Robert Masello - The Medusa Amulet

But her lawyer, Mr. Hudgins, had just informed her that Phillip Palliser was dead. His body had been found floating in the Loire, several miles downstream from a little French town called Cinq Tours.

“And what does the coroner say was the cause of death?” she asked, her eyes already straying to the huge windows that looked out over Lake Michigan from her penthouse apartment. “Drowning?”

“Probably,” Hudgins replied. “But there were considerable abrasions to the body and face. The injuries might have been postmortem, or they might have been caused by… a violent attack first. It’s unclear.”

Another one, Kathryn thought, caught in the spider’s web.

He lowered his gaze to the stack of folders and papers arrayed on her glass-topped coffee table. The afternoon light filled the spacious, expensively appointed room, and after he had waited a suitable amount of time, he said, “So what would you like to do?”

She touched a finger to a stray brunette hair, putting it back in place.

“Do you wish to go forward?” he asked.

Did she? What choice, really, did she have? “Yes.” It was all like moving another chess piece into play. “Of course I do.”

“Then it would be this young man at the Newberry,” Hudgins said, glancing at a paper. “This David Franco?”

“Yes.” She had always cultivated the next candidate before his predecessor had failed.

“And you think he has done a good job on the Dante volume?”

“A very good job.” She had been impressed with his credentials before she had seen him at the library, and she was even more impressed after hearing him speak.

“Then I’ll go ahead and make the arrangements for us to meet with him,” Hudgins said. “How soon would you like to do so?”

“Tomorrow.”

Even Hudgins seemed a bit surprised. “Tomorrow? Well, then, I will leave it to you to assemble the materials you wish to share with him.”

Kathryn nodded, almost imperceptibly, but she knew his eyes were riveted on her. Men’s eyes generally were, and it was something she had grown accustomed to over the years. Hers was a sensual face, with high cheekbones, arched brows, and full lips, unaided by collagen. But it was her eyes-a remarkable blue, tinged with violet-that made the most striking impression. One ardent admirer had even proclaimed her beauty to be “timeless,” and it had been all she could do not to laugh out loud.

“Now, in respect to your late husband’s estate,” he said, shifting gears and moving a separate folder to the top of the pile, “I’ve been in contact with his family.”

Randolph Van Owen had died a month earlier, but when it happened, one of his sisters had been on a world cruise she was loath to interrupt and the other was recovering from a face-lift.

“They have agreed to come to Chicago and hear the reading of the will this Friday.”

“That’s fine. The sooner, the better.”

“But they have asked if the service could be… less private? As one of Chicago’s most recognized families, the Van Owens were hoping for a more public expression of your late husband’s importance to the fabric of the city. In fact, they had suggested-”

“No,” she said. “Randolph would have wanted a very small, private ceremony, and nothing more.”

In actuality, she had no idea what he would have wanted, any more than she understood what he was doing racing his new Lamborghini through Lake Forest in the middle of the night. He’d hit a slight bump in the road. But at the speed he was traveling, the car had become airborne and wrapped itself around a stone gatepost. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Randolph-love was barely in her vocabulary-but theirs had been a marriage of… what? For him, she had been the ultimate trophy, a woman whose beauty made men stop in their tracks, and for her, he had been just another refuge. He had provided her with a new identity, in a new place, and a new time. She needed these anchors now and again in order to feel connected to the rhythms and the texture of ordinary life.

And now that that connection was broken-yet again-she was searching for a way out, once and for all. A way out of everything. For most people, it would be easy. But for her, it was a challenge so immense she could take no chances with the outcome. No chances at all.

After Hudgins had cleared up a few other matters, he gathered his papers, and she escorted him to the door. Then, leaving the plates and glasses for Cyril to clean up, she dimmed the lights and mounted a corkscrew staircase to a portion of the apartment accessible only to someone with the silver key she wore around her neck. Once inside, she flicked on the wall sconces, and it was as if she had entered another world. Even Randolph had not been allowed in her private sanctum.

Unlike the rest of the apartment, which was flooded with natural light, this was like entering a catacombs, thirty-five stories in the air. The floors were made of dark tile, and the walls were decorated with oil paintings of religious scenes. An ivory crucifix hung at the end of the short hall, with one room on either side. On the left, a tiny chapel had been erected, with a stained-glass window-artificially backlit-depicting Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. There was a simple pew set before the altar, on which rested as many as two dozen small urns-some of them ornately carved of marble or porphyry, others cast in silver or steel. The low hum of an air-filtration system was the only sound.

On the right, a slightly larger room was lined with mahogany bookshelves packed with everything from old books in cracked threadbare bindings to memorabilia from around the globe. Egyptian candlesticks, bronze inkwells, carved totems, an ivory saltcellar. There was little furniture-just one armchair, an end table, and a torchere, which she turned to its highest wattage. Atop the table, there was a bundle of papers, as yellow and crackly as parchment, tied with a frayed string. Kathryn sat down in the chair and took the stack into her lap. She carefully undid the string, which nearly disintegrated, and lifted the top sheet of paper; even now, so many years after it had escaped being burned, it gave off an ashy odor.

But the black scrawl was still entirely legible. La Chiave Alla Vita Eterna. The Key to Life Eternal.

Scanning the pages, hastily scribbled in Italian with a sharp quill, she could imagine their creator at his desk, head down, brow furrowed. She could envision him filling one page, then tossing it aside and, without so much as a pause, starting on another. Each paper was crammed with words and sometimes drawings, all a testament to the ferment and the fecundity of his thoughts.

But when she came to one page in particular, she stopped.

Its center was dominated by a fierce scowling visage, its hair a mass of writhing snakes. Written beside it, in a florid hand, were the words La Medusa. She stared at the creature’s grim face and traced the lines with the end of one nail. She had to remain strong, she told herself. At least a little longer. She had to have hope, however tenuous. If she, of all people, did not know that anything was possible, who did?

Closing her eyes and turning out the lamp, she sat in the perfect darkness, hearing only the hum of the air-filtration unit… and allowing her thoughts to transport her backwards into an age-old dream, of another place-the city of Florence-and another time, centuries ago, when the Medici ruled… and a woman then known as Caterina had been the most sought-after artist’s model in all of Europe.

It was an indulgence she rarely permitted herself. But after the bad news about Palliser, she needed it. And the pictures were quick to come…

… the woman is lying on a straw pallet, in a moonlit studio. It is a hot summer night, and she is waiting to be sure that her lover has fallen asleep.