“You’re lucky you and your family weren’t home. If you’d been awake you would have smelled it, but if you’d all been asleep … it could have been bad … real bad.” He was still eyeing the faulty connection. “Oh, and Mr. Devereaux, I suggest you have your landlord replace this stove; it’s in very poor condition.”
Michael nodded and walked over to Laurel. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
He put his arms around her and held her gently, his warmth making her realize how chilled she was. “Come on. We’ll treat the Patricks to dinner and then go buy our own stove.”
13
Laurel sat at the kitchen table trying to adjust the tension on Myra’s portable sewing machine to handle the heavy yellow drapery material. She wished she had a mechanism to adjust the tension inside her.
In five months the blackout in her mind had lifted only slightly, giving her a peek at two meaningless images. And it was obvious where her life was heading. She’d soon be without a family as well as a memory. If she could even hold onto her sanity and her life long enough to see the end of her probation.
The new electric stove jutted out beyond the partition wall, creating a menace to the traffic pattern. It had enough dials to fill the control panel of a rocket ship.
Anyone could have loosened that compression nut. Claire Bently and Evan Boucher had been in the kitchen recently. The patio door was unlocked, so even Janet or Paul could have come to the house, found her gone and seen their chance. Had she left it unlocked? Even Colleen or the Patricks could have loosened it at any time, waiting for her to jiggle it or bump it. For all she knew, any of them could have a motive that she didn’t know about or couldn’t remember. It could posibly be someone else from her unknown past. It didn’t have to be Michael. He had the obvious motive and the most access to the stove. A man trained as a mechanical engineer and a pilot might well think of such a strange yet logical weapon. But he wouldn’t jeopardize Jimmy’s life as well. Please don’t let it be Michael.
Michael’s attitude had softened some since the gas incident. When he took Jimmy for an outing now, he included Laurel. He was very patient, trying to teach her how to use the new stove. But this gentleness could change to the old hardness in an instant and often did.
Out on the patio Jimmy squealed as he raced his tricycle around Sherrie’s. Laurel turned to watch them. Each day he grew bigger, browner, more scratched and bruised. His face and body grew leaner, his coordination astounding. All little boy now, he showed every sign of becoming a giant of a man. But when he came fresh from his bath with his hair still damp, smelling of soap and powder, to snuggle against her for his nightly bedtime story—he was her baby. The thought of losing him was so agonizing that she would sometimes cry while she read and his eyes would turn sober, the thumb he was fast outgrowing once more seek his mouth.
Michael would have to have her jailed to keep her away from her son. Or killed.…
She turned back to the sewing machine. The gas leak had heightened that sense of urgency, of time racing her toward some unknown end. It could have been an accident; she could have imagined being threatened that night in the courtyard. But her nerves told her that the two incidents were connected and that she’d need all her memory and her wits to face what was coming.
What if she went back to that double track in the desert, followed it to the spot where she’d awakened to a new existence on that morning in April? Would that jog her memory? How would she get there?
Laurel went into a little flurry of decorating, and all the beige rooms gained a little sparkle. New drapes and curtains at every window, new bedspreads and bright throw rugs, flower arrangements and wall hangings.
No amount of genius could make the little house a showpiece, but its character had changed. From a neglected cheap rental it seemed to settle with a sigh into a home that someone cared for. Laurel wondered how much longer she’d be there to care for it.
One evening she stepped out onto the patio on her way to the clothesline to take in the clothes and stopped to enjoy the relative coolness of approaching night.
It was a quiet evening and the clothes hung still on the line. Water splashed from the revolving sprinkler head. Sherrie and Jimmy played contentedly on the swing set.
Voices came to her from Colleen’s kitchen. Her cooler must be off and her patio door open. Colleen’s voice was followed by Myra’s, and Laurel heard her own name mentioned.
“… they’re married? Not just living together?”
“That’s silly, Colleen. Why shouldn’t they be married?”
