Ashes to Ashes (27 page)

He meant living, not as a ghost. But no, she couldn’t blame him. “What do you mean by Warren being too soft? Do you think he’s covering up for Dorothy? She’s been lurking around like Bela Lugosi.”

“Dorothy?” Eric’s features flickered with sardonic humor. “The uncertainty about her job is eating her. Not surprising. Phil, too, although with him it’s harder to tell. But we have no proof that either of them has done anything dishonest.”

Central Ohio slipped by on either side of the highway, clumps of trees, farmhouses, and stores all fading into the evening obscurity. The occasional lighted window or neon sign seemed like a hole cut in a gray backdrop. Rebecca sighed. Her suspicions sounded so melodramatic. And she wasn’t even talking about the ghosts. “It’s like trying to follow a railroad timetable in an Agatha Christie thriller. Who signed what will when? Where were Steve and Heather when? Who had what key when? You’ve solved the problem of the front door, but now the mausoleum key is lost. Return to ‘Go’, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“Steve,” Eric snorted, “could use a stint in the Army.”

“And Heather?”

“Get her away from Steve, she’ll be fine. She just needs to do a little growing up.”

Don’t we all, Rebecca thought. “You didn’t answer my question. Do you think Warren is covering something up?”

“Inquisitive tonight, aren’t we?” he teased. “What’s to cover up? Surely you don’t think Warren, Dorothy, and Phil are planning a heist? If you ask me, it’s Campbell… ”

“I didn’t ask that,” she said, and then bit her tongue. Michael, too, was an outsider. But if dishonesty meant guilt… . No, he could be annoying enough when she was with him. Now she wasn’t.

Eric glanced narrowly at her but said nothing.

“What’s to cover up?” she repeated. “That’s what’s so irritating. Nothing I can put my finger on.” Of course there was Phil’s comment about “that lawyer fella”. Someone else had said that James had soured on Eric there at the end. Warren? Jan? She wriggled uncomfortably. She was starting to sound like Dorothy, an obnoxious voice in a loop. But she asked anyway, “Why would James blame you for the taxes?”

“What?” Eric asked incredulously. “Who said that?”

“Phil, I think.”

“Oh. Probably some comment James made about my filling out his tax returns for him. Bet you didn’t know I do accounting, too, did you?”

“And leap over tall buildings in a single bound?”

He laughed, crooked teeth flashing unashamedly.

Rebecca was beginning to appreciate just what it would be like opposing Eric in court. If he was being deliberately evasive, that would mean there was something to evade. Maybe he was simply confident that matters were under control. Or else… . If anything infuriated her it was a man’s condescending “don’t worry your little head about it”.

“So you don’t want me to worry about anything?” she asked. “The whereabouts of the mazer, or the key, or whether someone— Jan’s kids, anyone— is planning a heist, or whether I’m going to find Steve’s and Heather’s fingerprints all over my room when I get back tonight?”

“I think you shouldn’t worry about anything, but if you want to, that’s up to you. Besides… ” He tickled her ribs with that admonitory forefinger. “What if you don’t get back tonight?”

The look he gave her would have ignited tinder. With a nervous laugh she sank back against the seat, glad the darkness concealed her pink face.

She’d never believed men like him really existed; compared to him every other man she’d met was an irredeemable clod. Yes, he had to keep throwing that stardust in her eyes. That was part of the bargain.

The traffic grew heavier. They were swept along in the stream, past residential areas and businesses, below glaring yellow streetlights that made Rebecca’s pink dress look as sepia as the old photographs of Elspeth. Soon they eddied into the Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium parking lot and stopped. When she got out, Rebecca’s hair whipped in a gust of chill wind off the river.

She leaned appreciatively into Eric’s protective arm, and together they hurried into the building.

How blissful to spend a couple of hours not worrying, not thinking, just feeling the glorious music of Handel, Beethoven, and Vaughan Williams. Rebecca had hardly even noticed Eric holding her hand. It was almost painful to stand up and register the auditorium and the departing crowd.

In the lobby they encountered Benjamin Birkenhead, Eric’s boss, and his wife. Rebecca made a quick mental inventory of her appearance. She was presentable. Eric said, “Let me introduce Rebecca Reid. She’s been cataloging the artifacts out at Dun Iain.”

