Inheritance

by Judith Michael

  "Probably," Ben agreed. He slowed to catch a glimpse of the ocean and the sailboats and motorboats moored at private docks. "But once you get me inside, I won't have any trouble getting away."

  'They can follow a boat as well as a car," Clay argued. "Why'd you pick this place, anyway? It's a goddam fortress."

  "Cut it out," Laura said, her voice low. "We'll get it over with and then quit. I told Ben this was the last time I'd help him; you can, too. I wouldn't do this one, except I promised. But you know"—her voice wavered as she thought back to the pine forests and stretches of staiic sand dunes and wild grass they'd driven past in their circuit of the Cape before coming to Osterville—^"it is kinda scary to be this far from home, and everything so . . . different . . ."

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  Ben caught her last words and grinned at them in the rear-view mirror. "I thought I taught you to have more confidence in yourself. Is there any house in the world my clever brother and sister can't break into? You've helped me crack some very tight places."

  "In New York," Clay said. "We know New York. It's got alleys and subways and crowds of people you can disappear in, not a million acres you have to be a cross-country runner to beat the dogs across—^"

  "Five acres," Ben said softly. *The Salingers' summer home. Six houses on five acres surrounded by a fence with one guardhouse. That's all we know so far. We'll know more after you and Laura start working there. Listen, Clay, I'm counting on you. Both of you. I trust you."

  Laura felt the rush of pride Ben's praise always gave her. He was much older than she, the child of her mother's first marriage. Her mother had remarried when Ben was almost nine, and a year later Laura was bom, and then Clay. They'd always adored Ben, trailing after him around their small rented house in Queens, trying to peek into his private attic room, following him outside until he sent them home. Then, when Laura was fourteen, her parents were killed in a car accident; and Ben Gardner, twenty-three years old, handsome, grown-up, with lots of girlfriends, suddenly became Laura's and Clay's guardian. From then on he was more like a mother and father than a stepbrother to them: he stayed home most nights to be with them, he took them for rides in his car, he helped them with their schoolwork.

  He also taught them to steal.

  Of all the jobs Ben ever had, stealing was the only one that kept him interested. He didn't make a lot of money at it and kept apologizing for not being professional enough, but he wouldn't join a gang and never found a way to become part of the tight-knit group of fences who controlled prices and outlets in New York. Still, he stayed with it, and filled in by working as a waiter. They'd moved to a tiny, dark apartment way up on West End Avenue, but still they had lots of expenses, and stealing was what Ben had always done so he kept on doing it—better than ever, he said, because now he had assistants.

  Clay and Laura were good. Their bodies were agile, their

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  fingers quick, their minds alert as they climbed drainpipes or tangled branches of ancient ivy, slipping silently through narrow windows into darkened rooms, opening the windows wider for Ben, afterward climbing swiftly down and disappearing in the shadows of the grafhti-coat&d, anonymous subway.

  They learned fast and trained themselves to remember everything. They could distinguish between a policeman's footsteps and those of a casual passerby; after one tour of a room they knew indelibly the location of stereo equipment, paintings and objets d'art; they could hear an elevator start up in a lobby twenty floors below; they had a feather touch and were almost invisible when they shoplifted or picked pockets on the subway or among the after-work crowd jostling for cabs on Wall Street.

  It was always exciting and dangerous and, best of all, it was something the three of them could share: planning the jobs, carrying them out, reliving them later. So when Laura suddenly found herself wanting to stop, she kept it to herself. She couldn't tell Ben she'd begun to hate what they did; it would be like saying she hated him, when he was the only one who loved her and Clay and took care of them.

  But then things got harder. She was lonely. It was her senior year in high school and all the other girls had friends to bring home after school, or have sleep over, or stand around in the schoolyard with, giggling about dates and new clothes, Saturday night parties and boys feeling them up, monthly cramps, and their awful parents. But Laura couldn't get close to anyone and so she had no girlfriends or boyfriends; she didn't go to Saturday night parties; and she couldn't have a girlfriend sleep over, because Ben slept in one room and she and Clay in the other, with a pair of drapes that they'd found in a dumpster on Orchard Street hanging between them. She could talk casually to classmates in school corridors about their studies or a show on television, but never about how she felt inside or what she really thought and dreamed about. She was always alone.

