15
Chelsea Schnell sat in the passenger seat of the Range Rover beside Daniel Crane, looking out the windshield most of the time but taking an occasional glance at him when she was sure her eyes wouldn’t meet his. He had taken her to the Escarpment tonight. It was even better than she had imagined it would be. The restaurant was built on a flat limestone shelf high above the Niagara Gorge in Lewiston. After the river washed over the falls, it ran onward through another seven miles of rapids and swift water to Lake Ontario. The river had dug a steep canyon there, three hundred feet below the restaurant’s patio, where she and Dan had sat for dinner on this warm summer evening. They had arrived at seven, when there was still plenty of daylight, and finished by candlelight three hours later.
The quality of the food and wine had taken her off guard. She had only agreed to go with him because he had kept asking and asking, and she had run out of excuses. She hadn’t had the mental and emotional energy to brush him off again. Each of his previous invitations had been to very nice places, but when he had offered the Escarpment, she had finally given in. She had always wished that Nick would take her to a place like the Escarpment just once. No, she admitted to herself, just once wouldn’t have been what she wanted. Once she’d been there, she would have wanted to come on special times, maybe birthdays or anniversaries. The thought of an anniversary made her feel lonely and bereft, so she decided to distract herself.
She said, “That was such a wonderful restaurant, Dan. Thank you so much for taking me.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “It was my pleasure.”
She waited a few seconds, but he didn’t add anything, so she spoke again. “You were right that I should get out of the house once in a while.”
“I knew you would like it,” he said. “You know another place that’s really nice? There’s a great restaurant—and I mean great—right outside of Rochester, in Pittsford. It’s been written up in a lot of food magazines. It’s where famous people go when they come to Rochester.”
“What’s it called?” What famous people ever went to Rochester?
“It’s called the Old Canal Inn. It’s built on the site of an eighteenth-century hotel. The road and the hotel were there before the Erie Canal, but I guess they want people to know it’s beside the canal. I’ll take you there.”
“I wasn’t hinting to make you treat me again. I was just curious,” she said. “After the meal we had tonight, I can’t even think about food again for a few days.”
“I liked the Escarpment too,” said Crane. “I’ve always liked it, but tonight it was at its best. It’s such a beautiful view anyway, but having you across the table made it even more beautiful.” He watched her for a reaction, but didn’t detect one, so he persisted. “I meant that, you know.”
Chelsea could feel herself getting panicky. He was trying to be nice, but being with him made the interior of the car seem suddenly smaller. She felt an impulse to open the car door and get out, but the car was moving. She held her discomfort in check. “You shouldn’t be such a kiss ass. People will think you’re trying to make fools of them.”
“Me?” said Crane. “I’d never do that to you. I do think you’re beautiful. I’m sure you can see that for yourself in the mirror every day, but it doesn’t hurt you to know that other people appreciate you.” He grinned. “You’re raising the property values around here, so it’s good for everybody.”
“Always glad to help the real estate people,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else. You’ve been careful all through dinner not to talk about work. So tell me about your day at work. How was it?”
“Good,” he said. “Business is always good. Whenever the economy starts looking up, people buy too much and don’t have anyplace to put the excess but storage. When the economy goes down again, they lose their big fancy homes and have to put all of it in storage.”
“So they have to come to you no matter what.”
“The smart ones don’t, but they don’t matter. There are so few of them that they’re not a big share of the market. How about your job? Are you back at work yet?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I was thinking of going back this week, but my mother asked me to go on a little trip with her, so I told the bank I wasn’t ready. She was going to fly to Denver to help my cousin Amelia with her new baby, and she wanted me to go with her. At the last minute I couldn’t face it. I realized it would have been the same thing that kept me from going back to work—lots of questions about Nick and the investigation and what I feel, and people saying it’s too bad we weren’t married, because then there would be insurance. It would be even worse in Denver. I’d edge out Amelia and her baby for attention and everybody would feel bad for me instead of good for her. I’d rather be around people who have gotten tired of talking about it.”
