One Door From Heaven

beams that suck you right out of your shoes and up into the mother ship, little gray men with big heads and enormous eyes-the whole package. Mrs. D, may I have one of those radishes that looks like a rose?"
        "Of course, dear." Geneva slid the dish of garnishes across the table.
        Laughing softly, shaking her head, Micky said, "Kiddo, you've pushed this Addams Family routine one step too far. I don't buy the alien abduction for a second."
        "Frankly," Leilani said, "neither do I. But the alternative is too hideous to consider, so I just suspend my disbelief."
        "What alternative?"
        "If Lukipela isn't on an alien planet, then he's somewhere else, and wherever that somewhere might be, you can bet it's not warm, clean, with good potato salad and great chicken sandwiches."
        For an instant, in the girl's lustrous blue eyes, behind the twin mirror images of the window and its burden of smoldering summer-evening light, behind the smoky reflections of the layered kitchen shadows, something seemed to turn with horrid laziness, like a body twisting slowly, slowly back and forth at the end of a hangman's noose. Leilani looked away almost at once, and yet on the strength of a single Budweiser, Micky imagined that she had glimpsed a soul suspended over an abyss.

Chapter 6
        
        LIKE THE SUPERNATURAL SYLPH of folklore, who inhabited the air, she approached along the hallway as though not quite touching the floor, tall and slim, wearing a platinum-gray silk suit, as graceful as a quiver of light.
        Constance Veronica Tavenall-Sharmer, wife of the media-revered congressman who disbursed payoffs in airsickness bags, had been born from the headwaters of the human gene pool, before the river flowed out of Eden and became polluted with the tributaries of a fallen world. Her hair wasn't merely blond but the rich shade of pure-gold coins, fitting for a descendant of an old-money family that earned its fortune in banking and brokerage. Matte-satin skin. Features that would, if carved in stone, earn their sculptor the highest accolades and also immortality, if you measure immortality by mere centuries and expect to find it in museums. Her willow-leaf eyes were as green as spring and as cool as the layered shade deep in a grove of trees.
        When he'd met her two weeks ago, Noah Farrel had disliked this woman on first sight, strictly as a matter of principle. Born to wealth and blessed with great beauty, she would skate through life with a smile, warm in even the most bitter wind, describing graceful arabesques upon her flashing blades, while all around her people perished in the cold and fell through the ice that, though solid under her, was treacherously thin for them.
        By the time Mrs. Sharmer had left his office at the end of that first meeting, Noah's determination to dislike her had given way to admiration. She wore her beauty with humility, but more impressively, she kept her pedigree in her purse and never flashed it, as did so many others of her economic station.
        At forty, she was only seven years older than Noah. Another Woman this beautiful would inspire his sexual interest-even an octogenarian kept youthful by a vile diet of monkey glands. By this third meeting, however, he regarded her as he might have regarded a sister: with the desire only to protect her and earn her approval.
        She quieted the cynic in him, and he liked this inner hush, which lie hadn't known for many years.
        When she arrived at the open door of the presidential suite where Noah stood, she offered her hand; if younger and more foolish, he might have kissed it. Instead, they shook. Her grip was firm.
        Her voice wasn't full of money, no disdain or evidence of tutor-shaped enunciation, but rich with quiet self-possession and faraway music. "How are you this evening, Mr. Farrel?"
        "Just wondering how I ever took pleasure in this line of work."
        "The cloak-and-dagger aspect ought to be fun, and the sleuthing. I've always loved the Rex Stout mysteries."
        "Yeah, but it never quite makes up for always being the bearer of had news." He stepped back from the door to let her enter.
        The presidential suite was hers, not because she had booked the use of it, but because she owned the hotel. She was directly engaged in all her business enterprises; if her husband were having her followed, this early-evening visit wouldn't raise his