Time After Time (59 page)

"God. All women personal.
Please. I'm begging you."

With that simple maneuver,
Liz made her announcement to Jack that she'd be taking over the
Great Room for an extravaganza unmatched since — well, since his
birthday a month earlier.

She squeezed his hand. "I
love you, you know."

He smiled. "Me too, you
conniving witch." After a minute or so, he said, "What do you think
about a baseball theme for Bradley's birthday? June — it's baseball
season. Just a thought," he said absently. "Oh, wait. By then the
baby—"

"—will still be too young
to blow up Bradley's party," Liz said, remembering her infamous
debut at East Gate.

"Plenty of time to do
that," Jack said reassuringly. Then: "Why are we going to the boat,
anyway? There's not going to be any necklace there. It's had a
hundred years to be found."

"But it hasn't been, as
far as we know. You have to humor me and Detective Gilbert on this.
We won't take long."

****

They searched, all three
of them, for four straight hours. The boat was ice-cold below, but
Liz pretended that she didn't notice. Starting with the staterooms,
they turned the boat inside out, pulling out the drawers, taking up
the floorboards, taking up the berthboards — anything that wasn't
screwed down was removed, searched, and replaced. From there they
moved into the main salon, repeating the process; and from there to
the galley, the wheelhouse, even the engine room and the
forecastle.

No pearls.

Liz had taken frequent
quick breaks and made the men coffee while they continued the
search — Detective Gilbert, with the discipline born of his years
on the force; and Jack, with mounting impatience and concern for
Liz.

The recovered letter got
picked up and reread until they all knew it by heart. Something
about it bothered Liz; she couldn't figure out what. It was while
she was taking her third pregnancy-induced pee of the search that
it hit her. No one would write, "I have a head for such things." In
that context they'd say, "I have a penchant," or, "I have a
weakness," or whatever.

Head.
It was almost a Freudian slip.

On a hunch, she decided to
search the bathroom she was in — the
head,
as Susy would undoubtedly
insist she call it. Small, exquisite cupboards were too recently
painted to give her much hope. But they were still empty of
supplies, since the boating season hadn't begun yet, and Liz was
able to feel behind them and all around without much
trouble.

At the back of the linen
closet was a small horizontal hole — meant for air circulation
between the closet and the hull — which was just big enough for Liz
to slip her hand into. With mounting hopes she probed the dark gap,
feeling for jewels and finding nothing but very, very cold
air.

Disappointed, she tried
another ventilation hole, and then another. In the third one she
felt something.

Fat round beads, a string
of them.

"Jack!" she screamed at
the top of her lungs. "Come quick!"

He showed up in five
seconds with a look of panic on his face, matched by Detective
Gilbert, who stood peering over his shoulder into the small
compartment.

She was half-kneeling in a
bizarre contortion with her hand still in the hole. "I've got 'em!
I've got 'em!"

"What're you
doing?"
cried Jack,
scandalized. "You'll hurt yourself, twisting like that!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. I
just ... don't ... want ... to drop them," she said, carefully
unhooking the strand from something sharp that protruded out of the
back of the closet — a too-long screw tip, she assumed.

With infinite care and in
utter silence she began pulling the rope of pearls through the
hole, fearful that at any moment the century-old string that held
them might be too rotten to hold, and she'd lose it all. But the
string held, and she was able to pass the rope of pearls intact to
Jack.

At first glance, the
pearls seemed ruined. They were covered with green fuzz, unpleasant
to hold. But even in that condition, there was no denying their
majesty. "They are
huge,"
Liz said, staring in awe at the moldy
beads.

The diamond that was
mounted on the clasp wasn't as big as a pie-cherry — more the size
of a plump raisin. Maybe Elizabeth Taylor wouldn't be impressed,
but Liz sure was.

She rubbed the mossy
coating from one of the beads, revealing an exquisitely dark pearl:
dusky, gray, as exotic as the Pacific islands it came
from.

"Wow," whispered Detective
Gilbert.

Jack handed the necklace
carefully to the detective. "Who was the owner, I wonder? Who are
the heirs?"

Those questions never
occurred to Liz. Her knee-jerk response had been: finders keepers.
She blushed to realize that she hadn't thought beyond that. It made
her love Jack all over again, just for his integrity.

"We can find out," said
Detective Gilbert, fingering the stone. "Between the
Daily News
and the
police archives, we should be able to tell. I predict a bunch of
lawsuits, though."

Jack was thinking of
something else besides lawsuits. "Hold it ... I wonder if it's
possible ... yeah. Has to be."

He laughed at some
recollection and said, "Last year Cynthia said that someone called
the yard, asking the name of the Eastman yacht. She told him
the
Déjà Vu
without thinking, then asked me if that was all right. I said
sure and never thought about it again, even after the fan-belt
episode. After all, David Penny obviously knew the boat; he
wouldn't have been the one to call."

