Right Hand of Evil (20 page)

For the first time in all her years of teaching, Sister Clarence had to struggle to keep her voice steady. "Both of you will report to Father Bernard's office at once." She waited, and for one terrible moment had the feeling that Jared Conway was somehow taking her measure. That he was thinking of defying her. Then he turned away and led his friend out of her classroom. But before he released her from the grip of his gaze, Sister Clarence saw the tiniest hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

The cold knot of anger within her congealed into hatred.

Hatred, and something else.

Something she'd never felt before, at least not in the presence of one of her students.

She felt fear.

For some reason she couldn't quite fathom, Sister Clarence realized she was dreadfully afraid of Jared Conway.

Janet climbed down off the ladder and stepped back to survey her work. When it was finished, the mural would cover most of one wall of the dining room. When she first told Ted her idea of doing the trompe l'oeil, making the long dining room wall opposite the French doors appear to open out onto another, far more formal garden from a time long past, she confessed that she'd almost given up on it before she even started. And it hadn't been simply the vastness of the wall that deterred her. "It's a whole different technique," she'd explained. "You have to know everything about perspective, and lighting, and-"

"And mostly, you have to have the ability to put what you see on the canvas," Ted had interrupted. They'd been in her studio, where she'd shown him the first sketch she made of the imaginary garden from the past. "I might not know much about art," he'd gone on, "but even just in black and white I feel as if I could walk right into that garden."

She eyed the image on the canvas as objectively as she could, and knew he was right-it was good. But still, the task of expanding it to fill the dining room wall seemed all but impossible. What if she couldn't do it?

"The worst that can happen is that you make a mess, and we paint it over. What have you got to lose?"

"Time," she'd reminded him. Just that morning, she'd tried to make a list of everything that needed to be done in the house, but gave up when the job began to look so staggeringly huge that she didn't see how they could ever succeed. But Ted had had an answer for that, too.

"Time is the one thing we're not lacking. Don't forget-there isn't any deadline for opening the hotel. I'd love to be ready by spring, but if it doesn't happen, it's not going to kill us. All the trust says is that I have to be living here. It's
my
idea to turn it into a business. And there's plenty of money in the accounts to hire people if I need to. So why not give the mural a try?"

He'd taken her hand-something he hadn't done in years-and led her through the house to the cavernous dining room. He had stripped the walls of their peeling wallpaper only the day before. "Maybe it's just the way you did the drawing, but I keep seeing a night scene." His eyes left the wall and scanned the vast, empty room. "And I keep seeing this room done in white-with fresh flowers everywhere-on the tables, on the sideboards, everywhere. I want to make it really romantic, with lots of candles, and tables for two-maybe a few for four, but mostly deuces." His eyes shifted back to the huge blank wall. "And when people look at that wall, they'll see what it must have been like here a century ago, with all those perfect formal gardens no one can afford to keep up anymore. Maybe with a reflecting pool, and moonlight…" He stopped, and looked worried. "Am I biting off more than you can chew?"

Janet shook her head. "If I could do it right, and it were lit right, it could be gorgeous at night. But what about breakfast and lunch?"

"We build a breakfast room," Ted had told her, and for the next hour he led her from room to room, describing the visions in his head. As she listened, Janet, too, began to see the elegant little hotel he wanted to build.

"I don't know if I can do it," he admitted when they were back in the dining room. "But I figure I'll take it one step at a time, and when I come to something I can't do, I'll find someone to help me out. So how about it? What's wrong with you trying to do something wonderful with that wall?"

She started the next day, elaborating on that first sketch she'd made. She worked through the morning, and Ted stopped by now and then to look over her shoulder at the drawings. But he never said anything unless she asked him what he thought. By the end of the morning, she'd finished a drawing that he assured her was a perfect depiction of exactly what he'd had in mind.

And Janet, after studying the drawing as objectively as she possibly could, decided that whether or not Ted was simply humoring her, the drawing was
good.
Right after lunch, she set to work expanding it onto the huge expanse of the dining room wall.

Within a couple of days-after she'd transformed the wainscoting into a faux-marble balustrade-she realized that Ted was right. She
could
do it. Slowly, the image took form, and as she worked, new ideas came to her. The painting seemed to take on a life of its own.

