Passing Through Paradise

by Susan Wiggs

  No one had lived in the big old Victorian beyond the hedgerow in years. When they were kids, Mike and Victor used to come here and pelt rocks from their slingshots at the Babcock place, which had been occupied only in the summer. The two boys had been inseparable, spending summers on the beach and winters skating on Frog Pond. When they were twelve years old, they’d become blood brothers in a solemn ceremony involving a dull Boy Scout knife, a campfire at Horseneck Cove and some chanted Latin phrases read from the back of a dollar bill.

  A lifetime had passed since that star-filled night, but he could still remember the way the waves, with curling phosphorous lips, had lifted, translucent against the moonlight, then slid up along the sand in the hissing rhythm that had been the theme music of their boyhood.

  They’d lost touch, as best friends often do, when adulthood had intruded like an incurable disease.

  And now this.

  Victor was dead and Mike was scrambling to regroup after being nailed in a vicious divorce.

  Which, given what had happened to Victor, didn’t seem quite so bad.

  He figured it was no coincidence that, only a day after the ruling, Sandra Winslow was ready to spend money. Knowing Victor, he’d probably carried a hefty life insurance policy.

  “So what do I do now, Vic?” Mike said aloud, his breath fogging the windshield of the truck. But he already knew. He needed the work.

  Mike Malloy used to be at the top of his game. In Newport, he’d owned a construction firm that specialized in historical restoration. But the divorce had broken that apart along with everything else. Now he was trying to recover, starting small again with light construction, remodeling, pretty much anything that needed doing. He never expected to find himself starting over at this point in his life.

  This time of year, a decent project was hard to come by. A few summer people might contract for repair work on their empty vacation houses; the weather did its part by ripping off shingles, blowing in windows, flooding basements. A long-term job would be perfect right now.

  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, put the old Dodge in gear and turned into Sandra Winslow’s driveway.

  The place looked as bereft as a toy left out in the rain. It was a Carpenter Gothic built in typical 1880s style, tall and narrow with a steeply pitched gable roof edged by lacy bargeboards. Pointed arches framed the windows, and a one-storey porch wrapped around three sides of the first floor.

  Even in a state of neglect, the structure exuded an airy delicacy. This was clearly a summer place, designed and situated to make the most of sea breezes blowing in from the water. The only provision for winter seemed to be the fieldstone chimney at one end.

  The gray siding hadn’t seen a coat of paint in decades, he guessed, and the roof had sprouted moss, lichens and poison ivy. The sagging front entrance sullenly greeted visitors, and a rooftop widow’s walk was bordered by a row of broken railings.

  Even so, Mike detected a subtle, uncontrived charm in the board and batten trim, the bay and oriel windows, the steep cross gables hand-hewn a century ago. But like the house, the original appeal had been warped and weathered. Shutters that had probably been functional half a century ago hung crooked from rusty hinges. At least one had plummeted into an overgrown lilac bush.

  The place was a disaster. People who wanted to slap the Winslow woman behind bars ought to see it. Maybe there was a sort of purgatory for people who got away with murder. Maybe it looked something like this.

  Except his trained eye kept going to the soaring lines of the house, the unself-conscious grace of the scrollwork trim, and the drama of the setting—a private half acre at the edge of the dunes, facing the broadest view the state had to offer.

  The landscaping had run wild, and the lawn consisted of a dead trampled area circling the house like a tattered skirt. Ancient wild roses bordered the verges, some reaching as high as the first storey of the house. Wind and cold had long since stripped the leaves from the snarl of bushes, leaving bald rosehips behind.

  Mike killed the engine. When he got out of the truck, he heard a rhythmic thunk from the vicinity of the garage, long ago converted from a carriage house.

  Someone was chopping wood. He walked around behind the garage to see who it was.

  From the rhythm of the chopping, he expected someone large. Experienced. He’d split his share of wood and knew it wasn’t exactly high tea.

