1
Two hours after Nicole returned home, she felt slightly more relaxed but very tired, so tired she might never be able to summon up any energy again. If only it were summer break, she thought. If only none of this were really happening.
When the phone rang, she lay on the big, ugly couch wearing a silk robe, her body feeling so tender and weak from fatigue she couldn’t even bear the weight of clothes. She groaned and went to answer it.
“So how are you today?” Ray asked.
“I have sore elbows and a bruised ego.” Nicole explained her earlier encounter with Avis. “At least we provided some entertainment on campus this afternoon.”
“The woman sounds like she needs some psychiatric help. She also sounds like she should be charged with assault and battery. You have plenty of witnesses.”
“You want me to charge two people in one week?” Nicole laughed. “I don’t think I’m up to it, although I am beginning to feel like a punching bag. It’s like I’m wearing a big sign saying HIT ME.”
“I’m sorry that happened,” Ray said sympathetically. “I don’t expect you’re up to a quiet dinner tonight.”
“Thanks, but not really. I still have to prepare for school tomorrow, and then I thought I’d go to bed early.”
“Sounds like a good plan. But may I reserve a space on your calendar soon for a nice dinner at the Tower of the Americas?”
“Oh, Ray, I haven’t been there for years! I’d love it, but I thought you weren’t allowed to date suspects and that’s such a public place.”
“This will all be settled within a couple of weeks.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.”
“I have a direct pipeline. Do we have a date, then?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Great,” Ray said enthusiastically. “I’ll keep you informed about the case this week. Be sure to keep all your doors and windows locked, call me anytime if you need me, and try to quit worrying and get some sleep tonight.”
“Yes, sir. Talk to you soon, Ray.”
What a nice man, Nicole thought. Nothing like that partner of his, Waters. And he’s good-looking, too. I’m very lucky he’s working this case. I was very lucky to meet him.
She smiled, going to the refrigerator and pouring a glass of orange juice. She hadn’t eaten dinner, and the thought of food was unappealing now although she hadn’t eaten since breakfast and knew she needed to gain weight. The cold, tart juice tasted delicious, though, and she poured a tall glass, carrying it back to the living room with her.
Nicole sat on the couch and placed her briefcase beside her. Tomorrow she would teach the stirring Composition I, which was never a problem. She did, however, need to refresh herself on how to create believable characters for Creative Writing. She opened her briefcase, looking first for the page of partial notes she’d already made for the class, then at the folded pages of the article on somnambulism. Her hand went to the article.
Twenty minutes later she’d learned that sleepwalking is one of the parasomnias that include night terrors, nocturnal enuresis, and nightmares. She also learned that it typically happens during stages three and four of sleep when there is no rapid eye movement, and that it is more common in children than in adults. Episodes can last between thirty seconds and thirty minutes, although sometimes they are longer.
But it wasn’t until she reached the end of the article that her heart began to pound when she read that sleepwalkers rarely remember their episodes, which are often caused by stressful or traumatic events. She leaned forward and read the last sentence of the article aloud, her hands trembling: “Somnambulists often inflict violent or even fatal injuries on other people during their episodes.”
She looked straight ahead. “They’re capable of inflicting violent or even fatal injuries to others,” she repeated emptily. Injuries like gunshots to the head?
2
Nicole wasn’t aware of exactly how long she had sat holding the article in her hands when the phone rang. It was her mother reporting that she’d taken Shelley to see Roger. “He looks awful, but the nurses say he’s doing fine. He seemed totally deflated when I walked in instead of you,” Phyllis said with satisfaction. “I think he had quite a tirade prepared. One look at me, though, and the wind went right out of his pompous sails.”
Nicole laughed. “Mom, you’re incredible.”
“You’re just realizing that?” It was the nearest thing to a joke Nicole had ever heard her mother make and she was too surprised to respond. “Your daughter wants to speak to you.”
“Wonderful,” Nicole said. “And Mom, thanks for keeping her and taking her to see Roger.”
“You have nothing to thank me for.”
A moment later her daughter’s buoyant voice sounded in her ear. “Hi, Mommy! We went to see Daddy.”
“Grandma told me. How is he?”
“Pretty messed up. He’s got bandages all over and he complained like crazy. The nurses said he was the worst patient they’ve ever had.” Shelley giggled. “I think they’ll all be happy when he goes home.”
“Then he’s Lisa’s problem.”
“She wasn’t there, Mommy. I was glad, but it was one of the things Daddy was so cranky about.”
“Maybe she just needed some time to herself.” Or maybe she had a date, Nicole thought. The cat was flat on his back and it was time for the mouse to play. But with whom?
“Nobody else has come to see him. There was only one vase of flowers. I told you his friends didn’t like him anymore.”
“Well, at least he got to see you, honey. I’m sure that meant more to him than a dozen vases of flowers.”
After the call, Nicole’s mind immediately returned to the article and she decided she needed a drink. Five minutes later she sat on the couch again, the article lying on the floor at her feet and a glass of vodka and tonic in her hand.
