She sat on the edge of the cot and examined it by the light of the kerosene lantern. There was a name on the first page. It had been written in a tight, precise hand. Dr. Thomas G. Atherton. Below the name was a phone number. The rest of the pages appeared to be covered in some sort of code, all of it in the same handwriting.
She puzzled over the strange numbers and symbols for a time before it dawned on her that she was looking at scientific notations. It struck her that she was in possession of the personal notebook of a mathematician or a chemist. But that made no sense. Helen Spencer had never displayed any interest in either subject.
At dawn Irene awoke from a restless sleep with a sense of resolve. She was running. She needed to know more about what she was running from.
After a breakfast of eggs and toast, she used the autocamp phone booth to call the number on the first page of the notebook. The operator requested several coins.
“Where is this number located?” Irene asked, chucking money into the slot.
“New Jersey,” the operator said.
A moment later a polished female voice answered.
“Saltwood Laboratory. How may I direct your call?”
Irene took a deep breath. “Dr. Atherton, please.”
There was a short, brittle pause on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry but Dr. Atherton is no longer with us.”
“Do you mean he is no longer employed there?”
“Unfortunately, Dr. Atherton is deceased. Would you care to speak to someone else in his department?”
“No. What happened to Dr. Atherton?”
There was another short pause on the other end of the line before the receptionist spoke.
“I’m sorry, who did you say was calling?”
“Looks like I’ve got the wrong Atherton,” Irene said. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
She hung up the phone and got back on the road. Two people connected to the notebook were dead. That did not bode well for her future. She would have to do a very good job of disappearing.
Chapter 4
Burning Cove, California
Four months later . . .
Irene stopped at the edge of the long lap pool and looked down at the body sprawled gracefully on the bottom. It was fifteen minutes past midnight. The lights had been dimmed in the grand spa chamber, but in the low glow of a nearby wall sconce, it was possible to make out the dead woman’s hair floating around her pretty face in a nightmarish imitation of a wedding veil.
Irene turned away from the pool, intending to run to the entrance of the spa to summon help. Somewhere in the shadows, shoe leather scraped on tiles. She knew then that she was not alone with the dead woman. There was a faint click and the wall sconces went dark.
The vast spa chamber was abruptly plunged into dense shadows. The only light now was the ghostly glow from the moon. It illuminated the section of the spa where Irene stood. She might as well have been pinned in a spotlight.
Her pulse pounded and she was suddenly fighting to breathe. The nearest exit was the row of French doors behind her. But they were on the opposite side of the long lap pool. The side door that she had used to enter the spa was even farther away.
She concluded that her best option was to sound as if she was in command of herself and the situation.
“There’s been an accident,” she said, raising her voice in what she hoped was a firm, authoritative manner. “A woman fell into the water. We’ve got to get her out. There might still be time to revive her.”
That was highly unlikely. The woman at the bottom of the pool looked very, very dead.
There was no response. No one moved in the shadows.
Somewhere in the darkness water dripped, the faint sound echoing eerily. The humid atmosphere was rapidly becoming oppressive.
There were two possible reasons why the other person on the scene might not come forward, Irene thought. The first was fear of scandal. The Burning Cove Hotel was one of the most exclusive on the West Coast. Located almost a hundred miles north of Los Angeles, it offered a guarantee of privacy and discretion to those who could afford it. If the rumors were true, it had sheltered a list of guests that ranged from powerful figures of the criminal underworld to Hollywood stars and European royalty. Times might be hard elsewhere in the country, but you’d never know it from the luxury and opulence of the Burning Cove Hotel.
The stars and aspiring stars came to the hotel to escape the prying eyes of the always hungry reporters of the Los Angeles newspapers and the Hollywood gossip columnists. So, yes, it was possible that the watcher in the shadows feared being discovered in the vicinity of a woman who had just drowned. That kind of scandal could certainly taint a budding film career.
But there was another reason the other person might not want to assist in what would no doubt be a futile rescue effort. Perhaps he or she had been directly responsible for the death of the woman in the pool.