Book of Shadows Read online

  They talked of the man they would kill tomorrow, the antique dealer who was the first of the five threatening the tribe’s life.

  THREE

  “SOMEONE BROKE INTO THE house and took two things,” said Nathan Shields. “They stole my address book and a photograph taken of the five of us in England last year.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. You’ve got thousands of dollars worth of antiques lying around. Wasn’t there cash, television sets, clothing, jewelry … ?”

  “None of it touched. Not so much as a pair of tweezers. Naturally my first reaction was that I’d misplaced the book and the maid had simply shifted the photograph to suit her taste, whatever that was. Then I remembered: The maid hadn’t been there in over a week. As for the address book, I tore the house apart and couldn’t find it. But I did find something else—several things, actually—which convinced me that someone had searched my house and I do mean searched.”

  “Like what?” said Marisa Heggen.

  “My shoes.” Nathan Shields sighed, a small hand over his heart.

  “Your what?”

  “Shoes. I’m particular about them, as you well know. I think the operative word is prissy. No one’s allowed to touch them except me. One hundred and four pairs of shoes, all neatly numbered on racks in two closets. When I found a Pierre Cardin sandal on the floor, I knew someone had been poking around.”

  Marisa smiled at him. “Nat, you are married. Doesn’t Ellie—”

  “In twenty-six years of marriage, Ellie has never touched my shoes. She wouldn’t dare. Besides, Ellie hasn’t been near the house for almost two weeks. She spends most of her time in the apartment here in town, especially when the ballet’s at City Center. The maid’s got her own problems. Immigration wants to deport her back to Santo Domingo, so lately she’s been spending more time with a lawyer than with a vacuum cleaner. When I hired Lupe I had a Spanish-speaking acquaintance of mine lay down the ground rules in her native tongue, the most important of which was stay the hell away from my shoes. In over two years of working for me, Lupe never touched so much as a shoelace or a Gucci buckle.”

  Marisa held her cup towards him for more cognac.

  “What about the two men who take care of your horses?”

  “Gone,” said Nathan Shields as he poured. “Actually they’re coming back tomorrow morning. I’d given them some time off. I sold the last of the palominos ten days ago, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “I’m having a pair of brood mares delivered this evening, which is why I’m closing the shop around six and driving over to the house. One man’s reporting in tomorrow morning and he and I’ll check reports on the studs we’d like to use, their bloodlines, fees, and so forth. I’m going to breed again, so to speak. A marvelous thought at my age.”

  Marisa watched him bring a three-hundred-year-old pink and gold teacup to his small mouth, inhale the aroma of the cognac before sipping it, and gently place the antique cup back on a matching saucer. The loss of the address book and photograph obviously bothered this man, who insisted that his life be precise and orderly in all things. Nat never suffered the violation of his privacy gladly. Psychic rape, he called it.

  She leaned over, took his hand, and watched his lips spread in a tentative smile. Nathan and Ellie Shields, in their mid-fifties and old enough to be Marisa Heggen’s parents, were her best friends. He was a successful antique dealer on Madison Avenue, a balding little man with a long, sad face that reminded Marisa of Stan Laurel. Nathan Shields was the kindest man Marisa knew and too intelligent to allow the loss of an address book and a photograph to upset him. But he’d listened to her problems often enough in the past; now it was her turn to listen to him.

  That’s why she was in his shop drinking cognac from antique cups with Japanese “felicitation” markings on the bottom. The marks meant happiness, something which had eluded Marisa lately.

  “My safe had been opened,” said Nathan Shields.

  Marisa looked up from her teacup.

  “Both burglar alarms had been bypassed,” he said. “Someone had cut the wires.”

  Marisa’s eyes held his for a long time.

  In the short silence, Shields placed the antique cup and saucer on his desk and stood up, his back to Marisa.

