Grim Shadows

SIX

LOWE WAS AN EXCELLENT schmoozer, as Adam would say. But several days later, when he climbed the white marble steps of the Beaux Arts–style Flood mansion and passed his things to the doorman—invitation, hat, white gloves, and overcoat—an old loathing resurfaced. Tailcoats and evening gowns thronged the Grand Hall and the adjoining rooms spilling into it. Old money. Prestige. San Francisco high society.

Everything Lowe was not.

Sure, his family home was in the same prestigious neighborhood, and his telephone number started with the same exchange name, but the Magnussons weren’t exactly on the same level. To start, he doubted any of them had spent the week avoiding Monk Morales’s telephone calls, completely paranoid that the man’s goons were watching him. Nothing so far, but the shoe had to drop sometime, didn’t it?

And even though no one here suspected Lowe owed a gangster fence a fortune for a forgery, everyone did know his family’s money came from bootlegging. Hell, the entire police department knew: his brother dutifully paid them off every month.

So, yes. The champagne these partygoers were all tossing back might very well be Magnusson stock, but Lowe wasn’t one of them. They knew it. He knew it. So he pasted on a smile as Dr. Bacall, walking with a gold-tipped cane, was steered in his direction by a much younger man.

“Mr. Magnusson?” The young man was built like a fire hydrant, low and squat. Seemed to be Bacall’s guide dog for the night.

“Where is he?” The old man’s white eyes stared at nothing as turned his head.

“Here, Dr. Bacall,” Lowe answered, guiding the man’s hand in a firm shake as the younger man assisted. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Think nothing of it, m’boy. They’re pouring drinks down the hall, and I’m told dinner will be served soon. Miss Tilly couldn’t make it tonight, I’m sorry. She had another commitment.”

Lowe feigned disappointment. “Maybe some other time.”

“Quite a few people here I’d like you to meet. Stan here helps me get around, but he doesn’t know all the faces yet. So why don’t you track down Hadley.”

Hadley. Would she tell him to shut up again? He’d thought of little else the past few days. God only knew why. Maybe he was a glutton for punishment.

Bacall leaned closer, nearly butting Lowe’s shoulder. “Have you considered my offer?”

Extensively. Lowe had also spent a little time getting to know Winter’s spirit medium wife. But if Aida really could call up Bacall’s dead wife, then she’d be privy to Lowe’s business. And she was, unfortunately, married to his brother.

“I’m definitely interested in trying,” Lowe told Bacall. “But if I do, I’m going to need something more tangible than a gentlemen’s agreement before I bring my sister-in-law into this. I don’t like family mixing with business, and keeping something like this under wraps will require tricky juggling.”

Bacall nodded. “I know precisely what you mean, my man.”

Good, because Lowe wanted to collect as much money as possible upfront, just in case Monk came calling and needed to be pacified with an installment payment.

“Dr. Bacall? Over here,” someone called.

Lowe assured the old man he’d hunt down Hadley. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

Leaving Bacall and his assistant behind, Lowe meandered through the hall, grabbing a coupe of champagne on the way—definitely Winter’s stock—and introduced himself to a widowed art critic he recognized from the newspaper. After his second glass of champagne, he bumped into a railroad tycoon who recognized him from the newspaper, but still no Hadley.

Until he glanced toward the end of the great hall.

Segregated from the main crowd on the far side of two immeasurably long tables set for formal dinner service, Hadley chatted with a man. Behind her, three bowed windows looked out over the night-blackened Bay. A single pendant light chased slow-moving shadows across her face as she talked.

Her pale arms and neck were bared by a layered sleeveless gown: silver bullion beneath a net of black beadwork. The beaded web gradually wove tighter and tighter to make ripples of sparkling obsidian strands that eddied around her hips and thighs, like a black whirlpool.

She wore curved silver heels on her feet, white gloves to her elbows, and diamonds on her wrists. And then, when she turned her head, something caught his attention. Something that softened every hard line on her face, every sharp note of her personality.

Every toughened wall of his lying heart.

Pinned behind her left ear, swaddled by a ruffle of raven hair, was a single star-shaped white Siberia lily.