“It’s not that we’re tired of talking about it. We just—”
“I am,” she said. “I should probably be ashamed of that, but it’s how I feel. I don’t want to go through the whole story over and over again for a bunch of new people, and relive everything to catch them up.”
“I understand,” said Crane. “You can visit your Denver relatives another time after it’s all over.”
She glared at him, coiling herself for a fight. Nick’s murder wasn’t ever going to be over. Death wasn’t a temporary setback. Her life had been marked forever. Saying that sometime it was all going to fade away was stupid. As the seconds passed she watched his face. He was trying so hard, and he had just made a small mistake trying to comfort her. He didn’t deserve a hysterical tirade from the same woman he had just bought the most expensive dinner in Western New York and tried to flatter and distract for over three hours. “It’s true,” she said. “Denver will still be there when I’m ready.” She noticed that he didn’t make the turn at Telephone Road. “I think you just went past my turn.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll get you there. Just a brief detour.” He kept driving, his eyes on the road. He seemed to be speeding up.
Chelsea didn’t like the way he avoided looking at her, and she didn’t like it that he had not asked if she minded taking a detour. She felt manipulated and trapped. But she was determined to remain silent, and give him enough time to realize she was irritated. Maybe then he would get around to discussing why she felt that way. The silence went on, and she began to suspect that she was more uncomfortable with silence than he was. “So what’s with the detour?”
“I just have to stop at my place for a minute before I swing back your way. I left some papers at home that have to be in the office in the morning, and that’s in the direction of your place, so I can drop them off on my way home from there. I’m sorry to do this, but it’s payroll stuff, and it’ll save me a long trip later.”
She ran his excuse through her mind and listened to the tone of his voice for evidence that he was lying to get her alone in a place where he could make an unwelcome move that would only cause them both embarrassment. She couldn’t detect anything. In penance for her suspicion she was inclined to be agreeable about this. He could just as easily have made whatever misguided advance he’d wanted at her house. She lived there alone now, and was always alone when he came to visit or pick her up.
Crane turned a corner onto a knot of smaller roads, and she knew that they were in the space somewhere between the Country Club of Buffalo and the Park Country Club because she’d once worked a night job for a caterer, but she had lost her sense of exact location from being turned around a couple of times. The houses were all big now, most of them long and low, with huge lawns and tall trees, all at the ends of long driveways marked by rural mailboxes on posts, but then curving up to modern houses.
Chelsea had always hated the mailbox where she and Nick had lived, because it epitomized for her the fact that she and Nick lived out in the sticks. She had to trudge all the way down the gravel drive in rain or snow to retrieve a few bills and a pile of garish ads for things she wouldn’t buy in a million years. But in this neighborhood, the mailboxes at the ends of long driveways symbolized the ownership of a big house on a vast piece of land.
Daniel Crane drove along the road, and then turned right into one of the driveways. The surface looked like cobblestones, but she knew that the stones must be some modern imitation, partly because every stone was identical and perfectly level. As he drove along the driveway’s big curve, she caught herself trying to look ahead of the sweeping headlights to see what came next. First thick shrubbery for privacy from the road, then neat plantings of bright dahlias, hydrangeas, and rock roses, then the trunks of tall pine trees, and then a lawn like a golf course. The house itself was one story, a sprawling, plain dark brown building that she only now realized was natural wood. There was a narrow opening between wings of the house, and through it she could see a Japanese garden that seemed to be surrounded by glass.
Crane stopped the SUV in front of the entrance, where she could see the garden beyond the opening by the dim light coming from the house’s interior through the glass wall. “Just give me a few minutes.” He undid his seat belt and let it retract.
“Beautiful house,” Chelsea said.
He turned to look at her. “Want to take a look inside? I feel weird leaving you sitting out here alone.”
