Ashes to Ashes (38 page)

She glanced back. He looked at his feet on the stone steps, his face hidden by the fringe of his hair, and his body language that could be so compelling was once again mute. He hadn’t asked her to trust him. But she did.

The sixth floor ballroom was so still the silence hummed in Rebecca’s ears, so chilly her flesh contracted, trying to snuggle closer to the bone. Last night’s dusting of snow reflected the watery sunshine. The pale, blurred light bleached the walls and floor not of color but of definition, so that the room was filled by a subtle mist.

Rebecca drained her coffee, opened an inventory and went to work. 19th century landscape prints, check. A tiny casein painting, check. An exquisite Clouet miniature of Mary, Queen of Scots, check. The book Michael had tried to show her the day Ray had come, an elegant mint copy of Johannis de Fordun’s
Scotichronicon Genuinem
, was listed on this floor even though it had turned up on the fourth. The claymore from the study had already been checked off.

Last night she and Michael had ransacked the house like eastern and western bloc armies on formal maneuvers. The little casket was gone. Even after Michael had given up and gone off muttering braid Scots curses, Rebecca had continued doggedly on. She’d come out of the lumber room, skin, clothing, and mood equally grimy, to hear Michael playing the pipes. Playing every difficult piece in his repertory, no doubt to prove that his manhood was no longer damaged, thank you. As she’d stood on the staircase, listening, her puzzled itch seemed to emanate from a phantom limb, impossible even to reach, let alone scratch.

The steps coming up the stairs to the ballroom were those of Michael’s Reeboks. “What was the final song you played last night?” she asked.

He studied her for a moment as though wondering if she’d turn his answer against him. “No Nighean Donn, Gradh Mo Chridhe,” he answered.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

He nodded toward the storerooms in the back. “So they’re comin’ the day to collect the books for the library?”

“I took out the ones that were in really bad shape, as well as the ones that’re worth something. A first edition Hemingway, for example.”

Michael shrugged, unimpressed by Hemingway. Rebecca opened a cabinet. With a slide and a thud the top sash of Elspeth’s window flew open. As one they jumped, and then shared a shamefaced smile. Michael tiptoed across the room and shut the window. “Would you like me to work in here wi’ you?”

“I can make it until noon, thank you,” Rebecca replied stoutly.

“Noon? What happens then?”

Rebecca considered his face. His cannon had been rolled into the armory for maintenance and his porcupine prickles were reduced to the texture of a hedgehog’s. Smudges of fatigue under his eyes looked like bruises on his fair skin. The lines at the corners of his mouth and between his brows were more deeply defined than they had been two months ago. His face wasn’t that different from the one staring back from her mirror. Shaking her head at herself and him both, she told him about the letter, how it and Katie Gemmell’s photo were gone, how she suspected Dorothy. “Would you like to come?”

“Oh aye, I’d like to hear what Louise has to say.”

“Michael,” Rebecca began, and then heard a faint hammering from downstairs. All right— she hadn’t really had anything to say to him.

Taking four flights of spiral stairs without pausing left her dizzy. She threw open the front door and stood blinking at a dark figure in a pallid halo of daylight. “Miss Reid?” it said, solidifying into a uniformed workman. “We’ve come to pick up your shipment.”

“Certainly. Come in.”

The hood of a silver-gray car peeked from behind a truck whose panel read “Ace Moving and Storage— you tag it, we bag it”. Of the two men talking by the truck’s cab, Rebecca recognized one. “Eric! What’re you doing here?”

Eric followed the workmen into the building, greeting Rebecca with a peck on the cheek. “I was at Golden Age, so I’d thought I’d run by and supervise. Hard to believe the day has come to start clearing the place out.”

“Just some nondescript books,” she replied.

“And those boxes for the Historical Society.”

Rebecca stopped dead outside the Hall. “What? Already?”

“The donation has to be made this year,” Eric explained, “if the estate is going to get the tax deduction. I thought you’d said they could go.”

“I did, it’s just… . “She looked through the door. The men were stacking the cardboard boxes of diaries and scrapbooks and the sacks of old clothes. “We were hoping there might be something in James’s diaries about the gaps in the inventories.”

“But you told me you didn’t have time to read them all.”

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t.”

“They’ll be safe and sound at society headquarters anytime you want them.” Eric pulled her aside as the workmen struggled to get their loaded dolley down the stairs.

