She wrote “BB&D!!!” on her paper and surrounded it with lightning bolts. Then she dialed the sheriff’s office but hung up before the dispatcher answered. Warren might not be guilty of anything more than a too-casual attitude, but she wasn’t convinced.
Swearing under her breath, Rebecca turned to a fresh page and wrote down everything she’d discovered. Little enough, she thought, tapping her pencil against her teeth. But she needed all the ammunition she could get. If Eric griped about all the long distance calls on the phone bill, tough. It was his own fault. And once she’d trusted him.
The odor of cigarette smoke wafted from the entry. The water pipes gonged. Darnley prissed in, sniffed around, left. Someone walked down the stairs and out the front door whistling the derisive “Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waulkin’ yet?” Ah yes, it was time for the mail. Michael was helpful, to a certain extent. To whatever extent she could trust him.
Don’t start that again, Rebecca ordered herself. She stamped up to her room slapping her notebook against her thigh. Her mind felt like an eggbeater, thoughts, images, fear, and frustration whirring frantically but never meshing.
Phil passed her as she went on up the stairs, touching his cap like a medieval serf. “I’ll be leaving now, Miss Reid. See you Monday.”
“See you Monday, Mr. Pruitt. Thank you.”
Dorothy was standing on the fifth floor looking at John Forbes’s portrait, the painted features showing more animation than the living ones. She said to Rebecca, “I forgot to bring your dinner tonight, sorry.”
Rebecca said politely, “It’s very good of you to think of us, Mrs Garst. We’ll manage until next week.”
“Have a nice weekend,” said Dorothy like an automaton. She shuffled off down the stairs.
Michael had disemboweled some of the smaller rooms on the sixth floor, leaving boxes strewn across the floor. The metallic sunshine blanched the room so that it resembled an overexposed photograph. The claymore, propped by the fireplace, shone with a cold steely gleam. The wind wailed around the turrets and on the roof something loose banged an uneven rhythm. The place suited her mood. Rebecca sat down, picked up the inventory, and chose a box.
Slow footsteps clomped far below, on either the front or the back stairs. “Hello, James,” she said. “I’m beginning to understand why you never married, with Elspeth and Athena, Katie and Dorothy setting such fine examples of womanhood.” She glanced warily at the slitted window. Silence. The ghosts had been silent recently. Saving up for something, no doubt. Maybe Rebecca herself would explode, just to amuse them.
That set of steps bounding toward her was Michael’s. “So many cars were comin’ oot the drive I doot you’d turfed them all oot good and proper.”
“How’s your girlfriend today?” Rebecca asked.
“The postie? She’s on holiday. This one’s a man. Didna ken a word I was sayin’.” Shaking his head incredulously he threw down a collection of form letters and ads and went back into the smaller rooms.
Rebecca turned the pages in the inventory. Box 576— all right! She lifted a finely tooled wooden box from the large cardboard one and opened it. Yes, just as the inventory said. It was Mary Stuart’s gold rosary. The filigree beads tingled between her fingers, and the crucifix was oddly warm.
Rebecca crouched beside the box, barely able to breathe. In a piece of cloth was a prayer book. When she opened the brass latches and turned the pages the 400 year old illuminations leaped out at her, fresh and vital. The cloth was Mary’s veil, its history embroidered around the edges in Latin: “A nobiliss matrona… . “”My God,” Rebecca breathed. Mary had held these things at her execution.
Rebecca sniffed. Crybaby. She was just so tired. Her back curved, weighted down with despair, with a life of struggle so futile that death was welcome. Mary, too, had lost her child; he’d been taken away from her and raised to hate her. For twenty years she’d been imprisoned in alien England, ill and reviled, and still had knelt before the executioner like a queen.
The floor was hard beneath Rebecca’s knees. The cloth, the rosary, the book tingled in her hands. The Hall at Fotheringhay was cold. Mocking faces looked at her, voices buzzed and were then stilled by awe and respect. No, not despair. Desperate hope, the light in a long tunnel. Not an end but a beginning. Faint and faraway a woman’s voice said, “In manus tuas, Domine, confide spiritum”—”Into your hands O Lord I commend my spirit”. The lips of Mary’s severed head had continued to pray for a quarter hour after her death.
