Chapter 1

Judy McAllister lay motionless and listened in the darkness to Sarah's labored breathing. Mostly, one breath was like another-a long, shuddering gasp with Sarah's voice audible, then a wheeze and a gurgling sigh. At the end of the sigh there was always a pause-a period when Sarah's body seemed to consider whether another breath was worth the trouble. At each such pause Judy held her own breath and wondered if this time the decision would be in the negative.

At this moment, as happened at intervals, the pause dragged on until Judy flung off her covers and started upright. But a choking sound and another of the agonizing inhalations stopped her. She dropped back and covered herself.

It was awful, lying here in the old house listening to those hopeless gasps. It was awful knowing she was listening to a woman die-especially one who had been powerful and determined and indestructible. It was worst of all at this hour halfway between midnight and dawn. Judy's foster mother, Penelope, had called it the low hour.

When John McAllister had been later than usual coming off his trucking run, Penelope had been likely to say, "Worst time of all, Judy. The low hour. When people die, it is. You just watch."

Grumbling and hateful, John and Penelope McAllister had been the only "folks" she'd had in the eighteen years of her life. They'd done right by her; if you didn't believe it, you could ask them.

None of that mattered right now-not when she was lying in the tiny room next to Sarah Garlock's waiting for Sarah to die. It didn't matter any more than the fact she'd been called away from the Miss Body contest in Ardmere County to come here, or that they'd unknowingly blasted her first real love affair at the same time-that they'd snatched her away from that wonderful, polished Steve Tessler on the very eve of what would have been her first experience with sex. She'd planned that, too. She'd weighed all the pros and cons and deliberately made up her mind she was going to give in to his urging.

Garlock Heights! They might better have called it Ghoul Hill! she thought now. What a place for tragedy! A wonder it's not crawling with ghosts!

In a way it was, she admitted to herself. With Oliver Garlock dead in that awful car accident and his wife, Sarah, waiting to die from it and with the ghastly maze of first and second marriages and offspring from everything but the Oliver-and-Sarah union-there were ghosts of the memory all over the place. The saving grace was that none of them rustled around in the night.

The only night noises were the natural creaking's of an ancient, over-complicated house and the tortured breathing. And it still seemed a cruel injustice to Judy that she, a total outsider, should have to keep the death watch when Sarah's own grown children made other rooms in the sprawling mansion ring with the lustful gaiety of their sinful sport.

Not that Judy objected to sinful sport-sometimes her breasts ached and her pussy tingled with her visions of the things she imagined were going on. She didn't mind any more than Sarah minded. It was amazing a mother could so readily bridge the gap between the Victorian era she'd matured and borne her children into and the "new ethic" those children had embraced. But Sarah had told Judy confidentially and calmly-in one of her better moments-of the fact both her children took part regularly in "swap" arrangements. Her only apparent emotion had been a certain quiet wistfulness at the thought that she'd been born one generation too early.

Somewhere in her river of inner protests and recollections, Judy drifted into the sleep she'd been awaiting for so long. And when the early sun tilted its rays into her room and turned her tumbling, widespread hair into a silver-gold halo around the peach-tinted glow of her face, she opened her wide, tawny eyes and held herself still to hear Sarah's breathing. Her charge would see another day.

Downstairs, the dining room failed to share the early morning brightness of Judy's cubicle. Both dining and living rooms were on the west side of the house, in the first place, and the heavy, interlaced foliage of the majestic oaks cut off their light in the second. Instead, they lay under a pall of gloom that matched the tension among the inhabitants-a tension that grew thicker every day Sarah refused to die.

It would have been tense under the best conditions, what with death hanging over their shoulders. But there were undercurrents of antagonism Judy still wasn't sure she'd sorted out properly. Mike Garlock was easy to pinpoint. Oliver's only known offspring-and that by Oliver's first marriage- twenty-five-year-old Mike had little use for either of Sarah's two children? They had even less affection for him; Judy had recognized from the beginning they hated his guts. What was worse, there was an ugly suspicion barely beneath the surface that Mike had engineered the accident. After all, he was the only one who was destitute enough to make inheritance all that urgent.

Judy didn't like him anyway; he was too damn sure of himself and too contemptuous of everybody else. (And he hadn't even made one pass at her in the ten days she'd been here!)

