Rey jerked his arm free, his simmering anger turning into overwhelming fury at her for embarrassing him. “Tess, stop it and leave,” he said with deadly quiet.
She drew back slightly, blinked through hurt feelings, drew herself up, and announced, “When I brought Christine home from the hospital this morning, we found a dead rat in her refrigerator!”
“You found what?”
Tess’s face lit up. She now had his full attention. “A rat. A big rat. It was in her hydrator. I’ve never seen anything so gross. It’s been dead a couple of days and stank to high heavens in spite of the cold air.”
Rey put down his shovel. “I have to go check on her.”
“Check on Christine?” Tess frowned. “Why?”
“To see if she’s all right. Someone might still be in her house.”
“Bethany was there, too. The three of us checked every room, every closet. There was no one.”
“I still think I should go.”
Tess put her hands on her hips. “I ask you to stop this ridiculous shoveling and come home with me and you say no. You hear some little thing’s gone wrong at Chris’s and you’re ready to fly to her rescue.”
“I don’t call someone breaking into her house and putting a rat in the refrigerator a little thing, especially after she was attacked yesterday.”
“But she’s all right. I told you that. Besides, she was going to call the police. They’ve probably already been there and gone.” She gave him a close look. “Why are you so concerned about Chris?”
“Because she’s my friend. And yours.” Tess’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, for God’s sake, you’re not going to get jealous over Christine, are you? Can’t I show simple friendship to a woman without you going nuts?”
“I am not going nuts.” Each word came out slowly, like the toll of a doleful bell. “I just don’t understand your hysteria over Christine.”
“Hysteria?” By now Rey’s friend was wandering away, looking for any constructive activity that would remove him from the quarreling couple. “You’re the one prone to hysteria, not me,” Rey said coldly.
Tess’s cell phone rang and she jerked it from the pocket of her jacket. “Yeah, what is it?” Her face went still. “Sorry, Mom. I’m a little out of sorts this morning. What do you need?”
While Tess listened, tapping her foot and chewing on a thumbnail, Rey went back to shoveling. “Well, why can’t Tom help?” Tess finally asked, referring to her brother. More tapping. More chewing. Then a grimace. “Oh, okay. I’ll be there as soon as possible. And calm down. Have a drink or take a tranquilizer—” Tess closed her eyes. “I was joking, Mom. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
She jammed the phone back in her pocket. “Mom’s basement is flooding. She needs someone to help her move stuff upstairs and Tom, as usual, is busy. Working on his sermon for Sunday service, he says. Can’t be torn away! Anyway, I want you to come and help me, Rey.”
Rey sighed. “First you claim I’m exhausted and you want me to quit working here, then you want me to spend hours at your mother’s rearranging her basement. Even if I had the energy, you know she can’t stand me.”
“You’re Catholic. She doesn’t trust Catholics. And you’re an artist. She thinks all artists are gay.”
“And I married you to hide my shameful secret, something a shifty Catholic would do. Such a warm and accepting soul your religious mother has. Anyway, I won’t be able to do anything to suit her, and then you two will get in a fight because she won’t stop griping at me.” Rey tried to make his voice less resentful: “Tess, dear, I’ll work here just a little longer, then go home, take a shower, and get some rest like you wanted me to. If you call Tom, you can intimidate him into giving you a hand with your mother. You can intimidate him into anything.” Tess smiled, taking this as a compliment as he knew she would. “Okay, cara mia ?”
Tess put her hand firmly on his arm. “Okay, but promise me you won’t stay here much longer. An hour, tops.”
“I promise.”
“I’m going to call home in an hour and a half to make sure you kept that promise.”
“I told you I’m going to try to get some sleep. How am I supposed to do that with you calling me?”
She frowned. “Okay. I guess you’re on your honor.” Reynaldo felt vastly relieved his friend hadn’t heard this last remark, which would have been more appropriately made to an eight-year-old.
She pulled Rey toward her and kissed him full on the lips, then plodded off through the mud. For the first time in years, Rey felt like hugging his harridan of a mother-in-law. Because she was dragging Tess away from him and would keep her busy for hours, he could quit shoveling, leave the riverbank, and have the whole afternoon without Tess breathing down his neck. And he had plans.
