Writ on Water (19 page)

Chloe snorted and replied bracingly, “You're alike. Believe me, anyone can tell that Rory's your son.”

“You think so? People used to comment on the similarity. He has my eyes and hair, you know,” he added with a flash of pride.

“And your build. And your stubbornness. And your intelligence. So what's eating you? Are you . . .” Chloe hunted for a polite euphemism and couldn't find one. Anyway, she was too tired to
bother being polite. “Are you concerned that jerk, Claude, might come back and do something bad?”

“No.” The denial was immediate and firm. MacGregor smiled humorlessly. “Claude will never tell anyone anything about this place. That I am certain of. We don't need to worry about him.” MacGregor's voice lowered. “No, he won't be saying a damned thing to anyone—ever.”

“Well, good. Then we have nothing to worry about.” Chloe wasn't as certain as MacGregor that Claude could be trusted, but she wasn't about to say so. And MacGregor was too upset to hear her suspicions about who had broken into Botanics.

Maybe it was time to start thinking about taking some greater security measures to allay MacGregor's fear. She would talk to Rory as soon as she could. He was right to be worried about his father's fascination with the cemetery; MacGregor's preoccupation with maintaining the graveyard's privacy at any cost was a TV docudrama just waiting to happen. Yes, MacGregor Patrick's veneer of modernity was thin. Rub it the wrong way and a ruthless pirate was likely to come through. And pirates were no respecters of society's laws. After seeing him around Sheriff Bell, Chloe had no trouble imagining him unloading a barrelful of buckshot into some innocent trespasser because the schmuck was showing disrespect for the Patrick dead. She was also less convinced than MacGregor that Claude would never say anything about the cemetery.

Chloe sat, squeezing MacGregor's hand and wondering how Rory had escaped the Patrick preoccupation with death and found his way into the world of computers and fax machines. She'd stretched the truth about Rory a little bit to comfort MacGregor. Rory wasn't a complete carbon copy of his father. Perhaps it was his mother's doing. Maybe she had been firmly grounded in twentieth-century principles of law and order, and had a love for the modern conveniences.

Of course, electronic trappings didn't guarantee that a man wasn't a pirate beneath the skin. What did she know about Rory, really? He'd been pretty ruthless when dealing with MacGregor's night of excess. And you didn't run a successful large company by being a marshmallow.

“You like my son, don't you?” MacGregor asked, as though picking up her thoughts. “You two have some things in common.”

“A few. But don't go getting any wild ideas. We wouldn't suit.”

MacGregor looked skeptical.

“I mean it, MacGregor. Lots of people like opera and flowers. You can't read anything into that.”

“Well, now! Actually I can,” he said, smiling happily for the first time in days. “But I won't trouble you with my thoughts since it makes you so skittish. You just run along, girl, and find Roger if you can. I'll be back to the house soon and we'll have some tea.”

Tea? Probably with a shot of something alcoholic in it.

“Okay,” she agreed, deciding against further warnings about his romantic fantasy. It was more important to cheer him up than to insist upon veracity. And time would take care of this ridiculous notion. She and Rory falling for one another? No, that wasn't in the cards.

Roger was where she expected, rolling and clawing at the door to tomb forty-six. He was looking a little greasy and bedraggled from his orgy of rolling. The summer rains had caused a new crop of moss or lichen to sprout on the stone sill, and the feline had covered himself in the slimy stuff.

“Yuck!” She held the cat away from her body as she inspected his limp form. Even his whiskers were sticky and he smelled a bit sour. “You're wanted back at the house, buster, but you're not getting inside until you're toweled off.”

Roger moaned pathetically.

“Well, you should have thought of that before you went and got all dirty. What's with tomb forty-six anyway? It isn't the nicest one. In fact, it's damned gloomy.” Her footsteps creaked over the discarded oak leaves. The desiccated remains were too wet to crackle. “Why don't you play in your own yard? There's a nice big bed of catnip right by the porch.”

