The Hell Yo - lanyon Josh. Страница 73

night came wafting on the breeze. Betty turned and pelted back toward the house.

Garibaldi stretched out both hands as though he planned on levitating me. “Spirits of

the Abyss, Lords of Hell, cast your darkness on his shell. Break him, burn him, in the night,

destroy my enemy with thy might –”

“Open the gate, Peter,” Guy’s voice said from the other side of the iron bars, and Peter

spun to face him.

That prosaic request seemed to throw Garibaldi momentarily off his stride. He swung

around, the cape gently unfurling in his wake.

“For Christ’s sake, stop him!” exclaimed Ava. And when no one moved, “Pull

yourselves together .”

For Christ’s sake? I bit back a shaky laugh. “Come on, it’s over,” I said. “The cops will

be here in less than a minute.” I walked toward the gate. Motionless, Peter blocked my way,

one hand gripping the metal bars.

“Peter,” Guy said urgently, “Don’t make it worse. Let him out.”

“No,” cried Ava. “Listen to me!”

“Lady, get real,” I said. “Or do you think you can kill me, Guy, Savant, and the

caterers – and the cops won’t notice?”

Peter moved aside, swinging open the gate, and squeezing out past Guy. He

disappeared into the night, his footsteps fading as he ran.

Garibaldi said to me, “Death and despair is your future now.”

“Blue denims and prison food are yours,” I said and slammed the gate behind me.

“Are you okay?” Guy asked. He put his hands to my face as though examining me for

signs of bewitchment.

“Yes. Thanks to you.”

“I’m sure you’d have come up with a Plan B.” He seemed to recall himself, letting me

go.

The blue sedan screeched up the drive, swerved around the Mercedes, and began to

honk furiously for us to open the gate. Ignoring this, I said to Guy, “Savant is stashed in the

shed with the trash bins. Have the cops use luminol when they examine the sculpture by the

swimming pool. I think it’s an altar.”

His eyes looked stricken. Then he said, “What do you mean? Where will you be?”

I said, “Will you do me a favor? Keep my name out of it, if you can?”

“What are you talking about? They all know you were here.” He gestured to the

frantically honking Betty, and Garibaldi and Ava who were arguing furiously across the top

of the Mercedes.

“I don’t think they’re going to have much to say to the cops. The last thing any of them

want is another witness to testify against them.”

Guy’s eyes were colorless in the moonlight. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. And for reasons that I can’t go into, I’m pretty sure the cops won’t push you to

offer my name up. There’s plenty here to convict them all without me.”

“But…if I take credit for finding Savant….”

“You might be able to redeem yourself in the eyes of the faculty and parents who

believe this was your fault.”

The sirens were getting louder.

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “Or this will be moot.”

“Adrien, this is…”

I said, “Merry Christmas, Guy.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

I was trapped in a Perry Como Christmas special.

It had started at the crack of dawn. Dauten, mini-cam in hand, shouting stage

directions like Cecil B. de Mille, gathered us around the towering Christmas tree and filmed

us taking turns opening our presents – an embarrassing wealth of presents – not a tie in the

bunch.

“Everyone look at Emma. Look surprised, Emma!” Dauten would command. Or, “I

missed that! Adrien, pretend to open that one again.”

But I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t touched. Natalie and Lauren and (according to

the card) Lauren’s inexplicably absent husband had gone in on software called Journey to the

Wild Divine, a kind of video game with biofeedback sensors. Emma had made me a colorful

assortment of bookmarks. Dauten and Lisa had bought me a ticket for one of those Atlantis

all-gay cruise ship vacations. Everything had been so carefully chosen and was so eagerly

offered; it was excruciating.

The gift exchange segment was followed of necessity by sharing a “wee dram” with

Bill. Then we had to comparison shop the booze. Luckily, while we could still walk, the

traditional suicide feast was served.

This was followed by charades. Yep, charades.

I kept that frozen smile in place, despite the headache, despite the indigestion, despite

the nerve-shattering shrieks of laughter and screams of delight. I knew how Scrooge must

have felt spending that first Christmas at his nephew’s: a smiling shipwreck victim sharing

supper with cannibals.

From dawn to dusk there was no letting up of the relentless holly-jolliness, and every

single moment I tried to tune out, to think back over the events of the past week, one or the

other of my self-appointed family members would make an effort to re-engage my flagging

interest.

Didn’t anyone want to take a nap or go for a walk or watch TV? No, they kept

hovering. Did they have me on a suicide watch? And here I thought I was coping so well.

It wasn’t until Emma finally went off to play the piano that Lisa said very casually, “We

saw Jake on the telly last night. He’s certainly getting a lot of press. I expect they’ll make him

Chief of Police one of these days. Have they found That Boy yet?”

She meant Angus. Peter Verlane had been picked up within hours of the police raid on

Garibaldi’s Bel Air estate. “They think he’s in Mexico, maybe,” I remarked.

“So you’ll have to hire someone at the bookstore, won’t you?”

“Yes, and I don’t want to talk about it now.”

She smiled a fleeting satisfied smile, leaning back against the sofa cushions. Emma,

seated at the piano, plinked out “My Favorite Things” for the third time in a row.

“Unbelievable,” Bill remarked, “that Oliver could have been involved in that stuff – in

murder – it’s absolutely unbelievable.”

“I believe it,” Lisa said. “He was always a tad too…intense. Something in his eyes…”

She shivered delicately.

“When I think of the possible ramifications,” Bill said. “Some of the deals he was part

of.” He knocked back another snootful of Laphroaig and held the bottle up for me.

I shook my head.

“He took a lot of people in,” Lisa said. “As for Ava…any woman who would even think