Thoughts of the dog faded as he noticed where Laurel had started tying up a running rose, a rich pink Zéphrine Drouhin, to the arbor over the side gate that he had repaired last week. He picked up the green plastic tape she had been using, then reached for a long runner to finish the job for her.
The rose was wet with early-morning dew, but the tape was dry. He frowned at the roll of green plastic as he realized it had not been lying there near the rose for long. Had Laurel been interrupted in using it, maybe by Maisie’s arrival or a ringing phone? Or had she, just maybe, heard him coming and escaped to the pottery shed because she couldn’t face him after what had happened Friday afternoon?
No, surely not. She probably hadn’t given him or their quick hug a second thought. Just because he had let his imagination run away with him about it all weekend didn’t mean she cared two cents, one way or the other. He certainly had no reason to think she would go to the trouble of purposefully avoiding him.
Finished with the rose, he walked over to the huge pine Laurel wanted cut, staring up at its big limbs outlined against the sky. He still hadn’t checked out the climbing equipment, wherever it was located, nor had Maisie remembered about the saw. On the other hand, the roses Laurel had ordered for the new beds hadn’t come in, either. The tree could wait.
Heading to the garage, he circled Laurel’s broken-down car inside, then opened the hood. It wasn’t as bad as he had thought. A good cleaning and lube, a few new belts and so on, plus a wash and wax might work wonders. Within minutes, he was up to his elbows in dry-rotted hoses, grease and dirty filters, wondering what Laurel would say when she discovered how he was using his time.
First, he was going to make the car run, then he was going to get Laurel into it. She might never belong to him, but he couldn’t stand seeing her shut up here. It was a grand old place, and he knew she loved it; still, there was more to life than its high walls. Having a garden wasn’t enough; he would make her see that, no matter what it took. He was going to get her out of Ivywild if he died trying.
He was down on his haunches wrenching off a flat tire when he heard the noise. He paused to listen.
It came again, a low whining. He recognized distress when he heard it. Dropping the tire tool, he rose to his feet and walked out of the garage. He scanned the yard, turning his head in a slow half circle as he listened.
Nothing. Yet he had been almost certain it was Laurel’s dog he heard.
“Sticks?” Hard on the call, he whistled in piercing command.
The dog whined in answer. The sound came from the high grass near the woods that grew along the creek at the back of the house. Alec jolted into a quick trot in that direction.
Sticks was trying to crawl, scrabbling with his big paws in the weeds and dirt. He moved his tail as he saw Alec, but it was a weak effort. There was pain in the fathomless darkness of his eyes and he couldn’t hold his head up. A stench hovered about him that, with the spittle rimming his muzzle, told its own tale.
“What happened, boy?” Alec said softly as he went down beside him. “Who did this to you?”
The dog made a low sound, lolling out his tongue. He was thirsty. Alec reached toward his head, meaning to gather him up in his arms, make a run for the vet. Then, as he turned the lax neck, he saw the glazing at the edges of the big, soft eyes.
“Aw, Sticks,” he whispered in pained acceptance. Gently, he rubbed the massive brow. “What’s Laurel going to say? How is she going to take it? And what in the world is she going to do without you?”
Just then, he heard Laurel give a thin cry. He swiveled on his haunches to see her running toward him from the direction of the shed. His first impulse was to keep her back, to not let her see, but it was too late. Her face was pale, her eyes huge in her face. Her gaze was fastened on the long, dark form of the dog at his feet.
Then she was there, falling to her knees beside him. Alec eased out of the way. She reached out to the dog as he had done, though her hands were shaking. She saw the dullness of his eyes, the gathering of buzzing bluebottle flies. A moan of helpless agony caught in her throat.
Sticks curled his tongue around her slim fingers once. His sides heaved in a last, labored breath. Then he was gone.
Laurel turned on Alec with her eyes blazing with rage and grief. “What did you do to him?” she demanded. “Why in God’s name did you have to kill him!”
Alec sat for long seconds as if he had turned to stone. Then he rose to his feet.
Laurel felt her breath catch in her throat as Alec moved in a slow uncoiling of muscles to tower above her. His face was set in grim lines, his mouth tight. His body was rigid with leashed temper, the muscles standing out in hard, sun-burnished relief.
“Your dog was poisoned,” he said with lethal quietness. “It happened hours ago. I wasn’t here.” Swinging from her in taut control, he began to walk away.
