I told him.
“What do they do?” he asked.
I explained, using words like “stereo,” “tape deck” and “speakers.”
“So,” he nodded, “do you have one? A tape deck, that is?”
Now here was an idea — something to keep him occupied. “We should,” I replied, thinking of the tape player Lila kept around — a relic, like the tapes, of the pre-CD age. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen it since we arrived. Or had I? Inspiration struck and I charged upstairs to my bedroom. There it was, Lila’s ancient Sony cassette player, on the lower shelf of my bedside table with a Sarah Brightman tape still in the drive. Cameron is a huge Brightman fan. I’d bet his gal pal is, too.
I ejected the Brightman tape, snatched up the boombox (which Cameron had carefully unplugged) and came downstairs to the living room where the Colonel was teasing a length of tape from one of the cassettes.
“Sound on ribbon,” he murmured. “How is that possible?”
“Beats me,” I told him, plunking down the tape player and taking the unraveled cassette away from him.
“I’ve been reading the labels,” he went on. “I know Handel, Vivaldi, Hayden, but…” he turned a cassette for me to see.
“Tchaikovsky,” I said. “Born sometime in the first half of the nineteenth century.” I took the tape from him, put it in the drive, and a moment later the opening chords of the first piano concerto in B-minor literally sprang from the speakers. In a heartbeat, the Colonel was spellbound. Twenty minutes later, when the last chord had died away, he looked at me.
“From the ridiculous to the sublime,” he said.
My sentiments exactly. I can never hear this concerto without recalling a old film clip I once saw of Liberace in a sequined tuxedo with a candelabra on the Steinway. “It’s a bit overblown,” I apologized.
“Quite.” A smile quirked at the corners of his mouth. “Play it again,” he said.
I could see where this was heading and the thing was, I didn’t have the time or inclination to be his private deejay. Instead, I showed him how to work the tape player himself, and while I was at it I introduced him to the ancient VCR as well. I have no idea why we’ve never updated our entertainment technology at the cottage. In the living room we’ve got a whole shelf of VHS movies from the 90s, everything from fluff to classics, including the 1960 production of Fielding’s Tom Jones. This was fortunate, for while I doubted that Pretty Woman would hold any meaning for the Colonel at this juncture, I was pretty sure Tom Jones would. After all, the book was a best seller in the 1760’s.
So I put in the video. Clearly, the VCR was an even more spectacular miracle than the cassette player, leaving the Colonel nearly slack-jawed with astonishment. I showed him the remote and as soon as he mastered the basics of play, rewind, and eject, I left him ensconced in one of Lila’s down-upholstered club chairs and returned to the study, where, for the next couple of hours I stared at book spines and thought.
*****
By early evening I had put together a sketchy sort of plan. It wasn’t much, and on its own it certainly wasn’t going to get the Colonel home, but it was the best I could come up with, and besides, I was hungry.
But I simply could not face the kitchen. Instead, I coaxed the Colonel away from his toys and took him to a small restaurant on the Sound where we ate a lazy dinner and watched the fishing boats return in the twilight. We lingered over coffee, ignoring the past and oblivious to the future, unexpectedly comfortable in each other’s company.
It was dark when we got home. I parked the car beside the cottage and realized we hadn’t left a single light on anywhere. We fumbled our way up the stairs to the door, where the Colonel tapped his foot impatiently while I fiddled with the key. Eventually, the lock turned, the door swung open and we stepped into the foyer. My hand reached for the light switch but I overshot my mark, my fingers touching only wallboard. I slid my palm up and down feeling for the switch.
Suddenly the Colonel flattened me against the wall, his chest and thighs hard against mine, his hand firmly over my mouth. I made a startled noise in my throat. And then I felt his breath hot against my ear.
“Shhhh,” he whispered.
I froze.
He dropped his hand and eased away from me, turning to look down the hall toward the living room, which was the same direction I was facing. In the darkness I saw nothing other than a dim rectangle of gray where the sliding glass doors opened onto the deck. Quietly, I took a half step forward so that we were standing side by side, and touched my fingers to his sleeve.
We strained into the darkness. I had no clue what we were waiting for. Had he heard something, seen something? Eventually I felt him relax almost imperceptibly beside me. False alarm, I thought, and took a breath to speak.
And that’s when I heard it.
A scrabbling sound. Not the sort of sound a person makes. Not the sound of a footstep. Not the creak of a floorboard bearing the weight of a man. It was the sound of something moving chaotically, a disjointed sort of dance. Beneath it was a second sound, an odd sort of clicking.
“It’s on the deck,” I breathed.
The Colonel nodded slightly. Both of us were staring at the gray shape of the glass doors, and then the sound stopped. I felt the light touch of dampness on my face and heard the muted shush of rhythmic breath, and realized what the Colonel must have known almost right away: the door to the deck was open, letting in night air and the sound of the sea.
In the next second something large, low and fast shot through the door and into the living room. It whipped around the sofa, bumped into a table, knocked over a lamp and then went sailing out the way it came in. I bolted for the light switch, this time hitting it squarely, and the hallway flooded with light. The Colonel was already halfway to the glass doors before I turned around.