Oh, God, was Carmen right? she wondered. Could she have killed Magaro and Zand? She’d certainly suffered a traumatic event—the brutal rape and beating that probably triggered the sleepwalking episodes. Basin Park was only half a mile from where she’d lived. The article said the episodes were characteristically short, but it wouldn’t have taken much time for her to get to Basin Park and back, even on foot. And the hoods. Her mother had said she made two and didn’t know what happened to them. “Maybe I do, Mom,” Nicole said, taking a gulp of her drink. “Maybe they ended up on the heads of Magaro and Zand.”
I couldn’t have killed them, she thought. I just couldn’t have. Still, she couldn’t get the sound of their voices out of her head as they sat beneath the overpass.
Nicole slapped her hands over her ears. “Maybe I didn’t kill them,” she moaned. “But I was there the night they were murdered. I know it. I was there.”
3
Avis poured another glass of burgundy, started out of the kitchen with only the glass, and paused. “Oh, to hell with it,” she muttered and went back for the bottle. Carrying both the half-empty bottle and the glass, she walked down the long hall of the house to what her parents had always called the “drawing room.” It was cavernous, decorated with valuable, if dusty, antiques, and very chilly on cool Texas winter nights. As a child she’d never been allowed in the room. Now that her parents were dead and the house was hers, it gave her great pleasure to eat and drink in it, knowing her mother and father would be horrified by such uncouth behavior.
Her father had been a famous lawyer, the kind who took on the glamour cases, always traveling around the country with his beautiful young wife. They were a dazzling couple who had been immensely proud of their handsome, equally dazzling son, John, and immensely disappointed in their plain, bookish, gawky daughter. Avis had spent her childhood trying unsuccessfully to win their love, which was focused on John. When Avis was seventeen, her brother was killed in Vietnam performing a stupid, reckless act that her parents, if not the army, labeled “heroic.” After John was gone, Avis believed her parents would turn some of their love her way, particularly if she distinguished herself in some way. But graduating from Harvard with a Ph.D. in English had not done the trick. Neither had the publication of her critically praised book on Samuel Johnson, of whom they had never heard. And after her father died abruptly of a heart attack and Avis had given up her position at Brown University in Rhode Island to come home to a mother who perpetually complained of loneliness, there had been no difference. It seemed to hurt her beautiful mother even to look at Avis’s face, which aged before its time, making her look middle-aged by the time she was thirty-three.
Avis gazed up at the portrait of her mother above the mantel. It had been painted when she was twenty-two, one year after her marriage. She had blond hair, startlingly blue eyes, high cheekbones, a porcelain complexion, and Avis thought she looked remarkably like Nicole Chandler. Nicole should have been her daughter, Avis thought bitterly. She would have been proud of Nicole.
Avis’s jaw tightened. She raised her glass to the portrait. “Here’s to you, Mother,” she ground out. “And here’s to your daughter in spirit, the one who looks and acts so much like you.” Avis giggled. “She didn’t look so beautiful sprawled in that parking lot today.”
She gulped the wine, almost choking, then burst into laughter at the thought of Nicole lying on the concrete, her skirt up around her hips. Then she thought of how the students had rushed to help Nicole, how concerned they’d looked, how someone had called her a wacko, and her laughter died. They didn’t care that Avis had once been considered a brilliant young scholar, that she’d written articles and a book, that she had just finished what she considered a pivotal book on Alexander Pope, even if those idiots at the university presses to which she’d submitted it said the manuscript was rambling, the criticism unsound. “As if they’d know unsound criticism if they heard it!” she said to the room at large. “They just can’t accept anything as sophisticated as what I’ve done. They don’t understand it.”
Thinking about the much-rejected manuscript made her feel worse. She emptied her glass, then filled it again to the brim. She addressed the portrait. “Yes, Mother, I know the glass shouldn’t be full, but who cares? There’s no one here to see my breach of good form. There’s never anybody here. Never.”
Her eyes welled with tears. How long had it been since she’d had company? Nancy Silver and her husband used to come, but they hadn’t visited her for over a year. Her few other friends had vanished long before. And men? Several years ago there had been a man; a handsome, sensitive man who’d gone to foreign films with her, talked of literature with her, had even eaten dinner with her and her mother in the big dining room that hadn’t been used since her father’s death.
Then, one hot summer evening when they’d sat in this room, Avis, summoning all her courage, took his hand and raised it to her lips. She kissed it and looked deeply, meaningfully into his dark eyes. He’d blushed, averted his eyes, and haltingly told her that while he cared deeply for her, he was afraid she didn’t realize he was gay.
Her mother had laughed when, the next day over dinner, Avis had burst into tears and told her. “You mean you didn’t know he was gay?” she’d asked incredulously.
“How could I have?” Avis had asked in bewilderment.
Her mother shook her head. “Avis, did you really believe a heterosexual man that good-looking would want to spend so much time with you?”