Such an ordinary thing. But it unlocked an undiscovered door in his head. And when it creaked open, the music and clinking glasses and the snobby conversation in the hall faded to a muffled hum.

She wasn’t skinny; she was elegant.

Her arms and legs weren’t long; they were endless.

She wasn’t pretty; she was knee-weakeningly, dazzlingly beautiful.

Lowe blinked several times and looked again. Not a dream. Still beautiful. She nodded her head in answer to her companion’s question while stealing a glance at the crowd, and her gaze found his.

They stared at each other. Or rather, she looked at him while he stood rooted to the marble floor like a small child who’d been asked a question in class and was too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know the answer. He became lost looking at her. For how long, he wasn’t sure. But one moment he was drowning, and in the next, he felt the stem of his champagne coupe slipping through his fingers.

In a panic, he fumbled and juggled the glass until he gripped it with both hands.

Nice. Smooth. Oh so debonair. Probably looked drunker than Satan on vacation. Her squinting eyes only confirmed his fears. He set the empty coupe on a nearby table and did his best to regain his lost bravado as he headed her way.

Her companion was about Lowe’s age, tall and lanky, dark hair. His formal tails were a little too long, his wing-tipped shirt a little too starched, and his face a lot too handsome. He was also alone with Hadley, so Lowe hated him on sight.

“Hello, Hadley.”

“Hello, Mr. Magnusson.”

No more first-name-basis, eh? Should’ve expected as much. “Hope I’m not interrupting an intimate conversation.”

“Mr. Oliver Ginn, this is Mr. Lowe Magnusson.” His own name fell off her tongue like a burden in that ridiculous posh accent.

“The treasure hunter,” Mr. Ginn replied, sizing him up with a cool look.

“I prefer treasure finder.”

“Mr. Ginn is a patron of the arts,” Hadley said, as if she were defending his good character in front of a jury. “He has financed several excavations in Mexico through his contributions to university research grants.”

“The Aztec program at Berkeley?” Lowe asked, trying to place the man’s name.

Ginn shook his head. “I only moved here recently. My family is from Oregon.”

Lowe honestly didn’t give a damn.

“Mr. Ginn’s the one who encouraged me to do more speaking engagements, so he’s indirectly responsible for me accepting that seminar in Salt Lake City.”

Oh, was he, now? “How kind,” Lowe said. “I suppose I owe you thanks, Mr. Ginn, because if you hadn’t encouraged her, then Hadley and I wouldn’t have met and had our little adventure on the rails in that cozy little—”

“May I have a word in private, Mr. Magnusson?” Hadley said in a rush.

“Why, yes, you most certainly may.”

Hadley excused herself from Moneypants and stormed off without a backward glance. Lowe guessed he was supposed to follow her like a dog, and he did—oh, he did. The spider web of black beads hugging her bountiful backside vibrated with every angry step she took. Mesmerizing. So much so, the great bronze door she opened nearly conked him in the head when it swung back.

Cool night air chilled his face as he trailed her into an Italian courtyard dotted with palm trees. A few stray partygoers mingled here. Servants smoked cigarettes in the shadows. Hadley strode to a marble gazing pool in the center of the cortile and stopped at the edge. Lowe heard her counting from several feet away.

• • •

Hadley focused on her watery reflection in the moonlit pool. Her specters gathered in the distance, hungry, waiting to be loosed. But somewhere between the count of eighteen and nineteen, another reflection floated over the water behind hers. It was enough of a distraction to send the specters scurrying away.

“I heard you doing that in your father’s office.” Lowe’s deep voice at the crown of her head sent chills down her neck. “Are you managing your anger?”

“That’s none of your business.” She crossed her arms over her breasts to ward off the chilly air. “Are you drunk?”

“I wondered that myself, actually. Because I can’t seem to stop staring at you, and that doesn’t make any sense.”

The two statements dueled in her head. She’d seen him staring at her in the hall—how could she not? He stared so intensely, she’d felt it. And for a moment, she’d almost believed, stupidly, that he was seeing her for the first time. That they were explorers on Mount Sinai, trapped on opposite rocky cliffs, and he’d thrown her a rope, and she wasn’t going to faint from starvation and lie there until vultures plucked her eyes out.

And then he’d acted like an ass in front of Mr. Ginn and her imaginary rope snapped.

