Right Hand of Evil (10 page)

"The others are just as bad," Janet said.

The other woman shook her head slowly. "I don't know." She sighed. "I guess it's nice that there are people who want to take on projects like this, but if you want to know the truth, I've got a feeling that folks around here are only going to take your trying to restore this place as proof that they're right."

"Right?" Janet echoed, unsure what the sheriff's wife meant. "Right about what?"

Corinne Beckwith grinned. "That all the Conways are crazy!"

Corinne's words touched a nerve in Janet. "If that's why you came over here-" She bristled, but Corinne raised her hands as if to fend off her words.

"I'm sorry-I was just trying to make a joke." Her smile disappeared. "I really am sorry. It wasn't a very good joke, and I suspect you're not really in the mood for jokes anyway. Actually, the real reason I came over was to talk about your project. If you're really going to try to turn this place into an inn, you're going to need all the help you can get. And Father MacNeill's just going to be the beginning, although frankly I'm not sure exactly how you're going to get around him."

"But all he said was that there'd be some people who'd object."

Corinne's brows rose in a cynical arch. "That's code, Janet." Her eyes darted around as if searching for an unseen eavesdropper, and her voice dropped a notch. "Ray-that's my husband-would kill me if he knew I was telling you this, but Father MacNeill never does anything up front. He doesn't have to, since practically everyone who's anyone in this town is Catholic, and if they didn't go to St. Ignatius School themselves, then their kids are going there now. And they do what Father Mack wants them to do. If he said there would be objections, it's because he's planning to make very sure that there are."

Janet cocked her head quizzically. "I gather you're not Catholic?"

Corinne shrugged. "I still go to St. Ignatius because Ray does. But I like to think for myself." Once again she glanced around as if searching for invisible ears. "Ray doesn't always like it, but that's the way I am."

Janet decided she liked Corinne Beckwith. "May I get you a cup of coffee?"

"If I can drink it while you give me a tour of this place. I've been dying to see it ever since I was a little girl and heard all the stories."

For nearly an hour the two women wandered through the house, stopping briefly to play with Molly and pet Scout, who seemed to have appointed himself the little girl's baby-sitter.

When they were finally back in the kitchen and Janet had split the last of the coffee between them, Corinne Beckwith offered up her opinion of the house, and there was no trace in her voice of the enthusiasm expressed by her words. "Well, your husband's right. This place would make one hell of an inn."

"If you agree with him, why doesn't it sound like it?"

Corinne's lips pursed thoughtfully. "It's none of my business, but does the trust have enough money to pay for everything that needs to be done?"

Janet nodded.

"And your husband can run a hotel right, as long as he-" Corinne cut her words short, and looked as if she wished she could recall them.

She knows,
Janet thought.
She knows about Ted's problem.
Janet felt a flush of anger. Who had told her? Or had she gone digging around, snooping into things that weren't any of her business, looking for something-Janet cut off her thoughts as sharply as Corinne Beckwith had stopped her own words a moment ago, reminding herself again that St. Albans wasn't Shreveport; here, everyone knew everyone else's business. There was no point in denying what everyone already knew. "As long as he stays sober?" she asked, finishing Corinne's question. When Corinne nodded, Janet took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. "As long as he stays sober, yes, he can run a hotel. And I hope he does stay sober. So let's assume he does. And let's assume we can get the variances we need. What else is there?"

"The house itself, and your husband's family," Corinne told her, deciding to match Janet's honesty with her own and confirming Janet's suspicions about the St. Albans grapevine. "I can tell you that since yesterday the phones have been ringing off the hook. And apparently what I told you about your aunt being pregnant wasn't just gossip. There must be half a dozen people who remember that she was pregnant when her husband died. But when they found her, she wasn't. The assumption was the shock of finding her husband's corpse induced labor, and she delivered the baby that morning." When Janet said nothing, Corinne went on. "The problem, as far as I can tell, is that no trace of the baby was ever found. There is no record of it having been born."

"Perhaps it was stillborn," Janet suggested.

"Even with a stillbirth, there should be a record. And there's something else. You remember the man outside the cemetery yesterday. Jake Cumberland?"

Janet almost shuddered. "I'll never forget him. The way he was looking at us. It was like he hated us, even though he's never met us."

"He probably does," Corinne replied. "His mother was the housekeeper for George and Cora Conway. And she disappeared that day, too."

"Disappeared?" Janet repeated. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"I'm not sure what I mean, either," Corinne told her. "I heard a lot of things, and I don't know what to make of it all. Apparently Jake's mother-her name was Eulalie-was some kind of voodoo priestess."

"Oh, come on," Janet began, but Corinne held up a hand.

