Heroes are My Weakness (6 page)

She opened the door of the dumbwaiter, lowered her head, and uttered, in a soft, creepy moan,
“The horror . . .”
The words uncoiled like a hissing snake.
“The horrrror . . .”

She got goose bumps.

Sick!
Scamp exclaimed in delight.

Juvenile, but satisfying,
Dilly said.

Annie hurried back the way she’d come and let herself out. Staying in the shadows where she couldn’t be spotted from the turret, she made her way to the drive.

Harp House finally had the ghost it deserved.

Chapter Three

A
NNIE WOKE UP IN A
slightly more positive frame of mind. The idea of driving Theo Harp gradually insane was so satisfyingly twisted that she couldn’t help but feel better. There was no way he could write those awful books without a powerful imagination, and what could be more well deserved than turning that imagination against him? She thought about what else she might be able to pull off and allowed herself a brief fantasy of Theo in a straitjacket, trapped behind asylum bars.

With snakes slithering across the floor!
Scamp added.

You won’t get him that easily,
Leo sneered.

Annie hit a snag in her hair and tossed her comb aside. She pulled on jeans, a camisole, a long-sleeved gray T-shirt, and topped it all with a sweatshirt that had somehow survived her college days. As she left her bedroom for the living room, she took in what she’d done before she’d gone to bed last night. The small animal skulls Mariah had displayed in a bowl edged with barbed wire were now buried in the bottom of a trash bag. Her mother and Georgia O’Keeffe might find bones beautiful, but Annie didn’t, and if she had to spend two months here, she was going to feel at least marginally at home. Unfortunately, the cottage was so compact there was nowhere to stash the iridescent plaster mermaid chair. She’d tried to sit in it and been jabbed in the back with a pair of breasts.

Two items she’d uncovered disturbed her—a copy of the
Portland Press Herald
dated exactly seven days earlier and a bag of freshly ground coffee in the kitchen. Someone had been here recently.

She drank a cup of that same coffee and made herself eat a piece of jelly toast. She dreaded the thought of going back to Harp House, but at least she’d have WiFi access. She studied the painting of the inverted tree. Maybe by the end of the day she’d know who R. Connor was and whether his or her work had any value.

She couldn’t put it off any longer. She stuffed her inventory notebook, her laptop, and some other things in her backpack, wrapped herself up, and began her reluctant journey to Harp House. As she crossed the eastern edge of the marsh, she eyed the wooden footbridge. Bypassing it made the trip longer, and she needed to stop avoiding it. She would. But not today.

Annie had met Theo and Regan Harp two weeks after Mariah and Elliott had flown off to the Caribbean together and returned married. The twins were just coming up the cliff steps from the beach. Regan had appeared first, all golden tan legs and long, dark hair swinging around her pretty face. Then Annie had seen Theo. Even at sixteen, skinny, with a few breakouts on his forehead and a face not quite big enough to carry his nose, he’d been arresting, aloof, and she was instantly captivated. He, however, had regarded her with undisguised boredom.

Annie desperately wanted them to like her, but she was intimidated by their self-confidence, and that made her tongue-tied in their presence. While Regan was easy and sweet, Theo was rude and cutting. Elliott tended to indulge them both in an attempt to make up for their mother’s desertion when they were five, but he insisted they include Annie in their activities. Theo begrudgingly invited her to go out with them on their sailboat. But when Annie arrived at the dock that jutted between Harp House and Moonraker Cottage, Theo, Regan, and Jaycie had already set off without her. The next day she’d shown up an hour earlier only to have them not appear at all.

One afternoon Theo told Annie she should go see an old lobster boat wreck not far down the shoreline. Annie discovered too late that the wreck had become a nesting spot for the island’s gulls. They’d dive-bombed her, batting her with their wings, and one had struck her on the head in a scene straight out of Hitchcock’s
The Birds.
Annie had been wary of birds ever since.

The litany of his misdeeds had been unending: dead fish in her bed, rough play in the swimming pool, abandoning her in the dark on the beach one night. Annie shook off the memories. Fortunately, she’d never be fifteen again.

She began to cough, and as she stopped to catch her breath, she realized it was her first coughing spasm of the morning. Maybe she was finally getting better. She imagined herself sitting at a warm desk in a warm office, a warm computer in front of her, as she worked away at a job that would bore her to tears but would bring a steady paycheck.

