The Eyes of Darkness Page 10

  “Of course,” he said, “exhumation of the body won’t answer the main question. It won’t help you discover who’s been harassing you.”

  “It might,” Tina said. “Whoever the creep is, whatever his motivations are, he’s not well-balanced. He’s one sort of sickie or another. Right? Who knows what might make a person like that reveal himself? If he finds out there’s going to be an exhumation, maybe he’ll react strongly, give himself away. Anything’s possible.”

  “I suppose you could be right.”

  “Anyway,” she said, “even if reopening the grave doesn’t help me find who’s responsible for these sick jokes — or whatever the hell they are — at least it’ll settle my mind about Danny. That’ll improve my psychological condition for sure, and I’ll be better able to deal with the creep, whoever he is. So it’ll work out for the best either way.” She returned from the window, sat on the couch again, beside Elliot. “I’ll need an attorney to handle this, won’t I?”

  “The exhumation? Yeah.”

  “Will you represent me?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Sure.”

  “How difficult will it be?”

  “Well, there’s no urgent legal reason to have the body exhumed. I mean, there isn’t any doubt about the cause of death, no court trial hinging on a new coroner’s report. If that were the situation, we’d have the grave opened very quickly. But even so, this shouldn’t be terribly difficult. I’ll play up the mother-suffering-distress angle, and the court ought to be sympathetic.”

  “Have you ever handled anything like this before?”

  “In fact, I have,” Elliot said. “Five years ago. This eight-year-old girl died unexpectedly of a congenital kidney disease. Both kidneys failed virtually overnight. One day she was a happy, normal kid. The next day she seemed to have a touch of flu, and the third day she was dead. Her mother was shattered, couldn’t bear to view the body, though the daughter hadn’t suffered substantial physical damage, the way Danny did. The mother wasn’t even able to attend the service. A couple weeks after the little girl was buried, the mother started feeling guilty about not paying her last respects.”

  Remembering her own ordeal, Tina said, “I know. Oh, I know how it is.”

  “The guilt eventually developed into serious emotional problems. Because the mother hadn’t seen the body in the funeral home, she just couldn’t bring herself to believe her daughter was really dead. Her inability to accept the truth was a lot worse than yours. She was hysterical most of the time, in a slow-motion breakdown. I arranged to have the grave reopened. In the course of preparing the exhumation request for the authorities, I discovered that my client’s reaction was typical. Apparently, when a child dies, one of the worst things a parent can do is refuse to look at the body while it’s lying in a casket. You need to spend time with the deceased, enough to accept that the body is never going to be animated again.”

  “Was your client helped by exhumation?”

  “Oh, yes. Enormously.”

  “You see?”

  “But don’t forget,” Elliot said, “her daughter’s body wasn’t mutilated.”

  Tina nodded grimly.

  “And we reopened the grave only two months after the funeral, not a whole year later. The body was still in pretty good condition. But with Danny… it won’t be that way.”

  “I’m aware of that,” she said. “God knows, I’m not happy about this, but I’m convinced it’s something I’ve got to do.”

  “Okay. I’ll take care of it.”

  “How long will you need?” she asked.

  “Will your husband contest it?”

  She recalled the hatred in Michael’s face when she’d left him a few hours ago. “Yes. He probably will.”

  Elliot carried their empty brandy glasses to the bar in the corner and switched on the light above the sink. “If your husband’s likely to cause trouble, then we’ll move fast and without fanfare. If we’re clever, he won’t know what we’re doing until the exhumation is a fait accompli. Tomorrow’s a holiday, so we can’t get anything done officially until Friday.”

  “Probably not even then, what with the four-day weekend.”

  Elliot found the bottle of liquid soap and the dishcloth that were stored under the sink. “Ordinarily I’d say we’d have to wait until Monday. But it happens I know a very reasonable judge. Harold Kennebeck. We served in Army Intelligence together. He was my senior officer. If I—”

  “Army Intelligence? You were a spy?”