“Ah,” boomed Birkenhead. “The lady historian. Isn’t she a pretty little thing, though? How do you find them, Eric?”

He did have a pocket watch and dangling fobs. And the massive belly to display them. Next to him, his wife resembled a bird searching for insects on a hippo. She looked from Eric to Rebecca and back as if Rebecca were applying for a position at the firm.

“Nice to meet you,” Rebecca said tightly. So there were real historians and then there were lady historians. And her job description included being an attractive artifact herself. She wished she had a run in her stockings or lipstick on her teeth.

Safely in the parking lot, Eric whispered, “Never mind old Ben. He’s— well— unreconstructed.”

“How can you tell?” Rebecca returned.

He laughed, unlocked her door, bowed her into the car. She lay back against the seat, feeling almost drunk with music. But the accompanying melancholy wasn’t exactly pleasant; it was the same yearning she felt when seeing a distant airplane, or when hearing the music of the Highland pipes. Yes, sex could assuage that longing, temporarily. Ray, in his own correct manner, had proved that. Eric could probably prove it, too. But the yearning, it seemed, was chronic.

Eric’s condo was several floors up a high rise. A wall of glass in the living room revealed a breathtaking view of downtown Columbus, the lights of the city reflecting in a gauzy glow off the lowering sky. He relieved her not only of her coat but of her shoes, and she gave him the will and the letter before stowing her purse beneath the coatrack.

“The Bright Corporation,” he said, inspecting the letter first. “They’ve already contacted Ben. Very tidy offer they’ve made for Dun Iain. I’ll advise the Dennisons— assuming I find them— to accept it. Only corporations and governments can afford to keep estates any more.”

“Just as long as they keep it, not tear it down.”

“That’ll depend, won’t it?” He unfolded the will. “Yes, this is a version of the others. See, these bequests to his ‘family’ were in every one. And he always meant for the historical artifacts to go back to Scotland.”

“I’m not surprised,” Rebecca said. Living among the haunted objects would get to anyone. It had certainly gotten to two people living there.

For all Eric’s continental airs, she thought, Michael was the European. And while he could be polite, he was not smooth. He bristled like a porcupine. He’d been pleased she was leaving tonight. What was he doing while she stood wiggling her toes in Eric’s carpet— playing the pipes, his shoes planted solidly on chill stone? Or cuddling the mail carrier? That was only fair. Lonely people needed someone to hold. How do porcupines make love? Very carefully. Rebecca smiled and the image of Michael shattered.

Eric put the letter and the will in his desk and headed for the kitchen. “It’s late. You must be hungry.”

“Starved. But first… . “Rebecca detoured through the bedroom, noting that Eric had a king-sized bed, and found the bathroom. Compared to the basic fixtures at Dun Iain it was a Cecil B. DeMille set. The lights spaced along the top of the mirror made haloes in her slightly dazed eyes. She wet a tissue, mopped at a crumb of mascara, threw it away. The wad of tissue missed the wastebasket and landed under the rim of the cabinet. When she bent to retrieve it her fingers touched something metallic and cold, a tube of flame red lipstick.

She visualized the woman with the bold red lips, a lobbyist from the Capitol downtown, or a corporate lawyer every bit as smooth as Eric himself. Cool and collected in her pin-striped suit, but an animal clawing at him as he… . Rebecca put the lipstick in a drawer and the tissue into the basket, and grimaced at herself. Her flushed reflection grimaced back.

A rhythmic tapping issued from the kitchen. Eric had shed his coat, vest and tie, rolled up his sleeves, and was chopping vegetables. The red and greens of peppers and broccoli shone brightly amid glass, chrome and leather. Rebecca, feeling as if she’d been magically transported from 1890 to 2001, stopped in the living room to survey the bookshelves.

Geological specimens shared space with best-sellers, a collection of the classics, and books on popular physics and train journeys through India. The magazines—
The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic
— were slightly crumpled; they were for reading, not decoration. Nothing changed Rebecca’s impression of Eric as a man determined to improve himself.

On the desk was the only photograph, a tiny, unfocused picture of a woman and a child. Rebecca held it to the light.

