The Ice Cradle

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  A couple of times, I’d seen him do double takes when spirits were in his vicinity. Then, for a while, he had a recurring nightmare involving a “skeleton in a dress.” This started shortly after we took a trip to Boston’s North End, where a couple of centuries ago, the immigrant Irish found dirt-cheap housing. Famine victims had collapsed and died on the streets of that neighborhood. I’d seen several “skeletons in dresses” myself that day.

  Henry and I just hadn’t talked about it. I suppose he figured, as I had at his age, that everybody saw the shadowy people. I know he mentioned Silas to his preschool teacher, relating the story of how Silas had jumped off the back porch roof and landed on his head. She’d laughed with relief when I explained that Silas was Henry’s imaginary playmate.

  But why hadn’t he spoken to spirits in public? Here, again, I could only guess. Tonight, he’d said he “sometimes” talked to the spirits of children, though I had to admit, I hadn’t been aware of this. There was Silas, of course, and now Vivi, but like lots of kids, Henry sometimes talks out loud to himself. At least that’s what I always assumed he was doing, alone in his room, playing with toys and action figures.

  As for the ghosts of adults, I wasn’t surprised that he avoided them. Most of the time, so do I. He’s pretty shy around strangers. If he can avoid interacting with just about any adult, he will.

  I wasn’t looking forward to telling Dec. For all my blather about “gifts” and “talents,” I actually felt guilty, as though I’d passed down a really quirky gene, of the type not everyone would be thrilled to have.

  There are huge satisfactions that come with being able to do what I can do. It’s gratifying to ease suffering that has been going on for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years. I make a lot of unhappy ghosts really happy. But when you’re a kid, you don’t want to have a “gift” that sets you apart. You don’t want to be one of a kind. You want to be just like everyone else.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THURSDAY

  WITH MEMORIES OF the trampoline still fresh in his mind—and recollections of his terror on the rocks apparently repressed—Henry fairly bounced out the door on Thursday. He couldn’t wait to get to the school, now that he had a couple of friends among the strangers, and now that Greased Lightin’ was all decked out with dazzling hubcaps and silvery flourishes.

  As we walked to school, I was practically holding my breath. The elephant had appeared in the room. Would I now be deluged with questions about all things ghostly, or would the subject just be dropped?

  “How’s the dance coming along?” I asked.

  “Good!” he answered brightly.

  “How’s Ellen?”

  “Good.”

  “How’s the hair looking?”

  “She got a haircut.”

  “You told me.”

  “No, another one. Her mom took her.”

  “To fix it?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Henry spied an enormous worm at the edge of the sidewalk, the kind so long and fat that it seemed to be two worms joined together by a wide rubber band. He sprinted over and knelt down.

  “If you cut a worm in two,” he announced, “both parts stay alive.”

  “What?” I’d heard this factoid when I was a kid, too, and though I doubted it was true, I wasn’t actually 100 percent sure. After all, some species don’t need a male and a female to reproduce. This could fall into that same category: facts of biology that seem ludicrous but are accurate.

  “It’s true,” he said, picking up a flat stone.

  “Don’t!”

  “It won’t hurt him,” Henry insisted.

  I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to his feet.

  “Mama!” he protested.

  “Worm blood stings,” I lied. “It’s worse than a bee sting. Way worse.”

  Henry dropped the stone.

  It was a relief to arrive at work. Caleb had just brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and for the next two hours, we immersed ourselves in the world of luxurious binding and storage materials. By noon, we had selected our papers and leathers, the acid-free boxes we would use to store the documents we weren’t binding into books, and matting materials for Honor Morton’s photographs.

  Most of the work I would have to do at home, but that was fine. It was already Thursday, so even if I called in my orders today and had all the materials overnighted to the island, they wouldn’t arrive until sometime on Friday. If there were a problem with the shipping, I could miss the packages entirely. It made a lot more sense to have the boxes sent straight to Cambridge.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Caleb said. “I really underestimated how long things would take.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Believe me, it happens all the time.”

