Time After Time (22 page)

Susy looked up just then
and gave her mother a happy grin that was short one tooth. "Wait
till you see what
I'm
making, Mommy. You'll like this one especially!"

Ben smiled and sauntered
over to her table for a preview. "Wow," he said, impressed. "That
looks
exactly
like your house from the back. It even has a barbecue grill!
But what's this over here, above the roof?"

"That's the
ghost
,"
said Susy gleefully. "He's trying to get down our
chimney."

Victoria and Liz shot each
other startled looks.

"Oooh," said Ben, falling
in with Susy's tone. "Is your house haunted?"

Susy giggled and said,
"No, of
course
not! Mr.
Eastman's
house is haunted. That one over there," she said,
pointing through the fence at East Gate with her paintbrush. "I
heard Mommy and Aunty Tori one time when they were talking about
the ghost who lives there."

"Oh, Susy, we weren't
talking about a real ghost," said Liz quickly. "That was just
what-if talk. What if a real ghost lived there, we were saying. You
must have misunderstood."

Susy drew her brows
together in a puzzled look. "I
think
I understood. Aunty Tori said,
'What was it like?' and you said, 'It got very cold.'

My God. She can hear us
when she's up in bed. My God.
"No, no,
honey, what I said was—"

Liz was saved from coming
up with yet another lie by the sight of their cat Toby flying
across Jack Eastman's grounds with Snowball — who ran amazingly
fast for a bouncing mop — in hot pursuit. Liz let out a cry and ran
up to the chain-link fence with the others right behind her, but
there was nothing anyone could do but watch in horror as fat old
Toby did his best to outrun the fierce little canine.

Toby picked the maple
nearest the fence to claw his way up and didn't stop until he was
out on a limb too narrow to perch on, at which point his hind legs
slipped off, dropping him a foot closer to his
tormentor.

They all held their breath
as the cat scrambled to regain his footing, and then they burst
into action. Ben began climbing the fence, Liz picked up a stick to
throw at the dog, Victoria shouted
shoo-shoo-shoo
as loud as she could,
and Susy yelled words of encouragement to her terrified
cat.

Snowball refused to budge
from the base of the tree, piercing the air with his relentless,
high-pitched bark. The cat, embarrassed and unhappy with this
arrangement, began wailing like a banshee. Then Ben dropped to the
ground on the dog's side of the fence, and Snowball turned on him
instead, locking onto the cuff of his slacks and growling
ferociously as he tried to tear the doctor limb from
limb.

Ben was trying to shake
off the clinging dog without hurting him when Jack Eastman came
running up with a look on his face that was more annoyed than not.
He called the dog's name — once — and Snowball left off the attack
and trotted meekly to his side.

For some reason, it was
Liz who felt she should apologize. "Sorry about that," she said to
Jack through the fence. "Our cat's in your tree. Ben was just
trying to —" Liz shrugged; she didn't know
what
Ben was trying to do, other
than to seem heroic.

Smiling away his act of
trespass, Ben introduced himself to Jack with an extended hand. "I
was a diversion tactic. Worked pretty well, don't you think?" He
lifted his right leg and surveyed his shredded cuff. "Ah, well.
Linen's too fancy for a cookout, anyway."

Jack sniffed the air that
was carrying down to them. "Speaking of which, I'd say your cookout
is just about cooked out."

"The steaks!" cried
Liz.

Victoria ran to the grill
and lifted the hood. The extra shot of oxygen was just what the
steaks needed to burst the rest of the way into flame. "Too late,"
Victoria said as she speared the burning slabs and flung them on
the grass. "We'll dash up to the A&P and get more. C'mon,
Spider Man. Can you make it back over?"

Ben grinned and took the
fence in three quick strides. Liz was reminded — and so, no doubt,
was Jack — that without barbed wire, this sort of thing was bound
to happen more often. Ben and Victoria were headed through the rose
arbor when Liz impulsively turned to Jack and said, "Any chance
that you can join us?"

"Sure."

"Bring extra!" she shouted
after them, even as she wondered what the
hell
she was doing, asking Jack into
her life. It made no sense. She'd worked it all out. This new
signal would only confuse him.

So what?
she decided.
Why
should
I
be the
only one who's off balance all the time?

"Meanwhile," she said with
a smile that she knew was more come-hither than it should be, "my
cat's stuck in your tree."

Jack nodded, then said,
"Go home," to the dog. Snowball skulked off dutifully toward the
house.

"I'm impressed," she said
to Jack. "Are you having as much luck training Caroline?" It was a
provocative question, she knew. But he chose to parry it with a
laugh, for which she was grateful.

"I'll get a ladder," he
suggested.

"Wait," Liz told him. "Let
me try something first." She left Susy and Jack trying to talk the
cat down from the tree and went into the house for a knife and a
sharpening stone.

When she came out, Susy
was showing Jack her latest artwork through the fence and
explaining, no doubt, how she hoped the East Gate ghost would come
slumming over to
their
house every once in a while. Whatever Liz believed, whatever
she hoped still to discover, she would have to wipe those thoughts
out of Susy's head, and quickly.

"I've had Toby for
thirteen years," Liz said to Jack, rudely interrupting her
daughter. "We've developed quite a vocabulary during that time."
She poised the knife over the sharpener. "These are the words for
'raw meat,' " she explained, and drew the blade down over the stone
left to right, right to left.

Toby pricked up his ears
and stared down gingerly at them from his perch. Liz kept at it,
adding a few words of encouragement as the cat began backing
awkwardly toward the trunk.
Raw meat, raw
meat, raw meat, raw meat,
said the knife
and stone.

