Fear and Loathing Read online

  ‘Everything’s cool,’ Andria said.

  Not quite so cool on the towpath in the dark, even for her, walking out here with two little ones, especially since the Burton house was in darkness too, until they reached the gate and the motion sensor lights illuminated it – comforting, but startling nevertheless.

  Opening the gate, Andria saw right away that something was up.

  Dishes of food untouched. Cooked burgers on the grill gone cold. Two beer bottles on the wooden decking. A spatula on the ground near the barbecue.

  Called away unexpectedly, Andria decided. Some emergency, or maybe there’d been an accident, like when her mom had sliced a finger while chopping salad, or maybe Gary had burned himself on the grill, or …

  She had a weird, lurching feeling in her stomach.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ Johnny picked up on her anxiety.

  ‘I guess they had to go out someplace,’ she told him. ‘I’m sure they’re fine.’

  ‘But my mom and dad would have called,’ Johnny said.

  He was right.

  ‘Probably no signal where they are.’ Andria took her Nokia from her back pocket. ‘I’m just going to make a quick call, Johnny. Don’t move, OK? Watch Mia.’

  She moved to the other side of the deck, keeping an eye on the kids, hit her mom’s speed dial key and quickly updated her, keeping her voice low.

  ‘That doesn’t sound right,’ her mother said.

  ‘I think I should go inside,’ Andria said. ‘The door’s wide open, Mom.’

  ‘I don’t want you going in there. Call out for the Burtons from outside, and if they don’t answer, call 911, but do not go in there.’

  ‘OK, Mom.’ Andria wished she hadn’t called.

  ‘You hear me, Andria? There could be burglars inside.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Andria said.

  ‘Stay on the line,’ her mother told her.

  But Andria had already hit the red button.

  Because she knew she was going to – had to – take a look.

  Just a quick one.

  Sam Becket could not sleep.

  In the first place, he just wasn’t tired enough. He’d grown so used to fighting through exhaustion, the brain-grinding kind that got you after too much overtime spent either in the pursuit of violent criminals or the endless paperwork battle.

  Today, though, had been a real family Sunday. Brunch at his brother’s, Saul and Mel Ambonetti, his girlfriend, doing eggs Benedict and smoked salmon omelets. David Becket, his dad – a retired doctor – taking a verbal swipe at cholesterol while tucking in with relish. Mildred, David’s wife, spending much of the afternoon playing with Joshua, and Grace helping Mel in the kitchen, then putting her feet up.

  All good.

  Still, something was keeping him awake, so, not wanting to wake Grace, he’d given in and gotten up.

  On edge, with no real idea why.

  Cathy, maybe. Almost five thousand miles away in France and probably – at five-thirty a.m. her time – still sound asleep.

  She’d come into her inheritance two Decembers ago. A complex business, presided over lengthily by two Miami law firms appointed, during their lifetimes, by her mother and stepfather and aunt. Everything left to Cathy, who had as a young teen been framed for their murders, then granted the double gifts of freedom and, ultimately, a new chance at life.

  Sam, a detective in Miami Beach Police Department’s Violent Crimes Unit, had been the cop leading the multiple murder case back then, and Dr Grace Lucca the child and adolescent psychologist originally brought in to care for her. Grace the first believer in Cathy’s innocence, even when all the evidence had pointed bloodily at her.

  All that had happened before Sam and Grace had got married and adopted Cathy, and years had passed since then, years zigzagged with joys and sorrows and times of fearfulness and a lot of love. And Cathy had deliberately put aside all thoughts of her inheritance because of its unbearable associations, but suddenly it was all upon her.

  Arnold and Marie Robbins’s and her aunt’s combined estates had been buffeted by market crashes and downturns, but Arnie had owned a small chain of restaurants and a house on Pine Tree Drive, and Cathy’s aunt’s Coral Gables property had made the overall legacy more than considerable.

