Part 50 (1/2)

”Topelis,” she said.

”Spell it for me.”

She did. ”I don't know where Miss Thomas is. But that Mr. Topelis will know. He'll know for sure.”

He took the knife away from her eye.

She had been rigid. She sagged a bit.

He stared down at her. Something stirred in the back of his mind, a memory, then an awful realization.

”Your hair,” he said. ”You've got dark hair. And your eyes. They're so dark.”

”What's wrong?” she asked worriedly, suddenly sensing that she was not safe yet.

”You've got the same hair and eyes, the same complexion that she had,” Frye said.

”I don't understand, I don't know what's happening here. You're scaring me.”

”Did you think you could trick me?” He was grinning at her, pleased with himself for not being fooled by her clever ruse.

He knew. He knew.

”You figured I'd go off to see this Topelis,” Bruno said, and then you would have a chance to slip away.”

”Topelis knows where she is. He knows. I don't. I really don't know anything.”

”I know where she is now,” Bruno said.

”If you know, then you can just let me go.”

He laughed. ”You changed bodies, didn't you?”

She stared at him. ”What?”

”Somehow you got out of the Thomas woman and took control of this girl, didn't you?”

She wasn't crying any more. Her fear was burning so very brightly that it had seared away her tears.

The b.i.t.c.h.

The rotten b.i.t.c.h.

”Did you really think you could fool me?” he asked. He laughed again, delighted. ”After everything you've done to me, how could you think I wouldn't recognize you?”

Terror reverberated in her voice. ”I haven't done anything to you. You're not making sense. Oh, Jesus. Oh, my G.o.d, my G.o.d. What do you want from me?”

Bruno leaned toward her, put his face close to hers. He peered into her eyes and said, ”You're in there, aren't you? You're in there, deep down in there, hiding from me, aren't you? Aren't you, Mother? I see you, Mother. I see you in there.”

A few fat droplets of rain splattered on the mullioned window in Joshua Rhinehart's office.

The night wind moaned.

”I still don't understand why Frye chose me,” Hilary said. ”When I came up here to do research for that screenplay, he was friendly. He answered all my questions about the wine industry. We spent two or three hours together, and I never had a hint that he was anything but an ordinary businessman. Then a few weeks later, he shows up at my house with a knife. And according to that letter in the safe-deposit box, he thinks I'm his mother in a new body. Why me?”

Joshua s.h.i.+fted in his chair. ”I've been looking at you and thinking....”

”What?”

”Maybe he chose you because ... well, you look just a bit like Katherine.”

”You don't mean we've got another look-alike on our hands,” Tony said.

”No,” Joshua said. ”The resemblance is only slight.”

”Good,” Tony said. ”Another dead ringer would be too much for me to deal with.”

Joshua got up, went to Hilary, put one hand under her chin, lifted her face, turned it left, then right. ”The hair, the eyes, the dusty complexion,” he said thoughtfully. ”Yes, all of that's similar. And there are other things about your face that remind me vaguely of Katherine, little things, so minor that I can't really put my finger on them. It's only a pa.s.sing resemblance. And she wasn't as attractive as you are.”

As Joshua took his hand away from her chin, Hilary got up and walked to the attorney's desk. Mulling over what she had learned in the past hour, she stared down at the neatly arranged items on the desk: blotter, stapler, letter opener, paperweight.

”Is something wrong?” Tony asked.

The wind worked up into a brief squall. Another burst of raindrops snapped against the window.

She turned around, faced the men. ”Let me summarize the situation. Let me see if I've got this straight.”

”I don't think any of us has it straight,” Joshua said, returning to his chair. ”The whole d.a.m.ned tale is too twisted to be arranged in a nice straight line.”

”That's what I'm leading up to,” she said. ”I think maybe I just found another twist.”

”Go ahead,” Tony said.

”So far as we can tell,” Hilary said, ”shortly after his mother's death, Bruno got the idea that she had come back from the grave. For nearly five years, he has been buying books about the living dead from Latham Hawthorne. For five years, he's been living in fear of Katherine. Finally, when he saw me, he decided I was the new body she was using. But why did it take him so long?”

”I'm not sure I follow,” Joshua said.

”Why did he take five years to fixate on someone, five long years to select a flesh and blood target for his fears?”

Joshua shrugged, ”He's a madman, We can't expect his reasoning to be logical and decipherable.”

But Tony was sensitive to the implications of her question. He slid forward on the couch, frowning. ”I think I know what you're going to say,” he told her, ”My G.o.d, it gives me goose pimples.”

Joshua looked from one to the other and said, ”I must be getting slow-witted in my declining years. Will someone explain things to this old codger?”

”Maybe I'm not the first woman he's thought was his mother,” Hilary said. ”Maybe he killed the others before he came after me.”