By The Howling (3 page)

“Yes, I suppose,” Rachel said. She had risen from the wing chair, though, and was standing at the window and talking more to the street than to Charlotte.

“I would think that the transition was quite difficult for you,” Rachel continued. “Leaving a demanding job that many would think was both exciting and gut wrenching and moving to a small hideout like Hopewell, and, on top of that, losing your husband at the same time—all of the normal props being kicked out from underneath you at one time. It would be normal for you to feel off balance—lonely and a bit vulnerable. Was your split with your husband painful?”

“Interesting that you would refer to Hopewell as a hideout, but I suppose it’s a bit of that for me. I just couldn’t stay where I was and disengage from my life. And I needed to. And the split from Sydney? No, not painful, I don’t think—at least not for me. He always said I was more married to my job than to him. And as gruesome as my job could get, I don’t naysay what he said—of the two, I preferred the job. I can clearly see that. And the divorce? I dare say that’s more painful for that secretary he ran off with, Delores, now than it is for either me or Sydney. I doubt that Sydney focuses on her all that much—just a younger, sleeker model. He bought one of the fancy eye-candy sports cars at the same time, you know. I think it was a Dodge Viper or something like that. It will spend as much time in the service garage as Delores spends in the beauty parlor, and neither one of them is likely to give Sydney good service. No, I think he has gotten what he deserved. And as a husband, he deserved more from me, I’ll admit—so I don’t bear any grudges against him.”

For a moment silence reigned in the parlor, with Rachel still looking at the street through the window and Charlotte’s eyes now scanning the room, inexplicably checking to see if she’d brought the Japanese tea service in here, or if something else in here was amiss—something in her brain was telling her that something was amiss, an occupational hazard of hers she hadn’t grown out of yet. But having found nothing she could put her thumb on, she continued. “Well, I don’t begrudge him much. An experiment gone wrong. But what about you? Have you tried marriage?”

Rachel had looked relaxed right up to that point, but when Charlotte asked that question she seemed to freeze stiff. And she didn’t answer immediately. When she did speak, she said, “No, I’ve known all my life that men weren’t for me. And the medical profession is demanding much in the same way as your career was.”

“You hesitated,” Charlotte said, but as soon as she’d said it she wanted to bite her lip and take it back. This career-developed nosiness and interrogation mode was another bad habit she needed to slough off in retirement, and she saw that saying that had had a negative effect on Rachel’s stance. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that. But you didn’t answer directly, and I am afraid I might have struck a nerve. Are there some painful misses in your past life, perhaps?”

“No, no near misses. Just a subject I’d rather not talk about.”

“Fair enough. There certainly don’t seem to be any threats along those lines here in Hopewell,” Charlotte said, trying to make her voice light to bring the conversation back onto a comfortable level.

Rachel turned and looked at her and visibly relaxed. “There’s always our good professor, Grady. He seems to have his sights on you.”

“Lord love a duck,” Charlotte said, with a laugh that perhaps had just a twinge of nerves to it. “I wouldn’t have Grady Tarbell on a Christmas tree. You can bet I checked the male population out before I got here. The only eligible man I’ve seen here is Deputy Burch, and he’s young enough to be my son.”

At the mention of the police deputy’s name, Rachel seemed to tense up again, and she turned back to the window and looked out. Charlotte heard her sigh, and then she moved the curtain back in place that she’d held aside to look out at the street and turned and looked at Charlotte and abruptly changed the subject. “Well, if I’m going to get lunch before we have to be at the arts center for the judges’ meeting, I guess I’d best shove off.”

“Would you like to join me here for lunch?”

“No, thank you, Charlotte. I have some medical notes to look at while I’m eating. But thanks for the invitation.”

The demur didn’t sound all that convincing to Charlotte. But she didn’t blame Rachel. Her lack of cooking skills had been learned quickly and well in the town. In fact, a recent survey of the residents for classes at the arts center had focused on cooking classes, and Charlotte strongly suspected this sudden interest was entirely for her benefit.