  Infinitely more money than she’d ever wanted to think about, but as the time had approached, two things had become clear. She was going to pay off Sam’s and Grace’s mortgage and buy Saul – Sam’s much younger brother, more like a brother to Cathy than an uncle – the apartment that he’d let her share rent-free for several years.

  No matter how much they argued, she’d been determined, and they’d all realized how much it meant to her, and though they were all more than comfortable, Sam was still only drawing a police detective’s salary and Grace had been cutting back work hours in order to spend more time with Joshua, their five-year-old. And Saul, though doing well enough with his one-man furniture-making business, would be in a far more secure position to ask Mel to move in with him, so there could be no denying that Cathy’s gifts would help them all.

  The year in France had been a fantasy Cathy had in common with many at Johnson & Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts, where she’d recently graduated with an associate degree. And then she’d heard about the American owner of a restaurant – Le Rêve de Nic Jones – in Cannes, who periodically took on a promising graduate for a year, training on the job (apartment included), working under his overall tutelage.

  Last November, Nic Jones, a slim, agile man with dark, brilliant eyes, had come to Miami to interview candidates. After three days of trial, Cathy finally going head-to-head with a fellow student – Luc Meyer, Florida-born son of a French mother and German father, plump-cheeked, bespectacled, sweet-natured, super-talented with pastry and trilingual – Jones had offered her the job.

  ‘Close call,’ he said. ‘I’d have liked you both.’

  ‘Maybe you could.’ The idea had suddenly struck her. ‘If I worked for almost nothing and rented my own place, Luc could have the apartment that goes with the job.’

  Jones had stared at her. ‘I’m not often fazed, but—’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve been left some money,’ she’d explained. ‘Quite a lot, and—’

  ‘Would you work for nothing?’

  ‘No. That would be like saying I feel I’m not worth anything, and I don’t feel that.’

  Jones had smiled.

  ‘Better brush up your French, if you want to keep up with Luc.’

  Cathy was doing great, Sam knew that, yet he couldn’t seem to stop worrying, didn’t much like the way he’d felt when she’d first told them, didn’t approve of the way he still felt. Over-protective. Wanting her close so he could be there if she needed anything. So he could keep her safe.

  ‘Like nothing bad ever happened to her here,’ Martinez had remarked, wryly.

  Alejandro Martinez, his partner in Violent Crimes and his greatly valued friend, who had no wife or children, but had regularly proved over the years that a man did not need to be either husband or father to get on that wavelength.

  Sam had experienced a measure of relief when he’d learned that Luc Meyer was going to France with Cathy. But what had helped most had been ascertaining that Thomas Chauvin was not presently living in France. Chauvin, the young would-be photojournalist from Strasbourg, who’d come briefly into their lives two years back, displaying an unhealthy interest in both Grace and Cathy because he felt they resembled his idol, the late Grace Kelly.

  An Interpol inquiry had informed them that Chauvin had been arrested more than once for stalking – and when Sam and Martinez had entered his rented Surfside apartment, they’d found the walls covered with photographs of Grace and Cathy.

  They’d warned him off, seen him on a plane bound for home, but still, within hours of Cathy announcing her job offer, Sam had run a fresh check on him and learned that he’d filed two stories in the UK. Minor publications, published three mont
hs apart, one very recently. Sam had asked a pal to run an in-depth check and had learned that the now ‘official’ photojournalist was living in West London.

  With a bit of luck, focusing on some other unfortunate blonde.

  Which was not, of course, the right way for a cop to think.

  But hell, Sam was a father, and his relief at the stalker being in the UK hadn’t stopped him from giving Luc a photograph of Chauvin and asking him to keep an eye open for any sign of him.

  ‘What should I do if I see him?’ Meyer asked. ‘Call the cops?’

  ‘Call me,’ Sam said. ‘First warn Cathy, then call me, day or night.’

  ‘You think he’s dangerous?’ Meyer looked alarmed.

  Sam shook his head. ‘Just a jerk and a bit of a sleaze, but obsessive. And I’ve learned to take that kind of thing seriously.’

  ‘Especially when it comes to your daughter,’ Luc Meyer said.

