In a voice that was a husky, electric mix of fury and frustration, he muttered, "Get upstairs — and get dressed — now."
He was right, of course. What was she doing, prancing around the kitchen half naked?
"All right!" she said. She dumped the cookbooks on the counter, the dishes in the sink, and then swung around to face him, her bottled-up confusion of emotions easily matching his own.
"But let me tell you this," she hissed. "That stupid barbed wire isn't worth squat! You got over it! He got over it! All you're getting for your effort is a possible case of lockjaw. And ... and let me tell you this," she added, more furious now than before. "It makes me feel like I'm in a federal prison! That's what all of us on this side feel like: a despised struggling working class, huddled in the shadow of your greatness. I'm embarrassed — do you hear me? — I'm embarrassed to have my friends come over and see that barbed wire. What kind of message does it send about my neighbors and me? We're all good people. We pay our bills. We have jobs, we have children, we love our parents, and we cut our lawns. Who do you think you are?"
"You're upset," he said in answer. "You're taking it out on the barbed wire."
"Who the hell," she repeatedly softly, "do you think you are?"
Without waiting for him to tell her — and she was sure he had a grand opinion he was just itching to express — Liz turned and went upstairs to dress.
She was pulling a sweat shirt over her T-shirt and jeans to ward off the waves of shivers that kept washing over her when she heard the deep rumble of a car engine much more powerful than any of the compact cars her neighbors owned. She glanced out over her window boxes. Yep. Newport's finest, as prompt as could be, despite it being their busy hour for arrests: bar-closing time.
She righted the lamp she'd knocked over earlier and thought how grateful she was that Susy was with her grandparents. Then she went back downstairs, dreading to see Jack Eastman's face. He'd shredded his hands in an effort to save her, and she'd responded like an ill-mannered, mean-spirited bitch. Her parents, who'd brought her up better than that, would've been scandalized by her ungrateful outburst.
Jack and two policemen were all standing in the living room, filling up most of the available space. It was odd, sensing so much testosterone coming from there. Ordinarily the room was filled with a soft feminine presence: Susy; Victoria; Liz's mother, who baby-sat so often. It was a room of ivory, rose, and grass-green colors; cold blue and gray and white didn't belong there at all.
The three men turned as one to look at her — The Victim — and Liz began immediately to blush. She had no intention of being the object of anyone's sympathy, even though part of her was so grateful for their protection that she wanted to dispense hugs all around. The younger of the officers, flashlight in hand, nodded to her and then headed for the back door.
"I know who did it," she announced with a lift of her chin.
"Yes, ma'am?" drawled the older officer, waiting patiently for more.
Liz glanced at Jack, who was watching her with a look fiery enough to scorch her eyebrows. He didn't like it at all, this B-movie revelation of hers. Well, too bad. She would've gladly told him her suspicions, if he hadn't been so busy treating her like a child.
"A young man named Grant Dade was here this afternoon, pestering me for access to some historical papers I found in the attic of this house, which I've just bought," she said calmly. "When I declined, he became angry and stalked off. A friend of mine was here at the time; we both had a bad feeling about him."
"Are any of these historical papers missing?" asked the officer.
"Well, no," Liz said, glancing at the shoeboxes stacked neatly on the hearth. The only shoebox missing was one Victoria had borrowed earlier. "I intercepted him before he got the chance."
"Mr. Eastman tells us you got a look at the perpetrator," the officer said carefully. "Were you able to make a positive identification?"
"Well, no," she said again. She gave them her description, such as it was, of the burglar, and then gave them a much better description of Grant Dade and of his whereabouts.
"For God's sake," said Jack, unable to contain himself any longer. "You mean to say you couldn't notice a foot- long ponytail on a man whose back was to you?"
Liz said coolly, "When I first saw him, he was dropping to your side of the fence in a stumble. He was bent over; the ponytail wouldn't have shown."
"You have no proof at all!" said Jack. "You're blaming an innocent man!"
"How do you know?" she asked.
He flushed and looked away.
