Ashes to Ashes (26 page)

Poor old James. “All right then. See you at five.”

“See you at five, Rebecca.”

She hung up with a smile and a pat to the receiver. Michael was singing, “Some day my prince will come.” Dorothy was smirking at her. Damn it, she wasn’t staging a show for their entertainment! Rebecca stamped into James’s bedroom, rescued the perfume bottle, and took it upstairs. The fifth floor bedroom, John and Elspeth’s room, was thick with the odor of lavender. The depression in the pillow on the bed was deeper than ever. Rebecca hurried away without looking behind her.

Back on the fourth floor Michael had shut up and was absorbed in a book. Rebecca sat on the bed, opening the first box she came to. Inside was a mound of intricate hand-stitched lace. “Wow!” she gasped.

Michael looked up. “What?”

“Irish lace. And… . “Carefully she unfolded the top layer, revealing a latticework basket made of porcelain so fine it shone like pearl in the light of the chandelier. “An Irish Belleek basket.”

“Here we go.” He flipped through the inventory. “John bought them from the Perth Moncrieffes in 1921. Limerick lace, is it?”

Rebecca’s fingertips smoothed the almost microscopic stitching. “No way. See the applique, and the layers of tulle and organza? Carrickmacross.”

“Aye, then. Carrickmacross it is.”

At least he was man enough to admit he was wrong. Rebecca said, “John didn’t restrict himself to specifically Scottish goods, did he? A lot of these things are just typical collectibles of the period— the Meissen clock upstairs, for example. The Pratt ware. This.”

“But he nicked them from someone in Scotland. That was what mattered. It was all a game to him.”

“Like James writing wills,” Rebecca said.

Michael swung around. “What did Adler say about the other will?”

“He said he’d been wondering where that one got to. It’s only one of several, I gather.”

“He wasn’t surprised?”

“No.” Rebecca smoothed the lace back around the basket and labeled the lid of the box. “The legal will, by the way, was dated August 20. If the one Peter found had been signed by two witnesses, it would be the legal one.”

“Takin’ away Adler’s tidy fee for findin’ relatives, eh? How nice that it was never signed properly. Mark my words, Rebecca, he’s up to something.” With this pronouncement Michael turned back to his stack of books.

His back was, as usual, uncommunicative. Why the two men had to be so suspicious of each other Rebecca couldn’t fathom. It must be some kind of territorial imperative. If Eric hadn’t known about the August 24 will she’d wonder why James hadn’t told him. But he had known.

The next box she opened contained yellowed rolls of paper. Gingerly she pried one open. “Maps! Copies of General Wade’s 18th century surveys. When the English were building roads and bridges so they could get at the natives to ‘pacify’ them.”

“And the first effective ground transportation in the Highlands,” Michael said to the bureau. “An economic blessin’ to those same natives. The museum’ll want those maps, right enough. You can set them aside.”

Not one flicker of patriotic indignation. Rebecca stuck out her tongue at his back, said “Yes, my lord,” under her breath, and set them aside.

Dorothy vacuumed the corridor. Phil slapped plaster downstairs. Darnley padded in, sniffed, padded out again. Michael’s chair creaked gently. Before long the little Tompion clock beside the bed said four o’clock. Rebecca slipped away, leaving Michael with inventory, spiral notebook, and a pile of papers that looked like letters and receipts. So much to do, and here she was leaving. Of course she’d worked every evening this week. And Michael was a full Ph.D., they were probably paying him more.

Her bedroom, despite its white walls, was already dusky. Before she plunged into the ritual of shampoo, hair curlers, pink dress, she stuffed Ray’s negligee into the bottom of her wardrobe. At least the odor of lavender had never returned. Steve and Heather must’ve frightened Elspeth away.

In the dim light the garnet, jet, and diamond of Elspeth’s pictured necklace seemed to sparkle, while the woman’s face was obviously only paint, sad, sensitive expression and all. But the woman in the photos had been a vivacious flirt.

Shaking her head, Rebecca touched her throat with the Chanel No 5 Eric had given her and plugged in her earrings. She packed her toothbrush in her purse, took it out, packed it and took it out again. Any man as well organized as Eric had to have an extra toothbrush. It just seemed, well, so calculating to actually plan to spend the night. Rebecca put her contact lens case in her purse, popped out the day’s birth control pill and swallowed it, even though her throat was dry.

She emerged from her room to encounter Michael strolling by, and waited for him to say something about her being “tarted up.” He said, with his appraising look, “That’s the frock you made, is it? Awful posh.”