  “Nothing as grand as that. No trench coats. No skulking about in dark alleys.”

  “Karate, cyanide capsules, that sort of stuff?” she asked.

  “Well, I’ve had a lot of martial arts training. I still work at that a couple of days a week because it’s a good way to keep in shape. Really, though, it wasn’t like what you see in the movies. No James Bond cars with machine guns hidden behind the headlights. It was mostly dull information gathering.”

  “Somehow,” she said, “I get the feeling it was considerably more… interesting than you make it out to be.”

  “Nope. Document analysis, tedious interpretation of satellite reconnaissance photographs, that sort of thing. Boring as hell most of the time. Anyway, Judge Kennebeck and I go back a long way. We respect each other, and I’m sure he’ll do something for me if he can. I’ll be seeing him tomorrow afternoon at a New Year’s Day party. I’ll discuss the situation with him. Maybe he’ll be willing to slip into the courthouse long enough on Friday to review my exhumation request and rule on it. He’d only need a few minutes. Then we could open the grave early Saturday.”

  Tina went to the bar and sat on one of the three stools, across the counter from Elliot. “The sooner the better. Now that I’ve made up my mind to do it, I’m anxious to get it over with.”

  “That’s understandable. And there’s another advantage in doing it this weekend. If we move fast, it isn’t likely Michael will find out what we’re up to. Even if he does somehow get a whiff of it, he’ll have to locate another judge who’ll be willing to stay or vacate the exhumation order.”

  “You think he’ll be able to do that?”

  “No. That’s my point. There won’t be many judges around over the holiday. Those on duty will be swamped with arraignments and bail hearings for drunken drivers and for people involved in drunken assaults. Most likely, Michael won’t be able to get hold of a judge until Monday morning, and by then it’ll be too late.”

  “Sneaky.”

  “That’s my middle name.” He finished washing the first brandy snifter, rinsed it in hot water, and put it in the drainage rack to dry.

  “Elliot Sneaky Stryker,” she said.

  He smiled. “At your service.”

  “I’m glad you’re my attorney.”

  “Well, let’s see if I can actually pull it off.”

  “You can. You’re the kind of person who meets every problem head-on.”

  “You have a pretty high opinion of me,” he said, repeating what she had said to him earlier.

  She smiled. “Yes, I do.”

  All the talk about death and fear and madness and pain seemed to have taken place further back in the past than a mere few seconds ago. They wanted to have a little fun during the evening that lay ahead, and now they began putting themselves in the mood for it.

  As Elliot rinsed the second snifter and placed it in the rack, Tina said, “You do that very well.”

  “But I don’t wash windows.”

  “I like to see a man being domestic.”

  “Then you should see me cook.”

  “You cook?”

  “Like a dream.”

  “What’s your best dish?”

  “Everything I make.”

  “Obviously, you don’t make humble pie.”

  “Every great chef must be an egomaniac when it comes to his culinary art. He must be totally secure in his estimation of his talents if he is to function well in the kitchen.”

  “What if you coo
ked something for me, and I didn’t like it?”

  “Then I’d eat your serving as well as mine.”

  “And what would I eat?”

  “Your heart out.”

  After so many months of sorrow, how good it felt to be sharing an evening with an attractive and amusing man.

  Elliot put away the dishwashing liquid and the wet dishcloth. As he dried his hands on the towel, he said, “Why don’t we forget about going out to dinner? Let me cook for you instead.”

  “On such short notice?”

  “I don’t need much time to plan a meal. I’m a whiz. Besides, you can help by doing the drudgery, like cleaning the vegetables and chopping the onions.”

  “I should go home and freshen up,” she said.

  “You’re already too fresh for me.”

  “My car—”

  “You can drive it. Follow me to my place.”

  They turned out the lights and left the room, closing the door after them.

  As they crossed the reception area on their way toward the hall, Tina glanced nervously at Angela’s computer. She was afraid it was going to click on again, all by itself.

