The Sinister Touch (8 page)

“I assume Valonia and Baldric are the only names you knew them by?” Zac asked.

“Yeah, and I’d be willing to bet that they made them up or got them out of one of their damn books on witchcraft. Who ever heard of anyone being named Valonia and Baldric?”

Zac nodded and fell into a remote silence. Guinevere peered at him expectantly. She knew what was happening. He was slipping into one of his private trances during which odd little connections would be made inside his careful, methodical brain. When he came out of the contemplation, he would be aimed in the same way a glacier was aimed down a mountainside, and he’d be just as unstoppable. In the meantime Zac might stay in this disengaged mood for a very long time.

“Zac?” she prompted, aware of Mason’s curious stare. “Zac? We’d better be going. It’s late and Mason’s told you everything he knows.” She touched his arm. She thought he was at least minimally aware of her.

“The cops,” he said distinctly.

Mason looked alarmed, and Guinevere understood instantly. “No,” she said. “We can’t call the police again, Zac.”

“The hell we can’t.”

“Zac, listen to me, if we call the cops again, news of this weird stuff is going to leak out. We both know that. Some sharp-eyed reporter is going to have a great time with hints of witchcraft surrounding a young new artist who’s exploding on the local art scene. Mason’s career is just getting launched. This sort of thing could ruin him before he’s gotten established. Do you think people like Elizabeth Gallinger will want to be associated with anything that even hints of the occult?”

“Mason is free to do what he wants,” Zac said. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Well, let me assure you that any publicity linking me to some occult group isn’t going to do me a damn bit of good, either,” she reminded him forcefully. “Zac, please, you’ve got to treat this just as you would any other business case. Your clients call on you precisely because they want to avoid awkward publicity. Think of Mason and me as being clients who want this handled discreetly.”

Zac’s mouth twitched. “You and Mason can’t afford my usual fees.”

“Zac!” Guinevere was shocked.

He came away from the wall. “Forget it. A small joke. Stop worrying for now, both of you. I’m not going to call in the cops, but only because I don’t think they’d get very far as this point. There just isn’t enough here to go on. We need more information before we can turn it over to them. And I don’t want Guinevere’s name dragged into this mess, Adair.”

The younger man nodded. “I understand. I don’t particularly want my own name dragged into it. I swear, Zac, I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on here. I just can’t believe one of my old buddies has gone crazy with envy. And Baldric and Valonia weren’t into art, so why should they be envious? I doubt if they would even know I’ve started selling.”

Guinevere recalled something Carla had said. “My sister thought that some of the freeloaders who showed up at the gallery the other night weren’t all that happy to see you making it so big. And that Henry Thorpe person sounded as if he might have a back-stabbing sort of nature.”

“Forget Thorpe. He had nothing to do with that group,” Mason said firmly.

“But he knew about it. He’s the one who first mentioned it to me.”

“He might have been aware that a few of us hung around together and got up to some weird things, but he was never close to any of the members. He wouldn’t have been aware of the pentagram with the bolt of lightning in it, for example.”

Zac shook his head. “Maybe. Maybe not. I want both of you to understand something here. My main concern is Gwen. I don’t want her business reputation tarnished by having people gossiping about an association with witchcraft. But more importantly, I don’t want her physically threatened or hurt. From now on I’ll be staying with her at night, either next door or at my place. During the daytime, Mason, I want you to put your window to good use. We’ll leave the blinds in Gwen’s kitchen window open all the time. If you ever see them closed or if you see anyone moving around inside whom you don’t recognize, call me. Call Gwen, too, and tell her not to go into her apartment until I’m around.”

Mason nodded. “Got it. I spend a lot of time right here in the studio during the day. I’ll keep an eye on things. Gwen says you investigate security problems for people. Does this mean you’re taking me on as a client?”

“I don’t seem to have much choice.” Zac took Guinevere’s arm again and led her toward the door. “Why is it,” he complained to her, “that you always manage to get me into these situations?”

“You’re not so good on your own,” she told him cheerfully, as the door closed behind them. “Just remember what happened to you tonight at Queen Elizabeth’s party. Your genes were about to be summoned for royal service.”

Zac went a dull red in the dim hall light. “If you had a charitable bone in your body, woman, you wouldn’t remind me of that incident. It was one of the worst moments of my entire life. I had no idea that all that talk of biological clocks was leading up to that . . . that proposition she made.”