Something touched her shoulders and Rebecca started up with a gasp that was almost a scream.
Michael was on one knee, looking into her face, his brows puckered with sympathy and alarm. Cautiously he took crucifix, book and veil from her hands, checked them against the inventory, and sat down on the floor, eyes bulging.
Rebecca watched, half crying, half laughing at how despair, terror, and elation swept his features just as they had hers. At last he laid the items reverently back in their box and cleared his throat. They looked at each other, dazed. “Is that the Forbes treasure?” Rebecca croaked.
“Canna be. James had it on the list. And John said he’d made a reliquary for the treasure from Elspeth’s jewels.”
“It should be the treasure. Romantic Mary and all.” Again tears spilled from Rebecca’s eyes and down her cheeks. No— this was a torture of embarrassment. But the tears were the fluid drained from a sore, relieving pain and fear. She cried, sputtering apologies. Michael’s hands touched her again. His supple fingers worked the quivering fibers of her back and neck until they relaxed and nestled into his grasp. “Ah well,” he said, “there’s naething wrong wi’ a bit o’ romance. And a good greet if it’ll ease your mind.”
Rebecca leaned back into the sanctuary and the danger of Michael’s arms. This was what she’d wanted, her mind hiccuped, the reassurance and support of which sex was so often only a counterfeit. But she and Michael were both too good at, if not lies, then certainly half-truths.
She rested, her shoulders against his chest, his arms locked around her waist, her hands on his slender wrists. No, she wouldn’t turn toward him, even as his cheek pressed against the side of her head and his lips touched her ear. “Rebecca, whatever happens, I want you to know… ”
She waited, each deep breath following quietly on the next. He rocked her in his arms and murmured, “Never mind, lass. Never you mind.”
With a shuddering gulp and a choked “thank you” she put his arms aside and sat up. He let her go without protest. She pulled out a tissue, mopped at her face and retrieved her wandering contact lenses. She must be a mess, her eyes red, her nose running.
“Go have a bit of a lie down before you leave tonight,” Michael said. “You’ve been workin’ yourself too hard.”
“No, I haven’t. You’ve done most of it.”
“I don’t mean wi’ the artifacts.” Michael stood, heaved her to her feet and pointed her toward the door. “Go take a snooze.”
Rebecca walked out of the room without looking at him. She didn’t want to see his expression, be it affection, conjecture, or some peculiar combination of the two. He had spoken perfectly calmly and coolly, as if nothing either good or bad had ever happened between them.
What did he mean, whatever happens? Rebecca lay down on her bed and stared at the canopy. Yes, the house drove everyone who lived here mad.
She dozed, dreaming quick images that twisted and twirled just beyond her grasp, and woke to find the house drowsing in the brassy afternoon sunlight. Maybe it, too, had needed a good cry. After tidying up she found Michael in the kitchen reading MacKay over a sandwich. His glance was uncharacteristically shy. “Did you put a warning on that box?” she asked. Rats, her voice had come out pitched too high, artificial.
“Aye,” he said with a rueful grin that looked like her voice sounded. “Right dangerous with those emotional land mines scattered about the place.”
Where we keep stepping on them. For a moment Rebecca wondered what would have
happened if she’d met Michael somewhere else. Then a knock on the front door snapped her away from the blue eyes and the appealing lopsided grin that called to her across a bottomless chasm. “See you later,” she said. He gave her a stoic British palm-outward salute.
Rebecca walked through the entry pulling on her coat, symbolically girding her loins. This was it, then. Eric.
Eric stood hunched into his overcoat. “Cold,” he said succinctly, and swept her into the warm, leathery interior of the Volvo.
The sunlight made the tiered windows of Dun Iain into sheets of flame. Dark clouds massed on the northern horizon. The wind tasted of snow. Eric guided the car past the dovecote and down the driveway, saying, “They’re predicting several inches by Sunday. The first big snow of the year.”
Rebecca responded with something appropriate. She made appropriate if monosyllabic responses all the way into town. By the time they passed beneath the interstate Eric was glancing at her curiously. “Something wrong?”
