Searching For Celia Part 9

Alec rises and touches the man's arm. "If you don't mind, sir, now is not a good time," he says, firmly but politely. "She's feeling unwell. Perhaps after her speech."

"Oh. All right." The man nods and ambles away looking disappointed.

"Thanks for running interference on my behalf," I say as Alec's attention returns solely to me.

"It's my pleasure." He bends closer and peers into my face. "Shall I call for help?" he asks softly.

"No, it's okay," I rea.s.sure him. "It's just been a really rough day."

He grabs a nearby chair and sits down facing me, knee to knee. "Tell me-what's happened?"

I look up into his anxious green eyes and long to tell him everything. There is so much Alec doesn't know about the past three years. He never knew I was pregnant, and that I had, and lost, a baby. Suddenly I want to talk about Rory; I long to speak my child's name aloud and know that someone who cares about me has heard it. I want to describe how, after losing my son, I discovered within me a new place for pain to come from. I want to say all these things, but when I open my mouth something very different emerges. "Remember my flatmate, Cecelia Frost? The author?"

"Of course." He frowns, searching his memory. "West of...?"

"West of Blessing, North of Hope." I pause. "Well, she died this morning."

"My G.o.d! What happened?"

"It seems she jumped off Waterloo Bridge."

"I'm so sorry, Dayle. I know you two were quite...close."

I bow my head and rub my temple. "I still can't believe it. When I arrived this morning, I heard that she was missing but only learned an hour ago that she had died."

He offers a gentle smile. "It was brave of you to come to the conference after getting such news."

"I had to," I explain. "Everyone was expecting me." I pause, looking around the s.h.i.+mmering drawing room. "Or I guess I should say, expecting Candee Cronin."

"Brave, nonetheless. Where will you go after?"

I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. "I had planned to stay with Celia, at her flat."

"Well, you won't want to stay there now. Come back to my place and rest."

I shake my head. "Thanks for the offer, but my luggage is at Celia's, and I've already booked a flight home for tomorrow afternoon. And I have to see Edwina."

"Edwina?" His face registers mild panic at the unfamiliar name.

"Celia's girlfriend. I need to say good-bye."

"Of course. But do you at least have time for a drink afterward?" He looks hopeful. "A number of us are meeting at The Only Running Footman, a nice pub just up the road. It would be lovely if you'd join us."

"Let's see how I feel." I offer a halfhearted smile. "My wrist and hand really hurt."

Before I can continue, Felicity Marchman's voice, amplified by a scratchy microphone, booms through the room. "Could I have everyone's attention, please?" She pauses. "Would our keynote speaker kindly approach the podium? I believe our other featured authors are already seated here behind me..."

"I have to go," I tell Alec. "Ms. Marchman clearly despises me."

"Dayle, no one could despise you." Alec winks, then his expression turns serious. "Are you certain you're up to this? Because if you aren't, I can let them know-"

"I'll be fine."

He smiles. "Well at least allow me to escort you to your seat."

His offer surprises me, but I comply. He helps me stand, and once I'm steady on my feet he leads me from the Small Drawing Room through the Long Drawing Room and into the Churchill Ballroom, a glorious, 1000-square-foot s.p.a.ce resplendent with rich, dark Louis XIV walnut paneling, a gleaming wooden floor, and enormous chandeliers dripping with crystal. This is a room where I imagine serious things taking place-kingdoms divided, treaties signed, monarchs usurped.

High-backed wooden chairs are arranged in a row behind two long tables and a podium, where Felicity Marchman stands, square shouldered, just before the enormous marble fireplace featuring a roaring fire of orange and amber flames. The long tables are manned, I quickly realize, by the seven other authors who have presented at today's conference, including Beatrice Allenby, who sits on the far end in her size 2 Prada suit and looks bored as she tosses her head, running her manicured nails through her sheaves of long blond hair.

Alec walks me to the first empty seat behind the table and holds out his hand for support as I sit heavily, slightly off balance due to my cast. He bends to whisper in my ear. "If you need anything, just nod. I'll be right in front." I smile my thanks, then glance at Felicity Marchman, who eyes me icily.

