Time After Time

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "Absolutely. You can use my office. Was the DeeJay locked?"

  "Well, no," Jay said sheepishly. "Dee and I came down for sundowners a coupla nights ago; we knew we'd be coming right back on the weekend, so ...." He shrugged. "Who woulda thought? There's not a damned thing on the boat that's valuable. You know that."

  "Yeah," said Jack vaguely. He turned to Liz, all business now, and said, "I'm sorry. Please excuse me."

  "Of course," Liz said.

  They were all headed for the same destination, so Liz hung back a moment, apparently to admire Jack's yacht a little longer. The men hurried on ahead while she walked slowly along the pier, studying the boat from stern to stern. No question, it was someone's labor of love. The thought popped into Liz's head from nowhere at all: If he can cherish and protect a yacht his whole life, why can't he do the same to a woman?

  She shook off the question, a truly idle question, the way she'd shaken off the memory of his kisses earlier. He can have anyone he wants, she told herself, and he doesn't want anyone—at least, not for long. That's how bachelors stayed that way. Well, nuts to that; it wasn't how Liz did business. She had the wedding ring — and the divorce papers — to prove it.

  She found herself staring in a daze at the afterdeck, with its deep cushions and fresh-cut flowers, imagining it as it would be at twilight ... and after the sun went down ... with no moon ... only the amber glow of the kerosene lamps ... and the faraway flicker of stars in the sky. What a setting for soft lies and faint promises.

  Suddenly the chime-sound — loud, rich, ringing in the air — shattered her reverie like a baseball through a window. Liz let out a muffled cry and jumped back, terrified. Why now? Why here? What was the pattern? Nighttime, noontime, his house, her house, here, there, everywhere! Why? It was making her wide-eyed, making her crazy. Liz whirled around, a cornered, haunted creature, ready to do battle with — what?

  Who are you?

  The fact that she was cavorting alone on a pier in broad daylight bothered Liz not a whit. Show yourself, she demanded silently, all but stamping her foot.

  The chime filled the air between her and the sun. She stared in the direction of the sound, blinded by sunlight, unwilling to look away, unable to keep it up, furious beyond fear now.

  Dizzy from the effort to stare into the sun, Liz dropped her gaze, trying to blink away the dark spots that bobbled across her line of sight. What an ass she was being, blinding herself that way! She rubbed her eyes with her hands, which only made things worse, and began to panic, convinced that she'd ruined her sight forever. She closed her eyes and kept them closed, standing as still as a pilon, gathering what was left of her wits, trying desperately to stay calm.

  She took a deep breath, held it, released it slowly, and then opened her eyes again.

  And there he was, just as clear as could be, nothing vapory about him: on the afterdeck, standing in just about the same place where she'd been imagining — well, someone she shouldn't have been imagining at all.

  He was wearing some kind of old-fashioned yachting getup this time. Sure. Why not? He's on a yacht, Liz reminded herself with bizarre lucidity. He seemed shorter than when she'd seen him lounging against the grandfather clock in the hall at East Gate; but then, Liz was standing high on the pier, looking down on the Déjà Vu.

  Navy slacks, elegantly cut; a long-sleeved white shirt with the sleeves rolled up; a dark tie (was it really fluttering in the wind?); and a yachting-cap trimmed in gold braid that glittered in the sun ....

  "No blazer," she muttered inconsequentially. It must have been hot out.

  Then? Now?

  His hands were hooked in his pockets, and his head was cocked a little to the right as he looked up at her, returning her stare with an insolent, arrogant one of his own.

  Except for the insolent, arrogant part, he didn't look like an Eastman. His jaw was less squared, his face a little longer. She had no idea what color his eyes were, but his mouth — ah, she knew the Eastman mouth, and his was not the same. The upper lip was wider, perfect for a handlebar mustache. She wondered why he wasn't wearing one, since they were all the rage.

  Then? Now?

  God help me, she thought dizzily. Have I gone back? Or has he come forward?

  There was no easy way to tell. With only him, her, and the antique yacht in her field of vision, Liz was unable to say which of their time zones was being breached. She tore her gaze away from him: the first thing she saw was a silver Lexus parked nearby. Liz was never so glad to see a status symbol in her life. It meant she might be hallucinatory, but at least she wasn't leaping freely through time and space.

