Tempting Fate

A long, relaxing bath, however, was in order.

Her only bathroom was downstairs, which meant fetching her robe from upstairs. In renovating the main house, she and her architects had become quite clever at finding places for bathrooms where there were no obvious places. Space wasn’t the problem at the cottage; the problem was getting around to the job. An upstairs bath just wasn’t a pressing need.

She stopped hard at her bedroom door, clutching the shoe box.

Holding her breath, she stared, frozen, at the mess.

Someone had removed all the drawers from her bureau, dumped them out on the floor and tossed them aside. Her underwear, her nightgowns, her socks, her T-shirts—the entire contents of her bureau were scattered and thrown everywhere. Her mattress was torn halfway off the bed frame, blankets and sheets in a heap under the window. The curtains billowed in a strong afternoon breeze. She could hear birds twittering in her garden.

Her heart pounded. Mattie’s dress…

It was there, in a ball beside Dani’s bed.

Clothes and shoes spilled from her ransacked closet. The antique shaker box she used for jewelry was turned over, empty, on top of her bureau.

Slowly and carefully, intensely aware of what she was doing, she withdrew one of her red high heels from its shoe box and held it by the toe, its lethal three-inch heel pointed out.

“Hello?”

Despite her constricted throat, her voice sounded eerily calm in the silent house. She could hear the faint laugh of Pembroke guests in the distance.

Naturally there was no answer.

What a stupid thing to say, she thought. She’d been mugged once in New York. A decidedly unpleasant experience. But it had happened outside, on a street far from her own familiar neighborhood, and it had been quick. Give me your money. Okay, here you go. The mugger leaves, you call the police. Nothing they can do. You go home, open a bottle of wine, call some friends, complain about New York’s crime rate. Scary and nothing you’d want to repeat, but different—very different—from having someone walk into your home and go through your personal belongings.

Very different, she thought, from having to guess, heart thumping, whether or not the thief was still around.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble.” She sounded controlled but not belligerent, at least to her own ears. “If you’re still here, wait just a second and I’ll go down into the kitchen and you can leave. Okay?”

Still no response.

But she did as she said. She set the shoe box on the floor, took her one high heel with her and made sure her footsteps were loud on the stairs. She started to run when she hit the living room, but made herself stop in the kitchen. Should she keep running? But what if the thief was lurking in the garden? What if he followed her?

She turned on the radio so the burglar would know she’d kept her word. She was in the kitchen. She’d give him a chance to get out the front door.

Should I call Ira? The police?

So they could come and scrape her off the floor after the thief had figured out she’d tried to trick him?

Most likely the burglar had taken off already. Or was outside waiting to make his escape. Surely if he were inside, he’d have made his presence known by now.

Dani switched off the radio and listened past the sound of blood pounding in her ears and the blue jays chasing off the sparrows in her garden.

“Okay.” She tried to project her voice without yelling. “I’m coming back upstairs.”

If he was in the garden, he’d hear her and make good his escape. Which was just fine with her. If he was hiding in the living room, he could sneak out while she was upstairs. If he was in the kitchen—

Swallowing hard, she resisted the urge to look around. If he was stuffed in the broom closet, best to give him a chance to leave quietly.

What if the bastard was upstairs?

He wasn’t. Of all her choices, going back up to her bedroom scared her the least. She’d just come from there, and nothing had happened.

She debated taking one of the knives she’d ordered from a company that advertised during a late-night television show she watched when she was suffering through a bout of insomnia. Kate hated the knives. “You get what you pay for,” she’d said.

Never mind, she thought. She had her shoe.

She repeated her words in the living room, again on the stairs, again on the landing, and one last time as she approached her bedroom door. Whoever had trashed the bedroom had to have gone by now. She was just being dramatic.

But she heard a sound behind her. A movement.

“No, wait—”

She started to turn around—to plead, yell, jab with her high heel—but before she could do anything, she felt a hard push against her back, propelling her up and across the room like a missile. Her shoe went flying, and she was hurtling so fast her feet barely touched the floor; she couldn’t control them or where she was going. Arms outstretched to brace her fall, she tripped on the edge of her mattress and fell over a pulled-out drawer, landed atop another, banged her shins and elbows and wrenched her hand. She hurt so much she didn’t think to do anything but utter a loud, vicious curse.

Behind her she heard heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs. Now her intruder was taking off. Obviously he hadn’t believed she’d keep her promise.

Groaning, aching, Dani sat a moment amidst her scattered underwear, trying to calm her wild breathing and assure herself she’d live. She wasn’t hurt that badly.

Clearly the garden would have been a better choice.

The front door slammed shut, startling her. A fresh wave of adrenaline flowed through her system. Okay. At least he was gone.

She raced into Mattie’s room and looked out the window but saw no one. How could her intruder disappear that fast?

Unless he hadn’t.

Trying to ignore her bruises and scrapes and the throbbing in her left knee, Dani grabbed the poker from the fireplace in Mattie’s room and checked everywhere, starting with the two bedrooms and the closets upstairs. She climbed up to the attic and checked it. She went downstairs and checked under the couch and in the closets and in every nook and cranny in the kitchen and pantry. She even went down to the basement and checked behind the furnace.

Nothing.

Back upstairs, her palms sweaty, her body aching, she sorted through the mess in her bedroom for what was missing. Twenty dollars in odd bills. Her canning jar of emergency change. Her sterling-silver earrings, her turquoise bracelet, a jade pin, the fetish necklace her father had sent from Arizona saying it was handmade, but for all she knew had been mass-produced in Taiwan.

Then she remembered the one piece of jewelry that she really did care about: the gold key she’d found on the cliffs.

“The bastard!”

The matching brass key was gone, too. Any relief she’d felt at not having been killed quickly transformed itself into anger. She started to pick up a drawer and throw it, but remembered her chestnut bureau was an antique and set the drawer back down.

She was furious.

This felt better than being scared.

Her thief must have seen the article on her in the paper or any of the recent publicity on the hundredth running of the Chandler Stakes. Like too many before him, he must have figured someone with a name and a family history like hers would have tons of valuables and disposable cash. That he’d been wrong was at least a small consolation.

But her keys—she’d definitely miss them.

She headed painfully back downstairs and started to call Ira, but hung up before she finished dialing. What good would calling the police or even Pembroke security do at this point? Unfortunately Saratoga in August was a stomping ground for petty thieves. Hers hadn’t gotten away with much that anyone else would care about. And, in retrospect, he hadn’t really tried to hurt her. He’d just been too stupid to make his getaway when he’d had the chance. Besides which, he was probably long gone by now. He had only to cut through the woods to the bottling plant or mingle with the crowds in the rose gardens and he’d be home free. She couldn’t even provide a decent description of the son of a bitch.