Dawn Stewardson (5 page)

“Grace, she’s hardly going to have a nervous breakdown if she has to sit in her car for two minutes.”

Sully wasn’t sure that was true. Lauren Van Slyke didn’t strike him as a picture of stability. But even though he doubted she’d remain exactly calm, cool and collected, he stood waiting for Otis to tell him about whatever he figured was so important.

“That woman who phoned me,” Otis said, “wasn’t Lauren Van Slyke.”

“What woman?” Sully asked.

Otis gave him an impatient look. “The woman who phoned asking questions about Eagles Roost. If that was Lauren Van Slyke who was just here, then the woman who phoned wasn’t her.”

“What?”

“I told you, that other woman’s voice was all scratchy.”

“Well, yeah, I remembered that. But I figured she must have had a sore throat or something.”

“Uh-uh. It’s not only the voice. The way she talked was different. Which is why I was trying to tell you about it before she left. So you could ask her what the deal is. I mean, why would the other woman have identified herself as Lauren?”

Sully wearily shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe Lauren asked her to.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Grace put in.

“No? Well it makes as much sense as driving around in the wilds of upstate New York with almost no gas. Or taking her cat to the office for a bath.”

“Oh, she didn’t do that at all,” Grace told him. “The cat was a stray she’d just picked up outside the building. And she was bathing it because it was filthy. She told me the story while I was showing her around.”

“Oh,” Sully said. In that case, maybe she wasn’t
quite
as flaky as he’d thought. Still, no one would ever suggest her chief virtue was common sense. He’d bet her Mercedes was gasping its last this very minute.

“You know, Sully,” Grace continued, “I really think you misread her yesterday. And now that Otis is saying she isn’t the one who phoned him… Well, I just wonder if there’ve been funny things going on that we don’t know about.”

L
AUREN DRUMMED
her fingers on the steering wheel, trying to drown out the voice in her head. It sounded exactly like her father’s, and it was saying she’d just made another of her little errors in judgment. Unfortunately, it was right.

She’d been certain she had enough gas left to make it back to Dead Head—or whatever that little town was called—but it turned out she’d only had enough to get about halfway. Which meant that last night hadn’t been the greatest time to forget to charge her cell phone.

She glanced at it again and mentally kicked herself, then stuck it back into her purse. At least the phone being useless didn’t count as an error in judgment. She could blame that little problem entirely on the cat.

He hadn’t liked the drive home from the office any better than he’d liked his bath, and he’d conveyed his feelings by caterwauling the entire way from Madison Avenue and East Fifty-Second up to East Seventy-Third—which was an awfully long twenty-one blocks in the five-o’clock traffic even without a cat yowling in your ear. And that was exactly where he’d been yowling, because he’d decided the only safe place to be was wrapped around the back of her neck—like one of those horrible dead-fox-neck furs her great-aunt Dorothy still loved to wear.

At any rate, when she’d finally gotten him up to her apartment he’d dashed around as if possessed, bouncing from one piece of furniture to the next. And she’d been so busy chasing after him, making sure he didn’t commit cat suicide by diving headfirst into something hard, that the last thing on her mind had been plugging in the phone.

Putting her thoughts of both the cat and the phone aside for the moment, she tried again to decide which direction she should walk. Despite being certain there were wild animals in those woods, she’d ruled out simply sitting here and hoping help would come along.

She hadn’t grown up in New York City without learning it could be fatal to trust a stranger. If someone came along offering to help, the odds on his being a serial killer had to be at least as high as on his being a Good Samaritan.

Besides which, the road between Eagles Roost and Dead Head was just some kind of secondary back road and there hadn’t been a single other car along it since she’d left the lodge. So either she walked into town, where she knew there was a gas station, or she walked back to Eagles Roost.

There was no gas there, of course, but there was that roast beef dinner with all the trimmings. Merely recalling how delicious the kitchen had smelled was enough to make her stomach growl.

Then she thought about the thunder-at-mid-night look Sully would give her if she turned up at the lodge again, and decided that going on to Dead Head would be the better choice.

Grabbing her purse, she got out of the car, locked it, and started in the direction of town. She’d only gone about a hundred yards, though, before she heard a car coming down the road behind her.

