Treasure Box Read online

  "But what if the thing I tell you convinces you I'm out of my mind?"

  "I'm already convinced."

  "I'm not joking, Wayne. I've been questioning my own sanity, and unless you're crazy, you will too."

  "Crazy people have as much right to a lawyer as sane people."

  "But what if you thought it would be in my best interests to be committed to a mental hospital? To be declared incompetent?"

  "I have no standing for that," said Wayne. "Your parents could try it, or your wife, or your children if you had any. Your heirs, perhaps."

  "My in-laws?"

  "They're running a different scam right now," said Wayne. "The point is, your attorney couldn't try to commit you on his own account. I'd be disbarred if I tried. My job would be to stop them."

  "But if you—when you don't believe me, will you still work as hard for me as before? Or will you start handing my work over to underlings until you finally spin me off to some other lawyer?"

  "Quentin, now you're bothering me. What is this, some alien abduction thing?"

  "I wish." He took a deep breath. "Get out your recorder."

  "I'll remember what you tell me."

  "I want it in my own voice."

  "Quentin, attorney-client privilege only protects you in court, not from public attacks on your reputation. Of course I'll do all I can to protect any tape you make here, but the best protection is for the tape never to exist."

  "Tape it."

  "Your call." Shaking his head, Wayne got out his recorder. And Quentin told him what really happened, starting with his sighting of a woman who looked like Lizzy at the Elden Street Giant food store in Herndon. From there he skipped to the events at Madeleine's family mansion. The midnight snack. The reason she gave him not to take a shower. The exquisite food at breakfast. The other people at the table. The walk on the bluff. And then the treasure box, Grandmother saying "Find me," Madeleine fleeing into the graveyard. No footprints but his own. The names on the headstones. The dark, cold, empty house, the dust and filth, the bed that only he slept in, the bureau that held only his own clothing. The words that appeared on the door. The talking rat. And then Lizzy, dead Lizzy come back to talk to him, to explain what she understood. And the long walk back to civilization.

  Told all in a stream, Quentin didn't believe the story himself.

  But there was Wayne Read, turning off the tape recorder, nodding. "I'll keep this tape, Quentin. In my safe. I'm not going to give it to a secretary to transcribe."

  "Right."

  "What I don't get, Quentin, is why you told me this... stuff."

  "Maybe I just had to tell someone."

  "Not you, Quentin. You're not a get-it-off-your-chest kind of guy."

  "Maybe I'm afraid that somewhere along the line I'm going to get killed. And if I am, I want somebody to know why."

  "Me? Your close, intimate lifelong friend?"

  He was right. It wasn't Wayne Read he had told this story for. Quentin thought for a moment. "If I'm dead, Wayne, then I want you to play this for my parents."

  "Quentin, come on."

  "I want them to know."

  "Quentin, it's one thing to tell me this stuff, but telling your folks this thing about Lizzy coming back—how is that going to do anything but hurt them?"

  Quentin leaned across the desk. "Give me the tape and I'll find another attorney."

  "I didn't say I wouldn't do it, I just gave you my best advice. I'm used to you ignoring me. But you are an ass, Quentin."

  "Thanks."

  "If you're not crazy you're the stupidest liar I've ever known. Dead people hanging around just in case somebody conjures them back? For breakfast?"

  "I'm sure inventive, aren't I, Wayne?"

  "The worst thing is that I can't even tell my wife because if she heard this story she'd know I was having an affair and didn't even care enough to come up with good lies."

  "Are you having an affair?"

  Wayne sighed and looked away for a moment. "I'm not, but she is."

  "You're kidding."

  Glumly, Wayne explained. "When she started getting suspicious of me, I figured something had changed, and it wasn't me, I was just the same as always. So I had her watched for a few weeks. She was giving—favors, I should say—to guys in the parking lots of bars."

  "And she's still accusing you of having affairs?"

