Ariadne's Thread

by Marie Treanor

  Gavin grimaced. “Tammy’s ex. Thrown the cat among the pigeons. Your accomplices are running scared,” he added with a sneering glance at the girl.

  Addie swallowed. It was so time to leave. She asked Johnny, “Did Malky start the car?”

  Johnny shrugged. His gaze was on his sister, whose eyes were slowly opening. Since her head was turned that way, she saw Addie first and leapt suddenly into her arms, clutching her shoulders convulsively.

  “It got me again, didn’t it?” she whispered.

  “I rather think it did,” Addie agreed, awkwardly patting the other woman’s back. As if embarrassed, Tammy transferred her hug to Johnny and only then, over his shoulder, did she catch sight of Gavin.

  There was an odd little pause. Then Gavin said, “Tammy.” And she moved to hug him, too, just as another figure appeared in the doorway.

  Inspector Daniel Newton.

  Tammy didn’t leave Gavin’s embrace, but she did say, “Hello,” in a slightly strange voice.

  “Hello yourself,” said Dan mildly. He held a glass of something muddy in one hand. Raising it for notice, he observed, “Anti-ghost medication, apparently. Courtesy of old Lady Maxwell.”

  Tammy detached herself and sat up, regarding the glass somewhat dubiously.

  Johnny said, “I wouldn’t drink any of that old witch’s potions. You’ll be sick as a dog.”

  Without further encouragement, Tammy snatched the glass from Dan and drank it down in one. “Ugh.”

  “Told you,” said Johnny, apparently pleased. Tammy stuck her tongue out at him, and Addie struggled to match up her fears, his confession, of what he was, with this amiable sibling by-play.

  “You want to get an exorcist in here,” Dan remarked.

  Gavin snorted, but Tammy said with feeling, “Bloody right. It’s time, Johnny. We should get rid of them all.”

  Johnny shrugged. “We can’t, unless they want to go. Anyway, most of them are harmless. Kit thinks something bad’s got hold of Julia. And Julia keeps leading it to you.”

  Tammy glanced at Gavin. “Oops,” she said feebly. “And here was me thinking Julia was the one person who couldn’t be pissed off by me and Gavin.”

  ef

  Did you really kill your wife? Or did you just say it to see how I’d react?

  The question trembled on the edge of Addie’s lips as she and Johnny walked downstairs. But she never spoke it. The silence was too loud. Desperate to escape the madness of this place, to get back to Kate, she already ached with the loss of it. Not just Johnny, whom she could never have in any meaningful sense, but the stories that would go on without her—the malevolent spirit, Tammy’s love triangle…

  As they neared the ground floor hall, she could hear old Lady Maxwell muttering and talking, the sound of a walking stick tapping across the wooden floor. A moment later, she limped past, leaning heavily on her stick, yet still surprisingly straight in her posture. Beside her glided the ghost of her husband.

  “Why don’t you just shove off, reprobate?” she snarled at him.

  “I enjoy your affectionate chatter,” came back his thin, distant voice.

  The old lady snorted.

  “Jemima, don’t be like that, I forgive you!”

  “Ha! You forgive me? Big of you! But irrelevant, because most assuredly I do not forgive you.”

  Jim, standing by the sitting room door, stood aside to let her pass him. Glancing at Addie, he lifted his finger to his forehead to denote the universal gesture for insanity. To him, she was just an old lady stumping along muttering to herself, like ancient Mrs. Brown upstairs from Mum. He didn’t even blink as Christopher passed right through him in pursuit of his wife.

  Addie scowled at Jim, and he grinned and went back into the room. She asked, “What is it with these two? Does she really hate him so much?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Johnny. “She hates him all right. Loves him, too. Which is why the old witch won’t die, and why Kit won’t pass on.”

  “But if she died, she’d be with him surely?”

  “Ah, not after what she did. She thinks she’d go to hell.”

  Addie paused on the last step to glance back at him. “What in the world did she do?”

  “Well…” He hesitated only a moment, then one of his twisted smiles dawned and he told her. “It’s a bit of a family secret. You probably heard that Christopher Maxwell died in a tragic hunting accident.”

