Читать книгу The Elevator - Angela Hunt - Страница 13

As the wind fires sharp pellets of rain at his windshield, Eddie Vaughn turns up the volume on his radio. On the seat beside him, Sadie, his golden retriever, shifts her weight and gives him a beseeching look.

“Almost home, girl.” He slows to ease the pickup across a stream gushing through an intersection, then tears his gaze from the pavement to grin at the dog. “You ready to settle in and watch some TV? If the power goes out, I figured we could play a few rounds of Go Fish or do a crossword.”

Sadie makes a rhrrrumph sound deep in her throat, then lowers her chin to the top of the seatback and stares out the truck’s rear window.

Eddie forces himself to whistle a bar of “Singing in the Rain,” then gives up the effort. The dog is worried, and no amount of grinning or whistling is going to relieve her anxiety. He’s heard that animals can sense impending natural disasters—whether or not the rumor is true, Sadie has been antsy for the last couple of days.

Felix has been swirling around in the Caribbean for almost a week, but only in the last twelve hours has the storm drawn a bead on Tampa Bay.

When the cell phone on the seat buzzes, Eddie turns down the volume on the radio, then scoops up the phone with his free hand. “’Lo?”

“Hey, doll.” Charlene’s voice, crusty from chain-smoking, fills his ear. “Are they all squared away up there at Freedom Home?”

“You can scratch that one off your list, ma’am. Those folks aren’t going to be using the elevators anytime soon. The nurses have moved all the residents into the common room—the poor people who didn’t have anyone to pick them up, anyway.”

“Thanks for running up there, Eddie. I hated to call you out so early.”

“No big deal. I can go power ’em up after the storm passes, if you want.”

She croaks out a laugh as another phone rings in the background. “You must have gotten a look at my friend’s daughter. Did you meet Emily? She’d be the blonde, the one that looks like Pamela Anderson.”

Eddie brakes for a stop sign. “Yeah, I saw her. Pretty package. Nothing inside.”

“You’re too picky, Ed. Here I go out of my way to hook you up with a girl—”

“Give it a rest, Charlene, I’m doin’ fine.”

“But you’re too nice a guy to be livin’ all alone—”

“I’d rather live alone than try to talk to a woman who’s as shallow as a pie pan.” He catches a quick breath. “Don’t you have to answer that phone?”

Thankfully, the question derails the dispatcher’s train of thought. “Yeah, I’d better. Well, doll, you take care. Batten down the hatches and all that. Check in when you can.”

“You take care, too, Charlene. I’ll talk to you when it’s all over.”

He disconnects the call and tosses the phone back onto the seat. Sadie lowers her head to sniff at it as Eddie slants into the left lane, where the water isn’t as deep.

“Almost home, girl.”

Charlene’s well-intentioned meddling has turned his thoughts toward Alabama…and Heather. His memories of her are hazy now, blurred by time and the receding fog of pain.

Yet thoughts of Alabama still tighten his throat.

He turns up the volume on the radio. No music yet; the newscaster remains focused on the threatening weather: “Experts are saying Felix could wreak the kind of damage Charley did to Punta Gorda three years ago. The tidal surge could rise as high as twenty-two feet, enough to flood the downtown area, Tampa International Airport and MacDill Air Force Base.”

“Good thing we don’t live in Tampa, huh, Sades?”

Eddie clucks his tongue as he turns into his subdivision and peers through the pouring rain. His neighborhood seems deserted, which means people have either heeded the evacuation warnings or hunkered down inside their homes. Sheets of plywood or corrugated aluminum cover most of the windows and the seven dwarfs have disappeared from Mrs. Jackson’s flower bed. Jack Tomlinson has parked his wife’s minivan on the open lawn, away from the heavy oak tree that shades the south side of their house. Though the Tomlinson family’s garage is crowded with old newspapers, paint cans, sports equipment and tools (several of them on loan from Eddie), apparently Jack has found room for his Corvette.