  She turned back to the vision, but it was gone.

  She stood there, fierce and attentive, listening for the chime-sound. But it was over. Feeling oddly desolate and more rubbery-legged than ever, Liz turned and retraced her footsteps to the office. Jack was gone, and so was Cornelius. Only Susy remained, backpack at her feet, under the watchful eye of the shipyard secretary.

  ****

  "It's the sex. The sex is just ... so ... good," Victoria told Liz after she got back from Block Island. Dr. Ben had been there, just as Liz suspected, and a truce between Victoria and him had been declared.

  "Of course, we declared it in bed, so who knows how long it'll last? But he promised not to keep looking for the me behind the me," Victoria said. "He promised to accept me at face value."

  Liz whacked off a stray sprig of privet with her hedge clippers and said, "If your Dr. Ben really does that, he's a better man than most."

  "Tsk, tsk," said Victoria, bending over for a handful of cut branches to stuff in the recycle bag. "We're sounding bitter today."

  "Yeah, well, blame it on the fact that you're getting some and I'm not," Liz said. Really, it was ridiculous, the hunger she was feeling. Where had it come from? She was as restless and irritable as a caged cat.

  "Anyway, I meant what I said," Liz continued. "Men go at this mating thing differently from women. Women — most of us — have only the vaguest idea of what we want. We say, 'Okay, this guy's not perfect, but he's not a bad compromise, either. He'll do.'

  "But a man — a man draws up a precise list: big boobs, blond hair, good dancer, flashy dresser, whatever. The sensitive ones maybe would like her to have an intellectual side — in other words, know a little about sports. So that they can share the Super Bowl together," Liz added with a dry smile. "Then, if the man doesn't find an exact match, he has an excuse for not making a commitment."

  Victoria blinked and said, "Is that how you picked Keith? You said, 'He'll do'?"

  "You bet," Liz said with brutal candor. "And he would've done, too, if he hadn't run away. But then, 'baby' wasn't on his list."

  "You never loved him?"

  "I guess not," Liz said grimly, moving her ladder to the next section of untrimmed privet. "Or I would've been able to keep him, baby and all."

  "But you said yourself that 'baby' wasn't on his list. I mean, family just wasn't his thing. He was more selfish than that. He's probably standing guard over some marijuana patch in northern California, even as we speak!"

  Liz laughed and said, "You think maybe that's why I couldn't trace him for child support? Because he's not paying tax on his income?"

  "You never loved him?" Victoria repeated.

  "I thought I did," Liz confessed in a whisper. "But I was so young."

  "They're not all like him," Victoria said, hauling the brown bag out to the curb. "Jack Eastman isn't."

  "Jack!" cried Liz after her. "He has the longest, most specific list of all! You're the one who told me he's already sampled everyone on Bellevue Avenue."

  Victoria cringed and made a shushing sound. She came back and in a lowered voice said, "I think in his case it's a good thing, not a bad, that he hasn't married yet. Obviously he could find himself a gorgeous socialite who'd jump at the chance to be his wife. So he must be looking for love as well."

  "Well, bless his heart. I hope he finds his perfect package."


  "I've seen the way he looks at you," Victoria said evenly. Liz blushed and said, "Yes. The same way I look at a hot fudge sundae." She whacked silently at the straggly privet for a minute or two, then climbed back down the ladder and folded it shut.

  "There's definitely something there when we're alone," she admitted as she laid the ladder against the mud shed. "The trouble is, it's the wrong something."

  "Love has to start somewhere," Victoria said, impatient now. "Give him a chance. You're letting one bad experience define your whole life!"

  Liz turned to her friend with a sad, surprised look and said, "You aren't?"

  The arrow hit its mark. Victor a colored a vivid pink. Liz had never done that before, thrown Victoria's amnesia in her face.

  "Let's talk about something else," Victoria said, obviously hurt. "Any word about our graduate student?"

  "Ah — I haven't told you!" said Liz, glad for the diversion. "Grant Dade came into the station, and yes, he did have scratches on his hands. But he claimed he got them hiking, which was plausible enough."

  "Did he go hiking with anyone who could corroborate that?"

