There was a flashlight, a shivering firefly almost obscured by snow. She tracked its path toward the house. A moment after it disappeared below her the door slammed and the dead bolt snicked. That was Michael, wasn’t it?
Scowling with rage rather than whimpering with fear, Rebecca crept to the stairs and felt her way down far enough to see Michael’s lanky form following the gleam of his flashlight into the Hall. In the backspill of light his mouth was pinched shut, his jaw outthrust. Before long he’d remember the fire he’d laid upstairs. Maybe by then she could face him.
Gingerly Rebecca climbed upward, turning on her flashlight only when she was past the third floor. Coffins lurched through the darkness in the corners of her eyes. Mary’s serene white face floated behind her, the open eyes fixed in mild surprise on the back of her neck. Every black doorway like a gaping mouth made her skin crawl as though it wanted to escape her body and hide. The profound silence of the house blanked out even the wail of the wind. No matter how carefully she climbed, her footsteps tolled on the stone.
The bottles were no longer on the steps. Rebecca peeked into Elspeth’s bedroom. Crystal flashed from the dresser. The furrow in the bedclothes moved, as if the sleeper woke and turned to rise. She shut the door and scampered up the next flight of stairs. Yes, the fatal window was open a crack, snow sifted onto the sill. No point in closing it, too.
Rebecca lit the fire, her hands so cold they fumbled three matches before one caught. She poked the burning kindling and leaned the poker against the brick. When the fire was throwing out bright yellow light she turned off her flashlight. She had the extra one, but it would be a long night.
The light of the flames danced on the walls, making the shadows writhe. The wood snapped and sighed. Rebecca set a cushion behind a couch to one side of the hearth, where her back was against warm, solid brick. The claymore leaned in its corner beside her, gleaming with fiery reflections. She saw herself standing at the top of the stairway like Joan of Arc… . Yeah, remember what had happened to her.
Something brushed by her, a palpable fall of fabric. Rebecca leaped to her feet. Beneath the odor of woodsmoke that of lavender swirled in the air. Rebecca heard a giggle, quickly muffled. “What do you know I don’t?” she asked under her breath, but there was no answer. She swept both flashlights around the room. The light glinted on the brittle blackness of the windows. Nothing and no one was there, just lavender, shadow and chill.
Rebecca turned off the lights, pocketed them, sat back down behind the couch, and pressed against the brick. Shutting her eyes against the wierd patterns of the light, she counted out several slow breaths. Too many plots, she thought. Too many malefactors, living and dead. She could try a little creative problem-solving, that was better than mindlessly waiting for… . Well, whatever.
She focused. Here Phil had found Louise’s necklace, a bribe to forget Katie Gemmell’s mysterious birth. It was Athena who’d remembered. She’d convinced Katie she deserved part of the Estate. But Katie had been conspicuous by her absence for thirty-six years now.
James’s last will, the unsigned one, hadn’t mentioned relatives. But that one wasn’t the legal one. The Estate was going to be an unexpected inheritance for the Morris’s… . Aha! That was when she’d made that comment about an unexpected inheritance— the first time she and Eric had gone to Gaetano’s. That night she’d still been innocent, not yet savaged by plot and time. The food and conversation had sparkled like Eric’s gold ring. A diamond, and his engraved initials “EFA”. His middle name was Frederick.
Her eyes opened, seeing nothing but the gleaming image of that ring. Frederick. Where else had she heard that name? Frederick. Fred.
Louise had said that Katherine Gemmell Brown left her husband for someone named Ed, Ted, or Fred. Who was a bad influence on her son.
Rebecca banged her forehead against her fists, trying to knock perception into her mind. What if Katie’s paramour had been named Fred— Fred Adler? Then Ronald would have been… . But no. James’s letter had said something about their grandchild “D”. Unless “D” was the daughter.
Again something moved. Rebecca started up. A man stood watching her. She squinted, and saw nothing but a chair and a bookcase illuminated fitfully by the ebb and flow of the firelight. She had to look more carefully, she told herself. She had to clear her mind of preconceived assumptions.
