Folly (52 page)

He gave the order to the lineup, and one by one the men came up to the glass, bared their teeth as if checking for stuck spinach, and went back into line. The fourth such grimace sent a jolt through Rae that turned her bowels to ice water.

“That’s him,” she stammered. “Look, can I use the toilet?”

“Do you identify one of these men, Ms. Newborn? For the record.”

“Number four. He’s the one who threw me off the road. He had a mustache then. Look, I really need—”

She was whisked away. When she returned, feeling unnaturally
empty, a different group of men stood on the other side of the mirror, shifting restlessly at the delay. All were taller than those in the first lineup, and blond-haired, and she waited fearfully for another twist of recognition while they turned from one side to another. Nothing.

“It could be number two,” she had to say finally. “But it could be number two’s brother, as well. I’m sorry, I can’t be anywhere near as certain about this one.”

The sheriff did not seem unduly worried about it, and when they had finished the paperwork, Rae looked over at him.

“I didn’t pick out two policemen, did I?”

“Oh, no, you most certainly did not. And don’t you worry about the second one—we’ve got something to work on him with now.”

“They haven’t said anything about who hired them? If anyone?”

“Not yet. But if you want to phone me tomorrow, I’ll tell you what I can.”

“What about my house being broken into? Did these guys do that, too?”

“I’m afraid they couldn’t have. Both of them were in jail when that happened—an alibi that’s hard to break. We’ll ask them, of course, if maybe they mentioned to somebody that the house might be empty, but somehow I don’t think so. Other than the deliberate damage, the break-in itself looked pretty smooth. Maybe not professional, since nothing much was missing, but from a cooler head than these two. You going up there, while you’re here?”

“I’m meeting my lawyer there tomorrow, to see if I find anything she and the insurance man missed.”

“Let me know if you do. Now, can I get you a ride somewhere? Arrange some dinner?”

“I have someone expecting me, thanks, but if someone could give me a lift across town, it’d be a help.”

The someone expecting Rae was her tree merchant and importer of exotic hardwood, Vivian Masters, a sawyer with the name of an English aristocrat, the build of an Olympic weight lifter, the voice of an Australian drover, and the hands of a Dutch diamond cutter. Vivian had been Rae’s partner in craft for more than a dozen years before the accident. When she had phoned him from the airport in Seattle to tell him she was coming down and would want to drop by the shop, he had shouted with pleasure, and insisted that she stay with him and his lover
(who Rae knew by long experience would be tall, intense, probably bearded, possibly foreign, and lamentably temporary).

When she stepped out of the official car at Vivian’s door, he burst from the shop at a run. Arms like steel bands wrapped around her rib cage, a grip that would have triggered a panicky struggle for escape had it been any man in the world other than Vivian. Him she hugged back with equal fervency, her arms around his neck, her chin resting on his hair, as they rocked with the pleasure of seeing each other. Then the wood merchant thrust her at arm’s length and declared how positively buff she was, and how the hell was she, anyway, she looked good enough to eat. Rae looked over her shoulder at the bemused driver and waved good-bye, then strolled into Vivian’s yard with her arm over his shoulder, his arm around her waist.

Vivian lived, literally, over the shop, which might have had something to do with his various lovers’ disinclination to become permanent, but when Rae walked through his shop door she felt her lungs instantly expand, followed a moment later by her soul. The fragrance of a hundred woods filled the air, the distilled essences of topsoils stretching from Borneo to Nicaragua. Two years had passed since Rae last set foot in Vivian’s warehouse, and the instantly remembered visceral magnificence of the air caught her unawares. She felt dizzy, frightened and intoxicated simultaneously. She had to sit down, and was aware of tears trembling in her eyes, and of Vivian bending over her in concern.

“I’m okay,” she reassured him. “I’d just forgotten.”

He straightened to his full five foot five, sawdust-clogged blond Afro and all, and turned to survey his wooden kingdom. “I know. When I’m gone for a while and come back, the bloody place does the same thing to me.”

“It’s… primeval.”