Jack chuckled as he
watched Toby's determined maneuvers. "Must be a bore when you have
to sharpen the bread knife."

"Oh, no," said Liz
blithely. "He knows the difference in the length of the blades, and
between steel and stainless steel. This is the only knife that
brings him running."

In less than a minute Toby
was down from the tree, making a beeline for the hole under the
fence that was a popular shortcut with the local wildlife —
possums, coons, a tree shrew, skunks, maybe even the red fox that
Liz had spotted on Jack's grounds.

"Unfortunately, now I have
to find some raw meat to feed him," she said to Jack. "While I'm
doing that, why don't you come on over — or under —or around," she
said with an offhand smile that was betrayed by the pounding of her
heart. "Whichever way you like."

"I'd like to come
through,
is what I'd
like," Jack said with a frustrated look.

"You can't do that, Mr.
Eastman," Susy piped up. "Only ghosts can do that."

"That's right," said Jack
with a penetrating look at Liz. "Only ghosts."

Liz smiled lamely and beat
a retreat to her kitchen. Why had he looked at her that way? Did he
know something about the artist-ghost? Was it a fixture at East
Gate? That the ghost was an Eastman, she had no doubt. Maybe it
would take another Eastman to confirm its existence. Liz had
assumed that
she
was the one who'd let the thing loose, that day in the
locksmith's shop. But maybe it had been hanging around the mansion
for the past hundred years, and she'd just happened on it at East
Gate and later on the yacht.

What she didn't know was
why it had chosen to appear to
her
. Twice.

Let me rephrase
that,
she told herself, her natural
skepticism reasserting itself.
What I
don't
know is why I've convinced myself
I've seen a ghost. Twice.

Liz bought off Toby with a
few minced pieces of frozen chicken livers and went back outside.
Jack had cleaned up the steaks, poured himself a rum punch, and
generally looked comfortable in the role of lord of her very small
manor. Susy was working on another watercolor. It didn't surprise
Liz at all to see that this one was a close-up of the ghost, a
Caspar lookalike in a flowing white sheet.

"What's this stick in his
hand?" asked Liz.

Susy frowned. "I don't
know," she admitted. "I was going to make it a magic wand. But I
think I'll make it a —
paintbrush!"
she said triumphantly. "Just like the one I'm
using."

Liz felt the blood leave
her face. This was too close for coincidence. Never mind Susy's
logic; something was happening here, something that made the hair
on the back of Liz's neck stand on end.

Jack, seeing Liz weave,
put his drink down and took Liz by the arm. "What? What is it?" he
asked, steadying her.

"Nothing," she said
quickly. "This rum punch packs a punch, that's all." She sucked in
a deep breath. "There. That's better. I'm fine now,
thanks."

Liz had to say that, since
Susy was watching her closely. The truth was, she felt anything but
fine. Was it possible that whoever — whatever — it was had begun to
communicate through her
daughter?
The thought chilled Liz's soul. Suddenly she was
furious with herself for having had the drinks, for not staying
completely in control. More than curiosity was involved now. Much
more.

Jack said offhandedly,
"When you were inside, I took a little tour around your house. Do
you realize your south gutter is mounted to the house badly? No way
it'll drain properly like that. I'll show you."

He led her, unprotesting,
to the narrow strip of land on the south side of the cottage, the
only place where they had a chance at privacy. Liz knew this, and
so, of course, did Susy, who gave her mother one of her
oh-you-grown-ups smiles as they walked away.

"What's going on?" Jack
asked Liz as soon as they were out of earshot. "You turned white as
a sheet when you saw Susy's watercolor."

"Not at all. I just get
hypoglycemic if I eat late," Liz said briefly. She held out her
hand. "Look how I shake."

"Bullshit. This isn't
about food. This is about these chronic stops and starts of yours.
I've known you only a few weeks, and yet this is the third time
I've seen you behave as if — okay, I'll say it — you've seen a
ghost."

"You saw the watercolor,"
Liz answered with a calmness she did not feel. "It
was
a ghost.

"You know what I mean,
dammit! I saw you whirling around on the dock the other day. What
were you doing? A rain dance? And the night of Caroline's birthday
party: you fetched up short at the longcase clock in the entry
hall, then broke into a sprint for the door. What the hell
was
that
all
about? I had a cat like you once — completely goofy. It didn't live
too long."

Liz blushed down to her
shoes. The good news was, he really did seem aware of her. The bad
news was, he really did seem aware of her. "I appreciate your
concern," she said, trying not to sound huffy. "And I'll also grant
that I haven't been myself."

"So you haven't always
been this way?" He shook his head thoughtfully and let out a low,
bemused laugh. "That's a relief — I guess."

Liz glanced around the
corner, knowing full well that Susy had periscope ears. "Look, can
we talk about this later?" she said, tilting her head in her
daughter's direction. "I actually
do
have some things I'd like to ask
you."

It seemed to satisfy him.
He nodded, his deep blue eyes looking more troubled than she had
seen before, and said simply, "Don't encourage your guests to
stay."

****

By the time the meal was
actually grilled, served, and eaten, everyone seemed tired and on
the quiet side. It was a reasonable response, given the long gap
between the alcohol and the food. Besides, Victoria and Ben could
hardly wait to fall into each other's arms, that was obvious. And
Susy was just plain tired; nine o'clock was well past her bedtime.
As for Jack, he seemed to have fallen into a brooding, reflective
mood that made Liz alternate between a desire to call him on it and
a dread of what he might tell her.

When Liz stood to take her
daughter up to bed, Victoria and Ben seized the moment to escape.
Quick hugs and handshakes, and out they went.