"Let me finish. From what I've heard, Eulalie thought there was something 'evil'-that was the exact word she used, according to everyone I talked to-going on here, and she decided to put a stop to it. Apparently she made a doll."

"A voodoo doll?" Janet echoed, her voice incredulous. "Come on, Corinne, nobody believes in that stuff!"

"Actually, a lot of people believe in it," Corinne replied. "And certainly Eulalie Cumberland did."

Janet's lips tightened. "I can't believe anyone would think-"

"Just let me finish," Corinne interrupted. "Nobody I talked to knew the details, but apparently the doll was found. And there had been a fire in the yard the night before. And after George and Cora Conway were found, Eulalie and Cora's baby were both gone."

"If people think Eulalie took Cora's baby, why would they blame Ted's family for anything?"

"Nobody thinks she took it," Corinne replied. "Everyone I talked to says that Eulalie would never have left Jake. He was just a child, and she was all he had. It's the one thing everyone agrees on-that Eulalie wouldn't have left Jake. If she'd gone anywhere, with or without the Conways' baby, she would have taken Jake with her."

"So what do they think happened?" Janet asked, though in her heart she already knew what the answer was going to be.

Corinne hesitated. Then: "All anyone would say was that they're sure George and Cora did something to Eulalie, and that ever since the Conways left this house, nothing bad has happened here."

Janet's eyes met Corinne Beckwith's. "And they think that now that we're here, bad things will start happening again?"

Corinne nodded.

"I don't believe it!" Janet said, trying to contain her anger. "What are they going to do, come after us with pitchforks, like the villagers in
Frankenstein?"

Corinne Beckwith's lips curved into a tight smile. "I suspect it will be a little more subtle than that, but I think you've got the general idea."

Janet's outrage coalesced into cold determination. All the doubts she'd had about Ted's ability to do what he'd promised vanished. If Corinne Beckwith-or anyone else-thought they would simply pack up and leave, they were wrong.

Dead wrong.

"That's not going to happen," she said quietly. "If we leave, it will be because of our own failures. But nobody's going to drive us away. Nobody."

Ted sat in the comforting darkness of the bar, staring at the drink in front of him. Straight vodka, with just a twist of lime for flavor. In the back of his mind a tiny voice whispered to him to leave the drink where it was, and go home.

Shut up,
he silently whispered back.
It's just one drink, and I deserve it. Anybody would!

He lifted the glass and stared at the clear liquid for a long moment, as if daring the voice in the back of his mind to challenge him again.

It remained silent, and Ted raised the glass to his lips, drained it, then lowered it to the bar and nudged it toward the bartender, who immediately responded to the unspoken request. As the bartender-another Tony, for Christ's sake-refilled his glass, Ted studied himself in the mirror behind the bar. What the hell had everyone been staring at all day? There wasn't anything wrong with the way he looked-in fact, he looked a hell of a lot better than most of the jerks who'd been staring at him. But it wasn't just the way they looked at him that pissed him off. It was the way they acted, too.

It started that morning, right after he'd left the house. He'd been on his way to the Home Depot to pick up some wood stripper and a sander and the other supplies he needed to restore the dining room floor, but as he was going around the square in the middle of town, he passed a small brick building whose columned entry and small dome had immediately identified it as the St. Albans Town Hall. And with that identification had come the echo of the words he'd heard at his aunt's funeral.

"…
there will be a lot of opposition to giving you a variance."

"I hope you're prepared for a fight on that one.
…"

If there's going to be a problem, I might as well know about it right now,
Ted told himself. He slid the Toyota into an open slot half a block past the brick building. As he walked back, he nodded to the two people he passed. One was a woman about his own age who was clutching the hand of a little boy who was perhaps a year older than Molly. The other was a man of about sixty, clad in overalls, with a fringe of gray hair sticking out from beneath a stained baseball cap.

Neither the man nor the woman replied to his greeting, though he was certain they'd both heard him. And he'd also had the distinct impression that they knew who he was.

The funeral,
he told himself.
They saw us at the funeral, and they've heard all the stories about Uncle George and Aunt Cora.
Well, there were bound to be small people with small minds in small towns. But there would be just as many other people who wouldn't hold his family against him.

Entering the Town Hall-which at first glance appeared completely deserted-he looked around for a building directory and saw a sign on a door identifying it as the office of the Town Clerk. Inside, there was a long counter, behind which were two desks, one occupied by a young woman with short blond hair and a look of efficiency about her, the other by a man who looked to Ted as if he should have retired a dozen years earlier. A small plaque on his desk identified him as Jefferson Davis Houlihan.

