The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [101]
Antenna 2, the state-owned television network, had carried an interview with the manager of a golf clubhouse on the Seine near Vernon. A California doctor the police suspected in the murder of an expatriate American named Albert Merriman had crawled out of the river early Saturday morning and spent time recuperating in the manager’s store before being picked up and driven off by a dark-haired Frenchwoman.
To date, everyone intimately involved with Albert Merriman Bernhard Oven had quickly and efficiently eliminated. But somehow, the American doctor, identified as a Paul Osborn, had survived. And now a woman was involved. Both had to be found and accounted for before the police got to them. Not so difficult, if time had not suddenly become the enemy. Today was Sunday, October 9. The agenda had to be cleared no later than Friday, October 14.
“Have you ever worked with Mr. Lybarger while he was in the nude, Ms. Marsh?”
“No, Doctor, of course not,” Joanna said, surprised at the question. “There would be no reason.”
Joanna liked Salettl no more in Zurich than she had in New Mexico. His shortness with her, his distant manner, were more than intimidating. He frightened her.
“Then you’ve never seen him undressed.”
“No, sir.”
“In his underwear, perhaps.”
“Doctor Salettl, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”
At 7:00 sharp that morning, Joanna had been wakened in her room by a call from Von Holden. Instead of the warm and affectionate lover of the night before, he’d been abrupt and to the point. A car would be by to pick up her and her things for transport to Mr. Lybarger’s estate in forty-five minutes; he knew she would be ready. Puzzled by his distance, she said nothing more than yes, she would. Then, as an afterthought, had asked what she should do about her dog in the kennel in Taos.
“It has been taken care of,” Von Holden had said, and with that hung up.
An hour later, still a little hung over from the combination of jet lag, dinner, drinks and marathon sex with Von Holden, Joanna sat in the backseat of Lybarger’s Mercedes limousine as it turned off the main highway and stopped at a security gate. The driver pressed a button and the passenger window lowered enough for a uniformed guard to look inside. Satisfied, he waved them on, and the limousine moved up a long, tree-lined drive toward what Joanna would only later describe as a castle.
A middle-aged housekeeper with a pleasant smile had shown her to her quarters: a large bedroom with its own bath on the ground floor that looked out onto a sprawling lawn that ended at the edge of a thick forest.
Ten minutes later, she answered a knock at the door and was escorted by the same woman to Dr. Salettl’s second-floor office in a separate building, where she was now.
“Judging by your ongoing reports, I see you have been as impressed as the rest of us with Mr. Lybarger’s progress.”
“Yes, sir.” Joanna was determined not to be intimidated by Salettl’s manner. “At the beginning, when I first started working with him, he hardly had any control over his voluntary motor functions. It was even hard for him to follow a clear train of thought. But each step of the way, he continually amazed me. He has an incredibly strong inner will.”
“He is also physically robust.”
“Yes, that too.”
“Comfortable in a social atmosphere. Able to relax with people and converse intelligently with them.”
“I—” Joanna wanted to say something about Lybarger’s continual references to his family.
“You have reservations?”
Joanna hesitated. There was no point in bringing up something that had been wholly between Lybarger and her.