The Jewelry Case (3 page)

However, cold-eyed objectivity told her that Ray was right: the place was sadly run-down, perhaps not even livable. The thick growth of ivy failed to hide the missing bricks in the chimney, the front porch sagged alarmingly, and the roof tiles curled. But it was not likely to fall down this week, nor the next.

"I really don't know why you bothered coming all the way to River Bend," Ray Henderson said, as if responding to her thoughts. He stroked his chin with stubby fingers that sported not one, but two massive gold rings. "Any particular reason you decided to come out here, ma'am?"

Paisley shook her head. No reason to tell him about that odd feeling of homecoming that began in Barry's office and which now surged through her body stronger than ever. She started toward the front door of the little white house.

Ray followed, still talking. "Your late husband grew up in this house, didn’t he? Before the old lady bought it. Must be a sentimental journey for you, seeing it for the first time. Did he tell you much about the place? A building this old should hold some interesting stories."

"All I know is that the house has been in the family for several generations,” she said. “I believe Esther bought it from Jonathan's parents when they moved to Palm Springs. You probably know more about it than I do. Didn't you say you grew up in River Bend?"

Ray shrugged his massive shoulders. "I didn’t pay attention to any of that. All I know is Steve's doing you a quite a favor, offering to take a piece of junk like this off your hands."

She turned. "Steve?"

"Steve Lopez." From the overly patient expression on his broad face, she realized Ray must have mentioned the name before. "Your neighbor. He's looking to expand his vineyard, remember? That’s why he wants to buy the place."

She remembered seeing a sign as they drove past the house next door: a depiction of lush purple grapes and curling vines forming the words "Lopez Winery." So her neighbor was the interested buyer her lawyer had mentioned last week.

Instead of responding to Ray’s comment, she tilted her head back and squinted at the shake-tiled roof. The structure appeared salvageable, but what did she know? She was an opera singer, not a building contractor.

Had been
an opera singer. Her hand rose to the rough line down the side of her throat, and for a moment she was back in the Porsche at the moment when Jonathan swung out to pass the lumbering truck, the moment he turned his angry face toward her. She could hear her own voice screaming as the oncoming car hurtled directly toward them.

Paisley realized Ray was watching her closely, and self-consciously she dropped her hand from her throat. "The house is in better shape than I expected," she said, struggling to hide how the flash of memory had shaken her. No doubt her pallor and the circles under her eyes had revealed too much already. "The place doesn't look as if it's falling down or anything."

Ray looked skeptical. "What about the parts you can't see? Termites, roof leaks.... Steve's had his eye on this property for a long time: not the house, you understand, that's obviously worthless, but the land. No one else is likely to want the place. It's too far from town, too isolated, for a family or even for a bed and breakfast."

Ray wasn't much of a salesman, she thought. She hoped he hadn't pointed out all those little details to her prospective customer.

"I told you, I haven't decided yet what to do with it yet," she said, a little too sharply. Suddenly she was determined to stay. Why should she sell just because a handful of overly controlling men, including her financial advisors, Ray Henderson, and this Steve person, wanted her to? With Jonathan gone, she was answerable to no one. She could stretch her visit to a few days, maybe even a few weeks. It wasn't as if she had anything important on her schedule: just months of recovery and doctor-ordered peace and quiet. For the first time, the prospect sounded heavenly. A little lonely, perhaps ... but maybe being alone for a while would do her good.

She turned and met the burly real estate agent's dark-brown eyes straight on. "I want to sleep on the decision of whether to sell or not. And that's what I'll do, even if it takes me all summer."

Ray did a good job of controlling his disappointment, although she saw a muscle twitch in his cheek. "Sure. Whatever you want. Although over the phone you gave the impression that…."

Paisley saw no reason to tell him why she had changed her mind. The fact was, she didn't know. She'd planned to do nothing more than take a brief look at the old Perleman home, visit the cemetery, and mutter an ecumenical prayer on Auntie Esther's behalf over her grave. And leave.

