Essentially, what Benny said was true. Since leaving Eric, Rachael had
taken five courses in business management at a Pepperdine extension, for
she intended to launch a small business. Perhaps a clothing store for
upscale women. A place that would be dramatic and fun, the kind of shop
that people talked about as not only a source of well-made clothes but
an experience.
After all, she’d attended UCLA, majoring in dramatic arts, and had
earned her bachelor’s degree just before meeting Eric at a university
function, and though she had no interest in acting, she had real talent
for costume and set design, which might serve her well in creating an
unusual decor for a clothing store and in acquiring merchandise for
sale. However, she had not yet gone so far as to commit herself to the
acquisition of an M.B.A.
degree nor to choosing a particular enterprise. Rooted in the present,
she proceeded to gather knowledge and ideas, waiting patiently for the
moment when her plans would simply. . . crystallize. As for the
past-well, to dwell on yesterday’s pleasures was to risk missing out on
pleasures of the moment, and to dwell on past pains and tragedies was a
pointless waste of energy and time.
Now, resting languorously in her steaming bath, Rachael drew a deep
breath of the jasmine-scented air.
She hummed along softly with Johnny Mathis as he sang “I’ll Be Seeing
You.”
She tasted the chocolate again. She sipped the champagne.
She tried to relax, to drift, to go with the flow and embrace the mellow
mood in the best California tradition.
For a while she pretended to be completely at ease, and she did not
entirely realize that her detachment was only pretense until the
doorbell rang. The instant the bell sounded above the lulling music,
she sat up in the water, heart hammering, and grabbed for the pistol
with such panic that she knocked over her champagne glass.
When she had gotten out of the tub and put on her blue robe, she held
the gun at her side, with the muzzle pointed at the floor, and walked
slowly through the shadowy house to the front door. She was filled with
dread at the prospect of answering the bell, at the same time, she was
irresistibly drawn to the door as if in a trance, as if compelled by the
mesmeric voice of a hypnotist.
She paused at the stereo to switch it off. The ensuing silence had an
ominous quality.
In the foyer, with her hand upon the knob, she hesitated as the bell
rang again. The front door had no window, no sidelights. She had been
meaning to have a fish-eye security lens installed, through which she
would be able to study the person on the doorstep, and now she ardently
wished that she had not procrastinated. She stared at the dark oak
before her, as if she might miraculously acquire the power to see
through it and clearly identify the caller beyond. She was trembling.
She did not know why she faced the prospect of a visitor with such
unmitigated dread.
Well, perhaps that was not exactly true. Deep downor even not so deeshe
knew why she was afraid. But she was reluctant to admit the source of
her fear, as if admission would transform a horrible possibility into a
deadly reality.
The bell rang again.
While listening to news on the radio during the drive home from his
office in Tustin, Ben Shadway heard about Dr. Eric Leben’s sudden death.
He wasn’t sure how he felt. Shocked, yes. But he wasn’t saddened, even
though the world had lost a potentially great man.
Leben had been brilliant, indisputably a genius, but he had also been
arrogant, self-important, perhaps even dangerous.
Ben mostly felt relieved. He had been afraid that Eric, finally aware
that he could never regain his wife, would harm her. The man hated to
lose. There was a dark rage in him usually relieved by his obsessive
commitment to his work, but it might have found expression in violence
if he had felt deeply humiliated by Rachael’s rejection.
Ben kept a cellular phone in his car-a meticulously restored 1956
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