“Oh, all right,” said Rebecca, “take them away, get it over with.”

Eric gauged the crumples in her brow and mouth. “Tired? We’ll go to a movie this Friday. Get your mind onto something else.”

As if that were possible. She inspected Eric’s smooth, handsome face, his tailored clothes, his slightly quizzical, slightly amused look. What a frivolous relationship, she thought, discreet and superficial. Just what she’d been looking for. She offered him an anemic smile. “Thanks, I’d like that.”

The workmen came back up. Phil Pruitt was just behind them, his quilted vest scented with motor oil and fish. “How is Steve?” asked Eric.

“Doing just fine,” Phil replied. “Mr. Adler, I’m sorry to bother you, but what you said once about the hospital bills. Steve’s going to need some of that plastic surgery, they tell me.”

The workers manhandled the dolly down the stairs. “Of course,” said Eric. “I talked to Dun Iain’s insurance company, and since Steve was working here when the— ah— accident occurred, his medical bills should be covered.”

“I sure do appreciate it,” said Phil.

The workmen asked about the books. “I’ll show you,” said Rebecca.

Eric guided Phil to the study. Rebecca led the men upstairs. Michael looked curiously up from the cabinet she’d left, inventory open on his lap. Elspeth’s window had opened itself again, the usual three inches from the top.

The boxes holding the books were imprinted with the brand names of catsup and toilet paper. When the men hoisted the first two the flimsy cardboard gave way and books crashed to the floor. The men shot aggrieved glances at Rebecca. She decided her presence was inhibiting their commentary and headed back down, passing Phil, his mission accomplished, on the way.

On the stairs to the second floor Rebecca heard Eric’s voice. Now it was in velvet mode, soothing, almost caressing, too soft for her to make out the words. Dorothy’s barbed voice ripped his. “— deserve it!”

Rebecca stopped, her hand on the rope banister. Deserve what?

Eric’s voice rolled over Dorothy’s like a buffing wheel, polishing its sharp edges. Rebecca caught the words “job” and “pension”. Oh— if the estate could do for Phil, surely it could do for Dorothy. Apparently the woman was going to make darn sure it did, legally or otherwise.

Eric walked Dorothy out onto the landing, his dark styled cut bent over her steel perm, and held her arm as she worked her way painfully down the stairs. The woman seemed shriveled, her once bloated flesh a couple of sizes too big for her, as if someone really had stuck a pin into her and deflated her. Having the flu was a drastic way to diet.

Rebecca peeked around the corner after them, then dodged into the study door ahead of the workmen as they wrestled boxes around the bend in the staircase. There was Dorothy’s purse sitting on a corner of the secretary. She picked it up and went on downstairs.

The vinyl bag was heavy, clinking as she walked. Unzipped, it gaped open to reveal several pill bottles sporting the labels of more than one pharmacy— and more than one doctor’s name. Valium, Rebecca read. Ativan. Elavil. Inderal. The last was for high blood pressure; her father took it. The others were tranquilizers; her mother had gone through several different kinds over the years. But all at once? No wonder Dorothy looked so ghastly. She needed detox more than Steve had.

Rebecca guiltily closed the purse and walked out the door holding it at arm’s length, like a vial of nitroglycerin.

Dorothy wasn’t there. Eric was leaning against her car talking to Heather. Rebecca squelched a grin. He was nondiscriminatory, he was going to vamp every female on the place. Heather was gazing at him through her lashes, slightly cross-eyed, as though she already had a bit of a crush on him. Girls that age don’t know superficial from bananas, Rebecca told herself. It’s girls my age who deliberately choose surface gloss over substance. She said, “Dorothy left her purse upstairs. Where is she?”

Heather jumped and blushed, making her heavily made-up face look like a jack-o-lantern. Eric’s polite smile broadened into an outright laugh. “In the kitchen. Here, I’ll take it to her.”

Rebecca handed over the purse. The workmen tramped by. And, just to complete the circus atmosphere, Warren Lansdale’s squad car came up the driveway. He had to stop by the mausoleum since the parking area was full. Rebecca, shivering, went to meet him.

The sheriff’s moustache was fluffy with glee. “Look what I found!”

“Not the mazer?” returned Rebecca.