  “That may be true, but we’re going to have to revisit the issue of money.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a much bigger job than I thought. You’ve been here nearly a week, and look how much work you still have ahead of you.”

  “The fee we agreed on was perfectly fair. This is all part of the process; I knew that.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” he insisted.

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to turn my back on more money, if he was offering to pay me more than the fee we’d agreed on, which he seemed to be doing. But I’d had my share of distractions this week, too. I couldn’t honestly say that I’d been overworked.

  “Let’s just table it for now,” I suggested. “I’ll keep track of how much time everything takes and we can talk about it again when the project is done.”

  “We certainly will,” he said.

  When I heard from Lauren that we were going to have dinner in the dining room, I made an immediate executive decision: Henry was not going to be part of the evening. We hadn’t laid eyes on Vivi since I’d screamed at her on the rocks, and I had no idea whether she was gone for good or just off planning the details of her next ambush. But if Henry was eating with all of us, and Vivi felt inclined to visit, she’d end up in the dining room, too. I really didn’t want that to happen.

  I carried Henry’s supper—a grilled cheese sandwich, a bowl of tomato soup, and a piece of apple pie—into the TV room on a tray and popped in the DVD of The Parent Trap.

  “Do not move from this couch,” I ordered sternly.

  “What if I have to go the bathroom?” he asked.

  “Do you?”

  “No, but I might.”

  “Then go,” I answered. “And come right back. I mean it. I don’t have to remind you about what happened last night, do I?”

  “No!” he said, a little freshly.

  If he hadn’t said it freshly, I would have let the subject drop. But because he did, I took the opportunity to rub it in a little. “I told you to wait on the steps and you didn’t.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t sound sorry, but everyone was sitting down to dinner. I had to pick my battles.

  “Okay,” I responded, and I left.

  Aitana had news. I’d met her and her husband, Peter, on the porch when they first arrived, and she’d indicated that she had quite a story to tell, but that she wanted to wait until we were all sitting down together and she could do it justice. As we finished our soup, it seemed that the moment had arrived.

  “You want to do the honors, or should I?” she asked Bert.

  “Be my guest,” he responded, winking at me.

  “Then don’t interrupt me,” she said. “You always butt in when I’m halfway through and take over.”

  Bert turned his palms to the ceiling and gave a look that said, Who, me?

  Then he glanced at me, taking measure of how I’d reacted to this little display. I hoped that I was coming across as cool and enigmatic.

  “Don’t give me that,” Aitana said good-naturedly. “Okay, so we’re up at the crack of dawn.”

  “What else is new?” Bert said dryly.
“That’s late for me.”

  “Just for the record,” Peter explained, “I was not in favor of this little … expedition.”

  “Which was why we had to go before you woke up!” Aitana chirped, batting her eyelashes at Peter in a Betty Boop fashion.

  Peter shook his head, but he was grinning, probably used to his wife’s cheerily disregarding his opinions.

  “So we drive over there,” Aitana continued.

  “Over where?” Mark asked.

  “To where Anza followed them.”

  Lauren turned to me. “Followed whom?”

  “You didn’t tell them?” Aitana asked.

  “I haven’t seen them!” I explained. “Not to talk to, anyway.”

  “The couple in the car!”

  “From the other night?” Mark asked.

  “Yes!”

  Lauren shook her head, looking baffled. “But I thought you didn’t see them.”

  “So did I,” Aitana responded. “But then, at the party, I was refilling a platter of cheeses, and I saw this woman across the table, and I knew it was her! I just knew!”

  “That she was the woman in the car?” Mark asked.

  “Yeah. And she gave me kind of a funny look, like maybe she recognized me, too. But I couldn’t leave, so Anza followed her.”

  “Them,” I corrected. “She was with a guy. They turned off onto Ballard’s Way.”

  “Where’s that?” Mark asked. “I forget.”