Now, even though the mural was still far from complete, the illusion was starting to emerge. She moved from the base of the ladder to the double doors opening from the entry hall, and was trying to gauge the mural's overall effect when she heard Ted come up from the basement, where he'd been working most of the day on the plumbing. For a moment she felt all the automatic responses that had become almost instinctual in her over the years:

The flush of apprehension as she waited to see how much he'd had to drink.

The reflexive shrinking away from the alcohol on his breath, and the roughness of his touch.

The measuring of the anger he always carried with him, which increased in proportion to the number of drinks he'd consumed.

But since that morning six weeks ago when he rid the house of the alcohol he'd bought only the day before, all of that had changed. Slowly, Janet had lowered her guard. Now, as she felt him behind her, she found herself looking forward to his touch rather than dreading it. She snuggled back against his chest, her fingers stroking the thick curly hair on his forearms as he slipped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck with his lips.

"I must smell like a pig," he growled into her ear.

"You smell wonderful," Janet murmured, her whole body responding to the musky odor emanating from his skin.

"Where's Molly?"

"Sound asleep," Janet replied. "I put her down half an hour ago."

Ted's fingers gently caressed her breasts. "How long will she sleep?"

"Maybe an hour." Janet twisted in his arms, and put her own around his neck. "Think that'll be long enough?"

"Not by half," Ted whispered. His lips moved from her neck and ear to her mouth, and his arms tightened around her. "Want to go upstairs?" he asked when their lips parted again.

Janet thought of the paintbrushes she'd left on the tray at the top of the ladder.

She thought of the mess in the kitchen that she hadn't cleaned up since lunch.

She thought of the hundred other things that needed to be done.

"I can't think of anything I'd rather do," she said.

He swept her up in his arms and started across the foyer toward the stairs.

"What are you doing?" Janet cried. "Ted, for God's sake, put me down! You'll cripple yourself!"

"Quiet, woman!" he commanded. He started up the stairs, and Janet's struggles gave way to giggles.

"If you drop me, so help me I'll-"

The front door opened then, and they heard Kirn's voice. "Mom? Dad? What's wrong? How come you're carrying Mom?"

"Damn," Ted swore. Janet froze, waiting for the explosion. But when he spoke again, his voice was low enough that only she could hear him. "There goes a perfectly good ravaging. But just wait until later, when the children are locked in their rooms…" His voice trailed off seductively, then he kissed her and lowered her to the stairs. "Nothing's wrong," he told Kim, starting back down to the first floor. "How was school?"

Kim's face clouded. "Okay, I guess," she said, her voice giving the lie to her words.

"What happened?" Janet asked, also back in the foyer now.

Kim's eyes flicked from her mother to her father, then back to Janet. "Just Jared and Luke. They were acting like jerks."

"Anything special, or were they just being adolescent boys?" Ted asked.

Kim's gaze shifted uncertainly back to her father. It had been so long since he'd wanted to talk to either her or Jared that she still wasn't used to it. "Well, Sandy thought they were being jerks, too."

"Sounds like teenage boy stuff," Ted said.

The clouds in Kim's face turned stormy. "Why do you always defend him?" she demanded, glaring at her father. "What's going on around here? It seems like anything Jared wants to do is just fine with you, even when he's acting like an-"

"Hey, I'm sorry," he said with no trace of anger, holding up his hands as if to ward off Kim's attack. "I guess sometimes your old dad can still be a chauvinist pig. So what exactly did he do?" Kim hesitated, and Ted thought he knew what she was thinking. "Come on," he urged her gently. "I'm not going to bite your head off. And I promise I'll listen. Okay?"

Kim, mollified, first told them what had happened at the pizza parlor, then the aftermath in Sister Clarence's classroom. "I don't know what's going on with him," she finished. "But something's wrong. He's just not like himself. He-"

"He's growing up, honey," Ted told her. "Just like you are. Neither one of you is like you used to be. But that's not a bad thing. It's just-"

The phone rang, and he stopped as Janet picked it up. A moment later she mouthed
Father Bernard
at him. The conversation was brief.

"Father Bernard wants to see us," she said as she put the phone down. "Jared won't be home for a while."

Ted's brows rose. "What's he doing?"