“Staring at your backside, that’s a given,” he continued. “I’m a man, after all. If I were a religious man, I might believe the devil himself sculpted your ass to lure me into temptation. But your front side—”

“My front side?” She spun around to face him. “My front side is what, exactly? Harsh? Odd? Too skinny? Have I been studying mummies so long that I’ve started to look like one? Because I’ve heard all those things before, so do your worst.”

He gaped at her for a moment, and then shut his mouth. Had she shocked him? Was he angry or embarrassed? Good.

“You want to know what I was going to say? Do you?”

“Say it,” she challenged.

Agitation transformed him into something foreign. His eyes narrowed to dark slashes under a rocky brow; his jaw tightened. Nothing jovial or casual or charming about him now—all of that vanished and was replaced by brute intensity and darkness.

He loomed over her, leaning in far too close. Their noses nearly touched. “I was going to say that you look goddamn bewitching in that dress, and I hadn’t realized how extraordinarily beautiful you are because all I’ve seen you wear are those ridiculous funerary outfits.” He pulled back, putting some space between them. “There. Happy now?”

Happy? Happy? Hadley’s heart nearly stopped beating.

The taut lines of his body softened. And in a low voice he added, “I was also going to say that your lily reminds me of a tomb painting I saw in the British Museum last spring, of Nebamun hunting in the marshes with a beautiful girl who wears a lotus in her hair. And that it’s lovely on you. Extraordinarily lovely.”

A strange sensation pinched her chest. No one had ever said anything like that to her. Why was he saying it, of all people? He wasn’t teasing. He couldn’t be teasing.

Please, let him mean it.

She blinked, pushing away unwanted emotion, waiting for a punch line that never came. He was so painfully attractive, towering over her in his black tuxedo jacket and white vest. His loose stance radiated confidence. Her body wanted to sway closer, as if it could drink up all his easy self-possession, all that golden light he seemed to emit.

Then she remembered what he was.

A liar. And a flatterer, too. He was good—very good. And she was a fool.

She snorted a bitter laugh. “After a man tells a woman the first untruth, the others come piling thick and fast,” she quoted loosely.

“Fair enough. I’ve given you little reason to trust me. Tell me what I can do to gain it. Swear on a Bible? Get down on one knee? Name it, Hadley.”

She shook her head, confused by feelings that tugged her good sense in different directions. In search of an anchor, her eyes followed the notch of his black tie to the broad ledge of his shoulder, limned with tawny light from the mansion. But when her gaze dropped to the crisp sliver of white cuff peeking from his dinner jacket, and his injured bare hand below, she decided to take him up on his offer.

“That,” she said, nodding her chin at his hand. “Tell me what really happened to your finger.” Give me something real I can trust.

Lowe lifted his bad hand and cradled it in his other, rubbing the scarred flesh with the pad of his thumb. “I haven’t told anyone since I left Egypt.”

“Not even your family?”

“Not even my closest friend.”

Was that a lie, too? She couldn’t tell. “Go on.”

“It’s not half as exciting as you’re expecting,” he said, stalling.

Was he waiting for her to revoke the request? Because she wouldn’t. And after a long moment, he sighed.

“It was early September,” he finally said. “My uncle had just moved us from Alexandria to Philae. It’s an island, you know. Two islands. Nothing there but half-flooded ruins and ancient temples . . . a handful of archaeologists, locals making money ferrying tourists. We were working near a section of colonnade, and one day when my uncle was traveling in Aswan, I missed the last boat and got stuck on the island overnight with a few of the local workers.”

Lowe turned and kicked at the edge of the reflecting pool. “I was supposed to be building scaffolding for the excavation. But the Nubi workers and I decided to have a few stiff drinks. By the time we got to the scaffolding, I was less alert than I should’ve been.”

“Drunk, you mean.”

“Fairly.” He sniffed and rubbed his nose, looking so much more sober than she’d assumed he was earlier when he was juggling his wineglass.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I was sawing a board with my right hand,” he said, pantomiming, “and holding the board with my left. And I couldn’t get a good grip, so I switched angles and, well, to be perfectly frank, I sawed my own finger clean off.”

The blood drained from Hadley’s face.

