Ashes to Ashes (43 page)

“Go have a bit of a lie down before you leave tonight,” Michael said. “You’ve been workin’ yourself too hard.”

“No, I haven’t. You’ve done most of it.”

“I don’t mean wi’ the artifacts.” Michael stood, heaved her to her feet and pointed her toward the door. “Go take a snooze.”

Rebecca walked out of the room without looking at him. She didn’t want to see his expression, be it affection, conjecture, or some peculiar combination of the two. He had spoken perfectly calmly and coolly, as if nothing either good or bad had ever happened between them.

What did he mean, whatever happens? Rebecca lay down on her bed and stared at the canopy. Yes, the house drove everyone who lived here mad.

She dozed, dreaming quick images that twisted and twirled just beyond her grasp, and woke to find the house drowsing in the brassy afternoon sunlight. Maybe it, too, had needed a good cry. After tidying up she found Michael in the kitchen reading
MacKay
over a sandwich. His glance was uncharacteristically shy. “Did you put a warning on that box?” she asked. Rats, her voice had come out pitched too high, artificial.

“Aye,” he said with a rueful grin that looked like her voice sounded. “Right dangerous with those emotional land mines scattered about the place.”

Where we keep stepping on them. For a moment Rebecca wondered what would have happened if she’d met Michael somewhere else. Then a knock on the front door snapped her away from the blue eyes and the appealing lopsided grin that called to her across a bottomless chasm. “See you later,” she said. He gave her a stoic British palm-outward salute.

Rebecca walked through the entry pulling on her coat, symbolically girding her loins. This was it, then. Eric.

Eric stood hunched into his overcoat. “Cold,” he said succinctly, and swept her into the warm, leathery interior of the Volvo.

The sunlight made the tiered windows of Dun Iain into sheets of flame. Dark clouds massed on the northern horizon. The wind tasted of snow. Eric guided the car past the dovecote and down the driveway, saying, “They’re predicting several inches by Sunday. The first big snow of the year.”

Rebecca responded with something appropriate. She made appropriate if monosyllabic responses all the way into town. By the time they passed beneath the interstate Eric was glancing at her curiously. “Something wrong?”

“Could we skip the movie tonight and just go someplace quiet where we can talk?”

“Oh now that’s ominous, when a woman says she wants to talk.” His voice wasn’t quite as light as he’d obviously intended; it roughened, rubbed against the grain. “Let’s go back to Gaetano’s. I’ll ask Mohammed for the table in the corner.”

“Thank you.” She bit her lip and realized she was getting lipstick on her teeth.

Long shadows stretched across the streets of Putnam. The candy canes on the lampposts looked sickly in the yellow sunlight, but Gaetano’s door sported a Della Robbia wreath whose brilliant lacquers only shone the brighter.

Eric seated Rebecca in the banquette, paused while the waiter lit the candle on the table, and ordered appetizers and wine. In the dim light his sculpted features looked like the funeral mask of a pharaoh, precious metal molded and polished. Oh, he was pretty. But only outside.

No. That wasn’t fair. Give the man a chance to tell his story. Rebecca accepted a glass of Asti Spumante and sipped, the bubbles tickling her nose. She asked, “Eric, why is your last name Adler?”

He swung toward her, his thick gold ring glinting beneath the curve of the wine glass he held, brow furrowed with perplexity. “What?”

“Usually adopted children take the name of their new parents.”

Perplexity faded into complete mystification. “Rebecca, what are you talking about?”

“I’m a historian. I’m trained to follow a paper trail. Birth certificates are very useful items.” She picked an olive from the antipasto tray and nibbled at it, remembered she hated olives, and laid it down again.

The mask of his face thinned and she glimpsed the heat behind. His voice was very soft. “My birth certificate?”

“I wasn’t looking for you. I was looking for Dorothy. She’s your mother.”

Eric’s eyes flashed and dulled. His mouth fell open and snapped shut. He turned away, staring at a print across the room, his hand clenched on the stem of the wineglass, his mouth so tight it was only a crease in his face.

So, Rebecca thought, she’d finally managed to turn Eric’s flank and take him by surprise. Not that that was anything to be proud of. It wasn’t Dorothy, then, who’d been listening on the extension, she’d have warned him that Rebecca was being so irritatingly curious again.

