The Purveyor Read online

  THE PURVEYOR

  THE PURVEYOR

  KARELIA STETZ-WATERS

  SAPPHIRE BOOKS

  SALINAS, CALIFORNIA

  The Purveyor

  Copyright © 2014 by Karelia Stetz-Waters. All rights reserved.

  ISBN EPUB - 978-1-939062-66-6

  This is a work of fiction - names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without written permission of the publisher.

  Editor - Margaret Martin

  Book Design - LJ Reynolds

  Cover Design - Christine Svendsen

  Sapphire Books

  P.O. Box 8142

  Salinas, CA 93912

  www.sapphirebooks.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition – August 2014

  This and other Sapphire Books titles can be found at

  www.sapphirebooks.com

  Dedication

  For Fay

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to the P & C Committee – Paul, Terrance, Chris, Robin, Rob, and Jane– and to all my friends and colleagues at Linn-Benton Community College.

  Thank you Sean Mishra for being the first to read The Purveyor.

  Thank you Rod Carter for taking me shooting. Thanks to all the friends who make my life so bright.

  Thank you to Chris, Schileen, and everyone at Sapphire Books for helping make my dreams come true.

  Also, thank you to my parents, Elin and Albert Stetz, for supporting me and supporting my love of writing since I was a little girl. You gave me everything.

  Finally a big thank you to my wife, Fay Stetz-Waters for believing in me for so many years. I could not do it without you.

  From the diary of Charity Kimball

  I’m writing this diary in my mind because anything I write down will be seen, confiscated, and held as proof of my disobedience. Obedience is the path of the True Reckoning. Like the Israelites I am in bondage, but it is my Lord who has enslaved me, and I can never be free, for even my blood is not my own.

  Prologue

  The Purveyor ducked her head to avoid the blades of the helicopter, then shielded her eyes from the sand thrown up by its departure. Then she was alone. The cement landing pad was the only sign of modern habitation on the small Caribbean island. Her instructions were to follow the foot path east to the main lodge. She set off. She was not accustomed to meeting clients in their homes, nor did she travel without a body guard or yield to the whims of her customers. That was what her girls did. That was what the clients paid for. However Harlow Galloway was an opportunity she could not resist.

  A sandy path took her through a sea of reeds, past a turquoise lagoon worthy of a postcard. At the end, the path opened on an equally photogenic beach and a low, flat building on stilts over the water. With no reference to anything but sea and sky, it looked like a pleasant summer house, but she had researched the square footage and considered the value, to which she had added the value of the island, assets, and company holdings. The sum was practically incalculable but by conservative estimates it made Harlow Galloway the twelfth richest man in the world. A man who had everything, except what she—if she liked his terms—was selling.

  She walked the long boardwalk to the front door. Before she could knock, a servant in starched livery met her at the door and invited her into a palatial sitting room overlooking the sea.

  Galloway was seated on a sofa, his back to her. “Good afternoon,” he said without turning. “Be careful of the leopard.”

  The Purveyor was momentarily speechless. She was used to wealth. There was no car, no chandelier, that she herself could not buy, but Galloway had bought the sky. He had bought the sea. He owned the island and, in an unprecedented deal with the government of Antigua, owned exclusive rights to the ocean and airspace within a fifteen mile radius around his home.

  “Please don’t move too quickly,” he said in a voice that was stillness itself. “She is nervous.”

  Slowly, the Purveyor looked around, and indeed there was a great dappled cat lying alert by the plate glass window that looked out over the sea.

  “An Amur leopard. There are less than fifty left alive,” Galloway said. “Please sit.” He motioned to a chair several feet away.

  The Purveyor sat but said nothing. It was best, she believed, to let the client begin negotiations. It either made men uncomfortable or it made them boast. Either way, she learned all she needed to know in that moment.

  Galloway sat, his hands folded in his lap. He had the ageless complexion of mixed parentage, perhaps Swedish and Syrian, yet his English was flawless, touched only by a slight, British accent. “She takes her beauty from her singularity,” he said finally.

  Behind Galloway, in the corner of the room where the plate glass met the wall, stood a man in a white caftan with a rifle held across his chest.

  Following her eyes, Galloway said, “If she attacks me, he will shoot her. If she has already struck, he will shoot me, so I do not feel the pain. He has his orders. The Amur always bites the throat. They can feel your pulse. Even from here, she can smell the valves of your heart opening and closing.”

  “How exceptional.” The Purveyor arranged her face to reveal nothing.

  “She is alone, as am I,” Galloway said.

  The Purveyor knew about lonely men and their needs, but Galloway was different.

  “You are a wealthy woman,” he went on. “But not wealthy enough, I think, to be without peers.”

  She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, as she glanced over at Galloway. He wore loose linen, but beneath the fabric she could make out a lean, muscular frame.

  “I am not as wealthy as you,” she said.

  “And you have taken up an unusual profession.” A faint smile played across his handsome face.

  She met his eyes. “I have built an empire,” she said, lest he think she was a servant he could dress in Turkish robes and place in the corner like a palm plant.

  “So you, too, are alone,” he said.