She hesitated, thinking about sitting here alone in the dark while he went inside. “Sure,” she said. She unlatched her seat belt and put her hand on the door handle, but he was there opening the door before she could go anywhere, offering her his hand.
She was glad she’d taken it when she stepped to the pavement. Her high heels were uncertain and a little wobbly on the stone driveway. She followed him as he opened the front door and punched in the alarm code on the keypad on the wall. He flipped a few switches and various parts of the house lit up.
The right side of the living room was the glass wall she had glimpsed from the front. The light out there was from small spotlights along the edge of the roof, and it showed her a big boulder with water trickling from a natural depression at the top, down its side into a tiny pond and recycling to flow down continuously. There was a bed of fine gravel raked into patterns to circle dark volcanic-looking boulders in a seemingly random arrangement, with a few twisted evergreen shrubs. A simple wooden bench beside the garden was where she could imagine herself sitting on a warm day reading.
Recessed lights in the living room ceiling lit floor-to--ceiling bookcases built into one wall filled with books and the occasional small sculpture or ceramic. Others threw softer beams of light on a semicircular arc of couches arranged as a conversation area around a low, round table.
But Crane was already across the room and disappearing under an arch into a wide gallery. “Make yourself at home,” he called over his shoulder. Chelsea lost sight of him, but had the impression that he turned to the right somewhere on his walk, and then had the sense that his office must overlook the Japanese garden from the side.
She walked across the living room, looked through a matching arch that seemed to end in the kitchen, where she could see gleaming stainless steel, and a couple of unlit rooms that opened on either side of that gallery.
Chelsea stood still and stared at everything, shocked. The house looked like it belonged to a celebrity who had incredibly sophisticated taste. The pictures on the white walls were mostly not of anything, just beautiful colors smeared or dribbled or painted on in stripes with so many layers that they seemed to be deep enough to fall into. There were smaller ones, drawings or watercolors, mostly of girls, a few of them just girls’ faces or girls not naked. She loved this house. It looked like something in a magazine.
She walked along the bookcases identifying tall art books, architecture books, thick collections of essays about opera, classical music, or philosophy. She had never imagined Dan Crane was interested in any of these topics. She had an urge to take some of the books down and look at them, but she could see that they had been arranged so precisely that he would know if she disturbed one, and might not like it.
She heard a door closing somewhere in the distance, and then Dan’s shoes on the hardwood floor. She looked toward the arch and saw him reappear, carrying a half-inch-thin soft leather briefcase. “This house is gorgeous, Daniel.”
He tossed his briefcase on the nearest couch and said, “Come on. I’ll give you a quick tour.”
“Can we start in the kitchen?”
He looked surprised. “Sure. This way.”
The kitchen was exactly as she had guessed—huge and airy, with granite counters, a big island with sinks and overhead ventilation hood. There was a Sub-Zero refrigerator, a nine-burner stove, a double oven. Everything was gleaming and spotless. She was sure Dan Crane never cooked here, but someone certainly could. He led her out and opened a door on the corridor, and she saw a big television screen and some identical leather chairs with end tables beside each of them. “Screening room.”
As she went with him from room to room she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to live here. The woman who had this house would live with Daniel Crane, of course, and that wasn’t something that appealed to her at first thought, but tonight she had begun to think that she had judged him too soon. She had been aware from the beginning that he had money. He owned the company where Nick had worked, so obviously he’d have more money than Nick. What she hadn’t known before was that he had such good taste, such a rich imagination, such an appreciation for beauty. He had a lively inner life that she had never suspected.
As she watched him on the tour she reflected that he was better looking than he had been before. She thought it might be because he had confidence tonight. He knew he had impressed her with the restaurant, and when he was here on his home ground he seemed masterful. He stood straighter and spoke with an ease that even made its way into his voice.
He stopped in the living room in front of a section of white wall and said, “Something from the bar?” He pressed a spot and a section of the white surface slid upward to reveal a granite bar with a sink, cabinets where glasses of various shapes and sizes were displayed, and rows of liquor bottles. He reached for a short, round bottle and said, “This is a really nice cognac. Perfect for sipping while we complete the tour.”
