Smoke in Mirrors (33 page)

“Her name was Meredith Spooner,” Leonora said quietly.

“Yeah, her, too.” Julie shivered again. “It is so freaky, when you think about it. He keeps his big secret all those years and then it all starts to fall apart, so he starts killing people to keep them quiet.”

“Freaky, all right,” Leonora said.

Travis moved closer to Julie and put his arm around her shoulders in a protective way. “What really gets me is that Julie did some odd jobs for Rhodes recently. What if she’d gone there last night to pick up her money? She could have been there when Professor Kern arrived.”

Leonora gave Julie a pointed look. “Always a good idea to know exactly who you’re working for.”

Julie flushed and said nothing. Travis patted her shoulder.

Thomas untied Wrench. They headed across the street to join the crowds on the footpath.

“I’d better go home,” Leonora said. “I want to call Gloria. Let her know what’s been happening.”

Halfway back to her cottage they saw the small crowd of joggers and runners gathered on the footbridge. Everyone was looking down into the deep waters of the cove.

Ed Stovall’s SUV was parked across the path. An ambulance and another police vehicle were stationed nearby. Two medics were unloading a gurney.

Thomas studied the scene.

“What do you want to bet that they just found Kern’s body?” he said.

Deke showed up
on Thomas’s doorstep late that afternoon. Thomas gave him a beer and opened one for himself. They sat in the recliners in the living room and talked.

“Stovall came to see me,” Deke said. “Don’t think the guy’s had any sleep for the past twenty-four hours. He looked exhausted. But he said he felt we had a right to be kept informed.”

“One thing you can say about Stovall. Man’s got a sense of duty.” Thomas swallowed some beer. “I like that in a public servant. Did he have anything more than what we already know?”

“Not much. They found some stuff they think might be drugs when they searched Rhodes’s house.”

“No surprise there.”

“No.” Deke drank some beer. “Stovall says they sent a sample to a lab for analysis, but he told me off the record that he’s sure it will turn out to be that hallucinogenic crap that’s been floating around since last year. He also said they’re going to do an autopsy, but that it looks like Kern wrote his note, had a few drinks, got into the boat and set the throttle on full. Then he just went overboard. The cold water did the rest.”

“Wouldn’t be the first person to commit suicide that way.”

They drank more beer. The silence between them felt good, Thomas thought. Familiar. Comfortable. Things were getting back to normal.

“I asked Cassie to go to the alumni weekend reception at Mirror House on Saturday night,” Deke said after a while.

The news, delivered as it was, without any sort of preamble or warning, caught Thomas by surprise. “What did she say?”

“She said okay.”

“Okay. Great.” Thomas smiled.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

Deke settled deeper into the recliner and turned the damp bottle between his palms. “I was thinking maybe you could ask Leonora to go with you.”

That stopped him cold. “I’m not a member of Mirror House. Neither is Leonora.”

“No, but I am. I can take you both as my guests.”

“I don’t know how long Leonora plans to stay here now that she’s got her answers. She may be gone by Saturday.”

Deke’s brows rose behind the rims of his glasses. He looked amused. “Have you tried asking her if she’s thinking of leaving anytime soon?”

“No.”

“Is there a problem here? Why can’t you ask her a simple question?”

“Maybe I don’t want to know the answer,” Thomas said.

“Huh.”

They drank more beer.

“Got an idea for you,” Deke said after a while.

“Yeah?”

“Tell her that you’d like her to stay through Saturday
and attend the reception with you because it would make Cassie feel more comfortable.”

“You think that would work?”

“Sure. Leonora seems to like the idea of matching me with Cassie. I think she’d stay a couple of extra days and go to the reception if you convinced her that it would help push my relationship with Cassie forward.”

“Devious.”

“Yeah,” Deke said proudly. “I thought so.”

Thomas contemplated the possibilities for a while. “All right, I’ll try it.”

