Page 42 of Close Up

Vivian raised her brows. “You sound like you’ve had personal experience.”

Nick reached out and rested his hand on Rex’s back. The dog immediately raised his head in response. Alert but not alarmed, not yet at any rate.

“Unfortunately,” Nick said, “the bride did not pay attention to what her intuition was trying to tell her until it was too late.”

“Too late?”

“Patricia had a nervous breakdown on what was supposed to be our wedding night. The marriage was never consummated.”

The atmosphere on the patio suddenly became very still. Vivian held her breath, waiting for secrets to be revealed. She watched Nick with the same kind of focus that she used when she took photos. The energy around him was as strong and vital as ever but the shadows that she had sensed just beneath the surface grew more intense.

“What happened?” she asked, mesmerized.

“I told you, the marriage was annulled.” Nick smiled a bleak smile. “According to the law it never existed.”

“Were the grounds failure to consummate the relationship or mental instability?”

“No,” Nick said. “The grounds were bigamy. The woman I married was already legally wed to another man. Patricia had done her best to assume another identity, but on our wedding night she lost her nerve because she felt guilty. We arranged for a quiet annulment.”

“Did she go back to her real husband?”

“No. She was afraid of him. With good reason. He tracked her down and tried to kill her.”

And suddenly Vivian could see the rest of the story as clearly as if she were looking at Nick through the lens of a camera.

“Patricia’s husband is dead, isn’t he?” she said.

She stopped there because she could not bring herself to probe any deeper. Nick had a right to his secrets. But he picked up where she had left off, answering the obvious follow-up question in a way that made her realize he was carefully choosing each word.

“His name was Fulton Gage,” Nick said. “He fell from the rooftop of a hotel in San Francisco. Broke his neck.”

She caught her breath. “Suicide?”

“Yes, according to the authorities.”

“Hang on, did this happen about a year ago? I was still living in San Francisco at the time. I remember something in the papers. Two men were supposedly fighting over a woman. One of the men—the husband—jumped. The authorities said he was evidently distraught because his wife had run off with another man.”

“There was a little more to the story,” Nick said. “His plan was to shoot me first, but in the fog he ran out of ammunition. He couldn’t see more than two or three feet. Unfortunately, he had Patricia. She was supposed to be hiding in a safe location but she knew that Gage wouldprobably try to kill me. She felt guilty because she had put me in harm’s way. She went to him. Pleaded with him not to hurt me. Offered to go back to him. He grabbed her and then he used her to draw me out onto the roof.”

“So the press got it right. The fight was over a woman. One man wanted to murder her. The other saved her life.”

“It sounds simple when you put it like that.”

“I’m sure it was anything but simple,” Vivian said. “How did you manage to save Patricia?”

“He was obsessed with the need to control her. I used that obsession to make him lose what little self-control he possessed. I pointed out that he was obviously so weak willed any woman could manipulate him. He had a gun. I figured he would either make a run for it when he ran out of ammunition or try to charge me. He came at me, following my voice in the fog. He had the knife that he had planned to use on Patricia. When he finally saw me, I’m sure that all he could make out was my silhouette. He didn’t realize I was standing right at the edge of the roof. He lunged forward...”

Nick stopped talking.

“Obviously you got out of his way,” Vivian finished quietly.

“At the last possible second. He went over the edge.”

Vivian took a deep breath. “That was not your fault.”

Nick was silent for a long moment. “Depends on how you look at it.”

“Is this where you tell me youknewhe would probably go over the edge if you managed to make him charge you?”

---