Fervently hoping it was the Good Samaritan and not the serial killer, she stopped and looked back. What she was hearing actually proved to be an old pickup truck covered with more brown rust than black paint.

When it pulled up beside her, her heart began beating faster. The two men in the cab were in their early thirties and muscular, with greasy long hair. Neither was wearing a shirt, and for a moment she couldn’t help wondering if they were completely naked—a couple of Adirondack nudists.

They looked, though, more like they might be escapees from the nearest maximum-security prison than residents of a nudist colony. In fact, one of their faces… She wasn’t sure, but she thought she might have seen it one night while she was channel surfing—on a segment of “America’s Most Wanted.”

“Hey, darlin’,” the passenger said, leaning his head and bare shoulder far enough out the window that she could smell beer on his breath. “That your Mercedes back there?”

She nodded, telling herself to relax. She didn’t necessarily have reason to panic.

“Problem with it, darlin’? Want us to take a look under the hood?”

For an instant, she considered saying she’d intentionally parked it back there and had some good reason for hiking down the road. When she couldn’t think of any reason that was plausible, though, she simply managed a smile and said, “Thanks, but I just ran out of gas.”

“Oh, so you need a lift to town,” the driver said. Then he belched and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

“Well…no. Thanks again, but I enjoy walking.”

The passenger’s gaze drifted down to her feet, then started slowly up her legs. When it finally got all the way up to her face, he smiled.

That made her more nervous yet. In Manhattan, the only time a stranger ever smiled at you was when he wanted something. And she was afraid to even think about what this fellow might want.

“Darlin’,” he said, “town’s over two miles from here. You won’t enjoy walkin’ that far in those high heels. So why don’t you just slide on in with us? We won’t hurt you none, will we, Roy.”

The driver shook his head. “You got nothing to worry about from me an’ Snake.”

Snake?
Her heart began beating faster yet. She’d been right about the prison. Surely only criminals were ever called Snake, which meant that getting into that truck with them would go far beyond any
little
error in judgment.

Before she could think of what to say next, she spotted a minivan heading down the road and began praying there was a white knight driving it.

When it pulled up behind the truck, she saw Sully was driving. That certainly dashed her hopes about any white knight, but under the circumstances she was more than happy to settle for him.

Not surprisingly, the first thing he did was glare at her through the windshield—before he even opened his door. But this time she didn’t care. As long as he got her away from these men, he could feel free to glare at her all the way to the gas station.

He climbed out of the van and nodded to the two in the truck, saying, “Hey, Roy. Snake.”

Of course. Sully knew these felons.

“Hey, Sully,” they greeted him.

“Let’s go,” he said to Lauren.

“Lady a friend of yours?” Roy asked him.

“Something like that.”

“We were tryin’ to help her out,” Snake said. “But I guess she didn’t like the looks of us.”

Sully laughed. “No wonder. You two really need cleaning up at the end of the day. Roy and Snake,” he added, glancing at Lauren, “build houses.”

“Or whatever else needs buildin’,” Snake said.

Lauren cleared her throat uncomfortably. Just because Snake and Roy weren’t suits, she shouldn’t have assumed the worst. They were merely a couple of working men. And Snake probably only smelled like a brewery because they’d stopped for a beer or two after a hot day’s work.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t like your looks,” she offered politely. “It was just…well, as I said, I enjoy walking. I live in Manhattan and everyone walks there. And I thought that since this was such a nice summer day… I guess it’s closer to evening by now, isn’t it. But, either way, I decided I really wouldn’t mind the walk to the gas station and—”

“Can we get going?” Sully interrupted. “Grace is holding dinner until we get back.”

“I’m not going back,” she informed him with a cool glance. As glad as she’d been to see him, the feeling was fading fast. His
can we get going?
had sounded a whole lot more like an order than a question, and she didn’t take kindly to being ordered around.

“I’m going to Dead Head,” she elaborated. And if he didn’t want to drive her, she’d darn well go with Roy and Snake, now that she knew it would be safe.

Roy and Snake, though, had begun to laugh about something.

“North Head,” Sully muttered to her. “The town is North Head, not Dead Head.”