The woman was about sixty, her hair pulled away from her face in a ringleted perm of the late fifties. Her eyes were dark smudges made even larger by the weary circles under them. But her mouth was a thin line of tenacity. She was a fighter. And so was the child. His hair was a caterpillar-like crewcut above his small, somber face. Even at the age of five or six his black eyes had been burnished with intelligence and a certain sad perception.

“Find anything?” Eric called.

“It’s lovely. Awful posh. And no ghosts— what a treat.”

He glanced up at her from beneath his brows. She wasn’t sure he’d ever believed her account of the lavender-scented entity in the pantry. There was no reason to make him even more skeptical of her common sense by telling him what Brian had said about James.

She went on, “This is you and your grandmother?”

“Yes. She was quite a woman to raise me alone. She always pushed me to make something of myself.”

“So I see.” Above the desk was a copy of
MacKay’s British Antiques
. No wonder Eric knew the inventories so well. Rebecca pulled the book off the shelf and flipped through it. A photograph of a Chippendale secretary like the one at Dun Iain was marked by an envelope whose return address read “Sotheby’s, New York”. Sotheby’s, the classy antiques dealer.

Eric’s arms came around her from behind and she jumped. “Now what?” he murmured into her hair. “Oh. I wrote them to check on some of Campbell’s valuations. And to see if the mazer was on the market. Outside chance, I’ll admit, and sure enough they’d never heard of it. But if they did know its whereabouts, and I retrieved it for you, you’d have spoiled your surprise, wouldn’t you?”

“We already know I’m too curious for my own good.” She couldn’t tell whether the undertone of irritation in his voice was genuine or pretend. Ray had had a knack for playing with irritation, as if she couldn’t be trusted with the real thing. “Isn’t that above and beyond the call of your duty? I thought Warren was making inquiries about the mazer.”

“He has his channels, I have mine.”

So Eric wanted to show off by finding the mazer. To make up, no doubt, for the galling fact that Michael’s valuations were correct… . Eric took the envelope from Rebecca’s hand, replaced it in the book, turned her around and kissed her. Her senses flared like sparklers in the July dusk. She wheezed, “Can I help?”

“Cook, or look for the mazer?” He laughed and released her. “Neither. Just relax.” He went back to work, and in a moment the delectable odors of onion and soy sauce filled the room. Rebecca consoled herself by finding the silverware and setting the glass-topped table in its alcove by the window. “Technically we should be having plum wine,” said Eric, producing a bottle from the refrigerator. “But you just can’t beat champagne for a special occasion.” The cork popped. He poured, sipped, nodded and handed the glass to her.

The food was delicious. The champagne bubbled in Rebecca’s head with prismatic sprays of sensuality. Was there anything Eric did, she wondered as she chased the last grains of rice around her plate, that he didn’t do well? When he pulled her away from the sink, wrested the dishcloth from her hands, and led her to the sumptuous leather couch, she settled down happily for a demonstration of yet another of his skills.

How much more comfortable the couch was than the seat of the car, she thought. It invited licentious activity. Then she didn’t think at all, but floated on sensation as she’d float on music, the song her body sang leaving her more intoxicated than the champagne ever could.

She curled against him, one of his arms across her knees, the other supporting her shoulders. Her hand splayed inside his shirt against the scratch and silk of his chest. The hem of her dress rode two thirds of the way up her thigh. Eric’s hand was even higher, his ring sliding over taut nylon, making its slow but resolute course toward what her brothers would have called home base. Her lips felt delightfully bruised.

Rebecca groped after her wits. Not that she wanted her wits, but it didn’t seem right to abandon them at the side of the road like unloved kittens. The ring and the hand stopped at the lace-trimmed edge of her teddy.

“Would you like to change clothes?” Eric asked. His voice was now brushed velvet, slightly husky.

So was hers. “I didn’t bring anything else.”

“There’s a robe on the back of the bathroom door.”

With her lips Rebecca traced the tense line of his jaw. All she had to do was go to the other room, undress, and put on the robe. He would take the robe off, hold her, and make love to her. She could cling to him and make stupid little vocalizations into his shoulder. She was guaranteed one complete orbit of the rarth and side trips to the moon and Venus as well.

Bubbles of champagne and sensuality spattered across her mind like raindrops across her face. Then it would be morning. In the cold light of dawn he’d drive her back to Dun Iain. Back to reality, and Michael Campbell’s mocking gaze.