“I’d like to repeat,” the radio announcer says, “that the governor has ordered the mandatory evacuation of ten coastal counties, warning that those who say behind face certain injury or death. If you’re not in a shelter and you live on the beach, you need to evacuate immediately to protect your own life.”

Eddie’s house, located on high ground in unincorporated Pinellas County, is part of a thirty-year-old subdivision built when contractors cared more for utility than aesthetics. The rainwater is draining properly on his street, a road lined by three-bedroom, two-bath structures of concrete block. Like its neighbors, his house isn’t fancy, but it has a fenced yard for Sadie, a small pool and a half-dozen shade trees to protect it from the sweltering summer sun.

Eddie hopes those leafy canopies survive the approaching hurricane. Last year even the storms that merely swiped at Pinellas County toppled hundreds of trees, which damaged cars and homes as they fell. Not even a house of concrete block can withstand a direct hit from a sprawling two-hundred-year-old live oak.

“Officials estimate that 487,000 people in Hillsborough County alone have had to seek shelter,” the newscaster continues, “and over 550,000 have filled shelters in Pinellas County. They’re fortunate—the Florida Highway Patrol has halted access to the interstate system, and those who haven’t made it across Pinellas County’s two bridges and single causeway are out of luck. Wherever you are, I hope you’re safely tucked away and not on the road.”

“You and me both, bud,” Eddie says, turning into his driveway. He pulls the pickup under the carport, then steps out of the truck. He doesn’t have to call Sadie—she leaps out behind him, a graceful golden blur on a beeline for the back door.

He laughs as he looks for his house key. “Ready to go inside, are you? Me, too. Let’s eat while we still have power to the microwave.”

Sadie scratches at the threshold, then sits back and waits for Eddie to slip the key into the lock. After opening the door, he takes one last look around before following the dog into the house. The garbage cans have been hauled into the utility room, the bird feeders tucked into a sheltered corner of the carport. He has covered his windows with plywood, turned the glass-topped patio table upside down on a mat of old towels and tossed his aluminum lawn chairs into the pool. He and Sadie have bottled water, a battery-powered radio, canned foods, a manual can opener, a stash of cash and a full gas can—enough supplies to get them through a couple of weeks, if necessary.

Satisfied with his preparations, he steps into the utility room and locks the door, securing the dead bolt, as well. The dead bolt would stop a human intruder, but he’s not sure it will hold against a category-four wind.

A year ago, when he left Alabama to escape an emotional storm, he never dreamed he’d be exchanging one kind of disaster for another. All things considered, though, the literal storms are easier to handle.

“God, help us,” he murmurs, one hand on the doorknob. Then he turns and whistles for the dog.

Because a man on the radio keeps insisting the police have blocked the downtown exits off I-275, Gina avoids the interstate and drives toward Sonny’s office along a less-traveled route. Several ominous clouds have swept in from the bay by the time she reaches the edge of the downtown district; a gray curtain of rain hangs beneath them, obscuring her view of the river.

On her approach to the Platt Street Bridge, she spots a policeman sitting in his cruiser. The brim of his hat shifts toward the rearview mirror, so he’s seen her.

Well…Sonny always says it’s easier to beg forgiveness than permission. She could almost believe he was counting on her forgiveness for the affair…if she hadn’t found the bankbook.

Rage rises in her cheeks as she stomps on the gas and steers around the police officer.

On the far side of the bridge, she looks in her mirror and sees the cop stepping out of his car. He might be frustrated, but he won’t stop her. He’s needed at his post.

Sonny is needed at home, but where has he been lately? With his mistress. With a young, pretty trophy tartlet.

She turns north and heads up Ashley Drive, then brakes at an intersection. No one else moves on this riverside street, not even the police. She glances at the wet road, where the traffic light shivers in red reflection beside her car, then turns the asphalt green.

She drives on. The haze of gasoline and diesel fumes that usually hovers over the downtown streets has been replaced by a thick humidity. She can almost feel the skin of the storm swelling like an overripe grapefruit. Soon it will burst.

Just as she will burst if she fails to act.

