Silk and Stone (50 page)

The funeral director was a short, puffy woman who looked as if she’d learned to do her own makeup by practicing on corpses. Talkative and eager to please, she led Alexandra down a somber hall. Their footsteps made no sound on the deep beige carpet. They were alone—except for the dead, and the dead couldn’t listen.

“Mrs. Lomax, it was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen,” the director said. “That young man and your niece coming in here to see his loved ones before the coffins were closed. They stayed long past our visiting hours, and I finally peeked in on them to say I really must lock up for the night. Your poor niece had to beg him to leave. He said something very strange, something about witches stealing from the bodies, and she looked absolutely heartbroken.”

“Witches are an old Cherokee superstition,” Alexandra explained, giving the woman a meaningful glance that dismissed such things.

The director nodded sadly. Then, leaning closer as they walked, she whispered, “I checked the caskets after he and your niece left. He’d put all sorts of little mementoes in each one. It is so tragic.”

“I appreciate you opening the house a little early today so I can pay my respects in privacy.” The director seemed pleased to be commended. She led Alexandra to a half-shut door. Alexandra smiled sadly at her. “I won’t be long.” With that she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

Draperies shut out the morning light. An amazing number of flower arrangements crowded the spaces between the caskets, which were positioned along three of the walls. A subdued chandelier cast the elegantly simple room in soft shades of light.

Alexandra stood in the center a moment, stunned at the triumph she’d accomplished by merely waiting until circumstances favored her. There was no doubt in her
mind that Malcolm Drury had started the fire. Jake had paid for his interference in her life. And most perfect of all, she was guilty of nothing but letting his foolishness follow its own course.

She went around the room, studying the cards on each flower arrangement and making a mental list of the people who had sent their condolences. She wanted to know who thought highly of the Raincrows. There was an astonishing variety. The tribal council at the reservation’s offices at Qualla. The agent from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Abraham Dreyfus, the respected lawyer from Durham, who had done considerable amounts of legal work for the tribe, a man she and Orrin considered an arrogant Jew. All the physicians in Pandora who’d insisted to her over the years that they considered Hugh Raincrow a laughable country doctor. The mayor. The sheriff. The woman who chaired the arts league Alexandra had created and still generously supported. The dean of Ellie’s medical school. Sheriffs from all over western North Carolina and the states bordering it.

And, most irritating of all, flowers from several of Alexandra’s closest friends, women who inhabited the fine homes around town, women who stupidly assumed Alexandra had not heard how they’d purchased Samantha’s weaving and avidly placed orders for more.

Ungrateful fools. The Raincrows didn’t deserve this homage. It was she who’d turned Pandora from a sleepy nothing of a town into the beautiful, interesting place they loved. She who’d endured Sarah’s bitterness, she who’d lost the treasure that proclaimed her place in the Vanderveer legacy.

And she would not be satisfied until she got it back. Alexandra went to a casket, glanced furtively toward the closed door, then lifted the lid. Grimacing, she looked at Hugh. A stethoscope and an aged, fire-ravaged copy of
Tom Sawyer
were tucked inside one of his arms. A spray of eagle’s feathers had been inserted between the lapels of his suit, covering his tie, placed directly over his heart. Alexandra reached down slowly, cringing at the thought
of touching his cold, hard skin, and felt inside the collar of his shirt for a necklace. Finding nothing, she quickly shut the lid and went to the next casket.

“Well, Sarah,” she whispered, “it’s clear who won,
isn’t it? Look
what your incessant cruelty to me has accomplished. I’ve taken far more from you than you ever took from me.”

Alexandra was beyond any sense of repulsion now. She quickly checked under the lacy neckline of Sarah’s green dress, hoping to feel the cool metal of a chain. Disappointed, she toyed contemptuously with the artist’s brushes that had been placed under Sarah’s folded hands, then frowned at the magnificent square of satiny red-and-silver material that had been arranged on the white pillow beneath her old enemy’s red hair.

Alexandra stroked it with a fingertip. The threads were extraordinarly delicate, woven with such care that the silver seemed to float among the darker background.

Samantha made this for her. Samantha loved her enough to honor her in a way she’d never honor me
. Alexandra drew back, furious.

She pulled the lid down and strode to the last casket. Ellie concerned her less than Hugh and Sarah; Alexandra wasted no time mulling over the whimsical items that had been placed with her and pushed apart the narrow scalloped V at the neck of her gold dress. No chain. No chain bearing Alexandra’s ruby. Of course, it could be hidden elsewhere on the bodies, but Alexandra decided it was not.

Jake had it now. So retrieving it was only a matter of time and patience. She had proved the wisdom of both, hadn’t she?

She closed the casket and smoothed her coat, then turned to leave.

Clara Big Stick stared at her with glittering, hateful old eyes.

Alexandra gasped involuntarily. Somehow the fat, dreary old woman had managed to slip into the room and shut the door again without her noticing. A bulky cloth bag hung from one of her shoulders. She clenched
the strap of it with one beefy brown hand and pointed the other at Alexandra, then advanced slowly.

“In the cold land where you live, O red spirit, we two have fixed your arrows for the soul of the Night Goer,” she chanted. “We have them lying by the path. Quickly we two will take her soul.”

Alexandra backed up, overwhelmed by the eerie words and the old crone’s sinister, commanding voice. Clara marched onward. “Listen, O purple spirit, in the cold land where you live. Quickly we two have fixed your arrows for the soul of the Night Goer. We have them lying by the path.”

