In-Laws and Outlaws (19 page)

“Are you feeling better?” Tom asked.

“Yes, a little.”

I struggled to sit up, but Tom gently pushed me back down, telling me to wait a while. “Give yourself time. Gillian, can't you talk about it?”

“No, I can't.” Not to you, Dr. Tom Henry, married to a high-style, manipulative, twinny-type Decker. Married … but divorcing. Was it possible he'd been excluded from tonight's little exercise in the dramatic arts? Perhaps he didn't even know about Joel. Oh, get real, Gillian! It was more likely I just wanted Tom to be innocent of all guilty knowledge, because I liked him. Hell, I didn't know; I was in no condition to make decisions or even distinguish what was true from what wasn't. Joel a fifteen-year-old killer? He'd have to be insane. I was beginning to feel a little nutty myself.

After a while I sat up and apologized to Tom. “Not the nicest thing to come home to—a near-stranger vomiting in your bathroom.”

He smiled. “Hardly a stranger. I felt I'd gotten to know you, Gillian—but obviously I missed something important. Won't you tell me what's upset you so much?”

Instead of answering I got up and wandered about the room. Annette had decorated it; her taste was everywhere. I picked up a Legras glass vase of a rare red ground color; the internal decoration showed three birds in cameo endlessly circling the body of the vase. I never wanted to break anything so much in my life.

But I put the vase back down. I was in over my head and I needed to talk to someone … yet as much as I liked Tom, I couldn't bring myself to trust him. Not completely. I wanted to, but I couldn't.

I looked at him sitting on the sofa, watching me. His face was troubled, and it was troubled on my account. He wanted to help and I wouldn't let him. God, had I become so suspicious and untrusting that I couldn't recognize good intent when I saw it?

“Tom, I want to stay here with you tonight,” I told him flatly.

He gave me no argument.

13

Tom was still asleep when I left the following morning. It was barely light out, and Connie was still in her room when I slipped into the house. I showered and changed and was in the kitchen squeezing oranges by the time she came down.

“How's your headache?” she greeted me.

“Completely gone,” I said with a smile.

“That's good. Your door was closed when I got home last night and I didn't want to bother you. I'm glad you're feeling better.”

I
was
feeling better, a lot. Nothing had changed, but a night of strenuous lovemaking had been just what I needed to give me the backbone to see this problem through to the end. I hadn't told Tom I knew the Matthew Zeitz story was a phony, because I still hadn't figured out the degree of his complicity in the deception or even whether he was involved at all or not. All I'd wanted from Tom was the comfort of a warm body wrapped around mine. He could be an ally, but I didn't dare risk telling him what I knew just yet. For the time being, I was willing to settle for the mere illusion that someone was
on my side
.

Tom was a good lover, and I was fond of him; so I felt a little guilty about using him to satisfy an immediate need. Also, I had to wonder about what was happening to me, to my common sense. Going to bed with a man I couldn't quite bring myself to trust—that was something new. But it was hard to maintain any sort of perspective in the atmosphere of deceit and conspiracy the Deckers had generated; I couldn't rely on my own judgment anymore. I thought I knew these people, but I didn't, not really. The only one in the entire crowd I felt I could trust was Connie.

Right then she was talking about Matthew Zeitz; she'd accepted the story without question. Connie wondered how he could have been tracking them all this time without anyone's noticing. “I don't understand what makes people do things like that! He didn't even know us. What was he thinking? What went so wrong in his life that he started … killing people?”

Connie really was a sweet woman. Here she was talking about a man she thought had killed her husband, and she had enough compassion to spare a thought about what had happened to
him
. “Something traumatic had to have happened,” I said, going along. “Something so awful that it warped him completely.”

“I wonder what it was,” she murmured.

Don't waste your sympathy
, I wanted to tell her;
Matthew Zeitz doesn't exist
. I took my orange juice and went to stand by the one kitchen window that looked out on the ocean. The sunlight on the water was already a burning glare; today was going to be a hot one.

Connie changed the subject. “Gillian, do you really have to go back to Chicago today? Couldn't you—

“I've decided to stay on,” I told her. “My assistant can handle the auction.”

