by Brian Hodge
She called out softly, waved though she knew they would pay her no mind, and buttoned her raincoat absently as she stepped outside.
Despite its pretentions to size, the front of the house was weathered plain and unimposing. It faced a circular drive that enclosed the only garden her mother permitted, narrowing to a blacktopped lane that darted almost fearfully under a canopy of elm toward the Williamston Pike. A generation earlier spotlights had illuminated facade and flowers from sunset to midnight; now the only light came dimly from within, as if the glow had retreated from the grasp of the trees.
Cyd rubbed a thoughtful finger along the smooth line of her nose and jumped the four low steps of the half-moon porch to the cracked concrete walk that led along the outside of the circle to what had once been a row of stables, off the house’s left side. The building was wooden, low and flat-roofed and badly in need of another coat of white. Where the stalls had been were five broad doors, one for each of them, hers on the far end where the trees blocked the bulk of the perimeter wall.
Her car.
A blue four-door sedan Father had complained she drove like a fury when the police weren’t around and she was on her own. Skybright when new, now it was faded from hood to trunk, sporting signs of spreading rust along the door rims and pitted chrome bumpers. When, not long before she’d left for England, her father had none-too-subtly suggested she trade it in for something … nicer … she had cried all night and slept on the back seat.
Gently she kicked in a ritual all the tires in turn, and sighed with a grin at the hubcaps dented and unmatching.
She loved it, babied it, had once decided that her life since graduation was so tied up with it that, when it died, she would too.
After closing and locking the garage door behind her, then, and slipping back behind the wheel, she glanced over at the house, frowning slightly, wondering if perhaps she shouldn’t call Doc Foster on her own, or drop in at his Centre Street office. And immediately she thought it, she dismissed it. Since the night Barton Yarrow had almost been lost through clumsy surgery for what was supposed to have been a routine extraction of a benign larynx tumor, her mother had sworn off most doctors on a hastily implemented principle. And when no one complained, home remedies became the rule as if they had always been.
Still, the fall …
Forget it, she told herself; you’ve enough to worry about as it is.
Slowly she drove down the lane, turned west onto the Pike and headed for the village.
The road here was narrow—two miles from the Station’s center—had once been a carriage route leading to the estates belonging to Oxrun’s founders. But though the road and its name remained, the estates were dwindling rapidly, for the most part sliced into smaller parcels on demand of higher taxes and a life-style dying. The division was still there, however; the area “beyond the park” and the town itself; a division Cyd thought foolish, and somewhat embarrassing.
The rain stopped.
The only sound the beat of the windshield wipers thumping.
On the left began the village park behind its black iron fencing as the road rose and fell over a low ancient hill. And once crested, she blinked at the lights that marked Oxrun Station. As many times as she had driven this way, she was never prepared for the sudden appearance of the town, as though a dark grey veil had been abruptly yanked from her eyes. She snapped on her running lights and took the second left turn onto Centre Street, barely noticing the library on the corner, paying more attention to the three blocks ahead of her—the town’s only business street, the hub of daily living. Here were the shops, the luncheonette, the banks, and the lawyers, brokerage firms, doctors … sure signs, she thought, that the Station was different, reasonably wealthy and reasonably content. Those who did not live beyond the park lived in the village itself in Victorians and New England Colonials and offsprings of both.
Quietly. Peacefully. Aware of the world, and keeping it distant.
Between High Street and Steuben, then, she pulled into a vacant space at the curb, switched off the ignition and rolled down the window. She twisted to rest her arms on the door, her chin tucked into an elbow as her gaze swept in from the corner, from The Smoke Shop, Anderson’s Shoes, The Melody Shop, Bartlett’s Toys to … a dark-faced store whose plate-glass windows had been carefully frosted so no one could see inside.
Cyd grinned.
A favorite place. Her secret place soon to be baptized.