But what about us?
Crumpet whined.

Annie needs a real job,
sensible Dilly said.
She can’t be a vent forever.

Scamp piped up with her own words of advice.
You should have made porn puppets. You could have charged a lot more for the shows.

The porn puppets were an idea Annie had entertained when she was running the worst of her fever.

She finally reached the top of the cliff. As she passed the stable, she heard a horse whinny. She quickly cut into the trees just in time to see Theo emerge through the stable doors. Annie was cold even in her down coat, but he wore only a charcoal sweater, jeans, and riding boots.

He stopped walking. She was behind him, but the tree cover was sparse, and she prayed he wouldn’t turn around.

A gust of wind stirred up a ghostly dervish in the snow. He crossed his arms over his chest, grabbed the bottom of his sweater, and pulled it over his head. He wore nothing underneath.

She gazed at him in astonishment. He stood there bare-chested, the wind tearing at his thick dark hair as he defied the Maine winter. He didn’t move. She might have been watching one of the old television soaps famous for using any excuse to get their heroes out of their shirts. Except it was bitterly cold, Theo Harp was no hero, and the only explanation for what he’d done was insanity.

He knotted his hands into fists at his sides, lifted his chin, and gazed at the house. How could someone so beautiful be so cruel? The hard planes of his back . . . The muscularity of his broad shoulders . . . The way he stood against the sky . . . It was all so strange. He seemed less a mortal and more a part of the landscape—a primitive creature who didn’t need the simple human comforts of warmth, food . . . love.

She shivered inside her down coat and watched him disappear through the turret door, his sweater still dangling at his side.

J
AYCIE WAS TOUCHINGLY GLAD TO
see her. “I can’t believe you came back,” she said as Annie hung up her backpack and pulled off her boots.

Annie put on her happiest face. “If I stayed away, I’d miss all the fun.” She glanced around the kitchen. Despite its gloom, it looked marginally better than it had yesterday, but it was still awful.

Jaycie lumbered from the stove toward the table, gnawing on her bottom lip. “Theo’s going to fire me,” she whispered. “I know he is. Since he stays in the turret all the time, he doesn’t think anybody needs to be in the house. If it weren’t for Cynthia . . .” She gripped the crutches so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “This morning he spotted Lisa McKinley here. She’s been meeting the mail boat for me. I didn’t think he knew about it, but I was wrong. He hates having people around.”

Then how does he expect to find his next murder victim?
Scamp inquired.
Unless it’s Jaycie . . .

I’ll take care of her,
Peter trumpeted.
That’s what I do. Take care of weak women.

Jaycie repositioned herself on her crutches, the pink hippopotamus head bobbing incongruously near her armpit, her forehead furrowing. “He . . . he sent me a text and told me he didn’t want Lisa up here anymore. To have them hold the mail in town until he could get to it. But Lisa’s been bringing up groceries every week, too, and what am I supposed to do about that? I can’t lose this job, Annie. It’s all I have.”

Annie tried to be encouraging. “Your foot will be better soon, and you’ll be able to drive.”

“That’s only part of it. He doesn’t like kids here. I told him how quiet Livia is and promised he wouldn’t even know she was around, but she keeps sneaking outside. I’m afraid he’ll see her.”

Annie shoved her feet into the sneakers she’d brought with her. “Let me get this straight. Because of Lord Theo, a four-year-old can’t go outside to play? That’s not right.”

“I guess he can do what he wants—it’s his house. Besides, as long as I’m on crutches, I can’t go out with her anyway, and I don’t want her out there by herself.”

Annie hated the way Jaycie kept making excuses for him. She should be smart enough to see him as he really was, but after all these years, she still seemed to have a crush on him.

Kids have crushes,
Dilly whispered.
Jaycie’s a grown woman. Maybe it’s more than a crush.

This is not good,
Scamp said.
Not good at all.

Livia came into the kitchen. She wore her corduroy pants from yesterday and carried a clear plastic shoe box–size container of broken crayons along with a dog-eared pad of drawing paper. Annie smiled at her. “Hi, Livia.”

The child ducked her head.

“She’s shy,” Jaycie said.