Poisoned. She glanced back at Sticks’s body in sudden uncertainty. Yes. Oh, God, yes. The evidence was there: the foam around the muzzle, the rictus that exposed the gnashed teeth, the dreadful stench. She was country-bred, familiar enough with the signs when not blinded by suspicion. She felt winded, as if the knowledge and the brief words Alec had spoken in his defense had been blows to her solar plexus.
“Alec!”
He didn’t stop, didn’t turn, gave no sign that he heard.
“Alec, wait. I heard you call him. When I looked out, I saw you bending over him. I thought—”
Her halting explanation made no impression. He kept walking.
Why should he listen? She had prejudged him and found him guilty in mere seconds, with no proof, no effort to consider that things might not be the way they looked. It had happened because she had once seen him put Sticks out, just that quickly.
That wasn’t all, of course. The terrible things that had been said about him added to her suspicion.
Gigolo.
Preys on older women.
Arrested for murder.
She couldn’t get them out of her head. If he could kill a woman, why not a dog?
Yes, but what if they were wrong—Mother Bancroft and Evan, and even Gregory Stanton? That thought had haunted her, too. She had been tried and found guilty in absentia herself by the gossip of her peers and her relatives. Why shouldn’t it have been that way with Alec? And if it was, if he was innocent, then what she had done was so wrong.
She knew how it felt to be falsely accused. She knew the pain and futile anger carried like a weight on her shoulders. She knew the humiliation of not being believed, was intimately acquainted with the withdrawal that was the only defense against it, and against everyone who looked at her in judgment.
She sprang to her feet and ran after Alec with quick, pounding steps. Catching up with him, she snatched his arm and swung him around. “Alec, I’m sorry,” she said, searching the dark, bitter-chocolate brown of his eyes. “I didn’t mean it. Please, I—”
Her voice failed her, choked off by the sudden rise of tears. Suddenly she was crying for Alec, for herself, and finally, for Sticks and all that he had meant to her.
Alec’s face changed as compassion rippled across it. “Don’t,” he whispered. Reaching out, he caught a teardrop on his knuckle.
“I can’t help it,” she said, scrubbing at her cheek with the heel of her hand. “Everything is so—so terrible.”
“Yeah.” He dragged air into his lungs, then let it out in a rush. Looking away from her, he squared his shoulders. “Go on into the house. I’ll get a shovel.”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. “I can’t let you do that, not alone. Sticks was mine, my responsibility. I wish—I knew he didn’t come back when I let him out in the middle of the night, but sometimes he doesn’t.”
“You let him out? Why?”
“He heard something, I think. He was barking and trying to scratch under the screen door.”
“You shouldn’t—” He stopped, folding his lips together as if to keep back the words he wanted to
say.
“I know,” she cried, running a hand through her hair in distraction. “I should have kept him inside with me, but how was I to guess this would happen?”
“You shouldn’t have opened the door at all, I meant to say. What if whoever was out there had been waiting until Sticks was out of the house?”
She stared at him. “I hadn’t thought.”
“Then think about it now.” His words were rough.
“But Sticks is gone.”
“Exactly,” he said, his voice grim. “Sticks is gone. Now.” He looked away. “Will you get the blanket, or shall I?”
They wrapped the big German shepherd in an old piece of quilt and buried him under a huge and ancient oak not far from the creek. It was a pleasant spot, a small clearing where honeysuckle grew and a breeze drifted, sighing, among the dark green branches overhead. Though Laurel was no longer particularly devout, she said a silent prayer. Alec marked the grave with a flat ironstone rock turned up on end and set in the ground. Afterward, they walked back to the house in the quiet warmth of the spring day.
Alec had not said a great deal, but he had been kind and efficient and had shielded her from the more horrifying aspects of the burial. Walking beside him now, she could feel wordless sympathy and comfort coming from him in waves. They surrounded her with a sense of endless support.
She could not help wondering what would have happened to her if Alec had been there when Howard died, if she had been able to depend on his understanding and strength when everyone else took theirs away. It was, she had to admit, a strange thing to wonder about a man who might be a murderer.
Oh, but surely he wasn’t. If he had been convicted of his wife’s death, he would be in prison, wouldn’t he? Unless, of course, he had received one of those light sentences for which the liberal California legal system was famous. In that case, there certainly must have been extenuating circumstances. That only stood to reason.
Rationalizing, that was what she was doing. She was good at it; maybe too good. Yet, even if what everyone said was true, all she had to do to be safe was refuse to surrender to his charm. Wasn’t it?
