The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror Read Free Page B

with a man he didn’t know. He was immobile, she was hysterical, and the man leapt from the bed, not bothering to fetch his clothes, evidently deciding that taking the offensive would drive Doug away. But Doug felt a rush of heat that blinded him, deafened him, and a single step forward had him in a fight.
    It was a graceless battle, more wrestling than punching, staggering around the room, bouncing off the walls, crashing into an end table, finally ending at the low-silled window.
    He heard Ellen shriek an obscenity, and the rage crumbled to disgust. He threw the man aside as hard as he could. All he wanted now was to leave; all he wanted to do was get away from the woman who knelt naked on the bed and shrieked at him to leave her poor lover alone.
    He grabbed the man’s arms and threw him away.
    The man’s legs struck the sill, his momentum slammed him back. There was a shout, and a scream. The window cracked, shattered, and the man fell through, eight stories to the ground where he landed on his back.
    When Doug looked out, the man was staring up, blood fanning from beneath his head, the rain filling his dead eyes.
    Arrest and prosecution; charged with manslaughter in the first degree because the prosecutor couldn’t prove actual malice. Four years in prison before he was paroled, four years more in Washington before they let him leave the state.
    The wunderkind was dead, a convicted killer, and the only one in Deerford who knew it was Judith Lockhart.
    In the beginning he had said nothing because he feared reaction to his past; then he had fallen in love with the place, and feared that after years of drifting they would force him to leave.
    “Shit,” he said again, and stared at his reflection.
    For months at a time he managed to avoid thinking about it at all, and the nightmares were at last only something to remember. Now it was coming back, and he knew the reason why: Judith and Liz—he was terrified of loving either because of Ellen and her dead lover.
    “You,” he said to the face in the window, “are a mess, pal, you know that, don’t you. God, what a mess.”
    The reflection grinned at him; no argument there.
    His nostrils flared then, and he looked at his lap and at his hands. Definitely a shower, he decided—to wash off the ride and the dust from the windstorm, and not incidentally wake him up for a decent night’s work. And it had better be now, or he’d sit here for hours, until it was too dark to do anything but stare at the stars.
    With a grunt at his aching legs he rose, stretched, and stripped off his shirt as he headed upstairs. The right-hand door led to his bedroom, a twenty-by-twenty haven over the dining room below. The furniture here was cherrywood and heavy, the king-sized bed under a wooden canopy bolted to the wall. After flicking on the overhead light, he dropped with a sigh onto the quilt and yanked off his boots.
    The mattress was soft, the pillows inviting.
    Shower! he ordered when he felt himself leaning back.
    He laughed and left the room, avoiding after a check the darkening bruises spreading over his thighs and the side of his chest; and he laughed again when, as he dressed in fresh clothes much like those he’d taken off, he found himself deliberately avoiding a look at the bed.
    Muir, he thought as he hurried down to the kitchen, you’ve no time for naps if you want to pay the bills.
    As he headed for the stairs, a cold gust of wind rattled the panes.
    2
    It was reputed to be the best car on the road—this great, marvelous, unsurpassed BMW. It was supposed to zip through rush hour traffic like a shadow, tear along the interstate like the wind, and not cost her more than an arm and a leg because if you want to be crass about it, the dollar-for-dollar resale value was higher than any other machine on the road. It says here. It says here in the impressive, leather-bound, plastic-preserved letter the salesman showed her, just one glowing testimonial among many from other,