[Oxrun Station] The Last Call of Mourning (10 page)

***

Dreaming of bloodred cheese and bloodred smiles.

Dreaming of shadows against shadows that prowled the hallways, sniffing, searching, prodding, poking, until they burst into her family's rooms and smothered them screaming.

Dreaming of cash registers overflowing with money, rooms filled with dimes and nickels and quarters, stores like her own bulging at the seams with grey canvas sacks that held millions of dollars. While Iris and Paul helped her in the counting, and Sandy and Ed danced with her till dawn.

Dreaming.

And waking.

Tuesday, the second day.

Thursday morning she was anxious to get started early. Iris had begun the day before to complain of an impending cold, and she did not want to force the old woman into work if she could help it. At Iris' age, she thought as she rushed through a breakfast of coffee and tepid toast, the slightest lung problems could mean potential disaster. Better she be first for a change, call Paul and see if she could persuade him to leave his wife home.

When she was done and the dishes piled in the sink, she darted into the hallway struggling into her coat. It was a green cloth affair she had found in her wardrobe, one she had forgotten but one she had decided was much better than the camel's hair; less pretentious, less blatant, certainly more fitting. She grinned as she shook her head at herself, stopped when her casual glance swept past the library door, reversed itself and made contact.

The door was open. She frowned, wondering if her father had renewed an old habit and had fallen asleep in one of his chairs while reading. She had a feeling that, despite his attack and Kraylin's orders, no one could keep him still for more than a few days. With a stern expression, then, she stepped into the vast room, a command on her lips that soon died. The French doors to the veranda were open all the way, the morning breeze teasing the white curtains. And on the left-hand wall the six-foot portrait of her paternal grandfather had been shoved to one side on its top-frame hinges, and the wall safe gaped in the first glow of morning.

For several moments she was unable to speak, to breathe, to do more than stare. Then she screamed for her father. For Evan. For Rob. Screamed louder, and was bracing to race upstairs when her parents in their bathrobes met her at the threshold. Cyd babbled hysterically, then pointed while Barton looked inside, returned grim-faced and was reaching for the wall phone extension by the kitchen door when Rob joined them.

"Rob—"

He pushed through them and stood on the edge of the oriental carpet. Nodded. Walked over  to  the   doors and closed them, opened them, nodded once again. Then he crossed to the safe and peered in.

"Well, isn't anyone going to say anything?" Cyd demanded, everything inside her telling her to start yelling again. "For God's sake, do you want me to call the police?"

"No," Barton said.

Cyd thought she heard him incorrectly. "Father, listen to me: There's been a robbery. Mother's jewels," and she turned to her mother who only took her arm and held on.

"Darling," she said, "there's no sense, really. They're not marked or anything like that, they're diamonds for the most part." She nodded toward the doors. "Isn't it obvious? The thief knew what he was doing. Probably one of my dear friends' friends we had over the other night. He took a walk around, saw what he wanted and came back while we were sleeping. He's long gone now. He'll never be caught."

"They cut the diamonds and things out of the settings, Cyd," Evan said, still in his pajamas and coming up behind her. "Then they can sell them and no one knows the difference."

Cyd yanked her arm free, looked from one face to another. "I
d
on't believe this
,
" she said. "I don't know how many thousands of dollars' worth of stuff has been taken from your very own house, and all you people can do is tell me that you're not going to report it." She glanced into the corridor, turned back and nearly shouted, "Well, if you don't call Stockton, damnit, then I will!"

Everyone tried speaking at once, no voice dominating until Cyd clamped her hands over her ears, waited until Rob took hold of his mother's arm as she had her daughter's. "Cyd's right, you know," he said, so quietly they all had to stop in order to hear him. "As usual, she's right." He smiled down at his mother. "You're forgetting something, aren't you? The insurance. There's no way we can collect a dime unless it's reported to Abe."

Thank God, there's someone still sane around here, she thought; and leave it to Rob to know what to do.

Barton seemed as if he were going to argue on, then sagged as though he were a deflated balloon. "You're right, son," he said, almost sighing. He looked then to Cyd, a weak smile at his lips. "I'm sorry, dear, but . . . well, this has never happened to us before. It's just a reflex, I suppose. You know what I mean—keep it in the family, we can handle it ourselves. Legacy of your grandfather I suspect it is."

"Pride is what you're talking about," she said, more angrily than she had intended, but not sorry for it. "But for God's sake, Father, pride or not this is a crime you're talking about here, not some damned company trying
to
take you over. And if you've got money problems—"

"Who told you that?" Evan demanded.

She looked at him in disgust, turned back to her parents. "I'm not stupid, you know. I really do have a brain, though sometimes it seems that people around here don't like to give me credit for it."