  “After the business with the shoes something told me to go to the safe. I keep a fair amount of cash there. I never know when I’ll need money on weekends or after banks close. Some of the people I buy from prefer cash, to avoid being hit for heavy taxes. I won’t buy stolen goods, but if people insist on cash I go along with them. Anyway, I checked the safe …”

  He turned around and looked at Marisa. “Nothing was missing. Cash, bonds, securities, my will, important receipts, none of it was gone. But someone had been in the safe. The money wasn’t stacked just the way I’d left it. My papers had been put back, but again, they weren’t in the order I’d left them in. Then I began to feel more than a little edgy, which is when I checked the alarms. They didn’t work, so I called the police. They came and did some checking of their own; that’s when I learned the wires had been cut.”

  He walked from behind his huge desk and sat on the edge in front of Marisa. “The police were there two hours and between us we couldn’t find anything else out of the ordinary. It was only after they left that I made a more detailed search and found out about the address book and the photograph. Whoever broke in also searched the attic, the freezer, the pool house, and the garage. In police terminology, my unknown visitors gave the place one good toss.”

  Marisa frowned. “Why, Nat? It’s all so unreal.”

  “To say the least. The police aren’t going to get excited about what I’ve lost and if I go to my insurance company with this fanciful tale, I’ll be laughed at. My premiums are high enough as is.”

  He pointed to his shop. “They tell me I have to have three different alarms, separate fire and theft policies with the usual exorbitant premiums, and I’ve got to change the combination on any safe I keep here at least three times a year. There are bars and gates on the windows and doors at night, and I get inspected more times than an Arabian virgin. I don’t mind it, being a precise sort of fellow—”

  Marisa smiled. “The operative word is ‘prissy.’”

  “Prissy. But it’s made me ever vigilant and watchful, which brings me to the next item on the agenda. For about a week I’ve had the feeling I’m being followed.”

  “That’s life in Fun City. Everybody in New York gets followed sooner or later.”

  Nathan Shields shook his head. “I’m not talking about the louts with wet chins who follow such stunning beauties as yourself. I’m talking about …”

  He closed his eyes and hesitated. “It’s … it’s just a weird feeling I’ve had that somebody knows everything there is to know about me.”

  Marisa stood up. “Sounds like you’re a victim of that old Chinese curse. Whenever they wanted to wish a person rotten luck, the Chinese would say ‘may you live in interesting times.’ Now didn’t you invite me over here for lunch?”

  Nathan Shields smiled and clapped his hands together. “Indeed I did, I most certainly did.”

  He looked at his watch. “Ten after two and America’s favorite actress hasn’t eaten and neither have I. My love for you is indicated by my having kept the ‘Closed’ sign dangling on the front door for the past half hour. You go out and bring back the eatables. Cottage cheese, black coffee, and fruit cup for me. Diet time.”

  “Tuna salad for me,” said Marisa. “No bread. Skim milk, maybe. The camera adds ten pounds and ten pounds is the last thing I need.”

  “How’s the show going?”

  “Well. Still number one in our time period. May we never run out of bored housewives, unemployed truck drivers, bored Gypsies, and whoever else watches soap operas.”

  “How does it feel to be America’s favorite bitch?”

  “Marvy-doo, as our new ingenue is fond of saying. I’d like to wring her neck but the twit do
esn’t have one. I’m thinking of bribing one of the script writers to come up with a scene where I run her over or throw acid in her face or something constructive like that. The show’s still a winner. Being a bitch on a soap opera ain’t Broadway but it pays a hell of a lot better than selling Bibles door to door, an occupation I was once forced to fall back on before becoming the star I am today.”

  They both laughed.

  Marisa took both of his hands in hers. “Don’t worry, it’ll turn out all right. The business at your house is probably one of those off-the-wall things that happens to everybody at least once in their lives. You did say nothing was taken.”

  He nodded.

  “About being followed,” she said. “I know the feeling.”

  “You’re a lot prettier than I’ll ever be. Any man who wouldn’t follow you is myopic. Speaking of men, how’s Robert?”

  Marisa withdrew her hands and looked away.

  After a few seconds Nathan Shields said, “That bad?”