Lowell Blake was something else again. Five years older than Mike and the product of Sarah's first marriage, he wasn't afraid to show how good life could be. He'd proved his outlook by marrying nineteen-year-old model Gwen Linder, for one thing. Judy didn't like the redheaded Gwen any better than she did Mike, but she had to admit Lowell had probably bought himself a lively bed partner. Lowell was sweet and thoughtful, too. He'd gone out of his way to ease Judy's discomfort at coming into the morbid old house. He'd kept her busy dodging his overly intimate approaches, as well, and he was so smooth with them she knew she was going to respond sooner or later. But he showed the strain; he was clearly close to his mother and was suffering real agonies over her condition. The possibility that the accident might have been "caused" must prey terribly on him, Judy suspected.

Lowell's sister, Edith, was another case. Judy liked Edith's husband, Cal Porter, a lot better than she did Edith. She supposed that was because Cal was earthy and had made his money on his own, while Edith was haughty and formal and cold. The only mark in Edith Porter's favor, so far as Judy was concerned, was that the tall, black-haired beauty did act as if she loved her husband. And that was just the opposite of her reaction to her stepbrother, Mike. Sparks flew when those two came together, which happened at least two or three times a day, as the whole group ate their meals at the same table.

Mike was the first to finish eating and leave the breakfast table. Gwen Blake excused herself a few minutes later, then Cal Porter. Lowell and his sister, Edith, exchanged amused glances.

"Think your husband's got a thing for redheads, Mrs. Porter?"

Edith sniffed. "He'd better get it while he can. Nice of you to marry such a plum for him to pick, but we're not going to see much of her after we go home." She softened her expression and added in a low tone, "Not even much of you, darling-all the way back in Denver."

The Garlock housekeeper-maid, Colleen Devlin, bustled in to clear the table. When her shapely bottom had vanished through the swinging service door, Lowell broke into a leering grin and included Judy in the sphere of his reminiscing. "Now there's a piece I get excited about!"

"Still?" Edith chilled. "At her age?"

"What, thirty-seven? You keep your figure that well for the next ten years, sis, you'll be doing all right!"

"If I lived on coffee the way she does..." Edith sniffed. "Thirty cups a day, if she drinks a drop!"

Lowell chuckled and winked at Judy. "Well, if that's what it takes...." He shrugged. "She drank just as much of that varnish-cutter when she was breaking me in. And me a fifteen-year-old snot. Kee-riste, she had the movement of a Swiss watch!"

Colleen reappeared for another armload of dishes. An inquisitive cockatiel perched in her hair, his beady black eyes peering through a mask of brilliant yellow and his crest erect. He cocked his head and stared at Judy.

"Hi, baby!" the bird muttered suggestively. "Put up or shut up! You got the time? Lookee the boobs!"

Colleen twitched her head. "Shut up, dummy! Want to go into the pot?" She grinned at Judy. "He don't mean nothin'. Just words to him."

When the housekeeper-maid had left again, Lowell sighed. "Talk about 'Lookee the boobs!' And that goddamn bird was saying the same thing fifteen years ago! Jesus, I wish she weren't so untouchable right now!"

"She's in mourning, you damn fool! Even if she is the maid, she's likely the only one in the world who cares that Oliver's dead! And you should think of Mother!"

"I think about her." His tone was flat and the eager vibracy of life was gone, replaced by gray.

Judy ached at the thread of pain in his voice and the dead look in his kind eyes.

He continued after a pause. "I think about her lying up there, knowing she isn't going to live and fighting every goddamn inch of the way! And I keep wondering what's so goddamn important she's got to stay for."

Judy understood. He wasn't being callous. He honestly suffered as his mother suffered. He yearned for her release as she yearned for it. And it puzzled him as it puzzled Judy what was so vital that Sarah had to wait it out. The more you love somebody, the more it must hurt to see her stay alive when she's like Sarah, she thought. And she thought, wistfully, I hope somebody loves me that much someday!

But Edith was talking again and her voice had venom in it.

"Just keep thinking about her, then," she said. "And stop thinking about that cheap Irish slut! You know how I felt about it when you started with her-and me twelve and burning up! You just stay out of the housekeeper's way, you son of a bitch! You're getting all you can handle and twice what a man needs!"