3
Patricia brushed her long hair, touched up her bisque eye shadow, and applied a layer of lipstick called Nude Blush. The makeup looked so subtle she appeared to be wearing no makeup at all. Actually, the artificial enhancement made her look twice as good as she did without it, and looking good was of utmost importance to her this afternoon.
She withdrew the note from her lacy bra and looked at it for the fifth time:
Meet me at the barn at 1:00 Thursday. Romance among the horses!
The note looked worn. He must have carried it around a day or two before finding a chance to place it under the statue in Eve’s “magic” garden. When Patricia had first visited the garden while Eve was still alive, she’d admired the statue of Venus. Her companion, a haughty twelve-year-old Dara, had informed her the statue was of Persephone in a tone that said Patricia must be a complete idiot not to know Greek mythology, so Patricia had not asked the identity of Persephone but waited and looked her up in a book of myths. Even years later, she never looked at the statue without remembering the disdain in Dara’s voice and eyes. She’d come to dislike the statue until he’d whispered to her one night that he’d left a note for her under it. Notes left beneath the statue had become a ritual now.
Patricia went to her bedroom window, once Eve’s bedroom window, and looked down at the garden. It looked rather pathetic now, but within a month it would be beautiful. After Eve’s death, Dara had looked after it. Then Dara vanished, and within six months the place had fallen into neglect.
To her surprise, Patricia had decided she couldn’t let the garden destroy itself. Bethany, whom she’d met through Christine, had come to her rescue. Patricia knew Bethany felt no particular affection for her, but she didn’t want to see the garden ruined. She’d told Patricia she’d help restore the garden, although she knew little about the herbs Eve had grown there for use in her Wiccan rituals. “We’ll just let those die,” Bethany had said. “I get scared even thinking about witchcraft, much less growing stuff to use in spells.” That had been fine with Patricia, not only because she thought Wicca was ridiculous but also because the death of the herbs made the lovely garden seem more hers than Eve’s.
Last fall Bethany had helped her select over 200 new bulbs for the garden. They would begin blooming soon. Patricia hoped the mischievous Pom-Pom wouldn’t decide the garden was an excellent place for digging. At age eleven he’d suddenly developed a voracious curiosity and started digging and burrowing and nosing into every space that was unfamiliar to him. Patricia loved the little dog beyond reason, but she regretted his new inquisitiveness, regretted it deeply, especially after what had happened two weeks ago.
Her hands began to tremble a bit at the memory. She pushed an image from her mind and flipped her thick hair over her shoulder, then went back to the mirror, inspecting herself closely. Yes, she could easily pass for twenty-nine, she thought. But did it really matter to him that she wasn’t twenty-nine? How many men were romantic enough to consistently place notes in “magic” gardens? He was fun and smart and sexy, and she knew he thought of her as fun and smart and sexy. And young. “You seem so much younger than your years,” he always said admiringly. “How could a dried-up prune like Ames Prin
ce ever appreciate you?” And wasn’t he proving how desirable he found her by taking such risks to see her? After all, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have anything to lose.
How lucky she was to have days to herself, she mused. A woman came in to clean twice a week, but that was Patricia’s only interruption since Jeremy went to work at Prince Jewelry almost a year ago. She’d been relieved to not have him underfoot constantly. Not that he’d been particularly bothersome. He’d spent most of his time in the basement recreation room watching television, practicing pool, that he could never come close to really playing, listening to music, singing his heart out into his karaoke machine. That last activity he’d shared with Dara.
Patricia used to resent all the fun they’d seemed to be having, singing along with records, taping each other, making up songs—although Jeremy’s were always simple and repetitive. That was when Patricia had begun to think of how much better her life could be if Dara should die. Then, after Dara mercifully had exited their lives, one day he’d asked Patricia to join him. She’d already indulged in two scotches on the rocks and was feeling warm and generous, so she’d agreed. Her voice had jumped and cracked. Her mother had always told her she had the voice of a baby crow. Jeremy had told her she had a pretty voice. She knew it wasn’t true, but he’d wanted to please her and she’d been so touched she’d joined him a few other times.