  But even worse than being lonely, she was afraid. Ever since she and Clay were caught, when she was fifteen, she'd been afraid. Everything about it was still fresh; she'd never

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  forget it: the pounding footsteps chasing them down the street, the gray smell of the police station, the way a policeman pinched her fingertips when he rolled them on the grimy ink pad, the flat face of the policeman who took her picture, growling, 'Turn left, turn right, look straight at the camera, you little cunt . . ."and then grabbed her ass and squeezed so hard she cried out.

  Ben came down to the station with a lawyer he knew, who got them out on bond, and then nothing happened for almost a year until their case came up. They were found guilty, and put on probation for another year, and released in the custody of Melody Chase. She was just one of Ben's girlfriends, but he*d been sure the social workers in court wouldn't release two kids in the custody of a single guy, and also he didn't want the law to connect him with them, so he brought Melody to court with him and she said she was Laura's and Clay's aunt, and the four of them walked out together. Nobody cared, really; all the court wanted was to pass them on to somebody else.

  So they were free. But the police had their pictures and fingerprints, and Laura dreamt about it for weeks: she had a record.

  That was one of the reasons she finally told Ben she didn't want to help him anymore. She didn't want to be a thief; she wanted to go to college and make friends. She'd had some parts in school plays, and she thought she might like to be an actress—or anything, really, as long as she could be proud of herself.

  They quarreled about it. Ben knew she felt bad about picking pockets; she always mailed wallets back to people after taking out the money because she hated thinking about them losing all the things inside: poems and recipes, scribbled addresses and phone numbers, membership cards, insurance cards, credit cards that were no use to her, and especially pictures of people they probably loved. When she told Ben she didn't want to steal anymore, he thought she was being sentimental, the way she was about wallets. But she'd figure out a way to make him understand that there was more to it, that she was really serious. She had to; she'd promised herself the Salinger job would be the last one she'd do. Ever.

  '1 know you trust us," said Clay, still clinging to Laura's

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  hand in the back seat of the car, "but we*ve never done a job in a place like this. What the hell do they want with all this space and light?"

  Ben stopped the car a block from the guardhouse. "You're due there in five minutes. Keep your cool; just remember how we rehearsed it. And don't worry; you'll get hired. Rich people in sunmier houses are always desperate for help. I'll be right here, waiting for you."

  "He isn't the one who has to go work for them," Clay muttered as the guard passed them through the gate and they followed liis pointing finger to a nearby cottage. "He just sits around while we plan everything and then he waltzes in and lifts what's-her-name's jewels and waltzes out. And we're still here."

  *That's not true," Laura said hotly. "Ben won't do anything till we work out an alibi." She turned her back on Clay's scowl, and then kept tu
rning, around and around, as she walked, straining to see as much as she could through the thickly wooded grounds. She caught glimpses of velvety lawns, the windowed bay of a house, splashes of color from flower gardens, a pond with a fountain, a greenhouse roof. The estate of six houses clustered along the ocean was bigger than it had seemed from the road, and much grander. Like a picture postcard, Laura thought: everything beautiful, with no tom-up streets, no graffiti, and no litter. "Anyway," she said to Clay, "we're not hanging around very long after he's done it; just a little while, so nobody thinks we're connected to the robbery."

  "We're still here," Clay repeated glumly.

  They reached the small stone cottage with flowered curtains at the window and slatted furniture on the front porch, and Laura swallowed hard. "Damn it, we've been through this a hundred times. I'm already jumpy, and you're making it worse. Ben knows what he's doing. And he's the one who's really taking chances: he could get hurt, or caught, and what could we do to help him?"