“Excellent.” Deke paused. “By the way, you can tell Leonora that the position we created for her at Mirror House is for real. I’ve decided she’s right. That collection is valuable and should be cataloged and made available online. The Bethany Walker Endowment will continue to fund the job.”

“I’ll mention that to her.”

Deke looked at the tips of his running shoes. “You know, it’s been a while since I went out on a date.”

“Don’t worry. It’s one of those things you don’t forget how to do.”

“Sort of like boolean algebra, huh?”

Thomas’s mouth curved. “Sort of. Want a little advice?”

“What’s that?”

“Lose the beard.”

Deke looked startled. Then he grinned ruefully. “You don’t think it’s a fashion statement?”

“It’s Cassie’s opinion that counts here and I’ve always had the impression she didn’t care for the beard.”

Deke ran his fingers through his beard, thinking. “Neither did Margaret Lewis.”

“There you go,” Thomas said. “That settles it. According to you and Leonora and Cassie, department secretaries rule.”

He waited until
Deke left before he picked up the phone and called Leonora. She answered on the first ring.

“You want to help further the cause of promoting an intimate relationship between Deke and Cassie?” he asked.

“They seemed to be doing quite well on their own.”

“Deke wants to take her to the reception on Saturday. He suggested that maybe she’d feel more comfortable if all four of us went together. But I’ve got a feeling he’s the one who’s a little nervous about getting back into the dating scene.”

“Let me get this straight, you’re asking me to go to the reception with you because you think your brother needs us to give him some moral support?”

“You’re not buying this, are you?”

“Deke and Cassie are both adults and their main problems seem to be out of the way. They can manage a date on their own.”

He went to stand at the window. Night was closing in fast. He could not see the new assault wave of fog that was rolling in off the water, but it seemed to him that he could sense its weight.

“Let me rephrase that question,” he said. “Would you care to attend the reception at Mirror House on Saturday evening?”

“With you?”

“Yes, ma’am. With me.”

“Oh, yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I would like that very much.”

The window reflected his own happy image staring back at him.

“Something else,” he said. “Deke told me to tell you that he agrees with you about the importance of that
library. He says the Bethany Walker Endowment will continue to fund the task of getting the collection online and he’d be pleased if you would agree to continue on in the position of librarian until the job is finished.”

Leonora was quiet for a moment.

“I’ll think about it,” she said at last. “It would probably take me a few months.”

“Yeah.” He could do a lot with a few months.

Leonora said nothing.

“Of course,” Thomas said, “I could always move to Melba Creek.”

“Thomas—”

“I’m pushing this a little too hard, aren’t I?” Thomas said.

“We both need to go carefully here.”

“Right. Carefully. Measure twice, cut once. An old bit of tool wisdom.”

Leonora surprised him with a laugh. “I wasn’t planning on cutting anything.”

“I can’t tell you how reassuring it is to hear you say that.”

“While we’re thinking about things, why don’t you come over here for dinner? Bring Wrench.”

“I’ll do that. And my tools, of course.”

“Planning to give me another demonstration of your astonishing skill?”

“Wait’ll you see what I can do with a drill press.”

Thomas took his
time making love to her that night. Probably the craftsman in him, she thought at one point. He was concerned with the smallest details. Who would have guessed that she would be so sensitive right
there
.

“Thomas.”

“Squeeze a little harder.”

“Thomas.”

“That’s it. Like that. Getting tighter. I can really feel those little muscles now.”

“Thomas.”

“No, you can’t move any other part of your body, remember? Just this one little spot. We’re working with a precision tool here.”

“Damn you, Thomas.” Frustrated beyond belief, she came up off the bed in a convulsive movement.

He laughed softly when she came down on top of him.

A moment later when the fiercely intense climax swept through both of them, he stopped laughing.

A long time later he pulled her close, tucking her securely against his body.

She fell asleep, warm and relaxed and feeling safe. Her last waking thought was that she would not have the dream tonight. She had her answers. Meredith could rest in peace.

