Sanguineus noted the time. It was eleven fifty-five. He took a last look out at the moonlit stretch of cemetery. The length of grass between the statuary lay a crisp silver below the lunar crescent, naked but for a single crow preening a wing.
Sanguineus closed the mausoleum door. He brought the step ladder over to a spot beneath the ceiling light. He climbed up and unscrewed the bolts of the yellow plastic shade, lowered it, and licking his fingers he gingerly turned the bulb until it went dark. He put the pen flashlight between his teeth, replaced the shade, and stepping down he took up the short ladder and carried it back to the end of the passage, his way lit by the pencil-thin beam of halogen light.
On the way his thoughts dwelt on the night he spent at the mansion...
He was on the verge of falling asleep when the creaking of the bedroom door roused him.
In the faint blush of light from the curtained window he watched the svelte figure coming toward him. He stretched out his arm that was nearest that edge of the bed to which the figure approached. He was certain it was Penny. As the warm naked body came down upon him he took hold of the sleek, scented hair, surprised at its length.
It was not Penny.
"Oh, are you disappointed?" Nellie whispered in his face as his fingers ran through her mane. His response was to wrap his arms around her and roll her roughly over him to the opposite side of the bed.
She had hardly breathed a word before his muscled length pinned her down and his throbbing stiffness began to probe the hot dampness of her passion. Her words were blown away into his mouth as he hungrily kissed her.
Afterwards, when their passion had burned down to a drowsy memory, they slept like two cats in a box, pushing against each other to hog more room.
Just as dawn broke Nellie got up and hurried out, or so Sanguineus supposed. It was the day's first bright ray through the east window that fully wakened him.
He wondered now if the beam of light that guided him between the stacks of crypts was what had brought that memory so vividly back to him.
There was a transverse walkway at the back of the mausoleum passage, about ten feet to left and right. The space allowed for the construction of several more crypts.
Sanguineus set the step ladder in the righthand space and sat down. He reached under his jacket for the butt of his Glock .38 and its squat suppressor. He held it on his knee and turned off the pen flashlight. He was engulfed in total darkness, in an eerie black silence smelling of stale death.
As he listened for any tell-tale sound, half his mind was remembering the events of that morning.
He had flown back to Atlanta after the meeting at Nob Hill, and just three days later, before dawn that morning, in his rented house trailer, he received a notification on his social media site. It was from Felicia, Red Rum's new Intell secretary. Her public post on the site was ostensibly about African wildlife. It told of a photo safari's search for a rare red leopardess and its mate. It had been spotted moving toward the fabled Elephant Graveyard.
Sanguineus caught the next flight out from Atlanta to San Jose, California. From there he drove a rental Corvette to Seaside, checked into the Blue Pelican motel, and contacted the cemetery superintendent.
Now, in the pitch blackness of the mausoleum, he recalled the 'rare red leopardess' at the Arden estate party two weeks ago...
She wore red-and-white striped leotards and a sleeveless cotton pullover of leopard-spot print with string shoulder straps. She had her curly red hair in bangs and a ponytail. Eleanor Lyme was a beautiful woman with Nefertiti features. Her long neck was graced with a choker necklace of jade and pearls.
The lawyer, Huffins, never left her side. Either he nibbled on her ear or was whispering to her, often, no matter where she took herself in the house or on the grounds. He was right there with her. He hardly looked at anyone else, and when she spoke and laughed, her drink held high as if in a toast, he stared at her like primitive man worshipping the sun.
Sanguineus was frustrated. He wanted a few minutes alone with Eleanor, having some loaded questions to ask her and some comments that would bring out her thoughts in the form of reflex body language.
Finally he had his chance. John Huffins went to the bathroom.
It seemed that Eleanor had been waiting for her own opportunity to escape him. She had spent the day looking at Sanguineus, or discreetly moving about the property hoping to run into him. But Huffins had been like a ball and chain around her ankle, holding her back, slowing her down.
Sanguineus had caught her glancing at the lawyer with daggers in her eyes even as she laughed at things he said or what other guests said to her. There was never a moment when she wasn't smiling open-mouthed, laughing or on the verge of laughing. And yet none of her theatrical merriment shone in her eyes. It was like her eyes were controlled by some hidden spirit of hers.
