The Blackstone Chronicles (38 page)

“So the building just sat empty for forty years?” Melissa asked. “What a waste.”

“On the other hand, at least they didn’t tear it down,” Bill McGuire said. He had started up the stairs and motioned for them to follow. “There’s still enough left that it can be restored and expanded.” As he led them up to the second floor, he explained how the reconstruction would be done, first by restoring the original entry hall and returning both the second and third floors to the
galleries they had once been. “The bedrooms up here were huge, but they got chopped up into cubicles just like the rooms on the ground floor. They’ll make terrific shops, and down on the first floor, the kitchen’s still almost up to commercial standards. We’ve found enough pictures of the original dining room that we can restore it almost perfectly.”

As the light continued to drain away, Bill McGuire flipped on the flashlight he’d brought along. Moving steadily through the rooms on the second floor, he carefully explained to Melissa the plans for every area, and what kind of shops had already agreed to lease space. Then, on the third floor, they discovered some rooms that weren’t quite empty. In one of the old patients’ rooms there was still a Formica-topped table and a chair; in another they discovered an old oak dresser. Its finish was nearly gone and its top surface slightly warped, but its frame was still solid, its brass fittings and pulls still intact though blackened with age.

Ed Becker pulled one of the curved drawers out of the dresser and took it to the window, where enough light was still leaking through for him to examine the dovetail joinery that a craftsman had used to fit the corners together. Though the light was nearly gone, he could see that the joinery had all been done by hand, and that its gracefully curved expanse had been carved from a single block of wood, not fitted together from pieces.

“What are you going to do with this?” he asked.

Bill McGuire shrugged.

“Any chance of buying it?”

“You’d do better to ask Melissa than me,” Bill said.

“What was done with the rest of the furniture?” the young banker asked.

“I had Corelli Brothers come and haul it out a few months ago. It was all auctioned off, and the money was put into the Center account, They must have just missed a few things up here.”

Melissa’s brow furrowed. “Well, there’s not enough left to be worth an auctioneer’s time. What do you think it’s worth?” Ed Becker eyed the dresser, calculating how much of an underestimation of its value he might get away with, but Melissa seemed to read his mind. “Given that it’s hand-carved, I don’t see that it would go for much less than a thousand at auction, do you, Bill?”

“I think she’s on to you, Ed,” the contractor said, grinning. “But look at it this way—by the time you finish restoring it, it’ll be worth twice that.”

Ed Becker’s eyes moved over the dresser, appraising its workmanship again. Though he and Bonnie couldn’t afford quite that much right now, he knew the chest was worth at least the thousand Melissa had suggested. Moreover, there was something about it—something he couldn’t quite put his finger on—that made him feel he had to own it. It was a beauty, after all.

Whatever the reason, he wanted the dresser. “No slack, huh?” he asked.

Melissa and Bill shook their heads. “You’ll have to clear the purchase with the rest of the Center’s board of directors,” she told him, a smile playing over her face. “They might claim you have a conflict of interest.”

Ed Becker rolled his eyes. “They’ll be so happy to get a thousand dollars out of me, they won’t argue for a second.” Putting the drawer back in the dresser, he moved to follow Bill McGuire and Melissa Holloway out of the room, but turned back at the doorway to look at the old piece of furniture one more time.

Even at a thousand dollars, he decided, it was still a hell of a deal. From the zippered portfolio he was carrying, he extracted a legal pad and pen and wrote in bold capitals:
PROPERTY OF ED BECKER. DO NOT REMOVE
. And folding the paper so it would hang from the drawer when closed, he staked his claim.

But as he turned away from the chest once more, he
felt a sudden chill, as if he’d been struck by a draft from an open window.

He glanced around the room again, but the window was closed tight and none of the panes was even cracked, let alone broken.

As he hurried to catch up with Bill and Melissa, he dismissed the strange chill, telling himself it must have been nothing more than his imagination.