"You're thinking it was —
who — Wragg?" asked Liz.

"Yep. And I think the
moron saw the
DeeJay
and got the two names confused — hell, they're both old
wooden boats —
and ransacked the
DeeJay
instead of the
Déjà Vu. Wait'll I tell Jay. He'll think it was worth it just to be
able to tell the story over sundowners."

"Well, that's that," said
Detective Gilbert. "The case may finally be closed."

It was hard to tell who
was the most relieved. "Just make sure somebody tells Wragg that we
found this, okay?" asked Liz.

They stepped out of the
boat into a brisk, cold, southwest breeze. Spring came hard to
cities by the sea.

Detective Gilbert flipped
up the collar of his jacket and said, "Nice yard you have
here."

"It's been touch and go,"
Jack said, "but I think we've turned the corner. The International
Yacht Race is sending a fair amount of business our
way."

Liz slipped her arm
through Jack's and said exuberantly, "And Jack's not selling --
thanks to a lady who's the wisest shareholder I know -- so those
jerks can just put
that
in their pipe and smoke it."

Both men looked at her
strangely, but she didn't care. She was wonderfully content with
finding the pearls, wonderfully pleased with herself for figuring
it out. Susy would have to be told: Liz wanted credit from her
nautical daughter even more than she wanted it from Jack.
Head.
Ha.

They went back up the ramp
that led from the float to the pier above. Detective Gilbert shook
their hands and wished them well with the new baby, and then he
hurried to get out of the wind.

"All set to go home,
Columbo?" asked Jack.

"You bet."

Liz turned and looked back
at the
Déjà Vu,
pulling restlessly on its docklines. She could — almost — see
Christopher Eastman on the afterdeck, looking up at her with a
glint in his eye and a laugh on his lips.

She blew a kiss down from
the pier: it got carried away on the wind.

"BEYOND MIDNIGHT
has a terrific plot, a wicked villain, and a sexy
hero. But the novel ventures beyond sheer entertainment, and it is
easy to see why Stockenberg's work has won such acclaim. The theme
and setting create a terrifying scenario, even without the
supernatural elements
:
a chilling correspondence between the events of Salem's
witch-hunting hysteria and contemporary allegations of ritualistic
abuse in preschools. A good read that makes you think. Comes
awfully close to
—
dare I say it?
—
literature."

—
Katherine Hennessey
Wikoff,
Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel

"Full of charm and wit, Stockenberg's latest (following
Time After Time)
is
truly enthralling."

—
Publishers
Weekly

"A pair of well-matched protagonists, a precocious three-year-old,
a relentless ghost, and a conniving nanny combine to produce an
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BEYOND
MIDNIGHT'S
shining strengths are its
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—
Kristi Lyn Glass,
editor,
Gothic Journal

“When it comes to unique, eerie and engrossing tales of
supernatural suspense, author Antoinette Stockenberg is in a league
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BEYOND MIDNIGHT
is a gripping and chilling page-turner outlining
two families’ courageous battle against an insidious evil with a
charming face. Outstanding reading!”
—Romantic Times

"Antoinette Stockenberg creates another winner with this fast-paced
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Affaire de Coeur

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Literary Times

"
BEYOND MIDNIGHT
is typical of Stockenberg's excellent paranormal romances,
with extremely strong characters, and an intriguing and original
plot."

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Melinda Hughes,
Gothic Journal

"Helen Evett, owner of a thriving pre-school in Salem, becomes the
object of a modern witch hunt that endangers her family, her
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Heart to Heart

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BEYOND MIDNIGHT
brings Salem and its
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New Reality Reviews

"This second chance at love story is ultimately satisfying,
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The Time Machine

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—
Rendezvous
Magazine

March.

Helen Evett dropped a log
into the jumpy flames of her cozy hearth, then went over to the
sitting room window and closed the heavy drapes of faded rose,
muting the sound of sleet that tapped against the panes.

This March will be
different.

She poured herself a glass
of sherry, settled into a deep-cushioned chair in front of the
fire, and cracked open the cover of a brand-new biography of Freud
that she'd been meaning to read since Christmas.

It's been four years now.
Long enough.

Five minutes into the
book, Helen looked up and began staring at the flames, unable,
after all, to shake herself free of the mood. March in
Massachusetts was long, cold, and cruel, full of false hope. March
was a liar. March couldn't produce a damn thing except April first,
the anniversary of her husband's death.

For four years in a row,
Helen Evett had tried to convince herself that spring would be less
painful. She had planted hundreds of snowdrops and burned cords of
wood, and yet here she was, facing April again with dread. The
memories of that fateful day had burned deep and left scars: the
somber troop commander standing at her front door, the slow-motion
ride to the hospital in a state police car, the shocking sight of
Hank's gray, lifeless face.