  “Yes, I vaguely remember that.”

  “Well, he didn’t. Jemima shot him.”

  Addie closed her mouth. Certainly there was very little frail about that old lady. “Why?” she asked faintly.

  Johnny shrugged. “He was—ah—playing away from home. She lost it and blew him away. The family covered it up, spun the police some yarn, and she got away with it. At least,” he added thoughtfully, “Tammy hasn’t shot Dan. Yet.”

  “Ah,” said Addie, understanding more. She began to move on toward the living room. “But she still wants him.”

  “I think so. But our family has a bad habit of self-destruction. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “Mine, too,” sad Addie ruefully.

  “Addie.” He drew her back against the wall, next to the broken grandfather clock, and suddenly, without touching her, he was too close. Heat spread upward from her toes, and lust coiled through her abdomen like a snake. “Ariadne.” His voice was husky now. His mouth was near enough to kiss; she could make out every tiny crease in his full, sensitive lips. His body touched her, hip to hip, breast to breast. “I have this terrible urge to self-destruct with you.”

  She wanted him naked, just like that, pressing against her, so that if she just spread her legs and stood on tip-toe he could push inside her… She wanted him for hours, forever, to make him happy and take away his pain. To take away her own.

  “Aw right, Addie?”

  With a gasp, she pushed Johnny away and saw Malky standing in his coat in the middle of the hallway.

  “Aye, fine,” she mumbled. “Did the car start?”

  “Naw. But we can maybe coax it.”

  “No point,” said Jim from the sitting room. “Radio Teuchter’s just said the road south from Loch Foy is still impassable.”

  ef

  The day wore on, surely one of the strangest New Year’s Days any of them had ever spent. Helen surprised everyone by rustling up a rather tasty risotto for lunch, and they ate in uneasy truce in the sitting room with plates balanced on their knees. No one accepted her offer of wine.

  To the burglars, the sudden appearance of a traumatized small boy passed almost without comment. Like just one more inexplicable event that didn’t appear to threaten them directly. And for the child’s sake, the family toned down their animosity, which seemed somehow to communicate to the burglars. Even Shug behaved with moderation. Jack himself recovered quickly, as children often do, especially after Tammy reappeared downstairs.

  After lunch, Gavin and Dan followed Malky outside and in an unholy alliance helped him push the car up the drive from the road. A little while later, Addie glanced out of the window and saw Johnny and Malky with their heads together under the bonnet. Dan sat in the driving seat. Jim was shouting advice from the sidelines, and even Uncle Herbert ambled out for a look. All seemed focused on the one thing: making the car go, an aim that obviously surpassed such petty matters as robbery and rivalry in love.

  “What is it with men and motorcars?” Tammy wondered, wandering over to regard proceedings with discontent. Although she, too, seemed more or less recovered from the morning’s strange attack, she still looked weak and washed out.

  “Are you all right?” Addie asked.

  Tammy shrugged. “Gran says I’ll be fine if I keep taking the medicine. Which is harder than you might think—it tastes like shit… Addie, do you know about ghosts and stuff?”

  “Not me. Ghosts don’t hang around in Glasgow.”

  “Bollocks. But you can see our ghosts, can’t you?”

  Addie nodded.
>
  “Can you hear them, too?”

  “I heard Christopher. Why?”

  She shifted restlessly. “I don’t remember hearing them, even when I was small. In my memory, they never speak, just are. But Julia…” She broke off, frowning. “I had the oddest feeling she was talking to me, only I couldn’t understand what she said.”

  “Die, bitch?” Addie suggested, and Tammy gave a snort of surprised laughter.

  “Well that’s the weird thing: it didn’t feel like ‘die, bitch’. It felt like…a warning. Only I don’t know of what. I thought you might have heard something.”

  Addie shook her head. “No, I didn’t. Christopher said there’s very little of Julia there, though…is she trying to warn you of something and dragging this malevolent thing with her unknowingly?”

  Tammy shrugged. “Maybe. But why me? If Julia doesn’t hate me, why should it?”

  “Maybe it just hates everyone, but Julia keeps taking it to you.”