“Poor Zac. Now you know how a woman feels when her boss gives her all sorts of encouragement and support and then expects her to pay him back with a few bouts in bed. You’ve just been the victim of job harassment.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Zac muttered as they walked down the street to Gwen’s apartment.

“If I were you, I’d finish up the Gallinger project very quickly and get your fee. That woman didn’t get where she is today by being anything less than tenacious.”

“It was probably just a terrible misunderstanding.”

“The hell it was,” Guinevere retorted spiritedly. “That woman wants a stud, and you’re the chosen male.”

“Do all women become that . . . that forceful when they decide they have to have a baby?” Zac asked in subdued tones.

“I don’t know.”

Zac slid an assessing glance at her as he walked beside her up the stairs. “Are you sure, Gwen?”

She heard the genuine concern in his voice and wasn’t certain how to interpret it. What was Zac trying to say? That he might be looking for a woman who was interested in having babies? Someone other than Elizabeth Gallinger? She wished desperately that she knew more about his feelings for her. The desire to be a father might be as sudden and strong in some men as the need to be a mother was in some women. Guinevere felt as if she were walking on eggs. One misstep and she might crush the fragile relationship that existed between herself and Zac.

“I’ll let you know if I ever change my mind,” she tried to say lightly as she opened her door.

“You do that,” he said behind her. “You make sure you do that. I don’t want you going hunting the way Elizabeth Gallinger is hunting.”

Fortunately the shattered mirror provided a timely distraction. Guinevere walked across the floor and looked at it once again. “What now, Zac?”

He tugged at his tie. “First we pick up the pieces and then we go to bed.”

“No, I mean, what happens next in this case?”

“I don’t think of this as a
case
exactly,” he told her as he unbuttoned the first button of his shirt. “I see it as more in the nature of a damned nuisance.”

“But what are we going to do next?”

“I think,” Zac said thoughtfully, “that I’ll go take a look at that old house on Capitol Hill for starters.”

“But Mason said it had been sold six months ago,” Guinevere protested impatiently.

“We’ll see.”

“Now, Zac, don’t go all enigmatic and cryptic on me. Tell me why you want to take a look at that old place.”

“Simple curiosity. And because it’s a starting point. Probably a dead end, but you never know.”

Guinevere eyed him thoughtfully, aware of the first faint ripple of excitement she always got when she was involved in one of Zac’s more exciting investigations. He claimed he didn’t like this kind of thing, and she was inclined to believe him. He was cut out to be a staid, plodding, methodical analyzer of other people’s security problems. But occasionally other people’s security problems had a way of blowing up into intriguing, sometimes dangerous situations. And Zac coped. Very well.

“When do we go take this look?” Guinevere demanded.

“Don’t look so excited. You’re not going with me.”

“But, Zac—”

“I mean it, Gwen. I’m not taking you along. I have no way of knowing what I’ll run into, and whoever clobbered Mason last night might have gotten a good look at you through the window. If there is someone interesting still hanging around that old house, I don’t want him to see you. It would only tip him off.”

“But you said that going to the old place is probably just a dead end,” she reminded him as she scooped up broken bits of mirror and put them in a paper sack.

“I’m not taking any chances. Not where you’re involved.”

She heard the steel in his voice and reluctantly stopped trying to argue. There were times when you had to go around Zac because you certainly couldn’t go through him. “So when are you going to take this look?”

“In a few hours. I’ll set the alarm for three.”

“Three in the morning? Isn’t that a little early?”

Zac shrugged, taking the paper bag from her and putting it carefully into the hall closet instead of into the garbage. “It’s a good time to have a look around. Not many people up and about at three in the morning.”

Guinevere went toward him, aware of a growing sense of anxiety. “I’d feel better if I went along.”

“No, Gwen. Not this time.”

She sighed as her arms went around his neck. “Sometimes you can be a very stubborn man.”

“We all have some strong points,” he agreed philosophically. His hands wrapped around her waist. “Have I thanked you for coming to my rescue tonight at Gallinger’s house?”

“I wasn’t sure for a while if you wanted to be rescued.”

“Believe me, I wanted rescue.”

“She’s very beautiful and very rich, Zac.”

“I want to be loved for myself, not my genes,” he said as he began undoing the fastenings of the red silk dress.

Did he mean it? Guinevere asked herself silently as the red dress slipped to the floor. Did he really want to be loved, or was it only one of those throwaway remarks people make when they want to lighten a situation? She wished she knew for certain. There was a great deal she did not yet know about Zachariah Justis. Some things she might never know. But he was here tonight, and that would do for now. She lifted her face for his kiss and closed her eyes as she felt the familiar male hunger reach out to enclose her.

