The Play of Light and Shadow & Writing Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    Derek was nowhere in sight.
    A dispirited Carol Prentice, holding a tray
of champagne glasses, drifted by without noticing us. I touched her
arm and asked if she’d seen him.
    “ Derek?” Her tone held the muzziness of
someone who has just awakened from a confusion of dreams. “No. No,
I haven’t.” She blinked rapidly, as though straining to see through
a fog.
    “ Did he leave?”
    “ Leave?” she repeated.
    “ Wake up, Carol,” Darnell snapped.
“Where is he?”
    She blinked again, staring through the fog
from eyes suddenly moist. “I’m sorry,” she whispered with barren
hopelessness. “It’s been a horrible day.”
    I put a hand on her shoulder. “Carol, we know
you’re upset about the painting, but we have to find Derek. Do you
know where he is?”
    She shook her head, blinking, a tear trailing
down her cheek, and without another word moved away.
    “ Big help,” Darnell
muttered.
    “ She takes it personally. She’s deeply
involved in Bart’s project.”
    “ Yeah, well, it’s not helping us find
Derek.”
    We continued to inquire among the guests and
students, but none of them had seen him.
    “ Let’s look upstairs,” Darnell
said.
    We went up to the second floor and along the
hallway, glancing into bedrooms. Bart‘s and Marjorie‘s, complete
with sitting area, was spacious and beautifully appointed. Shelves
lined one wall, filled with books, a stereo system, compact discs,
a television set, and bric-a-brac. Predictably, paintings and
photographs abounded.
    Athletic trophies atop a low bookcase
indicated that the smaller room across the hall belonged to Carol
Prentice. Its decorations reflected her passion for art. Unframed
reproductions of famous paintings and posters advertising museum
exhibitions floated against the walls without apparent support. The
towel she’d used at poolside lay discarded on the bed.
    We continued down the hall. Alexis Crowell
came out of the room next to her mother’s and stepfather’s. Despite
her apartment in the city, she evidently still maintained quarters
here, too. Holding a glass of champagne and moving with an
inebriate’s self-consciousness, she raised her glass in a mocking
salute. Champagne slopped over the rim.
    “ No boogieman up here,” she needled
Darnell.
    “ What about Derek?”
    “ He’s not a
boogieman.” She shook her head with exaggerated
emphasis.
    “ Lexie, where is he?” I
asked.
    “ Prob’ly taking pictures of the
scull’ry maid.” Her laugh was off-key, brittle, her eyes unfocused
and her voice thick with the effort to enunciate.
    “ Lexie…”
    “ Y’really a bartender now,
Alan?”
    “ Yes. At Culhane’s. Come in sometime
and I’ll buy you a drink.”
    “ Oh, you can’t afford what I drink.”
    What she drank was disaffection, buried
anger, and self-loathing, a brew bitterer than any bartender could
concoct. I was glad of my impoverishment.
    “ Ms. Crowell,” Darnell said sharply,
“where’s Derek?”
    “ Ooh! Grilling me, Mr. Detective?” She
thrust out her hip, patted it, and made a loud kissing noise. “Just
what the hell is a scull’ry,
and why does it need a maid?”
    “ Lexie, this is important,” I
said.
    “ So serious,
Alan!” She made a face. “Oh, all right. He went to get
lunch.”
    We went back downstairs and retraced the path
we’d taken when we first entered the house, emerging onto the deck
near the pool. The sunlight was dazzling, the air thick with heat
and humidity. Guests filled their plates before sitting down at the
umbrella-shaded tables. Derek wasn’t among them. We continued
around the house, neither of us speaking, our footfalls on the deck
the only sound.
    We found him not far from sliding glass doors
that led into Gaines’s office. His widened eyes stared at the sky
as though at another enticing shot, but he couldn’t see it. He lay
on his back, his face darkly congested with blood, his tongue
swollen between his lips. The camera strap was looped