  Sam had felt happier than ever that Meyer was going with Cathy to France.

  Not just Cathy he was thinking about tonight, though. Kovac being back in Violent Crimes and giving him grief wasn’t helping.

  Just when you thought you’d gotten rid of a nagging pain, it came back. Ron Kovac, head bald as a bowling ball, eyebrows and the hairs on his muscular forearms the color of orange marmalade, had never been warmly disposed toward Sam or Martinez. But he’d transferred to Strategic Investigations a few years back, and the transfer had brought them Lieutenant Mike Alvarez – one of the good guys. Sadly Alvarez was now sick, had gone to New York City for lengthy treatment, and though no diagnosis had been disclosed, the detectives feared for him.

  ‘Still together, I see,’ Kovac had said to Sam and Martinez on his first day back.

  ‘Just waiting for the chance to see you again, Lieutenant,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Still with the smart mouth.’ Kovac had turned to Sam. ‘You’ll never get promoted, either of you.’

  Ugly man, inside and out.

  Grace had asked Sam once if she knew what Kovac’s home life was like. If there was some great misery in his private existence that might have turned him mean.

  Typical Grace, a major part of her raison d’être trying to find out what might have weakened the apple’s skin so the worm could crawl inside. That, and seeing the good in almost everyone.

  Only almost. She’d seen evil at close quarters more than once, been as glad as Sam when it had been snuffed out.

  Grace was one of a kind.

  Sam Becket a hell of a lucky man.

  Still, tonight he was on edge. And maybe it was just the changes in the unit brought about by Kovac’s return, but to be honest, it felt like something more.

  Like something was coming.

  And not a good thing.

  Andria was inside the Burton house.

  The layout of the Florida room area looked about the same as in the Ventrinos’ house, but with the only lighting coming from the deck behind her, everything felt eerie.

  She moved further, into the great room, and paused. To her left against the far wall, a giant flat-screen TV hung blackly; to her right the kitchen area, and she pictured Mrs Burton – who was real pretty, looked almost like Jamie Chung – over there. And maybe she should just look for blood on a chopping board, because then all this would make sense and she could just turn around, take the kids back home …

  But she did not do that.

  Because of the feeling she had.

  ‘Andria?’ Johnny tugged on her left hand.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said.

  Except she didn’t believe that. But if she called 911 now, for nothing, she’d look like a total loser, and anyway, she felt as if she was being pulled farther into the house by some kind of invisible magnet.

  ‘We’ll just take a little look around,’ she told Johnny.

  Mia, safe in the stroller, was sleeping again, and Andria gripped one handle with her right hand, took the boy’s hand with her left, and pushed on into the hallway.

  ‘It’s too dark,’ Johnny complained.

  In the dim light from the deck, Andria saw a switch on the wall to her left, hesitated, then flicked it.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said softly.

  The hall was square, like the Ventrinos’, which meant the bedrooms were probably along the corridor over to the right.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ Johnny said.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said again. ‘I’m just going to call out, and if no one answers we’ll go back home.’

  She did it, called: ‘Mrs Burton?’

  No one answered. She tried again.

  ‘Hello? Mary Ann?’

  Nothing.

  ‘I want to go home,’ Johnny said.

  ‘We will,’ Andria said, ‘in just a moment.’

  She looked to her left, saw a couple of statues of weird-looking animals, and a stone cabinet with a big round fish bowl.

  ‘Hey,’ she said softly. ‘Fish. Look, Johnny.’

  She wheeled the stroller over to the cabinet, hoping to distract the boy.

  There was a corridor to the left, a door at the end.

  ‘You stay here, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Look after Mia.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Just taking a look along there.’

  ‘You said we could go.’ He sounded querulous.

  Andria didn’t know why she felt drawn along that corridor.

  Except, when she reached the door, she stopped, afraid to go any further.

  Certainly not through that door.

  But she could hear something on the other side of it.

  Something that sounded like low growling, that made her skin prickle.

  And then suddenly she realized, grinned at herself for being a prize dork.