I barely have time to settle myself and clear my head before I'm called to speak. One moment Ms. Marchman is introducing me as American novelist Candee Cronin, author of the bestselling a.s.signment novels, and the next I am standing behind the podium, staring out at an attentive crowd of around 250 mostly middle-aged men and women who breathlessly await my first words.

Celia should be here tonight. That's how I pictured it, as soon as I accepted the conference invitation. Celia sitting in the front row, rolling her eyes, desperate for a cigarette, stretching her arms and pantomiming a yawn. I would have had to cajole her to come, of course. She would not have wanted to seem too outwardly supportive or anything. Yet behind my back she would have been telling everyone at the conference how brilliantly subtle a.s.signment: Sao Paulo really is; deconstructionist and self-referential, she would call it, with faint yet palpable echoes of John Le Carre and Graham Greene.

I clear my throat and begin. "In Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and other works, Virginia Woolf gave us some of the greatest literature, not just by a female author, but by any author, of the twentieth century. And yet I propose that if Virginia Woolf were alive today, she would not be penning the character-driven literary fiction for which we remember her; no, she would instead be creating GBLTQ romances and other genre works..."

When I finish speaking the audience politely applauds while Alec winks his approval from his seat in the front row. Following some brief closing remarks, Felicity Marchman announces that Beatrice Allenby will be signing copies of her novel during a wine-and-cheese reception in the Small Drawing Room. Yes, it occurs to me, Beatrice Allenby is this month's flavor. Candee Cronin is already fading; she will be a has-been soon enough. The fourth book in the a.s.signment series did not sell as well as the third.

In the ensuing orderly stampede of busy feet to meet Beatrice at the wine and cheese, I manage to lose myself in the crowd. Suddenly I catch a glimpse of Alec across the room with a tall, elegant brunette, midtwenties, at his side. His arm is around her narrow waist and she casually touches his hand as they converse with another couple, a professional-looking man and woman, who stand close to them in a loose semicircle. All four lean forward as if conspiring, or sharing a provocative joke.

I slip back into the crowd and follow the flow of people down the marble staircase and back to the lobby. I decide not to meet Alec and his colleagues at The Only Running Footman. My hand and wrist pulse with pain, and I doubt I'd be much fun.

I grab my coat from the coat check and hurry outside, where the temperature seems to have dropped fifteen degrees. My breath is visible and there is a suggestion of snow in the air, or perhaps, more accurately, it is a frosted fog that twinkles on the pavement, thickening my eyelashes and stiffening my collar.

I hurry across Charles Street, dodging sleek motorcycles and ma.s.sive city buses, hoping to remain unseen by any departing conference attendees. Once across I hail a taxi and settle in for the ride back to Hampstead. I pull out my cell phone and check my voice mail. No messages from Callaway. As I return the phone to my attache case, I release a deep breath. Now what? I dread the thought of returning to Celia's flat, to her little room with its makes.h.i.+ft bed, where only her ghostly aroma awaits to keep me company, along with the stale memory of a million smoked cigarettes, and the old mattresses that spread softly, ready to welcome the gentle pressure of her drowsy limbs. At least when you get there, I tell myself, you can give in to grief. Once inside, no one can see you cry.

The taxi driver drops me in front of Celia's building, and after I pay him, he screeches away, leaving me marooned on the curb. An icy wind rises at my back as a loose paper wrapper cartwheels across the pavement near my feet. I turn and stare up at the front of the three-story Victorian structure. Its features appear sharper at night, more defined, as if carved from stone, with narrow, recessed windows and a solitary light on upstairs, in what must be the flat directly above Celia's.

I make my way up the front steps and push the door with my shoulder. It doesn't budge, so I push harder, until I realize the door is locked. This is the first time today that it's been locked. Perhaps they always lock the front door at night, or maybe word has gotten out that Celia's flat was ransacked and the tenants are suddenly more crime conscious. I glance at my watch: 8:30 p.m. Seeing no other option, I ring the buzzer for Dot Crawford's flat, number 8, and hope that she is still awake and will buzz me in.