  At first he didn’t recognize Sandra Winslow. He’d seen her only in pictures, and he was fairly certain she didn’t dress this way for the press. Faded jeans and an oversized plaid hunting jacket. Some of her brown hair was caught into a messy ponytail; her feet were stuffed into cracked rubber boots. Her face was chapped from wind and cold.

  Split logs lay scattered around her, littering the ground like small corpses. Oblivious, she kept chopping away with single-minded purpose, lifting the maul high over-head and burying it in the wood, then giving it an expert twist as she wrenched it out for another blow. She paused once and made a small, surprised sound in her throat. Then she stooped down to watch a tiny brown field mouse dart to safety behind the woodpile.

  She took the next log from the opposite end of the pile, away from the mouse. She lifted the maul to swing it again.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  She stopped in midswing and turned to face him, angling the ax across her chest. She looked dangerous—red-cheeked and wild-eyed, full of deadly fury.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name’s Mike Malloy.” He paused to see if that meant anything to her. Had Victor ever mentioned him?

  Probably not, judging by her guarded expression and her next question: “Wh-what do you want?”

  Loaded question, and she must’ve known it. He’d come looking for work, and found the woman accused of killing Victor Winslow.

  He held out a business card. “I’m a contractor. You left me a message a while ago.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d reply in person.” Her gaze flicked at the house. “So. I’m in the market for some repairs.”

  “Starting with the mailbox,” he said.

  She looked away, and he figured he’d said the wrong thing.

  “The place is a wreck.” She leaned the maul against the side of the building. “This is not news to me. I don’t need some drive-by handyman to tell me so.”

  Handyman. Mike wasn’t insulted. He wished things could be that simple.

  “I haven’t told you much of anything yet. Ma’am.” He didn’t like her. After only a few moments, he could tell she was difficult, combative, holding up anger and distrust like a riot shield.

  This was a stupid waste of time, Mike decided. He put the business card in the wheelbarrow with the split wood, anchoring it with a log. “Anyway, that’s how to reach me if you decide you need me.” Without looking at her again, he turned and walked toward his truck.

  He was just about to get in and drive off—relieved, already thinking about the next business call—when she yelled out, “Wait.”

  He turned back and saw her standing there with the card in her hand. “Just what is it you do?”

  “I fix things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll fix it.”

  For some reason, that seemed to strike her as funny, but not in a pleasant way. A harsh, staccato note of laughter burst from her and then died. “As a matter of fact, I’ve decided to sell the place.”

  Mike hid his surprise. Homes like this rarely came on the market. In spite of its barely livable condition, a house on Blue Moon Beach was a potential gold mine.

  “In that case, you do need me. There’s no way this place would pass inspection. When did you decide to sell?”

  She glared at the wreckage of her mailbox. “About twenty minutes ago.”

  She was not exactly a barrel of laughs.

  Mike shut the door of his truck and said, “Tell you what. Why don’t we have a look around the place, Miss — ?�
� It was risky, pretending he didn’t know who she was, but he figured if he played dumb, she’d quit acting so edgy.

  “Sandra Babcock Winslow,” she said, stuffing the card in her pocket. She watched his face with a probing stare, but Mike didn’t give any indication that he recognized the name. He’d deal with her on a need-to-know basis. Over the years, he’d worked with dozens of clients and hadn’t felt obliged to tell them about his past or his personal life. If he let on that he’d known Victor, she might order him off the premises.

  She walked toward the edge of the yard, where a tumble of bracken fern and brier formed a natural barrier between the property and the dunes. Crushed by the blight of winter, the gentle terrain of the yard was worn hard and smooth.

  A strong wind blew Sandra Winslow’s brown hair every which way, partially obscuring a face that was both impatient and haunted. “The house dates back to 1886,” she said. “My great-grandfather, Harold Babcock, built it as a summer place. At one time, the family planned to re-store it.”