“I don’t know. They’re such a weird couple. And Jimmy doesn’t look like him. She doesn’t wear any rings. Maybe he just moved them in to keep women like me away.”
“Are you serious?”
“Okay, laugh. But how many couples that age do you know who sleep in separate rooms?”
Myra giggled. “Maybe he snores. Oh, don’t get mad. She told me they’d been separated. Maybe things aren’t going too well between them. Although he did seem very considerate and worried about her that night they took us out to dinner after the gas leaked into their house. But I do think she’s a little afraid of him.”
“I don’t blame her, the way he looks at her.”
“Like how does he look at her, lady detective?”
“Like he wants to commit murder … or rape. Like he doesn’t know which. Like.…”
Myra cut her off with a burst of laughter that made the kids look up from their play.
“Colleen, your life must be exciting with that imagination. Tell you what. If I find any bodies or ladies in distress lying around, I’ll call you in on the case.”
Laurel crept back into the kitchen, squirming inside, the wash forgotten. She closed the screen, then the glass door, and then the drapes.
The last Friday in August Michael announced that he was taking Jimmy to Tucson for the weekend. She was welcome to come along if she liked. Laurel had no intention of being separated from her son, even for a weekend. So they locked up the beige house on Saturday morning and raced across miles of beige desert.
The temperature had climbed to 102 degrees when they left Glendale. The car radio announced that it was 105 degrees when they reached Tucson. Leaving the desert floor, so baked it had cracked in places, they wound along the low foothills, where only the saguaro seemed really alive, and finally rounded the bend in the road where the great white house stood above them on the hill.
The stolid saguaro still stood sentinel duty in its fenced enclosure; palm fronds peeked over the wall of the outer courtyard. And above it all the bell wall, its two empty niches staring sightlessly into the noonday sky. Sun glinted off the great bell in the center niche and the house seemed whiter, less mellowed in the summer sun.
To Laurel this was not a coming home. The house seemed to remind her that there were less than three weeks left of her probation and then Michael would be free to hand her her hat. If something worse didn’t happen before that.
“Come on, Jimmy. We’re here.” Laurel pushed the seat forward and reached in to help him out. But Jimmy crouched against the back seat, sucking his thumb, staring at the giant front door of his inheritance. One of his eyes was blackened from a fall off the new tricycle. He looked slimmer now that he didn’t wear bulky diapers under his shorts.
“What’s the matter with him?” Michael came around the car.
“I can’t get him out. Don’t you want to see Consayla?”
Jimmy stared back at them—unblinking, not moving.
When Michael snapped his fingers Laurel jumped, but their reluctant son hit the floor and scrambled out of the car. He grabbed Laurel’s hand and she had to drag him into the house.
The entry hall was empty and as unreal as ever. It looked cool and dark with its high ceiling, and the sunburst on the red tiled floor lay in shadow. A quiet house greeted them.
Michael looked into the library and then closed the door. He came back to the doors of the main
salon. Laurel followed, Jimmy still tugging at her hand.
The heavy green drapes were open and light streamed through the two-story windows, brightening the rich upholstery and deepening the luster of the wooden tables.
“Well, here you are. And just in time.” At the far end of the room Janet stood halfway up a ladder to the side of the fireplace.
Consuela, looking monstrous and dark against the white wall, held the ladder for her.
Michael walked across to them, his feet making no sound on the thick carpets. His deep voice echoed in the high-raftered room. “Just in time for lunch, I hope.”
“Lunch right after my surprise. Consuela, get the others in here.”
The housekeeper didn’t move. Janet climbed down the ladder and confronted her. “I said get the others.”
“Please, Mrs. Devereaux.…”
“Now listen, old woman.…”
Michael put an arm around the housekeeper’s shoulders and said softly, “What’s wrong, Abuelita?”
“Mr. Michael, it is awful.…”
“I’m afraid Consuela doesn’t like my surprise. Do you want me to get them?” Janet’s low voice had developed an unpleasant rasp.
