Rosemary Remembered (14 page)

"Oh, yeah?" Sheila demanded. "Like what? She goes into a trance, doesn't she? There's some weird supernatural being hanging around, isn't there? If it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck — "

"Sheila," I said, "it's okay." I leaned over and patted her hand. It was cold, although the room was very warm. "It's safe. Nothing's going to happen."

Sheila cleared her throat. "I just don't like spooky stuff." She glanced over her shoulder at the shadowed corner.

The drapes closed out the gathering storm and what was left of the daylight. Ruby lit the candle, then turned out the lamp. The candle flickered, then steadied and burned brighter as she sank down on her knees on a tas-seled paisley cushion and folded her hands in her lap, giving the impression that she consults the spirits everyday of the week—as perhaps she does. Her tarot cards are in a wooden casket on the table, a bowl of I Ching coins sits on the table, and a large painted horoscope — Ruby's birth chart, rendered symbolically—hangs over the fireplace. Maybe it's fairer to say that the spirits consult Ruby.

"It's not spooky, Sheila," she said reassuringly. "It's just an ordinary room. Just take a deep breath and try to relax. You're sending out waves of negative
cbi,
and your aura is awfully dark. Your stuff might keep La Que Sabe from coming through."

But the room didn't seem ordinary any longer. Nothing concrete had changed—the furniture was the same, the art, the candle in the dusky dark, the sweet fragrance of smoldering sage and cedar—but the room held an energy that had nothing to do with us. It wasn't anything I could see, anything I could touch or smell or hear, but I sensed it, nevertheless: a gathering urgency, a canny concentration of power as wild and unruly as the storm outside. I glanced at Ondine. Her hands were clasped, her eyes closed, her lashes dark against her pale cheeks. She looked as if she were asleep. Or dead.

A few moments — how many, I couldn't say — passed. Finally, Sheila cleared her throat. "Excuse me for interrupting," she said in a loud voice, "but can we open a window? It's getting stuffy in here."

It
was
stuffy. The air seemed to have an oppressive weight and texture, as if we were seated in the burial chamber of a pyramid and tons of rock were pressing down on us, compressing the air, making it soupy. Half-giddy, I realized how ancient our air is, millions, billions of years old, breathed in and breathed out by millions, billions of beings, human and otherwise. An ancient communion, a wordless, soundless liturgy, linking creatures with no common inheritance other than birth, death, and breath.

Ruby shook her head. "Leave the window for now, Sheila," she whispered. "It feels like La Que Sabe's about to come through. Anyway, it's raining too hard."

And suddenly it
was
raining, coming down in lashing sheets mixed with small hail, to judge from the sound as it hit the porch roof. The room was lit by a flash of blue-white lightning, flaring like a torch across our pale faces. An impatient clatter of thunder rattled at the window panes, as if the storm wanted to come in.

Ondine's eyes opened. "I see that we are all here," La -Que Sabe said, her deep voice resonant and a little amused. "It is good that we are all here."

"Really,"
Sheila said desperately, "I
wish
we could
open — "

"Shush!" Ruby said.

Ondine turned tow
ard me. Her mouth was shadowed,
pale eyes lit as if the hghtning had set off an inner blaze. Her gaze transfixed me for a long moment.

"Your friend who is searching, he follows the wrong trail." The voice was taut, vibrating, a strummed wire. "He seeks the wrong man."

I blinked. "The wrong man?"

"It's Robbins!" Ruby yelped. "I told you so!" She clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oops. Excuse me."

Ondine was still looking at me — no, not at me, but
into
me, as if I were transparent. It was as if she had found something of interest inside me and was pulling it out, turning it over to examine it, approving it, putting it back.

"You are the one who will find the killer," she said. Her face was a flat, expressionless mask in the dimness of the room, but her eyes brimmed with light. "Tell the boy's father to abandon his search and come home at once. The child is in peril. You have much to fear."

"Brian's in peril?" I leaned forward, urgent.

Ondine's voice became hard. "There is a man who wears a snake."

A snake? Jacoby's tattoo! A cloud of black, unreasoning fear rose up out of the most primitive core of my being and blotted out everything else. I whispered, "Was it
Jacoby
who killed Rosemary? Is that why McQuaid's after the wrong — ?"

My question was silenced by a sudden jagged flash of lightning and the simultaneous roar of thunder as loud as a dynamite blast. Something like pebbles rattled in the chimney, and a fluorescent wave of blue-white sparks rippled across the floor, across my feet. I felt a jolt. My feet tingled.