As she stood at the door to see Rachel off down the two blocks to her own house just beyond the old elementary school that had been turned into an arts center when all of the families with children had flocked off to the cities, Charlotte noticed that the police cruiser was no longer parked in front of Joyce and Todd’s B&B, just one door beyond Rachel’s house.

Charlotte sensed the excitement that everyone else did upon seeing David Burch’s cruiser on River Street. Police cars were so prevalent in Annapolis where she’d come from that they had been almost invisible to her, but here David, the Talbot County sheriff’s deputy responsible for this section of the county, was assigned to such a wide swatch of territory that he rarely came to their sleepy “artists’ colony” of urban dwellers trying to make the most of their silver years.

And Charlotte hadn’t wanted to crowd David in his work, so, although it was impossible not to come in contact with him occasionally in her position as the town’s mayor, she thus far had worked hard to stay clear of him.

As she watched Rachel walk up the street, she felt a warm silkiness brush against her hand and looked down to see Sam’s yearning eyes looking up into hers. She leaned down and scratched his ear. “Yes, I miss the Wellses too, Sam. They are good neighbors—and certainly more attentive to you than Susan is. They’ll be back as soon as they’ve dug up Turkey, though. And, if you’re good, maybe they’ll bring you a mastodon bone.”

Chapter Four

Charlotte, Rachel, and Jane all approached the arts center from their different directions—Rachel and Jane from their homes flanking each side of the old school building and Charlotte from farther down the street—almost like they were a precision team of marchers. This was one aspect of retirement to the river that had not yet ceased to amuse Charlotte. Everyone was still so obsessed with schedules and otherwise footloose that they arrived precisely on time for all of the activities they manufactured to make them feel useful and creative and busy.

The movement of the three was so well synchronized that they almost ran into each other where the sidewalk met the concrete walk up to the front entrance of the old school. They hadn’t been looking at each other or where each of them was going. The attention of all three was focused on the old brick Manse across the street from the school—the most imposing and largest house in the village—which had sat empty, but well maintained, since long before Charlotte moved to town. It wasn’t empty now. There was a moving van in front of it, which occasioned a flurry of activity and the movement of some quite elegant, and obviously very expensive furniture.

Charlotte thought that this must be some sort of festival day in Hopewell. First the visitation by Deputy Burch’s police cruiser and now this. And not just this either. As she had walked up the street, Charlotte had passed a blue sedan parked on the side of the street—as discretely as any unfamiliar car could be in a town this small and out of the way. A single occupant—a dark-haired woman—was sitting in the car, and if Charlotte knew anything about surveillance work—and she had every reason to be familiar with it—this woman wasn’t lost or waiting to pick up someone in the house she was sitting in front of. She was here watching someone or looking for something.

“What’s that all about?” Rachel asked Charlotte, indicating the moving van.

“Why ask me?”

“You are the mayor, aren’t you? Aren’t you supposed to know everything new that’s happening in this town?” Rachel laughed, though, to take the edge off the accusation.

“Hell, I don’t even know what the woman is doing sitting in that car up the street,” Charlotte said. And she too laughed. “She certainly isn’t anyone from the village.”

Rachel turned her eyes up the street, and a little scowl formed on her face and she seemed to withdraw upon herself.

“I think she must be moving in at last,” Jane said.

Both Charlotte and Rachel turned their attention to her.

“Brenda Brandon.”

“Yes, what about her?” Charlotte asked. The name was certainly familiar. That was the name of one of the leading ladies of the movies, having been one of few who had made the successful transition from bombshell to respected leading lady actress to box office mature roles. But what did this have to do with her, Charlotte wondered.

“Brenda Brandon the movie star,” Jane repeated just to make sure the other two women were following her. “She owns that house, but no one has lived there for years. Now, I guess she’s finally leaving Hollywood and moving in with us.”

Rachel started to say something, but Jane signaled her surreptitiously—or at least it would be surreptitiously if Charlotte’s powers of observation hadn’t been superb—and Rachel held whatever she was going to say.

“And the woman in the car?” Charlotte asked, believing now that Jane was the font of all information, and filing the little exchange she’d seen between Jane and Rachel in the back of her mind.

