Public Secrets

shifted them under the slanted shade of the eaves. Apparently, Stevie hadn’t read his garden books carefully enough.
She pressed the doorbell. Since her father’s car was nowhere in sight, she hoped Stevie might feel up to taking her for a tour of his gardens.
The housekeeper opened the door and eyed Emma with both impatience and distrust.
“Good morning, Mrs. Freemont.”

Mrs. Freemont’s dusty brown hair was secured in a no-nonsense bun. She might have been anywhere from forty to sixty and kept her sturdy, bullet-shaped body primly attired in good black wool. She had done day work for Stevie for over five years, mopped up his blood and vomit, carted out his empty bottles, and looked the other way when her housekeeping duties brought her in contact with suspicious-looking vials.
Some might have been duped into believing she was devoted to her employer. The staunch Mrs. Freemont was only devoted to the hefty salary Stevie paid her in return for minding her own business.
She sniffed as she opened the door for Emma. “He’s around somewhere. Probably bed. I ain’t got to the upstairs yet.”
Old bat, Emma thought, but smiled politely. “That’s all right. He’s expecting me.”
“None of my concern,” Mrs. Freemont said righteously and went off to attack some defenseless table with her dustcloth.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Emma said to the empty hall. “I’ll just find my own way up.”
She started up the old oak stairs, unbuttoning her jacket as she went. “Stevie! Make yourself decent. I haven’t all day.”
It was a huge barn of a house, which was one of the reasons it appealed to Emma. The paneling along the wide second-floor corridor was mahogany; the gleaming brass fixtures and glass globes bolted to it had once burned gas. It made her think of the old Ingrid Bergman movie in which Boyer, playing against type, had plotted to drive his innocent wife mad. The comparison might have been apt, but for the fact that Stevie had amused himself by hanging Warhol and Dalí lithographs between the lights.
She could hear the music, and with a sigh, Emma knocked, shook her stinging knuckles, and knocked again.
“Come on, Stevie. Rise and shine.”
When he didn’t answer, she sent up one quick but fervent prayer that he was alone, then pushed open the door.
“Stevie?”
The room was empty—the shades drawn and the air stale. She frowned at the rumpled bed, and at the half bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the eighteenth-century table beside it. Swearing, she marched over and lifted it, but she was too late to save the glossy old cherry from the white ring. Still, she set the bottle on a crumpled copy of Billboard before she put her hands on her hips.

All the progress he’d made, she thought, and now he’d pumped whiskey into his belly. Why couldn’t he understand that he’d already damaged himself so badly that the booze was just as much a killer to him as the drugs.
So he’d gotten drunk last night, she thought as she sent the shades flapping up and pushed windows open. Then he’d probably crawled off to be sick. Asleep on the bathroom floor, she decided. And if he’d caught his death of cold, it would be well deserved. She’d be damned if she’d feel sorry for him.
She pushed open the adjoining door.
Blood. And sickness. And urine. The stench had her stumbling back, gagging. She felt the bile rush up her throat, stared at the red and gray spots that danced in front of her eyes. She fell against the stereo, sending the needle raking across the vinyl. The sudden silence hit her like a slap. On a cry of alarm, she rushed forward to bend over the body sprawled on the floor.
He was naked, and so cold. Terrified, she heaved until she turned him onto his back. She saw the syringe, and the revolver.
“No. Oh God, no.” Panicked, she searched for a wound, then for a pulse. She found the first, but it was only the tragic marks of the needle. The sob burst out of her when she found the second, faint and delicate, at his throat.
“Stevie, oh God, Stevie, what have you done?”
She raced to the doorway, to the top of the stairs. “Call an ambulance!” she screamed. “Call a bloody ambulance, and hurry!”
As she ran back, she tore the quilt from the bed to cover him. His face was the color of paste made from water and ashes. The sight of it, of his skin still smeared with blood from the needle, terrified her more than his deathlike stillness. On his forehead, just above his eyebrows, was a nasty