“Oh. Well, whatever, that’s where I’m going. Then as soon as I get some gas I’ll be on my way again.”

“Lauren, the gas station in North Head closed at six. And I’m not driving thirty miles and back to the next closest one until I’ve had dinner. So can we
please
go back to the lodge?”

Billy the Kid’s new plan

D
INNER
, S
ULLY THOUGHT
,
had taken a lot longer than usual—mostly because every time Lauren had finished telling the boys one story, they’d gotten her started on another. They’d barely sat down at the table before Grace had prompted her to tell them about how he’d walked in while she’d been bathing the cat. And she’d made the story sound a lot funnier than things had seemed at the time.

All in all, she’d turned out to have a surprisingly good sense of humor—when she wasn’t busy cutting off his funding, or playing Ice Princess, or doing one of a hundred other things that he didn’t find the least bit amusing.

“Hey, you guys,” he said as the last of the boys polished off his second serving of Grace’s apple crumble. “None of you helped get dinner ready today, so you’re all on cleanup detail.”

As they began pushing back their chairs, Sully got the coffeepot and filled four mugs for the adults, glad he was finally going to be able to ask Lauren about that woman’s phone call. He’d been awfully tempted to raise the subject earlier, in the van, but he’d decided not to say anything without Otis and Grace there. By triple-teaming her they should be able to get at the truth.

“Let’s take our coffee into the family room,” he suggested. “Give the boys space to clear the table.”

Before any of the others rose, though, Lauren said, “You know, I’ve been thinking I should just phone a garage and have some gas brought to my car. There’s no point in one of you having to drive me someplace. And if I called right now—”

“I think you should stop worrying about getting gas tonight,” Grace said. “I think you should just stay right here until morning.”

Sully looked at Grace, not wanting to believe she’d actually said that. Was he the only one who hadn’t forgotten that Lauren Van Slyke was the enemy?

Around him, the kitchen was silent. The boys had begun clearing the dishes, but now they were all standing like statues. Statues with big ears.

“I’m not sure,” Otis said, “that leaving an expensive car just sitting out overnight would be a good idea.”

Otis was right, of course, but before Sully could voice his agreement Grace was saying, “Oh, don’t be silly, Otis. You locked it, didn’t you, dear?” she asked Lauren.

“Yes, but—”

“Then it’ll be fine. There’s hardly any traffic on that road, especially at night.”

“Well, even so,” Lauren said, “I really don’t think I’d better stay.”

Sully breathed a quiet sigh of relief and shot Grace a look that told her to let it go.

Ignoring him, she glanced back across the table at Lauren, saying, “By the time you got gas and started for home it would be after dark. And you wouldn’t get to the city until the middle of the night.” She turned to Sully again. “She can’t be driving all that way alone in the dark.”

He gritted his teeth, knowing Grace was right. It really wasn’t safe for a woman to be driving alone at night. Especially not a woman like Lauren Van Slyke.

Lauren murmured, “No,” though. “Thank you, but I really couldn’t impose. Besides, the cat’s all alone in my apartment.”

“You said you left lotsa food down,” Billy piped up. “Or maybe you could phone yourc friend across the hall. The one you phoned from your office after you said you’d come here.”

“Well…I really shouldn’t leave him alone for too long when the apartment’s still a strange place.”

There was a silence, then Sully heard himself saying, “Most cats don’t really need much attention. We’ve got three here, and you probably haven’t even seen them around.”

He paused, trying to stop himself before he made things even worse, but for some reason he couldn’t. “So,” he added, “if you don’t get home until tomorrow, the cat will be fine. And Freckles has a room to himself at the moment, so I can use the second bed in there for the night.”

He glanced at Freckles. “You wouldn’t mind me bunking in there, would you?”

When the boy shook his head, Sully looked at Lauren again. “That means you can use my bedroom.”

“Oh, I couldn’t put you out of your own room.”

He shrugged. “I can hardly have you sharing with Freckles, and there isn’t a spare bed in the cottage.”

She’d been watching him as he spoke, searching his eyes with her big blue ones as if wanting to be sure he really didn’t mind the idea of her staying. And the strange thing was that all of a sudden he didn’t.