He shot her a look that was pure joy. “Shit oh dear, girl, it’s fine to see you. Come in, have a drink. Have ten drinks. Let’s get smashed to the eyelids and talk about wood and trees and curse the fucking gallery owners. But first you have to meet Jordan. Jor!” he bellowed hugely up the stairway that led to his living quarters. He continued talking as they went up. “I can’t believe you two’ve never met, like my left hand not knowing my right, but I guess it was that Christmas—oh, Christ Almighty.” Vivian turned on the narrow stairway to look into Rae’s eyes, his voice gone suddenly soft. “What a terrible time that was. I never told you. When I talked to you, coupla days after the funeral, I knew damn
well you were goin’ through hell up in that house of yours, but you told me you wanted to be alone. I knew I should’ve gone and snatched you up and brought you here, even then I knew it, and instead of that I let you talk me into leaving you be and just dove in head over heels with Jordan, like some demented teenager with his balls on fire. I was a fucking idiot and—”

She impulsively took his face in her hands and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “You’re not an idiot, and honestly? Nothing you could have done would have made a speck of difference. Even if I’d let you come near, that kind of breakdown is like a broken leg or an earthquake— friends can’t make it heal any faster or stop any sooner.”

“Yeah,” he said in his Aussie drawl, “but mebbe I wouldn’t’ve felt like such a shit.”

A voice came down the stairs. “You notice that his primary concern in the matter is the problem of being stuck with a feeling of guilt?”

“A course,” Vivian retorted, instantly happy again. “You don’t think I’d worry myself about a mad sheila like Rae, do you? Rae—Jordan Benedict. Jordan my love, this is the other woman in my life. You have to adore her, I order you to, she’s a genius.”

Rae had never seen Vivian quite so manically Australian before, and it occurred to her that, unlikely as it might be, the man was nervous. The proximity of the mentally ill had that effect on people, but she wondered if in this case it might not be something else. Such as the man in the doorway above them, a man who had survived eighteen months with Vivian Masters (whose relationships had never gone more than four in all the time she’d known him), a man who did, granted, have a beard, but who was neither foreign nor tall, and more comfortable than intense.

His handshake was strong but not assertive, and if he was troubled by Rae as rival—a rival, moreover, who had been smooching Vivian on the stairs—it did not show.

“Hello,” he said. He had a book in his left hand, one finger marking his place.

“Good to meet you.”

Vivian had pushed past them and was already in the apartment, shouting over the clatter of beer bottles. “Have a beer, Rae? Go and dump your clobber—you know where your room is—and then we’ll eat. Here, try this little brewery up in Marin, daft name but paradise in a bottle. Say, you haven’t turned into a vegetarian or some crap?”

“No, I eat anything.”

“That’s a relief. Seems like everybody I know’s sworn off meat or drink or both. Don’t know how they bloody expect—”

“Vivian.” The wood man and his client both stopped what they were doing to look at the source of that gentle, authoritative voice. When he had their full attention, Jordan continued. “I do adore her, Vivian. I recognize her genius. And I’m very happy to share your life with the Other Woman. So would you stop racketing around like a frog in a frying pan? Just calm down. Everything’s fine.”

Vivian’s jaw dropped, then snapped up into a crooked grin. He beamed at Rae, kissed Jordan, and wordlessly went back into the kitchen. Looking calmer. Rae met the man’s eyes, saw the depth of affection and humor there, and felt like kissing him herself.

Rae slipped into the evening with the ease of a fish entering its native pool. The meal had been cooked by Vivian, who rarely bothered but when he did always created some culinary echo of himself—blunt, muscular, and full of unexpected subtleties. He couldn’t have followed a recipe if his life depended on it, but he stormed around and tossed together unlikely ingredients that worked. Tonight’s was vaguely Middle Eastern in flavor, with touches of Japan and New England.

When they had eaten, Vivian shooed Jordan out of the kitchen and handed Rae a dishcloth.

“Final papers,” Jordan explained with an apologetic smile as he allowed himself to be pushed out. “Grades are due.”

“I’ll bring you a coffee when we’re done washing up,” Vivian shouted after him, and rolled up his sleeves.

“Jordan teaches?” Rae asked.

“At the uni. Part-time, so far—Shakespearean lit and creative writing. He never met Alan,” he added, knowing what she wanted to ask. “He’s a writer—his first novel’s coming out in the fall. Real highbrow stuff, boy growing up in a small town.”

Rae made the appropriate noises of interest, but her mind was not on Jordan Benedict’s literary future. After a minute, Vivian dropped the sponge in the soapy water and turned to plant his back against the sink.

“What is the matter?”