Judy gasped and colored at the bald reference to the incestuous swapping she already knew was taking place. With a strangled mutter, she excused herself and rose to leave the table. She had to pass Lowell on the way out, but something on Gwen's abandoned chair caught the edge of her wrap-around skirt and jerked it open. The pale, youthfully swelling flesh above her stocking gleamed in the light from the chandelier and the edge of taut, white panties showed. She heard an ominous popping sound-the first threads that held the waist button on-and stopped abruptly. Lowell's even teeth flashed in a grin of sympathetic delight and he touched the soft flesh with his fingertips.

Judy gasped. She flinched violently and felt the button fly from her skirt. With a wild grab she salvaged the situation, but not before the garment had slipped entirely away from the delicious roundness of her buttocks and momentarily exposed the full taper of her long, graceful thighs.

"Oh! Oh, please...." She twisted from Lowell's quick caress and fled from the room, Edith's pleased chuckle ringing in her ears.

Oh, God! What a clumsy way to show what I've got! she thought as she gained the safety of the hall. Nothing but a stupid kid trick! Her eyes smarted with tears of embarrassment. She'd grab the first chance to entice Lowell-to show him she wasn't all that scared of playing his kind of game-but not like some gawky adolescent!

She hurried back to her room to repair the damage before going through that open door to Sarah. The woman's breathing told her sleep hadn't deserted the patient yet, and while she sewed on another button, her shapely legs crossed and, one foot swinging gently, she again felt the overall air of tension of the house.

If it hadn't been for missing out on the contest and leaving Steve, this could have been something of an adventure. No matter what sacrifices she'd made, it was worth them to get away from John and Penelope. She'd never understand what had made them take her in the first place, she thought. There had been something about Penelope's inability to have children, she'd heard. But if that were true, the woman had picked a curious way of showing any desire. Maybe they'd taken Judy before living with John McAllister had deadened Penelope's natural warmth, though.

"That has to be it," Judy commented quietly to the needle. "He'd kill everything in anybody!"

Penny-pitching bastard, that's what he is. And sour, besides. Wonder if I'll ever know how much they got for bringing me up-or who paid it. That was the whole secret, of course. They'd taken her in because somebody had wanted them to. Somebody had gone to Oliver Garlock for help. And Oliver had turned to his sister, Penelope, knowing her need even though she'd given up her place in the Garlock dynasty for that good-for-nothing nobody, McAllister. And Oliver had made whatever financial commitments had been necessary, never telling who he was acting for and never caring to know anything about the child he'd placed, except to know she had a home with God-fearing, conscientious people. Evidently that was all he'd been asked to assure whoever he'd acted for.

McAllister, being the type he was, had visualized Oliver's commitment as an obligation against the Garlock estate. And he'd seen it as a two-way street. So when the urgent plea had come for a companion to watch Sarah Garlock die, John had rejected whatever reservations Judy had without letting her express them.

He'd growled, "You'll go, by God. You'll go and you'll like it. Clear?"

She hadn't dared open her mouth.

But she had her own share of the tension in the house. Nobody else knew-except one, of course-but a nagging edge of fear kept her looking over her shoulders in the long, dark hallways and made her hurry when she had to go through any of the less-used rooms. Garlock Heights was a fitting place for the burden of mystery she had to bear.

She listened to Sarah's breathing again. Satisfied the woman still slept, she took a soiled, much-handled letter from one of the dresser drawers where she kept it hidden under her neatly folded panties. She took it to the window and reread it as she had many times each day since she'd found it waiting for her in the mail on her arrival.

Judith McAllister: (That had been part of the agreement; no adoption, but she was to use the McAllister name while she lived with John and Penelope.) Judith McAllister: Who I am don't matter. Watch out for yourself. There's dark deeds and hateful wrongs at Garlock House. Your in danger for your life. Walk carefully. But stick if you can. There's a grand prize if you play your cards right. Just be sure things aren't all what they look like. Don't trust nobody without you know what your doing. Signed, Somebody who you mean a lot to.

She'd crumpled it and thrown it in her waste basket. Anonymous letters were part of a world John McAllister had forcefully taught her didn't exist. Besides, even she could recognize illiterate spelling when she saw it. But Sarah had rambled weakly and petulantly about "youngsters" who wouldn't let well enough alone, about the young ones' vindictive insistence and the accident hadn't been accidental after all, and about the interesting way Oliver had set up his will. And Judy's contempt for the note had dissolved.