He wasn’t entirely sure why, except that something in her expression made him doubt she was as self-assured as he’d thought. It was something he often saw in his kids, something that said they weren’t used to being accepted simply for themselves. And it was a look that always made him feel he wanted to help.

That was ridiculous, though, he realized a second later. Lauren Van Slyke didn’t need any help from him.

“Well,” she murmured at last, “if you’re really sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble…”

“Good,” Grace said. “That’s settled, then. Before bedtime, I’ll find a nightgown and robe you can borrow. And what size shoes do you wear?”

“Six.”

“Perfect. I’ll give you some flat shoes and jeans for the morning. I’m sure I’ve got things that would fit you. But right now, let’s do as Sully suggested and take our coffee into the other room.”

Sully glanced at the boys and caught them all giving each other looks. They clearly figured they’d just gotten off the hook, so he said, “We’ll save the rest of our discussions about Billy and Hoops’s trip to Manhattan for tomorrow.”

He turned and followed the other adults out of the kitchen, feeling five pairs of eyes burning holes in his back.

T
HE MINUTE THE DOOR
swung closed behind Sully, Billy wheeled around to the others, saying, “I got a plan.”

“No way,” Hoops told him. “We don’t even know how bad we’re getting punished ’cuz of your last plan.”

“But it worked, didn’t it? She’s here, isn’t she?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Then, listen,” Billy said to all of them. “You still wanna make sure we can stay here, don’t you?”

They all nodded—even Hoops—just like he knew they would.

“Okay,” he went on. “Then we gotta all swear to help. Swear we’re gonna do everythin’ we can. Hands,” he added, holding out his hands.

The others all piled theirs on top of his. Hoops was last, and kinda slow, but he did it, too.

“Okay, then,” Billy said. “Here’s the plan. If Sully and Lauren got to really likin’ each other, then she’d give him the money, right?”

“But he don’t like her,” Freckles pointed out. “You know that. You was the one listenin’ in yesterday. When he told the Plavsics she was a wing nut and all that.”

“So what?” Billy said. “Just because he doesn’t like her now, doesn’t mean she can’t make him like her.”

“What do you know about that kinda stuff?” Freckles said.

“I know lots. I got three older sisters. And girl cousins, too. And all they ever talk about is how to get guys to like ’em. So I know how they do it.”

“But why,” Tony asked, “would Lauren want Sully to like her?”

Billy looked at Tony like that was a real dumb question while he tried to think of an answer. “’Cuz that’s just how girls are,” he finally said. “And even if she doesn’t want him to like her yet, if we fix things right then she’ll start wantin’ him to. And when she does, he’ll have to.”

“Why?” Tony asked.

“’Cuz she’s pretty and rich.”

“So what?” Tony said.

“So she must know how to make guys like her way better than my sisters or cousins.”

T
HE MORE DETAIL
Otis went into about that phone call Sully had alluded to yesterday, the less sense it made to Lauren.

She had no idea why some woman would have phoned here claiming to be her, let alone have asked all about Sully’s program. Or, as Otis had put it, tried to
dig up dirt.
But given the way Grace and Sully were watching her as she listened, they were expecting her to shed some light on things.

Unfortunately, she was no Nancy Drew. She almost never figured out how a mystery was going to wrap up before she got to the ending. And as far as this little mystery was concerned, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to shed even the tiniest ray of light.

“You’re absolutely certain,” she asked Otis once he’d finished his story, “that the woman said she
was
me. She couldn’t have said she was calling
for
me?”

“No, she definitely said she was you.”

“
Did
someone call on your behalf?” Sully asked.

“No…not that I know of. I mean, I certainly didn’t ask anyone to. I’m just wondering if, for some reason, Rosalie…”

“Rosalie?” Grace asked.

“She’s my assistant, but I can’t imagine why she’d have phoned.”

“I met Rosalie yesterday,” Sully told Otis. “And she’s got a Jamaican accent.”

“Then it wasn’t her.”

“You know,” Lauren said slowly, “any woman in the world could have called and said she was me. It could have been anybody who wanted information about your program. And maybe she figured that saying she was me would be an easy way to get it.”