But something was at work here, a subtle but powerful force that wanted her to stay. Not just her innate stubbornness, although that surely played a role. Most of all, it was that invisible
something
that had been pulling her here like a magnet ever since she had seen that photo of the house on Barry Klein's desk. And she had no intention of turning away and driving back to the airport.

Then a wave of her old depression washed over her as she remembered she had nothing to go back to. She'd even had the foresight, if that was what it was, to bring along a flight bag with her nightclothes, a toothbrush, and a couple of changes of clothing. One thing Paisley was sure of: she would not sell the house in this condition, to be knocked over by a bulldozer by a greedy neighbor. The lovely thing deserved better.

She turned toward the realtor. "The house can be fixed up, can't it?"

"Anything can be repaired, for a price." Ray hesitated, twisting one of his massive rings, as if trying to find tactful words. "But I, er, thought money was a bit of an issue."

Barry Klein must have spilled more of her personal information to this agent than he'd let on, she thought, fuming. Weren't there laws against that? She'd speak to Barry about that later.

"Don't worry. I can always sell the family jewels to pay for the repairs if I have to," she said. She meant to head off the topic with a light joke, not let him know how serious her financial situation really was.

When Ray's eyes widened, however, she quickly realized that her words might be taken as a
double entendre
, and she felt herself blush. "Oops. I didn't mean it that way. I only meant.... "

What
had
she meant, exactly? An elusive memory jangled tantalizingly, and she suddenly recalled that Jonathan had once used the same expression. in her presence. But at that time, she'd had the impression he'd been referring to real
jewels, like rubies and diamonds. What on earth had he been talking about? A memory began to surface, vague and flimsy as a ghost, but she could not remember the details. Still, it was strange, how those words had burst out of her mouth.

"That's just a saying," Paisley said quickly to cover her embarrassment, as Ray's face began to crack into a grin. "You've heard it before, haven't you?"

"Why, yes, ma'am," Ray drawled in an exaggerated Southern accent, winking. "Although I don't think that would be downright legal, if you'll excuse my saying so."

She fought down her exasperation. "I mean I'll do anything to get the house in shape, make any necessary sacrifices," she said with asperity. "This place has far too much character to just knock it down. If we're patient, I'm sure we'll find someone who will cherish it, who will restore it to what it must once have looked like. The place is quite beautiful, really, under all that ivy and peeling paint. A ... a ... diamond in the rough."

Ray looked back at the house as if seeing it for the first time. A flitting expression crossed his face that she could not identify. Then he shrugged. "Diamond in the rough? Maybe you're right. Forget what I said about Steve Lopez's offer. Take all the time you need to see the place. All summer, if you want." He repeated to himself, "Family jewels," and chuckled. Without warning he launched into song, an unexpected rich, smooth baritone pouring out of his barrel chest: "Some women are dri-i-ipping in diamonds, some women are dri-i-i-pping with pearls...."

She stared at him, as surprised by his about-face as by his sudden singing. The notes from the Broadway musical
Annie
echoed incongruously in the rural clearing. No one in the world could have looked or sounded less like the greedy orphanage director Miss Hannigan.

Ray glanced at her, and his face turned red. His hand self-consciously went up and adjusted his gold-colored tie. "Sorry, ma'am," he muttered. "Incurable shower singer. My ex-wife used to drag me to musicals
at the Mondalvi Center, and I guess some of the songs got stuck in my head."

Paisley found herself smiling, a surprisingly painful process; the muscles in her cheeks felt atrophied. It had been a long time since she had found anything humorous, but the thought of the ultra-macho Ray Henderson fidgeting through an endless season of musicals at the behest of an insistent wife tickled her funny bone.

"You must have been in the military," she guessed with certitude. "No one else uses 'ma'am' these days.

"Why, yes, ma'am, that's right. Came home from Afghanistan three years ago. It's hard to break old habits."

