And once in the open, brittle air she decided it was time for an extravagance to boost her morale. By the clock on the National Bank on Centre Street, she saw she still had fifteen minutes left on her lunch hour. The reminder made her stomach rumble embarrassingly, but she decided it could wait. First she had to get over the meeting with Sam; secondly, she had to spend a little of her pay check.
A young boy whistled at her. She grinned and startled him by whistling back.
Three sparrows fluttered out of the gutter, wheeled overhead and perched noisily on an awning over the barber shop.
She checked the windows of a dress shop, notions shop, and finally stepped into the understated sparseness of one of the several Centre Street jewelry stores. If nothing else, she thought as she headed for the first display case, the Oxrun rich were wise enough to understand that gems were investments as well as ornaments. It was, in fact, a lesson her own father had taught her long before he himself had had a second minor business collapse into bankruptcy — indirectly, the cause of his death. His entire estate had been fashioned into the blue-white facets of four diamonds, all of which had been sold to satisfy his creditors and assure her college education. Like a racial memory, she’d often concluded, the impulse toward gems more often than not led her to the jewelers instead of the bank; while the checking account was always sufficient to cover her needs, her savings book was starving, her safe deposit box heavy.
As a result, the dealer knew her well, and often lent sincere and un mocking commiseration when she had to sell a diamond to pay a bill. It was a circle she traveled at least once a month.
“Mrs. Windsor, how good to see you again.”
Natalie looked up from her musings and held out a hand to Helene Bradford, the wife and portly twin of the store’s owner. “Mrs. Bradford, I need something to calm me down.”
The grey-haired woman laughed dutifully, a ring less hand bouncing across her sagging breasts. “Well, dear, how about a necklace? I have just received some from Amsterdam …” and she wandered toward another case. Natalie refused to budge.
“No,” she said. “A ring.”
“What kind?” The question was more of a pounce, and Natalie wished she had the temper to playa game of fussing over diamonds and settings just to feed the gossip’s fire. Sam, however, had effectively defused her.
“I’ll just look a bit, Mrs. Bradford. You don’t have to hang around. I know you’re busy.”
Mrs. Bradford stepped immediately out of her matron-servant role and glared at the otherwise empty shop. “Busy? Listen, when I get four people in here I feel like I should run out and hire some help. Busy! I should live so long.”
Natalie poked gently at a velvet-lined tray in front of her. “Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, you sure don’t look like you’re going out of business.”
The laugh was closer to an irritated bark. “It’s what they call local trade, Mrs. Windsor. The people from out of town I see in here wouldn’t fill the park benches in a year.”
“Is it really all that bad?”
The elder woman shrugged sadly, and Natalie’s spending mood evaporated. She stalled for several minutes, then promised to return and buyout the inventory.
Mrs. Bradford didn’t smile.
She walked, then, to the pocket park behind the library and sat on a redwood bench. She watched a squirrel cadge peanuts from three old men sitting opposite her. They clucked, whistled softly, and undermined the animal’s natural fear until it was nipping the snacks directly from their unsteady fingers.
There was a breeze, and she shivered, pulled her coat tightly around her neck and reluctantly rose to return to work. A jay scolded her loudly and she looked up through the remaining leaves, and saw Adriana in her office window. There was a shifting spot of sun glare that made Natalie’s eyes water, but it was obvious, nonetheless, that the Director was watching her.
Natalie waved, and slowly dropped her hand when the gesture was ignored.
Bloody snob, she thought. I hope a witch turns your scotch to milk.
* * *
Chapter 6
The afternoon, then, was a dreary repetition of the morning’s tedium and Mrs. Hall’s none-too-subtle interference into her life. Several times, the iron-haired woman made passing references to dalliances in the stacks and the library as a seraglio; and when Natalie was on the floor double-checking inventory or going through the Fine list with Miriam, she looked up to see the Director staring down at her from the gallery. “The crow’s nest,” the staff called the overhang, but she’d never before appreciated the double edged meaning.