“None for me,” she said. “I’ve already had more wine than I ever drink. That will just put me to sleep.”
“You’re probably right,” he said. “And I’m going to be driving, so I’d better skip it too. A soft drink then.” He opened a cabinet that had no glass in front, and revealed that it was a small refrigerator. “Ginger ale?”
“Is it diet?”
He took out a can and looked at it. “It says it is.” He popped it and poured a glass for her and another for himself. He left the bar open and led her onward. There was an office in the place where she had guessed it must be, big and neat with a desk that showed a reflection, and a big sliding glass door to the Japanese garden. They passed three bedroom suites, all of them perfectly furnished and untouched. “There’s another one with Japanese watercolors that overlooks the garden,” he said, “and two others I made into a den and a pool room.”
That was the last thing that she heard him say before she became aware of the sun. It wasn’t shining directly on her, or making her hot. Its light just invaded her sleep until she was forced to open her eyes. She stared at the scene in front of her, trying to make sense of it. Nothing seemed all right. Where was the yellow color of her bedroom wall? And her dresser was missing. It should be right here, where she could see it when she was lying in bed on her left side, like this. She rolled and sat up.
She had moved too fast. Her head felt tender and bloated, not quite a headache but not normal either. She looked at the room and realized she had seen this room before, but couldn’t quite place it. She exerted greater effort and realized she must be in Daniel Crane’s bedroom. She was in his bed, naked. And now she admitted to herself that she could feel that she’d had sex. How could she have done that?
She tried to bring the answer out of her memory, but her mind was sluggish, like a heavy thing that she wasn’t strong enough to move. She would push it, and it seemed to be going in the right direction, returning to the dinner, the view of the deep chasm with the river at the bottom, the ride. She remembered coming into the house, some vague flashes of rooms, although in no particular order. She recalled that she had felt the effect of the wine, but that had just been a buzz. She hadn’t had the spins or even felt dizzy. And then she brought back the secret bar in the wall and the cognac. Had she had too much of that? She couldn’t remember.
Chelsea thought harder. She felt bad, frightened by the idea that she couldn’t remember. The word rape floated to the surface of her mind. Had Dan Crane drugged her? She got up from the bed and looked down at her body, then stood in front of the full-length mirror. There were no marks or scratches. But would there be? This was terrible. She panicked. She wanted to run.
She whirled, looking for her clothes. There, on the chair. Her underwear was on top, and under it, her dress—not tossed carelessly, but laid over the back of the chair to keep it from being wrinkled. She sucked in a breath. That was the way she would have left her clothes. When she had undressed in front of a man before, she had found she liked to face away from him. It made her less self-conscious and aware that he would be staring at her, and she knew that her back and bottom were pretty. She came closer and noticed the shoes. She would have stepped out of them while she was facing away from the man and left them exactly that way, with the toes pointed toward the chair. If a man had taken them off, he would have left them with the toes pointed outward, away from the chair. She looked at the clothes again. No matter who had taken them off her, the dress would have been first, and the underwear last, on top. But if he had put her dress there, would he have done it exactly the way she did? It seemed impossible. She must have done it herself. She must have done this, decided on her own to have sex with Daniel Crane.
Where was he? She realized that in the past five seconds she had begun to smell coffee. She picked up her clothes and hurried into the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it.
She turned on the shower and let it run. The water was already hot. Of course he would have one of those water heater systems that circulated hot water all the time. She stepped into the stream, letting the hot water wash over her. She scrubbed herself hard, soaping up and rinsing the lather off over and over, trying to feel clean but not feeling satisfied. She kept thinking that the water would wake her up and clear her mind, but she didn’t feel any effect.