“It’s a dog!” I called out to him. “Just a dog!” I chased pell mell after him and burst out on the deck in time to see him bolt over the railing and drop to the sand. “A dog!” I repeated. I leaned over the railing and watched as he sprinted up the beach until I lost him in darkness. Then, in the distance, I heard the joyful yap of a dog, a happy dog who thought he was getting away with something. A dog who had slipped his leash on a fine summer evening.
Just a dog.
I waited. After a while I saw a pale form materialize in the darkness and glide down the beach toward the cottage. When it was about ten feet away I straightened and braced my arms on the deck railing. “Find anything?” I called out.
He came up on the deck — this time using the stairs — before replying.
“I wasn’t looking for a thing, Mrs. Finlay. I was looking for a person.”
“There wasn’t a person,” I explained patiently. “There was a dog. I was trying to tell you that—”
“Yes, that was a dog. But the dog is not the issue.”
“Well, of course the dog is the issue!” I exclaimed. “It’s what we heard out on the deck. It’s what burst into the living room—”
“The door was already open.”
Oh shit. That’s right.
“Which is the issue, Mrs. Finlay. Who opened the bloody door?”
*****
The whole front of the cottage is mostly glass, and there are sliding doors leading to the deck from the living room, the dining area and the study. We go in and out all three sets of doors all the time. I could have easily left any of them unlocked. I could even have left one of them open, but if I did, it would be the one in the study, which I can’t see from the main part of the house. The door the dog pranced through was the middle door, easily seen from any part of the main living area. Before we left for dinner this evening, I would have seen that it was open. In fact, I make a habit to glance that way and check.
The door was closed when we left. Maybe not locked, but closed. I knew it was. And yet, when we came home, the door was open.
Immediately, I began to pace. “It was him,” I said. “The guy from the other side.
Your … doppelganger.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he replied firmly. “It could not have been him.”
“He’s had plenty of time to get down here, to follow us,” I argued, striding back and forth.
“Think what you are saying! Even if he exists, he could not have done it. He would not have known how to get here, let alone have known where to go.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do know, Mrs. Finlay! I could not have done it. I would not have known. I could not have navigated my way here alone even if I had a map and compass!”
I turned this over in my mind. Then I said, “Yes, you could have. You’re a soldier. You could make your way anywhere with a map and a compass.”
“Yes. All right. On foot or horseback. Given time.”
“He could have hitch-hiked.”
“What’s that?”
“Begged a ride,” I told him, treading to and fro.
“He would have been disoriented, overwhelmed. Oddly dressed. He would have appeared peculiar, at best. And he would have had no money. It’s a long way to go without money.”
Suddenly I wondered if, in our haste to leave Pennsylvania, I had set the security system in the house. I was pretty sure I hadn’t.
“What if he broke into Uncle Bennett’s house,” I asked him. Pace, pace, pace. “He could have gotten money and clothes and God knows what else.” Pace, pace, pace. “And if there wasn’t any money laying around, he could have stolen some or, I don’t know, mugged someone.”
“Mugged.” The Colonel glanced at me.
“Like a … a … highway man. Or a …”
“Footpad,” he supplied. “Even so, he would not have known where to come.”
“He overheard us,” I argued, continuing my back-and-forth march. “He could have been lurking almost anywhere. I said we were going to Avon. I told you Avon was in North Carolina. If he heard me say that, then he would have known that much.”
“And if he did, if any of that were even possible, he would not have known where to find you in Avon.”
“He could have heard my name! I introduced myself to you. You referred to me as Mrs. Finlay. He could have heard!”
“But … not Mansfield. You never mentioned your mother’s name. And this is the Mansfield cottage, is it not? Mansfield, not Finlay.”
The Colonel’s hand shot out as I paced by him and grabbed my arm. “Stop it,” he told me sharply. “Stop it.” His hands went to my shoulders and he shook me not quite gently. “If he even exists,” he whispered, his face just inches from mine, “he’s still back in Pennsylvania.”
*****
We spent the next hour going over every conceivable explanation. There was no sign of theft or obvious disturbance, which increased the number of likely scenarios.
“How easily does that door open?” he asked. “I mean, if it was not quite shut.”
We tested the doors. They are good doors and they move easily on their tracks.
“If there was a gap, an inch or two, could a dog have slid the door open with his paw or nose?” I asked.
“Yes. I think so. A large dog like a setter or a good sized pointer. And the door was not wide open the way a person would likely open it.”
I tried to remember. Foolishly, we had moved the doors before we thought to ask ourselves this question. “No,” I agreed finally, “but it was open enough that you didn’t have to push it further when you dashed outside, did you?”
The Colonel thought for a moment. “I don’t think do, but I had to turn my shoulders a bit as I went through.”
“An intruder would not have opened it all the way,” I pointed out. “He would have opened it just enough to slip through.”
“But he would have closed it when he left. To leave it like it was.”
“Unless he left in a hurry,” I argued.
We looked at each other.
“But it was a big dog I saw.” I remarked, examining the other argument. “If he were sniffing around, and if we had left the door open even a little bit…”
“It’s possible. It’s a good deal more probable than your doppelganger theory.”