Roger began to purr. Chloe relented and tucked him into her shoulder. Her shirt needed washing
anyway and she found the cat's weight to be pleasant and reassuring even if he smelled a little vinegary.

“Okay. I'll be your human litter-bearer—but just this once! I usually have cameras to carry.”

She wasn't terribly surprised when Rory met her at the gate. He had obviously seen his father, as he had the cemetery key in his hand.

“I guess we need to be extra careful about locking up with vandals in the area,” she said, shifting the cat so his claws weren't resting directly over her jugular vein.

“Hm.”

The reply was absentminded and not terribly encouraging, but Chloe persisted anyway: “I was talking to your dad. I get the impression that he is worried—I mean,
more
worried—about someone finding the cemetery. He's talking about letting the whole thing grow over.”

“It might not be a bad idea,” Rory said, shocking her.

“What? But you can't!”

“Not until you're done, of course. But after? It might be best. MacGregor's been spending far too much time out here. It's morbid. He needs some other occupation. He has to let Mom go.”

Part of Chloe knew that Rory was right, but she protested anyway.

“Occupation like what?
Bingo? The Rotary Club?”

Really she was protesting the loss of all that beautiful art as much as MacGregor's forced separation
from his beloved cemetery, which was selfish, but she couldn't help herself.

“Why not? Other people do it when they lose a spouse,” Rory said defensively. “He can learn to have other interests.”

“Get real . . . Or better yet, get married and have some grandkids. That would really please him.”

Rory snorted. “You get real. I have a business to run. I can't have kids just to entertain my father.”

“Why the sneer? ‘Other people do it. You can learn to have other interests',” she mimicked. Then, more seriously: “Really, Rory, you can't blame him for wanting your happiness. If you were just a tiny bit less stubborn—”

“MacGregor doesn't want my happiness,” Rory growled with a shade of bitterness. “He wants a dynasty.”

“He
has
a dynasty, and it's dying out. You don't know your father real well, do you?” She spoke without thinking.

“And you think you do?” he asked coldly, turning on his heel and walking away from her. “Believe me, you don't know him at all. You don't know any of us, so don't make judgments about who we are and what we need in our lives.”

After a moment, Chloe closed her gaping mouth and looked down at the bored cat shedding on her chest.

“Well, Roger! What do you think that was all about? Did we just stab him in his Achilles heel?” She added, “Not that I didn't deserve it for being
so presumptuous. So much for the peacemakers being blessed.”

The cat didn't answer; he just stared over her shoulder, looking back at the gray mausoleum.

“Well, I think that somebody is still cranky about those broken pots, which is understandable. We'll have to cut him a little slack. Today.”

The cat gave a soft chuff, but didn't protest when she took him out of the cemetery.

The graveyard is full of indispensable men.
—Charles de Gaulle

Chloe rushed through breakfast. There was no reason for her to linger at the table. The meal was as unpleasant as dinner had been the night before. Not that the food could be faulted; the fare was as excellent as it always was. It was the company. MacGregor still wasn't his usual boisterous self, and Rory was maintaining his . . . not
coldness
, but deep preoccupation with something other than his present companions.

Chloe tried not to be hurt at the discovery that Rory Patrick, who had been shaping up as one of the nice guys, turned out to have feet—and a heart and possibly a brain—of clay after all.

Her subdued request for the cemetery keys was granted, but there were no offers of aid from either of the Patricks, a fact that suited her. Until the spiritual gloom had passed, she would be better
off working alone. It was bad enough to continue to have horrible realistic dreams every night, she didn't need the negative vibes during the day as well.

Rory did rouse from his self-absorption long enough to urge some of his smelly yellow oil on her. She didn't intend to use it, but accepted the offer without argument, deeming it easier than a debate. The two-tailed bashaw wasn't so far gone upon the road to thought that he didn't manage one suspicious look for her meek reply, but he chose not to inaugurate an argument in front of his father.