“I will go.” But before she left, Consuela knelt in front of Jimmy and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He grinned shyly but didn’t release Laurel’s hand. The housekeeper disappeared through the door under the balcony.
“Well, Laurel. How are you? Not too many bruises, I hope?”
“What the hell kind of remark is that?” Michael towered over his sister-in-law.
“Really, Michael, your military career has done nothing for your vocabulary. Must you swear?” Janet wore her working smock; her once-molded copper curls had frizzled in the heat, the lines on her damp face no longer softened by makeup. Lines that Laurel hadn’t noticed before pulled down on the corners of Janet’s mouth.
Michael moved to stand in front of the fireplace where the. bulky outline of a picture frame showed through the green velvet draped on a copper rod above the mantel. “Is this the surprise? Have you turned artist now?”
“You’ll see,” Janet said, flopping down on a nearby couch. “Fix us a drink, Michael. Something cold.”
If Michael noticed her commanding tone, he didn’t show it. But Laurel could feel tension rising in the room as he moved to a bar under the balcony.
Janet turned to her and Jimmy. “Well, sit down, you two. Don’t stand there like beggars. After all, you practically own the place.”
Laurel sat across from her, Jimmy close beside her. She wished they hadn’t come, too.
“You haven’t said a word since you came into this room. Does he beat you to keep you silent?”
Laurel felt anger rise up her throat, and she managed through clenched teeth, “Only on Sundays.” She caught Michael’s startled glance as he bent over her to offer a tall glass on a tray and his deep-throated chuckle as he passed the tray to Janet.
Paul entered through the door under the balcony, Claire and Consuela behind him. “What is it now? You know we can’t be dis … oh, Michael, Laurel. I forgot you were coming. Forgive me.”
“Deep in another book, Paul?” Michael asked, handing the tray around.
“Yes, well into the research anyway.” Paul and Claire were still in their lab jackets, and both sides of Paul’s mustache quivered impatiently. He looked drawn and tired and somehow older, like a sad old bird peeking out through the magnified cages of his glasses.
“They’ve been locked up in that smelly laboratory for months, don’t even come up for meals. They actually locked me out.”
“Janet, you made that necessary—barging in at the worst possible times. Interrupting everything.” Paul’s expression was one of irritation almost to the point of desperation.
“You can at least forgo meals in the laboratory while Michael and Laurel are here.”
Claire moved to Michael’s side. She’d reverted to her plain Jane role and had even forgotten the brown-rimmed reading glasses that perched halfway down her nose, forcing her to look over the top of them.
“Well, get on with it. Whatever it is.” Paul sighed and sat beside Laurel.
“I just hope the light is good enough to do it justice,” Janet said, pulling a cord at the corner of the green velvet and uncovering a portrait in oil of a woman seated with a young boy on her lap.
With Janet’s present mood and Consuela’s swollen eyes, Laurel was ready for anything, expected something nasty. But the portrait seemed innocent enough. The woman was pretty in a dark, slender way. She sat at an angle, her black hair pulled back in a French roll, her white suit with too much padding on the shoulders setting off the pale olive of her skin. Her head was turned so that she looked directly into the eyes of the observer over the dark head of the child on her lap.
It wasn’t until she felt a cold wetness on her sandaled foot that Laurel realized Paul had let his glass slip through his fingers. His hand was still cupped as though he held it. He made no attempt to retrieve the glass, no move at all, his eyes riveted to the picture above the mantel.
Laurel looked around for Consuela to come and wipe up the mess, but the housekeeper hid in the shadow of the little stairway that led to the balcony, her breath coming in sobs.
Claire peered with interest at the picture over her glasses.
Michael had gone pale. A muscle twitched in his cheek. His lips parted but he didn’t speak.
And Janet gloated, watching each face for its reaction. She certainly got plenty of that. But why?
It was obviously a portrait of Maria and a young Michael. They must have seen it before. And it was good, fitting its place on the wall and in the room as though it belonged, much better than the hunting scene it replaced.
