The Tea Party - A Novel of Horror (29 page)

He almost stopped. “Huh? What are you talking about, Liz?”

She looked back again. “He’s . . . I don’t know. Not literally different, I don’t mean that. But he’s like Ollie. That wasn’t really her we saw this morning, you know that, don’t you. She wasn’t the overgrown flower child who’s supposed to marry Bud Yardley. That was an Ollie I’ve never seen in my life. Keith, he’s . . . he’s never done anything like this before. He’s never deliberately disobeyed me, and then flaunted it. Never. Ever since the other night I don’t know him anymore.”

Her hand became a fist, and he took hold of the wrist until the fingers relaxed. “Liz—”

“I want to get them out of here, Doug. I want to get them home. And you,” she added without pause. “You can’t stay here either. I’ll bet you don’t even have a gun or anything.”

He could feel the tension in her arm, could see her eyes widen and dart from side to side, like Maggie when she saw lightning and didn’t understand, knowing only the fear.

He lit a cigarette and smiled politely at those who saw them and waved, nodding at those who nodded to him. A stout man in a charcoal grey three-piece suit was orating by the house’s far corner, his audience mostly men who jeered and slapped their thighs. Gil was still puzzled by the punch. An impromptu barbershop quartet began singing east of the tent and drew most of the crowd there. The others sat, or wandered, but no one entered the house.

“Douglas, help me.”

He was about to turn, to agree, when Olivia came around the corner from the front, spotted them, and waved gaily as she headed without pause for the tent and the buffet. She was still dressed in white, the breeze filling her blouse now, catching the sleeves and pulling them back along her arms. Her hair was un-braided, tangling itself, weaving, flowing like a sable banner that made half the men stop to stare.

“It isn’t polite to drool in public,” Liz said dryly.

He grinned and poked her side, relieved she seemed not about to lose control, at least not yet. She poked him back and shook her head. “Douglas, for god’s sake, don’t you feel it?”

He did, and was relieved it wasn’t his imagination. Now if he only knew exactly what it was, he might be able to do something about it.

“Doug, let’s go home.”

His answer was delayed when Judith appeared in the doorway.

She wore a loose-fitting peasant blouse that exposed a generous portion of her lightly freckled chest, and a dark blue skirt stiffly pleated and girdled by a wide-ribbon gold sash. A dark green ribbon wound through her black curls like a laurel wreath; her feet were bare.

He waited; she didn’t look.

“Doug,” Liz said, “let’s go home, please? Let’s forget all this and get the kids and go home.”

“Let’s take a walk,” he said instead, extending a hand. “Don’t worry about the kids. They’ll be all right for the moment. Come on.”

She took the hand without arguing, and they strolled away from the party, away from the house toward the back of the estate. The flat of the lawn ended fifty yards along, where it began lifting into low swells separated by troughs running with twilight, swells that eventually merged with the slope of the hill behind and the hollow where Douglas lived and Maggie waited. They stopped at the first rise, and he pulled her down gently to sit beside him. He raised his knees and wrapped his arms around them; Liz stretched her legs out and leaned back on her palms.

“View from the top,” he said, though they weren’t that much higher than the lawn they faced.

She didn’t smile. She only said, “Well?”

When he didn’t respond immediately, she reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes; when she had one, he lit it without moving his gaze from Judy in the doorway. She appeared to have recovered from the night before, he thought; yet she still made no attempt to establish eye contact with him even when she looked in his direction. She appeared not to be in the slightest bit of trouble. It wasn’t an act. She was perfectly normal, just looking for someone else, and all others had been blocked out until she located who she wanted.

The Mohawk Gang, led by Keith and a red-faced Heather, sprinted toward the open-sided tent, only pausing long enough to wave at them and pantomime a starving man eating before running on again.

“I swear to God I’ll kill the little bugger,” Liz said, almost rising. “If his father were alive—” She cut herself off, and lowered her head.

