Fully Loaded Thrillers - Crouch Blake - Страница 42

“You staying here tonight?” she asked, lifting one, flipping through the crisp, clean bills, breathing in the ink and the paper.

“I would,” he said, “if you wanted to get together again.”

The shower cut off. She heard the curtain whisk back. Tossed the packet into the briefcase, grabbed the manila folder, leafed through the contents: floor plan, house key, one page of typewritten notes, and a black-and-white photograph of a woman who couldn’t have been more than a year or two past thirty. The shot was candid, or trying to be, Daphne in the foreground, in startling focus, surrounded by clusters of blurry rhododendron. Her hair long, black, straight. Skin preternaturally pale. A remote and icy beauty.

Arnold was toweling off now.

“We could definitely meet for dinner tonight,” Letty said as she scanned the address on the page of notes: 712 Hamlet Court.

The tiny motor of an electric razor started up. She closed the briefcase. Her heels lay toppled on the carpet at the foot of the bed, and she stepped into them, slung her duffle bag onto her shoulder.

“Maybe we could grab dinner downtown,” Arnold said over the whine of his razor. “I’d like to see more of Asheville.”

“Absolutely,” she said, lifting the briefcase. “I’ll take you barhopping. I know a few good ones. We’ll hit the Westville Pub. Great beer bar.”

“Now you’re talking.”

Twelve feet to the door. To being done with all of this. Her biggest score.

She turned back the inner lock, reached down for the handle.

Arnold said something from the bathroom that she missed. Saw herself slipping out into the corridor, heard the soft click of the door shutting behind her. Felt the tension of waiting for the elevator.

Letty turned back from the door, returned the briefcase to the closet shelf. Hardest thing she’d ever done.

She set her bag down and knocked on the bathroom door. “Can I come in, Arnie?”

“Yeah.”

He turned off the razor as she opened the door, frowned when he saw her. Steam rising off his shoulders. “You’re dressed.”

“I want to go back to my apartment, get a shower there.”

“You can stay here while I go to my meeting.”

“I need to let my dog out, get some papers graded. I’ll leave my number on the bedside table.”

He stepped away from the sink, embraced her, the towel damp around his waist, said, “I can’t wait to see you tonight.”

And she kissed him like she meant it.

Letty ran through the lobby, past the front desk, out into a cool, fall morning. She forced a twenty into the bellhop’s hand, and he relinquished the car service he’d called for another guest.

“You know Hamlet Court?” she asked when the Bellhop had shut her into the backseat of the Lincoln Town Car.

The driver glanced back, a light-skinned Haitian with blue eyes. “I will find. You have street number?”

“Seven twelve.” As he punched the address into the GPS unit, Letty handed a hundred-dollar bill into the front seat. “I’m sorry, but I need you to speed.”

Through the streets of the old, southern city, the downtown architecture catching early light—City Hall, the Vance Monument, the Basilica of St. Lawrence, where a few churchgoers straggled in for morning mass—and on the outskirts of Letty’s perception, secondary to her inner frenzy, a spectrum of Appalachian color—copper hillsides, spotless blue, the Black Mountain summits enameled with rime ice. A classic autumn day in the Swannanoa Valley.

They turned onto an oak-lined boulevard, red and gold leaves plastered to the pavement.

“We’re going into Montford?” Letty asked.

“That’s what the computer says to me.”

Hamlet Court was a secluded dead end off the B&B bustle of Montford Avenue, approximately a half mile long, and home to a dozen Victorian mansions.

The entrance to 712 stood at the end of the cul-de-sac through a brick archway just spacious enough to accommodate a single car.

“Stop the car,” Letty said.

“I take you all the way up.”

“I don’t want you to take me all the way.”

She climbed out of the car at 10:04. Hurried to the end of the street and under the archway, glancing at the name on a large, black mailbox: Rochefort.

The residence sat toward the back of the property, which sloped up across a masterfully landscaped yard shaded with maples and spruce trees, dotted with stone sculptures—fountains, birdbaths, angels—and not a leaf to be seen on the pockets of lush green grass.

An engine turned over near the house. Letty stepped off the drive and crawled into a thicket of mountain laurel as a boxy Mercedes G-Class rolled past. Through the branches and tinted glass, she glimpsed Chase at the wheel, a young boy in a booster in the backseat. The car ride over had only intensified her nausea, and as the diesel engine faded away, she put her finger down her throat and retched in the leaves.

She felt instantly better. Weaker. Less drunk. But better.

Only when the Mercedes had disappeared did she climb out of the bushes. Shivering, shoulders scraped, head pounding not only with a hangover, but a new element of suffering—coffee-deprivation.

She jogged uphill to where the driveway widened and cut a roomy circle back into itself. Up the brick steps onto the covered porch, where she rang the doorbell twice, struggling to catch her breath.

10:08 by her BlackBerry as footsteps approached from the other side of the door.

When it finally opened and Daphne Rochefort stood in the threshold in a lavender terrycloth robe, Letty realized she had given no prior consideration to exactly what she might say to this woman, had thought through and executed getting here, but nothing after.

“Yes?”

“Daphne?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “What can I do for you?” Though at face value the words were all southern hospitality, the delivery carried a distinct northern draft.

Letty rubbed her bare arms, figured she probably still reeked of alcohol and vomit.

“There’s a man coming here to kill you.”

“Pardon?”

“I know this must sound—”

“You smell like booze.”

“You have to listen to me.”

“I want you off my porch.”

“Please, just—”

“I’m calling the police.”

“Good, call the police.”

Daphne retreated to slam the door, but Letty darted forward, planting her right heel across the doorframe. “I’m trying to help you. Just give me two minutes.”

Letty followed Daphne past the staircase, down a hallway into an enormous kitchen full of marble and stainless steel and redolent of chopped onions and cooking eggs. Daphne went to the stove, flipped an omelet, and began to peel a banana. “What’s your name?”

“It’s not important.”

“So talk,” she said.

Letty stood across the island from her, light flooding in through the large windows behind the sink, the coffeemaker at the end of its brewing cycle, gurgling like it’d had its throat cut.

“Here’s the Clif Notes,” Letty said, “ because we don’t have much time. I went to the Grove Park Inn yesterday. Someone hooked me up with a master keycard, tipped me off to which rooms might be worth hitting.”

“You’re a thief.”

“I was in the last room of the day when the guest came back unexpectedly. I had to hide in the closet.”

“I’m failing to see—”

“Chase was with him.” Daphne stopped slicing the banana. “Your husband gave this man, Arnold, a key to your house. A photo of you. A floor plan. And twenty-five thousand dollars to murder you.”

Daphne looked up from the cutting board, her bright, black eyes leveled upon Letty like a double-barreled shotgun. Her smile exposed a row of exquisite teeth.

“I want you to leave right now.”

“You think I’m lying? I didn’t want to come here. I had a chance to steal the twenty-five thousand this morning. Could’ve gone home, had nothing more to do with any of this. You don’t know me, but this isn’t like me, this…selflessness. I’ve been to prison too many times. I can’t take another felony charge. Getting involved in this was a great risk for me.”