While I wait, I hear footsteps behind me, footsteps that pick up speed as they move closer. As I turn, the footsteps mount the steps and what there is of streetlight is suddenly blocked by two enormous figures, one on my left and one on my right. Before I can scream, or make any sound at all, a large hand is clamped across my mouth. Dot, I think. Please open the door. Open it now.

Chapter Twelve.

Wednesday 8:32 p.m.

I'm too stunned to scream for help as the two burly men frog-march me down the concrete steps and bundle me into the backseat of an idling van, then whip the door closed with an angry rattle that splits the silence of night. I land on my left side, pinning my broken hand beneath me. A stabbing pain shoots up my arm and momentarily stops my heart as the van peels away down Rosslyn Hill.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Able to breathe again I sit forward and speak slowly, trying to disguise my rising terror. There are two men in the front, one in either seat. Both are broad shouldered and heavyset, with the pa.s.senger inches shorter than the driver and wearing a black fedora.

The driver glances at me in the rearview mirror. He has dark, deep-set eyes that suddenly, pa.s.sing beneath the slivered light of a solitary street lamp, appear to be Polynesian. Oh no.

We are heading south, back toward the center of London. I search the horizon for a stoplight that might turn red in my favor, allowing me a chance to escape. Silently I reach for the door handle but just as my fingertips touch the cold metal, I hear the solid click as every door automatically locks.

"Please. Who are you? What do you want?"

No response.

We turn left onto a narrow, deserted side street off of Chalk Farm Road. The driver slows to a crawl behind a half-completed building site bookended by an empty parking lot and a row of industrial Dumpsters. Shadows gather and merge, creating overlapping layers of darkness with only thin fingers of light bleeding through from the street. Quietly unzipping my attache case, I slip my hand inside and feel for my cell phone.

Suddenly the driver hits the brakes and pulls up short against a curb of crumpled pavement. The pa.s.senger, turning quickly in his seat, grabs the case from my lap and whisks it into the front seat, sending several items flying-lipstick, Kleenex, ballpoint pen.

"Don't be frightened," he says brusquely, in an accent I can't identify. "We won't hurt you. We just need your help."

"My help?"

Neither man answers as the van lumbers slowly away from the curb, threading the length of the side street before returning to Chalk Farm Road. I try to stay calm and focused. I've already made a potentially fatal mistake, allowing them to abduct me from outside Celia's flat and take me to a second location. And yet, if they wanted me dead, why not kill me at the building site and leave my body there?

I consider what Redleigh Smith would do under these circ.u.mstances. Kung fu, no doubt, with a few karate chops to the throat after momentarily mystifying her captors with an encyclopedic knowledge of conversational Samoan, complete with perfect noun declensions. Why did I write such rubbish? I suddenly wish Candee Cronin had never been born.

The men don't seem concerned that I can see them, viewing their faces in profile when we pa.s.s beneath streetlights. They might be brothers, both dark haired and olive skinned, mid-to-late thirties, with the smaller one likely younger by three or four years. They must mean to kill me. Otherwise they would hide their ident.i.ties.

"You said you needed my help," I offer carefully, trying not to sound terrified. "What can I do?"

"You'll see," the driver says.

"Be quiet," the other one warns. "It won't be much longer."

A bolt of fear slices through me. I try to pray but I can't find the words. My mind races. Random images shuffle like a deck of cards across my consciousness, finally settling on the memory of my dead father, which rises to the surface and obliterates all other thought. My kind and loving father who was lost on opening day of the gun deer season, sixteen years ago. He was far from home when it happened, coc.o.o.ned among the slender birch and fragrant pine of the Chequamegon National Forest, on the edge of the Bad River Indian Reservation. His beloved Gordon Setter, Axel, was at his side, and he had just finished setting up his tree stand when an errant rifle shot split the frigid afternoon and entered his abdomen.