She is overcome with a memory, unshakable and vivid, of a character in a Flannery O’Connor short story. The woman’s thin skin is described as “tight as the skin on an onion” and her gray eyes are “sharp like the points of two ice picks.”

Today Tampa wears the look of O. E. Parker’s coldhearted wife.

After passing the light at Jackson, she spots the flashing bubble of another police vehicle. To avoid it, she heads the wrong direction down Kennedy, a one-way street, then breaks the law again as she drives north on southbound Tampa. After a quick turn, she pulls into the whitewashed entrance of the Lark Tower’s parking garage and guides her car up the slanted driveway.

At the entry gate, she presses the red button, then takes a ticket. She looks to her left, where the parking attendant’s booth stands empty. The garage, in fact, is as quiet as a ghost town.

The black-and-white striped arm lifts, allowing her to enter. She turns and glances in the rearview mirror. No lights flash behind her; no siren breaks the stillness. She glories briefly in her accomplishment, then follows the curving arrows past the visitors’ parking to the third level, reserved for tenants.

She smiles after rounding the corner. Her instincts about her husband were spot-on, as usual: Sonny’s silver BMW is snuggled into its reserved space. He must have been in a hurry when he arrived, for he pulled in at an angle, carelessly trespassing on another tenant’s parking place.

“How rude, darling.” Purposely remaining between the painted lines, Gina pulls into the space next to the BMW and crinkles her nose as the front of her Mercedes just misses her husband’s back bumper.

She would have liked to hit his precious car, but she can’t afford to indulge a childish whim. She needs to get in and out of the building with as little fuss as possible.

Gina kills the engine, then pulls her keys from the ignition. Pistol in the right pocket, keys in the left. She steps out of the car, gives Sonny’s unblemished bumper a regretful smile and strides toward the elevators on legs that tremble despite the dead calm in her heart.

The designers of the Lark Tower have done their part to ease Tampa’s traffic congestion by reserving the six lowest floors for parking. On an ordinary day all six levels would be filled by tenants and visitors, but most of the spaces are vacant now.

The garage is heavy with after-hours quiet, broken only by the echo of Gina’s footsteps and the tick of her cooling engine. She glances over her shoulder to be sure she’s alone, but no one has driven in or out since her arrival. Most everyone, apparently, has gone home.

Sonny should have gone home, too. If he hadn’t been playing around with his girlfriend last night, he wouldn’t need to come to the office this morning.

Twelve elevators at the center of the building provide access to the Lark Tower’s thirty-six floors. Six of the elevators are express, stopping only at levels one through seven and office levels twenty-five through thirty-six. A second bank of six elevators serves the first through twenty-fifth floors. A special plaque announces the eighth-floor location of the renowned Pierpoint Restaurant, home to one of Tampa’s finest chefs.

Since Sonny’s office is on the uppermost level, Gina steps into the air-conditioned space at the express landing and presses the call button. While she waits, she checks her reflection in the polished bronze doors. In order to surprise her cheating husband, she needs one more thing.

With Florida’s attorney general occupying five and a half floors of office space at the top of the building, the Lark Tower’s uppermost levels aren’t accessible to the public. Every visitor has to obtain an access card before the elevator will rise to the thirty-sixth floor, and Sonny believes the extra layer of security lends the offices of Rossman Life and Liability a certain cachet.

A bell dings to signal an elevator’s arrival. Gina steps into the car, then turns and presses the button for the lowest level. The polished doors slide together, then the car lowers her to the marble-tiled lobby.

Gina moves into the open area and strides toward the security station, where a tubby older man in a blue uniform blinks at her approach. She doesn’t recognize him, nor, apparently, does he know her. Not surprising, since she hasn’t visited Sonny’s office in months.

Behind a granite-topped counter, the guard slides off his stool. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he calls, his voice ringing against the marble walls, “but the building is closed. We’re under an evacuation order.”

Something in his appearance—perhaps the stun gun attached to his belt—sends a wave of reality crashing over her, as hard as the terrazzo beneath her loafers. She is about to do something that cannot be undone. She has planned a heinous act, a deed that would cause her children to gasp in revulsion if they knew what she had in mind.

