Jane fought against panic. How could she drown when she was within twenty yards of a life ring? When the boat was no more than a hundred yards away? But when she came up on the next peak, the boat was still rocking broadside. The life ring was nowhere in sight. Could it have broken when it hit the water? Had it already sunk? She caught a glimpse of the shoreline, now dark and vacant. How far away was it? They had been sailing only a few hundred yards off the island’s volcanic edges, a distance she should be able to swim. But the sea would be in her face.
Fear began to take over. Was Bill coming back for her? Had he swung the wheel, causing the boat to turn and the sail to jibe? Jesus, had he planned to put her overboard? She thought of his telephone call and the gloomy, nonresponsive mood it had caused. What had he learned? Why wasn’t he coming back for her?
There were running lights on the boat, red and green at the wa-terline and white high up on the mast. Was the boat coming at her, or had it turned away? It seemed no nearer, and the light on the mast was still swinging widely. The boat hadn’t steadied in any direction. The life ring was no longer an issue. It could be floating just a few yards from her and she would never find it in the darkness. The boat disappeared as she slipped behind another wave.
How long could she stay afloat? And hour? Maybe two? Sometime during the night her strength would falter, her breathing would become less rhythmical. There would be no chance of rescue until daylight. Her best chance was to strike out for the shore.
When she rode up the next crest, the boat came into view, now closer and steadier in the water. It was on its way back to her, kicking up a gray bow wake on the black surface. She screamed with all the air she could muster and waved frantically until she dropped down into the next trough. Could he see her? Probably not. She took another breath and screamed again.
There was a bright light on the boat when she saw it next. Bill was panning a searchlight over the waves, trying to locate the voice. Jane waved frantically, but the beam of light was well short of her. She heard the boat’s engine, a low rumble from the small diesel. Then she heard the sound of the bow slicing through the water. “Over here!” she called. The light swung to her and hit her face with a blinding glare.
Bill’s voice came. “I’ve got you! I’m coming to you!” The engine noise lowered and then went silent.
The boat went past her. She could see Bill at the helm, turning the boat behind her so that it was between her and the open sea. He was out of the cockpit and back on the swim ladder, reaching down to her. She caught his hand and swung her feet to the ladder. He lifted her aboard.
His arms were around her. He kissed the top of her head and hugged her as if he were trying to wring the seawater out of her clothes. “Thank God, thank God,” he said over and over. Then Jane began to cry hysterically.
She went below to get into dry clothes and heard the engine start while she was changing. She was still sobbing and gasping for breath when she went back up to the cockpit and sat across the wheel from her husband. “I don’t know what happened,” Andrews said. “I was worried about jibing and turned even farther toward the wind. One of the waves must have caught us square. All of a sudden we were swinging and before I could stop it, the boom came over.”
Jane nodded, not sure of what he was telling her. “I got my arms up just in time,” she remembered.
Bill was lost in his own recollection. “I threw the ring, but the light never came on. There’s a lamp that’s supposed to turn on when the ring hits the water. I threw the damn thing at you, but then I couldn’t find it.”
“I saw it hit the water …” Jane started.
“I got the sails down pretty fast. I turned into the wind and freed the halyards. But then the engine wouldn’t start. It must have taken thirty seconds for it to catch….”
“More like thirty minutes,” Jane said. “I thought you weren’t going to make it back.”
“I would have come back in the dinghy,” Bill assured her. And then he was back to the beginning. “I can’t believe that I let the mainsail jibe! It must have been a wave!”
They motored into the bight on the northern end of the island and saw several boats bobbing in a protected cove. He wanted Jane to stay in the cockpit, but she insisted on going forward to catch their mooring. He shut off the engine and welcomed her into his arms. They sat quietly out in the open until Jane fell asleep.
They left the boat in Soper’s Hole and climbed aboard the single-engine floatplane that he had chartered. The plane took off to the east and then turned back over the sprawling harbor with its flotilla of yachts so they could have one last look at their honeymoon vessel. As soon as they boarded the jet on St. Thomas, Andrews picked up the telephone and got back to work.
She watched aghast at how easily he made the transition. He talked with Gordon Frier, evaluating the worth of a cable company in the Canadian Maritimes. “I know it has coverage,” he said as if he had been studying it for the past week, “but nobody lives up there! We’d have to run it as a social service. I mean, who in hell wants to advertise to a bunch of fishermen?” He hung up and then instantly dialed Henry Davis, who had the week’s financial consolidation waiting for him. “Will we make our numbers?” he growled. After listening for a minute, he cut in with “C’mon, Henry, it’s a simple question. Will we make them or not?” He didn’t seem pleased with the answer. And then it was John Applebaum, who headed up the newspapers and was Roscoe’s immediate boss. “How about that promotion for Taylor?” he asked. “Good,” he said when he heard the answer.
He spared Jane a moment. “Roscoe has accepted the promotion,” he told her with a smile. She had to wonder whether the smile was congratulating her on her friend’s good fortune or was a cynical announcement that her most important ally had sold out.
When he started another call, Jane snatched the phone from his hand. “Is there a window around here that I can open?”