"Now, Cyd," Rob began, but she silenced him with a glare.

"As I said, I'm not stupid. You get rid of the Lennons and old Wallace, you cut down on the parties, on the food, on . . ." She waved her arms wide. "On everything! At first I thought you didn't offer to help me buy the store because you wanted me to work on my own. Wrong, right? You didn't have the money, right? And all those jewels you kept saying were missing . . . I'll bet you a hundred dollars you were selling them in the city. Am I right again?"

No one said anything. They only stared blankly, and she hugged herself suddenly as though she were chilled.

Barton cleared his throat. "Robert, please call Abe and tell him what we've found here. Evan, call the office and tell them we won't be in today. For obvious reasons. And Cynthia—" she looked up and saw him smiling—"I think you'd better get your tail into work before you're late and Iris fires you."

The tension passed then and, after watching Rob dial the police number, she kissed her mother's cheek and ran out of the house.

Insane, she thought as she drove into the village. I swear they're all going to need keepers before very long. My God, how stupid can you get, not wanting to call the police? Melancholy swept over her almost as soon as the thought was done; an almost wrenching sadness that in her anger and frustration she had forced them to be truthful to her for once in their lifes.

The money was going, going faster than they could make it; and on top of it a robbery to take the last of . . . what would she call it? Their legacy? Their stake?

Nevertheless, she reveled in a swell of pride at the ranks that had closed during the crisis, knowing that right at this moment her mother would be primping for the news photographers Marc Clayton was sure to send around from the paper, while Evan wrote a quick statement to be handed to the reporters. A laugh then as she parked in front of the store, louder when she saw Iris and Paul impatiently waiting.

"Boy," she said as she unlocked the door, "have I got news for you guys today."

And half an hour later Abe Stockton walked in.

"Hey," Cyd said from behind the counter, "you come for my statement or whatever you do?"

Abe Stockton could have been Paul's twin for the lines and the wattles, the New England stern that stamped his expression. He was wearing an ill-fitting dark suit and an out-of-fashion thin tie, his white shirt bunching at his waist when he opened his jacket to hitch at his trousers. He wore no overcoat though the day was chilled, a trademark he tried to foster until January brought the real season.

"Hey, Abe, you hear me?"

Stockton frowned and scratched at his head, the wisps of faintly red hair that clustered about his ears. "Statement? I came in here to see how you're doing, maybe pick up one of them new cop books you got there in the window. Then I got to go over to the bank to see about a loan. Why do you think I'm dressed like a damned fool instead of a chief? Statement? What do I want a statement for? You bash your brother or what?"

Cyd almost told him, then grinned stupidly and tried to pass her question off as a joke as she showed him around, only half-listening to his comments both sour and complimentary. And when he had gone, she called Ed from the back office.

"Listen," she said when Iris took the hint of her look and wandered out toward her husband, "you'd better get over here as soon as you're done work."

She paused, heard no comment, and said as softly as she could, "Ed, please say you'll come. I think I'm getting frightened."

After sunset, paradoxically, the temperature rose to an unseasonable warmth and December seemed May despite the signs of Christmas. Low banks of fog billowed over the road partially obscuring it, freeing it as though a curtain had been raised, obscuring it again in a disturbing dead white that reflected the headlights back into her eyes. Cyd squinted, clicked the beams to low and slowed the car to a crawl a full hundred yards before she reached the entrance to the drive. Behind her she heard Ed's car grind loudly to a lower gear and she winced, yet she did not want to move any faster. Not because she might hit something or run off the Pike during those disconcertingly brief moments of temporary blindness, but because she was beginning to feel somewhat foolish about her panic-driven call. Fear was something she equated with a fast car on a sharp mountain curve in the middle of a storm, or leaning over a hundred-foot drop with little more protection than a flimsy wooden railing This sensation was something new, something unusual. It had, for one thing, a direct connection with the confusion she had been experiencing since Thanksgiving, the unsettling notion that there was something wrong with her world and she was helpless to define it.

It was, she thought, rather like being on a lonely road in an ancient automobile. The motor sounds right, there's no extraneous play in the wheel, yet one senses there is something out of place in the driving and tenses . . . waiting for the tire to go flat, the engine to miss, the electrical system to suddenly flare and burn out.

Tension.

She nodded to herself as she swung into the drive. That's what it was. That was what kept her from really enjoying the alien world of her bookshop, the Lennons' wry company, even Ed's hovering protection. A tension created by an entity she had always felt reasonably secure with, always at home with . . . her family.