  But she and Elliot left the outer office, flicking off the lights as they went, and the computer remained dark and silent.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Elliot Stryker lived in a large, pleasant, contemporary house overlooking the golf course at the Las Vegas Country Club. The rooms were warm, inviting, decorated in earth tones, with J. Robert Scott furniture complemented by a few antique pieces, and richly textured Edward Fields carpets. He owned a fine collection of paintings by Eyvind Earle, Jason Williamson, Larry W. Dyke, Charlotte Armstrong, Carl J. Smith, and other artists who made their homes in the western United States and who usually took their subject matter from either the old or the new West.

  As he showed her through the house, he was eager to hear her reaction to it, and she didn’t make him wait long.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Stunning. Who was your interior decorator?”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “Really?”

  “When I was poor, I looked forward to the day when I’d have a lovely home full of beautiful things, all arranged by the very best interior decorator. Then, when I had the money, I didn’t want some stranger furnishing it for me. I wanted to have all the fun myself. Nancy, my late wife, and I decorated our first home. The project became a vocation for her, and I spent nearly as much time on it as I did on my legal practice. The two of us haunted furniture stores from Vegas to Los Angeles to San Francisco, antique shops, galleries, everything from flea markets to the most expensive stores we could find. We had a damn good time. And when she died… I discovered I couldn’t learn to cope with the loss if I stayed in a place that was so crowded with memories of her. For five or six months I was an emotional wreck because every object in the house reminded me of Nancy. Finally I took a few mementos, a dozen pieces by which I’ll always remember her, and I moved out, sold the house, bought this one, and started decorating all over again.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d lost your wife,” Tina said. “I mean, I thought it must have been a divorce or something.”

  “She passed away three years ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Cancer.”

  “I’m so sorry, Elliot.”

  “At least it was fast. Pancreatic cancer, exceedingly virulent. She was gone two months after they diagnosed it.”

  “Were you married long?”

  “Twelve years.”

  She put a hand on his arm. “Twelve years leaves a big hole in the heart.”

  He realized they had even more in common than he had thought. “That’s right. You had Danny for nearly twelve years.”

  “With me, of course, it’s only been little more than a year since I’ve been alone. With you, it’s been three years. Maybe you can tell me…”

  “What?”

  “Does it ever stop?” she asked.

  “The hurting?”

  “Yes.”

  “So far it hasn’t. Maybe it will after four years. Or five. Or ten. It doesn’t hurt as bad now as it once did. And the ache isn’t constant anymore. But still there are moments when…”

  He showed her through the rest of the house, which she wanted to see. Her ability to create a stylish stage show was not a fluke; she had taste and a sharp eye that instantly knew the difference between prettiness and genuine beauty, between cleverness and art. He enjoyed discussing antiques and paintings with her, and an hour passed in what seemed to be only ten minutes.

  The tour ended in the enormous kitchen, which boasted a copper ceiling, a Santa Fe tile floor, and restaurant-quality equipment. She checked the walk-in cooler, inspected the yard-square grill, the griddle, the two Wolf ranges, the microwave, and the array of labor-saving appliances. “You’ve spent a small fortune here. I guess your law practice isn’t just another Vegas divorce mill.”

  Elliot grinned. “I’m one of the founding partners of Stryker, West, Dwyer, Coffey, and Nichols. We’re one of the largest law firms in town. I can’t take a whole lot of credit for that. We were lucky. We were in the right place at the right time. Owen West and I opened for business in a cheap storefront office twelve years ago, right at the start of the biggest boom this town has ever seen. We represented some people no one else would touch, entrepreneurs who had a lot of good ideas but not much money for start-up legal fees. Some of our clients made smart moves and were carried right to the top by the explosive growth of the gaming industry and the Vegas real-estate market, and we just sort of shot up there along with them, hanging on to their coattails.”

  “Interesting,” Tina said.

  “It is?”

  “You are.”

  “I am?”

  “You’re so modest about having built a splendid law practice, yet you’re an egomaniac when it comes to your cooking.”