  This didn’t surprise Mike—the house was a diamond in the rough, and he saw what the place could be. In Newport, knowing how to treat historic houses had been the key to his success. He had a knack for peeling back the layers of time, for correcting misguided modernizations, for excavating the intent of the original builder.

  The house on Blue Moon Beach had an old home’s way of stirring a sense of nostalgia, the kind that pierced through cynicism and disappointment and the heaviness of years. Just for a moment, he imagined the Babcock house restored, handsome as a clipper ship, the garden in bloom, a rope swing suspended from the gnarled hickory tree, kids playing in the yard.

  Mike told himself he ought to view the house for what it was —run-down, neglected, blighted by rot, infested with bad karma by its cranky resident.

  And yet . . .

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Perfect candidate for restoration,” he said, his words true and unequivocal. “Even though it’s in lousy condition now, the structure and workmanship are outstanding.”

  She laughed again, that bitter note. “You have a wild imagination, Malloy.”

  “A good eye,” he said, annoyed by her sarcasm. “I won’t fool you—the place needs work, but I’m guessing it’s got strong bones. The roof itself might be okay, too, under all the plant life.”

  “Trust me, it’s not okay.” She led the way to the enclosed sunroom, which faced the endless water.

  Without thinking, he picked up an armload of split wood.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “No charge,” he replied, then followed Victor’s widow. The Black Widow of Blue Moon Beach—wasn’t that what the local press called her?

  She stood at the door to her house and held it open. “‘Step into my parlor,’ ” she said, a touch of irony in her voice.

  “ ‘Said the Spider to the Fly,’ “he finished for her, entering the house.

  She flipped her hair out of her face. “Oh, you know that little rhyme?” She seemed surprised. People always were; they expected workmen to be illiterate, ignorant even of nonsense poems.

  “I sounded out the words,” he said.

  She pulled off her rubber boots and left them by the door. “You must have children, then.”

  He nodded. The fact that he had kids defined him entirely now. “A boy and a girl.”

  “That’s nice.” Her expression relaxed a little. It was the first hint of softness he’d seen in her. She really did seem to think it was nice that he had kids.

  Mike wondered why there weren’t any little Winslows running around. Victor had really liked children, he re-called. He’d been a swim instructor at the YMCA in Newport when they were in high school. Each summer, he’d given sailing lessons at First Beach.

  It was just as well there weren’t any children, Mike realized. What kind of kid needed to grow up hearing that his mother had killed his father?

  He set the wood in a stack by the door.

  She didn’t thank him, but pointed to a corner of the ceiling. “That’s what I meant about the roof,” she said.

  Streaks of mildew stained the ceiling and wall. “Fixable,” he said. “I’d have to take a closer look.”

  She folded her arms in front of her. “I never said— “

  “Neither did I,” he interrupted. “I’m just looking.”

  “You must have a lot of time on your hands.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s the slow season.” He strolled into the next room, a tall narrow kitchen with ancient linoleum rubbed bare in places, an old scrubbed pine table and a big cast-iron sink. Stuck to the window with a suction cup was a bird made of colored glass. The humming refrigerator bore a collection of cartoon-character magnets, scrawled notes and lists. The room smelled faintly of spices and dish soap. “This is original cabinetry work,” he commented. “Nice, but it’s got the worst paint job I’ve ever seen.”

  She ran a hand over a cabinet door, thickly coated with glossy seafoam green. “One of my great-aunts, I think.” She winced and turned her hand over, studying her palm. A row of livid blisters, some broken, covered the base of her fingers.

  “You should wear gloves when you chop wood,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Without thinking, he took hold of her wrist. She reacted instantly, trying to pull away.

  “You need to clean this up,” he said, leading her over to the sink and turning on the cold water. He felt strangely aware of the fragile bones of her wrist, the smooth, delicate skin in his grip. She had bluish ink stains on her fingers.

  He stuck her hand under the stream of cool water. It probably stung, but she didn’t flinch. “Let’s see the other hand,” he said.