“Granted, it was only to the first joint. I suppose the drink numbed my reaction and nerves. But we were stuck on the island with no doctor—no nothing. All I could do was bandage it up and drink until I passed out. By the time my uncle returned the next day and they got me to someone who could stitch it up, I was feverish. Infection set in. A few days later, I had to have the rest of it amputated or risk losing my whole hand.”

“Good heavens,” Hadley murmured.

“Took a couple of months to heal properly. I was almost useless to my uncle. Hard to work in the sand and dirt with one hand. Hard to do much at all when you’re in constant pain. That’s actually when I started deciphering pieces of the temple walls. Sheer boredom led me to the djed. Not a glamorous story, I’m afraid.”

Hadley didn’t intend to reach for his hand, but when her arm began moving, she didn’t restrain herself as she normally would have when it came to her actively touching someone. The warmth of his skin penetrated her silk glove as she lifted it to inspect the scars in the light spilling into the courtyard. “It’s not immediately noticeable that it’s missing,” she said. “Less conspicuous than a middle finger.”

“That’s one way to look at it.” A gentle smile curved his mouth.

Well. Couldn’t hold his hand forever. But as she withdrew, he held on to her, just as he had when they first met in the train station. This time she didn’t fight it.

“I’ve often worried that I might never be able to touch a woman again without her having to swallow disgust in order to tolerate it.”

“I suppose that would depend on the woman.” A practical observation, or that was her intention, but the way his head tilted, just a bit—the slightest of movements—she knew he’d read more into it. Perhaps she didn’t mind that he did. She certainly liked the sturdy feel of his hand holding hers. Some stranger living inside her head wistfully imagined that very hand running up her glove to her bare arm. Just a test, to see if she could “tolerate” it, as he’d said. Just the thought made her stomach flutter nervously.

“You don’t think it’s grotesque?” he asked.

“Haven’t you heard? I’m an admirer of the grotesque and grim.”

Lowe squinted one eye. “Are you flirting with me, Hadley Bacall?”

“I really wouldn’t know where to start,” she replied honestly.

A nearby couple shuffled past them to the other side of the pool. Lowe tugged her out of their earshot, into an awning’s shadow. His head dipped lower, his face an inch away from hers again—only this time, she wasn’t sure what intimidated her more: the angry Lowe, or the Lowe that looked as if he might ravish her right there in the dark of the courtyard. “What’s the verdict? Do you trust me now?”

“Maybe.”

“Only maybe?”

“Temporarily. Until the next lie.”

“Maybe I won’t tell another lie tonight. Maybe I’ll be so virtuous, you’ll nominate me for sainthood.”

“Refraining from deception for one night is hardly virtue.”

“Mm-hmm. Expert on virtue, are you?”

“Expert on several things, but virtue isn’t one.”

“Happy to hear it,” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “You know, I always thought the wicked deserved their own sort of canonization. It’s tough being immoral. Requires skill and perseverance.”

“And a certain amount of natural talent, I’d think.”

“Most definitely. I like to believe I was born bad. Shifts the burden of blame to my bloodline.”

She chuckled softly.

“Fan,” he murmured in Swedish. “You should do that more often.”

The scent of laundry starch wafted when he lifted his good hand to her, slowly. The tips of his fingers traced the petals of the lily at her ear, sending a cascade of tremors through her hair, across her scalp, down her neck. It lit up her nerves and cells and spread like wildfire.

Pleasure.

She barely recognized the feeling. All her muscles tightened to hold back a shudder. Good God, it wasn’t even a real touch and she was drowning in it. Perhaps it was halfway real, because she realized he was still holding her hand. Or she was holding his. Someone was gripping harder. It might’ve been her.

His head dipped lower. He inhaled the blossom and whispered, “Intoxicating.”

He was so close. Close enough for her to catch a faint note of vanilla in his pomade. Close enough to shield her bare arms from the cool night air. Close enough that the lapel of his jacket brushed against her nipples.

Her breath caught as another wave of tremulous pleasure waterfalled over her skin, and she was drowning again. So very near. She wanted to lean her cheek against his. Wanted his mouth on—

A nearby booming voice tore into her thoughts.

“Dinner is served in ten minutes, ladies and gentlemen.”