She'd retrieved it at her first opportunity. She'd learned something about modernization, as well. In the fiction she'd read, the postmark had always been the first important clue in case of anonymous mail. The envelope she examined had been cancelled merely with a stamp that announced, U.S. Postal Serive, and gave a barely legible date. The date was two days prior to Judy's arrival, but no one had been able to tell her whether the letter had come the day of her arrival or the day before.

The message, itself, was typewritten. She saw nothing distinctive about the type or the way it had been done. Anybody could have made the typographical errors it contained. And the paper was just plain paper as far as she was concerned.

She'd kept it to herself; if "things weren't what they looked like" and if she wasn't to trust anybody until she knew what she was doing, she'd decided the warning would remain a secret between her and the anonymous writer.

She shivered now and hid the crumpled piece of paper. It was so simple and transparent it was sinister-sinister in the same artless style as the house and the restless people in the house. If she were honest with herself, she knew little more about either house or people after ten days than she did about the shadowy writer. And she understood little even of what she did know.

The breathing next door faltered and yielded to a weak fit of coughing. After a moment the coughing stopped and Sarah cleared her throat, hacking with all the vigor her weakened system was capable of.

"Judy...Judith?"

"Right here, Sarah." Judy was beside the helpless woman in seconds. She smiled and squeezed the thin hand. "Feel better this morning?"

Sarah grunted, coughed, cleared her throat and made a faint gesture of shaking her head. "You know better."

Judy bent closer to hear.

Sarah continued, her voice gaining strength. "You know better, girl. Feel worse every morning, not better."

"I . . .I'm sorry."

"Yes, yes, dear. I know. Well, we say things by habit. How long was it Oliver kept saying 'I love you' at bedtime when it had all changed to hate?"

"Oh, no! Not really, Sarah! Not hate!"

"Hate, my dear. Hateful, irascible man. He hated me because of the children, you know."

You've said it before! thought Judy desperately. Oh, God, you've said it so often before! But aloud she murmured soothingly, "Not really, Sarah. Not really."

"The children," Sarah repeated herself, ignoring Judy's protest. "Because they were older than Mike, don't you see, and wouldn't take the boy's pushing. And because I didn't give him any more .. . because after all I couldn't have any more. He even hated me for being older than he was! Imagine!" Sarah sagged, her ringers fluttering weakly, and turned her head to survey Judy. A sly smile lit her drawn face. "Forgot to get dressed. Legs like those, you oughtn't to wear a skirt, anyway."

Judy felt herself flush and her hands went automatically to cover the brief, flimsy panties. "Oh, my! I was putting a button on and-"

The door to the hall opened and Lowell stepped briskly into his mother's room. His eyes widened abruptly and he whistled when he saw Judy.

"Whew! Legs and more legs!"

"Oh, please!" Judy wailed and backed toward her own room.

Sarah interfered. "My goodness, child! Don't be provincial! You really ought to let yourself go, you know. In my day it was different. But you young people...You can make your choices! You don't have to deny natural feelings!" She sighed. She continued to grow stronger, as if she were drawing on reserves nobody should expect her to have. "You're so very lucky!" She turned to her son. "Boy...see if you can talk some sense into her! I'm sure a dying woman can't. I'll be all right by myself. Don't mind me."

"Oh, no!" Judy whispered. Maybe she wasn't ready for all that freedom of choice, after all, she thought. If she were, she wouldn't have all these funny, squiggly feelings of fear and embarrassment.

Maybe, she thought, the real problem was her status here. She and that dear Colleen Devlin were the outsiders-the only two not related in any way to everybody else in the house. Garlock Heights consisted of two parts, now falling apart.

There were Oliver Garlock, "grand lord and master," now dead in that brutal accident, and his son Mike. There were Sarah, Oliver's second wife (and soon to be dead from the same accident), and Sarah's two children by her previous marriage. Those two were Lowell Blake and Edith Blake Porter. Then, of course, there were Lowell's ex-model wife, redheaded Gwen Blake, and Edith's self-made husband, Cal Porter.

Judy and Colleen were the domestics-Colleen Devlin because she'd been there as housekeeper-maid since right after Oliver's first wife had died, Judy because she was the foster-daughter of Oliver's sister.

And how much freedom did a domestic really have to refuse her employer's advances Judy wondered. What help could she look for when Lowell followed his mother's suggestion?