The Mephisto Club

As they crossed the living room, he looked at Angela, standing with a drink in her hand, the disco ball casting multicolored sequins of light across her dress. “I want you home by eleven!” he yelled to his wife. Then he walked out of the apartment, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Ha,” said Angela. “Fat chance.”

Jane sat at her kitchen table, papers spread out in front of her, her gaze on the wall clock as the minute hand ticked past 10:45 P.M.

“You can’t just go dragging her home,” said Gabriel. “She’s an adult. If she wants to spend the whole night there, she has every right to.”

“Don’t. Even. Mention that possibility.” Jane clutched her temples, trying to block out the thought of her mother sleeping over at Korsak’s place. But Gabriel had already thrown open the gates, and the images came stampeding in. “I should go back there right now, before something happens. Before-”

“What? She has too good a time?”

He came around behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, massaging her taut muscles. “Come on, sweetheart, lighten up. What are you going to do, give your mom a curfew?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

In the nursery, Regina gave a sudden wail.

“None of the women in my life are happy tonight.” Gabriel sighed and walked out of the kitchen.

Jane glanced up at the clock again. Eleven P.M. Korsak had promised to put Angela safely in a cab. Maybe he already had. Maybe I should call and find out if she’s left yet.

Instead she forced her attention back to the papers on the table. It was her file on the elusive Dominic Saul. Here were the few fading clues to a young man who, twelve years ago, had simply walked into the mists and vanished. Once again, she studied the boy’s school photo, gazing at a face that was almost angelic in its beauty. Golden hair, intense blue eyes, an aquiline nose. A fallen angel.

She turned to the handwritten letter from the boy’s mother, Margaret, withdrawing her son from the Putnam Academy.

Dominic will not be returning for the fall semester. I will be taking him back with me to Cairo…

Where they had simply disappeared. Interpol had found no record of their arrival, no documentation that Margaret or Dominic Saul had ever returned to Egypt.

She rubbed her eyes, suddenly too tired to focus on the page, and began gathering up the papers and returning them to the folder. Reaching for her notebook, she suddenly paused, staring at the page in front of her. She saw the quote from Revelation that Lily Saul had written:

And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore and make her desolate and naked. And shall eat her flesh. And burn her with fire.

But it was not the words themselves that made Jane’s heart suddenly start to pound. It was the handwriting.

She rifled through the folder and once again pulled out Margaret Saul’s letter withdrawing her son from the Putnam Academy. She laid the letter next to her notebook. She looked back and forth, between the biblical quote and Margaret Saul’s letter.

She jumped to her feet and called out. “Gabriel? I’ve got to leave.”

He came back out of the baby’s room, holding Regina. “She’s not going to appreciate it, you know. Why don’t you give her another hour at the party?”

“This isn’t about my mom.” Jane went into the living room. He watched, frowning, as she unlocked a drawer, took out her holster, and buckled it on. “It’s about Lily Saul.”

“What about her?”

“She lied. She knows exactly where her cousin is hiding.”

THIRTY-FOUR

“I’ve told you everything I know,” said Lily.

Jane stood in Sansone’s dining room, where the dessert dishes had not yet been cleared from the table. Jeremy quietly placed a cup of coffee in front of Jane, but she didn’t touch it. Nor did she look at any of the other guests seated around the table. Her gaze remained on Lily.

“Why don’t we go into the other room, Lily, where we can talk in private?”

“I have nothing else to tell you.”

“I think you have a great deal to tell me.”

Edwina Felway said, “Then ask your questions right here, Detective. We’d all like to hear them.”

Jane looked around the table at Sansone and his guests. The so-called Mephisto Club. Even though Maura claimed not to be part of it, there she was, seated in their circle. These people might think they understood evil, but they couldn’t recognize it, even when it was sitting right here at the same table. Jane’s gaze returned, once again, to Lily Saul, who sat stubbornly in place, refusing to move from her chair. Okay, thought Jane. This is the way you want to play the game? That’s how we’ll play it, with an audience watching.

Jane opened the file folder she’d brought into the house and slapped the page down in front of Lily, setting off the musical clatter of wineglasses and china. Lily looked at the handwritten letter.

“Dominic’s mother didn’t write that,” said Jane.

“What is it?” asked Edwina.

“It’s a letter withdrawing fifteen-year-old Dominic from the Putnam Academy boarding school in Co

“Supposedly?”

“Margaret Saul didn’t write that letter.” Jane looked at Lily. “You did.”

Lily gave a laugh. “Do I look old enough to be his mother?”

Jane placed the notebook on the table now, open to the page with the quote from Revelation. “You wrote that passage for me tonight, Lily. We know it’s your handwriting.” She pointed back to the letter. “So is that.”

Silence. Lily’s mouth had tightened to two thin lines.

“That summer, when you were sixteen, your cousin Dominic wanted to vanish,” said Jane. “After the things he did in Purity, maybe he needed to vanish.” Her eyes narrowed on Lily. “And you helped him. You told everyone a convenient cover story: that his mother suddenly came to town to fetch him. That they left the country. But it was a lie, wasn’t it? Margaret Saul never came to get her son. She never showed up at all. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t need to answer you,” said Lily. “I know my rights.”

“Where is he? Where is Dominic?”

“When you find him, let me know.” Lily shoved back her chair and stood up.

“What went on between you two that summer?”

“I’m going to bed.” Lily turned and started out of the dining room.

“Did he do all your dirty work for you? Is that why you’re protecting him?”

Lily stopped. Slowly, she turned, and her eyes were as dangerous as radium.

“When your parents died, you came into a nice little inheritance,” said Jane.

“I inherited a house that no one will ever buy. And a bank account that paid for my college education, but not much more.”

“Did you get on with your parents, Lily? Did you have arguments?”

“If you think I’d ever-”

“All teenagers do. But maybe your fights went a little further. Maybe you couldn’t wait to get out of that dead little town and get on with your life. Then your cousin moves in for the summer and he gives you ideas, ways to make your escape happen a little easier, a little quicker.”

“You have no idea what happened!”

“Then tell me. Tell me why you were the one to find Teddy’s body in the lake, why you were the one who found your mother at the bottom of the stairs.”

“I’d never hurt them. If I’d known-”

“Were you lovers? You and Dominic?”

Lily’s face went white with rage. For one knife-edged moment, Jane thought the woman might actually lunge at her.

A loud ringing suddenly cut through the silence. Everyone glanced at Sansone.