Her face lit up. “Oh, I'm so glad! That's wonderful, Gillian!” She really did look pleased, and that made me smile too. “You belong here, you know.” She stopped to clear her throat. “Mrs. Vernon and I have a meeting in Edgartown today. With people from the other communities who're going to help fight the franchise?”

“Yes?”

“Michelle and Rob and Elinor and Tom are all coming—Oscar can't make it, his people from Washington are getting in today.” She paused and then asked wistfully, “I don't suppose you'd like to come too, would you?”

Through the window I spotted Joel climbing the steps up from the beach. “I'd love to come,” I told Connie.

That pleased her too. “The more Deckers there, the more chance we have of persuading other people to join in. That's what Mrs. Vernon says.”

Bless Mrs. Vernon. Joel came bursting in in his usual uninhibited manner; he gave Connie a kiss and turned to me, sudden disappointment showing on his face. “You're not wearing your swim suit! Hey, Aunt Gillian—you don't want to miss going out today! Now that they've caught old Matthew Whatsisname, we don't have to stay in so close to shore anymore!”

“Zeitz,” Connie said.

I could barely look at him, my most likely murderous teen-aged nephew. “No windsurfing for me today,” I said. “I'm going to a meeting with Connie.”

“That's right, Joel,” she said. “This morning. You can go surfing another time.”

“Righty-o.” He shrugged. “Are you really going back to Chicago?”

“Not right away. My business there can take care of itself.”

“Terrif!” He swooped me up in a big hug; I pushed away quickly. Joel hesitated. “Aunt Gillian, are you mad at me or something?”

Oh dear. “Why should I be mad?”

“I dunno. But you seem, well, like you're mad.”

I forced myself to look straight at him … and all I saw was the puzzled face of a fifteen-year-old, poised midway between childhood and adulthood, wondering whether he was reading his grown-up aunt correctly or not. “No, Joel, I'm not mad. I'm a little preoccupied today, that's all. This just isn't a good time for me to be thinking about windsurfing.”

His face broke into a relieved grin. “Sure. We'll go another time.” He gave Connie a wink and was gone. I could hear him whistling as he clattered down the wooden steps to the beach.

The meeting was already in full swing by the time we arrived; Connie had got the time wrong. Tom was waiting by the door for us. He gave my arm a squeeze and whispered he was glad I wasn't leaving; I wondered if he thought I was staying because of him. Connie had insisted on calling the rest of the family with the news that I wouldn't be going back to Chicago for a while; they all knew, and probably construed from that that their Matthew Zeitz ploy had worked. Tom led us to where the rest of the Decker contingent was sitting.

We were meeting in a room of Edgartown's yacht club, and it was crowded. At the front of the room three of the island's lawyers were arguing strategy, with Mrs. Vernon interrupting them every other sentence. The rest of the group wasn't exactly quiet either; everyone had a question to ask or a suggestion to make or an opinion to express. It was every bit as bad as I'd thought it would be.

Elinor hadn't come; her cold had got the better of her. So she'd sent Nancy Younger in her place, to be seen but not heard, to help swell the ranks of Deckers there to endorse the island-wide war against McDonald's. I sat next to Nancy, who even on this hot day was dressed like a graduate of Miss Finicky's Finishing School, right down to the mandatory single strand of pearls. Michelle flashed me a quick smile …
oh, how one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
. Rob was on his feet arguing with somebody.

Then I took a good look at the somebody—and I recognized him. It was the man who'd come over to our table at the Bay Tower Room in Boston, the day Annette had taken Connie and me shopping. He was the one who owned cable TV and radio stations.

I leaned over to Nancy. “That man who's arguing with Rob—who is he?”

“Ah … that's Mr. Underwood,” she said in her usual whisper.

Underwood—that's right, I remembered. “Patrick?”

She said yes. I was glad to see him again; I recalled he'd seen a play I had directed in New York, and that made him kind of rare. The meeting dragged on, getting nowhere. Nancy kept leaning around me to say things to Tom, who answered her in barely polite monosyllables. Mrs. Vernon was angry at one of the lawyers, who was angry at Patrick Underwood, who was angry at Rob.

