Hell by Hilary Norman Page B

over.’
    Only three patients for Grace to see this first day (the mother of the fourth put off by the change of location, though the Shrike apartment was less than a mile from their house), but enough for her to realize, as the morning progressed, that there might be something efficient, even calming about this kind of compartmentalization.
    Although the den and deck where she saw her patients at home had always seemed to relax them, and Grace firmly believed she could do a better job for troubled youngsters in an easygoing environment.
    Easygoing, relaxed and stable.
    Unlike her mind, currently.
    The move had been easy to organize, files brought across, phone calls diverted, and she’d contacted the parents of two of her more critical patients – Sara Mankowitz, for one – to let them know where she’d be in case of emergency.
    Her organization not quite infallible, though, she realized after lunch, finding she’d left a file at home that she would need first thing Tuesday. Which meant she’d have to go to the house to fetch it, and the deal she’d agreed with Sam was that she would drive herself to and from Bal Harbour so long as she stuck to daylight hours, and call if anything out of the ordinary occurred.
    A swift visit to their house just after five p.m. definitely did not necessitate a call, Grace decided. And while she was home, she could take another swift scan around to make sure there was nothing else they might have left behind.
    Everything seemed OK when she walked through the front door.
    No warning prickles of intuition – just sadness because the house felt so empty, because they’d chosen to abandon it.
    Not chosen , she reminded herself.
    And went about her business.
    She located the file, added two others, slipped them into her attaché case, then went upstairs to the bedroom and into the walk-in closet – where nothing sprang to her attention – then back to her dressing table.
    An extra lipstick, maybe, she decided, and some perfume, and maybe some headache pills . . .
    She wandered into the bathroom.
    And knew instantly.
    Someone had been in here.
    She could smell it.
    She took a step forward, her heart hammering, palms damp.
    And saw it.
    â€˜ Holy Mary ’ – all the way from early childhood and her late mother’s influence – flew into her mind.
    She stared down into the bathtub for an interminable moment.
    And then she turned, one hand covering her mouth, the other stretched out to steady herself as she went out through the bedroom and back down the stairs.
    Carefully – she couldn’t afford to fall, not now.
    Not here all alone, with no one knowing where she was . . .
    She waited until she was outside on the sidewalk before letting herself turn to look back again at the house. The home she’d made a long while before she’d met Sam. Lovely small white house with its red-tiled roof and the old familiar bottle brush tree and twin palms in the yard.
    Perhaps this, finally, of all that had happened here over the years, might be what drove her and Sam away for good.
    And then, suddenly aware of how violently she was trembling, she went to the Toyota, got inside, locked the doors.
    And called her husband.
    â€˜How in hell could he have gotten in without anyone seeing him?’
    Sam’s anger and frustration were at boiling point.
    He had already erupted at Grace for going to the house alone – getting no argument from her because she knew that he was right.
    â€˜Though if I hadn’t gone,’ she had said, lamely, ‘we wouldn’t have known it was there.’ She’d seen his expression. ‘I know you’d have come with me if I’d asked, but you were working on the case.’
    He’d been at the Starr Banking Corporation, talking to former colleagues of the late Andrew Victor, had left the office of the dead man’s manager within seconds of receiving