The Cove

“That’s just right,” he said easily. “Thank you.” He waited until she’d poured herself a bit, then gave her a salute. “I need this. You scared the bejesus out of me. Nice to meet you, Susan St. John.”

“And you, Mr. Quinlan. Please call me Sally.”

“All right—Sally. After all our screams and shouts, why not call me James?”

“I don’t know you, even if I did scream at you.”

“The way you gouged me in the ribs, I’d give up before I’d let you attack me like that again. Where’d you learn to do that?”

“A girl at boarding school taught me. She said her brother was the meanest guy in junior high and he didn’t want a wuss for a sister so he taught her all sorts of self-defense tricks.”

He found himself looking down at her hands. They were as thin and pale as the rest of her. She said, “I never tried it before—seriously, I mean. Well, I did, several times, but I didn’t have a chance. There were too many of them.”

What the hell was she talking about? He said, “It worked. I wanted to die. In fact, I’ll be hobbled over for the next couple of days. I’m glad you missed my groin.”

He sipped his brandy, watching her. What to do? It had seemed so simple, so straightforward before, but now, sitting here, facing her, seeing her in the flesh as a person and not just as his key to the murder of Amory St. John, things weren’t so clear anymore. He hated it when things weren’t clear. “Tell me about your father.”

She didn’t say anything, just shook her head.

“Listen to me, Sally. He’s dead. Your damned father is dead. That couldn’t have been him on the phone. That means that it must have been either a recording of his voice or a person who could mimic him very well.”

“Yes,” she said, still staring into the brandy.

“Obviously someone knows you’re here. Someone wants to frighten you.”

She looked up at him then, and remarkably, she smiled. It was a lovely smile, free of fear, free of stress. He found himself smiling back at her. “That someone succeeded admirably,” she said. “I’m scared out of my mind. I’m sorry I attacked you.”

“I would have attacked me too if I had burst through the front door like that.”

“I don’t know if the call was long distance. If it was long distance, then I’ve got some time to decide what to do.” She paused, then stiffened. She didn’t move, but he got the feeling that she’d just backed a good fifteen feet away from him. “You know who I am, don’t you? I didn’t realize it before, but you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“How?”

“I saw your photo on TV, also some footage of you with your father and your mother.”

“Amabel assures me that no one in The Cove will realize who I am. She says no one besides her has a TV except for Thelma Nettro, who’s older than dust.”

“You don’t have to worry that I’ll shout it around. In fact, I promise to keep it to myself. I was in the World’s Greatest Ice Cream Shop when I met your aunt. A Sherry Vorhees mentioned that you were visiting. Your aunt didn’t say a word about who you were.” Lying was an art, he thought, watching her assess his words. The trick was always to lean as much as possible toward the exact truth. It was a trick some of the town’s citizens could benefit from.

She was frowning, her hands clasped around the glass. Her foot was tapping on the linoleum.

“Who is after you?”

Again she gave him a smile, but this one was mocking and underlaid with so much fear he fancied he could smell it. She fiddled with the napkin holder, saying while she straightened the napkins that had dumped onto the table, “You name someone and he’d probably be just one in a long line.”

She was sitting across from one of those someones. Damnation, he hated this. He’d thought it would be so easy. When would he learn that people were never what they seemed? That smile of hers was wonderful. He wanted to feed her.

She said suddenly, “The strangest thing happened the first night I was here, just two nights ago. I woke up in the middle of the night at the sound of a person’s cry. It was a person, I know it was. I went into the hall upstairs to make sure something wasn’t happening to Amabel, but when the cry came again I knew it was from outside. Amabel said I’d imagined it. It’s true that I’d had a horrible nightmare, a vivid memory in the form of a dream, actually, but the screams pulled me out of the dream. I know that. I’m sure of it. Anyway, I went back to bed, but I know I heard Amabel leave the house after that. You’re a private detective. What do you make of that?”