The day’s saving grace was, as usual, Miriam. Just prior to four, she asked if it would be all right to take on the night shift duties. “I’ve got some studying to do for this stupid course in anthropology I got talked into, Nat,” she explained, tugging nervously at her hair. “I can close up and handle the late comers. Honest.”
Surprisingly, her black eyes had brimmed moistly.
“You,” Natalie said, “are a doll. I think if I stayed one more hour in this place I’d strangle the old bat.”
Miriam grinned and leaned against the counter, waiting until a matron left with an armful of children’s books. “I know what you mean,” she said in a stage whisper. “Believe me, I do. Hey, by the way, did you have a good time Saturday night?”
The question came in a rush, and Natalie looked up sharply at the abrupt change of subject. There was a hesitant suspicion instantly dismissed; she’d almost succeeded in relegating the night to selective memory.
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact I did. It was interesting, to say the least. You sure looked like you were enjoying yourself.” She tried a smile just this side of a leer and laughed aloud when the girl blushed.
“Mrs. Hall introduced us,” Miriam said shyly. “He is Mr. Toal’s nephew, I think. She said he needed some company his own age.”
“Nice work if you can get it.”
“Did you meet Mr. Toal?”
“Sort of.” Indeed, she thought. “I think we communicate on different levels, though. Money versus poverty, that sort of thing.”
Miriam nodded understanding. “I like your blouse,” she said, reaching out to pull gently at the flowered collar. “You know, ever since you started messing around with that Herald guy, you get nakeder and nakeder.”
Too astonished to say anything, she provoked a short laugh when she glanced down at herself. Her blouse was, in fact, open far enough to permit a provocative glimpse of winter pale skin, but ... nakeder? No. Looser would be a better word. Her hands strayed to her hips; her slacks, however, did fit slightly more snugly, and her skirts were perhaps shorter than she ordinarily wore them. But why not? Was there a law that prohibited a little innocent flaunting in a library? Miriam, she decided, was imagining things.
The girl continued to tease her, snickering until Natalie relented in self-defense and let her believe a trap was being laid for the unsuspecting reporter.
The voice was a shroud from above them, “Ladies, isn’t there enough work for you to do?”
They behaved, then, like guilty school girls, mumbling under the Director’s stare, giggling when they escaped out of sight in the stacks. And when, ten minutes later, Mrs. Hall joined them to mutter about social improprieties and potentials for gossip, Natalie told her she was leaving early and the younger girl would be taking her place.
“Well, I don’t know ... might it not be better ... “
“Mrs. Hall, I have a splitting headache, and there’s nothing down here now that has to be done that Miriam can’t do. Believe me, it’s all right.”
The Director made a pantomime of conflict, yielded and turned her shark’s grin to Miriam as a gesture of trust none of them knew was genuine. Then she asked Natalie for the pass key. “Mine has been misplaced, dear,” she said lamely. “I’ll return it to you in the morning.”
Furious, she yanked the key from its holder and nearly tossed it into Mrs. Hall’s outstretched h
and. Wisely, Miriam kept silent while Natalie retrieved her coat, said her good-bys and left.
Tomorrow, she promised as she stood outside the building. Tomorrow will be better. I’ll tell Marc all about it, and he’ll tell me what I did wrong and why I shouldn’t be so angry and why there is no reason on earth why I shouldn’t turn right around and put a fist into the old hag’s nose.
A hand went automatically to button her coat, stalled, and dropped to her side. Oddly, the temperature seemed higher than it had been at lunchtime, and as she watched fog began to turn the night sky starless; there were no puffs of wind, no banks of grey rolling in from the empty fields-only a light mist settled. The street lamps became hazy with faint blue halos, and the edges of neon signs blurred as though seen under water. The traffic had reversed itself and, with several stores geared to a five-o’clock closing, the Pike momentarily engaged in a charade of a rush hour. The checker players had left, and the benches were deserted except for a boy and his girl, giggling, tickling, apparently reluctant to end the school day and separate.