This fact was as interesting as anything else that had happened in the last three days, but Chloe firmly resisted the temptation to pry any further into the Patricks' affairs. So what if the fighting Patricks weren't fighting? She had a job to do and the rain had put her behind schedule. Anyway, she wasn't looking for any closer ties to the peculiar Patricks, was she? Her task was to get in, get done, and get out again as speedily as possible.

Chloe found the day's heat was lying in wait just outside the door, and it pounced on her with heavy feet. It was latent with the lingering humidity that hung suspended in the still morning air. It felt oily passing through her nose and into her lungs, and it insinuated itself into her clothing. But that, too, was something unpleasant that had to be ignored. The long pants and sleeves were necessary for the part of the cemetery she would
be working in, so dwelling on her future heat rash was a pointless activity.

Roger raced out the door with her, nearly tripping her as she struggled with her assorted bags and clipboards, but he didn't follow her into the family cemetery. Apparently he had tired of the sport in there and was going back to dig in his favorite earth in the slaves' half-cleared graveyard.

Chloe didn't look in his direction. Her antipathy for the sad place was stronger than ever, and she wished passionately that there was some way to avoid doing that part of her job.

But once again, dwelling on future misery was pointless. She would have to take pictures of the place eventually, but not until she felt more like it, or she ran out of other tombstones to photograph. Maybe with time, her opinions about the place would change.

The gate to the necropolis was nearly blotted out with new creeper and honeysuckle vine. It was all she could do to hold the living curtain aside while she fit the key into the lock, making her wish that she had remembered to bring some pruning shears. She was peeved enough with Rory to ignore his wishes and to go ahead and lop back the plants where she was working. It would slow but certainly not stop them from taking over the familial burial grounds.

Her path to the southwest corner of the cemetery, slotted that morning for photographic immortality, took her by tomb forty-six. The little
stone house looked rather naked and forlorn without Roger keeping vigil on the narrow sill. Chloe's footsteps slowed as she examined the tomb in the clear, early light. Something really was different about the place. The angle of the sun was causing some interesting shadows but . . .

Her eyes moved carefully, comparing the present setting with the one fixed in her head and found that there were two different images. Everything was in place from when she had last seen it. There were no trampled shrubs, no disturbed earth. It was just as it had been yesterday except . . .

“Get a grip.” But even as she scolded herself, she was stepping over to look at the door's stone sill.

It wasn't morning shadow darkening the doorway. It was a fresh crop of moss brought on by the rain. The chlorosis that yellowed the other brave cemetery parasites hadn't set in yet. It was green and already beginning to take on the quality of dense, uncut velvet.

She wasn't a huge fan of moss, but Rory certainly was. Chloe reached for her camera. This close-up of the sill would make an interesting photo for her private collection, and perhaps it would serve as a peace offering. She did actually—sort of—owe him an apology for her comment the day before. They said a picture was worth a thousand words. Surely this would be sufficient groveling!

It was dark enough that she had no choice except
to use a flash. She didn't want to spend a great deal of time on this pretty distraction, so she contented herself with a quick reading on her light meter and a couple of shots with different f-stops. It would have to do.

Chloe stepped back from the tomb, allowing the poor spider she had shocked into immobility with her flash to return to his task of webbing up the door. Roger had decimated his last effort, and she suspected that this would be the fate of the new silk home, too, but she wished the arachnid luck all the same. Forty-six needed some cobwebs. It was a building that cried out for webs and dead leaves on the roof, and patches of scabrous lichen creeping up its walls. Of all the tombs in the cemetery, it seemed the most
dead
. The thriving green moss was terribly out of place.

She worked through lunch that day. It was an exhausting stint, and she spent hours bulling her way through the months' accumulation of flora, using her tripod to stake the aggressive foliage back while she photographed her smaller finds. But she wasn't complaining because there were constant rewards for her labor. Whether the markers were those of blood Patricks or of their pampered pets, they were all extraordinary; touching, funny, beautiful. It was a pity that the place could never be opened to the public. Taphophiles would adore it—but, of course, it couldn't be opened. Thieves would adore the place too. No, they
couldn't open it; not ever. It would be like allowing burglars into an unguarded Tiffany's.