C
lara Wagner gazed down at the handkerchief that still lay in her lap, exactly where Germaine had left it. Since her daughter had left the room half an hour before, Clara hadn’t moved at all. The fire on the hearth had burned low, but for once she hadn’t called out, hadn’t banged her cane on the floor to bring Germaine or Rebecca running to do her bidding.

For half an hour she’d done nothing at all except sit in her chair, gazing at the handkerchief.

Why did it look so familiar to her?

And why did the very sight of it so frighten her?

Somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind, this small scrap of linen with its elaborate floral design had stirred a memory, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t quite grasp it, couldn’t get it quite close enough to pull into the light. Annoyingly—maddeningly—its significance hovered in the blurry fringes of her memory, refusing to come into focus.

Was it possible that Germaine hadn’t been lying, and that she’d actually found the handkerchief in Janice Anderson’s antique shop?

She supposed it was barely possible, though she’d never admit as much to Germaine. A strong and certain sense within told her she had seen this handkerchief before. And it came from no shop.

The handkerchief had stirred her memory the moment she laid eyes on it. And not a pleasant memory either.

Her stomach—delicate even when she was feeling at her best—had instantly churned, and bile boiled up into her throat, leaving a sour taste in her mouth. For a moment she’d even thought she might vomit. She hadn’t, of course; instead she’d sat motionless, willing her body to respond to her wishes, just as she’d willed it to respond when she decided she no longer wished to walk. That memory still made her smile, for when Germaine had brought Dr. Margolis to see her, he hadn’t been able even to find a reflex in the legs she’d decided never again to use. Philip Margolis—and a host of neurologists and orthopedists to whom Germaine had dragged her—agreed that she couldn’t walk. None of them could determine the cause. The wheelchair—and Germaine—had become her legs.

Precisely as she’d intended.

Ever since that day eighteen years ago, Clara had felt completely in control of everything about her life. Her daughter did her bidding, and her cleaning girl did her bidding.

Now Rebecca Morrison too did her bidding.

But for some reason—a reason she couldn’t quite fathom—the handkerchief was upsetting her. Picking it up as gingerly as if it could have burned her, she held it under her reading light, examining it more closely.

It had indeed been skillfully done, every loop and knot of the tatting perfectly even, every tiny stitch of embroidery executed with such remarkable precision that she could find neither a knot nor a tag end of the fine silk thread showing anywhere.

Suddenly an image from the past flashed through her mind. An image of a woman, clad in nothing more than a thin cotton nightgown, sitting on the edge of a metal-framed bed, gazing straight ahead, seemingly at nothing.

But in her lap, her fingers were working so quickly they were little more than a blur as she wove silken thread into a square of fine linen.

Clara’s fingers tightened on the handkerchief. But of course the idea that was forming in her mind was impossible. More than half a century had passed since Clara had so much as set foot in that building! Whatever that woman had been working on had disappeared as utterly as had the woman herself.

Despite her own logic, Clara examined the handkerchief yet again, unable to take her eyes from it, searching for … what?

Something that—once again—she couldn’t quite grasp. As her memory refused to respond to her demands, and the recollection she sought remained hidden in the shadows, her frustration grew. For a moment she was tempted to hurl the handkerchief into the fireplace. She crumpled it in her hands, squeezing it hard, as if she might be able to wring the memory from its folds, then drew her hand back in preparation for tossing it into the dying flames. At the last second she changed her mind.

She wouldn’t destroy the handkerchief—yet.

First she would remember.

Then
she would burn it.

As the clock on the mantel above the fireplace struck six, she shoved the handkerchief deep into the pocket of her dress, then placed her right hand on the wheelchair’s control panel. With a nearly inaudible hum, the wheelchair rolled out of the room onto the mezzanine.

“For Heaven’s sake, Rebecca, can’t you be more careful? If you drop it, Mother will kill you.”