“Jealous?”
She turned, a curse dying on her lips as the glass door hissed shut and Miriam made a mocking face before running back into the library’s shadows. One of these days I’ll kill that girl, she thought, and thrust back the vagrant accusation that the truth was beginning to hurt.
A step down, and she hesitated. The fog was thickening rapidly, having already erased the opposite side of the street and transformed the traffic into slow-motion cat creatures prowling behind diffused torches. It was, suddenly, an unpleasant thought: to return home in the fog, and have only the light in the kitchen, the living room, the stairwell. The night’s warmth took on a paradoxical chill. She thought of the graveyard.
Yanking at her collar, feeling beads of moisture weighing the fur down over her shoulders, she walked around the library to Centre Street and headed for the luncheonette. A plate of lasagna, a cup or two of espresso, and she would be able to face the dark street, and the hurricane fence.
The luncheonette was only at the next corner, but Natalie crossed the street before reaching it. A patrol car had sped past, drawing her eyes to Bradford’s jewelry store. A connection was made, and curiosity made her act.
She stood under the mansard roof’s overhang. The store was empty. When she entered, the warning chime sounded solemnly hollow. Several of the display cases were already covered in black velvet for the night, but now she had a purpose in her search, and she was impatient for Mrs. Bradford to pop out of her rabbit hole in the back. When she did, however, she was wearing a plastic raincoat and fussing with the folds of a collapsible hat.
“Mrs. Windsor!”
Natalie shrugged an apology. “I didn’t know you were closing, Mrs. Bradford.”
“I didn’t either,” she said, sourly, bustling around the case and, without appearing to be rude, herding her back toward the door, “but my husband called to remind me we have a dinner party to attend tonight. There are some customers one doesn’t dare to ignore, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I just wanted to ask you something.”
Mrs. Bradford stopped her maneuvering and rummaged in her handbag. “Stupid keys,” she muttered. “Well, go ahead, my dear, be my guest.”
“My brother ... rather, Chief Windsor. I was talking to him this afternoon, and he said … he said he bought a ring from you recently.”
“He did?” She added a frown to her wrinkles, then shook her head.
“A gold ring?” Natalie prompted. “Two ruby chips with a silver inset between them? It’s not a common design, I think.”
“No,” Mrs. Bradford said. ‘‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Windsor, but I really don’t think the Chief purchased it from us. It sounds specially made, and we try not to handle accounts like that. They cost too much.”
Natalie would have protested her lie further, but she found herself out on the sidewalk again, staring dumbly while the jeweler’s wife extinguished the lights and set the alarms. She waved, then, at the woman’s departing back, and recrossed the street to enter the luncheonette.
It was a five minute wait before she could get a booth to herself, not wanting to spend time on a stool at the counter, and another five before a harried waitress was able to take her order. Between times, she wondered how she’d managed to come up with such a lie, and why Mrs. Bradford’s answer displeased her. There were, after all, half a dozen other stores along the street he could have been to.
Dumb, she told herself, and passed all thought into limbo while she ate and watched the customers slip in out of the fog, clean their plates, empty their cups, joke with the counterman and take their exits at the sound of the register. More hungry than she realized, she ordered a second helping of the over spiced pasta and, when she’d done, held the espresso cup to her lips and sipped as slowly as she could.
You’re stalling, Natalie Windsor.
The luncheonette emptied. The fluorescent lights embedded in the ceiling took on a softer glow that reflected off the fog that had completely washed out the view from the store’s long front window. Like characters in a shadow play, pedestrians slipped past with shoulders hunched and hats pulled low over faces. Couples huddled as though for warmth. Another patrol car ghosted by, identified only by its blue flashing lights.
You are stalling, Natalie Windsor.
She was sitting against the back wall, partially concealed by a rack of paperbacks running heavily to romances and Westerns. Occasionally, a customer would paw listlessly through them with scarcely a glance in her direction. Less frequently, the waitress would remember where she was and, without walking all the way back, raise an eyebrow, moving only when Natalie lifted an empty cup. Stalling, maybe, but enjoying the show, feeling the library and Mrs. Hall’s accusations shatter to dust. She was feeling relaxed.
