Rose Red: Model 85001
Chapter 12
There was a choking sound on the other end of the phone. Van rolled his eyes. It sounded like this Dryden guy had spurted a mouth full of coffee into the receiver.
"Wait a second. What did you say her name was?" the private investigator asked after he paused to wipe his mouth.
"Hitomi Kanzaki," Van replied with a heavy dose of patience.
The guy on the other end of the phone hooted. "That's tremendous!" he exclaimed with a howl. "I should come down there in person. What's your address?"
Van's dose of patience had already worn off. "Excuse me. Do you mind telling me what you're so excited about? If it's just because she once belonged to Allen Schezar and you think she might have an interesting story to tell a magazine editor, you'd be dead wrong. She's had her memory wiped."
When Van said that, the private investigator calmed right down. "Are you serious?"
"Of course. I'm calling you to see if you can help me fill in the blanks of her missing memory."
Dryden sucked in his breath. "Of all the stupid rat sh… Still, I'll come right down. What's your address?"
"Are you sure you'll be able to make it? It's quite far away from the city." Van stalled. He wasn't actually sure he could trust someone Dilandau had recommended before he made the call, and now that he'd talked to him, he still wasn't sure.
"Listen, I understand if you're getting cold feet about hiring me," Dryden said rationally. "But the reason I'm interested in Hitomi has nothing to do with selling the fabulous story of a purchased woman. It's because she's been part of a case I've been working on for years. I thought she was dead."
"Dead?"
"I'll be there by tonight. I'll meet you at Dilandau's house."
Then the line went dead.
Van clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and clicked the phone off. How could that maniac make it all the way to Dilandau's by evening?
Then he heard Hitomi calling him down the hall. It was time for lunch. He got up and strode down the hall. The kitchen was empty and it took him a second to realize she was in the conservatory pouring drinks for them.
There was a white rose bud behind one of her ears. The water in the crystal made a pattern of light across her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle.
Van's heart ached.
What had that monster done to her?
Van got in his truck in revved the engine. He'd already told Hitomi he was going to town to 'hang out with the guys'.
"Which guys?" she had asked reluctantly.
He knew he'd never done anything like this before, so he was honest. "Dilandau."
"Dilandau?" She laughed. She knew Van couldn't stand him. "Have a good time!"
Van smirked. "Don't you want to know why I'm going?" he called after her. She was already half up the stairs of her tower.
She leaned over the railing and said, "Not really. If it has to do with Dilandau, then that means you can't get out of it. Unless …" She drummed her fingers on the banister. "You're actually going to see Celena?"
That was when Van clued in to the idea that Hitomi might know about his past feelings for Celena.
Van had waved her off playfully, but now that he sat alone in the truck preparing for a bumpy drive to town, he hated himself. How had he given himself away? Was he really that obvious? Was that why Hitomi always seemed to regard him with unwavering plutonic friendship? Because she thought that his feelings were with a married woman? Damn.
When Van got to Dilandau's, Dilandau and another man were waiting outside the house.
Van shut off the engine and casually made his way over to them. The stranger was probably Dryden. Van mistrusted him on sight. His hair was too long. He hadn't shaved in well, maybe it was only since that morning – he did look like the type who got a ten o'clock shadow and then a two o'clock shadow long before five. Well, those weren't the only things. He didn't do up enough buttons on his shirt and he was smoking something vile in a pipe. He was exactly Dilandau's type of guy.
"Greetings," Dryden said cheerfully.
"Hi," Van said.
Dryden tapped out his pipe on an old salon-style hairdryer that was sitting in the yard and was about to say something when Dilandau suddenly roared, "Hey! I just got that for Celena."
"Oh," Dryden said, brushing the ashes off it. "I thought it was garbage." It was no wonder he would say that, considering the heaps of trash sticking through the untrimmed grass.
Dilandau disliked Dryden as much as he did, Van realized.
Dilandau scowled at both of them and indicated that they could come inside. Dryden sat at one end of the couch while Van sat on the other and Dilandau filled in his butt-print in his usual armchair.
"Before we begin, I should tell you that right now I'm acting as the employee of Mrs. Marlene Schezar."
"Who is she?"
"Allen's wife."
"Excuse me," Van snorted. "He's married?"
"Yeah, it was one of the biggest weddings in celebrity history. Back when she married him she was not only an honest-to-goodness princess, daughter of a king and everything, but she was also a very accomplished clothing designer."
"What happened?"
Dryden took out his phone and projected a series of images onto the wall over the television. They were pictures of Allen and an extremely stunning woman in a white wedding gown. Van had seen her picture before, but he didn't know her name or that she was a princess.
"Why would a princess want to marry him?"
"The Schezar family is rich. They are rich beyond your wildest dreams and actually also the wildest dreams of the Aston family. Marlene was married to Allen for the sake of money, but she did not know that that money was drenched in blood." Dryden continued. "They were married for about three weeks before she realized that there was something wrong with him. I mean something more than multiple surgical procedures – something worse. By the end of the first three months, she refused to live with him and now they are considered by the public as permanently separated. He simply won't sign for a divorce. Besides, at this point, there's little point in pursuing one."
"Why?" Van asked breezily. "If she dislikes him so much?"
"She's dying," Dryden admitted gravely.
Van's mouth hung open in silence.
Dryden continued. "She believes that Allen married her just so that he could become a prince. What is not commonly known is that three months into their marriage she was diagnosed with M.T.N."
