Part 3 (1/2)

”Everything, She held her arms around him just below the shoulders and nipped playfully at his ear.

”I'm not leaving till tomorrow morning” she said.

”I've got a couple of days off.” She gave him a mischievious smile, her brown eyes alive with intrigue.

He smiled for the first time. He released her and she disappeared into the kitchen. Thomas reclined on the living-room sofa, closing his eyes, trying to erase the images of his burned-out office listened to Andrea rattling something in the kitchen. She could be so considerate when she wanted to be, so gloriously feminine, loving.

And then she'd go sleep with someone else. He cared not to think of that right now. For the time, at least, he was to be treated to her good side. She had read him perfectly. He hadn't wanted to be alone and now he wouldn't be.

He glanced at the coffee table. On top of the clutter was that afternoon's New York Post. She had left it there.

He was about to open it when an item at the bottom of the front page caught his eye. The headline of the story was suddenly shouting out at him, staring him in the face.

VICTORIA SANDLER.

DEAD AT EIGHTY.

Last Living Member of Millionaire Family Found Dead in Mansion The story recounted the final years of Victoria Sandler, a woman who, though one of the wealthiest in America, had spent the last three decades going quietly but spectacularly insane.

She'd lived alone, since the 1954 death of her brother, Arthur Sandler, who'd been three years younger than she, and the departure of the final servant in 1955. The family mansion, originally fas.h.i.+oned after a French chateau of the 1870s, had acquired grates on the windows, an iron fence and gate in front, and a twenty-foot high concrete fence in back to protect a rear patio. The fencing included electrified barbed wire all around. Victoria lived within.

The once elegant but fading mansion, the symbol of the family, was now a fortress in a tough, changing city Victoria, the article continued, wore heavy galoshes without shoes in all weather. Thick, black woolen stockings and the same ragged, frayed dress was her outfit day after day. There were seven marble-and-zinc bathtubs in the mansion, but for twenty-five years Victoria Sandler had remained a stranger to all seven. Matters of personal hygiene were, to phrase it kindly, questionable. Victoria suffered from-among other things-aquaphobia, and touched water only when absolutely necessary.

”Dollars and doggies,” as she termed it, were her only two pa.s.sions.

She liked crisp one-dollar bills and would take nothing else from local merchants. She gave them to her brother, she explained; he had use for them. Local merchants kept stacks of crisp money just for Victoria, despite the fact that Arthur Sandler, who she said was receiving the money, had been dead for years.

And then there were the dogs.

Since the 1930s, Victoria had had a succession of canines, mostly poodles, and each named Andy The dog would be fed steak in the morning and walked for at least an hour each afternoon. The walk” would be in the courtyard behind the mansion-with the . dog in a baby perambulator.

As each Andy pa.s.sed away, Victoria would commission a walnut casket to be built. Then, it was said, when the current Andy died, he would be entombed on a velvet pillow somewhere within the mansion. No outsider ever saw exactly where. And former servants were notoriously lacking in memory.

Victoria Sandler was a woman who had rejected reality as ardently as reality had rejected her. Estate management by Thomas's father, William Ward Daniels, until his death in early 1975, had kept her afloat financially and out of asylums. Since his pa.s.sing, the estate had drifted aimlessly.

Thomas devoured the story, not speaking again until he'd read every word. He grimaced with suspicion. An infirm old woman had died. Seven paraffin candles had been strategically left in his office. No connection, of course.

Andrea stepped out of the kitchen. My G.o.d, Thomas noticed, even now she turned him on.

”Tom. I hate to add to your worries,” she said.

”Feel free.”

”Did you know there was a murder in front of your building last night?”

He put down the Post.

”No.”

”Between three thirty and four o'clock,” she said, drying her hands on a dish towel.