  Clay was silent. Laura knew he wasn't really angry; he worshiped Ben. It had been all she could do to keep him in school after he turned sixteen and wanted to drop out and do whatever Ben did. She didn't know what would happen now

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  that she'd graduated. If she could get enough money for college, she wanted to move out; she dreamed of a room of her own, with shelves of books and posters on the wall, and pretty furniture, and her favorite music on the radio. But then what would happen to Clay?

  "See you later," Clay said as a tall woman approached them. "She's yours. I'm for the head maintenance guy at the greenhouse." He was gone as the woman reached Laura.

  "Laura Fairchild? I'm Leni Salinger; let's sit on the porch and talk, shall we? The cottage belongs to Jonas—the guard, you know—and I don't like to take over his living room unless it's raining. But it's pleasant today, isn't it? June is often a little confused here, not quite spring and not quite sunmier, but today is perfect. And, of course, we do love the quiet; it all changes in July, when the tourists descend. You said on the telephone you had references from your previous jobs."

  "Oh." Lulled by Leni's serene voice, Laura had almost forgotten why she was there. "I have them ..." She fumbled in her black patent purse. She'd known the purse was wrong for June the minute she saw Leni SaUnger's white straw hat; she knew everything else was wrong, too, when she pictured herself beside this tall, angular woman in perfectly pressed slacks and a cotton shirt with ivory buttons, her fingernails long and polished, her face and voice perfectly calm because she had nothing to worry about: she knew that whatever happened to her would always be wonderful.

  / could never look like that because I'm never sure of anything.

  "Laura?" Leni was studying her. "You mustn't be nervous; I don't bite, you know, I don't even growl, and we do try to make our staff comfortable, but I really must find out something about you, mustn't I, before I bring you into our household."

  "I'm sorry; I was thinking how beautiful you are, and how you don't have nothing to worry about. I mean, you don't have anything to . . ." Laura's voice trailed away and she bit her lip. How could she be such a baby? She blurted things out and made the same stupid mistakes her grammar teacher always had marked her down for. What would this elegant lady, who never would blurt anything, or talk wrong, think of

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  her? TYying to look confident, she handed Leni the three reference letters Ben had typed out and signed with made-up names, then held her breath as Leni read them.

  "Very impressive," Leni said. "To have done so much at eighteen. I'm not familiar with the people who wrote these, and I must say they've been very careless—all of them, how surprising—in not including their telephone numbers. O'Hara, Stone, Phillips; goodness, even with a first initial, how difficult to find the right ones in the directory. Do you recall their telephone numbers?"

  "No." Laura paused, just as she and Ben had rehearsed it. "But I can find ttiem. I mean, if you want, I'll call everybody who has those initials until I get the right one and then you can talk to them. I really need this job; I'll do anything . . ."

  "Well," Leni said thoughtfully, "it's only a temporary position, of course . . . and it's hard enough to find anyone, much less someone truly anxious and agreeable . . . I'll have to mull this over a bit." She gazed at Laura. 'Tell me about yourself. Where do you live?"

  "New York." Ben had warned her it might get personal; she sat very straight and spoke carefully but quickly to get past this part as fast as she could. "My parents are dead, and my brother and I lived with some relatives, but they didn't really want us there, so a year ago we got our own place. I graduated high school last week."

  After a moment, Leni said, "And what else? Are you going to college?"

  "Oh, I'd love to. If I could get the money . . ."

  Leni nodded. "So you need a job. But why not in New York? Why did you come to the Cape?"

  Laura hesitated an instant; they hadn't rehearsed this part. "Just to get away, you know. We have a tiny apartment, and it gets awftjUy hot in the sunmier and sort of closed in . . . And somebody at school said it was nice here." She looked beyond the porch at the sparkle of the ocean through the trees. "It is. More beautiful than I ever thought."

  Leni was watching her closely. "And how did you get here? Do you have a car?"

  Laura felt a surge of impatience. Why did she keep asking questions? "A friend drove us," she said briefly.

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  "And how will you get back?*'

  "I hope we don't have to." She looked at her hands. **I mean, I was hoping you'd hire us and then we could just . . . stay."