Finally Michelle stood up. “May I say something?” she asked in her meticulous, I'm-used-to-being-listened-to manner of speaking. Every head in the room swiveled toward her; one of the lawyers invited her to the front of the room with a gesture. She walked to the front languidly, taking her time, enjoying being the center of attention.

For she
was
the center of all attention in that room. She looked fantastic, with her off-the-shoulder white dress and her glistening, short black hair and her red, red mouth. It wasn't just the men who were looking, either; the women liked watching her too. Michelle faced the rest of the room with a half smile playing about her lips and struck her favorite pose—hand on hip, foot forward.

“We're not going to get anywhere talking at cross-purposes like this,” she said. “We ought to be following the same rules of order as any other meeting—no one speaks unless recognized, and we stick to one topic at a time. This meeting needs a chairman.”

In no time at all Michelle was installed as chair, and from that point on the meeting proceeded in an orderly manner. When they started on the subject of what legal steps they could take to make sure that no public land was leased to McDonald's, I tuned out. I just couldn't get all worked up about hamburgers right then.

Eventually the meeting came to an end and I was on my feet immediately; I'd been sitting too long. I looked around to see Patrick Underwood heading in my direction.

“Gillian! I thought that was you,” he said, smiling. So he remembered my name. “Aren't you glad you came here for the summer? Think of all the excitement you'd have missed.”

I smiled back. “I
am
thinking of it.”

“How'd you get roped in on the franchise fight? Connie?”

“Yep, Connie. It was either this meeting or go windsurfing with Joel.”

His eyebrow went up. “I'd like to see you on a surfboard. But I think we can come up with better options than that. Are you busy tonight? Why don't we—”

“Hello, Patrick,” Tom interrupted, “good to see you again.” The two men shook hands. “I didn't know you knew Gillian.”

“We've met, in Boston. I think it was the Bay Tower Room, wasn't it, Gillian? Annette introduced us.” Did I imagine it, or was there a slight emphasis on the name of Tom's wife?

“Just recently, then.”

“Yes. I was about to ask Gillian to have dinner with me tonight.”

Tom casually draped an arm around my waist.
Claiming
me. “Gillian's busy tonight.”

The look on Patrick's face said he got the message, but he didn't back off. “Tomorrow, then?”

Tom's fingers pressed against my side, signaling me. “I'm afraid Gillian's pretty much tied up for the rest of her stay here. I'm sure you can find another dinner companion.”

Patrick looked at Tom coolly and said, “I'd like to hear her say that.”

That was my cue. “It's true, Patrick. I'm … tied up.”

Tom relaxed his hold on my waist and let out a barely audible breath. He'd won. He smiled at Patrick with a new affability and asked, “Hasn't Mrs. Vernon snared you for one of her committees yet?”

“Not yet, although I'll be happy to do what I can.”

“That's good to hear.” He called Mrs. Vernon over. “We have a volunteer for you.”

She gave us a toothy grin. “Ah, Patrick, I'd been meaning to get to you. You have friends in Chilmark, haven't you?”

“Yes, several. What have you got in mind?”

“What I've got in mind is getting those hedonists up off their naked behinds and
organized
. That's where you and Tom come in.”

“Me?” Tom said, surprised.

“Both of you.” Mrs. Vernon gave me her disconcertingly direct stare. “Gillian, I'm going to have to take them away from you. D'you mind?”

Would it matter if I did? “No, of course not—go ahead.” Both Tom and Patrick threw me a rueful look and followed the small woman in the denim skirt and white sneakers.

He was jealous! Tom was jealous! Or pretending to be. Whoa, now—
pretending
to be jealous? Good god, what was the matter with me? Wasn't I going to trust anyone's motives ever again?

Connie was gathered into Mrs. Vernon's little group, and Michelle and Rob were heading back to West Chop to play tennis. I declined their offer of a lift and invited Nancy Younger to have lunch with me.

We found a place right on the Edgartown waterfront. I ordered the “Tourist's Special” (which tourist? I wondered)—fried clams and cole slaw. Nancy asked for a salad.