Time After Time (14 page)

Liz dropped her daughter
off just ahead of the bell. She considered visiting the shipyard
but decided against it for the simple reason that she looked and
felt like hell. Instead she went directly home, hoping to catch an
hour's nap.

It was not to be. The
answering machine blipped four times when she checked it, a lot of
calls for less than an hour's absence. Then she remembered that
she'd turned off the phone ringer before she'd begun reading the
letters; the calls could have come any time since then.

Liz rewound the tape and
listened, pencil in hand, for what she hoped would be inquiries
from folks who lived on Bellevue Avenue.

Again her hopes were
dashed. The first three messages were from the local historical
society, the local psychics' society, and a graduate student named
Grant Dade. All of them were interested — as a result of an article
in the paper — in her cache of letters.

The fourth call was from
Jack Eastman.

She returned that call
first. Liz assumed it would be about the picnic; but it turned out
that Jack, too, was interested in the letters.

"So your cottage has a big
dark secret," he said in a lazy, intimate drawl.

"My house is too
small
to hold anything
big," she said, flushing with pleasure at the low, almost sexy
sound of his voice. "And as for it being a secret — well, I doubt
that a town crier could've spread the word any faster than
the
Daily News."

She filled him in on the
other messages. He seemed genuinely interested, which left her
genuinely pleased; it wasn't often that she'd seen him anything
else than self-absorbed.

"You
did
know," he said, "that your house
is built on land my family used to own?"

Ah, yes,
she thought.
Back to me,
me, me.
"Of course," she answered,
remembering what Victoria had read in the other Victoria's letters.
"My land was part of an access road to East Gate."

"Not always. Originally
there was a small artist's studio there. The studio got torn down a
couple of generations ago, and the land started being used for
access after that. Eventually it was sold off to make the boundary
line more square."

He might as well have
dropped the artist's studio on Liz's head. "Oh, really ... how
interesting." She tried to keep her voice from shaking as she
asked, "Do you happen to know who stayed there?"

"I said it was an artist's
studio," he said, a smile in his voice. "I don't imagine it was a
plumber who used it."

Oh my god. Oh my
god.
Liz's heart took off on a wild thump,
racking her chest, leaving her voice stripped of emotion as she
said, "I see. Not a plumber."

Not a coincidence,
either.
Victoria was right. All that stuff
about karma ....

"Hey, come on," said Jack
in a cajoling voice. "I was only teasing. Boy, you sure can dish it
out more than you can take it." He let out a short, musing laugh.
"What a thin- skinned little newt you are."

An artist's studio.
"Is that why you called, then?" she asked weakly,
oblivious to everything he'd said after that. "To find out about
the letters?"

Obviously he was mistaking
her faintness for chilliness. "No, that was supposed to be the
friendly chitchat part that preceded the business part," he
admitted dryly. "I called to find out how the picnic plans are
coming. My secretary tells me she hasn't heard from you yet.
Naturally I'd like to be sure—"

"That I can handle it? A
commission as small as this?" She laughed with fine bravado,
considering that she was in a state of shock.

"I'm glad to hear it," he
said, coolly now. "In that case I'd like to see your preliminary
workup. Is the day after tomorrow at eleven too soon?"

Liz felt as if she were
being summoned into the principal's office for skipping school.
"Eleven is fine," she said, rallying herself. "I'm absolutely sure
you're going to love my proposal."

I have nothing! No
proposal, no ideas — nothing!" Liz said to Victoria late the next
afternoon. "I haven't even
thought
about the picnic. All I've done is read the
damned letters, trying to find out who the damned apparition was —
is — was."

Victoria, who'd cut her
vacation short and was feeling as glum as Liz was feeling frantic,
shrugged and said, "What's the big deal? Just make sure there's
lots of good food. Nobody's going to pay attention to color schemes
or party themes at a boatyard."

"But Jack said he
wanted
magic,"
Liz wailed.

Victoria poured another
spoon of honey into her tea and stirred it languidly. "So? See if
you can get your artist pal to make an appearance."

Liz, leafing madly through
her Rolodex, looked up and said, "How can you be so
flippant?
You're
the one who got me into this.
You're
the one who convinced me you
were
her. Now
look at you — you're not her ... you're not you ... you're
just a mooning, moping ... teenager! God! One little fight with
your new boyfriend—"

"It wasn't a fight,"
Victoria murmured. She dropped her head over her bone-china teacup
and inhaled the bergamot scent as if it were a restorative. "It was
a parting of the ways."

"Well, either tell me what
it was about, or cheer up," Liz said, plunging back into her
Rolodex. No
way
was she going to find a decent caterer on such short
notice.

"He wants me to be Judy
Maroney," Victoria said in a dull, weary voice. "I told him Judy
Maroney was dead, and that there's nothing I can do about
it."

Liz stopped in her tracks.
"Ah," she said softly. "I'm sorry, Tori. I didn't
realize—"

Victoria shook off the
tears that were glazing her deep-green eyes and said, "He's
convinced I have psychogenic amnesia, that I can go back to being
Judy Maroney anytime I want. He can't believe I've really
tried."

"Well, forget Dr. Ben,
then," said Liz softly. "What does
he
know?"

"I didn't dare tell him
about Victoria St. Onge," Victoria added with a crooked smile. "You
can imagine what he'd think about
that."

"Do you still feel, you
know, connected to her?" Liz ventured to ask. "Knowing what
a—"

"Stinker she was? Yeah,"
said Victoria, sighing. She flipped a long, frizzy red lock of hair
over her shoulder. "The best spin I can put on this is that she has
some unfinished business to take care of."