Van's throat tightened at the mention of the illness. It was completely incurable. Someone diagnosed with it could not hope to live for longer than four years. Many people died much sooner than that if they didn't have proper treatment. Van had seen it. Hair gone, limbs hanging on by threads – a patient lay blindfolded and crumbling at the end. Both his parents had died that way. But, the disease didn't fly across the air. You had to get it from something.
Dryden cleared his throat and went on, "Marlene believes that Allen deliberately infected her with it."
Van turned his head away. "No one is that cruel."
"Well, she doesn't believe this without reason. The Schezar family hasn't exactly treated their women with equality in the past. Allen's aunt was put into cryostasis repeatedly for absolutely no reason, other than to get her out of the way from time to time."
"No one would do that either."
"Yes, they would. Why don't you just ask Celena?"
Van twitched. He wasn't thinking. That was right. He overheard Allen and Celena talking the other day in the café. Allen had said she was his aunt.
"So, even though there is loads of criminal evidence against other members of the Schezar family – Allen is clean. The reason Marlene wants to find Hitomi is because she's sure that Hitomi knows all about Allen's past indiscretion. Otherwise, why would he pay her off?"
"What if she doesn't remember anything about that?" Van asked dryly.
"Well, there are two different ways of having a memory wiped. One is through brain damage. If it's done that way, then there's no way of recovering the information. Or there's another treatment that's based in hypnosis. They hypnotize a person and force them to close a door on a certain part of their life."
"How was Hitomi paid off?" Van asked, suddenly remembering his conversation with her about her financial transactions before she went into cryostasis. "If she was paid to keep Allen's secrets then why did she wipe her own memory and sell herself? Besides, she was actually in debt when I recovered her."
Dryden looked taken back. "Hmm," he said thoughtfully. "Then the only answer is that he didn't pay her off – he wiped her memory for her. If she didn't consent, we wouldn't know, would we? Her memory of that conversation is gone."
Van clenched his fists and couldn't speak for a second. He hadn't even considered the possibility that Allen would have done it for her to protect his closet full of skeletons.
"How could we prove that?" Dilandau interjected.
"We have to find out where she had her memory wipe done," Dryden said confidently, as he turned off his projector. "In the meantime, I'd like to talk to Hitomi. Will you allow that, Van? Even if she got her memory wiped, she may remember something that can help me put the pieces together and get a little justice for a princess."
"Sure," Van said, raking a hand through his hair.
"Good. Can you bring her to the café tomorrow?"
Van nodded.
Hitomi came out of the shower and looked at the clock. It was after ten and Van still wasn't home. Van had left her at home plenty of times to do tours and other flights to the city, but this was the first time he had been gone at night. Hitomi found herself very lonely. Even though Van slept at a completely different corner of the house, she really relied on his company.
She sat down in front of her dresser with the mirror over it and shook her towel off her head. She was just about to comb her hair when she noticed a little folded piece of white paper stuck between her lotion and her deodorant.
Flipping it open was a man's messy scrawl. 'Miss me?' it said.
Thinking it was from Van; she smiled wanly and thought it was strange. This was the first time he had ever left her a note. Normally, he would just come and talk to her. And when did he have a chance to get up to her room. He hardly ever came upstairs.
She set the note down on her dresser and went on combing her hair. Then she reached into one of her drawers and brought out a hairdryer. Another note was lying underneath it. Hitomi took it out and read it. 'I missed you,' it said.
Hitomi's eyes flicked around the room uneasily. The note wasn't from Van.
When she came into the room after Allen left, the first thing she did was strip the bed. She took all the bedding to the laundry room on the main floor. Then she took all the towels out, even the ones he hadn't used and had them washed too. Then she put new blankets on her bed and forgot that he had been staying in her room at all.
A shiver ran up her body and didn't leave out her elbows to her shoulders.
She needed to clean this room again.
After running downstairs to get her supplies, she started in on it. Her room consisted of a dresser with six drawers. Half of them were filled with clothing, the other half were filled had a few bags in them and her hairdryer. She shook out each piece of clothing and went through every single compartment in the bags. She found two more notes. One was in the front flap of her most used purse and the other was in the back pocket of a pair of her jeans.
When she found the one in her purse, she had to go through it and make sure that nothing was missing. It wasn't really that she had anything valuable. All her most important information was in her bracelet, but STILL! After examining it, nothing was missing, but she still felt violated.
The note from her jeans said, '90-342-9325-00-3432.' Hitomi knew it was his phone number. It was the same number from when she spied it in his father's address book when she was seventeen. That number was intended for family use only.
The note in her purse said, 'Did you find the money yet?'
But Hitomi didn't stop there. She still had a closet full of clothes to inspect.
By the end, after having looked in every nook and cranny, every toe of every shoe, every vase, and even in the light fixture – she found three more notes.
'Remember, I can get you out of this.'
'You don't have to stay a purchased woman.'
'I'm waiting…'
Hitomi laid them all out on the floor. She didn't know how to deal with this. Sure, Allen would probably never come back here. He'd wait for her to contact him, but this room was completely destroyed for her. How was she supposed to sleep here now with his fingerprints all over everything?
She felt like dying.
Just then she heard the door. Thank goodness! Van was home.
She gathered up the notes and went downstairs. Van had already gone to his room and shut the door. Hitomi tiptoed up to his door. She had a half a mind to knock and ask him if she could sleep with him that night – just because she couldn't sleep in her room now.
She raised her hand to do it when she remembered two things. The first one was that Van had gone to see Celena that night, and the second one was that there was a completely un-used-by-Allen bed in the spare room.
She opened the door and went in. She'd sleep in the spare room instead.
Author's Notes: I have notes. And they're good notes too.
Thanks to everyone who reviews, sends me PMs and reads. I'm all out of wittiness.