Avis had leaped up from the table, turning over her chair as she went. Two days later her mother was found at the bottom of the steep staircase, her neck broken. The death was ruled an accident, although Avis knew the police had their suspicions.
She quickly turned her mind away from the image of her mother’s glassy eyes staring up at her. Even in death Avis thought she saw disappointment, even repulsion in them. After that the house had been all hers and she’d made changes. She closed off both her parents’ and John’s bedrooms, and virtually abandoned the upstairs. She’d fired the housekeeper, then thrown away the key to the wine cellar, indulging herself in all the fine vintages her mother had reserved for company. After all, what did it matter? There was very little company anymore, and there was no one to whom she could leave the house and its treasures, including the wine cellar. At one time Avis had planned on leaving it to Nancy Silver, but three months ago she had changed her will, bequeathing it to charity.
She took another sip of wine, then slipped a CD into the portable player she kept in the room. Just before Handel’s Water Music began, she thought she heard the tinkling of glass coming from the back of the house. She cocked her head, but the music obliterated all further sound. Probably nothing, she thought. She hadn’t washed dishes for three days. Maybe one of the glasses stacked in the sink had fallen over and broken.
Avis drained her glass and refilled it, emptying the bottle. “Oh, well, the hour is young and many more bottles await.” She set the glass down on a dusty Sheraton drum table and reached out her hand to a handsome, invisible suitor. “Yes, sir, I would most surely enjoy a dance.” She began an elaborate gavotte, preening and dimpling at her imaginary lover, picturing herself in a gown of lavender satin, her thick blond hair piled high, her ample breasts nearly spilling from the top of her low-cut gown, her beauty the desire of all the men, the envy of all the women.
She tripped, almost fell, and giggled loudly. The room seemed to be moving. “Please forgive me, sir. I fear I’m dizzy from dancing,” she told her dance partner.
The music softened during one of the string movements and she heard it. A thump. Then another and another. Near the stairs. On the stairs. The stairs where her mother had died.
The simpering smile faded from Avis’s thin lips. She stood still for a moment. Finally she moved from the drawing room to the hall. She never turned on many lights at night, mostly because bulbs had burned out and she never bothered to replace them. This was true of the crystal chandelier in the hall, which had ceased to glisten and glow two years ago. She slept downstairs, so the only light on the stairs was that filtering from the drawing room. She crept forward, alternately frowning and squinting as she tried to focus on the mound at the bottom of the stairs. She stepped closer and closer. Was it a body? Was it…
“Mother!” she screamed. “Mother, I didn’t mean to do it! I was just so angry. You were laughing at me. You said I was comical! And I pushed you—”
Avis was screeching, her face blanched, her eyes huge and burning in their cavernous sockets. Her hand clapped over her mouth, and she backed slowly away from the mound, horrified. You’re drunk, she thought with a brutal clarity she rarely allowed herself. You’re hallucinating. Mother has been dead for four years. Dead and buried. She couldn’t be lying, once again, in a broken heap at the foot of the stairs.
She kept backing up, nearly gibbering with fear and guilt and shock, when she bumped into someone. Instead of turning to see who it was, she froze, terrified that if she turned, she would see the face of her mother.
Flutes, oboes, bassoons, and strings sounded in the other room. “Scared?” a voice asked in her ear.
Avis opened her mouth, but nothing came out. If I could just talk, she thought. If I could just say one word, this hallucination would end. One word…
An arm circled her waist and jerked her backward against a body that felt abnormally warm. “Did you think that was Mama at the foot of the stairs? Did you relive that moment when you pushed her, just like you pushed Nicole Chandler today? You got all mixed up, didn’t you, Avis? You thought Nicole was your mother.”
“No, no I didn’t,” Avis whispered frantically. “I didn’t mean to push her.”
“Who? Your mother? Or Nicole?”
“Nicole.”
The gun jammed against her head, feeling as if it were going to push a hole in her temple. “Liar.”
“Okay. Just for a moment. They look so much alike. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I wouldn’t hurt her. I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Liar!”
Avis was beginning to hyperventilate. “All right. I don’t like her. But she laughs at me.”
“Who? Nicole or your mother?”
“I don’t know. Both.”
“No wonder. You’re pathetic.”
“Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right,” Avis panted. The hall was beginning to circle around her. Too much wine and too little air in her lungs. “I’m sorry. I won’t hurt her again.”
“You’re damned right, you won’t. You won’t hurt Nicole or anyone else ever again,” the voice grated. The arm moved up, encircling her throat, completely constricting her breathing. Everything went black, even though Avis knew she was still alive. She tried to move her hands, to claw at the arm around her throat, but she was paralyzed with fear. She knew what was coming and she wished she would faint, but she’d never fainted in her life. “You’ll never hurt anyone again.”
Even if the gun hadn’t been silenced, the shot couldn’t have been heard over the soaring, triumphant trumpet ending of Avis’s favorite musical composition.