No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale (15 page)

“Well, that’s a record,” Randall’s brother Colin said, setting his wine glass down on the kitchen counter and heading out to discover the cause of the commotion. “I think they made it an entire half-hour this time before somebody got scalped.”

Randall’s sister and her husband followed after him, apparently to provide additional backup if necessary. Randall had told me that his sister had four-year-old twins who were usually quite well-behaved. But throw Colin’s son Brian into the mix, and it was only a matter of time before the combination of the three provided the preschool analog to TNT.

In the general hubbub that followed, I was able to retreat somewhat out of the way to a couch off to one side of the family room and watch as the twins were led off to an upstairs bedroom where they could be pacified with a DVD, while Brian was given a stern lecture on the evils of trying to get his cousins to eat dirt. As an only child, I hadn’t been around small children very much, and I was a little amazed by the amount of disruption such small beings could create.

With things brought somewhat back to normal—with the exception of Brian’s continuing whine in the background—the conversation picked up again, but I was able to take my favored role of observer, since Randall’s siblings were talking about all the minutiae of child-rearing—discipline, the problem of the right preschool, and God knows what else. Randall himself took a seat next to me on the family room couch and was mostly quiet except for a few pointed remarks here and there about his nephews and niece, remarks that his brothers and sister mostly ignored.

I was glad to see that it wasn’t long before dinner was ready, and Randall’s mother commanded everyone to vacate the family room so she could get everything out of the kitchen without tripping over someone. My own feeble offer to help was met with a polite demurral, and so Randall and I went to take our places at the dining room table, which was large enough to accommodate all ten of us adults with room to spare. In the corner of the dining room a small table had been set up with plastic cutlery and paper plates for the children—Randall’s dreaded “kiddie table.” Of course there hadn’t been any such thing at my own family’s holiday gatherings; my father had been an only child as well, so it had always been my parents, my grandmother, and myself, since my paternal grandfather had passed away before I was even born.

Randall has once described his mother to me as “Martha Stewart without the mean,” and once I saw the spread she laid out for us, I could see why. The table itself had a festive centerpiece of warm autumnal flowers and gorgeous place settings of fine china, sterling flatware, and crystal wine glasses, while the food seemed to be of an infinite and dizzying variety—the turkey of course had the place of honor, but there was also smoked salmon and both mashed and roasted potatoes, homemade spiced cranberry sauce and two kinds of dressing, salad, and fresh-baked breads and rolls. Certainly I had never seen anything like it outside the pages of a magazine, but then I remembered that Denise was a food and entertaining writer for a variety of magazines, so I supposed for her this sort of spread was only normal.

Food is a great icebreaker. Whatever awkwardness I had felt at the beginning of my visit was soon forgotten, as we all talked of normal things, film and current events and everyone’s jobs or school, all the while helping ourselves to the truly prodigious mountain of food Randall’s mother had provided. The flow of conversation was broken up once or twice by a commotion at the children’s table, but the problems were quickly smoothed over—even the kids seemed more interested in shoveling down Thanksgiving dinner than in torturing one another.

Randall had been right. I felt happy, welcome; there were no awkward questions, no probing remarks. For the first time in I didn’t even know how long I had an overwhelming sense of belonging, of content. I could have been a part of his family all along. And from the gratified looks Randall gave both me and the rest of his family, I knew he was feeling the same way.

Before I knew it, however, the evening was over, all of us so torpid with food that Randall and I could barely muster the energy it took to drag ourselves out the front door. The hug Denise gave me in farewell was much more welcome than the one she had given me in greeting. It seemed she was very pleased with me, both for Randall’s sake and for my own, and I was inwardly relieved that I had made such a good impression on her.

The drive back to Pasadena was quiet, both Randall and I so full that even speech was an effort. He laid his right hand on mine for most of the trip, though, as he navigated the twisting Pasadena Freeway up through the arroyos and I listened to the soft melodies of a string quartet on the car radio. I felt at peace, drifting with the music and the slight lightheadedness caused by my last glass of wine, savoring the pressure of his hand on mine.

