34
Rita couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing when she arrived at Huntington House for work the next morning.
Carrying freshly laundered sheets upstairs, she paused on the landing. The portrait of Dominique was gone!
In its place was merely its outline, a large dusty rectangle. The blue wallpaper that had been behind the portrait was a more vivid color than the sun-bleached paper around it.
So it had finally come down . . .
Rita heard a voice from the top of the stairs.
David’s voice. Talking on his cell phone.
She hurried up to the second floor. She spotted David in his study. His back was to her, and he was giving instructions in Dutch to some overseas business colleague. She slipped into the room without him noticing, closing the door behind her.
Setting the sheets in her arms down on a chair, she moved quietly across the room to her intended target.
As soon as David ended his call, Rita’s arms snaked around him.
“Jesus Christ!” David shouted, shaking her off and looking back at her.
“What’s the matter, David?” Rita purred. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
He glared at her, saying nothing.
Rita smiled. “Don’t you realize why you had such a sudden and overpowering desire to come home?”
“Rita,” he seethed, “I told you to leave me alone . . .”
“I left you alone all day yesterday, even though I was dying to see you.”
“Look, Rita . . .”
“Really, David. Haven’t you stopped to wonder? Why did you feel so compelled to come home, David? It was me. Admit it. You were thinking of me.”
Rita knew it must be true. The doll that Variola had given her . . . it had enabled her to break the spell on David and allow him to once again feel his love for her. While she refused to win him back through hocus-pocus, all the doll really did was liberate David so he could admit the truth . . . that he loved her.
But his face appeared far from loving.
“Get this through your head, you stupid, stupid girl,” he snarled. “I didn’t think of you. I never thought of you! The only time you came into my mind was when you so inappropriately called me on my private phone to tell me about my brother.”
“David, I know you love me . . .”
“Look, Rita, I tried to be kind to you. I tried to be careful of your feelings. But you just won’t get it!” His face was beet red. “I don’t love you! I never loved you! I used you, Rita! I was an unhappily married man and I used you! Get that through your head!”
It was as if David had physically struck her. Rita took a few steps back, staggered.
“I came home because I was concerned about my wife,” David told her. “My wife—to whom I intend to remain married. My wife, whom I love very much.”
“No . . . it was me . . . me who brought you home . . .”
David pushed past her. “One more scene like this, Rita,” he told her, “and you are fired.”
He pulled open the door and stormed out into the corridor.
Rita didn’t know what to do, what to say, what to think.
That doll Variola gave her . . . it was worthless!
Variola was a fraud!
But so was David.
He lied to me all that time, Rita thought. He let me think he loved me when he was just using me.
His words echoed in her ears.
I never loved you! I used you, Rita! I was an unhappily married man and I used you!
In that instant, all of Rita’s affection for the man mutated. Soured, corroded.
Changed into hate.
Now she didn’t want his love.
Now all she wanted was revenge.
Rita picked up the sheets she had set down on the chair. When the moment was right, she decided, she would tell that dear, sweet little wife of his all about her husband’s affair.
David had asked her to be Liz’s friend. And good friends told each other things they needed to know, didn’t they?
Then she’d go back to Detective Foley. She’d reveal everything she knew. She’d tell him what Jamison had revealed to her the night he was killed—that Audra had been killed right in this very house, and that Mrs. Hoffman, quite possibly with David’s knowledge, had had the body moved out to the grounds.
Wouldn’t Detective Foley love to know that? Wouldn’t little Liz love hearing it, too?
Oh, the scandal Rita would bring to Huntington House.
A scandal that might even ruin David financially, if it appeared he covered up a murder in his house.
Maybe he’d even go to jail . . .
Rita walked out into the corridor carrying the sheets in her arms and wearing a smile that stretched across the entire width of her pretty face.
“What’s got you in such a cheery mood?” Mrs. Hoffman asked her when she saw her.
“It’s such a beautiful day,” Rita responded, “why shouldn’t I be smiling?”
And she went on smiling for the rest of the day.