"Don't we all," Liz agreed
tiredly. "I'll be doing this stupid picnic on my
deathbed."

That brought a smile from
Victoria, and immediately they both felt better. Victoria said,
"What can I do to help?"

"Nothing right now," Liz
said. "It's mostly phone and computer work. I may throw in a couple
of sketches — did I tell you I went through the shipyard this
morning? Acres of asphalt, and a dozen bank-possessed boats sitting
high and dry in their cradles with For Sale signs on them.
Bor-ring."

"I hope you didn't say
that to Jack."

"No, he's out of town
until late tonight. My point is, the boatyard's just so — I don't
know — hard-edged. Masculine. Picnics should be about grass and
shade and families."

Victoria snapped her
fingers. "Have it at East Gate!"

"Oh, right," Liz said with
a snort. "He was reluctant to let his
relatives
on the property for
Caroline's birthday. I can see him opening it up to welders and
mechanics."

She sighed and glanced up
at the three-foot-long calendar clock that hung on the kitchen
wall, ticking as relentlessly as a time bomb.

"Three o'clock!" Liz said,
panicking all over again. "What was the point of dumping poor Susy
on my parents?" She picked up the latest packet of unread letters
and scowled at them in sheer frustration. "I'm ignoring my family,
ignoring my work, ignoring everything except these
godforsaken
letters!"
she cried, flinging the batch in a sliding heap across the
kitchen table.

Exactly at that moment
they heard the old-fashioned
br-rringg
of her hand-cranked
doorbell. Much later that night, Liz wondered about the
significance of the visit; but for now, it merely represented an
interruption she was in no mood to have.

Which explains why she was
downright surly when she flung the door open to greet a ponytailed
young man with droopy eyes and wire-rimmed glasses who introduced
himself as Grant Dade, fifth-year graduate student at nearby Brown
University and author-in-progress of what he hoped would be a
published doctoral dissertation titled "The Rise of Spiritualism in
Two Ages of Excess."

"Got a minute?" he asked
with a John Lennon smile.

"Mis-ter
Dade," said Liz, exasperated, "I thought I told
you on the phone this morning that I won't be making the letters
available until sometime in the future."

"If I could just ... if
you could just hear me out. One minute.
Please,"
he said, with the fierce
resolve that only doctoral students almost through with their
dissertations can muster.

She sighed and gestured
him in. "I've told the historical society and the — well, one other
group — the exact same thing," she explained, folding her arms
eloquently to back up her refusal. "So you needn't feel singled out
or anything."

She refused to sit down,
hoping he'd get the message, but then Victoria wandered out and
invited him to have a seat, so there they all were: ghostbuster,
reincarnated con-woman, and crazed researcher. A nicely balanced
group with a certain amount in common.

Mr. Dade rolled back the
cuffs of his denim shirt and gave his pitch. It was his theory — or
would be, if he could just be first to get it published — that
toward the end of every age of lavish spending, a backlash sets in
of increased spiritualism. You could trace the pattern all through
history, he said, but he himself was concentrating on comparing the
Gilded Age of the 1890s to the decade of the high-flying
1980s.

Victoria, dressed in her
favorite New Age star-splashed sundress, said, "Really! So you
don't think it's just typical end-of-the-century soul-searching?
With an approaching millennium thrown in to boot?"

"Not at all — God, no!"
said the student, his eyes glittering with maniacal conviction. "I
mean, think about it! In Gilded Age Newport —maybe the most
concentrated example of excess since Rome — people thought nothing
of budgeting three or four hundred thousand dollars for the
summer's entertainment. For nothing! For fun!"

He leaned forward in the
wing chair; instinctively, Liz sat back in the sofa, easing away
from him. He was too intense, too intent on converting her to his
theory.

He narrowed his eyes. "It
was
obscene,"
he
said, hissing the word through clenched teeth. "Think what that
money was worth a century ago. Consider the mansions: The Breakers;
Rosecliff; The Elms; Marble House. They cost millions of dollars —
millions of
1890s
dollars — and were used a lousy six to eight weeks a year.
And the people who built them made
two
stinking dollars a day!"
he said, sneering
in disgust.

Liz was becoming more and
more uncomfortable; he was making her feel like Nero's
wife.

She could see that he was
struggling to calm himself so that he could go on. To some extent,
he managed to succeed. His voice became dry and professorial as he
suddenly sat up straight and said, "However, at the same time,
spiritualism was making itself felt as a genuine force here.
Mystics, esoterists, occultists — many of them the offspring of
wealthy atheists — came forward to combat the Vanderbilts and
Astors and Belmonts."

His lecture ended
abruptly. "That's why I need to see the letters," he said, eyeing
the shoeboxes furtively. "Those
are
the letters, aren't they?"

He forced himself to look
away from them, to concentrate on Liz instead. "Please ... I'm so
near the end of my dissertation ... I could read through them here,
if you like," he begged in a suddenly pathetic voice. "I'll pay you
rent; I'd be no bother."

Mad as a hatter,
Liz decided. Maybe all graduate students were.
The pressure must be phenomenal. Not that she'd know: her only
exposure to academe was a few evening courses at a community
college before Susy was born.

Looking warily at the
stressed-out, teary-eyed graduate student now confronting her, Liz
decided to cut the interview off once and for all. "I understand
your enthusiasm, Mr. Dade, but if I gave you access, it wouldn't be
fair to the others. I've already stated my plans," she said firmly.
"I'm sorry I can't help you."