"Cleaning the church," Janet said. "Father Bernard decided that if they didn't see fit to get to class on time, they might as well find out how they would enjoy being janitors, since, as he put it, 'that's about all either of them will be fit for if they don't straighten up.'"

Ted's eyes flashed with the sudden fury of his drinking days. They cleared quickly, but when he spoke, his voice was harsh. "Well," he said, "I suppose Father knows best, doesn't he?"

Clean the church.

Clean the freakin' church!

What kind of crap was that? Jared wondered, though he was careful to say nothing out loud until he and Luke were safely out of the school building. So they'd been a few minutes late getting back from lunch. What was the big deal? It wasn't like they were going to miss out on learning the secret of life, for Christ's sake. So they didn't get to hear Sister Clarence discuss the proper use of the subjunctive tense, or whatever the hell she'd been talking about. Who cared? But the thing that had pissed Jared off most was that Father Bernard left them waiting outside his office all afternoon. It wasn't like he'd been doing anything important-Jared was sure that most of the time he'd just been sitting there, inside. But they'd had to stand and wait, with everyone else in the school staring at them during the breaks.

No one had spoken to them, as if they were afraid they might catch some dread disease.

Bunch of kiss-ups, that's all they were, he thought.

Then, when they'd finally been called into Father Bernard's office, the priest made them stand at attention, like they were in some kind of military academy or something! And he'd even given them the "this hurts me as much as it hurts you" line of crap, like he really cared what happened to either one of them.

The way the priest had spoken, Jared assumed they would be suspended, but in the end he told them they were going to have to clean the church. "Perhaps if you see what it's like to work as a janitor, you might appreciate your classes a bit more."

More likely it was free labor that Father Bernard wanted, Jared decided.

"I bet he finds some reason to make a kid clean the church every single week," he said when he and Luke left the school. Sometime during the afternoon the weather had shifted, and the heavy mugginess in the air made Jared wish he could just go home and maybe sprawl out and take a nap. "What do you 'spose he'd do if we ditch it?" he asked.

Luke scuffed at the sidewalk, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. "You can do whatever you want. But if I don't show, my mom'll find out, and she'll kill me."

Jared eyed the church that loomed across the street. The last time he'd been inside was for his aunt Cora's funeral. He remembered thinking it had been kind of pretty, with the light coming through the stained-glass windows. But now it seemed forbidding, and as he came to the steps, he suddenly didn't want to go inside.

But why should I want to?
he wondered. Going inside meant spending the next three hours scrubbing the floors, polishing the brass railing in front of the altar, and cleaning all the statues. But even as he silently ticked off the list of chores Father Bernard had assigned them, he knew there was more to his reluctance to enter than just that.

As he stared at the high limestone facade of St. Ignatius, a deep anger took hold inside him.

"Come on," he growled. "Let's get it over with."

They walked into the vestibule, and Luke automatically dipped his fingers into the font of holy water that stood just outside the doors to the sanctuary, and genuflected.

Jared reached toward the water himself, then stopped.
Why should I?
he asked himself.
I'm not here to pray. I'm here because I'm being punished.
"Where do they keep the cleaning stuff?" he asked.

"Downstairs," Luke told him. "I know where it is."

He started up the aisle toward the altar, with Jared trailing after him. But halfway up the aisle, Jared felt a strange queasiness in his gut, as though he were getting the flu. He stopped. Now, he felt a cold sweat break out, his whole body feeling clammy, and a shiver passed through him. "Hey, Luke," he said. "Where's the bathroom?"

Luke spoke without turning around. "You either have to go next door to the parish hall, or use the one downstairs."

"What do you mean, downstairs? Where're we going?"

"Will you just come on?" Luke countered. "Jesus, what's wrong with you?"

"I-I just don't feel so good," Jared replied.

Luke turned to look at him, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Well, you don't look like anything's wrong," he said. "You trying to stick me with all the work?"

Jared glared at him. "I just need to use the can. No big deal."

As he followed Luke down the aisle, his queasiness getting worse, he prayed that he wouldn't puke or have an attack of diarrhea right here in the middle of the church. Luke would never let him forget that. Everything inside him was churning by the time they got to the sacristy, and when he saw the stairs at the back of the small chamber, he hurried down them. At the bottom, there were three storage closets and the rest room.