“She’s right pretty, if you like the type,” Aunt Delia said slyly.
“I didn’t notice.”
“Hogwash! The day you don’t notice a woman will be the day they put you in the ground, Kevin Patrick. It amazes me still that one of them hasn’t caught you by fair means or foul. Goodness knows, half the female population of the Northern Neck has tried hard enough.”
Her expression turned thoughtful. “Of course, that’s the problem, isn’t it? They’re all trying too hard. What’s the challenge in that? You need a woman who won’t go all weak-kneed just looking at you. Struck me that this Gracie of yours has spunk.”
“I just met the woman. She is not my Gracie.”
“Whatever. She looks as if she could keep you on your toes. Probably too much woman for you, now that I think about it.”
Kevin fought a surge of indignation and lost. “The woman hasn’t been born who’d be too much for me,” he grumbled.
“So you say.”
“Do you have a license for all this analysis you’re doing?”
“I have something better. I have years of experience. You’d do well to listen to me once in a while.”
“I listen to every word you say.”
“And then pick and choose which half of them to ignore.”
He couldn’t deny that at least half of it fell on deaf ears. “Okay, Aunt Delia, let’s leave me out of this for a minute,” he suggested on a more somber note. “Bottom line. Do you really want me to sell your house to Gracie MacDougal so she can turn it into a bed-and-breakfast?”
For a second, she looked nonplussed by the direct question. Then she squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye, challenging him right back. “Might’s well,” she said. “You won’t let me near the place. It’s a shame to let it sit there, when it could be filled with laughter again.”
His gaze narrowed. He was missing something here. She had fought tooth and nail every suggestion he’d made about putting the house on the market. She’d insisted, in fact, on putting it in his name, though as far as he was concerned it was still hers to do with as she liked.
“Do you mean that?” he asked. “I thought you loved that old house.”
“I do. I spent my entire life in that house. Not a minute goes by that I don’t miss it, but I’m not a fool, Kevin. I know it was getting to be too much for me. I’m better off here with you, though why you’d rather be out here in this mausoleum instead of in town is beyond me.”
She surveyed him, then shrugged. “Besides, you need somebody around who can stand up to you. None of those pitiful Daniels relatives of yours has the gumption to put you in your place when you deserve it. And Molly’s been catering to your every whim since the day you were born. I’ve never seen a housekeeper who’s so taken in by a smile and an occasional kind word. That leaves me to see you don’t get too big for your britches.”
Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “Something tells me that MacDougal girl could hold her own with you, though. I wouldn’t mind watching the negotiations for the house, just to see the sparks fly.”
“Maybe,” he conceded cautiously. He knew what she was up to. She was laying the groundwork for throwing him into more frequent contact with Gracie. He had a hunch, though, that any actual deal would be a very long time coming. Aunt Delia was especially fond of fireworks, especially of the human variety.
“She didn’t back down when you said no, did she?” his aunt pointed out.
“True. She said she’d be back.”
“Good. Next time, I want to meet her.”
The very thought of such a meeting sent a chill through him. He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why on earth not? It is my house she wants to buy, isn’t it?”
“And we both know you’d give it away if you took a shine to the potential buyer. I won’t have you being cheated. If the time comes when you’ve given the matter some thought and you decide you want to sell, I’ll handle the negotiations.”
“Then keep the lines of communication open with Gracie MacDougal. Something tells me she’ll pay top dollar,” she said, regarding him with a canny look. “If that’s all you’re interested in.”
“We’ll talk about it when you’ve thought it over,” he repeated. “In the meantime, you stay the heck away from Ms. MacDougal.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, getting to know a stranger might relieve some of the boredom around here.”
His aunt went to more luncheons and tea parties than the Queen of England, but Kevin played along.
“I already told you I’d take you to the off-track betting place tomorrow,” he reminded her. “We’ll have lunch, watch a few races. You can throw some of your savings down the tube.”