The older officer cleared his throat. "Well, now, let's take this one thing at a time. I'll write up the report, and you can sign it, Mrs. Coppersmith, and then we'll see about having Mr. Dade in for questioning and to check his hands. Is there someplace I can—?"
Liz motioned the officer toward her kitchen desk, still sitting serenely in the middle of her mess. Maybe her mother was right after all: always do the dishes and straighten up before bedtime.
Jack said, "If you don't need me anymore, officer—"
"No, that's fine, Mr. Eastman. Thank you. And better see about those puncture wounds," he advised in a friendly way.
Liz turned to Jack and said, "Would you like a lift around? Or do you plan to go back the way you came?"
He glowered and said, "I'll walk, thanks." He added, "About our meeting tomorrow—"
Canceled, of course, she thought glumly. Give my regards to Bellevue.
"Under the circumstances, I think we ought to put it off a day. Same time Saturday all right with you? I'll be at the shipyard all day."
She nodded, feeling like a jerk. He'd behaved rationally through the whole thing, whereas she 'd been — well, a jerk. "Look, I want you to know ... I'm grateful," she murmured, bowing her head. "And sorry."
"Sure," he said curtly, and he left.
"At least let me pay for the shirt!" she called out as he hit the street.
He turned around. In the darkness, she couldn't see the expression on his face. But she was pretty sure she heard a snort before he turned and began walking away.
It annoyed her; everything about him annoyed her. She ran down the steps after him, ready and willing to take him on again. But it was too late; in the blink of an eye, he'd been swallowed up by the fog.
Liz turned on her heel and began marching back up her steps when she suddenly heard the chime-sound. But coming from where? From the pear tree? The holly bush? The inside of her head? She froze in place. She knew the sound so well. It was haunting her nighttime dreams and her daytime reveries. She knew it like the sound of her own thoughts.
She shuddered, unwilling to suffer any further torment on this endless night, and went inside.
Eventually the officers left, and Liz, jumpy as a cat now, began — at last — to attack the mess in her kitchen. It took five whole minutes. She could hear her mother's voice: Was that so hard? She was about to turn off the lights and head upstairs when she remembered the packet of letters that she'd hurled across the table earlier when Victoria was over.
The packet wasn't there anymore.
"I knew it!" she cried triumphantly.
Shit.
Chapter 8
Liz returned home the next morning from amending the Crime Report at the police station and found Victoria sitting on the front steps, shoebox on her lap.
Victoria, wearing a big straw hat and a lavender sundress, waved one of the letters at Liz as she pulled the minivan onto the graveled parking space. "Where have you been?" the redhead cried. "I have news!"
"I have news," Liz said grimly.
She got out of the van, pausing at the foot of the steps to take in her little cottage. It looked the same — just as sweet as could be, with its lemon-yellow paint, deep-green shutters, and white picket fence. The pink climbers on the rose arbor were in the last stages of bloom; she could smell the scent from where she stood. Even Victoria was the same, with her fey outfit set off by the ever-present heart-sh
aped pin. Everything was the same.
And nothing was the same.
Liz sat on the steps next to Victoria and brought her up to date on the events of the night before.
Openmouthed, Victoria said, "This is unreal! My God — do you think it was Grant Dade?"
"That's the message I left on Jack's machine this morning," Liz said, pulling off an espadrille from her foot and knocking out a stone. "Who else would want a packet of hundred-year-old letters?"
"Jack really climbed over the barbed wire for you?" Victoria asked in a dreamy voice. "How utterly romantic."
Liz said, "You wouldn't have thought so if you'd seen him—or me," she added wryly. "We looked like a scene out of Friday the Thirteenth."
The trouble was, it did seem romantic. Every time Liz thought of it, her stomach fluttered in a way it hadn't since — well, since she'd made her last dumb mistake. Uh-unh. She didn't want this to be romantic. Heroic, maybe. Neighborly, for sure. But not romantic.
"He was just being nice," she said lamely.
