peaceful silence of the Leben estate, as a warm wind scented with star
jasmine blew across the sea-facing hills and through the long veranda,
Ben could almost believe that he had, in fact, been transported back in
time to a more genteel, less hectic age. Only the architecture spoiled
the halcyon illusion.
And Rachael’s pistol.
That spoiled things, too.
She was an extraordinarily easygoing woman, quick to laugh and slow to
anger, too self-confident to be easily frightened. Only a very real and
very serious threat could compel her to arm herself.
Before getting out of the car, she had withdrawn the gun from her purse
and had clicked off the safeties. She warned Ben to be alert and
cautious, though she refused to say exactly what it was that he should
be alert to and cautious of. Her dread was almost palpable, yet she
declined to share her worry and thus relieve her mind, she jealously
guarded her secret as she had done all evening.
He suppressed his impatience with her-not because he had the forbearance
of a saint but simply because he had no choice but to let her proceed
with her revelations at her own pace.
At the door of the house, she fumbled with her keys, trying to find the
lock and keyhole in the gloom. When she had walked out a year ago,
she’d kept her house key because she’d thought she would need to return
later to collect some of her belongings, a task that had become
unnecessary when Eric had everything packed and sent to her along with,
she said, an infuriatingly smug note expressing his certainty that she
would soon realize how foolish she had been and seek reconciliation.
The cold, hard scrape of key metal on lock metal gave rise to an
unfortunate image in Ben’s mind, a pair of murderously sharp and
gleaming knives being stropped against each other.
He noticed a burglar-alarm box with indicator lights by the door, but
the system was evidently not engaged because none of the bulbs on the
panel was lit.
While Rachael continued to poke at the lock with the key, Ben said,
“Maybe he had the locks changed after you moved out.”
“I doubt it. He was so confident that I’d move back in with him sooner
or later. Eric was a very confident man.”
She found the keyhole. The key worked. She opened the door, nervously
reached inside, snapped on the lights in the foyer, and went into the
house with the pistol held out in front of her.
Ben followed, feeling as if the male and female roles had been wrongly
reversed, feeling as if he ought to have the gun, feeling a bit foolish
when you came right down to it.
The house was perfectly still.
“I think we’re alone,” Rachael said.
“Who did you expect – to find?” he asked.
She did not answer.
Although she had just expressed the opinion that they were alone, she
advanced with her pistol ready.
They went slowly from room to room, turning on every light, and each new
revelation of the interior made the house more imposing. The rooms were
large, highceilinged, white-walled, airy, with Mexican-tile floors and
lots of big windows, some had massive fireplaces of either stone or
ceramic tile, a few boasted oak cabinets of superb craftsmanship. A
party for two hundred guests would not have strained the capacity of the
living room and adjacent library.
The furniture was as starkly modern and functional as the rather
forbidding architecture. The upholstered white sofas and chairs were
utterly free of ornamentation.
Coffee tables, end tables, and all the occasional tables were also quite
plain, finished in mirror-bright high-gloss enamel, some black and some
white.
The only color and drama were provided by an eclectic group of
paintings, antiques, and objets d’ art. The bland decor was intended to
serve as an unobtrusive backdrop against which to display those items of
surpassing quality and value, each of which was artfully illuminated by
indirect lighting or tightly focused overhead mini spots.
Over one fireplace was a tile panel of birds by William de Morgan, which
had been done (Rachael said) for Czar Nicholas I. Here, a blazing