  Marisa nodded. “Eight days in Bermuda didn’t make a damn bit of difference. I came back with a tan and Robert came back as Robert. It seems that whenever we go away together he always returns the worse for it. Last year the five of us went to England and he comes back … God, Nat, it’s getting so I hardly know him anymore.”

  Nathan Shields eased off the desk and took Marisa in his arms. “Next thing you’ll be telling me is Robert hasn’t been the same since he’s gotten hold of that peculiar book—a Book of Shadows, they call it.”

  Marisa looked at Nat and was about to say something when the little antique dealer smiled and stroked her hair. “You can tell me all about it when you return with the food. I’m starving. Tell Michael to put it on my bill and see if he’s got a Danish. I’m sick of dieting. Who wants to live forever?”

  Marisa, a bag of food in one hand, turned the corner in time to see Nathan Shields lock the front door of his shop and walk across the sidewalk toward his brown and tan station wagon parked at the curb. He wasn’t alone. A stocky white-haired man had a hand on Nat’s right elbow, guiding him; a tall, thin-faced woman in thick glasses walked just behind the two men.

  Waving and shouting his name, Marisa tried to get Nat’s attention.

  “Nat! Nat! Where are you going?”

  He said nothing. He stood calmly by the station wagon and waited for the tall woman to open the door on the passenger side. On the driver’s side, the white-haired man paused to stare at Marisa before getting behind the wheel. His left hand was near the windshield and the thick silver and pearl bracelet on his wrist gleamed in the afternoon sun like a polished mirror.

  Marisa was getting angrier by the second. The two of them were supposed to be having lunch, but instead Nat Shields and two strangers were now sitting in the front seat of his station wagon and Nat was ignoring her.

  Marisa ran to the station wagon and pounded on the window with the palm of her hand. “Nat! What about our lunch? The Danish, remember?”

  Inside the car, the white-haired man turned the ignition key and as the motor started, the tall woman looked from Nat Shields to Marisa, who flinched as though she’d been struck. The hatred in the tall woman’s face was so strong that Marisa held her breath and stepped back. As the station wagon pulled away and eased into Madison Avenue traffic, Marisa watched the tall woman gently pat the shoulder bag resting in her lap. The tall woman glared at Marisa until the station wagon went deeper into traffic.

  Marisa exhaled. What the hell was that all about?

  Turning, she looked at Nat’s antique shop and frowned. The “Closed” sign hung in the door, but neither steel gates nor bars had been put up. She moved closer. No one inside. It was just a little after two-thirty, too early to close for the day. Hadn’t Nat said he never left the shop unattended during business hours? If he had an appointment, why hadn’t he mentioned it to her? Why hadn’t he answered her when she’d called him? And who was the weird couple he’d just driven off with?

  Marisa looked up. The sky was suddenly dark; the sun had disappeared and the weather had quickly gone from hot to sticky humid. She could smell the oncoming rain. Walking to a nearby overflowing trash can, she laid the bag of food on top of it, and watched the bag roll off the trash and into the gutter. She left it there and began walking the ten blocks home, her only exercise for the day, thinking that Nat Shields better have a good explanation for speeding off without telling her why.

  She didn’t want to think about the way the tall woman had looked at her.

  The station wagon turned onto the George Washington bridge, which would take it to New Jersey and the farm where Nathan Shields raised golden palomino horses. He sat silently in the front seat between the Comforts and stared ahead. Rowena Comfort had hypnotized and now controlled him. Nathan Shields remembered nothing, he offered no resistance, and was unaware that the Comforts were taking him to his death.

  In his conscious state, the last thing he’d seen was a beautiful pale blue light reflected off the blade of a black-handled knife. Minutes after Marisa had left him alone in the shop, Nathan Shields held the knife in his hands. It had been brought to him for an appraisal by the Comforts, who reminded Nat of many of the English people he’d met in England last year. The Comforts were on holiday, nothing fancy, just a quick flight over on the cheap to see old friends.

  “The knife is an Athame,” said Rowena Comfort, “a ritual knife used by witches in various ceremonies. They sometimes employ it to hypnotize.”