Zac felt the soft swell of her breasts against his chest and forgot about biological clocks and embarrassing confrontations with clients. When Guinevere was in his arms, she was all that mattered. The extent of her response to him filled him with a heady satisfaction that wiped out everything else in the vicinity. This was one element of her nature that he could read with certainty. She was the most responsive, the most honest woman he had ever held.

“If you ever want my genes,” he told her thickly as he put her down on the bed and came down beside her, “you can have them for free.”

“I’ll remember that.” Her eyes gleamed up at him in the shadows as she took him into her waiting softness.

Three hours and fifteen minutes later Zac awoke with the alertness he felt only when things were getting nasty. He didn’t like the feeling, but he had learned to respect it over the years. He was ahead of the alarm clock and reached out carefully to switch it off before it could ring. Five minutes to three.

Quietly he got out of bed, hoping not to wake Guinevere. But as he pulled on his slacks he realized that she was watching him.

“I’ll have coffee waiting for you when you get back,” she promised.

He grinned in spite of himself. “If you’re planning to use that red-and-black monstrosity to make it, you’d better start early.” He leaned over her, planting a hand on each side of her on the bedding. Then he kissed her. “See you by five.”

Guinevere wanted to say something else, but there wasn’t time. He vanished silently through her bedroom door.

Her staid, plodding, methodical Zac was once again on the hunt.

Chapter Six

The house had once been a stately, if rather overwrought, home for a successful businessman during the first part of the century. Now it was what real estate people liked to call a fixer-upper. The streetlight directly in front of the sagging porch was out, but with the fretful moonlight Zac could see that the plump wooden columns that flanked the steps were badly chipped, as if someone had idly carved on them with a pocketknife. The place had once been painted gray, if one could judge by what remained of the old paint. The porch wrapped most of the way around the aging two-story structure, and the weeds in the uncared-for garden were as high as the railing in some places. The screen door appeared to have given up the ghost long ago. It hung lethargically on its hinges. Someone or something had kicked a hole in the bottom part of the screen. No one had bothered to repair it. There was no light in any of the windows.

Zac quietly walked through the backyard of a vacant house next door to what had once been the Sandwick place. He assumed the house was vacant because of the
FOR SALE
sign in the front yard, but he didn’t take any chances. About half the houses in the neighborhood had
FOR SALE
signs in the front yards. So far he had been lucky enough not to arouse any dogs in the area, and he was hoping to keep it that way.

The neighborhood was one of the streets near Capitol Hill that had not yet been rehabilitated by the upwardly mobile types who had been moving into the district in droves during the past few years. The Sandwick house was slightly more run-down looking than its neighbors but not significantly so. Whoever had paid cash for it several months ago had obviously not had a lot left over to effect even minor repairs.

Moving quietly and without the aid of a flashlight, Zac made his way around to the rear of the house Adair and his friends had once used for their occult games. When he reached the back steps, he paused and glanced up at the unlit windows with a certain morose resignation.

This wasn’t, Zac decided, the kind of investigation he thought appropriate to the newly emerging image of Free Enterprise Security, Inc. It was his firm’s mission to cater to the security needs of sophisticated businesses. He was supposed to be a consultant, for God’s sake. One who charged very large fees in return for reports bound in genuine simulated-leather binders. This business of sneaking through decaying neighborhoods to spy on an old house that once might or might not have been used for witchcraft definitely came under the heading of tacky. Very low class. And it was all Guinevere’s fault.

He thought of Guinevere as he had left her over half an hour ago. She had been lying in the tousled bed, her dark hair tumbling around her bare shoulders, eyes wide and a little worried in the shadows. Zac admitted to himself that he rather liked it when she became anxious on his behalf. He couldn’t remember anyone else in recent history who had ever really worried about him. Already he was looking forward to the coffee and concern that would be waiting for him when he returned from this sortie into the wilds of Capitol Hill. A man could get used to the idea of someone waiting for him.

No use putting off the inevitable. The sooner he was finished here, the sooner he could collect both the coffee and Guinevere. Silently Zac started up the back steps of the house. At the rear door he paused and let the tiny sounds and nuances of the night infiltrate his heightened sense of awareness.