My street in Pasadena was quiet, the homes sleeping under a dreamy cloud-flecked night sky barely illuminated by a fingernail moon. We paused on the porch as I unlocked the front door and opened it, letting out a narrow bar of golden light from the lamp I had left on in the front room.

“I had a wonderful time,” I said, knowing that he was about to kiss me
 

“So did I,” he replied, and brought his mouth to mine, warm and welcome.

We stood like that for a long moment, until at last I broke away, still feeling the pressure of his lips.

“It’s late,” I said, knowing even then the words were inadequate.

“I know.” He reached out, traced the curve of my lower lip with his forefinger, then said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I smiled, then gave him a second kiss, this time not as lingering but just as intense. “Good night.”

And with that I slid in through the open door, into the familiar shabbiness of my living room. The afterglow was still with me as I deposited my purse on the drop-leaf table and went on to wash my face and climb into a ratty but comfortable USC jersey and yoga pants, my usual sleeping attire during the cold months. Tired and full as I was, just a few moments passed before I dropped into dreamless sleep...only to be wakened either a few seconds or an eternity later by a pair of dark forms that seemed to coalesce from the blackness to place implacable hands on my throat and mouth. I bucked up in my bed, at first not sure whether I was experiencing a very realistic nightmare, and then there was a sudden sharp pain as a needle pricked my arm, and I fell again into blackness, swirling down into nothingness.

There was so much that could have gone wrong, even though he and Jerome had tried to plan for every contingency. So many things that could have disrupted his careful plots, but, in the end, all his worries were for naught. Even Jerome said it had been absolutely textbook.

As much as Erik had wanted to be the one to take Christine from her bed, he knew that it was utter folly to risk himself in that way, and so had allowed the task to be carried out by the men Jerome had hired, men who had been paid extremely well to execute the kidnapping and then disappear afterward.

They had waited until a little after two in the morning, a time when Christine’s neighbor had long since departed for his graveyard shift and the rest of the street slept, unaware of the crime taking place in the shabby little bungalow at number 572. An unexpected piece of good luck had come their way when the two girls who lived next to Christine on the other side of her home had packed up late Wednesday night and departed for destinations unknown. Really, it would have required men with less expertise than those he had hired to pull into the alley behind her bungalow with their phony cable television van, pick the lock on her back door, then drug her and disappear out that same door, all in less than two minutes. For all his and Jerome’s precautions, there were no watching eyes to record what had happened to Christine Daly.

Erik did not know the kidnappers’ names. “The less you know, the better,” Jerome had said, and Erik knew he was right. Just as he knew very little about the drug they’d administered to Christine, save that it would knock her out immediately and keep her out for some hours, during which time she would gradually slip into normal sleep.

“No real side effects,” Jerome replied in answer to Erik’s anxious questions. “She might feel a little pukey in the morning—some people do—but she’ll be up and walking around in no time.”

The ersatz cable van had come nowhere near Erik’s home. Jerome met the kidnappers at a deserted construction site, had them transfer her to the back seat of his anonymous rented compact car, paid them the balance of their fees in cash, and then drove her himself on a winding route through Pasadena before finally arriving with her a little after three in the morning.

Now she lay in her elegant canopied bed, an unexpected fairy-tale princess with her pale face and faded red and gold USC jersey. He stood there in the half-darkness, watching as the soft golden light from her bedside lamp gently illumined her face. It would be easy, so easy to reach out and touch her, to lay his lips against the curve of her delicate cheek. Lost in the darkness of her drugged sleep, she would never know.

With a low moan he turned, the ache of his desire for her like a cramping pain through his body. Instead, he placed on the night stand his first gift to her, a bouquet of white roses, wondering if she would notice that amongst all the white, one red rose bloomed—one red rose for the love he hoped would prove triumphant....
   

Chapter 12

In my dreams I was drowning, struggling through a black sea to a dim shore that seemed to recede even as I reached out toward it. The waves broke over my head, and I slipped down, gasping, choking...