  "Quentin, people are crazy. That's why I told you that. So you'd understand—I know that people do crazy things. But they do them in the real world. The guys my wife sees—they're cowboy types. She goes to cowboy bars. In Marin County, right in San Rafael, we have three kids, and she's blowing guys in the parking lot in exchange for a joint. How is that crazier than your telling me this horrible story that you actually want me to play for your parents if you suddenly croak. I once thought you were the only island of sanity in a screwed-up world. You had no connections except your parents. You didn't get emotionally involved. Rational decisions kept doubling your fortune every three years or so. No waste. No lies. No illusions. Then you fall in love with a woman and she leaves you and you come to me with this story and I swear, Quentin, I've lost all faith in the human race. I've got only one question. Is there any way you can get my wife to disappear off the face of the earth? No, no, I don't mean that."

  "I don't know if this is what you had in mind, Wayne, but at least you made me remember that I'm not the only guy in the world with problems."

  "That's not what I had in mind. I don't know what I had in mind. I didn't really have anything in mind. I guess I am a getting-it-off-my-chest kind of guy."

  "Why don't you divorce her?"

  "Because she's still a good mother when she's home. And I love my kids. And I love my wife. Or at least I love what I thought she was."

  "I love what I thought Madeleine was, too."

  "Yeah, but at least your wife didn't exist." Wayne laughed but it caught in his throat. "Why aren't we drinkers, Quentin? Guys who drink can go to a bar at a time like this."

  "Is Swensen's open? We can eat like a hundred scoops of ice cream and puke in the street."

  "Well, that's half the fun of drinking, at least."

  Quentin got up. "I'm sorry I spoiled your dinner with your wife."

  "Yeah, well, maybe I would've stuck a fork in her eye, so you probably saved me from going up on assault charges."

  "I hope nothing ever happens that's weird enough to make you believe me, Wayne."

  "I hope the same thing. But I still like you and care about you and I'm the best lawyer you'll ever get, especially now that you're a complete loon."

  "Thanks, Wayne."

  "Come in tomorrow after two to sign the papers getting her name out of your will and off your policies. You'll have to eat the ice cream alone."

  And that was that. Somebody else knew the truth—somebody alive—even if he didn't believe it. Now it was just a matter of waiting. For his investigation to lead him somewhere. For the police to start getting suspicious of him. The trouble was that all he was likely to come up with was negative evidence—nobody knew her, nobody had seen her. But there was a paper trail. The User couldn't alter the paper trail. At least he didn't think she could. She dealt in illusions, in getting people to do what she wanted. She hadn't actually changed physical reality one bit. If she wanted that house to look clean, she could fool people. If she wanted it to be clean, somebody had to come in with a mop. The same applied to documents and records. It wasn't easy to fake a life. This Ray Cryer could be exposed. It could be proved, eventually, if he spent enough money, that Madeleine Cryer had never been born.

  Which wasn't to say that the User would stay defeated. If one attempt failed, she'd make another—he knew that about her now. She needed him, for some reason. Needed him. And as long as she needed him, she would keep coming at him, and he'd never know it was her. He could never trust anybody again.

  That was the worst. Knowing that the User could come at him however she wanted, in any disguise. He'd never
guess it was connected to her. After all, there hadn't seemed to be any connection at all between his sightings of Lizzy and meeting Madeleine at the grande dame's party. Every single person he ever met for the rest of his life, he'd have to wonder if it was really the User, trying again and again.

  In the long run, he wasn't going to get out of this until he found the User herself and confronted her. The night before, he had imagined, in his rage, finding the User's mortal body and putting a .45 slug in her head. Now, in the light of day, did he really have the heart for that? Was he a murderer, just waiting for the right provocation? He shuddered at the thought. There had to be a way to defeat her short of killing her. To get her out of his life.

  Of course, the simplest way would be to go back to New York and open the damn box.