No, Jeremy’s presence hadn’t bothered Patricia nearly as much as she’d pretended. But she’d needed her privacy. Under the best of circumstances, extramarital affairs were tricky business. They were even harder to manage with someone like a curious Jeremy wandering around constantly, inadvertently stumbling onto knowledge he shouldn’t have. Knowledge that was dangerous to her.
Patricia checked her clothes in the full-length mirror across from her bed. A blue silk turtleneck sweater, tight khaki pants, low-heeled leather boots, a casual denim barn jacket. Just in case she had an unknown observer, she wanted to look as if she were merely going to the barn to spend time with the horses, Sultan and Fatima.
Pom-Pom was nowhere to be found, so she couldn’t shut him in a room so he wouldn’t follow her. Maybe he was sleeping in a hiding place like Dara’s cat, Rhiannon, used to do. Patricia glanced at her watch and saw she had no more time to look for him. She’d be a couple of minutes late as it was.
Outside no rain fell, but the air felt heavy, wet, and chilly. Patricia hated this weather. Some people said there was beauty in all God’s seasons. She didn’t believe it. She didn’t believe in God, either, although her mother had insisted on regular church attendance and Patricia had suffered through more boisterous revival meetings than she cared to remember.
But being a woman of faith had not helped her mother hold on to a husband who’d absconded with all their savings and another woman. It hadn’t protected her mother’s adored son from dying of leukemia at ten or her elder daughter from death by a heroin overdose when she was twenty. Nor had faith given her peace, health, or happiness. Patricia’s mother was a bitter, depressed, hopeless woman with congestive heart failure and rheumatoid arthritis and a remaining child she didn’t like. Patricia only visited her mother when the woman was in particularly bad shape, and even then she knew her presence was neither really wanted nor appreciated, just grudgingly endured.
And Ames doesn’t want me, either, she thought as she strode across the lawn. He hadn’t touched her sexually for years, and even those first encounters after their marriage had been quick and passionless. She’d known when she married him he didn’t love her, but she’d thought his long abstinence because of Eve’s illness, coupled with her own lovely face and body, would evoke his ardor. They hadn’t. And after Dara disappeared, he’d dropped all pretense of sexual attraction to Patricia. That was when loneliness and a shriveling ego had driven her to take lovers.
But now she didn’t have just a lover—she had actually found love, and it felt wonderful. She thought of her lover constantly and dreamed of him frequently, awakening drenched in perspiration. She fantasized about when they would really be together, because that was what they both wanted. Their eventual union would be tricky. It would cause embarrassment, scandal, and maybe even reprisals, but it would happen. She knew it.
Patricia didn’t feel like worrying about any ugly details now, though. She wanted to look forward to her afternoon and forget last night when that good-looking deputy had come to the house. Ames had sent Patricia from his study like a child while he talked with Michael Winter, but she’d listened outside the door. Ames had been chilly as an autumn frost in the deputy’s presence, even when Winter asked him for the letters supposedly from Dara, even when Winter told him about being in possession of Dara’s diary. Ames had already known about the diary thanks to Jeremy. He demanded that the deputy return it. Winter had refused, claiming the diary was evidence, which Ames well knew. Ames, in turn, had coldly refused to give up Dara’s letters or even let Winter look at them. He’d bade the deputy a stony good night at the door and shut it quietly.
Within half an hour, though, Ames had drunk two glasses of brandy and turned into a different man. He’d spent most of the night pacing, talking to himself, and drinking. Ames rarely took so much as a glass of wine, and the strong brandy had a frightening effect on him. He cursed Christine as a traitor for giving the diary to the police. He’d yelled until Pom-Pom shivered. He dashed an expensive crystal ashtray into a fireplace. Patricia had taken refuge in her room, clutching the terrified Pom-Pom, knowing this was one night when she wouldn’t sleep. Ames’s ranting, threats against Christine, and eventual stormy sobbing over his lost daughter had made Patricia wonder if he was having a nervous breakdown. In the ten years since she’d met Ames, she’d never guessed he could be so fierce or so vengeful, and for the first time, she felt fear of him.