Livia brought her drawing supplies to the table, hoisted herself up onto one of the chairs, and set to work. Jaycie showed Annie where the cleaning supplies were stored, apologizing the whole time. “You don’t have to do this. Really. It’s my problem, not yours.”

Annie cut off her apologies. “Why don’t you see what you can do about his master’s meals? Since you let me down with the rat poison idea, maybe you could find some deadly mushrooms?”

Jaycie smiled. “He’s not that bad, Annie.”

So untrue.

As Annie carried dust rags and a broom into the main hallway, she eyed the stairs uneasily. She prayed Jaycie was right and that Theo’s appearance here four days ago had been an anomaly. If he found out Annie was doing Jaycie’s work, he really would find another housekeeper.

Most of the downstairs rooms were closed off to conserve heat, but the foyer, Elliott’s office, and the dreary sunroom all needed attending. With her limited strength, she decided to make the foyer her priority, but by the time she’d gotten rid of the cobwebs and wiped down the dusty paneled walls, she was wheezing. She returned to the kitchen and found Livia alone there, still busy at the table with her crayons.

She’d been thinking about Livia, and she went into the mudroom to find her backpack with Scamp inside. Annie made most of her puppets’ outfits, including Scamp’s rainbow tights, short pink skirt, and bright yellow T-shirt with its sparkly purple star. A headband with a floppy green poppy held her crazy orange yarn curls in place. Annie slipped the puppet over her hand and arm, then positioned her fingers on the levers that operated the puppet’s mouth and eyes. She held Scamp behind her back and returned to the table.

As Livia peeled the paper from her red crayon, Annie took a chair catty-corner to her. Instantly, Scamp poked her head up over the side of the table and peered at Livia. “La . . . La . . .
LA!
” Scamp sang in her most attention-getting voice. “I Scamp, otherwise known as Genevieve Adelaide Josephine Brown, declare it a beee-u-tiful day!”

Livia jerked up her head and stared at the puppet. Scamp leaned forward, her wild curls tumbling around her face, and tried to peer at Livia’s artwork. “I love to draw, too. Can I see your picture?”

Livia, all eyes on the puppet, covered the paper with her arm.

“I suppose some things are private,” Scamp said. “But I believe in sharing my talents. Like my singing.”

Livia cocked her head curiously.

“I’m a wonderful singer,” Scamp chirped. “Not that I share my amazingly fabulous songs with just anybody. Like you and your drawing. You don’t have to share with anyone.”

Livia promptly pulled her hand away from what she’d drawn. While Scamp bent over the paper to study it, Annie had to rely on what she could see out of the corner of her eye—something approximating a human figure standing near a crudely drawn house.

“Fab-u-loso!” Scamp said. “I, too, am a great artist.” Now she was the one who cocked her head. “Would you like to hear me sing?”

Livia nodded.

Scamp threw her arms wide and began to sing a comically operatic version of “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” that always brought squeals of laughter from the kindergarten crowd.

Livia listened carefully, but she didn’t crack a smile, not even when Scamp began changing the lyrics. “Out came the moon and drank up all the grasshopper juice . . . And the itsy-bitsy underpants went crazy all over again.
Olé!
”

The singing made Annie cough. She covered it up by having Scamp embark on a wild dance. At the end, Scamp threw herself down on the table. “Being fabulous is soooo exhausting.”

Livia nodded solemnly.

Annie had learned it was best when dealing with children to stop when you were ahead. Scamp picked herself up and tossed her head of curls. “It’s time for my nap.
Au revoir.
Until we meet again . . .” She disappeared under the table.

Livia immediately ducked her head to see where the puppet had gone, but as she leaned forward, Annie rose, tucked Scamp out of sight in front of her, and crossed the floor to return the puppet to the backpack. She didn’t look at Livia, but as she left the kitchen she could feel the child watching her.

L
ATER THAT DAY, WHILE
T
HEO
was out riding, Annie took advantage of his absence to carry the trash that had accumulated in the house out to the metal drums that sat behind the stables. On her way back to the house, she looked toward the empty swimming pool. An unsightly collection of frozen debris had accumulated on the bottom. Even in the heart of the summer, the water around Peregrine Island was frigid, and she and Regan had done most of their swimming in the pool while Theo preferred the ocean. If the surf was up, he’d toss his board in the back of his Jeep and head toward Gull Beach. Annie had yearned to go with him but was too afraid of rejection to ask.