Victoria gave Liz a knowing grin. "Ri-ight," she said. "Well, we'll find out pretty quick if Grant Dade did it. if his hands look anything like you've described Jack's, it'll be obvious."
"Unless he was a ghost," said Liz, standing up and tipping Victoria's hat off her head. "C'mon in — I'll make tea."
She slipped her key in the lock and pushed the door open. The cottage was so small that, standing in the front doorway, Liz could gaze directly through the back kitchen windows and see the view of East Gate and its superb grounds. It made her fall in love with her house all over again every time she opened the door.
This morning, however, the view was different. Liz could see a workman standing on a ladder on the other side of the chain-link fence, just about eyeball to eyeball with Victoria and her.
He was taking down the barbed wire.
"Whoa," said Victoria in a husky voice. "This is heavy-duty devotion."
In her recap of events to Victoria, Liz had skipped her little diatribe about the federal prison. She realized, as she watched the workman roll up one of the strands of barbed wire, that she'd shamed Jack into this. Couldn't she have just waited? He might have done it on his own. Eventually.
"Now he'll be able to get here with a lot less fuss," said Victoria slyly. "For those midnight trysts of yours."
"Now criminals will be able to get over there with a lot less fuss," Liz said with uneasy candor.
Victoria looked at her, surprised. "The Robber Barons live thataway," she said, jerking a thumb toward East Gate.
"But the petty thieves are all on this side," Liz said morosely.
"Hey— what's with you, missy? This is a good thing."
"I know, I know. . . but. . ." She almost hated to see the barbed wire go. It had Jack's blood — sacrificial blood — on it.
Had she been misjudging him?
She sighed and pressed the monitor button on the answering machine. There was one message, in a deep, baritone voice: "Elizabeth; Jack. It's false logic to say that Grant Dade coveted the letters, the letters were stolen, ergo Grant Dade is the thief. If you need help with that one, give me a call."
"Ho!" said Victoria, delighted. "He's right, you know."
"I sounded too smug when I left my message," Liz admitted, rewinding the tape. "It's a mistake to sound smug around him. He takes it so personally. Oh, well; it doesn't matter. I'll make tea while you read me your exciting discovery."
"This isn't as big a deal as that," said Victoria, waving her hand theatrically at the workman by the fence. "But it does deepen the mystery about our artist-ghost."
"Wonderful," said Liz dryly. "God forbid the mystery should be solved."
"Oh, but it will be!" cried Victoria. "And when it is, the mystery of me will be solved. It's all connected. I know it is."
"What if Victoria St. Onge never names him?" Liz dared to ask as she filled her big copper teakettle — a gift, like every other copper object in the house, from relatives in Portugal. "What then?"
"In that case I'll die," Victoria said simply. "But she'll name him. Okay. Ready?"
My dear Mercy,
I write you from my stateroom aboard the SEA GODDESS, to which we adjourned after viewing a tennis match at the Casino in what can only be described as bone-melting heat. I became quite angry at the players for continuing to play in such perishing conditions. If only someone had collapsed of stroke! The rest of us could have boarded our yachts for lunch that much sooner and enjoyed the cool sea air that is now tumbling through the large open porthole above my writing table.
I have a delicious bit of gossip to pass on to you. Do you remember the masked marauder who so stole your heart at the Black and White Ball several years ago? I had occasion, with a group of two other gentlemen and three rather reckless ladies, to tour the young man's studio yesterday. I'm sure I wrote that he was an artist. Well, he is, and quite a good one at that, but his talents seem to me to be terribly misdirected.
He paints nudes, my dear Mercy! Or rather, one particular nude, in quite breathtaking detail. The subject is quite beautiful, with pale, porcelain skin and deep auburn hair, rich and glowing in every portrait. Unless he has idealized her, I may say without exaggeration that her form is as lovely and slender as ever I have seen.
In every painting — there are seven or eight in his studio, of varying sizes — she is wearing, as her only adornment, a band of deep green around her neck. The velvet neckband, I think, is what enables her to retain a certain dignity in her bearing. Certainly there is nothing lascivious in her expression, but only a rather wistful and loving look.
