* * *
Grace stepped through the gate, into the street, and looked both ways. There was no sign of Palmer Wainwright.
She returned to her own backyard, closed and latched the gate, and walked toward the house.
Wainwright was sitting on the porch steps, waiting for her.
She stopped fifteen feet from him, amazed, confused.
He got up from the steps.
“Your face,” she said numbly.
His face was unscarred.
He smiled as if nothing had happened and took two steps toward her. “Grace—”
“The cat,” she said. “I saw your cheek… your neck… it’s claws tore out…”
“Listen,” he said, taking another step toward her, “there are certain forces, dark and powerful forces, that want to see this played out the wrong way. Dark forces that thrive on tragedy. They want to see it end in senseless violence and blood. That mustn’t be allowed to happen, Grace. Not again. You’ve got to keep Carol out of the girl’s way, for her sake and for the sake of the girl, too.”
Grace gaped at him. “Who the hell are you?”
“Who are you?” Wainwright asked, raising one eyebrow quizzically. “That is the important question right now. You aren’t only who you think you are. You aren’t only Grace Mitowski.”
He’s mad, she thought. Or I’m mad. Or we both are. Stark, raving mad.
She said, “You’re the one on the phone. You’re the creep who imitates Leonard’s voice.”
“No,” he said. “I am—”
“No wonder Ari attacked you. You’re the one who’s been giving him drugs or poison or something like that. You’re the one, and he knew.”
But what about the facial wounds, the gouged neck? she asked herself. How in the name of God did those injuries heal so quickly?
How?
She pushed those thoughts out of her mind, refused to think about such things. She must have been mistaken. She must have imagined that Ari had actually hurt the man.
“Yeah,” she said, “you’re the one who’s behind all of these weird things that’ve been happening. Get off my property, you son of a bitch.”
“Grace, there are forces aligned…” He looked no different now from the way he had looked when he’d first spoken to her, several minutes ago. He hadn’t looked crazed then; he didn’t look crazed now. He didn’t look dangerous, and yet he continued to babble about dark forces. “… good and evil, right and wrong. You’re on the right side, Grace. But the cat—ah, the cat’s a different story. At all times, you must be wary of the cat.”
“Get out of my way,” she said.
He took a step toward her.
She slashed at him with the gardening trowel, missing his face by just an inch or two. She slashed again and again and again, cutting only empty air, not really wanting to cut anything else unless she had no choice, just hoping to keep him at bay until she could slip around him, for he was between her and the house. And then she was around him; she turned and ran for the kitchen door, painfully aware that her legs were old and arthritic. She went only a few steps before she realized she shouldn’t have turned her back on the lunatic, and she wheeled to confront him, gasping, certain that he was leaping toward her, perhaps with a knife in his hand—But he was gone.
Vanished. Again.
He hadn’t had time to reach any of the shrubs that were large enough to conceal a man, not during the split second her back had been turned. Even if he had been a much younger man than he was, in the very best condition, a trained runner—even then he couldn’t have gone more than halfway to the gate in such a short time.
So where was he?
Where was he?
From the offices of Maugham & Crichton on Front Street, Carol and Jane drove a few blocks to the Second Street address that was supposed to be the home of Linda Bektermann. It was in a good neighborhood; a lovely French country house, at least fifty years old, in fine condition. No one was at home, but the name on the mailbox was Nicholson, not Bektermann.