“Could we skip the movie tonight and just go someplace quiet where we can talk?”
“Oh now that’s ominous, when a woman says she wants to talk.” His voice wasn’t quite as light as he’d obviously intended; it roughened, rubbed against the grain. “Let’s go back to Gaetano’s. I’ll ask Mohammed for the table in the corner.”
“Thank you.” She bit her lip and realized she was getting lipstick on her teeth.
Long shadows stretched across the streets of Putnam. The candy canes on the lampposts looked sickly in the yellow sunlight, but Gaetano’s door sported a Della Robbia wreath whose brilliant lacquers only shone the brighter.
Eric seated Rebecca in the banquette, paused while the waiter lit the candle on the table, and ordered appetizers and wine. In the dim light his sculpted features looked like the funeral mask of a pharaoh, precious metal molded and polished. Oh, he was pretty. But only outside.
No. That wasn’t fair. Give the man a chance to tell his story. Rebecca accepted a glass of Asti Spumante and sipped, the bubbles tickling her nose. She asked, “Eric, why is your last name Adler?”
He swung toward her, his thick gold ring glinting beneath the curve of the wine glass he held, brow furrowed with perplexity. “What?”
“Usually adopted children take the name of their new parents.”
Perplexity faded into complete mystification. “Rebecca, what are you talking about?”
“I’m a historian. I’m trained to follow a paper trail. Birth certificates are very useful items.” She picked an olive from the antipasto tray and nibbled at it, remembered she hated olives, and laid it down again.
The mask of his face thinned and she glimpsed the heat behind. His voice was very soft. “My birth certificate?”
“I wasn’t looking for you. I was looking for Dorothy. She’s your mother.”
Eric’s eyes flashed and dulled. His mouth fell open and snapped shut. He turned away, staring at a print across the room, his hand clenched on the stem of the wineglass, his mouth so tight it was only a crease in his face.
So, Rebecca thought, she’d finally managed to turn Eric’s flank and take him by surprise. Not that that was anything to be proud of. It wasn’t Dorothy, then, who’d been listening on the extension, she’d have warned him that Rebecca was being so irritatingly curious again.
She presented her suspicions as methodically and emotionlessly as he would’ve done himself, omitting only that Jan had been with her at the Bureau of Records. He would just be hurt worse if he knew someone else knew.
Eric inhaled, set his glass on the table, and took Rebecca’s hands. The gleaming intensity of his black eyes mesmerized her. Maybe it was just as well she’d chosen a public place for the confrontation. But no. Eric was not one to shout or make a scene, even in private. That night at his condo had proved that. “I’ve lied to you,” he said, his voice slightly fuzzy.
“Yes, you have.”
“I haven’t been using your affections, I promise you that.”
“Oh?”
“My adoptive parents were named Schnerk. Can you see a judge ever taking me seriously with a name like that? And my grandmother’s name was Matwiejow— I spent years spelling that out. So when I foolishly decided to look up my biological parents I was delighted my father’s name was simple, straightforward, Adler. The change is quite legal. I did it myself, ten years ago in California, long before I came here.”
His hands tightened. He was hurting her. She flexed her fingers and with a quick shake of his head he released her. Still his eyes, dark crystals each containing a solitary flame, held her trapped.
“That was three years ago. I found out very quickly that my father was dead. As for my mother— well, I don’t know what I envisioned, but it wasn’t that pitiful, addicted, bitter woman old before her time. Can you imagine walking innocently into a spider’s web, being caught in it, knowing there’s no way out?”
“You didn’t have to help her,” Rebecca said. Brutal, but true. She felt as if her skin, too, was matted with sticky, grimy web.
“She’s my mother. If it ever came out how she’d been skimming the till all these years… . Well, I felt the least I could do was obtain a position with the firm that represents Dun Iain and help to, if not make good the losses, at least make sure no more occurred.”
“What about the mazer?”
“I got to her too late. She destroyed it and sold it for scrap. I did get her to return the little box.”