“Why, thank you,” she replied.

They passed the study in time to see Phil bringing out the white-stained plaster bucket, and the entry in time to see Dorothy open the door and go out. “What culinary time bomb did Dottie bring today?” Rebecca asked, following Michael into the kitchen.

He unrolled one end of a foil bundle. “Looks like a petrified haggis.”

“Oh, no.” She could’ve cried. That gray brick had once been a lovely little rump roast. “Maybe I can shred it and serve it with a sauce.”

“At least she didna bring those sausages filled wi’ yellow glue.”

“The hot dogs stuffed with American cheese? Pretty bad, I agree. The meat loaf was okay, though, even with the catsup smeared on top.”

“My mum makes the best shepherd’s pie you ever ate,” Michael said wistfully. He opened the box of shortbread. “And her black bun… ”

“Oh, Becky!” warbled Dorothy from the entry. “Eric’s here.”

Michael extracted a cookie without so much as rustling the paper wrapper. Rebecca went to the door. “In here!”

Eric was wearing the charcoal three-piece suit that made his eyes look like onyx. All he needed was a pocket watch and chain with fobs dangling across his vest. He greeted Rebecca with a wink and shook hands with Michael. “How’s it going? Making any progress?”

“Just about,” Michael replied, butter not melting in his mouth. “Do you know anything about an English book cover inset with rubies and diamonds, circa 1630? Or a decorated English agate perfume bottle, circa 1540? From Hopetoun House and Drumlanrig, respectively. The list doesn’t say if there was a book in the cover— I assume there was no Shakespeare folio.”

Eric smiled. “I asked James about those same pieces. He de-accessioned them about ten years ago, I think, before my time. Showy things like that sold quickly when he needed cash.”

“They’re still listed in the inventories.” Now Michael smiled. Rebecca watched, fascinated. They were just like dogs— a border collie and a Doberman, possibly— sniffing each other out.

“I warned you that James didn’t always record a sale,” Eric said. “Somehow he thought if he didn’t mark an item sold, he’d still have it.”

Michael said lightly, his smile becoming a lazy grin, “Convenient, then, that you know the inventories so well. I thought cheap lawyers didn’t bother with things like that.”

“Oh,” said Eric, voice perfectly moderated between a laugh and a polite protest, “but I’m a very expensive lawyer.”

“Touche,” said Michael, and ate his cookie with an emphatic crunch.

Eric turned to Rebecca. “Shall we go?”

“Let’s,” she said. Really— men were absurd.

“Have a good time, children,” called Michael. “Don’t forget to write.”

The toad. She’d been worried about leaving him with more than his fair share of the work and he was glad to get rid of her.

Phil was waiting in the parking area, his Cincinnati Reds cap shading his hangdog face. “Mr. Adler, here’s an expense sheet. I hope it’s made out all right.”

“I’m sure it’s fine, Phil. Let’s see— nails, plaster, glass panes, caulking.”

Steve, Slash at his heels, slouched across the gravel. “I’ll put the leftover gas in the pickup.”

“No you won’t,” said Phil. “That gas belongs to the estate. We’ll save it until we start the lawn mowers up again in the spring. But,” he added apologetically to Eric, “I will have to get a new gasoline can.”

Assuming Phil and Steve had jobs here in the spring, Rebecca said to herself. She looked at Slash. He looked at her, nostrils flaring.

Eric said, “Get a good one. You don’t want gasoline to be stored improperly.” He pulled out a pen, jotted “Gas can” on the list, put both paper and pen in his pocket and shook Phil’s dirty hand with his clean one. “Thank you. I’ll see that you’re reimbursed quickly.”

Eric turned to Steve and Steve spun away, one corner of his mouth twitching in a barely suppressed sneer. Swells like Eric, he seemed to be thinking, didn’t have to know gasoline from Perrier. A shape moved in a fourth floor window. Rebecca shot a sharp, wary glance upward. It was Dorothy, her bulbous form outlined by the ceiling light. She stood, arms crossed before her, impersonating a waxwork figure.

Michael’s voice echoed through the door, singing lustily, “There’s many a wean wi’ the red locks of the Campbells who’s ne’er seen the coast of Argyll.” If he grew a beard, Rebecca thought, it’d be red. Wasn’t the Campbell who was murdered in
Kidnapped
called “The Red Fox”?

“Earth to Rebecca,” said Eric.