  He laughed. “That’s because I’m a better cook than attorney. Listen, why don’t you mix us a couple of drinks while I change out of this suit. I’ll be back in five minutes, and then you’ll see how a true culinary genius operates.”

  “If it doesn’t work out, we can always jump in the car and go to McDonald’s for a hamburger.”

  “Philistine.”

  “Their hamburgers are hard to beat.”

  “I’ll make you eat crow.”

  “How do you cook it?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Well, if you cook it very funny, I don’t know if I want to eat it.”

  “If I did cook crow,” he said, “it would be delicious. You would eat every scrap of it, lick your fingers, and beg for more.”

  Her smile was so lovely that he could have stood there all evening, just staring at the sweet curve of her lips.

  * * *

  Elliot was amused by the effect that Tina had on him. He could not remember ever having been half so clumsy in the kitchen as he was this evening. He dropped spoons. He knocked over cans and bottles of spices. He forgot to watch a pot, and it boiled over. He made a mistake blending the salad dressing and had to begin again from scratch. She flustered him, and he loved it.

  “Elliot, are you sure you aren’t feeling those cognacs we had at my office?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then the drink you’ve been sipping on here.”

  “No. This is just my kitchen style.”

  “Spilling things is your style?”

  “It gives the kitchen a pleasant used look.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go to McDonald’s?”

  “Do they bother to give their kitchen a pleasant used look?”

  “They not only have good hamburgers—”

  “Their hamburgers have a pleasant used look.”

  “—their French fries are terrific.”

  “So I spill things,” he said. “A cook doesn’t have to be graceful to be a good cook.”

  “Does he have to have a good memory
?”

  “Huh?”

  “That mustard powder you’re just about to put into the salad dressing.”

  “What about it?”

  “You already put it in a minute ago.”

  “I did? Thanks. I wouldn’t want to have to mix this damn stuff three times.”

  She had a throaty laugh that was not unlike Nancy’s had been.

  Although she was different from Nancy in many ways, being with her was like being with Nancy. She was easy to talk to — bright, funny, sensitive.

  Perhaps it was too soon to tell for sure, but he was beginning to think that fate, in an uncharacteristic flush of generosity, had given him a second chance at happiness.

  * * *

  When he and Tina finished dessert, Elliot poured second cups of coffee. “Still want to go to McDonald’s for a hamburger?”

  The mushroom salad, the fettuccine Alfredo, and the zabaglione had been excellent. “You really can cook.”

  “Would I lie to you?”

  “I guess I’ll have to eat that crow now.”

  “I believe you just did.”

  “And I didn’t even notice the feathers.”

  While Tina and Elliot had been joking in the kitchen, even before dinner had been completely prepared, she had begun to think they might go to bed together. By the time they finished eating dinner, she knew they would. Elliot wasn’t pushing her. For that matter, she wasn’t pushing him, either. They were both being driven by natural forces. Like the rush of water downstream. Like the relentless building of a storm wind and then the lightning. They both realized that they were in need of each other, physically and mentally and emotionally, and that whatever happened between them would be good.

  It was fast but right, inevitable.

  At the start of the evening, the undercurrent of sexual tension made her nervous. She hadn’t been to bed with any man but Michael in the past fourteen years, since she was nineteen. She hadn’t been to bed with anyone at all for almost two years. Suddenly it seemed to her that she had done a mad, stupid thing when she’d hidden away like a nun for two years. Of course, during the first of those two years, she’d still been married to Michael and had felt compelled to remain faithful to him, even though a separation and then a divorce had been in the works, and even though he had not felt constrained by any similar moral sense. Later, with the stage show to produce and with poor Danny’s death weighing heavily on her, she hadn’t been in the mood for romance. Now she felt like an inexperienced girl. She wondered if she would know what to do. She was afraid that she would be inept, clumsy, ridiculous, foolish in bed. She told herself that sex was just like riding a bicycle, impossible to unlearn, but the frivolousness of that analogy didn’t increase her self-confidence.