“But not more probable than some other intruder. A human one, I mean.”
“If it was a person, it could have been anyone — except my, ah, fellow traveler, if he exists — and for any reason.” He paused. “So … the intruder left the door open, and the dog came through later, or we left it open and the dog came through alone. It is possible, even probable. Do you have a, um, flash lantern here?”
“Flashlight. Yes, in the kitchen,” I told him, heading there as I spoke and retrieving the flashlight from a drawer. “What are you going to do with it?”
But he didn’t answer. He just took the light from me and headed out to the deck. I followed and watched as he aimed the light on the sand by the foot of the stairs.
The cottage is surrounded by sand dunes. It is, actually, built into the dunes, which provide us privacy from neighbors and protection from both wind and sea. The dunes are covered with sea oats, and where they aren’t, they are covered in dry, soft, sifting sand. This was not the best media for retaining footprints and I doubted the Colonel would find any useful tracks.
But he gave it a shot, descending the steps and working his way down the face of the dunes and out onto the beach. I waited, and about ten minutes later he returned.
“And?” I queried.
“And nothing. Or I should say everything: there are tracks over tracks and none of it can be distinguished. In truth, I probably obliterated anything telling when I chased after the dog.”
“And the sand drifts with the breeze, anyway,” I pointed out, “and the tide’s come up the beach.”
The Colonel ran a hand through his dark, windblown hair. “In the future, Mrs. Finlay,” he sighed, “I suggest we ensure the doors are always locked.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. Immediately I retreated to the house and locked every door and window, even the windows on the second floor. We had never been particularly security conscious in Avon — but those days, I decided, were definitely over.
Nothing was taken, nothing disturbed. Maybe we really had left that door open ourselves, but I was sure we hadn’t. I was certain it had been closed. I paced around from room to room, looking for anything amiss and finding nothing. I was too jittery for sleep and the Colonel, sensing that, resigned himself to staying up with me. He put Tom Jones back into the VCR and settled in for another viewing.
Eventually I went to bed, leaving the Colonel on guard with the remote control in his hand and a pile of movies by his chair. It was comforting, somehow, to know he was there.
Chapter 16
The next morning I awoke to an unnatural stillness in the house, a kind of heavy silence. I wanted to escape back into sleep, but I knew I couldn’t, not after last night. So I got up and dressed, and made my way downstairs to the empty living room where I noticed the VCR was off and Tom Jones was neatly returned to its shelf.
“Colonel?” I said aloud.
For an answer the phone rang. I padded into the kitchen and picked it up only to have it click annoyingly in my ear. I replaced the receiver, surveyed the kitchen, wandered into the study. From there I went out on the deck. The beach was empty.
For several long minutes I stared at the sea, lost in thought and speculation until something unnamed crawled lightly up my spine. I spun around, but the doorway and the study beyond were empty. Don’t be silly Kathy Lee, I chided myself. There’s not a soul here except for you.
In the light of day I was willing to buy the Colonel’s argument that our intruder last night had not been his shadowy pal from the other side. In fact, I was almost willing to go so far as to credit the dog with the open door.
But there was no point in being stupid. I stepped back inside and locked the door after me. Then I went upstairs, unsure what I was looking for. The Colonel’s bed was neatly made, military fashion, and I wondered, suddenly, if he had
even slept in it. After all, I went to bed first last night. The Colonel could have slept anywhere, gone anywhere. Still, the room looked lived-in. Clothes were carefully folded over the back of a chair and Tristram Shandy lay on the bedside table. I checked the bathroom and noticed that the towels were slightly damp.
Obviously he’s around here somewhere, I thought. I moved to the kitchen where I brewed some coffee, ate a bowl of cereal, and did some some laundry. Yesterday I had begun to piece together the rough outlines of a plan, and now, while I separated whites from darks and measured out detergent, I shuffled though a few ideas. This proved therapeutic and gradually the disquiet I felt on the deck began to ease.
While the laundry made its way through the wash cycle, I called River House and chatted with the children. I missed them, but they didn’t appear to miss me. They were going with Lila to the Wheatleys for a cookout tonight, they told me, evidently well pleased with the prospect. Evenings at the Wheatleys were fun. There were always scads of little Wheatleys about, and a swimming pool with lights.
This was fuel for several minutes of chatter, during which I moved the laundry from washer to dryer. Eventually the children handed me off to Lila, and after a preliminary exchange, I cut to the chase.
“Isn’t there a library in Hatteras?” I asked her.
“Yes. At the community center. Why do you ask?”
“I thought I’d pick up something fresh to read.”
Lila seemed to think this was a productive idea. “You know,” she said, “There’s a box of books in the hall closet. John and Helen brought them down the last time they were here and we never got around to shelving them. Why don’t you see if they threw in any good paperbacks?”
I promised I would, then tried to mention my Phillip Olson sighting only to have Lila interrupt with a list of titles she thought I might like, just in case I still headed out for the library. I listened dutifully. I couldn’t tell her that what I was really looking for was internet access so I could research the physics of time. She’d ship me off to her old friends at Havenhurst if she knew what I was up to.
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