“Yes, and that will be real nice, but there’s a movie I’ve been wanting to see, too,” she mentioned oh-so-casually. “It’s playing in Fredericksburg.”
For pure sneakiness, Aunt Delia could put the Daniels side of the family to shame. “And you think these two outings will relieve the tedium?” he asked.
“It’ll be a start.”
“Okay. What movie?” Kevin asked suspiciously. “Not another of those violent, blood and gore things. The last one had no plot.”
“Of course it had a plot. It also had that hunky Jean-Claude van Damme in it. That alone was worth the price of admission.”
Kevin sighed at the thought of his aunt having fantasies about an action-movie superstar. “I worry about you, you know that.”
“Why? Just because I can appreciate a hunk when I see one?” She regarded him with another of those sly looks. “Bet that Gracie MacDougal can, too. I saw her looking at you, you know. Little wonder, given the way you dress.”
Since they’d had the discussion about the way he dressed about a hundred times, he seized on her revelation about Gracie MacDougal.
“She was checking me out?”
“Ogling you, in fact. You let her catch another glimpse or two, you can probably drive up her offer on that house by another fifty thousand.”
Kevin stared at her, astounded by her suggestion. “Why don’t I just sleep with her?” he grumbled. “Maybe then she’d fork over another hundred thousand.”
Despite his facetious tone, Aunt Delia took him seriously. “Nope, I think building anticipation is a better approach. You’ll have her so muddle-headed, she won’t know what she’s doing. Once you’ve gone to bed with a person, nothing much is left to the imagination.”
Kevin thought of Gracie MacDougal’s singleminded negotiations earlier. “I think you may be underestimating her, Aunt Delia. I doubt she’s distracted easily. She’s a tough cookie.”
She feigned shock. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of her.”
“Scared? Who said anything about being scared?”
“Well, then, don’t let any grass grow under your feet. Get busy and reel her in, boy.”
Kevin had a feeling they weren’t talking entirely about a real estate transaction now. “I’ll see Gracie MacDougal again in my own good time. In the meantime, you do some serious thinking about whether you’re really ready to sell that house to her or anybody else. We’ve had other offers in the past and you haven’t been interested. In fact, you chased that last man off with threats of bodily harm a lady shouldn’t even know about. Made my blood run cold.”
“Times change. People change.”
“Not overnight they don’t.”
“Okay, okay, if it’ll make you happy, I’ll think about it. You set up an appointment with that MacDougal gal for tomorrow. Invite her to have lunch with us at the races.”
“Not on your life.”
“Coward.”
“Bossy old lady.”
She chuckled. “You’ll call.”
“Will not.”
But he did. He told himself he didn’t do it because he wanted to. He swore to himself he did it only to satisfy his aunt. He was more relieved than he could say when he got an answering machine. The sound of Gr
acie’s voice, all prim and prissy, did astonishing things to his pulse, which just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt why he needed to conduct this negotiation—if there was to be one—very, very carefully. Otherwise, he, not Aunt Delia, would be the one giving the house away.
In the end, he didn’t leave a message and he didn’t call again. Might have been stubbornness. Aunt Delia certainly would have called it that. More likely, it was just plain good sense kicking in in the nick of time.
Aunt Delia looked around the Riverboat with its banks of TV screens with absolute delight.
“Get me a Racing Form,” she ordered Kevin. “And hurry up. I don’t want to miss the first race.”
Aunt Delia had been spry as a young chicken ever since she’d hatched this plot to get him and Gracie MacDougal together, Kevin noticed. She was bossier than usual, too.
The truth was, though, he enjoyed matching wits with her. Nobody had ever put anything over on his aunt. She’d remained unmarried by choice, claiming that there wasn’t a man around who could tolerate the fact that she was smarter than he was. Kevin had the distinct impression, though, that that hadn’t stopped her from having a few serious male friends over the years. She was too darned savvy about relationships not to have been through a few herself. Not that she’d ever admit it. She’d go to her grave implying that she was as innocent as a newborn babe. But the twinkle in her eyes when Kevin suggested otherwise proved his point.