A pleasant, soft sigh and she gathered up her purse, hung the strap over her shoulder and opened the door. Slipped out. Closed the door with a push of her hip and sidled until she was leaning back against the front fender. Kicked back with one boot and struck the hubcap gently. A car passed and sprayed her, but she scarcely noticed.
A favorite place.
A secret place.
Her smile shattered suddenly when she looked up, looked left, saw a huge grey limousine bearing down on her rapidly, its side barely clearing the other parked cars. From somewhere behind her a woman screamed. From somewhere inside her an order screamed, but she could not move. And could not look away— from the teeth of the chromed grille or the windshield’s blind face that reflected the streetlamps in kaleidoscopic nightmare.
She had half turned to run when two hands suddenly gripped her shoulders, lifted her up and back and across the hood.
The limousine streaked on without slowing down, took the first corner shrieking, was gone, and it was silent.
Slowly, then, she was helped to the sidewalk where she grabbed at the man’s arms to steady herself before shaking loose and slumping against her car.
“You know something,” he said, his hands loose on his hips, “if that had been me, it would have been a beer truck, and it would have hit me.”
“Luck of the Yarrows,” she said, trying to grin, trying not to give way to the trembling inside her. “Ed Grange, damnit, if I didn’t know better I’d swear you set that up.”
“You’re welcome,” he said with a half-smile. “Any time.”
He was not much taller than she, and not much heavier, but his face was far less velvet, much more stone. Myrtle called it a rugged sort of handsome; Cyd called it uninspired. His nose was too large, his chin too perfectly squared, his cheekbones too high, his hair too blond … and the smile widening to a grin was too arrogant by far. She would have said more, but her legs abruptly refused to hold her any longer, and she did not protest when he took her arm and stared at her with black eyes narrowed with concern.
“Trust me,” she said. “I won’t die on you.”
Several pedestrians had passed nearby, and Ed turned to them and waved them away with a professional smile. They moved, reluctantly, their heads a degree behind the direction of their feet.
Cyd, fighting a conflict of nausea and dizziness, barely resisted the urge to stick out her tongue.
“The cops,” he said then, not really a question.
“No, I don’t think so. It’s too late, he’s gone.”
“Well … don’t you think you at least owe me a drink?”
She wiped a hand over her face, tugged at the handbag’s strap and stood away from the car. “Is that what knights are getting these days?”
Ed shrugged. Then stared at her in frank admiration. “I think if that had been me, I’d be on the ground in a puddle waiting for a doc.”
“I told you,” she said, taking his arm. “The luck of the Yarrows.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Edwin Grange, stop fussing!”
“I’ll stop fussing when you stop pretending.”
She looked back at her car, saw in a moment she could not stop her body trapped between her car and the Greybeast, spun around and dropped, discarded like a doll.
“You said,” she muttered weakly, “something about a drink?”
Chapter 2
Diagonally opposite the Chancellor Avenue police station was the Mariner Cove, a low and long Monticello miniature less than a year old,
windowless (for mystery) and signless (for confidence). The only interruptions in the clean brick front were two white double-doors; the one led to a dining room specializing in seafood, the other to a lounge heavily dark in mahogany and ebony, with carriage lamps on thick squared posts, exposed beams, and nightwine walls that felt remarkably like velvet to the touch. There was no music, no filtering of chatter from the adjoining restaurant, no flirtations with the waitresses or gambling with the bartender. Church-quiet. Relaxing. An island within an island for some to shed their tensions by sighing instead of screaming.
The bar was in the center, surrounded by small pine tables and captain’s chairs, in turn surrounded by a string of low-backed booths whose faces were artfully screened by draped fish netting. Red chimneys and candles. No tiers of bottles to distort the curved mirror as the bartender and his shadow moved swiftly, soundlessly, on a burgundy carpet.
