Now You See Her Page 0,68
They paid the funeral expenses, but other than that, we got nothin’.” He shook his head. “Oh, well. What’s done is done, right? Think I remember a very wise man once saying that there’s no point beatin’ yourself up over things you can’t change.”
“He is a very wise man,” Marcy said.
“Just not the man you want.” Liam pulled to a stop in front of the Doyle Cork Inn.
“Liam …”
“It’s all right. It’ll all work out in the end,” he said, green eyes twinkling. “And if it doesn’t …”
Marcy got out of the car. It’s not the end, she finished silently.
NINETEEN
SADIE DOYLE WAS WAITING for her in the inn’s small reception area, hands on her wide hips. “That’ll be an extra fifty euros for your guest,” she announced before Marcy was through the door.
“Is he still here?” Marcy asked hopefully, her eyes running up the stairs toward her room.
Sadie shook her head, the tightly set curls of her gray-flecked, reddish-blond hair barely moving. “Nah. He left hours ago. Got tired of waitin’ around, I guess.”
Marcy tried to mask her disappointment with a smile. What did I expect? she wondered. “Did he leave a message?” she asked hopefully.
Another vigorous shake of Sadie’s head, the motion dislodging the stale scent of too much hair spray. “I’ll just tack that extra charge onto your bill, shall I?”
“Yes.” Marcy walked toward the stairs.
“Where’d you run off to in such a hurry anyway?” Sadie asked, disguising the question she’d obviously been dying to ask as an afterthought. “You find your daughter?”
This time it was Marcy’s turn to shake her head. She proceeded up the stairs in silence, deciding to call Vic as soon as she got to her room. Liam had said he was staying at the posh Hayfield Manor Hotel, which was relatively close by. She’d ring his room, apologize profusely for running out on him again, and tell him about what had happened in Youghal. He’d understand and forgive her without a second’s hesitation. They’d arrange to meet for dinner. He’d stay the night, or maybe this time she’d stay with him, spend the night in the warmth of his arms, surrounded by luxury. And this time she wouldn’t skip out in the wee hours of the morning or abandon him without so much as a word of good-bye. She’d been wrong to treat him in such a cavalier fashion, wrong to exclude him when all he wanted was to help. She’d make it up to him tonight, she was thinking as she strode purposefully down the hall toward her room, key in hand, her hand reaching for the door.
It took several twists of the key until she succeeded in unlocking the door, and then it suddenly swung open, as if pushed. Marcy froze, thinking for an instant that she must have the wrong room. This couldn’t be hers. “Oh, my God,” she gasped, slowly stepping over the threshold, her eyes flying from one corner of the room to the next, trying to absorb what they were seeing. “Oh, my God,” she said again, louder this time. Then, “No. No.”
The room looked as if a terrible storm had swept through it. Everything was in violent disarray. The sheets had been ripped from the bed, the mattress dislodged and left dangling precariously across the bed frame. It had been slashed down its center, and its stuffing sprouted across its surface like weeds. Every drawer in the place had been opened and upended. The closet had been emptied, her clothes ripped from their hangers and left in a crumpled heap on the carpet. Even her toiletries hadn’t been spared, she noted, glancing into the bathroom, the bottles smashed, the tubes emptied, her toothbrush snapped in half. “What the—” Her words froze in her throat as she approached the bed, her shaking hand reaching for a pair of panties whose crotch had been slashed repeatedly with either scissors or a knife. “Oh, God,” she exclaimed in mounting horror, realizing that every item of her clothing had been violated in some way: her underwear, her nightgown, her blouses, her sweaters, her black slacks, even her trench coat. Nothing had escaped mutilation. Everything had been slashed, shredded, gutted. “No!” she shouted at the flowered walls. “No, no, no, no!”
She heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, followed by a shrill scream. Then more footsteps, faster, nimbler than the ones before. A whoosh of air behind her. A sharp intake of breath.
“My God. What have you done?”
Marcy spun around to see