  “Just to warn me about it?” Tammy said skeptically. “Or about your Psycho-Weasel, or something else entirely? Again, why me?”

  “I’d talk to your family about that. This stuff is way beyond my ken.”

  Tammy gave a lopsided smile. “Weirdest house you ever robbed, eh?”

  “Weirdest house, period.”

  “You’ve got that right, Bad Hair. I mean, what the fuck is Johnny doing helping to fix your car?”

  Addie shrugged. “Gets rid of us faster.”

  “Not unless he drives the snow plough as well.”

  “Believe me, I’d drive the bloody snow plough all the way to Glasgow,” Addie said bitterly and swung away. As she did so, she caught sight of a mobile phone abandoned on the table. Dan Newton must have left it there when he went back out to the car. It spoke volumes for Shug’s new relaxation—or for his lack of sleep—that he hadn’t noticed it. Anyone could have called the police with it. Anyone still could.

  Or they could phone their daughter.

  Addie glanced out of the window, at Dan who was cheering because finally they’d started the car. She glanced again at the phone.

  “Addie, you’ve just robbed us. Don’t tell me you’re worrying about borrowing a phone?”

  Addie’s gaze flew to Tammy’s. “You’d be surprised the things that worry me,” she observed and, picking up the phone, she walked quickly out of the room, past the rather charming vignette of old Lady Maxwell asleep in her winged armchair, with young Jack, also sleeping, curled into her arm.

  The phone still had some charge, enough to get through to her mother. Enough to hear the tears in Kate’s voice because she wouldn’t be home. Not enough to soothe her or to make aloud the promises in her heart.

  Addie stared rather blindly across the empty hall. Only it wasn’t entirely empty. The two ghosts she’d first seen this morning, the naked one and the kilted one, hovered outside the door next to the sitting room. The polished brass knob gleamed liked a beacon through one misty, naked thigh. The kilted ghost seemed to be beckoning to her.

  Only yesterday, Addie thought, she’d have run a mile in the opposite direction. Today, although her heart beat loudly, she allowed herself to walk toward the ghosts. They seemed pleased, urging her to go in through the closed door.

  Wary, because she really didn’t want to meet Julia again, Addie turned the handle and peered into the dining room.

  Shug and Gavin whipped round and stared at her.

  Shug was leaning against a chair arm, Gavin standing nearby as if they’d been engaged in quiet conversation.

  Shug and Gavin?

  “What do you want?” Shug demanded.

  “There you are,” Addie observed. “You’d have been better off in the front room, where you might have noticed this lying around.” She waved Dan’s now dead phone in the air. “PC Plod’s. And by the way, the car’s going.”

  So, however, was the light. The short, northern day was heading to a close; the roads would freeze up again. Probably. Yet as Addie strolled out of the room, their prospective getaway was not at the forefront of her mind. Rather, what in hell had Shug to discuss in private with Gavin?

  Something the ghosts wanted her to know about.

  The ghosts, of course, could be mischievous or malevolent. They could be a figment of her imagination. After all, life just now was a tad surreal; she couldn’t rely on any of it being the truth. If she was insane, it would be so much easier. And the courts might deal more leniently with her.

  Shite.

  Gavin wanted the house for some purpose of his own. If you could believe Helen. Gavin wanted Tammy. Julia was warning Tammy and dragging some evil spirit with her. Where did Shug fit into any of that?

  Shug was robbing Tammy’s family, Tammy’s house. Robbing to order, the order of someone in Glasgow. Not Gavin. She was sure there had been no recognition between them when they’d first pushed their way into the sitting room in the early hours of the morning. Someone Shug was afraid of, though, some criminal Mr. Big.

  Was Mr. Big the middle man? Someone Gavin knew socially who could order around people like Shug and her stupid brother?

  The front door flew open and a gaggle of men fell inside, stamping their boots on the mat, rubbing their hands together, exchanging banter with apparently perfect camaraderie.

  “Car’s going,” Jim told her. “We can be off as soon as the road’s passable.”

  “Won’t be tonight,” Dan said regretfully.

  “First thing tomorrow,” Johnny suggested. “I think there’ll be a thaw.”