In my mind I have viewed the scene a thousand times, each time trying to imagine a different ending. Pappa, shocked, first by the ruptured silence and then by the shattering pain, sinks to his knees in the snow. He sways side to side, struggling to stand, before collapsing onto his back and staring up at the sodden gray-white horizon. Axel, panicked, circles and cries, sniffing the air and the ground and the wound, so Pappa pulls him close and comforts him, stroking his black-and-tan head and whispering to him in nursery-rhyme Norwegian.

We know that, though mortally wounded, Pappa did not die right away. But, perhaps sensing the extent of his injury, he also did not call for help. Instead he settled himself on the ground where he had fallen, straightened his long narrow legs, and arranged his clothing. He removed his blaze orange cap, packed it with snow, and wedged it behind his head, where it melted and refroze, icing his ears to the ground.

Axel, loyal to the end, stretched out beside Pappa, breathing against his ribs to keep him warm. Side by side they must have lain there, considering the featureless sky for as long as it took for the life to seep out of him. Man and dog watched silently as snowflakes forming high in the atmosphere tumbled to earth, gaining weight and dimension during their descent, only solid when they finally came to rest on Pappa's golden-blond eyelashes. With his final breath he pressed one hand to the red stain spreading steadily over his midsection and draped the other hand softly across his heart. I have often wondered whether his last thoughts were of us, my mother and me, that we'd be told by the park warden who found his body that he died looking satisfied, like a man at peace with the world.

No. I won't give up. I won't just lie down and die. If these men plan to kill me, they have to know what they're taking. I sit forward, slipping my shoulders and torso into the narrow s.p.a.ce between the two front seats, balancing my broken hand in my lap.

"My name is Dayle Salvesen." My voice sounds strong and steady. "You may know that I'm American and that I'm a writer. But I'm more than that. I have family; I belong to people. I was someone's mother for fifty-three minutes." I pause. "My disappearance won't go unnoticed."

The men exchange sideways glances but neither says a word as central London looms into view. I continue. "I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on a street full of tumbledown, shanty-shaped taverns with neon beer signs in the windows and strings of twinkling Christmas lights on display all year round. The city itself is compact and opens into Lake Michigan like the sprung joint of a giant elbow. Drive any distance in any direction away from the lake and you will find endless acres of cornfields, dotted with dairy farms that have red wooden barns and tall silver grain silos.

"When I was young, my father was my favorite person. He was fair-minded and generous, even though he was given to quiet moods during which no one could reach him. He had grown up on Norway's Hardangerfjord and refused to admit how much he missed home. I was an only, but not lonely, child, a tomboy who refused to play with dolls, but I loved animals and had an enormous black-and-white rabbit named d.u.c.h.ess. I could see the Glory Road water tower in Ashwaubenon from my bedroom window, and it seemed so huge that I imagined it was visible to astronauts floating across the surface of the moon."

We cross Waterloo Bridge and the van turns onto Belvedere Road and slows, screeching to a halt beneath Hungerford Bridge, just before the Royal Festival Hall. The doors unlock and I am startled into silence. The driver keeps the engine running while the pa.s.senger opens his door and jumps to the ground, then a moment later slides open the back door and motions for me to get out. Apparently I don't move fast enough because he reaches in, grabs my good arm, and drags me from the backseat. I'm still trying to find my balance as he hands me my attache case. "Our apologies," he mumbles as he climbs back into the front seat, closes the door, and they speed away down Belvedere Road.

I am shaking so hard I can't catch my breath. I must call the police. I am reaching into my attache case and fumbling for my cell phone, barely able to see in the hollow brick cavern beneath the bridge, when a soft voice behind me calls out, "Wait."

I turn quickly and stare straight into the shadowy face of Cecelia Frost.

Chapter Thirteen.

Wednesday 8:53 p.m.

"Celia-you're supposed to be dead," I whisper, choking on the words.

"We're not safe here-come, follow me."