“I’m sorry, Viv, I’m not being a very good guest, am I?”

“Sod that. What’s wrong?”

“I saw the men who attacked me, this afternoon. Stood on the other side of a one-way mirror not four feet from … oh Christ, Viv, it was like a nightmare. I honestly expected his hand to come through the glass at me. It’s—I mean, it’s okay, I’m glad they caught them, but it’s left me—”

He seized her shoulders with his wet hands, marched her over to a chair, pushed her into it, then went to the cabinet and poured her a large slug of expensive brandy.

“Drink that.” He stood over her until she had swigged half of it, then he nodded. “Nothing like booze for the shakes. Now, tell me everything.”

Rae told him, if not everything, at least a clear outline of the last months. He went back to the dishes, and when he had stacked the last pan on the stove, he filled the coffeemaker, then set out cups and a jug of milk. She finished her story about the time the coffeemaker stopped spluttering. Vivian took a cup to Jordan, and when he came back, he poured enough brandy into theirs to dilute the mixture to room temperature.

“You’re working now?” he asked, an apparent non sequitur. “Not just the bloody four-by-twos?”

“Gloriana has some idea of the house as subject of a book of photographs. I told her I’d think about it.”

“Tell her you’ll do it. Do anything. Work, and love—they’re what keep anyone from running off the rails.”

“You’re more firmly on the track than I’ve ever seen you, Vivian. Jordan’s a sweetheart.”

“Jor’s a bloody wonder. The best thing that ever happened to me. And you—you gonna find someone in those islands of yours?”

It was said as a jest, but Rae hesitated a split second too long with the memory of Jerry’s hard mouth on hers before laughing her response. Vivian was on it in an instant.

“You have found someone! Why, you beaut, tell Uncle Viv all.”

“No, I haven’t found anyone. How could I? I’m a hermit; the only man I see is the aging hippie who brings me groceries. But I’ll tell you, he’s worth a minute’s fantasy, this guy. He’s like something out of a Jimmy Buffett song, and he’s got these incredible tattoos …”

Ed and his skin sidetracked Vivian, and as he refilled their cups, not bothering with the coffee this time, he told her about this tattooed boy he’d once known. The subject drifted safely away from Rae’s love life.

The level in the bottle went down, and they moved into the comfort
of the living room, where Vivian lit a fire with wood scraps from the shop below. She asked him about recent acquisitions; he told her a few tall tales about the wood trade.

“You wrote me about a piece of burl,” she suddenly remembered. “I don’t think I even wrote you back, did I?”

“You did not.”

“Do you still have it? Let me see it.”

“Not tonight. But let me tell you how it came to me,” and he was off again, the only man who could make buying and selling dead trees sound like piracy on the high seas.

It was pure pleasure listening to him, watching his eyes gleam like black diamonds. It was even a pleasure, if a bittersweet one, when Jordan came in and joined the conversation for a while before wandering off to bed. She watched him go, unaware of the look on her face, somewhere between wistful and yearning.

“So,” Vivian said in a brook-no-nonsense voice when they were alone again. “What’s this about you and some bloke?”

“It’s nothing, Viv. There’s just… the sheriff up there seems to have a thing for me.”

“Anything wrong with him?”

“Not a thing. He’s a few years younger, but not much, and a really nice guy.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Don’t be rude. Alan was nice.”

“Alan was a lot of things, but I don’t think ‘nice’ would’ve been your first word in describing him. What’s your sheriff’s name?”

“Jerry Carmichael. He’s six two, lots of muscle, lived on the islands his whole life. Good sense of humor, sensitive without being sickening about it. He’s even a good listener; do you know how few men are good at listening?”

“So what kind of a tree would he be?”

“What kind of-— Oh, right. Let me see.” Rae had nearly forgotten Vivian’s old game, typing people as trees. Vivian himself was clearly a eucalyptus: thirsty Australian native; bending to a certain point and beyond that terribly brittle; unworkably hard when dry; going up in flames at the merest spark. Alan had been bamboo—flexible looking, steel at the core— and Rae, Vivian had once let slip, was one of those Monterey Pines hanging on to the cliff face near the sea, battling the elements but tough and
with roots deep in the unfriendly ground. “Jerry’s a cedar, I think. Straight, strong, solid, both soft and impervious. Plus that, he smells good.” Rae suddenly blushed, and Vivian crowed with laughter.