Grandchild “D”. Deborah, Diane, Doris. Darnley. David, Dennis, Daniel, Donald. Donald? Rebecca saw the smeared letters on the screen in the Records office. She hadn’t interpreted the one word as “Horton” because she’d already known Dorothy’s name was “Norton”. But the man, Eric’s father— his name she hadn’t known in advance. Maybe it wasn’t Ronald but Donald. Maybe Donald was Katie’s son, who’d taken the name of his stepfather, Fred Adler.
Fireworks exploded in her head. That was it! The link between Katherine and Dorothy and Eric! Rebecca leaped to her feet, did a quick jitterbug on the hearth and plumped back down onto her pillow.
Where was Donald Adler? Where was Fred, for that matter? Why had Dorothy returned to Putnam but Katherine hadn’t? Because Katherine had taken the child to California and filled his head with her mother’s stories of cats smothering babies and property hoarded by the undeserving! Katherine might still be sitting out in California, an old spider weaving her web over Dun Iain and everyone who belonged to it.
Every link sounded true, right down to Eric’s cat phobia. Motive, opportunity, ambition. Rebecca visualized the portrait of John Forbes. His eyes were onyx marbles. Eric’s eyes were dark, too. But then, so were Rudolph’s. And Elspeth’s. Donald Adler might have had Rudolph’s and Eric’s devastating good looks. No wonder Dorothy had been swept off her feet.
A shame, Rebecca thought, she had at last come up with a viable theory too late to do her or the house any good… . She stiffened, her muscles keening with tension. Footsteps were coming upstairs. James? Michael? If it was Michael he’d be calling to her.
The floorboards squeaked. A light flickered. Darnley’s little head appeared above her, looking at her quizzically over the back of the couch, his tail waving like a semaphore. Rebecca made shooing gestures. Darnley said in conversational tones, “Meow.”
Two quick steps and hands seized her, one around her chest, the other pressed over her mouth. Her scream was only a choked gurgle. Eric’s hands were sturdy, Warren’s were large, Phil had picked her up bodily from the broken chair… . The strong arm across her chest was deceptively slender. The fingers that crushed her right breast were long and flexible. “Hush,” said Michael’s rounded vowels in her ear. “You’d think I was Jack the Ripper.”
“Then stop acting like him!” she mumbled, and bit him.
“Ow!” Both hands vanished. She swung around. He was shaking the hand she’d bitten and inspecting the other, just realizing what it was he’d been holding. “Sorry. But I didna want you tae go screamin’ on me. I heard something movin’ aboot that wisna the cat nor one o’ the bogles. Someone’s in the hoose.”
“Already?” Rebecca sat hard on the wooden floor but didn’t feel a thing. “How’d they get in? If it’d been when you were outside, there’d have been four sets of footprints. And I closed off the tunnel.”
“Tunnel?” Michael peered over the back of the couch like a soldier looking from his trench into no man’s land. Darnley sniffed at him, made a face, trotted away. Michael settled back down beside Rebecca, so close she could smell his breath. So he’d had a swig of the whisky while he was in the Hall. He could’ve brought her some.
“Of course there’s a tunnel.” Even as Rebecca explained about Heather and the drugged casserole, about Steve and his ambiguous promise to bring help, she remembered that scrape of stone, that quick draft in the tomb. That was when the predators had come inside. They’d been inside all this time.
Michael laid his hand on her arm. The fingers pressing her skin through blouse and sweater were wonderfully firm. In the glow of the fire his features were stark,
ravaged by self-knowledge, tired and yet stubbornly denying the tiredness. He could tell her it was a balmy summer day outside, she thought ruefully, and she’d believe him. “You look terrible,” she said.
“Seein’ that face in the tomb was damn close tae a religious experience,” he replied. And added, “You’re no sae lovely yoursel’. Half-Hangit Maggie looked fitter when they pulled her oot o’ the coffin.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” And he said, low and urgent, his accent so thickened by his agitation she could hardly understand him, “Aye, I’d been thinkin’ o’ theivin’ something. I’m sick tae death o’ cheese-parin’. But what made me think I could steal when I never had the gumption tae park illegally I dinna ken. I came here tae work, no tae steal. That was lunacy.”