  "Nope," said Liz. "I gather he was amazed and angered by the questioning. Apparently he charged a gas fill-up in New Hampshire, but he can't produce the Visa slip. They're looking into that now."

  "So no lineup or anything?"

  "Nobody mentioned that. It'll be just my luck that he's really innocent but pissed off enough to come back and make trouble for me."

  "If he's innocent, then who stole the letters? And why?" Victoria mulled it over for a moment, then said, "For someone with no men in your life, you sure have a lot of men in your life."

  Liz flashed to the afterdeck of the Déjà Vu. "Tori," she said, "you don't know the half of it."

  Chapter 10

  "R-i-p-e-n? I'll look it up," said the official who answered Liz's call to the Adult Correctional Institute. He didn't even have to put her on hold; the computer was too fast to bother.

  "Nope," he said, "he doesn't show up. He's either dead or discharged. I can find out for you, but the request will have to go through the archives in Providence. It'll be a couple of weeks."

  It was a disappointment. Liz wanted to find out what happened to Victoria St. Onge's murderer, and she wanted to find out now. She wasn't sure why it mattered; maybe she wanted to know for poor Tori's sake. She declined the official's offer and decided, instead, to play a hunch.

  It paid off. In the Newport City Clerk's office she learned that — however long he'd been at the state penitentiary — Johnny Ripen had ended up coming back to Newport. He died nine years ago, when he was seventy-one years old.

  So the murdering gigolo had passed on. If Liz had had any wild ideas of finding out what he knew about the woman he'd conned and then killed over half a century ago, those hopes were dashed forever. Morbidly curious now, Liz drove the few short blocks back to the library and looked up the date of Johnny Ripen's death in the Daily News obituaries, half expecting to find out that he died in royal splendor in some big estate on Bellevue Avenue.

  Wrong again. Johnny Ripen was found dead under a cherry tree in the Common Burying Ground, which was a favorite gathering place for drunks and disreputables. It was as good a choice as any: None of the colonists, Indians, and slaves who were buried there were likely to complain about rowdiness.

  ****

  When she got home, Liz telephoned Victoria to tell her what she'd found.

  "The police speculated that Johnny Ripen either cut his own wrist or got into a fight over the broken bottle of vodka they found lying in his lap."

  "How horrible," Victoria said, truly shocked. "If he was drunk, and he probably was, he wouldn't even have known he was bleeding to death."

  "I checked with Detective Gilbert. The police never did make a case for murder. I'm surprised I don't remember the episode. But I was living in Middletown then; I suppose it just got past me."

  There was a thoughtful silence at the other end of the line. Then Victoria asked in a low and apprehensive voice, "Do we have any idea where Victoria St. Onge is buried?"

  "Don't be theatrical," Liz said all too quickly. "There was nothing supernatural about Johnny Ripen's death. It was a predictable end to a wasted life."

  "If so, it's the only predictable thing that's happened so far. I'm frightened, Liz. It was exciting at first, the letters and all — but now I'm scared."

  "Well, don't be," Liz said with a reassurance she did not feel. "Come over tonight. We'll have a cookout. Bring along your Dr. Ben. It's high time I met the man."

  Victoria agreed, and Liz hung up, more uneasy now than ever. Were these bizarre events connected? Was someone, somewhere administering a kind of rough justice every once in a while as the world went spinning around? Or was everything — the deaths, the visions, the box, the letters, the pin— simply the clutter and mess of life itself, with Liz desperately looking for a pattern, trying to impose some kind of order and meaning on it all.

  It would be so nice if she knew.

  In any case, that world was spinning plenty fast at the moment; Liz had no idea when she'd find the time to squeeze in a cookout. It wasn't as if Jack Eastman's company picnic were all arranged, or the back-to-back weddings over and done with. Tomorrow alone she had three meetings with potential clients. Not to mention, her new landlord had moved hell and high water to make her office ready for occupancy; the least she could do was to occupy it.