  Only he didn't want to do that. If only because the User wanted it so much. Whatever was in there, it would be a very bad thing if the User got it. Because the User loved power, didn't she? That part of Madeleine, that disturbing part of her—that was the User talking. It had to have been. Certainly she didn't find it in Lizzy, or in Quentin's image of the perfect woman. That had been the User telling the truth about herself. The love of power. Whatever was in that treasure box was about power, and if there was one sure thing in this whole business, it was that the User should not get her hands on more power.

  Power. Madeleine had told him that she was in Washington in order to be around power, to get some kind of influence. Was any part of that true? The User must have noticed him somewhere, and it was after he moved to the DC area that he started seeing things—Lizzy, and then Madeleine. The User might have grown up in the Hudson River Valley, but that house had been closed down for years. She had to be living somewhere, and it made sense that it was in the DC area. And if she lived there, somebody knew her.

  He made a connection. The grande dame's party, where he met Madeleine. There was someone in DC who had known Madeleine before he did.

  But he wouldn't send one of his investigators to talk to the grande dame. He owed her more civility than that. He'd go and talk to her himself.

  10. Memories

  "I remember you. Or do I?" She was as gracious as before, and the confusion of her words didn't show on her face.

  "You were very kind to me at a party one night," said Quentin. "In fact, you introduced me to my wife."

  "That would be clumsy of me, to introduce a husband and wife to each other."

  "No, no, she wasn't my wife at the time, we—"

  "Please, Mr. Fears, I was joking. I'm old, but I still understand the ins and outs of simple communication. I spoke to you for a while, didn't I? I think I ran on and on, but you were very patient."

  "Conversing with you made me glad that I had read my sister's collection of Jane Austen novels."

  "I was not around in the Georgian period, Mr. Fears."

  "You converse as elegantly as if you had been. It makes a California boy like me struggle to keep up."

  "Now I remember you. I caught you fingering the books in the library."

  "I thought of myself as eyeing them."

  "You were climbing the ladder, anyway. Did you come to thank me for introducing you to... what was the young lady's name? Not Duncan, anyway."

  Not Duncan? "Madeleine Cryer."

  "The niece, yes."

  "Niece?"

  "Well, of course to you she's your wife, but to me, she's the niece of my good friends the Duncans. They have been so kind to me in the last few years, since my husband passed on."

  "And so you invited their niece to your party."

  "How could I not? Such a lovely girl. Not at all like the Duncans' rather unfortunate daughter. Oh, but now I'm being a gossip."

  "What's the Margaret Truman quote? 'If you can't say something nice, come sit by me'?"

  "It wasn't Margaret, my dear boy. But these stories have a way of attaching themselves to the people the newsmen have actually met. Of course no one invites newspapermen to any real parties. So they never know the truly clever people."

  "You aren't telling me that it was you who originated that—"

  "How old do you think I am, young man!" She feigned horror. "That story was ancient before Margaret Truman was born. My great-grandmother's diary mentions hearing that line attributed to the wife of James Buchanan."

  "He was the president before Lincoln, wasn't he?"

  "Very good—you are in the top two percent of your generation, for knowing that."

  "Do I make the top one percent for knowing that Buchanan was a bachelor?"

  She clapped her hands together, hankie and all. "Oh, you are a delight, Mr. Fears! It's no fun teasing people who never understand they're being teased."

  "Do the Duncans understand?"

  She looked at him sharply. "So we're on a fishing expedition. But I think your purpose is either loftier or lower than mere gossip."

  "Loftier, I think. My wife has left me."

  "Without a claim check, it appears. So when she returns to reclaim you..."

  "Oh, I'll be here waiting, if she returns. Her departure was sudden. I don't know where she is."

  "Did you do her violence, young man?"

  "I'm not a violent man," said Quentin. "But I appreciate your concern for her safety."

  "Men do not come with labels, alas, clearly identifying those who harm women from those who are unfailing gentlemen."

  "Then tell me nothing, but merely allow me to write a note to Madeleine, care of the Duncans, care of—"

  "Care of me."