Rebecca tightened her grip on the silver tray bearing the teapot, three cups and saucers, a pitcher of cream, a sugar bowl, a basket of scones, and a box of candy. Germaine had been insistent that she couldn’t use the tea cart in the butler’s pantry—she must carry the tray in herself, and she mustn’t let even a single drop of either the tea or
the cream spill. Still, Rebecca knew she had steady hands, and Germaine’s reluctance to let her use the cart was no more strange than her demands regarding the preparation of the tea, which she insisted on tasting and had made Rebecca prepare no fewer than four times before declaring that it was satisfactorily brewed.

As she followed Germaine out of the kitchen and through the dining room to the foyer, Rebecca took tiny, careful steps so the surface of the cream barely even moved, let alone threatened to slop over onto the tray. She stopped just outside the dining room door, just as Germaine had instructed. A clanking, followed immediately by the sound of the machinery in the attic coming alive, announced Clara Wagner’s imminent arrival. As she and Germaine waited side by side, the brass elevator slowly descended from the mezzanine to the first floor, its door opened, and Clara, her small frame sitting absolutely erect in her wheelchair, emerged from the metal cage. Her eyes fixed balefully on Germaine and Rebecca, almost as if she was sorry they were waiting for her. Rolling the wheelchair across the enormous Oriental carpet that covered all but the edges of the entry hall’s walnut floor, Clara inspected the tray. Rebecca could almost feel her searching for something to complain about, and it took her only a moment to find it.

“The sugar bowl isn’t full,” she announced at the exact second she lifted its lid.

“I’m sorry, Miss Clara,” Rebecca said, her face reddening. Why hadn’t Germaine told her to fill it? “I’ll fill it right away.”

“You won’t,” Clara Wagner declared. “Germaine will do it while you set the tea table.”

Rebecca saw a vein in Germaine’s forehead throbbing, but she said nothing as Germaine picked the offending sugar bowl off the tray and retreated back toward the kitchen. Rebecca herself followed Clara Wagner as she led the way to the front parlor, where a tea table waited,
which Rebecca had already set with three places. Clara eyed them suspiciously, but Rebecca had been careful to get each utensil straight. The damask napkins were folded perfectly. She held her breath as Clara’s eyes moved from the china to the jam pots to the butter dish, but those too seemed to meet her standards.

“You may set the tray down,” she decreed.

They waited in silence until Germaine arrived with the sugar bowl. Rebecca carefully fixed its level in her mind, determined not to make the same mistake again.

Germaine poured the first cup of tea and set it in front of her mother. “Why don’t you show Rebecca the handkerchief I gave you?” she asked, her eyes flicking toward Rebecca as if to see if the younger woman would contradict her.

She
did
give it to her mother, Rebecca reminded herself. Oliver gave it to me, but it was Germaine who gave it to Miss Clara. “Thank you,” she said as Germaine finally passed her a cup of tea. Then she turned to Clara. “I’d love to see the handkerchief.”

Clara Wagner’s hand moved automatically to the pocket into which she’d stuffed the handkerchief. “I didn’t bring it downstairs,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

The vein in Germaine’s forehead began throbbing again as she saw the lump in her mother’s pocket and instantly understood what it was. Still stinging from her humiliation over the sugar bowl, she glared at her mother. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you give it back to me?”

Clara’s eyes met her daughter’s. “I don’t have it,” she insisted.

“You do,” Germaine replied coldly. She reached over to take the handkerchief out of her mother’s pocket, but Clara’s fingers closed on her wrist. For a long moment mother and daughter glared at each other. “Are you going to call me a liar again, Mother?” Germaine asked.

Suddenly Clara’s hand released Germaine’s wrist and
she pulled the handkerchief out of her pocket. “Very well,” she said, her voice rasping. “If you want it that badly, have it! Have it with my blessing!” Crushing the handkerchief into a wad, she hurled it in her daughter’s face.