She started. “Sorry. I haven’t been quite with it all day.”

“Then it’s time for an evening out.” He opened the door of the Volvo and Rebecca climbed out of the chill wind.

The limbs of the trees along the driveway were black brush strokes against an overcast sky that shimmered like sifted ashes, touched with mauve where the sun sank invisibly toward the horizon. “The days are creepin’ in, right enough,” she said.

Eric started the car. “You’ve been working with Campbell too long. You’re starting to talk like him.”

“Dialect is insidious,” admitted Rebecca. “Especially that one. I’ve been reading British all my life.”

“And whatever is a nice girl like you doing in a field like that?” But he touched her cheek as he spoke— just kidding, no criticism implied.

“My great-grandfather emigrated from Ayrshire a hundred years ago. My grandfather taught me the old songs his father had sung to him. ‘Loch Lomond’, for example.”

“The one with the high roads and the low roads?”

“Do you know the story behind that?”

“I have a feeling I’m going to hear it,” Eric said with exaggerated patience. He guided the car out of the driveway.

Rebecca batted affectionately at his shoulder. “There’re two Scottish soldiers— or drafted crofters, most likely— in prison in England. One’s going to be released, the other executed. Taking the low road means to go along the fairy route, underground, as a ghost. So he’ll be home, but he’ll be dead.” Like James, she added to herself. Like Elspeth. But maybe she had never considered Dun Iain home.

“I’d always thought,” said Eric, “it was a happy little tune.”

“Typical Scots, making lemonade out of lemons. Irrepressible.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said dryly.

Eric would never have believed the expression on Michael’s face when he played the pipes. His astringent manner had been peeled like a lemon, the raw pulp exposed. But she didn’t have to think of him tonight.

“I’m rather partial to ‘Music from the Hearts of Space’ myself.” Eric reached to the dashboard and inserted a tape. Synthesized New Age harmonies emanated from the speakers, soothing and nondemanding.

Rebecca relaxed into the upholstery. “So,” she continued, “when I was being carted around all over the countryside as a child, British history seemed exotic enough to be interesting but familiar enough to be safe. Make sense?”

“Perfectly. When I was a kid, I was partial to automobile engines— rationality, you see. When I wasn’t down at the beach. But you can’t make much of a career out of cars or surfboards.”

No, Rebecca thought, those meticulously clean fingernails hadn’t touched engine grease in years. The motherless child had found his rationality.

They turned onto the access road, gained the interstate, and accelerated smoothly toward Columbus. The music murmured, its subtle rhythms blending with that of the car wheels on the road. The lights of passing cars threw Eric’s face into sharp relief and then swept on, leaving him in twilight. Carefully controlled features, noted Rebecca, framed by an exact haircut. And yet, that afternoon on the roof of Dun Iain, she’d glimpsed the flame that burned within. His sophistication had probably been hard-won, layer after layer of shiny lacquer applied to both enhance and protect the fiery core. She admired him for that, even as she was amused by it. Well, Eric was in a profession that rewarded smooth edges.

“A penny for your thoughts,” he said.

She laughed. “Have you ever considered politics?”

“No. Much too demanding.”

“Have to keep your nose too clean?”

“My nose is clean, thank you. I take my lumps on the stock market like everyone else, and there’s not a single messy divorce clouding my record.”

“Divorce doesn’t matter these days like it did back in Mary Stuart’s,” said Rebecca. “Or in Elspeth’s.”

“Divorce wasn’t even an option for her.”

“Or John. Although I daresay she was the injured party, not him.”

“You’d better believe it,” Eric murmured, so quietly Rebecca wasn’t sure she’d heard him.

“So Warren says he didn’t take the mausoleum key,” she said.

“If he did take it, he can have it. In some ways Warren’s too soft to be a law officer, but he’d protect John, James, Elspeth and the baby.”

Rebecca regarded Eric’s profile thoughtfully. James must have told him about the baby. Or Louise. It was no secret. “He wouldn’t have had to lie about the key, though. That bothers me.”

“People sometimes lie for perfectly innocent reasons.”

“If they’re innocent they can be honest,” Rebecca persisted. “Did you know Warren was the only witness on that will?”

Eric looked over at her. Passing headlights reflected in his eyes, making them glint like the gold ring on his hand. “Yes. James told me on the phone. Last time I talked to him before he died. Poor old guy. As far as he was concerned, state or relative, it’d still be some stranger who took over Dun Iain. Can you blame him for wanting to stay longer?”