  "Though many hands touch my message, yet may it still have power to touch her heart."

  "In all my reading, I can't recall where I heard that gracious speech before."

  "You heard it here."

  "You invented your own? A lost art is revived before my eyes."

  "That art cannot be lost as long as you are in the world. In you the river of time slipped its banks and took a different route from the rest of the world."

  "Now that one you did not invent."

  "The January Atlantic."

  "The article on Madagascar." She laughed. "Oh, Mr. Fears, you're such a spoof."

  "Madeleine and I read that issue on our last plane trip together."

  Her face grew solemn. "The pleasure of your company has made me forget your errand. By all means, give me your message."

  He patted his pockets for a pen. "I'm here unarmed, I'm afraid."

  "Then you must rise to your feet and arm yourself at my writing desk. Perhaps you'll want to choose one of the second sheets, so you don't have my monogram on your note."

  Quentin went to the writing desk, chose paper and a pen, and wrote.

  Dear M

  I love you and miss you. Please assure me that you're well. Tell me the future is still a treasure box which we may open together.

  All my love, Q

  Since Quentin had no idea what the User wanted, he could not be sure that this note, if it even reached her, would have any effect at all. But if in fact the opening of the treasure box was her goal, this note had to leave her wondering exactly how much Quentin had understood of the things that happened at the house on the Hudson. It had to be good for him if she thought he understood less than he really did. And since he understood very little, it shouldn't be hard to persuade her that he knew nothing.

  Except, of course, that the moment he called attention to himself, what would stop her from ransacking his mind and finding all his secrets? Lizzy said that the User had left him some independence. You are not without resources, Lizzy said. So maybe it was worth writing this note.

  He folded the note in half, then carried it to the grande dame.

  "Oh, Mr. Fears, you are cruel."

  "Am I?"

  "You could have sealed it. Then I would have steamed it open and read your note. But handing it to me folded shows such trust that I would die before I violated it."

  Quentin laughed and read it to her.

  "Oh, Mr. Fears, I will not delive
r this note. Instead I will find treasure boxes of my own for us to open together. Why couldn't you have white hair and arthritis! Such a romantic!"

  They laughed together.

  "Young love is so hard, these days, Mr. Fears," she said, offering him her hand. He took it gently, and because of the way she rested her hand on his, he did not shake it but instead bowed over it, thinking that he should surely be wearing a cutaway for this scene. "If I see my friends' naughty niece, I will reprimand her for wasting such a fine young man—and after all the trouble we took to bring you to her!"

  "Trouble?"

  "I told you at the party how I felt about marriages and money. The Duncans are an old family. You are new money. Such a match is made in heaven."

  "But the only person I knew at this party was a lobbyist who—"

  "Who was invited to this party because he knew you."

  "But I only called him a day before to ask him to take me to something."

  "Really? Then the Duncans must have been watching you rather closely, because it was exactly the day before when they asked me to invite both that lobbyist and their dear niece."

  "So you didn't just stumble across me in the library."

  "Nor was Madeleine only by chance under the cherry tree. Oh, Mr. Fears, I thought I was helping create a good family, not setting you up to have your poor heart broken. Will you forgive me?"

  "There's nothing to forgive. If I've had any happiness in my life, it's because Madeleine brought it to me. And even if I only had that happiness for a season, I'll always be grateful to you for sending me to her that night."

  "I'm glad you're not in politics, Mr. Fears, for I should have to leave my home and vote for you, and I do hate going out."

  "Yours would be the only vote I'd get, but I'd feel as if I had won."

  She applauded him again. "If only you would pink some rival in a duel over me, I could die happy."

  "I have to ask, even though I know the answer. You couldn't simply tell me the Duncans' first names and where they live, could you?

  "If your wife didn't introduce you to them, and they didn't introduce themselves, it's hardly my place without their consent, don't you think?"

  Quentin nodded. It was the answer he had expected. "I'll come back when it's all settled, to tell you how things came out."