Zac could usually tell when a place was occupied. There was a sense of presence about a room or a house or a building that made itself felt. It wasn’t anything concrete, just a kind of instinctive awareness. There had been times in the past when that kind of awareness had kept him alive. There had also been occasions when it had let him down at awkward moments. He hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those moments. Zac didn’t fool himself. He wasn’t psychic; he simply had fairly well-developed survival instincts. But they weren’t infallible.

Still, there was nothing to indicate that anyone was at home here tonight. Zac slipped into the deeper shadows of the porch and examined the lock on the back door. Piece of cake. He pulled the small twist of metal out of his pocket and, a moment later, let himself into what proved to be the kitchen.

As he eased the door shut behind him, he stood still for another few seconds, trying to pick up any new vibrations that might indicate the presence of another person.

The house was silent. Perhaps too silent. Zac frowned thoughtfully and walked through the kitchen. The refrigerator was turned off, and there were no dishes standing in the chipped sink. He was about to make his way into the next room when he saw the Styrofoam hamburger containers in a paper sack by the stove. Someone had made a recent foray to a fast-food restaurant and brought the results back here to eat.

Zac considered the possibilities. A transient might be using the place to bed down at night. A workman might have been commissioned to do some repairs and had brought a fast-food lunch with him. Neighborhood kids might have been using the old house as a hangout. There were a variety of potential answers to the questions raised by the burger container. Zac didn’t like most of them.

The floor beneath his feet was hardwood, and it was in better condition than most of the rest of the house. Zac was cautious as he moved into the breakfast room, but there were no squeaks or groans.

There were a few pieces of furniture in the breakfast room and also in the parlor he found on the other side. None of them were in decent condition. No one had even bothered to cover the few chairs, tables, and the sofa. Zac could smell the damp, dusty odor emitted by disintegrating fabric in every room. The only reason he could see at all was because the drapes were in such tatters that the vague streetlight could filter in through the large windows.

He found the staircase in the front hall. It was broad, heavily banistered, and still sturdy. The shadows were thicker on the second floor because the windows were smaller and allowed less moonlight and light from the street to enter. There was no more evidence of recent habitation, but Zac found himself using more caution than should have been necessary under the circumstances. It was a good thing he’d had the sense to make Guinevere stay behind. She would have been running around, exploring and investigating like an eager puppy. Guinevere tended to be both impulsive and a little reckless, Zac thought with indulgent disapproval. He wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his life getting himself dragged into a series of adventures such as this one.

The odd part was that in the beginning, when he had first contacted her, he’d entertained a few notions of using Guinevere on certain kinds of cases. Her temporary-help business provided an ideal cover for planting an observer in almost any sort of firm. Everyone needed secretaries and clerks, and no one paid much attention to them, not even when they were temporary replacements. But lately, Zac noted wryly, he seemed to be the one getting involved in Guinevere’s adventures, rather than vice versa.

The upper floor was as empty as the first. There was an old, tilted bed in one room with a lumpy, stained mattress. Zac didn’t get the feeling it had been used in the past several years. If some transient was using the house at night, he wasn’t sleeping in the bedrooms.

Getting up at three this morning had probably been a waste of time and energy. He could just as easily have stayed in bed with Guinevere and learned as much. Zac headed back downstairs, still moving cautiously.

In the kitchen he glanced around once more and idly opened a few cupboard doors. Most of the shelves were empty, although there were a couple of grungy mugs in one cupboard.

He was hunting for the broom closet when he opened the door that revealed a flight of stairs down to a basement. The door had a key-activated bolt on it, but no one had locked it that night. Perhaps not for a long time.

Zac paused on the threshold and tried to analyze what it was that seemed different about the dank odor wafting up from the dark pit at the bottom of the steps. He couldn’t see a thing past the first two or three treads.

For the first time he removed the small, pencil-slim flashlight from the pocket of his Windbreaker. Closing the basement door behind him so that light wouldn’t escape back into the kitchen, he flicked on the narrow beam.

At first he could see nothing but a few more steps. The utter darkness of the basement seemed to crowd in on the small band of light as if trying to devour it. For the first time since he had entered the house, Zac felt a tiny frisson of awareness. Grimly he shook it off. He was letting his imagination take over. Not a common state of affairs. Once again he thanked his lucky stars he’d held the line with Gwen and refused to let her accompany him.
Her
imagination would be having a field day down here.

Slowly he started down the steps. The flashlight fought back bravely against the overpowering darkness, and Zac followed in its wake. It seemed a long way down to the concrete floor, but eventually he reached the last step. His imagination was not settling down, he noticed.