  She shrugged.

  “There is someone more lonely than you and I, more unique than the leopard. Priceless beyond measure.” He withdrew a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and held it out to her, a faded magazine article with black and white photographs. The Purveyor looked at the photograph and then back at Galloway, her face set in an expression that said…so?

  “I would like them. For my collection.” He gestured toward the window, the sweep of his hand taking in the sea and the sky and the leopard.

  “It would be a monumental undertaking for my company.” She paused. “We are not in the habit of this kind of selection, particularly of such a unique…” She paused, searching for the word Galloway would use to describe his prize. “Individuals.”

  “I would prefer that we do not lower ourselves by negotiating. You are a woman of the world, and you have your price.” His voice grew fierce.

  The Purveyor leaned forward. “How much are they worth to you?”

  “There is no price that you can conceive that I cannot pay in triplicate.” Galloway held a hand up. “To own something so rare is beyond calculation.” He looked up, his eyes almost black against his sandstone complexion, a striking contrast to his thick white hair. “Can you put a price on the cell dividing only once along this line? Can you put a price on God?”

  “I can,” said the Purveyor. “It is my calling.”

  Chapter O
ne

  In Adair’s dream, Helen was walking in the gentle surf of a Provincetown beach. White ruffles of ocean water were lapping at her feet while her sandals dangled from one hand. The sun was high. A breeze off the ocean cooled the air. The shore was littered with starfish. Adair stopped and picked one up to toss it back into the ocean. The underside of the starfish was gray and covered in mucous, a thousand foreshortened tentacles writhing in her hand. She dropped it.

  Helen screamed. “Get it off me!” The starfish had landed on her foot and stuck. She kicked frantically. “It hurts!”

  Adair seemed to move in slow motion as the words, “I’m sorry,” drawled out of her.

  Now the whole beach was seething with starfish. Helen screamed again and ripped at her leg where they swarmed, but when she tore at them they sank deep into her flesh. Her eyes were wide and dark with terror. “It hurts!”

  Suddenly Helen was very far away, just a speck on the horizon, but her scream was close.

  Adair jolted awake and blinked at the dim light. In front of her, suspended in the air like an apparition, a frantic green line beat across a black screen. She reached for Helen’s warm body in the bed beside her. She felt a stab of pain in her arm. Then her hand connected with cold metal. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t breathe. There was something in her throat, gagging her. Frantically, she tore at it. Pain stabbed through her hand again. A needle hit her bone. Slowly her situation became clearer…an IV…a tube in her mouth. He had her!

  Marshal Drummond, the serial killer who had terrorized Pittock College, had found her, caught her, drugged her. She kicked her legs. The movement sent a sickening wave of pain through her body, but at least she still had her legs. He had not amputated them as he had tried to do to Helen Ivers…at least not yet. And where was Helen? This was not their inn by the beach. This was not the high, soft bed in which she had made love to Helen and Helen had whispered declarations of love to her.

  With her free hand, Adair pulled out the IV. With both hands she fumbled with the contraption at her lips. It was some kind of a mask taped to her cheek. She tongued the tube in her mouth, retching as her throat tried to expel it. She pulled at the tape and then the tube. She felt it scraping deep inside her body, abrading her throat until she had pulled out a foot or more of tubing, the end of the tube disgorging a thick brown substance that smelled of protein powder and bran.

  Above her on the ghostly green monitor, a red light flashed. Although Adair was not aware of a door opening, a second later a woman in a white uniform rushed to her bedside. Adair tried to rise.

  “No, no, no,” the woman said, pressing a hand to Adair’s chest. The woman looked very young, a child really, with the dark complexion and narrow eyes of the Mung or perhaps an indigenous South American people. She held Adair down easily, although her arms were as thin as bird bones.

  “Where am I?” Adair asked. A wave of nausea rolled over her. She tried to rise again, but could only manage to turn her head, vomiting more of the brown substance on her pillow.

  “No, no,” the woman whispered. “Shh. No move.” She looked anxiously around the room. From somewhere beneath the bed, she grabbed a box of wet towelettes. She swabbed at Adair’s face and mouth, all the while whispering “No, no, no,” as though she were frightened of some unseen force.

  Adair let her clean her face, but when the woman tried to reinsert the feeding tube, she struck her hands away.

  The woman tried again, but her movements were as tentative as her heavily accented English. After another failed attempt she wrapped the tube around itself and tucked it away. A second later, Adair felt the sting of an auto-injector. Then the world went black.

  aaAA

  Adair woke after what felt like hours, but it might have been days, or perhaps only minutes. She was in a large parlor. Heavy tapestry curtains shrouded high windows. The walls were lined with inset bookshelves and heavy, leather-bound tomes. The ceiling above her head displayed an intricate filigree of hammered tin, and the crown moldings were carved like a Victorian rendition of pineapples. She lay in a hospital bed, the aluminum rails at odds with the antique décor. Someone had returned the IV to her arm but not the feeding tube. She was also aware of a catheter between her legs.