Can she really go through with this?

How easy it would be to smile at the security guard, profess ignorance of the evacuation and take the elevator back to the parking garage. She could drive home to her sleeping children. They would never know what she’d planned or how far she’d gone—

But they need not know anything. She won’t tell them about this, or the bankbook, or the forty-three-thousand-dollar bracelet Sonny gave to his Don CeSar date. She’ll keep everything from them, just as Sonny has kept secrets from her for who knows how many years.

Yet some secrets refuse to stay buried. Matthew might find something in the office or Samantha might run into someone at the club who knows that woman. Idle gossip is a powerful force, and even if her plan goes off without a hitch, someone might guess at the truth….

She sways on her feet as the walls blur and only half hears the security guard’s alarmed question: “Ma’am? Are you all right?”

She puts out a hand and grips the edge of the counter. “Just give me…a minute.”

Can she continue to ignore Sonny’s late hours? Can she pretend she doesn’t notice another woman’s perfume on his shirts? When the inevitable occurs and he comes in to ask for a divorce, can she look her children in the eye and say she didn’t see it coming?

She can’t. She sees, she knows, and she has to stop Sonny from ripping her family apart.

She blinks at the guard and forces her lips to bend in a curved, still smile. “Sorry about that,” she says, realizing that this man could be called to testify at her trial. “I should have stopped to grab a bite of breakfast.”

The guard’s brow wrinkles with concern. “Should I call a doctor? Get you something to eat?”

“I’m fine now, thanks.” She broadens her smile. “My husband is tending to some last-minute details in his office. I thought I’d help him out—you know, speed things along so he can come home.”

The man’s look of unease deepens. “I’m not supposed to let any visitors go up. We’ve been experiencing blackouts and I wouldn’t want to be responsible—”

“Don’t worry.” She flattens her hands against the countertop and softens her smile. “I’m sure I can talk him into leaving the building eventually. But I need an access card.”

The man crosses his arms and folds his hands into his armpits. “No can do, ma’am. Why don’t you call him? There’s a phone around the corner—”

The ding of the elevator interrupts. Gina pivots, half expecting to see Sonny, but the man who steps into the lobby is a stranger. He comes forward, drops a sealed envelope onto the security desk, then returns to the elevator. An instant later he reappears, pushing a cart loaded with cardboard file boxes.

Gina transfers her gaze from the stranger to the wealth of silver hair on the guard’s forearms. “You let that man go up.”

The tip of the guard’s nose goes pink as he shoves the envelope into a drawer. “I—I can’t stop anybody with a pass key. They come straight from the garage and go up, nothing I can do about that. But I’ve been told to clear the building by ten o’clock, so that’s what I aim to do.”

“The thing is,” Gina says, lowering her voice, “I haven’t been able to reach my husband by phone. I’m worried and I need to see him.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you a card.” Despite his concerned expression, the guard is proving to be about as flexible as a brick wall. “I didn’t even program any visitor’s cards this morning, on account of the evacuation order. So you can sit and wait or you can call your husband, but I can’t give you an access card.”

Maybe she can sweet talk him into going upstairs with her. Once she’s on the thirty-sixth floor, he ought to let her walk to Sonny’s office alone.

“I’m worried,” she repeats, meeting the man’s gaze. “Sonny doesn’t answer his phone. Could you—could we go up together and see if he’s okay?”

The man frowns, glances at the elevators, then shakes his buzz-cut head. “Can’t leave my post. The other guards didn’t come in today, on account of the hurricane. I’m supposed to leave in a couple of hours. The entire building’s gotta be evacuated.”

Sonny used to say she could charm the sting out of a bee, but she must be losing her touch.

Sighing, Gina scans the desk behind the counter. No access cards in sight, but they’re probably in a drawer. She has no idea how to program one, but if Deputy Dawg can do it, surely she can figure it out.

She smiles, then lowers her arms and slips her right hand into her pocket. Reluctantly, she grips the gun. “I suppose you’ve left me with only one choice.”