Of course Sanguineus knew what that spirit was about. It was haunting the idea, the plan, to dispense with 'Penelope.' It was this spirit of hers that Huffins had raised with his insinuations that 'Penelope' was a danger to her and must be permanently put away.
At that time Sanguineus believed Huffins to be acting on the orders of an NSA manager. Sanguineus had just one concern: discover the identity of 'Penelope,' either before or after the hit. So when he saw Huffins heading off down the hall, he gave an inviting nod to Eleanor and sauntered leisurely out to the veranda.
"Mister Golf Course Designer!" he heard her say, laughing. He kept walking until he came to the veranda steps around a corner of the house.
"Rick, is it?" she asked, coming up to him like a puppy greeting its master.
"Ricklen, but Rick is close enough," he said, surprised by the degree of her enthusiasm. "Is it Eleanor, or Heleanor?"
"What--? Ha!"
She stood quite close to him, leaning with her forearm on the veranda railing. He made a point of gazing studiously back at her. He wanted her to think that he was more than what his job suggested. He wanted her to be suspicious of him in a positive way. He wanted to come across as something of a rogue.
"John Huffins isn't your type," he said bluntly, like a man who knows he hasn't much time to make his mark. She reacted as he had hoped.
"He's a bore, but he's useful," she said.
"In what way? In getting you out of trouble?"
"Trouble is my guardian angel, Rick my boy. It isn't very smart to be careful about how one lives. If you're afraid of cliffs you'll never get anywhere, because success means living on the edge."
"And your angel catches you when you fall?"
"No, when I jump!" She laughed at his response to that. He smiled in a knowing way, as though they were sharing a secret.
"How exactly is Huffins useful?" he wondered, leaning in close to her. "He's a lawyer. He knows the loopholes. He knows what can be gotten away with. Do you consult with him? Is he your advisor?"
Eleanor opened her mouth in a silent laugh. "Have you been talking to someone about me?"
"Who would that someone be? You know I'm not acquainted with Huffins."
"Ross, or his two hottie cousins. Forgive me, Rick, but we--" She went blank for a moment. "But I don't think you're the golfing type."
"You're right, I'm not. I'm a scam artist. I'm here to see how deep Ross's pockets are. He'll put down half the cost of the golf course up front. And I'll spend it on the good life."
Eleanor looked pleasantly shocked. A laugh fluttered in her throat. Her seductive neck tautened. She brushed the edges of her bangs away from her greenish eyes. "God I could talk to you all day, but John will be hunting me down, and he'll cling to me like a barnacle."
"Get rid of him," Sanguineus advised. "His usefulness comes at too high of a price."
Eleanor looked serious for the first time in his brief experience of her. She scrutinized him openly. "You know Penny and Nellie. Don't you?"
"No better than I know you."
"I feel you're reading me like a book. I want to know..."
Eleanor stood up straight and looked at the guests on the veranda and out on the lawn, under the pavilions. She sighed, saying to him, "I want to know what it is that's got you interested in us... I mean, in me, in me in particular."
"Is that so mysterious? You're a gold digger. Penny wants out from under the Arden family thumb and to do her own thing, with plenty of money to do it with. Are you any different? I know I'm not any different, except that I have no patriarch breathing down my neck. Neither do you, or am I wrong? Aren't you your own woman?"
"You're damn right I am. And no one's going to stop me."
"What makes you think anyone would want to?"
Eleanor laughed a harsh insinuation. "I can't tell you that. But maybe... but maybe if you'll meet with me early tomorrow morning at the Blue Pelican Cafe... say, eight o'clock?"
"Just you and me?"
"John has business to attend to in the morning, in San Jose. I think Ross wants to spend the night at John's beach house, but that shouldn't be a problem. He'll be going with John, probably. It's something about tax write-offs."
Sanguineus nodded. His heart was pounding, but he maintained a casual interest, as if he had nothing better to do than meet with her for breakfast.
"Alright then," he said. "The Blue Pelican Cafe."
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