  "Stay where?" Leni asked gently.

  "Oh, we'd find a place. We bought a newspaper and there are some rooms for rent in Osterville and Centerville ... If you'd give us a chance I know we could manage everything. You wouldn't have to worry about us; we can take care of ourselves, you know."

  "Yes, I think you can," Leni murmured. She looked around. "Yes, Allison, is there something you need?"

  "A tennis partner." The young woman who stood at the foot of the porch steps was about Laura's age and looked like a young Leni, as tall and angular, though her long blond hair was straight, while Leni's was short and curled, and she had a touch of arrogance that Leni lacked. "Patricia doesn't feel like playing. Would you like a game?"

  "My daughter, Allison," Leni said to Laura. "This is Laura Fairchild, Allison. She's applying for the job of Rosa's assistant."

  "Rosa's a sweetie," said Allison. "She's also an absolute tyrant in her kitchen; she'll wear you out in a week. Or maybe she'll take you under her wing and then you'll gain fifty pounds." She turned to her mother. "Can't you just hear her telling Laura she's too thin?"

  "Am I?" Laura asked anxiously. She was ashamed of her cotton dress and black patent shoes, bought at a resale shop, and the way her hair hung lankly around her face in the salt air of the Cape, and she knew her face had a city pallor beside these two tanned women, but she hadn't thought about being thin. / won't get the job if I'm skinny and ugly; they only want pretty people working for them. Ben and Clay always told her she was pretty, but they were her brothers. Nervously she pushed her hair behind her ears, tried to look taller on the chair's slippery cushion, and kept her legs close together, her feet flat on the porch.

  But it wasn't just her looks that bothered her, she was envious of the warmth between Allison and her mother. She had never known anything like that, even when her mother was

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  alive, and she envied them and liked them at the same time. It's too bad we have to rob them, she thought.

  Another one of Ben's warnings came back to her. It's better not to know the mark at all. But if it's unavoidable, don't get close; keep your distance. Laura felt a pang of regret. It might be nice to be close to Leni and Allison.

  *There's nothing wrong with your figure; you mustn't worry," Leni said. "Well, perhaps a few pounds, a little rounding out . . .
young girls do seem gaunt these days. They want to be willowy or sway like a reed or some such thing—it always seems to involve some damp and probably unhealthy plant. Yes, I do believe you could use a few pounds . . . Perhaps you don't eat properly. Do you have a hot breakfast every day?"

  Laura and Allison looked at each other and burst out laughing. "Oh, well," Leni sighed. "I suppose you do hear that a great deal." But she wasn't really thinking of her words; she was hearing Allison's laughter and watching it banish the supercilious amusement that usually curved her daughter's perfect lips without allowing laughter to escape. Leni often worried about Alhson's cool, amused silence; and at that moment, as her daughter and this strange girl continued to smile together, and even though she was sure those reference letters were faked, she decided to hire Laura Fairchild as a kitchen helper for the Salingers' summer stay on Cape Cod.

  Clay worked in the greenhouses and flower gardens shared by the whole family while Laura was at Rosa's side in the kitchen of Felix and Leni's house. It was tfie biggest in the compound, and Ben had instructed her to explore and sketch it for him. But by the end of their second week at the Cape she still had not done it, nor had she looked for Leni's jewels so Ben could go straight to them when he broke in. She knew what they looked like because Leni was frequently photographed wearing them at dinner parties and balls—she even took them to the Cape for the big parties in July and August —but Laura had to find out where she kept them.

  "What are you waiting for?" Clay demanded, looking up from his own drawing of the layout of the compound. They were sitting in the tiny two-room apartment Ben had rented for

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  them over a garage in downtown Centerville before he went back to New York, and Clay had been trying to figure out the exact distance from the guardhouse to Leni's bedroom window. "How are we going to get out of here if you don't do your part?"

  "Fm trying," Laura said. "But Rosa expects me to be with her all the time.'*