  More blisters. He made her rinse that one, too, and while she did, he got a couple of paper towels to pat them dry. He cradled her hand in his, palm up, making a nest of his own hand around hers. “Do you have a first-aid kit around here somewhere?”

  “This is not a major medical emergency,” she said.

  “If you don’t cover up these open blisters, they could get infected.”

  “Whatever.” She rummaged around in the cabinet under the sink and produced an ancient Girl Scout kit. Poking through it, he found a roll of gauze and tape, and a bottle of Mercurochrome so ancient its cap was rusted.

  “You’re not coming near me with that stuff. I was traumatized by it as a kid.”

  He pitched it into the trash can under the sink. “Probably toxic by now anyway.” Taking her hand, he wrapped the gauze and loosely taped it in place.

  As he tended to the other hand, she held up the first, turning it this way and that. “Now I know you’re a dad. Good field dressing,” she said, flexing her fist. “I look like a prizefighter.”

  It sounded a little incongruous coming from someone her size, and he almost smiled. “Wear gloves the next time you chop wood.”

  “Good plan.”

  “So how long have you lived here?”

  She leaned against the counter. “Less than a year. The house has been in the family forever, though. But nobody’s done much for it lately.” She pushed away from the counter and led him into the next room, a big sitting area with a sagging sofa facing the woodstove, set into the fieldstone hearth. A panoramic bow-front window with cushions on the sill framed a stunning view. More books than he’d ever seen outside a library lined the shelves flanking the fireplace, and there were still more books in the library alcove adjacent to the parlor.

  “The floors creak,” she said, demonstrating in her sock feet and opening a door as she passed it. “Basement leaks. All the windows rattle, and so does the banister. God knows what shape the attic’s in. I dumped a lot of moving boxes there and haven’t been up since.”

  She headed upstairs, wiggling the railing like a loose tooth. The second storey had a laundry chute, a shotgun hall running the length of the house, a bathroom and three bedrooms, two of them completely empty except for a draping of cobwebs. The third
had a bank of windows facing the sea and an old four-poster bed of dark, scarred walnut, the traditional sheaves of rice carved into the posters. It hadn’t been made up, and she didn’t seem to care. A limp stuffed bear, the garish sort given away as carnival prizes, lay amid the tangled blankets. Paperback novels were stacked haphazardly on the nightstand, along with a prescription pill bottle, a spiral notebook and a pen. A faint, flowery smell—a woman smell—hung in the air. He wished he hadn’t noticed that.

  The atmosphere had the transitional feel of a seedy hotel room. But again, as he had in the yard, he looked past the peeling wallpaper and dingy woodwork, and saw a room transformed, the bed angled for a view of the sunrise over the water, prisms in the leaded windows casting rain-bows on the walls.

  “So that’s about it,” she said, brushing past him as she walked out of the room.

  She smelled of shampoo and sea air and something else, something lonely, maybe. In the hallway, she indicated a pair of doors. “The linen closet, and stairs to the attic.”

  He went to have a look, picking his way around battered luggage and cardboard cartons, haphazardly stacked, some of them labeled in a scrawl of Magic Marker.

  “Just move the boxes if they’re in your way,” she called after him. “Did the roof leak?”

  “I don’t think so. “ The dormer windows were so dingy they barely let in enough light to see. The frames showed a powdery brown dusting of rot. Reaching up, he tugged the string to turn on a bare lightbulb. The roof beams and supports, hand-milled a century ago, had the sturdiness of ship’s timbers. Batting away cobwebs, he shut off the light and went downstairs.

  She stood in the cavernous, sparsely furnished parlor, her back to the stove, her bandaged hands unconsciously reaching for the heat. “Well?” she asked.

  “What do you want to do with the house?”

  “I told you, I intend to sell it,” she said. “Which means getting it fixed up, obviously. I’d never find a buyer for the place in this condition.”