The words TOWN CLERK followed his name, in letters just as large as the name itself.

"May I help you?" the efficient-looking blonde asked, offering Ted a polite if not quite warm smile. The plaque on her desk-much smaller than Houlihan's-informed him that her name was Amber Millard.

"I'd like to check the zoning on a piece of property," Ted replied. Was it his imagination, or did Amber Millard and her boss exchange a quick look? When he gave her the address of the house and saw the smile on her face turn brittle, he knew it hadn't been his imagination.

"That would be residential," she told him so quickly that Ted was certain she'd already looked it up. Her next words confirmed it: "Here's a copy of it. Someone else was just asking about the same property." Getting up from her desk, she came to the counter and handed Ted a single sheet of paper.

He scanned it carefully, though he was already certain of what it said. "Would you mind telling me who was asking about my house?"

This time, Amber Millard deferred to her boss.

"Well, now, that would be a breach of confidentiality, now wouldn't it?" Jefferson Davis Houlihan drawled.

Ted's first impulse was to ask Houlihan how many lawyer shows he'd been watching on television lately, but he checked the impulse; it would only anger the man. Studying the document in his hands again, he returned his attention to Amber Millard. "I'm going to need an application for a variance."

This time Houlihan didn't wait for his assistant to defer to him. "Not sure we have any. Haven't had any call for one in maybe twenty years."

Ted felt his temper rise. "Would you mind looking?" he asked, making no attempt to soften the edge in his voice.

"Don't mind looking," Houlihan drawled, lazily getting to his feet. "Just not sure where to start." His eyes fixed on Ted. "Maybe if you came back in a week or two…" he suggested, letting his voice trail off in an unmistakably deliberate way.

As he was leaving Town Hall a few minutes later, the first urge for a drink came over Ted, an urge that only grew stronger as the day went on. Everywhere he went, it was the same as at the Town Clerk's office.

No one was rude to him.

No one turned away as he approached.

Most people even smiled at him.

At first he tried to pretend it was just the way small towns worked: everybody here had known everybody else all their lives, and nobody knew him. It would take a while, but once they got to know him, they'd accept him. Especially once he got the inn open and his guests started spending money in the restaurants and shops strung neatly along the south side of the square.
It's money that talks,
he reminded himself,
and mine's as good as anyone else's.

Nobody refused to sell him anything.

By lunchtime, when he'd hauled the first load of supplies back to the house, he'd already spent close to five hundred dollars, and in the afternoon-after Janet told him about Corinne Beckwith's visit-he made sure he spent a lot more.

He ordered paint and wallpaper, new slate for the roof, and new fixtures for every bathroom in the house. He spent an hour at the one furniture store in St. Albans, searching through catalog after catalog, finally putting half a dozen of the best-and most expensive-into the car to take home to Janet.

He talked to the plumbers and electricians and roofers, and anyone else he could think of who might be able to help him on the restoration. "I'm not worried about money," he assured every one of them-and made certain they all had Bruce Wilcox's phone number so the lawyer could confirm that the money was, indeed, there. "I'm interested in getting the job done right."

All of them listened politely.

All of them sold him whatever he wanted.

But all of them-the plumbers, the electricians, the roofers, and everyone else-told him the same thing: "I don't know. It's pretty busy right now. Don't see how I can fit you in. And that house is in pretty bad shape. Be better just to tear it down."

By the end of the afternoon, Ted was sick of hearing it. His last stop was at the market, where he picked up everything on the list Janet had given him. Then, he decided to make another stop to add a few things of his own.

Some bourbon. Some gin. A lot of vodka.

He'd had a rough day. He deserved a drink.

The girl at the cash register passed the bottles across the scanner without saying anything, but he'd seen the look in her eye, and had no trouble reading its meaning: Go
away. We don't want you here.

Now, sitting in the bar, he met his own gaze in the mirror.
To hell with you,
he said silently.
To hell with all of you. I'm here, and I'm not leaving.
Draining the second drink in a single gulp, Ted dropped enough money on the bar to cover the bill and a tip and walked out.

After he was gone, the bartender scooped up the money, dropped part of it in the cash register and the rest of it in his tip jar, then picked up the phone.

"He was here," he said. "And he's drinking."

There was a short silence, and then the recipient of the call spoke. "That's good," Father MacNeill said softly. "Maybe he'll drink himself to death."

Evening lay like a shroud over the house. Janet tried to tell herself that her dark mood was just a result of the weather-the heat and humidity, unseasonable even for mid-September, that wrapped St. Albans like a sodden blanket. The iron determination that Corinne Beckwith's visit instilled in her that morning had begun to erode as soon as Kim and Jared came home from school. Jared tried to put a good face on it, but Kim made no effort to hide her feelings. Her unhappiness, Janet was certain, was heightened by the fact that there hadn't been any sign of Muffin all day.