Odd how she’d once thought Eric’s eyes were compelling. They were blank slate compared to Michael’s hot, demanding blue gaze. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”
“Oh aye?” he replied. “If I dinna owe you, lass, I dinna owe a soul.”
Rebecca looked up at the plaster ceiling and down at the planks of the floor, trying to evade those immeasurably deep eyes. But they followed her. She said, “You told me several days ago your scheme didn’t concern me.”
“I didna ken what was goin’ on here, did I? The only thing I was sure I wanted was for you to get away free and clear. No right you’re bein’ mucked aboot because I was gey daft.”
“It was too late for that even then! Besides, how do you know I haven’t been in on the plot all along?”
“Just for one, you’d no have written a’ that incriminatin’ evidence doon in your wee book, would you?”
“You read my notebook?” Rebecca demanded indignantly, and clapped her hand over her mouth. Nothing moved in the ballroom but light, shadow, and that insidious tang of lavender.
“You had the wind up when you came back from the Records office. And you were talkin’ tae Birkenhead— aye, I listened in. You twigged it and never said naething to me. I’m no the only liar.”
“I didn’t lie for personal gain, like you did— at the beginning, at least,” she amended.
“No, you were coverin’ your arse for actin’ a gowk ower Adler!”
“I never told him about your letters!” Rebecca shook off his hand, bounced to her feet and started around the couch.
Michael came around the other side and they met nose to forehead. “Never grassed on me, did you? That’s fair obligin’ o’ you.”
“No it wasn’t, I just wanted to be impartial… . “Her thoughts raced in circles, panting. “I don’t know what it was.”
Michael pulled her, none too gently, against his chest. “Aye, you ken what it was right enough. The same thing that had me wantin’ to protect you.”
“Yes,” she said. Her hands got away from her, running around his sides to embrace him. She watched bemusedly as her mind stilled and puddled in his grasp. His warm smoke-scented breath stirred her hair. The fire popped and shrank to orange incandescence. The wind cried.
Then the dorsal fins of thought sliced the still pool of Rebecca’s mind. No. Not now. Not yet. She straightened abruptly and Michael dodged, guarding his chin. “The mausoleum key was gone for three weeks. Who knows about the mask?”
He emitted a wry laugh and released her. “No one’s touched it in years. You could hardly see it for the dust and cobwebs. But then, I was lookin’ for it.”
If she’d gotten control of her feelings then he’d managed to bring his accent to heel. “Obvious once you know the answer?”
“Aye… . “Suddenly Michael looked around and held up a warning hand. Slow footsteps reverberated in the air. The sifting of snow on the window sill exploded softly into the air and settled, sparkling, onto the floor.
“How many of them?” Rebecca asked.
“Only the one. Which staircase?”
“I can’t tell. Do you want to face him— her— down? Or do you want to play hide and seek through the house until Steve brings the cavalry?”
“I’m no puttin’ my trust in Steve, thank you just the same. Maybe we can throw something at him and distract him.”
Rebecca didn’t argue with Michael’s choice of pronoun. If only one person had come, instead of a pack, she knew who it had to be. “This way,” she said, tugging at Michael’s sleeve, and started toward the storerooms.
Too late. A burst of light caught them poised in the center of the room just as Heather had been nailed by the headlights of the Volvo. He was only a dim shape behind the glare as he stepped from the storerooms into the ballroom. Of course he would have one of those big Black and Decker spotlights. “Well,” said Eric’s smooth, perfectly moderated voice, “there you are. Punch up the fire, would you please?”
“Damn,” said Rebecca, and walked across to the fireplace.
“Careful with that poker,” Eric said, as her hand touched warm iron.
“Do as he says, hen,” said Michael. “These American yobbos, they have to have their guns.”
Rebecca glanced around. The gleaming black shape in Eric’s right hand was nothing less than obscene. With another curse she flailed away at the fire. Sparks flew and flames clawed high up the chimney. She sidled back to Michael’s left hand and said, “Eric Frederick Adler. You shouldn’t have told me your middle name. I’ve figured it all out.”
“Really?” In the combined reflections of fire and spot Eric’s face wasn’t a stiff, cold mask. One side of his mouth twitched and his teeth glinted between his lips in a vulpine smile. “Well, you’re wrong. The ‘F’ stands for Forbes.”