Maria watched them, too, unsmiling, sitting very straight as if she would clutch her child and dart from the picture if anyone moved suddenly. Her dark eyes, almost too large for her face, opened too wide as though the artist had just startled her with something slightly bewildering or frightening. Maria had doe eyes, too.
“I found the portrait in an old wardrobe, and the frame is one of my finds. The combination turned out well, don’t you think?” Janet, satisfied that the bomb she’d dropped had had its effect, sat down on the couch and picked up her drink. “You don’t like it, Michael?”
But Michael was almost to the door of the entry hall, and even from that distance Laurel could hear him swearing under his breath. Consuela hurried after him.
“Why, Janet?” Paul finally tore his eyes from the picture. “You’ve tried to stir up trouble all summer. And now this. Just tell me why?”
“Why not? It’s the only family portrait I could find. Surely you’re not ashamed of your precious Maria? Besides, it belongs here. It’s much too good to be moldering in a drawer.”
Paul removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’m going back to the lab. You don’t need to come in until after lunch, Claire,” he said as he left the way he’d come.
“I heard nothing but Maria when I married Paul and came here to live. I wondered why there was no picture of her anywhere. She’d been dead two years and they were still in mourning. Father Devereaux would speak of her and then quietly sit and stare at the wall. Paul would get positively misty-eyed. And Michael would take on a hangdog look and go off and kick something.” Janet stood in front of the fireplace, gazing back at Maria. “I still can’t see why they.… She’s been something of a mystery in my life, I can tell you.”
“You could have looked at her and put her back in the wardrobe,” Claire said quietly and Janet turned to face her. “But you brought her down here so that you could watch Professor Devereaux and Michael hurt. Just because you’re bored and everyone else is busy and because you’re jealous of a woman who’s been dead for twenty years.”
“There’s something in what you say, Miss Bently. I was curious to see if Paul had this infatuation for his father’s dead wife. I’d thought Michael over his mother complex until I saw
this portrait. But I wanted you two to see it especially.”
“Why should we be so interested in it?” Claire asked.
“Because you both want Michael. And you saw him just now.” Janet pointed dramatically to the portrait. “There’s the only woman he’ll ever love.”
“Most everyone loves his mother, Janet. This whole melodramatic scene is disgusting.” Laurel set her glass down and rose from the couch.
“Laurel, dear. I’m only trying to tell you what you have a right to know. You’re trying to get him back, but you never had him. He didn’t marry you for love but because you look like her.” Janet clutched her arm. “Look at the eyes, Laurel, the shape of her head, her expression.”
“Are you through?” Laurel pulled away and turned to leave, but Janet took Jimmy’s hand. He tried to wiggle loose but she held him, talking rapidly now so as not to lose her victim audience.
“No. There’s one more thing. Look at Jimmy and then at Maria and Michael.” She grinned almost haglike. “There’s proof there.”
“Proof of what? Janet, you’re hurting him.” Laurel rescued Jimmy and picked him up, wanting only to get them both out of the room.
But Janet’s next words stopped her.
“Proof that Jimmy is not Michael’s child.” Sure again of her audience, Janet turned back to the portrait. Even Claire’s interest was revived.
“Maria was Mexican, but most of her family came from Spain. Consuela told me there were some blue eyes in the family. Father Devereaux had eyes like Michael’s and Paul’s, hence Michael’s eyes are possible. But how could he with his background and you with your darkness have a blond child? This is hardly probable.”
Claire moved closer to the fireplace and looked from the portrait to Jimmy. “We’ve always known of Michael’s background. Why is this suddenly proof?”
“Because with her out in plain sight, Michael will have to admit to himself what the rest of us have known for a long time. That Jimmy must have had a blond father. The heir is a fake.”
Laurel hugged her son tighter, old questions that she’d refused to let surface rising in her mind. She’d wondered too when she first saw Jimmy how he could be Michael’s. Even Colleen had noticed it.
Michael’s Wife Page 14
