
Victor Dimorta
, you miserable little turd! Hartley College! Valentine’s Day! You and the others, the Elements. You got me
expelled
, asshole!”

Then, controlling the rage that threatened to overtake him, he took a deep breath, leaned farther down, and kissed her on the lips.

“You’re going to die now, Belinda,” he whispered softly, caressingly, like a lover. “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

It happened so fast that Belinda’s panicked mind barely had time to register the fact that these were her final moments on earth. He was shouting, and then he kissed her, and then he was whispering. Then, in a flash, she was being lifted up in his amazingly powerful arms. And all the while, the beautiful voice continued to sing “My Funny Valentine.”

My funny valentine
. . .

Victor Dimorta.

Oh, God! Victor Dimorta!

There was one last second of lucidity, of sanity, as
she stared up into his smiling face, so unlike Victor Dimorta’s face.

“My husband,” she whispered as he carried her over to the edge.

He continued to smile.

“Tough luck, bitch,” he said, and then he released her.

And his face was gone, his arms were gone, and she was moving, or something, and she could hear a great whistling of wind rushing past her, and she was freezing,
freezing
, and she was—

Falling!
Oh, my God, I’m
falling!
But it can’t be, I
can’t
be falling I can’t be falling oh please God don’t let me fall I have to be okay I have to live I have to live I have to go to Puerto Rico with my—

He watched as her body smashed into a ledge some fifty feet below him. Then she bounced off and out into the air before plunging down. She fell and fell, landing at last in a snowdrift far below him and tumbling down the rest of the way into the little ravine beside the mountain. After that, she disappeared into the trees.

And that was the end of Belinda Rosenberg Kessler.

He smiled as he looked down, thinking:

Two.

Then he moved. In seconds, he smoothed down all telltale tracks in the snow, reattached his skis, and followed her trail up several yards. He came down,
veering toward the cliff, stopping just short of the edge. He nearly fell over himself, but the danger produced a pleasant thrill. Then he took off the skis, tiptoed back to the trail—being sure to cover these last tracks—put on the skis again, and made it down the slope in no time flat. He and Toni waited at the bottom for Belinda to join them.

Fifteen minutes later, when she had not made an appearance, Toni ran to find the pro. He took off on the lift, then radioed down that there appeared to have been an accident. A group was quickly dispatched around the side of the mountain.

It took them nearly an hour to find her.

He spent the rest of that afternoon comforting Toni as she sobbed, and he remained inconspicuously in the background when the police and the paramedics and the dazed husband arrived. When the reporters showed up, he and Toni made brief statements. His greatest challenge that day was to keep a straight face, to look appropriately horrified and saddened when all he could feel was a tremendous sense of elation. Finally, Toni took Jacob Kessler by the arm and led him away. As they left, she called to Len over her shoulder that she was going to drive Jake home, and that she’d call him later at his hotel. He nodded and waved.

Then he went back to his hotel, packed, and headed for the airport.

Jill was feeling better today. Nate had brought her home in a cab from his place late last night, and he had stayed over. He’d left her sleeping early this morning. The note on the bathroom mirror informed her that the framer was arriving at his studio early, and he would call her later. The slight dizziness she’d felt on rising had dissipated in the shower, and now she was ready for what she must do. In fact, she realized as she went into the kitchen to put on the water for tea, she was looking forward to it.

Elaine Williams stood up from the bed and made her way over to the bureau on the other side of her spacious bedroom. Accompanied by the sounds of the surf below and her own beating heart, she picked up the silver-framed photograph of her husband, Walter, and her daughter, Sharon, and kissed both images.

That done, she dropped her gauzy nightgown to
the floor and proceeded into her marble-lined, gold-fixtured bathroom. She reached into the shower and turned on the hot water. Every day began with a shower: the prescription pills that were now her only means of sleeping left her groggy and disoriented, and there was another reason as well. Hydrotherapy, she thought, as she did every day of her life. Comfort: a temporary balm.

She was just stepping into the scalding shower when the low, discreet knock came at her bedroom door. Jenny, the new maid, came cautiously into the bedroom.

“Good morning, madam,” she whispered to the older woman who stood naked in the bathroom doorway. “Are you ready for breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you, Jenny,” Elaine replied, turning her attention back to the shower.

Fifteen minutes later, dressed now in the blue caftan her late husband had so loved, she was seated at the glass-topped, wrought-iron table on the redwood sundeck of her immense Pacific Palisades home. She rang the tiny silver bell and waited patiently for the shy little maid to bring her usual coffee and toast. No more hearty breakfasts for her: the very act of eating was now a chore.

Jenny was placing the silver coffee service and toast rack before her when the phone rang in the living room. She poured a cup and waited as the
maid went to answer. Moments later, the girl arrived once again beside her chair.

“A call for you, madam,” Jenny whispered. “From New York.”