“Grabbed your step-grandfather’s name out of the air, did you?” If she didn’t keep talking she might start screaming, and there was no way she’d let him know how frightened she was. “All right, Forbes is close enough. Named by your grandmother, Katherine Gemmell, in a fit of wishful thinking.”
Michael gasped. “So that’s it!”
“Not wishful thinking,” Eric said. “As a promise, that I’d one day regain what had been kept from us by John and by James.”
“Sure,” snorted Michael. “Katie could never prove a thing. You could never prove a thing. No one kens whose bairn was whose.”
“So you understand why I had to take a slightly more subtle approach.” Eric strolled closer to the fireplace, his smile cramping.
“All that blether about Dorothy,” said Rebecca. “It was your scheme all along, not hers. You were using her. And you weren’t after a few artifacts. You wanted the entire estate.”
“I’ll have the entire estate. Haven’t you figured out that Charlotte Dennison Morris and Katherine Gemmell Brown Adler are one and the same woman? And I’m Katie’s heir, perfectly legal.”
“I would’ve gotten there eventually,” Rebecca replied. “Is Katie waiting for you to sell the place, pocket both the proceeds and your commission, and come home to California?”
“No. She died five years ago. But she trusted me to carry on without her. It’s the principle of the thing, you see. Justice.”
“Justice,” Michael repeated, his breath hissing between his teeth.
Katherine must’ve been a Tennessee Williams character, consuming her offspring. Rebecca shivered. The estate. The only way he could get it now was to eliminate the people who’d figured out his scheme. He hadn’t come tonight to get a few paltry artifacts, he’d come to kill them.
Her mind leaped and twirled in denial, tripped and fell sprawling. Don’t think about that, think about how to get away. He didn’t know about the letters she’d written, he didn’t know that Jan knew his ancestry. He wouldn’t get away with it, no, but threatening him with that would only put Jan in danger and make sure the letters were destroyed. None of which would help her and Michael now. Keep him talking and pray for a distraction.
“The only one who had any money to begin with and you wanted more,” scoffed Michael. “You’re a right bastard, you are.” He took Rebecca’s hand. Their sides pressed together. Lavender
wafted through the firelight. Rebecca could almost hear Elspeth laughing with glee. Eric, her great-grandson, come for vengeance, come for justice.
Eric’s hands holding flashlight and gun were perfectly still, his face thoughtful, even regretful. “Yes,” he said, his voice slipping into a lower register. “Cozy up together— that’s the idea. He appreciates your type, Rebecca, more than I can. A love triangle, except the foreigner won’t take no for an answer, one thing leads to another, and there’s a gun to hand.”
“Clever,” said Michael. “Murder/suicide.”
Oh, God, wailed something in Rebecca’s stomach. He can’t, he can’t! Eric was wearing gloves. No fingerprints would be on the gun except hers or Michael’s, which didn’t matter. “Where would we get a gun?” she asked.
“I reported it missing from my car yesterday,” Eric replied. “I’m sorry, I wish there were some other way, but there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is,” said Rebecca. “What about Dorothy? What about Steve and Heather? They’ve all been working for you. They can all turn you in, and probably will.”
“Poor pitiful Dorothy, with all her pills and booze. She’s suicidal, can’t you tell? Has been for a long time. Steve was supposed to have eliminated himself. It was certainly handy, that day, to still have my suitcase in my car so I could change my shoes. But you had to interfere. No matter. He never knew where his orders were coming from.”
Michael said, “So I have you to thank for burnin’ my hands?”
“You had to be a hero, didn’t you?”
Michael didn’t reply. Rebecca’s mind sparked and sputtered and successive waves of heat and cold ran down her spine. Heather had been furious at Steve after the fire in the trash can. She’d said, “Love is worth anything.” “Steve wasn’t taking his orders from Dorothy but from Heather,” Rebecca said. “What’d you bribe her with? Clothes? Make-up? Drugs?”
Eric stared at her. “You’re too clever by half, aren’t you? No, just for your information; I told her if she was going to be seen with me she had to take off the make-up. She’s much prettier without it.”
Ashes to Ashes Page 37