Ondine raised her voice above the howling of the storm. "The man who wears a snake will lead you to the truth. You will find the answer by
el ri
o abajo."

For a moment I thought I hadn't heard her right.
El ri
o abajo?
The river beneath? Beneath what? It wasn't enough to have psychics, now we had psychic riddles,
Spanish
psychic riddles, for God's sake.

"What river?" I demanded. A clap of thunder swallowed up my words. "What river?" I yelled.

Suddenly the wind and rain stopped and there was utter silence for the space of a dozen heartbeats. Ondine closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were empty. The light had gone out.

"La Que Sabe has no more to say," she said.

I leaned forward, coldly angry. "Well, that's a hell of a note. Who does La Que Sabe think she is, coming on with a teaser like that and then — "

"She Who Knows will tell you nothing more." Ondine's expression was closed, her voice flat. "The rest you must learn for yourself."

I reached out my hand. "Nothing more?" I snarled. "Well, you tell that bitch — "

I was stopped by a blaze of absolute light, a clap of thunder loud enough to wake the dead, and a long, shud-dery ripping sound that froze us in place. We were released from our paralysis by a splintery crash and the brittle chime of breaking glass. The French doors slammed open. A chill hurricane of pelting rain and pebbly hail. The acrid smell of ozone and burnt wood filled the room.

Sheila jumped to her feet and ran to wrestle with the doors. It took a moment to force them shut. "Get that sofa over here," she yelled. "The latch is broken. The doors won't stay shut."

Her command galvanized us into action. Ondine scrambled out of the way as Ruby and I shoved the futon against the doors.

"It sounded like a limb from the oak tree," Ruby said, her face white. "It must have been fallen onto the garage."

But when the rain stopped and we went outside to survey the damage, we discovered that it wasn't a limb that had fallen, it was the entire tree. Oaks are notoriously shallow-rooted, and this one had been pushed past the limits of its endurance. It had toppled onto Ruby's garage.

"Your insurance will probably cover the garage," Sheila said, "but it's really too bad about the oak. It was a nice tree."

"Actually, the poor thing was half-dead with oak wilt," Ruby replied. "It was going to have to come out anyway. But at least it missed the house and the car." Ruby's Honda was safe. There's no room for it in the garage, so she parks it in the driveway. She gave a rueful laugh. "I guess I should have smudged the garage, huh?"

There wasn't anything left to say. I gave Ruby a hug and said a strained good-bye to Ondine. Together, Sheila and I went out to our cars, parked on the street. The storm had rolled northward, and in the clear lemon-yellow light of the setting sun we surveyed the flotsam of branches, leaves, and loose shingles that littered the street. Ruby's next-door neighbors were out on the sidewalk, peering anxiously up at their roof, while across the street, another neighbor dragged a limb off a brand-new white van. All the damage looked to be pretty minor, compared to Ruby's garage.

"I hope you don't believe that weird stuff Ondine was dishing out," Sheila said. Safely outside, in the cool normality of the street, she had regained her skepticism. "All that nonsense about McQuaid coming home to protect Brian, and that stuff about the snake man. Ridiculous!"

I opened the car door and leaned on it. "It doesn't matter what I believe. McQuaid's not going to come home, whatever La Que Sabe says. He doesn't care whether Jeff is the right man or the wrong man. He's got a job to do and he's doing it."

"Stop calling her La Que Sabe," Sheila said tautly. "it was Ondine, talking in a funny voice. All those special effects, the lightning and thunder and stuff, that was just the storm."

"Was it?"

"You're not suggesting that — "

"I don't know what I'm suggesting," I said. I leaned over and brushed wet leaves off the windshield. "I just wish I knew how Ondine found out about the snake."

"What about the snake?" Sheila asked, and I told her about the rattlesnake tattoo on Jacoby's neck.

"Ruby didn't tell her?"

"Ruby doesn't know." Wearily; I opened the door and got in. "I've had enough excitement for one night. I've got to collect Brian and head for home."

Sheila put her hand on the door to keep me from closing it. Her gray eyes were serious. "I don't for a minute believe that there's a dime's worth of truth in any of Ondine's pronouncements, but — " She stopped. "I suppose you've got a gun."

I rolled down the window. "McQuaid left me enough firepower to defend the Alamo, if I wanted to use it. We'll be safe."

"Of course," Sheila said. "You can take care of yourselves." She bent over to look at me through the window. "You and Brian must really rattle around in that big old house out there. How many bedrooms did you say it has?"

"Five." I put the key in the ignition and turned it. "It's almost nine," I said. "I need to get home."