She presented her suspicions as methodically and emotionlessly as he would’ve done himself, omitting only that Jan had been with her at the Bureau of Records. He would just be hurt worse if he knew someone else knew.

Eric inhaled, set his glass on the table, and took Rebecca’s hands. The gleaming intensity of his black eyes mesmerized her. Maybe it was just as well she’d chosen a public place for the confrontation. But no. Eric was not one to shout or make a scene, even in private. That night at his condo had proved that. “I’ve lied to you,” he said, his voice slightly fuzzy.

“Yes, you have.”

“I haven’t been using your affections, I promise you that.”

“Oh?”

“My adoptive parents were named Schnerk. Can you see a judge ever taking me seriously with a name like that? And my grandmother’s name was Matwiejow— I spent years spelling that out. So when I foolishly decided to look up my biological parents I was delighted my father’s name was simple, straightforward, Adler. The change is quite legal. I did it myself, ten years ago in California, long before I came here.”

His hands tightened. He was hurting her. She flexed her fingers and with a quick shake of his head he released her. Still his eyes, dark crystals each containing a solitary flame, held her trapped.

“That was three years ago. I found out very quickly that my father was dead. As for my mother— well, I don’t know what I envisioned, but it wasn’t that pitiful, addicted, bitter woman old before her time. Can you imagine walking innocently into a spider’s web, being caught in it, knowing there’s no way out?”

“You didn’t have to help her,” Rebecca said. Brutal, but true. She felt as if her skin, too, was matted with sticky, grimy web.

“She’s my mother. If it ever came out how she’d been skimming the till all these years… . Well, I felt the least I could do was obtain a position with the firm that represents Dun Iain and help to, if not make good the losses, at least make sure no more occurred.”

“What about the mazer?”

“I got to her too late. She destroyed it and sold it for scrap. I did get her to return the little box.”

“That beautiful artifact, ruined!” Rebecca knotted her hands, trying to keep her voice quiet. “At the risk of stating the obvious, you never should’ve told that first lie. If you’d gone to Birkenhead to begin with… ”

“I know! I should’ve gotten help for her right at the beginning. But I didn’t want to— to admit she was my mother. Selfish and callous, I know. But there it is.” At last his eyes fell.

Without the pressure of those eyes Rebecca felt almost deflated. “Was she paying Steve and Heather to make trouble around the place— my room, the chair, the small fire?”

“I think so, yes. But the fire in the shed must really have been an accident. Steve was trying to hide that he’d been using the gasoline.”

“And what about Michael?”

Eric darted a swift, sharp glance at her. “What about him?”

She asked, “Did you really suspect him of working his own embezzlement scheme? Or were you just trying to deflect suspicion from Dorothy? And from yourself.”

“Oh.” He looked back down and poked at a piece of cheese. “No, I’ve never had any evidence that he was dishonest.”

Rebecca wanted to laugh, to shout, I could’ve given you plenty of evidence! But she could never have given him the truth. She looked back at Eric’s immaculate profile, ran her tongue over her lips, and asked, “Did James suspect?”

“Yes he did, there at the end. Dorothy was pushing too hard, wanting too much. He was my friend, and I lied to him, too. Believe me, Rebecca, if I could go back and change things I would.” Eric’s eyes caught her again, as if she touched a high-voltage wire. “It’s been an impossible situation right from the start. I tried to help, and I only made it worse. I just hope that Mrs. Morris gets her fair share of the proceeds and that it’ll all be over soon.”

The waiter was hovering, offering menus. Eric waved him away.

Yes, Rebecca thought, she was sympathetic. But Eric was so quick with those facile lines, so adept at telling her what she wanted to know. She took a healthy swallow of her wine and followed it with a bite of prosciutto and cheese. It tasted like sawdust.

“What’re you going to do?” he asked grimly. “Have me disbarred?”

“Will that set things right? Damn it, Eric, you didn’t go shopping for a mother. We’re all stuck with what we get.” He gazed into his glass, ego wilted and yet still distinguished. She was impressed in spite of herself. “Monday, you go to Warren and Chief Velasco in Putnam, too, and explain it all. Surely if you come clean before you get caught that’ll help matters. Maybe you can get Dorothy off on an insanity defense. I don’t know, that’s your department.”