Immediately they entered, Ed led her to a table hidden on the far side of the bar, beneath a narrow print of the USS Constitution, He waited until she sat, lifted the raincoat from her shoulders and draped it over the rounded back of her chair. Then, with a shrug, he was out of his own beige topcoat and facing her over the chimney, the brass stand, and the unlighted candle. He glanced around the near empty room, then back to her.
“Down among the peasants,” he said with a smile.
“Don’t knock those peasants, sir,” she said. “They keep the ladies alive.”
“Barely, Cyd,” he said quietly. “Good Lord, what were you thinking of? No,” he added before she could answer, “where were you, is a better question. Because you sure weren’t there.”
The room darkened briefly, and she ran a hand through her hair before patting it unnecessarily. “I …” She swallowed at the bile rising, nodded weakly when Ed offered to order for them. And when the waitress, in a nautical costume complete with tiny cap, smiled at them and left, she gripped the table’s edge tightly. “I could have been killed.”
Ed nodded, said nothing.
“My God, I could have been killed!”
And something denied it. People die; Yarrows don’t. It was an axiom she had dedicated herself to since the death of her grandparents when she was less than five. But now … she cupped her hands around a glass the waitress placed before her, fought to find some warmth in the dark red wine within, her arms beneath the smooth cashmere sweater, the tightening at the back of her neck when, in her mind’s eye, she saw the Greybeast again.
And where had she been? That was simple enough. Perhaps too simple for the state she was in.
The Station Bookmart had long been out of business, not for lack of readers but because its owners had decided Florida’s Decembers were more conducive to long life than the bleak weak star that lightened Connecticut’s winters. A jeweler had tried his luck there and couldn’t compete with the others on the street; a lawyer tried it and didn’t like the ambiance; and a toy store attempted a direct assault on Bartlett’s, only to find that Dale Bartlett Blake was more than a match for an ambitious outsider. The shop had remained empty for nearly a month before, without warning, a grizzled workman in blue coveralls opened the door and hauled in all manner of carpentry equipment. Immediately after, he frosted the insides of the two narrow display windows, and several times a day since then someone would stand on the sidewalk and stare, trying to pierce the white fog and second-guess the new owner.
“Hey, Cyd,” Ed whispered. “Are you all right?”
Her answering grin was weak, growing stronger, as she heard behind her the room filling with customers preparing a libation for the day-to-day gods that kept them afloat. She was glad her back was to the room. There was enough talk in the Station these days about the company she kept, gossip that had twice caused a fierce row with her parents. Not, she thought in soft silent scolding, that Ed Grange was poor company. Only … unexpected. The Yarrows, after all, were from beyond the park; and Ed was the owner of a firm that specialized in security work—providing guards and part-time patrolmen for those functions the Station’s own limited force was unable to man adequately without skimping somewhere else. Ed himself was an ex-Station cop, and as such there was no animosity or professional rivalry between himself and Abe Stockton, the chief of police. The need was recognized, and pride in one meant pride in the other.
“Cyd, I think I’m coming down with the Plague.”
She nodded absently. Staring at him, not seeing him. It was no secret that he loved her—at least not to her—and in the beginning she’d thought it a compliment to what she hoped was her fine humor and a caring about herself without the taint of vanity. But as for reciprocation … not, she thought, until she had worked out some proofs for her being.
She never supped with him, then, or walked with him through the park or along the streets; but he always managed to be at the house when there were too many dowagers with too many jewels, or checking the guards who patrolled the estates at night when she stepped out alone for a stroll along the Pike. Before Europe there had been those arguments with her parents, and since then … she frowned in abrupt realization—her mother suddenly didn’t seem to care, and her father said nothing beyond a faint scowl whenever he happened to see them talking.
“Cyd, there’s a purple scorpion in your hair. I think he’s looking for a vacancy.”
“Yarrow’s Yard,” she said, as though through a dream.
“What?”
“Yarrow’s Yesterdays, maybe.”