“Five races, that’s it,” he said, as he handed her the Racing Form. “I’m not letting you wager your life savings today.”
“What if I win? Do we stay longer?”
“We’ll discuss that when—no, if—it happens.”
“Then keep quiet and let me do my handicapping in peace,” she said, snapping open the paper to the day’s races in New York.
Kevin sat back and sipped his beer. For a weekday, the Riverboat had a modest crowd, including a few locals and quite a few unfamiliar faces in town just for the chance to bet on races at tracks across the country. Some of them would be here until the last race ran in California hours from now.
He wondered how Gracie would react to this simple place out over the water with its basic menu, plain tables, and noisy patrons. He’d lay odds if she’d ever placed a wager it had been in some elegant casino in Europe. She’d probably been wearing diamonds and satin at the time, looking all slinky and sophisticated. An image of Grace Kelly in Philadelphia Story came to mind.
“Is it hot in here?” he asked suddenly.
“I hadn’t noticed,” Aunt Delia mumbled.
She barely glanced up from her papers. A little furrow of concentration lined her brow. Her reading glasses had slipped to the tip of her nose. Kevin observed her with tolerant amusement, laughing out loud when he noticed that she’d worn her fancy white sneakers with the rhinestones on them in honor of their outing. She was such a joy. It truly was a shame no man had seen that and dared to take her on for a lifetime.
“It’s four minutes till post time,” Kevin reminded her. “Have you made up your mind?”
She nabbed a little slip of paper from the pile beside her and jotted down some numbers. “A trifecta,” she announced. “In this order. Don’t mess it up. I’ve put a lot of thought into getting it right.”
“I won’t mess it up.”
“What about you? You planning to bet?”
“I thought I’d put a little down on that number eight.”
Aunt Delia hurriedly glanced at her notes, scribbled all over the past performance listings. “Eight? That horse will go off at fifty-to-one. Why that one?”
“The name reminds me of someone,” he said, and walked away.
“Scottish Lass,” she murmured.
The sound of her laughter followed him over to the betting window.
“I just don’t understand it,” Aunt Delia complained after Kevin finally managed to drag her away after the eighth race. “That three horse was sired by a distance runner. His mama had speed. He should have blasted past every other horse on the track.”
“Maybe he was a little too taken with that mare swishing her tail in his face in the homestretch. Hormones will distract a male.”
“So I’ve noticed,” his aunt retorted. “Are you planning to swing by the house?”
“I wasn’t. Why?”
“There’s something I left in that old bureau upstairs. I’d like to get it, as long as we’re already in the vicinity.”
“I thought you cleaned out every bureau and closet before you moved in with me.”
“Well, I forgot this. Sue me.”
“Okay, okay. We’ll go by the house.”
“Thank you,” she said with a bite of sarcasm.
“You’re welcome,” he replied with the same edge.
Kevin knew there was something more going on with his aunt than some forgotten personal item she couldn’t do without. He had walked through every inch of that house with her a dozen times to be sure nothing of real or sentimental value had been left behind. No, she was up to something, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what.
He began to get a worrisome idea when he noticed that the wrought-iron gate was unlatched. But how had Aunt Delia guessed that there might be a trespasser on the property, particularly the trespasser Kevin’s gut told him was at this very moment trampling down weeds?
“Looks like someone’s here, doesn’t it?” his aunt said, not sounding especially surprised or worried by that fact.
“Probably kids,” Kevin retorted, though he didn’t believe any such thing. More than likely it was Ms. Gracie MacDougal, up to no good. Kids were scared to death of the place. He’d planted several hints that the old house was crawling with ghosts. Kids hadn’t been near it since, according to the neighbors who kept an eye on it for him. They huddled outside the gate, occasionally slipped inside and went as far as the front step on a dare. But at the first creak of the old, rotting wood, they dashed for safety.