Methodically he turned to the right at the bottom of the steps, prowling along one wall. He didn’t see the heavy black drapes until he nearly blundered into them. One moment he was feeling his way along a cold, damp surface, and the next his hand tangled with thick velvet cascading from the low ceiling all the way to the floor. Startled, Zac stopped and shone the light along the entire surface of the black drapes.

As far as he could tell, there was nothing but basement wall behind the wide expanse of fabric. Certainly there was no window to be shielded. It didn’t take much investigative talent to realize that, unlike the torn and rotting fabric on the windows upstairs, these drapes were in good condition.

Zac edged back, playing the light on the fabric as he studied it. He had to move back quite a ways to see the full extent of the velvet wall coverings. The velvet hung in heavy folds along most of one entire wall. Who the hell would drape a basement in black velvet?

Zac didn’t like the possible answers to his questions. Perhaps this was a leftover from the days when Adair and his friends had held their little parties here. The new owners of the house might not have bothered to take down the drapes. They certainly hadn’t bothered to make any repairs or modifications. Perhaps they hadn’t even seen their new acquisition. Zac made a note to find out who the legal owner was as soon as the appropriate county offices opened for business that day. The information probably wouldn’t do him any good, but Zac liked to have all the loose ends accounted for.

He took another step backward, marveling over the extent of what must have been very expensive, if very ugly, drapery, and promptly collided with a cold, unyielding surface. Zac swung around and let the flashlight beam run along the edge of a long, high table.

It wasn’t, Zac decided grimly, exactly a Formica-topped dining-room table. This monstrosity was at least six feet long and appeared to be made out of some sort of black stone. It was supported by three squat columns that had clawed feet.

The uneasy flicker of awareness sizzled lightly over his nerve endings once more. This time Zac decided not to ignore it. He switched off the flashlight in the same instant that he felt the small disturbance in the air behind him. Zac threw himself to one side, but the heavy metal object that had been descending toward his head didn’t miss him entirely. It glanced along the side of his skull and landed with numbing force on his left shoulder.

Zac spun around, his body automatically following the direction of the blow in an effort to lessen the impact. There was a stifled grunt as his right fist landed in the center of a man’s chest. It was pure luck as far as Zac was concerned. The impetus of the man’s rush had carried him straight into Zac’s instinctively raised hand.

The thing about luck was that it didn’t do you any good unless you took advantage of it. With no feeling at all in his left shoulder Zac had to rely entirely on his right arm. In the utter darkness he could see nothing of his attacker, but the man’s heavy, scrabbling body was easy enough to locate. It was all over Zac.

Whoever he was, he still had the metal object he’d used a few seconds earlier. Zac struggled to land a decent, chopping blow before the other man could swing again. There was another grunt as Zac found a solid, if slightly soft, target in the stomach region. He brought his knee up, hoping for a more vulnerable area.

But the attacker was staggering backward, blundering into the table. Zac’s maneuver landed slightly off target. There was a vicious curse as the other man hit the stone, and Zac followed the direction of the sound. He aimed another chopping blow at what should have been the neck region and connected with what must have been a shoulder. Then a wild, swinging kick from a booted foot caught Zac on the thigh, sending him staggering against the curtained wall.

When his left shoulder struck the wall, Zac realized that the numbing effect of the blow was wearing off. Streaks of agony laced through his arm and shoulder, making him suck in his breath and struggle to keep his senses from reeling into a darkness that was greater than that of the basement.

The shock of the pain drove him to his knees. Through the daze he could hear frantic shuffling sounds from his attacker and braced himself for another assault. If the man rushed him, Zac decided the only thing he could do was hit the floor and hope the other guy crashed into the wall.

But the other basement denizen wasn’t planning any more heroic attacks. The shuffling sounds sorted themselves out into footsteps, and a few seconds later Zac heard the man on the stairs. Apparently whoever it was knew his way around the basement far better than Zac. The door at the top of the stairs opened briefly, revealing a rectangle of lighter shadow, and then it slammed shut again. There was no sound of a key in the lock. Perhaps the escaping man didn’t have the key, or maybe he just didn’t want to take the extra time it would take to lock the door to the basement.

Zac struggled awkwardly to his feet, listening for the sounds that would tell him whether his assailant was escaping or merely going for bigger and better weapons. With a small sense of relief Zac heard the back door slamming shut. It was a very distant echo. The heavy wooden flooring upstairs covered almost all the noise.