  Primarily she was aware of the pain. It was like nothing she had experienced before. It was not the sharp agony of a broken bone from a riding accident. Nor was it the feverish, cleansing pain of hunger that had beset her after her mother had died and she had stopped eating. It was a pain that lived nowhere and everywhere. It was in the very fluid of her spine, in between vertebrae, in her blood, and in the air around her. It moved through her, and it reached deep inside her. She felt hollowed out in a way that was all body and not body at all. It was as though her soul had become an empty skin. Now someone scraped it with a cold stone and hung it up to dry, unrecognizable. She wanted to move, but moving was agony. She wanted to sleep, but sleeping and waking had blurred together.

  “Help,” she whispered.

  She was drowning. She was dying. Marshal Drummond had poisoned her, and this was the end. Polonium. Dimethylmercury. Hemlock.

  Even in her incapacitated state, she recalled Helen’s dark eyes, her auburn hair. The slight imperfections of the skin of her hands, a freckle, a wrinkle, proof that she had lived. The vision cut through the pain. She had to find Helen. She had to find out what happened! “Help me!”

  A moment later, a door opened. Adair held her breath waiting for Drummond’s familiar face to appear.

  “Merrill!”

  It was her middle name, the name only her family called her.

  A moment later, her sister-in-law, Cecelia, stepped into view. “How are you, Merrill?” Cecelia said with unnecessary cheer. “You’re home. Do you know that? Do you recognize the West Parlor?”

  Adair’s eyelids drooped closed. She had not recognized the room, but now she associated it with some distant memory. Her mother. A Christmas party. A college girlfriend with long, black hair. The memories swirled behind her eyes, imperfect and grayed out, like a film that had been cut and bleached and spliced back together. It was too hard to think. Then Helen’s face flashed across the screen, and her eyes flew open again. “What happened?” she whispered.

  Cecelia pulled up a chair. In one hand she held a glass of water with a straw. “Try a drink.”

  Adair’s throat constricted. She coughed, and the water spilled down her neck. Cecelia set the glass on the bedside table and touched Adair’s chin with a tissue.

  “What…?” Adair tried to signal her questions with her eyes.

  Cecelia watched, her dark hair haloed by light from an amber light fixture above. She wore bright red lipstick. Adair closed her eyes against its brilliance. She had known Cecelia her whole life. They had been in boarding school together. They had broken a horse together, a vicious Arabian named Take Five Sterling. Cecelia had given her her first taste of cocaine. They had been other things to each other as well. Lovers, some people would call it, although that was never a word Adair used. Then Cecelia married Cyrus and became inextricably, eternally part of the family.

  Now she and Adair were here, and Adair could not make sense of the pain.

  “You’ve been ill.” Cecelia smiled at her tenderly. “You’re on a special kind of drug therapy. That’s what the IV is for. We’re taking good care of you. You don’t have to worry about anything. Just rest.”

  Adair felt sleep pulling at her, dragging her down, but when she closed her eyes, she saw Helen. She forced her eyes open. “Where is she?” She held onto the image of Helen’s face. If Drummond had killed Helen, if he had hurt her, Adair would have to rise out of the hospital bed.

  She felt a surge of adrenaline push the pain away. She could rise. She did not need the heart monitor to chart the pounding in her chest. If she was indeed in the Wilson estate, she could limp to the gun safe where she kept the arsenal her brother Cyrus had bought for her over the years. The tiny Seacamp. The Kel Tec shotgun. Ridiculous
gifts for a thirty-something theater professor with family money and a job at a sleepy Berkshire college. Had he somehow seen into the future? Foretold that provost Marshal Drummond would fixate on Helen, would “love” her in his own sick way, and that Adair would have to remove the Kel Tec, load the magazine, and try to remember the lessons Cyrus had given her when she was just a girl shooting hay bales late in the summer twilight? She would remember. Even as the pain gutted her belly, she remembered. She would kill Marshal Drummond.

  She rolled over and vomited onto her pillow again. “Please.” Her whisper was thick and wet.

  “Helen is at Pittock,” Cecelia said, her voice icy.

  “Is she…okay?”

  Cecelia glanced away. “I presume.”

  Adair searched her profile for a lie. “And Drummond?” Adair’s mouth burned. “Did he get her? Did he hurt her?”

  Cecelia turned back to her and laid a cool hand on Adair’s cheek. The sharp smell of Cecelia’s perfume caught in Adair’s throat.

  “Drummond is in the State Hospital.” Cecelia’s lips were the bright red of a do not enter sign. “Nothing happened to Helen Ivers.”

  Relief flooded Adair’s eyes with tears, and with the tears her strength ebbed.

  “Rest.” Cecelia stroked her face.

  Adair fell back into her writhing dreams.

  Chapter Two

  When Adair woke again, she was surrounded by people. She sensed that they were discussing her. She forced her eyes open, and her vision cleared. Cecelia stood by the side of her bed again. Beside her stood Adair’s eldest brother, Montague, and beside him stood, their middle brother Cyrus. At the foot of the bed stood a tall man with the sun-bleached hair and light tan of a surfer or a marathoner. He wore a white coat and checked the papers attached to a metal clipboard with practiced efficiency.