“That beautiful artifact, ruined!” Rebecca knotted her hands, trying to keep her voice quiet. “At the risk of stating the obvious, you never should’ve told that first lie. If you’d gone to Birkenhead to begin with… ”
“I know! I should’ve gotten help for her right at the beginning. But I didn’t want to— to admit she was my mother. Selfish and callous, I know. But there it is.” At last his eyes fell.
Without the pressure of those eyes Rebecca felt almost deflated. “Was she paying Steve and Heather to make trouble around the place— my room, the chair, the small fire?”
“I think so, yes. But the fire in the shed must really have been an accident. Steve was trying to hide that he’d been using the gasoline.”
“And what about Michael?”
Eric darted a swift, sharp glance at her. “What about him?”
She asked, “Did you really suspect him of working his own embezzlement scheme? Or were you just trying to deflect suspicion from Dorothy? And from yourself.”
“Oh.” He looked back down and poked at a piece of cheese. “No, I’ve never had any evidence that he was dishonest.”
Rebecca wanted to laugh, to shout, I could’ve given you plenty of evidence! But she could never have given him the truth. She looked back at Eric’s immaculate profile, ran her tongue over her lips, and asked, “Did James suspect?”
“Yes he did, there at the end. Dorothy was pushing too hard, wanting too much. He was my friend, and I lied to him, too. Believe me, Rebecca, if I could go back and change things I would.” Eric’s eyes caught her again, as if she touched a high-voltage wire. “It’s been an impossible situation right from the start. I tried to help, and I only made it worse. I just hope that Mrs. Morris gets her fair share of the proceeds and that it’ll all be over soon.”
The waiter was hovering, offering menus. Eric waved him away.
Yes, Rebecca thought, she was sympathetic. But Eric was so quick with those facile lines, so adept at telling her what she wanted to know. She took a healthy swallow of her wine and followed it with a bite of prosciutto and cheese. It tasted like sawdust.
“What’re you going to do?” he asked grimly. “Have me disbarred?”
“Will that set things right? Damn it, Eric, you didn’t go shopping for a mother. We’re all stuck with what we get.” He gazed into his glass, ego wilted and yet still distinguished. She was impressed in spite of herself. “Monday, you go to Warren and Chief Velasco in Putnam, too, and explain it all. Surely if you come clean before you get caught that�
�ll help matters. Maybe you can get Dorothy off on an insanity defense. I don’t know, that’s your department.”
A reluctant wry humor tickled the corner of his mouth. “You’re right. Confession is good for the soul.”
If Warren isn’t on the Dun Iain take, Rebecca thought. If I shouldn’t go to the police myself. She squirmed. With what? Until Eric made a formal, witnessed confession what she had was still circumstantial. Including her conclusion that James Forbes was murdered, reached because a three-year-old talked to his ghost. She was sick and tired of being condescended to by male officialdom. No, she had to give Eric a chance, the equivalent of the quaint old British custom of leaving the accused alone in a room with a loaded gun to take the gentleman’s way out.
Eric lifted her chin and turned her face toward him. His eyes narrowed slightly, glinting between their lashes. Concern, calculation, pain— she couldn’t tell. “And what about us, Rebecca?”
She pulled gently away from his grasp. “I’ll be leaving in a couple of weeks. It’s just as well. Even though that cruise would’ve been… ” She groped for a word and finally produced a lame, “… nice.”
“We would’ve had a good time, wouldn’t we?”
“We already had some good ones. I’m sorry.”
“Oh no, I’m the one who should be apologizing.” He picked up his glass, drained it, looked at the tray of food and shoved it away. “Would you like dinner, or would you like me to drive you home?”
“Neither, thank you. I’ll ask Peter to take me back out there. Or Michael can come and get me.” Although, she added to herself, that was one perceptive eye she still didn’t want to face.
Eric’s features were taut and pale, but his armor never cracked. He summoned the waiter and paid the bill. He helped Rebecca up, poured her into her coat, stood dutifully by while she called the Sorensons and Peter said he was on his way.
In the dark deserted hallway at the front of the restaurant they kissed one more time. Then, without another word, he walked out the door. Rebecca’s lips burned from the ferocious regret of that kiss. That much of his performance, at least, had been sincere. She decided she was getting much too good at breaking up relationships.
Ashes to Ashes Page 34