With a cough, I rolled over in bed and opened my eyes. For a few seconds I stared at the canopy of rose-hued silk without really focusing on it, and then I blinked and reopened my eyes. At first I thought this was just a bizarre continuation of my dream, but it looked real enough. Slowly I pushed myself up, groggy and just the slightest bit nauseated. I had to take several deep breaths before I felt sufficiently recovered to look around me.

I was lying in a huge four-poster bed, its canopy draped with a lush rose-colored material with the sheen and luster of silk. The room in which the bed was situated was equally huge; you could have put my entire bungalow in there with room to spare. Directly opposite the bed were three tall mullioned window that let in the soft light of a cloudy morning. Each window was hung with elegant brocade drapes in soft tones of rose, blue, and cream, shades echoed in the enormous Persian rug that covered the entire floor, with only the faintest hint of hardwood appearing at each of its edges.

Memory started to return—the dark figures in my room last night, the sting of a needle. I found the tender spot on my upper left arm with the index finger of my right hand. Yes, it was real, as was the elegant room around me.

I was immeasurably relieved to find that I still had on the shabby USC jersey and yoga pants I’d worn to bed the night before. As far as I could tell, the only ill effects I’d suffered from the kidnapping were the tenderness of my arm and a faint lingering nausea —no doubt the lingering remnants of whatever drug they had given me. And although I wasn’t exactly sure what to look for, I was fairly sure that I had not been touched or molested in any way. That, apparently, had not been the motive.

With a faint moan I lowered myself from the bed—it was much higher than the narrow daybed I slept on at home—and stood, taking stock of my surroundings. The far wall to my left had been painted with an exquisite mural of what looked like an enchanted countryside of gently rolling hills, fields of flowers, and an Italian villa in the distance, all under a dreamy sky worked with billowy clouds that were faintly touched with pink. A beautifully carved table flanked by a pair of rose-upholstered chairs stood against the mural. On the table was an elegant gold-leafed lamp and one of those expensive little Bose radios. From it I could faintly hear the sound of a violin concerto.
 

Past the table an arched doorway opened into another room; I made my way over to it and peered inside. It was a charming little sitting room, outfitted with a comfortable-looking armchair and matching footstool, and several tall carved bookcases filled with books. In here was another mullioned window.

Feeling bolder now, I stepped up to the window and looked out. Any thoughts I might have had of picking up the footstool or some other easily hefted piece of furniture and using it to break the glass vanished immediately. The window was fitted with narrow bars that didn’t do much to block the view but were obviously very capable of keeping me trapped in here. And as far as I could tell, breaking the glass just so I could scream for help probably wouldn’t do me any good, either.

The window overlooked a marble-paved loggia edged with a carved stone balustrade. To one side a set of wide, shallow steps led down to a formal rose garden, with some late blooms still lifting their heads to the halfhearted November light. After the rose garden came wide green lawns that stretched as far as I could see to either side until they were finally met with a tall edging of pine trees and Italian cypress. To my left a smaller path ended somewhere near a reflecting pool, around which weeping willows trailed their narrow branches down to the water. Directly ahead but at least several hundred yards away was some sort of gazebo or summerhouse in gray stone, almost hidden in a stand of gray-barked trees that lifted their elegant bare arms to the half-clouded sky.

It should have been a beautiful scene, but all I could do was look at it in despair. This place—whatever and wherever it was—seemed so isolated, so closed in on itself. I saw no evidence of any nearby streets or neighbors, no one who could hear my cries for help even if I did break the windows.

As I reentered the main bedroom area, I noticed for the first time the bouquet of white roses that stood on one of the carved marble-topped night stands. Moving closer, I reached out to touch one velvety petal. What sort of kidnapper would leave a vase full of roses for his victim? There had to be at least three dozen of them in the crystal urn-shaped vase, some still tightly shut, a few just beginning to open. Almost hidden amongst the sea of white buds and green accent leaves was one dark red rose, opening its brave petals like a crimson kiss.