  “Really?” Nathan Shields turned the knife around in his fingers. The black handle had been carved from stone, then polished, and the blade had been made from an odd sort of metal, perhaps steel, perhaps not. It shone like a jewel and didn’t have so much as a smudge on it. The entire knife was handmade and had an appealing crudity. He wondered where the couple had gotten it. Museum thefts were at an all time high; art treasures and antiques were in demand all over the world and the people who bought them weren’t concerned where they came from.

  “It’s over a thousand years old,” said Rowena Comfort.

  Nat Shields traced the blade’s keen edge with his thumb. “That would make it Celtic, wouldn’t it?”

  His eyes were on the knife and he didn’t see the look that passed between the Comforts.

  “That it would” said Rupert Comfort. He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Do you know much about the Celts, Mr. Shields?”

  “Not very much, I’m afraid. Last year some friends and I vacationed in England and we spent some time in your lovely countryside. We picnicked near Warwick Castle, where one of the locals warned us to watch out for ‘the washer at the ford.’”

  Nathan Shields smiled. “She’s supposed to be a rather hideous hag who spends her time going from one lonely stream to another washing the bloodstained clothing of people about to die. It’s one of several legends we encountered on the trip and I must say I found them fascinating. We even drew water from a well in which your Celtic tribes supposedly tossed human heads.”

  Rupert Comfort said, “The Celts were actually head hunters, Mr. Shields. We—they regarded a severed head as a fertility symbol. If you put a head into well water, it thereby gives life to those who drink it.”

  “Oh, my word. That’s what I enjoyed about England. Everywhere you turn there’s history and tradition. We have no tradition in this country and we’re the worse for it. Something just occurred to me, Mr.—”

  “Comfort. Rupert Comfort, and this is my wife, Rowena.”

  “Pleased to meet you both and welcome to America.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Shields,” said Rupert Comfort. “You were saying?”

  “You mentioned human heads in wells. Is that connected in any way with our throwing coins into wishing wells today?”

  “Indeed it is, Mr. Shields.” Rupert Comfort started to smile, then abandoned the effort. “You might say throwing pennies and such into water is a remnant of what civilized people like to call a pagan custom.”

  �
�Isn’t that something! That bracelet you’re wearing. I couldn’t help noticing it. Would you be interested in selling it?”

  Rupert Comfort shook his head slowly. “No, Mr. Shields, I wouldn’t. It’s been in my family for some time now.”

  Nathan Shields gazed at it with interest. “I’ve never seen such magnificent workmanship. Silver and pearls. Does it have any special significance?”

  Again he missed the look that passed between the Comforts.

  Rupert Comfort covered the bracelet with a wide hand. “Nothing I’d care to go into at the moment.”

  Nat Shields looked up at the couple. “Sentiment.”

  “Sentiment,” repeated Comfort. “Of course if you believe in such things, silver is said to be a protection to travelers in strange lands, and both silver and pearls are said to invoke lunar forces.”

  Nathan Shields’ smile took in the white-haired man and the tall woman in thick tweeds. “Well, I’m sure that’s not the reason you wear it, Mr. Comfort. Your wife said something earlier about the knife being used to hypnotize.”

  Rowena Comfort’s strong hands gently took the knife from Nathan Shields. Her green eyes seemed to bore into him, forcing him to blink. “One has to hold it up to the light,” she said. “Sunlight, the glow of a fire.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Perhaps even the moon.”

  Nathan Shields forced a smile.

  Then suddenly the tension was gone from him and he relaxed. Rowena Comfort’s voice was soothing, gentle, slightly seductive, and he found himself drawn to it, though he couldn’t quite understand everything she was saying.

  But the pale blue light was irresistible. It came from the knife’s blade, which seemed to catch and hold the sunlight. Nathan Shields wanted to hold that pale blue light in his hands, to caress it, to be near it, because it was so lovely and compelling and Rowena Comfort was commanding yes commanding him to gaze at it.