. . . She was back in the endless hall of mirrors, fleeing the unseen menace. She must not gaze directly into any of the dark looking glasses. It would be fatal to make eye contact with any of the ghosts trapped inside the mirrors. She would be sucked instantly into the world on the other side.

Her pursuer drew closer. She heard laughter.

Don’t stop.

She stopped.

Don’t turn around.

She had to turn around. She had to know the face of her pursuer.

But something went wrong. To her horror she found herself staring straight into a terrifyingly familiar nine-sided convex mirror. The silver monsters carved on the frame writhed, mouths gaping, claws extended.

Meredith’s distorted face stared out at her from the dark glass.

“. . . You can’t sleep yet . . .”

“Leonora.
Leonora.
” Thomas’s voice shattered the dream just as surely as if he had picked up a hammer and smashed the silver-framed looking glass.

She came awake, her heart pounding, her nightgown clinging damply to her body.

“It’s all right,” Thomas said. He held her tightly pinned against his chest, one hand in her tangled hair. “You’re okay. Just a dream.”

She gulped air and clung to him, taking comfort from his strength and the heat of his body.

“That damned dream again,” she whispered after a while. Frustration and a strange anger burned in her. “I thought there wouldn’t be any more. I thought it was over.”

“Easy, easy. It is over.” He stroked his fingers slowly through her hair. “What’s the dream about?”

“I’m in a long hall full of dark mirrors. Someone is chasing me. I know I shouldn’t look into any of the mirrors, but I do. I see Meredith’s face looking out at me. She’s telling me that I can’t sleep.”

“Well, I guess we know where the symbolism for that dream came from, don’t we? Right out of Mirror House. Try not to worry about it, honey. You’ve been through a lot lately. Might take a while for your unconscious mind to let go of the images.”

He continued to run his fingers soothingly through her hair. She loved the feel of his hands on her, she thought. There was strength and sureness in his touch. Competence and cleverness. Power and passion.

Slowly she relaxed.

When she fell asleep this time, she did not dream.

The following morning
she sat at a table in the Mirror House library, computer at hand, a stack of books beside her, and thought about staying on in Wing Cove.

Putting the Mirror House collection online would be an interesting job and she knew Gloria would be delighted to fly up to Washington for a visit while she was here. Her grandmother would no doubt insist on it, in fact. She wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to meet Thomas.

But those weren’t the reasons she was giving serious consideration to Deke’s offer.

It was time to face the truth: What she felt for Thomas was far more than a passing attraction. She was in love. Willing to take risks for it. But it was no good unless he was willing to take risks with her.

The realization had come softly somewhere in the night, but she knew that the knowledge had been with her for a while. She had tried to stay focused on the questions
that had brought her to Wing Cove. But looking back she could see quite clearly that the intuitive part of her had been aware from the very beginning that something important was happening between her and Thomas. Something that made it seem worthwhile to take some chances.

It was probably foolhardy in the extreme to hang around now that she had her answers. A smart woman would go back to Melba Creek and pick up the threads of her life.

She opened one of the old books, a small, leather-bound volume written in the waning years of the seventeenth century, and examined the title page.

On the Proper Method of Trapping a Demon in a Magik Mirror
. The author had chosen to remain anonymous, no doubt for social and political reasons. But in a lengthy introduction he assured the reader that he . . .
was a student of the occult sciences and one who is most excellently qualified to provide instruction in this most dangerous and powerful art
.

She wondered if the author of the little book had made a lot of money selling his method for trapping demons in mirrors. She thought about Alex Rhodes and his antistress formula and his mirroring therapy. No matter what the era, there was never a shortage of charlatans and frauds. Never a lack of people willing to plunk down their money for a magic fix, either.

Another line of text caught her eye.

. . . Beware, images in the magik mirror must be examined closely and interpreted wisely and with great caution for nothing is as it seems in that other world . . .

She heard Thomas’s footsteps in the hallway just outside the door. A sense of great certainty swept through her. Unlike visions in a mirror, Thomas was exactly what he appeared to be, real and solid.