She turns to flee but I reach out and grab her arm, spinning her around. "Wait." I step closer and stare into her half-hidden face. Without a doubt it is Celia, looking as she did in the photo that arrived this afternoon, drained and underweight with brittle, bleach-blond hair roughly cut and skimming her narrow shoulders. The only differences are a slightly blackened eye and an aging facial scar, curved and strangely elegant, an inverted pink smile bisecting her sunken left cheek. Dressed in faded jeans, scuffed boots, and a denim jacket over a dirty white T-s.h.i.+rt, she looks ruined: an anemic, jaundiced, malnourished mess. And yet she is also fantastically alive, with a nervous energy pulsing just beneath her skin, skin that is opaque and iridescent, as if beat to airy thinness, or hollowed by a flame of desperation.

"We have to go," she says roughly, "now." She jerks my good hand and the jolt electrifies my heart. Still dressed in my raincoat, skirt, blouse, blazer, and pumps, I struggle to keep pace as she darts along the damp thoroughfare of Belvedere Road, past a deserted parking lot on one side and faceless gray office buildings on the other. She turns onto a concrete path that cuts through the flat green expanse of the Jubilee Gardens, not even stopping for breath until we reach the approach to the ma.s.sive London Eye, the huge Ferris wheel erected along the banks of the Thames to celebrate the birth of the new millennium. The Eye, which looks like an enormous bicycle wheel with long narrow spokes and gla.s.s-encased pa.s.senger capsules attached to its outside circ.u.mference, towers over central London's cityscape, dwarfing even Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

"Over here," Celia pants, nodding toward the ticket office inside the County Hall. "We're just in time for the night's last flight."

I follow her across the street and inside, struggling to catch my breath as I stand behind her in the ticket line. "Celia-the bridge, the body..."

"Shus.h.!.+" She turns and scowls at me, pressing a finger to her lip.

"Sorry," I mumble, content now, given the brighter indoor lighting, to gaze at the back of Celia's neck, watching the muscles tighten and release as she purchases two tickets for the ride. I don't dare blink for fear she'll disappear. It occurs to me that I might be dead; perhaps the men in the van really did kill me and now it is only my soul that is coursing the damp concrete rise and fall of London's South Bank, trailing the elusive ghost of Cecelia Frost, whose death has a mere seventeen hours on my own. I don't care. I don't care at all. I am just so glad to see her.

The tickets purchased, Celia turns and beckons me to follow her back to the entrance of the Eye, up a wooden ramp, through a security checkpoint, and to the embarkation point on the very edge of the Thames where we stand, hunched against the cold, waiting for the next empty pa.s.senger capsule to reach us. The wheel moves continuously at a steady pace, but the movement is so slow that there is time enough to empty and refill each compartment without stopping the wheel. Normally the London Eye is overrun with tourists and a long line of people waits to board, but tonight the ride is nearly empty, no doubt due to the cold, the fog, and the lateness of the hour.

When our capsule arrives we step inside the gla.s.s-walled, oval-shaped, futuristic-looking pod, and an attendant closes the door behind us. The capsule, which is stationary save for the revolution of the wheel itself, is large enough to hold at least twenty people, but Celia and I have this capsule all to ourselves.

We rise slowly above the thick oily ripple of the Thames, watching it churn darkly beneath our feet. The gla.s.s capsule's normally panoramic view of late-night London's illuminated landscape is blurred by drizzle and softened by fog, leaving only the largest and brightest sights visible, poking through the gloom.

Suddenly the lights go down inside our pod, leaving nothing but a low blue glow. Celia takes a seat on the slatted wooden bench in the center of the capsule, where the muted light gently envelops her, erasing years from her appearance. She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, as if releasing a huge weight. A slight nervous smile plays about her pale lips and her face becomes youthful again, almost impish, although the smile never reaches her eyes.

"Sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger," she says softly. "We can speak freely here. We have about thirty minutes until we once again touch ground." She pulls a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of her denim jacket and taps one into the palm of her hand. Of course smoking is not allowed inside the capsule, but Celia doesn't care.

"Celia, everybody thinks you're dead." Even in the semidarkness my eyes keep searching her face, looking for details, anxious for proof that she is real.

She clamps the cigarette between her teeth and grimaces. "I know. I wanted it to look that way."

"But the dead body...?"

Her eyes widen. "Dead body?"

"At Waterloo Bridge."