“But why,” Grace asked, “would anyone be curious about what goes on at Eagles Roost? Anyone aside from Lauren and the social services people, I mean.”

Before any of them could hazard a guess, the door to the kitchen swung open and the five boys appeared.

When they stopped as a little group and smiled straight at Lauren, she couldn’t help thinking something was up. Then the other four looked at Billy, which made her decide there was definitely a plot afoot and that they’d elected him spokesman for whatever was coming.

“The kitchen’s all clean, Sully,” he announced. “So we were thinkin’ it would be nice if we went and helped Mr. and Mrs. Plavsic pack their car. Like now, I mean. Before it’s totally dark.”

“You’re going somewhere?” Lauren asked Grace, the idea making her a little uneasy. When she’d taken them up on the offer to stay the night, she’d certainly assumed the Plavsics would be right there in their cottage.

“Not until morning, dear,” Grace said. “But yes, we’re leaving for Minnesota. We drive out there almost every July. We’re both originally from Minneapolis, and we still have all kinds of family there.”

“Did you
ask
the boys if they’d help you pack the car?” Sully said.

He looked, Lauren thought, very suspicious.

“Why…no,” Grace told him. She glanced at Otis, gave him a blatantly conspiratorial smile, then looked back at Sully. “But isn’t it thoughtful of them to offer? If we pack up tonight, we’ll be able to get a really early start.”

“Right,” he muttered. “And I’ll bet they don’t have an ulterior motive among the five of them.”

When he looked over at the boys again, Lauren’s gaze followed his.

Their expressions made her think of cats that had just swallowed canaries, and for half a second she didn’t understand what was going on. Then she realized what they were up to and almost started laughing.

If they thought she had the slightest interest in being left alone with their chief eagle, they were out of their young minds. And as for Grace and that smile of hers…well, Grace must be one of those women who can’t resist trying to play matchmaker, whether she was looking at a total mismatch or not.

But even if Lauren believed in the theory of opposites attracting—which she didn’t—she and Sully were a lot more than mere opposites. She doubted they could have a single solitary thing in common.

“Don’t you guys go getting any funny ideas,” Sully said in a decidedly no-nonsense tone. “Lauren is staying here because driving back to the city this late wouldn’t be a good idea. Period. Got it?”

“What?” Billy said, all wide-eyed innocence. “What are you talkin’ about? I never said a word about her. Did I?”

He glanced at the other boys, who immediately began shaking their heads, then he looked back at Sully. “We just wanted to help the Plavsics, Sully. Honest.”

“And I think it’s very sweet of them,” Grace said quickly. “So why don’t we take them up on the offer, Otis?”

Otis shot Sully an amused glance, then pushed himself out of his chair, saying, “We’ll see you both in the morning before we take off.”

“I won’t forget about those clothes, Lauren,” Grace added as they started for the door. “I’ll send them over when the boys come back.”

Sully sat watching the others trail out of the lodge—Roxy bringing up the rear—part of him glad the boys wanted to stay at Eagles Roost badly enough to try to help him, another part wanting to strangle them for their ridiculous plotting.

As the screen door banged shut behind the dog, he turned to Lauren and shrugged. “Sorry about that.”

She smiled. “It’s all right. It just surprised me. I didn’t realize boys that age would think along those lines.”

“Oh, they can be pretty creative thinkers at times. And even though Otis and I explained things to Billy and Hoops—explained there was nothing you could do about the funding, I mean—if kids don’t like reality they tend to ignore it. So they probably figured you could still come up with the money if you decided you really wanted to.”

“And if leaving us alone together led to anything…” Lauren smiled again.

Sully eyed her for a few seconds, deciding she must figure the boys’ scheme was about as crazy as they came. After all, the idea of a man like him and a woman like her getting together…

Besides which, he didn’t even like her. Although, he had to admit she wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d figured at first. And she hadn’t actually gone sneaking around behind his back the way he’d initially thought.

Fleetingly, he wondered again who
had
made that call to Otis. But it was probably going to remain one of life’s little mysteries.

“Well,” he said at last, for lack of anything better, “I guess I should find some clean sheets for you.”

“I’ll help make up the bed,” she offered. “It’s the least I can do when I’m putting you out of your room.”