MITCH’S PLANE HIT THE TARMAC WITH a violent bump. The woman next to him made the sign of the cross and offered up a little prayer of thanks.
Mitch was not a religious man, but he, too, started to pray.
Don’t let me be too late.
HARRY BAIN RUBBED HIS EYES. FOR a moment he forgot where he was. He’d been in the middle of a wonderful dream. He was in New York at Sweetiepie, one of his favorite restaurants on Greenwich Avenue, salivating over a hot fudge sundae, when some A-hole started shaking him by the shoulders.
“Camp’s packing up. If you want a ride to the airport, you better get up now.”
Madagascar. Isalo. John Bastard Merrivale.
Gloomily, he reached for his phone. The red message light flashed at him reproachfully. Harry flipped it open and hit the key for voice mail.
“You have…seven new messages.”
Seven?
He sat up and listened.
GRACE LEANED ON THE KITCHEN DOOR. It opened immediately.
John must feel safe here. Like we did.
There were only two places in the world where she and Lenny had routinely left their doors unlocked: Madagascar and Nantucket. John had ruined the memory of both those places, poisoned them, like he poisoned everything he touched.
Hugging her hatred to her like a security blanket, Grace crossed the dark room. It was eerie. Above her head hung copper pots and pans, shadowy and immobile like a set of unloved puppets. In front of her the enormous triple-fronted cook’s stove gleamed, pristine and untouched. Next to it, on the countertop, Grace noticed that someone had recently bought, unwrapped and plugged in a basic microwave oven. Its box could still be seen in the corner, propped on top of the trash can.
Typical. A single man moves into a house with a fully equipped gourmet kitchen and the first thing he does is buy himself a microwave.
Grace found herself wondering if John had used it yet, and if so, what he had prepared. She hoped it was delicious, whatever it was. It didn’t seem right to eat a horrible last meal.
The inner kitchen door opened into a small flagstone pantry, which in turn led to stairs. These were originally the servants’ stairs and they ran all the way from the cellar to the attic on the west side of the house. Grace drew her gun—it was Gavin Williams’s gun but she thought of it as hers now—and started to climb.
The house was not just quiet. It was silent. Grace could hear her own breath, the soft rustle of her clothes as she moved, the creak of a water pipe. It was only a few days since she’d last been here, sitting in the library with the kindly Jan Beerens, but something seismic seemed to have happened to the place in the interim. It was more than just the absence of furniture and people. Beerens’s staff had gone, and John had clearly moved in alone. It was as if the house itself had died. As if John’s presence had forced all the life and the joy out of it, like albumen from a straw-blown egg. All that was left was the shell.
Suddenly a door slammed. The noise was so loud and so unexpected, Grace opened her mouth to scream, but stopped herself, stifling the sound with her hands. She’d almost reached the second floor, but the noise had come from below, at ground level. As quietly as she could, Grace turned around.
On this floor, the door from the servants’ stairs opened into a large, marble-floored atrium. It was shaped like a pentagon, with five floor-to-ceiling archways giving onto various reception rooms. The library and the study faced inward, toward Le Cocon’s small central courtyard, but the dining and living rooms opened onto the main garden, each with a set of French doors. Grace stepped cautiously into the atrium, looking around her, listening for a second sound, some sign to guide her. She felt a soft breath of wind on her face. The drawing-room doors were open to the garden. Grace took a step toward them, then stopped.
There he was.
She saw him from behind, walking out into the garden, still in his pajamas and bathrobe. He had a coffee mug in one hand and a book in the other, and he looked like any tourist on vacation. His red hair was unkempt, sticking up at strange angles from where he’d slept on it. Grace was struck by how small he looked. How slight. How normal. If one were to form a mental picture of a brutal murderer, it would not be this harmless, shambling, middle-aged man.
She had not seen John in the flesh since her trial. Her last memory of him was his pained face as she was led from the dock. Don’t worry, he mouthed to her. Grace thought back to the terror of those first days in custody, the van ride to Bedford, being beaten to near death by Cora Budds. Back then, she’d still believed John Merrivale would rescue her. He was her friend, her only friend.
She released the safety catch on the gun.
“John.”
He didn’t hear her. Grace moved closer, walking at first, then running.
“John!”
He turned around. At the sight of the gun, his face drained of color. The coffee mug fell from his hand, shattering into a thousand pieces on the paved stone of the terrace. Instinctively he moved to one side, covering his head with his hands. As he did so, Grace saw for the first time that he was not alone.
Behind him, sprawled out in a lawn chair, was another man. The second man was turned three-quarters away from Grace, facing the garden rather than back toward the house. At first she could see only the top of his head and his slippered feet stretched out in front of him, but still a shiver of familiarity shot through her. Something about his posture, his body language…I know you.
She stood transfixed as the man slowly turned. Even before she saw his face, she knew. The languid, unconcerned way he moved, as if the commotion behind him, and John Merrivale’s cowering terror, didn’t bother him in the least. Grace had met only one man with that confidence. That total, unshakable sangfroid.
“Hello, Gracie.” Lenny Brookstein smiled. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
GRACE WATCHED HER LIFE FLASH BEFORE her eyes. Was this a dream? Or a nightmare? Part of her wanted to touch Lenny, to stick her hands in his sides like a doubting Thomas and prove that he was real. But something made her hesitate.
“I saw you! I saw your body.” She was shaking. “I went to the morgue, for God’s sake.”
“Why don’t you put down the gun?” Lenny’s voice sounded soothing. Hypnotic. “We can talk.”
Grace was about to do as he asked when John Merrivale took a step toward her. Instinctively she swung the gun in his direction and stepped back, her finger hovering over the trigger. “Don’t move!” she shouted.
John stepped back.
“Sit down on that chair. Put your hands where I can see them.”
John did as he was asked, sinking down into the lawn chair beside Lenny’s.
Grace looked at Lenny. “You, too.”
Lenny raised an eyebrow, in admiration as much as surprise. He, too, put his hands on his lap. Keeping the pistol trained on the pair of them, Grace reached into her backpack and pulled out the Dictaphone. She pressed the record button and set it down on the ground between them.
“Talk,” she commanded.
Lenny couldn’t take his eyes off Grace’s face. So beautiful. But she’s changed. I suppose she had to. She’s stronger. That sweet, trusting little girl could not have survived.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. I want to know everything, Lenny. I want to know the truth.”
Lenny Brookstein started talking.
THIRTY-EIGHT
WHAT YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER, GRACE, is how long ago this all started. You were a tiny child when I founded Quorum. Four, maybe five years old. I’d had a couple of funds before that, made a little money, but I always knew Quorum would be different. I set out to rule the world and I did.”
Lenny looked at John Merrivale and smiled. John smiled back, a look of blind adoration on his face. Grace remembered that look from the old days. He loves him. John’s always loved Lenny. How could I have forgotten that?
Lenny went on, warming to his theme. “In the early days of the fund, it was a struggle. It was the beginning of the nineties, the economy was in the tank, people were losing their jobs, their homes. No one wanted to invest. Remember now, I’d staked every cent I owned on Quorum. Every cent. If she went down I’d be back at the bottom. Poor again, in my forties. Penniless.” Lenny’s face darkened. “You can’t imagine the fear, Gracie. How terrifying that was, coming from where I came from. The idea that I might have to go back, back to the dirt, the violence, the hunger. No. It wasn’t going to happen to me.” His said this angrily, almost as if it were Grace who had tried to bring him down. “And thanks to John here, it didn’t.”