“Cyd, maybe I ought to get you a doctor, huh? Maybe I grabbed you too hard. Did you hit your head when—”
“Oh, sit down, Ed! You’re making a scene.” He froze at her words and lowered himself slowly. “Good,” she said. “That’s better.”
He grunted, sipped at his drink and grimaced. “God,” he said. “Not enough blood, too much Mary.” And he caught the waitress’ elbow to ask for a glass of tomato juice.
“You’re getting soft,” she told him. “I remember the day you took a whole—what was it, a fifth of vodka?—and downed it without stopping.”
“You’ll also remember that I threw up and passed out.”
“In Mother’s garden no less. Her roses to be exact. I thought she would go through the roof.” She laughed lightly, took some of her wine and let the warmth slide and ease the faint trembling. Then she stared at him, appraising. “You need a new suit,” she decided. “Brown becomes you better than that blue thing.”
He looked down at his chest, brushing at his lapels and running a palm along the length of his knit tie. “It serves. I must be inconspicuous, you know.”
“You’d be more inconspicuous naked.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You know about such things?”
Her sigh was jaded. “Europe had nothing better, I’m afraid,” she said, setting an invisible monocle to her right eye. “It was frightfully difficult in Venice, however. The gondola rocking and all that. And I damn near fell out of the Tower of Pisa.” She grinned, softened it when she saw she was teasing too much, that Ed for all his graces never understood when she was pulling his leg. “Ed,” she said after a deliberate pause, “thank you. Really. I—”
“Hey, listen,” he interrupted, not unkindly, “it’s almost five and I have to get going. There’s a charity fair at the high school tonight, and what with Thanksgiving vacation and all, the college crowd is going to be looking for some action.”
“Did you have a good meal yesterday?”
He blinked rapidly, unsure, off-guard. “I went over to Harley to see my sister. Ate too much turkey, as usual.”
“And now you’re going into action. What action? The only action around this place is watching the beasts get ready for winter.”
He rose and slipped into his coat, belted it and stood by her side until it was evident she wasn’t going to join him. “You’re too hard on the place, Cyd. And after today I would think you’d had enough action to last you a year.”
The Greybeast bearing down … windshield glaring the last o
f the sun … a face, a wavering shadow behind the wheel …
“The least he could have done was stop,” she said over her glass.
“He was probably drunk and too scared when he saw what he’d done. I’ll ask around.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Meanwhile, if you don’t mind, I’m going to stay right here for a while and count my blessings. See you at the party tomorrow? I guess Evan’s called you already.”
He grinned as he buttoned his coat to the neck. “Maybe. I’ll have to check the bank to see how many safe deposit boxes were called for today.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that kind of thing this time. Lots of people, no fancies. Dad’s on a new kick this year.”
“Ah, the peasants again.”
The word had no sting, but she felt it anyway, her smile tightening for a fraction of a second before she nodded and he left, one hand brushing over the round of her shoulder. A moment later, her hand reached up to touch it, softly, returned to grab the glass. If she had known she was, going to see Ed, she wouldn’t have worn the cashmere—it clung too softly, revealing without exposing, and there was nothing she needed less now than Ed’s friendship turning hungry. The peasants, she thought with a silent laugh. They had been kidding each other about peasants and lords since the day they’d met nearly three years before; and at the time she’d taken umbrage, thinking him some sort of reverse snob before she understood there was no covetousness there … only a trace of wistful envy bound in realistic resignation. And in thinking about it she amazed herself in realizing that this, too, was part of Oxrun’s existence—the rich, and the middle class, and an unspoken rule that no lines were ever to be drawn. Those who did—on either side of the fence—were soon enough ostracized to practice their snobbery, or martyrdom, elsewhere.
Which explained, in part, her own excitement now, and glad for her mother’s excuse to get out of the house.
The store.
Yarrow’s Yesterdays, or Yarrow’s Yard, or Yarrow’s anydamnthing was going to be hers.