He ran a gentle hand along the plane of her back, and decided that she was right and he was wrong. Whatever was here, whatever had brought them here, wasn’t worth the pain; it certainly wasn’t worth the pain he heard in her voice. And startled by the value he had suddenly given her feelings, he almost laughed with delight. He was about to grab her shoulders, turn her around and tell her, “I love you,” when she said, sharply and without warming, “Look!” and pointed down at the party.

When he did he saw nothing out of place. The singing was still in full flourish though not always on key, the buffet was still under attack, and the white lawn tables were filled now with animated conversation. Staring, he searched for a face, saw neither Clark nor Bud—but Ollie was in the midst of a group of young men, laughing and tossing her hair as she let out all the flirting stops.

“Try harder,” she said.

“I don’t get it.”

“Try!”

“But Liz, I don’t even know what—” And he saw it.

It was in the movement of the guests.

Before, they had been stilted, almost timid, their voices low and respectful in the shadow of the all too familiar house; now they were shifting about in abrupt, oddly static stop-and-go patterns, rarely remaining at ease in one place for more than a few seconds at a time. Conversations were interrupted or broken off in mid-sentence, plates and glasses were returned to the tables half-empty, hardly touched. The voices carrying in the still, warm air were tinnier, louder, the laughter more explosive, more raucous, and once in a while couples and singles would hurry through the back door, and return a minute later with strained smiles on their faces and their eyes averted. A word or two, and they headed for their cars.

Restive; high-strung thoroughbreds being led to the starting gate.

“It seems,” he said with an enforced calm, “as if the big moment is arriving.”

He looked over, and Liz’s face was strained. The skin was drawn taut over her cheekbones; her lower lip was pulled between her teeth, her eyes were narrowed as if she were trying to see through a dense fog.

“Liz?”

She pointed.

The party had come to a complete halt.

Judith had left to join the others, and now Eban Parrish was standing in the doorway.

3

5:00

The overcast had thickened perceptibly and laced itself with black, the air was darker grey and still, and the lanterns dangling motionlessly from their chains under and around the tent were crystalline bright as if a mist were trapped inside them. The door was closed. All the windows were black now, reflecting nothing. “Doug, we can still go.”

“No,” he said. “No, not now.”

And the anger returned, apprehension replaced by a silent promise to end once and for all the manipulation of his life.

He rose awkwardly and pulled Liz to her feet. They took the slope slowly, watching as Parrish, smiling and nodding, walked toward the tent. The others closed around him expectantly, nervously, the barbershop quartet cut off in mid-verse by a matron’s imperious scowl. The kids had already grabbed their food and drink and were streaking back to the site of their game; no one raised a voice to stop them.

Parrish stood in faint shadow just beneath the canopy’s fringed overhang, his back to the mansion, his hands folded loosely in front of him—a respectful and humble speaker waiting patiently to be recognized.
He
smiled blandly as the townspeople who remained filled in the gaps between the buffet tables, waiting until the shifting for position was completed, the accidental elbow knocking a cup or a platter placed under control. Someone coughed; someone blew his nose; someone hastily crushed a cigarette under his heel.

Doug and Liz stopped at the back of the crowd, and she gripped his hand, hard.

“Winterrest welcomes you,” the realtor said. He seemed to speak in a normal tone, but there was no one who had to crane to hear his words. “May I assume that Mr. and Mrs. Cleary have done their usual fine job?” He paused for a smattering of self-conscious applause to fade with the breeze. “And of course, our equal thanks to the Depot and the lovely proprietress, Miss Lockhart, for the, shall we say, slightly spicey punch?” Again the applause, this time laced through with polite laughter.

Doug couldn’t see Judith; he imagined she was grinning.

Parrish cleared his throat.

The overcast lowered.

“I will make a third assumption, if you will permit me.” He glanced around the crowd blindly, not caring about eye contact, enveloping them all with a single sweep of his head. “I imagine you have heard by now that certain highly interested and well-financed parties from outside our little community here have made certain inquiries into the availability of Winterrest— for purchase, that is, not for rent.” An uneasy stirring; less people knew than Doug had suspected. “I assure you the respectable concern engaged in these preliminary exploratory inquiries has in mind turning this wonderful old estate into a—how shall I put it?—into a—”

“Development,” Doug said loudly, ignoring the sudden yank on his left arm, ignoring the alarm he felt by blurting out the word before he had time to think.