A bright red cardinal sitting on a fence post caught her eye. He cocked his head at her, and suddenly thoughts of Ames flew from her mind. In the summer, cardinals would flock to the garden feeders. Jewel-colored hummingbirds and gentle doves and obstreperous blue jays and melodious warblers would come. It would be lovely. And it would now be Patricia’s garden, no longer Eve’s.
As she walked the long path to the barn, which sat about a hundred yards from the house and was partially hidden from it by a stand of evergreens, Patricia was still careful not to look back. Ames had left hours ago and said he wouldn’t return until dark, but if for some reason he’d decided to come home early and spotted her headed to the barn while repeatedly looking over her shoulder, he might get suspicious. But she had no qualms about him coming to the barn without a good reason. Ames didn’t like horses, couldn’t even stand the smell of them. He’d probably only been in the barn a few times since it was built fifteen years ago. And Jeremy would be completely obsessed with the sandbagging operation. She didn’t have to worry about him following her like a faithful pet. No, all she really had to think about was seeing him. It had been almost two weeks and she longed for his touch, his smell, the aura of romance he created even more than she longed for the sex.
The dark red barn loomed in front of her. She hated the Pennsylvania Dutch hex symbols that decorated the outside. She thought they looked garish, but they had been Eve’s touch, so naturally Ames would not allow them to be removed. One looked like it was in danger of falling off. Good, Patricia thought. Maybe within the next couple of years they’d all drop to the ground, and Ames would never replace them. Of course, she wouldn’t be living here then, but she’d still like to see them all buried in the mud.
Abruptly the sun appeared through the low cloud layer and the landscape turned surprisingly bright. And cheerful. Patricia smiled. It’s shining for us, she thought, not caring that she was being silly and romantic. He made her feel silly and romantic, and she had no trouble believing the sun had emerged just for them.
Rather than opening the big main doors of the barn, Patricia entered the side door. The smell of hay and horses washed over her, and she breathed deeply. Unlike Ames, she
loved the scent of horses, and the boy they’d hired to tend to the animals kept the stalls scrupulously clean. A sophisticated ventilation system also prevented the unpleasant damp mustiness that could spoil hay. The barn was large, with a vaulted roof and a concrete floor. It was at least ten degrees cooler in here than outside, and she drew her barn jacket tighter around her.
Patricia saw no sign of her lover, yet, so she stopped to admire the horses, who’d neighed greetings as soon as she entered. She went first to her own horse, Sultan. He was gray, approximately fifteen hands, or sixty inches, tall, and weighed around nine hundred pounds. Patricia loved the Arabian, which research had taught her was the oldest recognized breed, similar to horses of Assyria and Egypt written about as early as 1,000 B.C. The lineage was impressive, but what she loved most about the Arabians was their intelligence and good nature. “Hello, my Sultan,” she crooned. “Have you missed me? The weather has just been too horrid for riding. Wait until the rain stops and the ground dries. Then we’ll fly like the wind.”
Sultan looked from side to side, pawed the floor of his stall, and nudged at her hand, blowing air out of his mouth and making his lips flap. As he’d expected, she brought out an apple from her pocket. “Not too many of these, my lad,” she said, “or you’ll be getting soft teeth.”
Next she moved to Fatima. Unlike Sultan, the smaller brown Fatima seemed downright nervous, looking around constantly. “What’s wrong, girl? Weather getting you down?” Patricia made a point of riding Fatima as much as she did Sultan because Dara was no longer here to care for her horse. Patricia knew she should have offered to let Christine ride Fatima, but she never had, not out of pettiness but out of convenience. Letting Christine ride the horses might encourage her to drop by during the day to ride, and Patricia needed her solitude. Maybe this summer I’ll invite her, Patricia thought, although that would be problematic if the barn was still being used as a rendezvous point for her and her lover. She hoped he would have his own place by then, a place she would be sharing with him in the next year.
If She Should Die Page 20