  An engine.

  ‘Car trouble,’ she said out loud, flooded with relief because that was all this was about, and come to think of it, she could smell something …

  She turned the handle.

  The door shifted a little, then stuck fast. She looked down, saw a strip of something at the base, like tape, saw the same thing running up both sides of the door and across the top.

  Andria froze.

  She didn’t know what lay on the other side.

  Only that she had to get the kids out.

  June 3

  At a quarter to six on Monday morning, Cathy and Gabe were wrapped around each other in the bedroom of her fourth-floor rented apartment on rue Saint-Antoine, a narrow, historic hill in Le Suquet, the old quarter of Cannes in the south of France.

  A day off for them both, pleasures to come.

  Most days and nights still feeling like a long, looping dream to Cathy.

  Being here on the Côte d’Azur, being here by herself, being herself, without her family watching over her. She could not love them more, but it was time to stand alone, at least for now, and doing that in this wonderful place, and then finding Gabe, falling for him …

  He knew almost everything about her: a lot to know, much of it hard for her to have shared, yet he’d taken it all in his stride, had said that however painful, it had helped create the woman she’d become: the person who loved to cook and run, who could make him hard with a look, who shivered when he touched her and cried when they made each other come.

  She’d told him about Kez, the woman she’d once loved, had tried to express her confusions about her sexuality and her feelings for him. Gabe said that loving him now did not mean that she hadn’t loved Kez. He said he figured there were many different kinds of love, and that though Kez Flanagan had been a sick young woman who had done terrible things, there couldn’t have been anything crazy about her loving Cathy.

  Cathy loved hearing what Gabe had to tell her.

  Gabe Ryan was, she sometimes felt, part healer – and many other things too.

  A mystery package, she guessed, but a good one.

  Perhaps the best ever.

  The restaurant where they both worked was on Quai Saint-Pierr
e, facing the port; spectacular yachts and the perfect blues of the Mediterranean beyond, other eating establishments and marine-themed businesses to left and right. Just a gentle stroll from Le Suquet and all things old, yet the broad, modern, smoothly paved sidewalk along the quai gave a sense of space and leisure that was distinctly twenty-first century.

  Le Rêve de Nic Jones appeared small from the exterior, but its imaginative proprietor had carved out two floors of his four-storey building for dining, with seven tables and a bar on the ground floor, double the table capacity on the first floor and a kitchen that was a marvel, laid out perfectly for efficient flow.

  ‘Our customers expect better than good,’ Nic had told Cathy and Luc on the first Monday – the one day each week when the restaurant was closed – after their arrival in March.

  They’d arrived at nine, entering at the unglamorous rear entrance in rue de la Rampe, had been welcomed by Jones and introduced to Jeanne Darroze, the general manager – an elegant, formidable, reed-thin woman of around forty.

  ‘You guys will be training in every area of the kitchen,’ Jones had told them. ‘I’m the chef-patron, but there’s nothing in this place that I haven’t done myself, including dishwashing, and the same goes for Jeanne.’

  They’d been given one day’s basic training, then begun work next morning, directed by Jeanne Darroze to observe and assist wherever asked to, the boss’s only instruction being that they respond swiftly to any request or task and make themselves as unobtrusive as possible when not engaged.

  ‘Less than unobtrusive,’ he’d said. ‘Invisible, but ready for anything.’

  They’d followed Jeanne’s daily opening routine, checking temperatures in the coolers and freezer, and by ten Cathy had been at her first post, observing Sadi Guinard, the poissonière, a tiny, energetic young woman with cropped red hair and good English, as she sanitized her prep table.

  ‘What can I do?’ Cathy asked.

  ‘Just watch me.’ Sadi smiled, her small teeth very white. ‘Don’t worry. There’ll soon be plenty for you to do. For now, only look, listen, learn. Regardez, écoutez, apprenez.’

  ‘Look, listen, learn,’ Cathy sighed later, encountering Luc outside the staff restroom. ‘We’ll have to have a sampler stitched, put it over our beds.’