He shook his head. “Not unless you want to kill us all.” He reached for the phone, and she surrendered it without a struggle.
“Technically, we’re still on our honeymoon until we land,” she reminded him.
He studied her, nodded, and turned off the phone.
She wasn’t overjoyed when they returned to their apartment. She had expected her renovations to be finished, but the master bedroom was still raw plaster, and nothing had been done to the children’s rooms. Cassie and Craig were still at home and had little to say by way of greeting. “We’re being picked up tomorrow,” Craig said, referring to the limo service that would return him and his sister to their schools. Cassie had her earphones on and couldn’t be disturbed.
Then Andrews disappeared into his office and closed the door behind him. He had a full week’s work to catch up on and no time to console his new wife. “Could you make me a sandwich,” he wondered, “and maybe fix a pot of coffee?” Her dreams of belonging came crashing down. She pretended to be asleep when Bill looked in and decided not to disturb her.
But she wasn’t even drowsy. Her mind was whirling through the events of her courtship and marriage, looking for a pattern and at the same time hoping not to find one. In her entire life, there had been only a few moments of danger, but since she had gotten close to William Andrews, threatening “accidents” were coming fast and furious. Was the runaway horse a sinister scheme or just a childish prank? Had someone pushed the button to close the dance floor on top of her, or was it an unexplained mechanical failure? Did she really pass out from a few sips of champagne, or had she been drugged into unconsciousness? Had she been knocked overboard by a sudden wave, or had her husband intentionally turned into a dangerous jibe? She could easily link all these events to attempts to keep her from marrying William Andrews and to end her snooping into the death of Kay Parker. But just as logically, she could argue them all away as odd coincidences.
Any number of people were legitimate suspects, even the man she had married. True, he had twice rescued her in life-and-death situations. But on the boat, her accident had come after a mood-altering phone call. Wasn’t it possible that he decided to kill her and then, when she was drowning in front of him, couldn’t go through with it? Jane was determined to find some answers.
In the morning she led the swimming pool engineer up to the roof. “Now take me through this step-by-step. I want to know all the ways that this thing can be made to open and close.” They went to the toggle switch that was behind the band shell. It was a simple snap switch with one position marked OPEN and the other CLOSED. Logic argued that she would have seen anyone who came out on the roof to throw the switch.
“Another way,” the engineer told her, “is to use the circuit breaker. You could turn the power off on this line and then set the switch to whichever position you wanted. Then, when you turned the power back on, the floor would move to whatever the switch was set on.”
“You can kill the power to just this line?” Jane asked.
“Sure. It’s a single circuit with its own breaker. All you have to do is open and close the breaker.”
“Where’s the breaker?”
“Downstairs in the line-entry box. That’s where the breakers are for every circuit in the house.”
“Where downstairs?” she asked suspiciously.
“In the foyer, right outside the service door.”
So that’s how they did it, she thought. That’s how they were able to close the dance floor on top of me without coming up to the roof. She felt an instant of triumph until she realized that “they” could have been anyone. One of the kids, certainly. Or Bob Leavitt, who was visiting the apartment that night. Or any of the corporation’s executives. They all had keys to the private elevator and were in and out of the apartment for their constant meetings with Andrews. Even Bill himself, if he was of a mind to put an end to her snooping, a possibility reinforced by her accident on the sailboat. Learning about the circuit breaker didn’t do much to narrow her list of suspects.
Still, knowing how it was done was important. It put to rest the notion that the pool cover just happened to malfunction. It warned her again that whoever had decided she was an intolerable danger had no qualms about keeping her out of the family.
Bob Leavitt called to tell her that her husband would be leaving for Chicago within the hour. He expected to be back by the next afternoon.
“Is he there?” she asked.
“Yes, but on a conference call.”
“Would you tell him I’d like to speak with him!” She didn’t care if she sounded bitchy. That was the way she suddenly felt. She waited the full hour until his scheduled departure for Chicago. When he hadn’t called, she packed an overnight case and headed downtown to the station, where she got on a train for Connecticut.
There was a light in the window of her apartment, which would have disturbed her except that Art’s car was parked in her space. She paid the taxi, went up the stairs, and let herself in. He was sitting at her computer, her research into Selina Royce up on the screen. He shut down as soon as he realized she was standing behind him.
“What are you doing here?” Jane demanded.
“You mean here, in your apartment? I just came over to do some work on my play. It’s noisy at my brother’s house.”
“That wasn’t your play. That was my research,” she charged.
“Oh, that. Yeah, I just happened to come across it. What’s so important about that girl? What’s she got to do with William Andrews?”
Jane wouldn’t let herself be distracted. “You let yourself into my apartment and were going through my things. Do you know I could call the police?”
He sneered. “Get off it! I was working on my play and I happened to see what you were looking into. I was curious—”
“You didn’t happen to see anything. You brought up my files and were reading them.” Her voice was getting louder.
“Big deal. It’s all public record stuff. It’s not as if you’re working for the CIA.” Art grabbed his jacket and stormed out of the apartment.
“Don’t forget your play,” Jane called after him, reminding her former husband that he hadn’t brought the play he said he was working on.