And anxious.
For Marc.
One more day, she thought, then blinked away a daydream when Simon Bains took a seat at the counter and ordered a slice of pie and a cup of coffee. The waitress, poking suddenly at her unkempt hair and pulling at her apron, was obviously surprised to see the banker so long after hours. Her lips moved, and though Natalie could not hear the question, the answer was clear enough. Bains was angry, and disgusted.
“Directors’ meeting tonight,” he snapped, and drank his coffee as though it were a double shot of scotch. He reached into his raincoat and pulled out a handkerchief to dab at his lips. “It’s a lousy business, you know. You work late when you don’t want to, and it’s too blasted late to go home for a decent meal without you having to rush to get back. So here I have to stay. Blast! You ever have a Directors’ meeting?”
Again the waitress’s voice was too low to hear, and Bains’s added comment was muffled by the action of the handkerchief.
Natalie surveyed the imported coat, the handmade shoes, the careful lay of Bains’s long black hair. She shook her head. You live a hard life, Simon old crock, she thought.
She was considering calling out a greeting when, pursuing his anger, Bains dipped into his trouser pocket to scoop out a fistful of change which he slapped on the counter. There was a space of several seconds, then, when the tableau froze: the waitress quickly totaling the money with her eyes; Bains in the act of rising; Natalie staring at his hand; the light catching and starring the ruby chips on the ring he was wearing.
* * *
A single peculiar ring was not to be questioned. It was. It existed. In the shoe box in the den. Two, and because it was Sam’s, was odd but not worrisome. Three, however, transformed that oddity into the commonplace, and there was nothing common about the design of that ring.
Reluctantly, she shuffled through memories, searching for the first time she’d seen Ben’s ring. The moment eluded her, more as she searched and finally she told herself to let it go, that it would come eventually.
And as she paid her bill and buttoned her coat, it did.
Ben had been part of an escort at some forgotten merchant’s
funeral. Supposedly, it had been his day off, one of two before he moved to the night shift, and he’d spent most of the morning polishing his brass and turning his boots into blackly embossed mirrors. A call had come — and he’d dashed out into the rain. When he returned, he was wearing the ring, sheepishly admitting he’d hoped it would add something to his image. She’d teased him so much he’d only worn it a couple of times afterward. At least, she’d always believed it was a result of her teasing.
She stepped into the fog, blinking at the dampness, frowning at the temperature that had twisted back on itself again.
The collar pushed into her face as she walked. There was still a light in the library, and she was tempted to drop in on Miriam to help her pass the time. Tempted, but only that, and she quickened her steps toward home. If it hadn’t been for Bains, she would have succumbed, but she knew the girl’s bright chatter would have only aggravated an irrational disquiet. A truck startled her by blaring through the fog, and she was briefly reminded of a locomotive barreling through midnight across an open field, blasting its horn at a crossing deserted by everything except the stars.
At Fox Road she paused before attempting to cross the Pike. She felt as though she were floating. The bulbs of the street lights were disembodied. Her breathing was amplified. Water dripped slowly into the gutter from an invisible tree.
She was halfway over when she froze.
A grumbling. Pitched too high to be a truck, not high enough for an automobile. In the road’s dark island center the fog was a clammy dusting on her cheeks, but thick enough to prevent headlights’ penetration. She ran, sensed the curb and slowed, nearly stumbling when her shoes slid in the gutter.
Suddenly, she was blinded. Headlights exploded. She threw an arm over her eyes, whipped it down when she realized the vehicle was swerving. She had time enough to think a drunk! before uttering a short gasping scream. She spun blindly on the sidewalk, as the headlights pulled the grumbling behind them, bounced when they struck the curb and canted wildly as the vehicle raced toward the center of town. There were no taillights.
The Hour of the Oxrun Dead (Necon Classic Horror) Page 9