No, the only person with the curiosity and the pure gall to be sneaking around was Gracie.
“Go visit Mrs. Johnson,” he instructed his aunt.
“Why on earth would I want to do that? You know she hates people dropping by unexpectedly.”
“Not as much as I hate the prospect of both of us getting clobbered over the head with something if we’re wrong about what’s going on here. Please, just apologize and stay with her until I come for you.”
“You think it’s that MacDougal girl, don’t you? And you don’t want me to meet her.”
“Okay, yes. I think it’s probably Gracie. And I don’t want you to meet her. What puzzles me is how the heck you knew she’d be sneaking around here.”
“Me?” she protested. “I’ve been with you all day. How could I know anything? I resent you thinking I would do something sneaky and lowdown like luring you over here just so you could bump into her again.”
Which, of course, was a little too emphatic and detailed a denial not to be the exact opposite of the truth.
“We’ll discuss your scheming later,” he said. “Just go see Mrs. Johnson and stay there.”
“Fine,” she said with an indignant little huff and headed off toward her longtime neighbor’s house.
Kevin watched her departure with admiration. She was quite an actress. The local theater group could have used her skills in their recent production of Arsenic and Old Lace.
Once he saw that Mrs. Johnson was, indeed, home and had invited his aunt inside, he stepped through the open gate into Aunt Delia’s yard. It really was a disgrace, he conceded, though at the moment the tall grass, dandelions, and buttercups allowed him to pinpoint exactly which was the intruder had gone. He turned to the left and followed the trampled weeds.
He’d give Gracie MacDougal credit for being brazen. She’d probably found a way inside and was already measuring for curtains.
The path she’d left took him around the back of the house. Sure enough, it stopped right beside the steps to the glassed-in back p
orch, which his aunt alternately described as her sunroom or her garden room. Once it had been filled with pots of blooming plants, but now those very same plants were decorating her parlor at his place. He’d had to knock out a whole damned wall practically and replace it with windows until the lighting suited her and her philodendrons, or whatever the hell they were.
Of course, at the moment, that was neither here nor there. At the moment, he needed to figure out exactly where his quarry had slipped off to. It didn’t look as though she’d broken in. Every window was intact and the door was firmly closed. He tested the lock and it held. So where the dickens was she? Surely she hadn’t vanished into thin air.
Suddenly his eye caught a glimpse of bright yellow where it had no business being, right on the bottom branch of the oak tree shading the side of the house. He shimmied up the tree and reached for the scrap of cloth. Silk, either from a blouse or a scarf. It was a nice, sunny shade, too, perfect for Ms. MacDougal’s coloring. He’d bet she looked like a million bucks when she’d left home. He wondered if she looked half as good now that she’d scaled a tree and shredded her clothing.
He glanced up a little higher and saw what had attracted her. The second-floor window was wide open. He had left it cracked himself, to allow some air to stir in the place and keep it from getting musty. It had never occurred to him that anyone, not even the neighborhood kids, would spot it and break in. But, then, he hadn’t known about Gracie MacDougal a few months ago.
Kevin considered scrambling down and using his key to go in the back door, but concluded that would be a tactical mistake. Though she probably didn’t know it yet, Gracie was trapped inside. All the doors had deadbolt locks requiring keys to open them from inside or out. If he entered the same way she had, he could corner her and scare the living daylights out of her. Or he could save himself the trouble and just wait for her under the tree. Either way, he hoped it would be a good lesson.
After a few minutes waiting, he opted for joining her inside. Grateful that he’d worn sneakers, he climbed the rest of the way up the tree, stepped onto the porch roof, then tiptoed over to the open window. Whether she’d heard the commotion outside and decided to beat a hasty retreat or whether she’d simply completed her unauthorized tour, Gracie picked that precise moment to try to back out of the window.
Amazing Gracie Page 5