  “Weather man as well now, aye?” sneered Shug, hirpling past with Lady Maxwell’s walking stick.

  “Aye,” said Johnny. He looked like a member of a completely different species from Shug. Tall, windswept and wild, still wearing last night’s kilt and shirt under his leather jacket, he was handsome enough to make any female knees turn to jelly. More than that, despite the upward sloping devil’s eyebrows that gave him such a predatory look, there wasn’t a mean bone in his body. Shug was all meanness.

  Where had that come from?

  So far as she knew Shug didn’t yet count murder among his crimes. According to the man himself, John Maxwell did.

  Was Julia warning Tammy about her own brother?

  She pushed that aside, because she wanted to. Instead, catching Johnny’s eye, she walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Clattering cups and teapots, she was vaguely aware of footsteps shambling into the distance, fading voices and mutterings as everyone retreated into the warmth of the sitting room.

  She knew he was there; she felt him. But something, shyness or perhaps shame, kept her back to him while she stared blindly at the kettle, waiting for it to boil. She had an instant’s warning, a faint breath of his warm, spicy scent and then his arms slid round her from behind, cupping her breasts in both hands. She gasped, twisting her head round instinctively to warn him, but before the words got out, his mouth covered hers and they were lost.

  His kiss overwhelmed her, turning her bones to water and her brains to jelly. All she wanted was more of him, his hands tenderly kneading her breasts through her thick sweater, in perfect time with his tongue in her mouth. Only when he came up for breath could she force her brain to function beyond blind lust.

  “Wait, wait,” she gasped, warding him off at the same time as her mouth followed his of its own volition and claimed it back. He cooperated with enthusiasm, but only briefly, before he broke the kiss once more.

  “Wait for what?”

  “I—I want to know about Gavin.”

  “Gavin?” Something died in his eyes. He straightened, his arms loosening enough to let her turn.

  “Does he really want this house?”

  Johnny dropped his arms and reached around her for the kettle. His nearness, his warm, brushing touch made her weak with desire. She wanted to grab him before he could answer, bring back whatever it was that had vanished when she spoke the other man’s name. Renewed shyness—or perhaps the boiling kettle�
�discouraged her.

  Johnny said, “Well, he offered to buy it once, why?”

  “What did you say?”

  “We all said no. It’s a pig to keep up, but it’s ours. Besides, Jemima would expire without Kit to annoy her. Somehow I can’t see her—or my mother—in an Edinburgh semi.”

  “What about you?”

  His lips twisted, though he continued to pour water into the teapot. “There are times I would give both hands to be free of this place.”

  He tried to make it light, but she heard the intensity in his voice. For some reason, it shocked her.

  “Then why don’t you?”

  Because of them. Helen and Herbert and Jemima. Even the ghosts. He glanced up, putting the lid squarely on the pot, and she knew he would never say the words. It didn’t make them less true.

  He said, “Other days, I like to be haunted. Why are you asking about Gavin?”

  “What does he do? Does he have dodgy friends?”

  Johnny’s breath caught. “We all have dodgy friends. Do you mean underworld acquaintances? Such as…”

  “Such as us, yes,” she said evenly.

  Johnny stared at her. Several expressions flitted across his face so quickly she couldn’t read them. “You think Gavin ordered this robbery?”

  “Why else would he be in confab with Shug? I just can’t work out what he gets out of your loss. What use is your music to him? Christopher’s he could sell, but yours?”

  Johnny drew in his breath. It seemed to catch. “I think…you may be on to something. We’re running out of money. I need to work or we’ll have to sell anyway in the spring. That’s why I let Liz arrange this ‘come-back’ tour. My concerto was meant to be the central piece. Perhaps he thought I’d give up if the concerto went missing. Despite what I say about it being in my head, it’s never the same twice. It might work, it might not. Or maybe he plans to publish it early as someone else’s work—and I’d be disgraced all over again. Either way, we end up skint, we have to sell, and he gets the chance to buy it for his bloody health farm.”

  “Fat young women with too much money. Men with muscles and no soul…” Addie quoted softly. A health farm. Made sense when you thought about it.