His moustache wilted. “That was a low blow,” she apologized. “What do you have?”

He mimed a magician producing a rabbit out of a hat and held up a massive key. “The mausoleum key!” The metal was cold in her hand, sticking to her palm like a Popsicle to her tongue. “Where on earth did you find it?”

“I went out to the Pruitts’ house yesterday evening, after Steve got home. He looks terrible, but the accident did wonders for his disposition.”

“He handed over the key.”

“That’s right. He took it off your kitchen table three weeks ago with some idea of letting his friends into the mausoleum. Kids and their macabre ideas these days. It’s those horror movies, if you ask me.”

Rebecca nodded agreement. “But no one’s opened the lock. I go out and check it every few days. Yesterday, as a matter of fact.”

“He had second thoughts. He never really said why. Maybe he realized if those punk pals of his vandalized the place he’d not only do himself and his dad out of their jobs, this time he’d end up in jail.”

Rebecca thrust the key into her pocket. Its weight made her feel lopsided. “But how did he get it? I’d swear that the only times the front door was open, someone was in the kitchen… . “She frowned, unable to separate those particular details from the welter of details crusted on her mind.

Eric came toward them carrying Rebecca’s coat. A slender shape stood in the sixth floor window— Michael, Rebecca realized with a start, holding a bundle of butterscotch and white fur. Both man and cat were no doubt agog with curiosity over what Warren and Rebecca were talking about. Clutching her coat around her shoulders, Rebecca smiled a thank you to Eric and turned back to Warren. “And what’s Steve’s version of the fire?”

The sheriff tilted his hat back on his head. “Well, Phil says he told Steve to transfer the gasoline from the milk jugs to the can. Steve says he did it. Now I know you think, Miss Reid, you saw the jugs empty and the can full. But the shed is pretty dark… ”

“And I could’ve been mistaken,” Rebecca finished for him. They’d already beaten that horse to death.

“Even Phil will admit,” Warren went on, “that when they were handing out the carelessness, Steve was at the head of the line. Maybe the pain and shock made him forget whether he did it or not. Maybe he’s too embarrassed to admit it. Maybe the jugs were cracked and leaked over the floor.”

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,” said Eric, “if the fire was set deliberately. If so, it was just part of the pattern of harassment.”

Warren went on, “We talked to some of Steve’s buddies in town and even to Dr Kocurek in Missouri. Nothing. I’ll stick by my theory that it was an accident. Poetic justice, I guess, that Steve was the only one hurt.”

Poor Steve. Rebecca looked long and hard at Warren’s guileless teddy bear face. Arguing with him was like sculpting Silly Putty. “As long as you’re here,” she said, “would you like to hear about another missing item?”

“What?” Eric and Warren exclaimed simultaneously.

She told them about the jeweled casket. Warren got out his clipboard and laboriously wrote down the details. A box for keeping rose petals— she suspected he’d much rather be out tracking down a stolen car. Eric looked tight-lipped at the house, his profile more like than eagle’s than ever.

Rebecca glanced at the dovecote, each stone edged with a lace of snow. “At least the key is back. That’s one tiny comfort.”

“What?” Eric shouted this time.

“Oh!” said Warren. “You didn’t hear. Steve had the mausoleum key. He gave it back to me last night. Sorry he took it, he says.”

“Steve gave it back to you?” Eric’s voice grated harshly. His eyes flickered and stilled, like embers stirred. “He had it all along?”

“No harm done. I gave him a very stern warning, believe me.”

Rebecca’s brows rose at Eric’s white, pinched look. Even his superhuman patience must be wearing thin.

“Sorry,” he said, his face relaxing, his eyes cooling. “You ambushed me with that one.”

The sheriff muttered something conciliatory, climbed into his car, and with a quick salute drove away. Rebecca looked after him, mouth tight. The doors of the truck slammed with a crash. One of the men proferred a couple of forms to Eric. He signed, and waved as the truck lumbered off.

Enveloped by the cloud of exhaust, Rebecca and Eric retreated toward the house. She glanced at her watch; it was almost time to go pump Louise for a hint that would explain something, anything at all. Eric had already been at Golden Age today, no reason to ask him to go back. Especially not with Michael in tow. “See you Friday,” she told him. “Thanks for your help.”

“My pleasure.” He pecked her again, the other cheek this time, and with another affable wave drove away.