The fog spattered in a light spray against the windshield, vanished beyond the reach of the headlights. Twice she thought she saw the quick red eyes of a deer far back in the shrubs and had jerked her head around to find it, could not, and shivered despite her buttoned-to-the-neck coat and the heavy scarf she had wrapped loosely around her throat. A trailing bough drummed on the roof. A stone thumped beneath the left front tire. She began whistling impatiently, tuneless, almost decided to call a halt to this nonsense and blare her horn when she reached the oval to let the others know she had arrived home safely.

Almost.

Not quite.

Instead, she cut the engine before leaving the drive and coasted with a light tire-hiss to the garage door and sat there, waiting for Ed to pull up behind her. Then she slipped out of her seat and waited for him by the trunk, her hands deep in her pockets, her eyes unable to stray from the black monolith she kept telling herself was her home. There were no lights on despite the hour, no way of knowing there was fog in the air except for the moisture that crept upon her face like strands of damp webbing. Somewhere in the darkness water dripped into a puddle, a tinny sound that should have been delicate.

When Ed touched her arm she almost screamed.

"Luck," he whispered with a nod toward the house.

She did not answer. Could not because she wasn't all that sure herself. At his urging then she led him around the side to the veranda, twice stumbling over protruding rocks in the grass, at the corner of the low wall barking her shin when she made the turn too soon. She cursed, rubbed at her leg, and stopped when they reached the library door. It was then that he snapped on his pencil flashlight, and she turned away quickly to keep from being momentarily blinded.

He grunted.

She looked up at the house and felt a light stab of regret. Less than two weeks before the holidays and there were no electric candles in the windows, no wreath on the front door, the usual display of colored lights gone from the tall fir in the center of the drive's oval garden. That, she remembered with a guilty stir, had been Wallace McLeod's job . . . and Sandy usually helped him.

"All right," Ed said brusquely, "let's get inside. I'm done here for the time being."

When he had met her at the shop after closing, the idea had seemed simple enough: instead of forcing a confrontation with her parents and brothers over the police, they would check first themselves on the nature of the burglary. It did not take much convincing for her to believe that she would receive no satisfactory answers from anyone if she faced them with the lie of contacting Stockton. What had shaken her, what had allowed Ed to maneuver her without much protest, was the inevitable conclusion that her near screaming attack on them that morning had only uncovered a surface conspiracy. There was money involved, to be sure, but evidently it was not the insurance payments they were after or they would not have hesitated to bring in the police. There were more lies beneath the lies, caverns of shadows she needed to be lighted before she could understand, and in understanding, confront.

"No lights," Ed said when her hand automatically reached for the switch.

"For heaven's sake," she snapped, "it's my house, isn't it?" But she dropped her hand and followed his dark outline behind the flashlight into the library where he moved immediately to the French doors and bent close to the latch. Then he turned slowly, aiming the thin beam at the stern-faced portrait. He shook his head.

"Idiots," he muttered as he crossed the room. "Looking behind a thing like that is the first place any pro would head for." He reached up with one hand and tugged at the broad, gilt frame, shifting it on its hinges to expose the face of the safe. He shook his head again. "You'd be surprised how many fools think something like this is safer than a bank. I would have thought your folks would have known better."

His left hand, encased in a snug brown glove, toyed with the dial for a moment, slapped at it once before he turned around and flashed the light around the room, at the vases dearly gleaned from private auctions, the brass and bronze figurines, the leather, and the skillfully, expensively preserved books on the highest shelves.

"There's a lot of money in here," she said, her arms folded and resting on the high back of a chair. "What you're saying is, someone knew about the jewelry and didn't waste any time with all this stuff, even though it would probably bring nearly as much."

"No," he said. He picked up a small brass horse from a square onyx coffee table, brought it to her and held it up to the flash. "Look at it," he said. She stared at him, shrugged, took the boldly fashioned animal and gaped. Blinked. Wondered where the weight was. "What I'm saying is, the thief knew that most of this stuff was for show only. I would guess nine out of ten pieces are worthless. And the way prices are these days, probably less than that."

She took the flashlight from his hand without speaking, moved numbly around the room and examined all those things she had helped her father purchase. There were only one or two pieces that were still genuine; the rest were forgeries, and not very adept ones at that. Those who were around them every day would not notice because they would not be looking for a change, and so they would not see one; those who understood the value involved, those from the outside, wouldn't grasp the switch because they wouldn't have an opportunity for careful examination. But now that she could follow Ed's drift, she could see it all, and in seeing ignored his warning and hit a wall switch that turned on all but two of the lamps.

"It's a fake," she said, not knowing whether to cry or explode. She looked at him for an explanation, but he seemed suddenly weary. His shoulders sagged under the worn Navy peacoat, and his eyes retreated to hollows beneath his brow. "It's a fake," she repeated dully, and tossed the horse onto a chair.