  Liz spent the rest of the day on the phone with florists, bands, jugglers, mimes, and minstrels, then dashed out at five to pick up steaks and hot dogs and some ready-made salads. By the time Victoria arrived with her beloved internist, Liz was in a darn good mood: she'd mixed up a pitcher of rum punch and had helped herself to an icy tall glass of it. Suddenly her life was seeming a lot more manageable. After all, it was a beautiful summer night in Newport. Thousands of people were in town expressly to have fun. Why shouldn't she be one of them?

  Dr. Ben turned out to be a charmer. Shorter than Victoria, with dark, quizzical eyes and a self-deprecating wit, he had Liz in his corner in no time at all.

  "So you're the lady with the letters," he said with a nudge at Victoria. "The letters that hold the key to my lady's heart. And soul. So to speak."

  "Ben!" cried Victoria. "You promised!"

  "Yeah, I know," he said, pulling up a chaise longue close to the barbecue. "But this way we don't spend the evening waiting for that particular shoe to drop. Madame?" he said to his belle with a flourish. "Will you sit?"

  "I never should have told you," said Victoria, pouting prettily. She arranged herself in the chaise, a picture of otherworldly elegance in a longish white sundress trimmed in crochet. She wore a hat, of course: a small-brimmed affair of crushed linen with big silk cabbage roses sewn to the band. Liz, wearing dress jeans and a V-necked T-shirt of bright coral, felt positively frumpy.

  And very much like a third wheel. Ben pulled a resin chair up close to Victoria and — when he wasn't making pleasant, amusing conversation about the trials and tribulations of his practice — was dropping light kisses on Victoria's shoulder or idly rubbing the back of her neck.

  Now he has the hands of an artist, Liz thought ruefully. She thought of Jack Eastman's hands, callused from his work at the shipyard. But then, remembering his touch, she had to admit: Jack had the hands of an artist, too.

  Suddenly she decided to wallow in her rum punch. Victoria had someone, a very nice someone indeed, while Liz had ... no one. Where was the justice in it? Rich, pretty, tall Victoria had a whole new life ahead of her—but Liz? What did Liz have to look forward to? Making sure that other rich, pretty, tall people enjoyed happy birthdays, wonderful weddings, joyful holidays, and — if she ever got that far — successful fund-raisers.

  Some entrepreneur. She was in service, plain and simple. Just like her laundress grandmother and her gardener father. Maybe it ran in the genes. There had to be some reason that she'd never gone into, say, banking. She stol
e another peek at Ben and Victoria. Yes. She could see them married, with children, shopping for a summer place on the Vineyard.

  Oh, who cares? she thought, pouring herself another rum punch. She had a delightful house with a year-round view, enough money for the mortgage, and a daughter who made every minute of life worth living. She gazed through a fond, rum-soaked haze at Susy, sitting at her minitable with her waterpaints and her artist's pad, humming a happy, inane little tune.

  Susy looked up just then and gave her mother a happy grin that was short one tooth. "Wait till you see what I'm making, Mommy. You'll like this one especially!"

  Ben smiled and sauntered over to her table for a preview. "Wow," he said, impressed. "That looks exactly like your house from the back. It even has a barbecue grill! But what's this over here, above the roof?"

  "That's the ghost," said Susy gleefully. "He's trying to get down our chimney."

  Victoria and Liz shot each other startled looks.

  "Oooh," said Ben, falling in with Susy's tone. "Is your house haunted?"

  Susy giggled and said, "No, of course not! Mr. Eastman's house is haunted. That one over there," she said, pointing through the fence at East Gate with her paintbrush. "I heard Mommy and Aunty Tori one time when they were talking about the ghost who lives there."

  "Oh, Susy, we weren't talking about a real ghost," said Liz quickly. "That was just what-if talk. What if a real ghost lived there, we were saying. You must have misunderstood."

  Susy drew her brows together in a puzzled look. "I think I understood. Aunty Tori said, 'What was it like?' and you said, 'It got very cold.'

  My God. She can hear us when she's up in bed. My God. "No, no, honey, what I said was—"

  Liz was saved from coming up with yet another lie by the sight of their cat Toby flying across Jack Eastman's grounds with Snowball — who ran amazingly fast for a bouncing mop — in hot pursuit. Liz let out a cry and ran up to the chain-link fence with the others right behind her, but there was nothing anyone could do but watch in horror as fat old Toby did his best to outrun the fierce little canine.