"Something's happened to her," Kim said as she finally gave up trying to call the missing cat. "She wouldn't just run away."

"Cats can be pretty independent," Janet told her, trying to offer Kim hope for her pet, but at the same time wanting to prepare her for the possibility that the cat might never come back. "Maybe she just didn't like it here, and has found somewhere else to live."

"But she wouldn't do that," Kim protested. "Not Muffin!"

"Well, perhaps she'll come back," Janet told her, and changed the subject. "How was the first day at school?" she asked, and immediately wished she hadn't.

Kim moaned. "It was awful," she said. Opening the refrigerator, she rummaged around for a couple of Cokes, one of which she tossed to her brother. For the next twenty minutes Janet listened to her oldest daughter's account of the twins' humiliation in the first ten minutes they'd been in class at St. Ignatius. "And it wasn't even Jared's fault," she finished. "Sister Clarence never even asked if he wrote the note, and of course he wouldn't tell her he didn't."

"Look how she treated us," Jared said. "And it was our first day in school. If I'd told her Luke Roberts wrote the note, she'd have probably had him expelled, or made him stay after school and say two thousand Hail Marys or something."

Kim rolled her eyes, wondering once again how it was that Jared never seemed to get mad about anything-even someone else getting him in trouble-and always managed to make it sound like he hadn't done anything special. He didn't even seem to be angry at Sister Clarence. "Will you at least admit Sister Clarence is a total creep?"

"Kim!" Janet did her best to glare at her daughter, but as she'd listened to Kim recounting their day at school, a dark suspicion had been growing in her mind that there was more to it than Kim knew.

Father MacNeill.

But surely he wouldn't go so far as to turn a teacher against her own students? Or would he? For the rest of the afternoon the problem gnawed at her, nibbling away at the resolve that had come to her only a few hours earlier.

Then Ted came home, and even before they saw him, they knew what he'd been doing. It was nothing visible; nothing they could hear or smell, taste or touch. But all of them had been living with it for so long that they recognized it the instant he entered the house.

It was the aura of alcohol.

Janet, testing the roast she'd fixed for dinner, caught the look that passed between Kim and Jared. Though neither said a word, she could read their common thought as clearly as if they'd spoken:
He's drunk!

Molly began to cry, as if she, too, had picked up the thought-or perhaps detected her father's condition with some internal radar of her own.

Then he came into the kitchen, confirming their unspoken thoughts.

His step was a little too careful, his speech a little too precise.

"Why are you all looking at me that way?" he asked, and the tension in the house notched up as they heard the paranoia in his voice. Neither Kim nor Jared replied, and did their best to neither look at their father nor appear to be trying not to look at him.

Molly's wail rose to a scream.

"Does that child have to howl every time I come into the room?" Ted demanded.

As Janet scooped Molly up from the floor and tried to comfort her, she had to repress the angry words that threatened to spill from her lips:
She only does it when you've been drinking!
"Dinner will be on in a few more minutes," she made herself say instead.

"Then Jared can unload the car," Ted said, his eyes fixing on his son. "If it's not too much to ask." The last words were spoken with biting sarcasm, warning Janet that an explosion wasn't far away.

"Not a problem," Jared said, already on his feet. Kim, grabbing at the opportunity to escape the ugliness in the kitchen, quickly followed her brother.

"What's wrong with her?" Ted asked. "Do I look like I have some kind of disease or something?"

Once again Janet forced herself to hold her tongue, but when Jared carried inside a large box filled with bottles of liquor, she turned furiously on Ted.

"You said you were going to stop drinking." She struggled to keep her voice under control, and wished she'd found the strength to hold her anger in check until later, when she and Ted would be alone. But it was too late. Ted was already glowering at her.

"Just because it's here doesn't mean I'm going to drink it."

This time Janet did stifle the words that came to mind. But it didn't matter. She'd already set Ted off.

"You all make me sick," he rasped. "Can you blame me for having a drink every now and then, the way you all act?" He picked up the box of bottles, nearly lost his balance, then managed to recover himself. "You want dinner, go ahead and eat it. I'll take care of myself." He disappeared through a doorway that led to a butler's pantry and the big dining room beyond. Jared made a move to follow, but Janet stopped him.

"Don't. Just leave him alone. Maybe at least the rest of us can enjoy our dinner."

But of course they couldn't. The pall over the house grew heavier, and though Janet kept telling herself it was just the dank heat of the evening, all of them knew its real cause.