  “Dan Koslowski’s street,” Bert replied.

  “Right, right,” murmured Mark.

  “But then this dog came after me,” I said.

  “Mavis Crocker’s, I’ll bet,” Bert put in.

  “Whoa!” Mark hooted. “I wouldn’t want to meet that mutt in a dark alley. Mavis used to keep him tied up, but lately I’ve seen him roaming around out on the street.”

  “He definitely wasn’t tied up,” I said.

  “So anyway,” Aitana said, anxious to get the story back on track, “Bert and I went over there this morning, before it was light out. Dan’s away, and he and Bert are buddies, so we parked in Dan’s driveway.”

  “What about the dog?” Lauren squealed.

  “I brought a harpoon,” Bert said evenly, and my heart did a little swoop. A harpoon? How cool was that? Of course it wouldn’t have been cool if he had actually had to use it, either for the dog or for the owner who loved him, but owning one and bringing it was pretty cool. Then again, if Dec is any indication, I obviously have a soft spot for guys who are comfortable with weapons.

  “But we never saw him,” Aitana said. “He must have been inside with Mavis.”

  I couldn’t wait any longer: I had to pop the million-dollar question. “Did you find the car?”

  Aitana’s eyes were sparkling.

  “Yes! And that’s not all!” she said excitedly. “We grabbed their trash bags!”

  “You grabbed their trash bags?” Lauren echoed, a look of distaste on her face. “Whose trash bags? Where are we talking about?”

  “The old Lawlor place,” Peter replied.

  “Doug Lawlor’s?” Mark asked. “But he’s not down yet, is he? He never opens it up until June.”

  “Well someone’s there,” Bert said. “The green Subaru was parked behind the garage. And you wouldn’t believe what we found in the trash.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Empty kerosene bottles. Lamp oil.”

  “But everybody uses lamp oil,” Mark protested. “We’ve got hurricane lamps ourselves.”

  “Yeah, but sixteen bottles?” Aitana said. “All empty?”

  “Seventeen,” Peter corrected, sounding a little excited in spite of himself.

  “Hmmm. Yeah, that does sound a little fishy,” Lauren said. “So what did you do?”

  “Drove straight to New Shoreham and dropped the bags off with Chief McGill. He put Denny Lombard on the ten o’clock ferry with all the empty containers. They’ll see if the residue matches the samples the fire marshall took, and if it does, they’ll bring the two of them in.”

  “Can’t they bring them in now?” I asked. “What if they leave the island?”

  “Oh, they won’t,” Bert replied. “The cops are keeping an eye on the ferries. McGill could go over there and talk to them, based on the car alone, but he said it would be easier to hold them for questioning if there’s a materials match.”

  “When will they know?” I asked.

  “This afternoon, they hope,” Aitana replied. “Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

  “But I’m afraid they’ll get away!” I protested.

  “They really can’t,” said Peter. “They definitely can’t sneak the car off the island, and there aren’t that many people going back and forth at this time of year. It’s mostly islanders. Aitana gave McGill a good description of the girl. He’s going to call Doug Lawlor and find out who’s staying in the house.”

  “So, what do you all think of Rawlings?” I asked. We were working our way through generous helpings of coconut-crusted chicken, lentil salad, and roasted beets.

  Bert turned the question back on me.

  “What do you think of him? You’re the one who got invited to his party!”

  “I’m sorry! I feel terrible!”

  “What was the house like?” Lauren asked.

  “Gorgeous,” I admitted.

  “He’s got two of everything in the kitchen,” Aitana added. “Two Vikings, two Sub-Zeroes, two dishwashers.”

  “They probably do a lot of entertaining,” Lauren said. She turned to Aitana. “Didn’t they have a big thing there last September? Some kind of ‘retreat’?”

  “In October, over Columbus Day weekend. Sixteen people. Except for the Annapurna wedding, it was my biggest job all fall.”