If she'd been less tired, she'd asked politely about his military experiences, but the truth was, all she cared about was exploring the house. They hadn't even been inside yet. She felt like a little child on Christmas morning, waiting for Grandma and Grandpa to arrive before unwrapping her presents.

Sensing her impatience, Ray produced a key, unlocked the lock-box, and waited for her to precede him. "Let's take a look-see, shall we?" he said cheerfully.

The house smelled musty but not unpleasantly so, like dried rose petals. Ray had told her the place hadn't been lived in for nearly a year, ever since Esther had gone into the nursing home. Sunlight shafted through unwashed windows which, once cleaned, would afford a nice view of the lowest branches of the towering oak tree out front, with the dangling hummingbird feeder that, in the old days, would have been filled with cherry-red liquid.

Dominating the room was a black Yamaha baby grand piano, its sleek lines softened by a gray layer of dust. This must be the piano Jonathan had learned to play on. She experimentally plunked a few keys and determined it was badly out of tune. That was no problem. With the right tools, she suspected she could tune it herself, a skill she had learned at the conservatory before meeting Jonathan.

Jonathan. It must have been a sacrifice for his parents to afford the instrument, she thought, looking around at the middle-class furnishings, which were comfortable but inexpensive. Most families of their class wouldn't have bothered to buy a piano, or would have settled on a cheaper brand, but music had always been important to the Perlemans. He had once talked of a famous singer in his lineage, back in Poland.

A cabinet-style hi-fi from the late 1960s along one wall retained a certain mid-century chic, and she thought with a new sense of pragmatism that it might be worth a couple of hundred bucks at a vintage store. Then her gaze fell on a bookcase crammed with LP albums, and she forgot everything else.

At her gasp, Ray folded his arms across his barrel chest, looking bored. "Yeah, must be a few hundred records there. Some probably belonged to Jonathan's parents, the rest would be Esther's."

"Uh huh." She was not really listening as she kneeled to sift through record covers. There were enough to stock a small shop. Pulling out a 1960s
Carmen
, she ran a finger over the image of a sloe-eyed, black-haired prima donna on the cover. "Did you know Maria Callas never played Carmen on stage, although she was famous for singing the role?"

"No kidding." Ray glanced at his thick gold watch, but she refused to be hurried. Feeling a new rush of gratitude to the old woman she had hardly known, Paisley moved on to a stack of CDs.

"What do you know?" she exclaimed, holding up the top one. The photographer had caught Jonathan in the middle of conducting a concert in Berlin. His lean, sensitive face glittered with sweat, his black hair fell in tousled strands across his high forehead. She'd always loved how distinguished Jonathan looked in white tie and tails, his graceful hand wielding the baton so skillfully. This CD had been his most successful; it had even been nominated for a Grammy.

"I never had a chance to record one of my own," she said wistfully, running a finger across the cover. "There were a couple of cast albums, of course, when I was in the chorus, and you can probably find a couple of my performances on YouTube, but I'd hoped that this fall I'd finally
….
"

She abruptly shoved the CD back and pushed herself to her feet. "Let's see the rest of the house."

In the kitchen, she stifled a groan when she saw the harvest-gold refrigerator and peeling laminate cupboards. She turned on the faucet, and a stream of brown water spurted out. "I thought you said the utilities had been turned off," she said, turning.

"Guess I was wrong." Ray flicked a light switch, and after a few seconds, fluorescent tubes overhead flickered on, their harsh light making her blink. "Esther must have had the electricity on auto pay."

Paisley walked on, opening and closing doors. A cramped pantry, painted mint-green, was partly filled with canned goods, boxes of breakfast cereal, and a well-used cookbook. After sitting unused for a year, the cereal might need to be thrown out, but there were enough cans of soup and chili to live on for a week or so. She pulled out a drawer by the sink, which revealed boxes of candles, matches, and an emergency radio. Esther had apparently believed in being prepared.