A reluctant wry humor tickled the corner of his mouth. “You’re right. Confession is good for the soul.”

If Warren isn’t on the Dun Iain take, Rebecca thought. If I shouldn’t go to the police myself. She squirmed. With what? Until Eric made a formal, witnessed confession what she had was still circumstantial. Including her conclusion that James Forbes was murdered, reached because a three-year-old talked to his ghost. She was sick and tired of being condescended to by male officialdom. No, she had to give Eric a chance, the equivalent of the quaint old British custom of leaving the accused alone in a room with a loaded gun to take the gentleman’s way out.

Eric lifted her chin and turned her face toward him. His eyes narrowed slightly, glinting between their lashes. Concern, calculation, pain— she couldn’t tell. “And what about us, Rebecca?”

She pulled gently away from his grasp. “I’ll be leaving in a couple of weeks. It’s just as well. Even though that cruise would’ve been… ” She groped for a word and finally produced a lame, “… nice.”

“We would’ve had a good time, wouldn’t we?”

“We already had some good ones. I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, I’m the one who should be apologizing.” He picked up his glass, drained it, looked at the tray of food and shoved it away. “Would you like dinner, or would you like me to drive you home?”

“Neither, thank you. I’ll ask Peter to take me back out there. Or Michael can come and get me.” Although, she added to herself, that was one perceptive eye she still didn’t want to face.

Eric’s features were taut and pale, but his armor never cracked. He summoned the waiter and paid the bill. He helped Rebecca up, poured her into her coat, stood dutifully by while she called the Sorensons and Peter said he was on his way.

In the dark deserted hallway at the front of the restaurant they kissed one more time. Then, without another word, he walked out the door. Rebecca’s lips burned from the ferocious regret of that kiss. That much of his performance, at least, had been sincere. She decided she was getting much too good at breaking up relationships.

A blast of cold air and the glare of neon burst the darkness around her. “Rebecca?” said Peter. “I barely got out of the house without Jan fixing me a little keg of brandy to wear under my chin. What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure I know myself.” Gratefully Rebecca took his gloved hand and walked outside. Tiny snowflakes swirled through an iron-gray dusk, stinging her cheeks. Her thoughts melted and ran down her mind like snow down the car windows. No, it wasn’t over yet.

Peter, driving in discreet silence, took her home.

Rebecca twitched and moaned. A man stood in the door of her room. Michael? She saw then it was an old man, so shriveled that decay seemed to have set in before death. “No,” he rasped, “don’t push me, help.”

Except for that quick glimpse when she’d first arrived, she’d never actually seen James before. She started up and found herself alone except for Darnley, who sat on her bed eyeing the doorway with feline equanimity. “I’m trying to help,” she whispered, but there was no answer.

Rebecca looked out the window into the diffused light of the morning. Snow had smoothed lawn and drive into one white expanse. The trees stood like dark candles in a cake, and the mound of the dovecote and tomb was softly lapped by white. The clouds were a low and gauzy gray, of that matte texture betraying cargos of yet more snow. The wind moaned and the castle hushed its own creaks and settlings to listen.

Shivering, Rebecca clambered into half the garments she owned and went downstairs. The teapot was warm and dirty dishes lay in the sink. She fixed herself eggs and toast and ate two leftover pieces of bacon.

She and Michael had spent last evening impassively sorting artifacts. Only his expression had reacted to her early arrival home, not so much with a query as with a kind of satisfied relief. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask him about his early suspicions of Eric; that would’ve required altogether too many explanations from them both.

Rebecca cradled her cup between her hands, but it had already cooled. Eric would either go to the police and brazen it out or he would run for it. He was more likely to brazen it out. His story sounded good. His stories always sounded good. He could wiggle out of the charges of theft, harassment and embezzlement even if he had to throw his own mother to the wolves. And what could the wolves do to her? She’d end up in a hospital, not in a jail.

Probably the first thing he’d done after leaving the restaurant was to tell Dorothy that Rebecca was threatening to blow the whistle on them. James had died because he’d threatened the same thing.

Rebecca leaped up and tidied the kitchen, her abrupt movements making the cutlery clatter and the dishes jangle. It was too late now to take back those accusing words. She would have to hedge her bets.