Here I must confess to an embarrassing encounter with the artist himself. The nude portraits had been stacked in one corner of the studio, facing the wall. I was curious about them — you know how I can be — and was in the process of browsing through them when your young artist, whose attention had been diverted, caught sight of me. He became quite angry — as I say, it was most embarrassing — and immediately afterward ushered us all out.
We were puzzled by his manner, but the mystery was explained to me just now over lunch, and that is why I write to you, while events are still fresh in my mind. Mrs. Le Fevre explained to me that the auburn-haired woman is — or was — an upstairs maid of the artist's parents.
After learning of their son's passionate involvement, the parents of course dismissed the maid. But I have it on Mrs. Le Fevre 's authority that the artist is quite madly, seriously in love with the girl and refuses to give her up. Can you imagine? This town is quite the hotbed of scandal. In any case, I shall keep you posted of developments.
Victoria, who'd read without pausing, now looked up and said to Liz, "The rest of the letter describes the polo match she went to after her lunch aboard the yacht, and the ball she attended that night. Do you want to hear it?"
"Does she mention the artist again?" asked Liz, barely emerging from the trance she'd fallen into while Victoria read.
"Nope."
Liz shook her head. "Never mind, then." She filled two cups from the copper teakettle before realizing that she'd forgotten to boil the water. "I know who the artist is," she murmured as she emptied the cups, filled the kettle, and started over.
"Liz!"
"No, that's not true," Liz amended quickly. She was remembering her not-necessarily-logical conclusion about Grant Dade. "I know where the studio was. No, that's not true, either," she said scrupulously. "I think I know where the studio was."
"For God's sake, stop sounding like a lawyer! Where?"
"Here. The studio — some studio, anyway — was built on this property, and then it got torn down and the property became a service access to East Gate. Jack told me."
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" demanded Victoria.
"I don't know; it got lost in the shuffle, I guess. It's been a busy couple of days."
"So the younger-brother artist-ghost is an Eastman?" Victoria's voice dropped an octave as she said the name. She laid t
he letter down on the table and nervously began to smooth its edges, as if she'd been somehow disrespectful of it.
"It makes sense," said Liz with a limp smile. "I saw the apparition in Eastman's house. A studio once existed on this property. Ghosts don't haunt places arbitrarily, do they?"
Victoria frowned. "But how does Victoria St. Onge fit in? And for that matter, why would she buy a house on this side of the tracks — or fence — or whatever?"
"It doesn't make sense," Liz agreed, instantly reversing herself. "Victoria St. Onge was a social climber. She had some money; she could've bought something better than a tiny house on a street occupied by millworkers and fishermen."
"But if she really could channel — aha! — then maybe the Eastman artist ended up being her spirit guide; maybe that's why he's hanging around. He's waiting for me to resume my mediumship duties!" cried Victoria, sliding back into her alter ego.
Suddenly tired of the endless, bizarre speculation, Liz snapped, "How can you possibly say that? They were both alive at the same time, he threw her out of his studio, and his ghost — if it was his ghost — appeared to me, not to you. Get a grip."
Undaunted, Victoria said, "Good points. Okay; we'll just have to keep reading. But let's read chronologically from this letter on — this random sampling is too confusing. I'll get the 1895 shoebox."
"Oh, no. Oh, hell," said Liz, looking up with a blank, ashen look. "Those are the letters that were stolen."
"Ah," whispered Victoria.
The single, heartwrenching syllable was the exact same response Liz had given her doctor when he told her she wouldn't be able to have any more children. Ah. A postpartum infection. Ah.
Ah. It was the sound of hope dying.
"Then we may never find out who he is," Victoria said in a dazed, dull voice. "I may never know why Victoria St. Onge has come back in me. This isn't supposed to be how karma works. I can't ... this isn't fair," she said, tears beginning to trickle down her pale, freckled cheeks. "Burglars aren't fair."
Time After Time Page 11