“Beats me,” Jane answered. “Maybe the great diva has bodyguards?”

“Doubtful,” Charlotte said. “If she’s still there when our meeting’s over, I’ll just walk up to her window and ask her what’s she up to. I guess that comes under the heading of Hopewell mayoral duties.”

They found Susan Purcell at the back of the gallery room, opening heavy wooden art frame boxes and removing paintings. She was such a small, slight figure of a woman that some of the cases seemed to dwarf her, but she was handling them deftly enough.

“There you are, Susan. Getting a start, I see,” Charlotte said as the three women entered the large room to the left of the old school entrance hall, which had been turned into a large, airy, white-walled gallery space. Art works were already hung around on three of the four walls and on a network of partitions slicing up the center of the room. Charlotte strode out beyond the other two, who had stopped short near the entrance to take in what had already been hung. “Those aren’t entered in the competition, are they?”

“No, most certainly not,” Susan said with a bit of a snort. “These are real art—several McCurdles and that group of Thompsons over there—and the smaller, more delicately painted Vormeers still in the cases over here.”

Susan had a way about her that seemed to set people off. She was younger than most in the village and dressed in an avant-garde style that screamed individualism. And she was bossy in a manner that insinuated she was the only one in the room with any brains. This was linked up with a whiny voice that could quickly get to you and a sharp tongue to match. She gave Charlotte the sensation of fingernails being run across a blackboard.

“And you’re going to hang them all down at this end, not mingle them with the canvases entered in the show?” Charlotte asked as she moved in to help, taking up one of the smaller of the cases and examining it for clues on how she could get into it and retrieve whatever treasure was inside.

“Yes, all over here,” Susan answered. “So these will be what people first see when they come into the room and won’t retreat in despair from the trash at the other end.” She tossed her head to flip her bushy mane of raven curls back over her shoulder and closed her claws around one of Charlotte’s hand. “Do mind that case, please. It’s something that should be opened by experts only. These are on loan from Barnes, you know. They must be handled with extreme care.”

Charlotte was about to say something, when Rachel and Jane approached. Jane looked to be in such distress that Charlotte turned her attention in that direction.

“Susan.” It almost exploded from her lips. “You have my landscapes in the shadows over there, in the far corner. I thought we agreed that they would be the transition pieces to the works on loan. I—”

“Upon reflection, with everything in situ, I thought that Todd Vales abstracts would better suit,” Susan answered, with just a touch of snottiness to her voice.

“Better suit? But the committee—”

“Committees are only good for pointing out the obviously unsuitable,” Susan retorted. “That’s why I was brought here as curator. In the available light here, which is shockingly inadequate, I agree, the Vale pieces—those by both of the Vales shine as much less insipid.”

“Insipid?” Jane was almost screaming, and Rachel had to take her by the shoulders and guide her back to the other side of the room. But before she could be pulled away, Jane gave Susan a venomous look that seemed quite unlike Jane’s mousy persona. Unfortunately, it was lost on Susan, who wasn’t even looking. But it wasn’t lost on either Charlotte or Rachel.

As Rachel dragged Jane and her clinched fists away, Susan was deftly opening the art case and pulled out a small, gilt-on-wood framed painting of an English garden that had been rendered in heavily loaded broad strokes in oils that nonetheless had captured the sense of delicate plantings of flowers backed by fully leafed trees with luminescent color that leaped off the canvas.

“A Vormeer,” Susan said almost reverently. “Not as well known as the other masters of his period, but worshipped by those with the proper art education.”

“Yes, it’s lovely, dear,” Charlotte said. “But don’t you think that Jane—”

“Jane’s a cow,” Susan said. And that seemed to be the end of that discussion.

“Well, it will be a little hard to have our meeting now,” Charlotte said. “And there doesn’t really seem to be a need for a meeting if all of the decisions are made and no help is needed in organizing . . . so . . .” She was slowing down and leaving an opening for Susan to realize how pushy and dismissive she was being. But, of course, Susan didn’t catch the ball on that.