Parrish stretched without taking heel or toe off the ground. Heads turned; there was whispering.

“What was that?” he asked, a slight frown on his brow.

“The word you’re looking for,” Doug said, shaking off Liz’s hand. “It’s development. As in Meadow View.”

“Perhaps, but hardly a common one, Mr. Muir,” Parrish said without a single change in intonation. He paused, and blinked once. “The generous people who will eventually live here should this matter be concluded in the way they wish, will be used to a standard of living quite naturally above what the rest of us are accustomed to.

“As for Winterrest itself,” he continued, now addressing the guests generally, “it will be something like but definitely not your usual hotel. A clubhouse, so to speak, with accommodations for overnight guests. These magnificent lawns will be completely preserved, except for those sections utilized as a golf course and a relatively small number of tastefully contemporary townhouses and condominiums. I expect, my friends, that as time passes quite a lot of business will be done with the town proper.”

“Rich or middle class,” Doug said just as loudly, “it’s still a development. High-toned, ticky-tack, no matter how you slice it.”

Heads swiveled again, the whispering more intense and the looks frankly quizzical.

Liz yanked his arm a second time, cautioning him with a frown to watch what he said. He didn’t mind the attention, however; Parrish had forced him into speaking out before they could get him alone and make known their objections; and though he saw little support among those facing him, he also did not sense any outright condemnation. They were annoyed with his behavior, not with what he said.

“The interested parties,” Parrish said, with a nod to note the architect’s objections, “have made this little gathering today possible, in the hopes that you will not dismiss their plans out of hand. They wish you to understand they are neither hostile nor indifferent to your feelings, nor are they desirous of creating any ill will among you.”

“Where are they, Mr. Parrish,” a man’s deferential voice asked from the crowd. “Do we get to meet them today or what?”

“In time,” Parrish answered warmly. “In time, sir, in time you will see.”

“What are their names?” another wanted to know. “Are they from around here?”

“In time,” Parrish repeated. “For now, let me say only that the duly chosen representatives in this matter are myself,” and he ducked his head modestly, “and the legal firm chaired by Mr. Clark Davermain, of Newton.”

Liz gasped softly; Doug’s puzzlement grew.

“Mr. Parrish,” said Nell Cleary, “what’s this all gonna do to our taxes?”

Wanda Hallman wanted to know if traffic was going to choke up the town, and did anyone know where the hell Bernie was?

A woman Doug recognized as Archie Mancuso’s mother worried aloud that an influx of new citizens might mean they would have to start building schools, which would raise their taxes and force the creation of a school board which none of them, at the moment, were qualified to man.

Doug was pleased. If the agitation in the air was as real as it sounded, he may have at least solved one problem today; and if not solved, he had at least driven it out into the open where it could be properly examined. Parrish, however, seemed unaffected by the barrage of questions and comments that grew steadily in volume.

The canvas above began snapping sharply at their heads; the breeze had returned.

Liz hissed when he cleared his throat. “Mr. Parrish,” he said, shouting over the heads of the people in front, paying little heed to a woman who wanted her chance to put in a word, “would you mind telling us who owns this place? Who hired you and Clark Davermain to deal with this so-called concern?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Parrish?” Judith’s unexpected voice was clear, and unforced, and turned Parrish’s gaze away from Doug’s eyes. “Mr. Parrish, excuse me, but isn’t this a matter for a town meeting? You really should have asked for one, you know. This honestly isn’t the time or the place to spring something like this on us. It smacks . . . well, it kind of smacks of coercion, or bribery, you know.”

Jesus, what the hell is she doing? Doug thought, craning to find her; what’s she trying to prove? Though it appeared as if she were merely consolidating the objections, what she had done was to rob the infant fire of its fuel.

Parrish, meanwhile, accepted the remarks, and their respectful echoes in the murmurs filling the tent, with evident good grace. A brief lowering of his head in acknowledged guilt for a misstep in procedure, raising it again with the first smile Doug had ever seen on his face.