She still didn’t remember anything that had gone on during the second half of her tour of the house. She must have been so completely drunk that she’d paid no attention to anything that he had said, and her eyes must have been closing half the time and unfocused the rest, so her subconscious mind had simply not bothered to retain the fragmentary information. How horrible and humiliating to have been so drunk. But if she had been so drunk, why had he had sex with her? Couldn’t he tell? Had she even been conscious?
She had to think about this carefully. Accusing somebody of a crime as serious as rape was a big deal. The evidence she had found so far was that she didn’t remember being with him, but that didn’t mean rape. She hadn’t been handled roughly, or there would be marks on her, and there weren’t any. Her clothes had been laid out the way she would have left them.
Chelsea worked hard, and reconstructed what she could of the sequence of her thoughts from last night. She had been thinking about Dan, and his house, and his tastes, and how much better he had looked in his own place. She had been gazing at him through wine goggles. How did she get in his bed? She was pretty sure she must have invited herself. Maybe when they visited this bedroom suite on the grand tour.
She turned off the water in the shower and took one of the oversized thick, soft towels from the rack. As she dried herself, she looked around. The master bathroom was a bit larger than her bedroom at the house where she’d lived with Nick, and it was covered floor to ceiling in beautiful marble, with two sinks that looked like ceramic bowls. The shower was big enough for six people, with four dish-size shower heads on the ceiling and others spraying from the walls. Every-thing matched and looked as though it had been hand polished a moment ago.
Dan had a lot of money, and he was generous with it, and good at thinking of tasteful ways of spending it. She searched further in her memory. Had she gone to bed with him because she was attracted to his money? No, she decided. What might have happened was that he was a trusted friend, she was grateful for the good time he had given her, and the wine had swept away her restraint and inhibitions. She had observed that when a person was drunk he did what he’d wanted to do all along. But he went further than he would at other times, didn’t wait, or consider, or speak quietly, or think about consequences.
With that word a horrible thought came to her, but she pushed it away. She had not been careful last night, but she definitely wasn’t pregnant. She had not made any plans to ever have sex with anyone after Nick had died, but she had not stopped taking her pills. She hadn’t made any changes to any part of her life, because change would have taken energy and thought, and she’d been too busy grieving.
She supposed that wasn’t entirely true. Without knowing it, she must have been thinking about Dan Crane. She used Dan’s hair dryer and the brush from her purse to dry and brush her hair, dressed in the clothes from last night, and looked in the mirror. The damage was done. She had thrown herself at Dan Crane. Now she would have to carry herself as well as she could and see if there was anything in that relationship to salvage, or if she had to break it off and refuse to see him ever again. She put on her makeup, taking special care to get it exactly right.
She opened the bathroom door and stepped into the bedroom. On the table by the window were a tray with a coffee pitcher and a small glass of orange juice, and a couple of small pastries on a plate. But beside them, dwarfing the tray, was a glass vase with a dozen long-stemmed yellow roses. How had he gone to a florist already? She looked around for a clock, but there was none, so she took her cell phone out of her purse. Ten fifteen. Of course. He hadn’t gone, he had simply made a phone call and they’d been delivered. She saw there was a little envelope. She plucked it out of the flowers, opened it, her chest feeling hollow with dread, and read the card.
“Good morning, Chelsea. I hope you’ll join me for breakfast at Semel’s.” Not so bad. No gushing, and no humiliating references to the sex. She put the note in her purse and prepared for the next challenge. She would have to see him and talk to him. She stepped out of the bedroom.
He was sitting on the bench in the Japanese garden drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. There was Dan Crane under glass, still unaware of her watching. He was hers to study, like a rare specimen sitting motionless in a terrarium. He looked slim but strong, and the way the sunlight filtered through the overhead bough of a pine tree and fell on his head and shoulders made him seem contemplative, sensitive.
She decided that when the time came, she would have to go out with him again. Next time she would avoid alcohol and keep her eyes wide open. After that she would figure out what she had done to herself—something bad, or something good. She walked to the sliding glass door and opened it.