  “Who were they?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Politicians?” Mark inquired.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “The wives drove me crazy.”

  “How so?” asked Lauren.

  “Oh, no butter, no white flour, no this, no that! This one’s on South Beach and that one wants a nutritional breakdown for every morsel of food she’s putting in her mouth. You’d think I was running a spa.”

  “What about Mrs. Rawlings?” I asked. “Did she help?”

  “She was in and out. Mostly out. She didn’t seem to know any of the women.”

  “So it wasn’t a social thing,” I suggested.

  “No, it was like—meetings during the day and then a dinner. One night they went out for a sunset sail, another night there was a jazz band and dancing.”

  “You think they were lobbyists?” I asked.

  “I really don’t know,” Aitana replied. “The check said, ‘The Lenox Consortium.’ No address.”

  The Lenox Consortium? I had just read that name somewhere—today. Where?

  “You never answered the question,” Bert said to me. “What’s your take on Rawlings?”

  “Honestly?” I asked.

  People nodded and murmured assent.

  “I—I—don’t know,” I replied, backing off a momentary impulse to answer the question directly. It wasn’t a secret that everyone at the table supported the construction of the wind farm, so I wasn’t in any danger of offending my dinner companions, but I didn’t like gossiping about people I barely knew, with people I barely knew. The truth was, Rawlings kind of gave me the creeps. He was smooth and polished, but my conversation with him at the party hadn’t changed the impression I’d formed at the Historical Society: that the man had an agenda, that he thought I could be useful to him, and that if I turned out not to be, I had better get out of his way.

  I decided to deflect the question. “The presentation was really something. And I guess that was the point of the party, to publicize the results of the study.”

  “Which were …?” Mark prompted.

  “The end of life on earth as we know it, the minute those windmills go in.”

  Then it hit me! The nam
e!

  “Excuse me a minute,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I got up and headed toward the stairs.

  “Everything okay?” Lauren called, apparently startled by my abrupt exit.

  “Just checking on Henry,” I responded. And I did. I looked in. He was sitting right on the couch where I’d left him, and Vivi was nowhere in sight.

  I raced up the stairs and down the hall. I opened the door to our room, located my purse on the floor near the bathroom, and rummaged through it until I found a copy of the report the senator’s aide had handed out. I turned the brochure over and scanned the back page. The top of my scalp began to prickle.

  I hurried back downstairs, report in hand, and threw it on the table.

  “What?” Mark said. “What is this?”

  “The summary of the findings,” I said. “Look on the back, on the bottom. Look who paid for the study.”

  “The Lenox Consortium,” Mark read.

  Lauren grabbed the paper out of his hand.

  “Who do you think they are?” I asked.

  “I’ll find out, believe you me.” Mark was leaving on the morning ferry for his trip to Boston. He was working on an article for the Wall Street Journal, something to do with stimulus funds and the national infrastructure. He would stay in Boston Friday night, meet the Australian ghost detectives in Providence on Saturday morning, and accompany them back to the island on the midday boat.

  “How can you find out?” I asked.

  “I have my ways,” he replied.

  Chapter Eighteen

  HENRY FELL ASLEEP during The Parent Trap, and for once, I was able to get him upstairs and into bed without his waking up.

  I had hoped that the evening would end with Bert and me having a little time alone, but that didn’t happen. And it was probably just as well. I had some issues to resolve, and plans to make, and I wasn’t even sure where to start.

  First, there was the matter of the ghost detectives. They might exaggerate their findings and work digital magic aimed at thrilling their audiences, but sensors like the ones they carried did actually register temperature variations and changes in energy fields. If, on Saturday night, the Grand View were filled with angry spirits, the gear would definitely vibrate, blink, and squeal. This wouldn’t be the end of the inn—the publicity might well fill every bedroom—but Lauren and Mark didn’t just want to fill the rooms, they wanted to fill them with a certain class of vacationer. The kind that read Town & Country Travel.