“Stay away from me,” Alexandra said. She took another step back and felt a soft wall of flowers blocking her retreat. The old woman halted, her unwavering finger stabbing directly at Alexandra’s face. “Quickly!” she said. “We two will cut her soul in two!”

“Stop this, you babbling old fool.”

Clara’s hand dropped. She nodded. “It is done. When the arrows fall on your head, you will die. The great stone will find you, and you will die.”

Alexandra made a sound of disgust, but even to her ears it sounded nervous. Clara laughed. It was the most chilling thing Alexandra had ever heard. She skirted the old woman with as much dignity as she could muster, then nearly ran from the room.

Chapter
            Twenty-Two
 

E
ach thing he touched brought him no closer to an answer, but he couldn’t give up until he had one. Jake moved through what remained of the house—the first floor, with its blackened and water-damaged furnishings, the piles of debris that had once been his home. Jagged, sooty timbers crushed the hall staircase; shards of glass from the hall lamps crunched under the soles of his lace-up boots as he sidestepped a fallen painting of Mother’s, the canvas burned beyond recognition.

Rain drizzled outside and found its way through cracks in the ceiling. He stared up at it, cursing weakly. He was covered in dirt and soot, and exhausted to the point where misery receded into a dull throb behind his aching eyes.

He stopped outside the door to Ellie’s bedroom. He hadn’t been inside her room since the day after the fire,
when he’d forced himself to dig through the scorched jumble until he found the ruby. Sam had been with him that day, horrified and confused by an obsession he would not discuss with her.

He had clenched the stone in his hand and, feeling nothing, slung it into a jar that he kept on a shelf in their bedroom. When they lay in bed at night, sleepless, he would catch her staring across the room at the jar, and when he held her he felt her questions, her fear, her loathing for the morbid value she thought he gave the stone.

He hated it too, because it might hold some clue to the fire but would not help him.

A state arson inspector had turned up nothing; he and Pandora’s fire marshal concluded that the fire started in a stack of old newspapers stored in a cardboard box by the wall under the window eaves. They’d found the ash bucket nearby, and when Jake had recalled Father cleaning out the fireplace Thanksgiving night and carrying the bucket to the porch, they speculated that some exploring raccoon or ’possum had knocked it over after the family went to bed. A live ember must have rolled against the box.

Jake moved down the hall, running his grime-streaked hands over the log walls. He could not hear screams or feel his family dying; he wouldn’t let himself, because he’d never sleep again if he did.

“You in there?” a male voice called. “Jake?”

Jake emerged from the house, blinking even in the gray December light, furious that someone had interrupted him.

Joe Gunther stood in the ravaged yard, steel-gray cowboy boots mired in the mud and charred leaves, rain dripping from the brim of his western hat onto a gray slicker. The older man frowned at Jake’s filthy, gaunt appearance. “Hadn’t been to see you since the funerals,” Joe said, his face grim. “Sammie called me today. Asked me to talk to you. She’s worried half out of her mind.”

Jake shivered. Thoughts of Samantha’s misery weighed him down. He knew what she feared, what
scared her so much she wouldn’t even say it. He, too, lived with the terrible thought that Clara’s predictions had been right in the first place. During the funerals, Clara had only shaken her head at him when he’d tried to talk to her.

Which was why he came here every day, alone, and tried to learn the truth.

“You’ve got to let go of this,” Joe said, sweeping a jeweled hand at the house. “You’re making yourself sick.”

“I’ve got to know exactly what happened here.”

Joe looked at him sadly. “An accident, Jake. A goddamned, senseless accident. Now, look, I know it’s hard, but the best thing you can do is clear all this out. I can have bulldozers and dump trucks down here in the morning. We’ll scrape this spot clean.”

“No.”

“You’ve got Sammie to think about, and poor Charlotte too. You weren’t even at home to help Sammie set up a bed for her. You’ve got a wife and a teenaged sister-in-law who are grieving their hearts out, and Sammie would feel a helluva lot better if you’d grieve with her instead of prowling around this god-awful place by yourself.”

“When I’m done, you can send bulldozers.”

“Done with
what
, man? Done making yourself and Sammie so crazy, neither of you’ll ever get over it?”

“
When I’m done,
” Jake repeated between clenched teeth.

It was almost dark, the dreary day sinking into a wet dusk whipped by the wind. Huddled miserably in a thick coat, Sam sidestepped piles of scorched timbers, broken glass, and ruined furniture. Bo walked beside her, his tail and head low. Jake had ignored him for days.

She knew how Bo felt.

Jake had shut her out, and that made the horrible aftermath so much lonelier. She had her hands full with Charlotte, who had lost another set of parents, another home. Visitors came by the house every day, shy people
from Cawatie, who brought small gifts of food and asked how Jake was doing.

What could she tell them? That he came here every morning and stayed all day, then sat by himself on their porch at night, until finally she coaxed him to bed, where he held her with wordless, almost savage intensity, and they both pretended to sleep.

She wanted to cry when she saw him now, coatless, hatless, his shirt plastered to his broad back, mud streaking his jeans. He was picking through a pile of refuse near the ruins of the back porch, wet, dirty, pulling each bit of soggy cloth, each broken dish out of the pile, holding it a moment, then dropping it by his feet and reaching for the next.