"I've got an idea," Sheila said. "I'm not doing anything
evenings for the next few days. Why don't you invite me out until McQuaid gets back? You know, sort of an extended sleepover. Just the two of us and Brian."

I squinted up at her, silhouetted against the last of the light. "Do you have any idea what you're letting yourself in for? Eleven-year-olds are beastly, not to mention their pets. This one has a bassett hound, an iguana, and a tarantula — at least. Lord only knows what else is lurking at the back of his closet.'

"Sounds like my kid brother." Sheila grinned. "Mice in his pockets and lizards up his sleeve. I'll just zip on home and get my toothbrush and something to wear to work tomorrow, then stop at the liquor store and pick up a jug of wine. While McQuaid's away, the girls will play, huh"? What'd'ya say?"

I grinned.
"Id
say you're one smart cookie."

Chapter Ten

I have presented to view divers forms or plots for Gardens, amongst which it is possible you may find some that may near the matter fit, and shall leave the ingenious Practitioner to their consideration and use.

Leonard Meager

The English Gardener: Or, a Sure

Guide to Young Planters & Gardeners, J 688

The storm that had shot a bolt of lightning down Ruby's chimney and destroyed her garage seemed to have been whimsically aimed at her block. I didn't see any other damage as I drove home, and Arnold's mother reported that it had rained there for only a few minutes. Texas thunderstorms are like that: half of Adams county can be floating away while the other half is on its knees praying for rain. Still, it was an odd coincidence that the storm had been so narrowly concentrated, at the exact moment Ondine was doing her thing.

The stars were out and a sliver of moon was showing in the eastern sky when we got home. It had rained just hard enough to erase the tire marks we'd left when we drove out, and the headlights revealed no footprints or tire marks in the drive. Still, I was cautious when I pulled up in front of the dark house. It didn't take a warning from La Que Sabe and a bolt out of the blue to make me wish that we had installed a security light. The house
id
isolated. The closest neighbors live on the other side of the ridge, and the lane leading from the county road to the house is a quarter mile long. Nice when you want privacy, a little unsettling if you're concerned about security.

"What are we waiting for?" Brian asked.

"Nothing." There was a misshapen shadow under the willow tree. I opened the glove box, fished out a flashlight, and shined it on Howard Cosell, grumpily aroused and resentful that he hadn't been let in to sleep behind the sofa, away from the fire ants. He lay back down, scorning to bark. So much for our trusty watchdog.

Brian turned to face me, his child's face a blurry triangle in the dark. "You're not
really
afraid of that guy with the tattoo snake, are you?"

"Absolutely not," I said firmly. "Lock the door behind me and wait in the car until I call you."

It took a few minutes to search the house, but I felt better when it was done. I had just finished checking the answering machine when Smart Cookie showed up with her clothes and the wine. We were in the kitchen when the phone rang. I grabbed for it, thinking it was McQuaid.

"I just wanted to see that you got home okay," Ruby said.

"Thanks for worrying," I said.

Ruby hesitated. "Uh, China, I know it's hard for you to believe this stuff. But I really think you should take Ondine seriously."

"Maybe so," I said. I was remembering Lyle Biggs and his vision of a grave in a muddy field. And Peggy Simmons and Samuel, and the woman who had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend. The police hadn't taken them seriously — in the beginning. When it was all over, they did.

"Well, that's all I have to say," Ruby said, and hung up. I had just put the phone down when it rang again.

"Everything okay?" McQuaid asked. "Any messages for me?"

"Everything's okay," I said. I reported my conversations with Matt and Bubba (leaving out the bit about Jacoby and the knifing in New Braufels). I added the message I'd picked up from the answering machine. "Bubba says that the Brownsville police matched Clark's prints with those in the car. They apparently didn't get them off the steering wheel or the stick shift, though. He said they came from the door."

"The stick was grooved," McQuaid said, "and the wheel had a pebble vinyl cover. Neither would have taken a print." He sighed wearily. "I guess that cinches it, China. Clark's our man. That's not the name he used coming through Immigration, though."

"He must have false documents," I said.
The wrong man.
Could La Que Sabe be confused because Jeff had assumed a different name? I stopped myself. That was ridiculous. I was acting as though Ondine knew what she was talking about.

"You can get papers in Brownsville as easy as you can get a beer." He was silent for a minute, and I could picture him pulling at his lip and scowling. "I never would've believed it of him, though."

The wrong man.
The prints on the gun and the prints on the car were indisputably Jeff*s. What did Ondine know that we didn't? But I couldn't tell McQuaid what she had said. He'd never believe it. I didn't believe it myself—did I?