Finally Ed nodded, unbuttoning his coat and dropping onto the sofa. "So was the robbery."

"I don't think I want to know about it," she said, but sat anyway, retrieving the horse and holding it tightly in her lap.

"There's no outside lock on those doors. The glass hasn't been broken, the wood is still solid around the bolt. It fits closely. Any jimmying would show, the stain is too dark. Someone came into the room from the inside, took the jewels from the safe, opened the doors and left them that way. Assuming, then, that your family are the only ones who know the combination and it wasn't written down someplace . . ." He spread his hands wide, half in unnecessary explanation, half in sympathetic apology.

"I can't believe it," she said. "I mean, I know what it sounds like, but I just can't believe it."

"If they had called the police, Cyd, it would have been fraud. It's obvious. They did it themselves."

"I still can't believe it."

"I'm sorry, but I don't know what else to tell you."

She waited for the passing of several long breaths before rising slowly, dropping the horse to the floor and walking to the doors. Her hand touched at the curtains, gripped the latch and pulled it to her.

The night crept in.

Shaded lampglow slipped ahead of her onto the veranda, and the fog backed off quickly as though an animal wary of fire. Her coat was unbuttoned, her scarf unwound, but she stepped out of the room and walked toward the wall, trying not to think, not to multiply the implications from the first damned one. Yet she could see her way along only a single path in the maze—the morning confession of the selling of the jewels, the firing of the staff, artifacts replaced . . . there was no money. Or, considerably less than she had been left to believe. But where had it all gone that the Yarrows avoided official interference? Why had they sacrificed a sure payment from their insurance company simply to keep Stockton from knowing?

And something else, something more painful, and somehow more threatening: She had been cut off from her parents, from her brothers, as if she were little more than a side-effect not to be considered. If it were true that she was still loved, it was also true that they no longer trusted her. Without giving her a reason, she was not to be trusted.

Because of business? She wanted desperately to believe it, and could not. In spite of everything else they were a
family,
and she knew she would have been made even a small part of the fight to keep matters running.

Something else, then. Something that drained them, and would not let them talk.

Whispering.

She cocked her head slightly, a brief frown that vanished.

Rob and his solemnity was no doubt the most staunch in his belief that whatever was happening would not destroy the family; not even his father could best him in that.

whispering . . . voices with words like dead leaves without wind
. . .

And Evan. Always the most nervous and therefore the most cautious. She could easily imagine him thrashing about in his bed every night, struggling for a clever way out of what he most likely thought was a one-way tunnel to abject poverty.

The idea came that perhaps they were being blackmailed.

. ..
the sound of a cat drifting across frost-stiff grass, a breeze across water, the moon behind clouds
. ..
whispering . . .

Absently, she reached out a hand to touch the wall, and drew it back sharply. The stone was cold. Too cold. It almost had burned her. She looked at her palm, half-expecting a scar, saw instead trembling beads of moisture she wiped off on her coat.

Blackmail.

For a man in her father's position it would be easy. A youthful peccadillo come back in a haunting. Some not-quite-legal banking maneuvers. Her brothers, or one of them, involved with a woman, some indiscretion.

Blackmail.

She heard Ed cough behind her in the library, ignored him and was grateful he did not join her.

She wondered if there was a connection, then, between what was devouring the Yarrows and Doctor Calvin Kraylin. He seemed to have moved into a position of confidant long held, and rightly, by Angus Stone. Yet the lawyer had said nothing to her at all during their months of negotiations for the shop, not even a hint that he was displeased, or worried, or opposed to Kraylin's influence. Assuming, she corrected herself hastily, the influence was as strong as she was tempted to believe. But that was too simple, too much a part of B-movies and potboilers, where sinister doctors in soiled lab coats crept around corners and locked the doors to their offices, rubbing their hands gleefully in pitiful Lorre imitations.

. . .
insistent . . . demanding .
. .
hovering like a carrion hunter without swooping because the wounds had not yet drained life from the body rapidly dwindling to a corpse . . . waiting . . . whispering . . . the fog stalking through the trees, crouching by the shrubs, sprinting across the back lawn to wait patiently behind the wall. . . .

The fog.

My God, she thought, what is it?

She brushed a hand over her face as she half-turned toward the house ...

the fog

. . .
and saw the lamps blurred and darkening beyond the white curtains.

had turned black.

A dampness spawned in corners of dungeons, shadows of walls, tunnels of worms, rose from the flagstone and snaked about her ankles, climbing her calves to cling to her thighs. She shuffled half a pace forward. A pressure settled on her chest and bent her back at the waist, slightly, gently, but nevertheless back. She tried to lift an arm, but only her shoulder moved; downward to her fingers there was only a dead weight.