She should also abandon her half-baked impulse to lead him on then send him away unsatisfied. It was far too dangerous to her peace of mind, for one thing, but mostly it was unwarranted. Alec had given her no cause to think he had ulterior motives where she was concerned, and it was ridiculous to accept Sadie Bancroft’s word for it when her mother-in-law had been wrong about so much else. He deserved a chance. It was the one thing she could do to show her appreciation for his help. And she would stop thinking that the situation might have been contrived with just that end in mind.
As they reached the side gate, she turned to face him. He glanced down at her, his features blank; carefully so, she thought. She wondered what he was thinking, what he saw when he looked at her so intently.
The question that rose to her lips was graceless, abrupt, and not quite even. “Will you stay?”
He watched her with swift consideration in his eyes. “Why would I go?”
Her heartbeat accelerated, thudding with feather strokes in her ears. It was sheer terror that drove it. She must be crazy for what she was saying, for what she meant to do, something that was far beyond anything she had ever done in her narrow, restricted life. But she didn’t feel crazy. She felt stubborn and defiant. She felt a deep empathy that was like nothing she had ever known, a positive compassion for another human being whom everyone wanted to turn into an outcast. As they had her.
“Because of what I said earlier,” she answered when she could.
He gazed past her shoulder, squinting a little as if looking at something he didn’t much care to see. “You had reason enough.”
“I should have asked what happened, listened to whatever you had to tell me.”
“Will you next time?” he asked, the words compressed.
“Yes, of course.” It was a lie, and she never lied. But there were times when the truth was too dangerous to make known.
“Then,” he said softly, “I’ll be here as long as you need me.”
It was what she wanted. Some things were worth a little risk.
Laurel left Alec at the gate and continued into the house. He had a project he had been working on, she thought; probably getting the lawn mower running again, considering the grease she had noticed on his hands.
Maisie was in the kitchen; Laurel could hear the low mutter of the radio her housekeeper liked to keep going, as well as the splash of water in the sink. Feeling unsettled and morose, she wandered in that direction.
Maisie turned from the sink to give her a shrewd look. “You and Alec got the job over with?”
Laurel gave a disconsolate nod.
“And you’re all right?”
Laurel shrugged a little as she sighed. “I feel as if I’ve lost a member of the family.”
“Guess you have, in a way. Sticks was about all you had these last few years.”
Laurel made no answer as she moved to the cabinet and took down a cup, poured coffee from the pot that was always ready, then turned with it toward the table.
“You should have asked Alec if he wanted a cup.”
“He doesn’t drink the stuff, haven’t you noticed?” Laurel grimaced. “Sometimes I wish I could break the habit.”
Maisie dried her hands on a dish towel, then stepped to check on the gumbo she had simmering in a black iron pot. “Reckon if that’s the worst vice you ever have, you’ll be fine.”
“You could sit down and keep me company,” Laurel suggested.
“Might at that,” the older woman replied, her voice a little grim.
Laurel studied the housekeeper as she went through the motions of getting her own coffee. Laurel could feel her nerves growing taut as Maisie finally sat down across from her, stirring sugar into her cup with a steady movement that made the spoon clink musically against the sides. Finally, Laurel said, “Something’s on your mind, isn’t it? Something I should know.”
“You got so much on your plate,” Maisie said with a shake of her head, “I hate to go adding to it.”
Voice taut, Laurel asked, “Is it about Alec?”
“Sort of. Leastwise, it’s talk about you and Alec, and also about Gregory. There’s so much stuff going around, really, that it’s hard to say exactly who it’s about.”
Laurel put her fingers to her eyes where a headache was beginning to throb. “Maybe you’d better just tell me.”
“You noticed we’ve been having more traffic out this way lately?”
“Have we? Oh, I guess you mean the two or three who have turned around in front of the house.”
“More than two or three, and that’s not counting the ones who slow down to look. Gawkers, that’s what they are, wanting to see if Alec’s motorcycle is sitting out front, though what they think that can tell them, I can’t figure.” Maisie shook her head without quite meeting Laurel’s eyes. “Then it seems that idiot son-in-law of yours thought to ask God to watch over the fornicating going on—”
“I know about that,” Laurel interrupted.
“Good, that’s good. I expect you can imagine, then, that it was the most exciting thing to happen in his church since the song leader was caught in the choir loft with the deacon’s wife. The old biddies have their panties in a major twist over it.”
Laurel couldn’t help smiling over Maisie’s acid drollery, which was probably what her housekeeper intended. With a faint shake of her head, she said, “I suppose it will all blow over.”
“I doubt it.” The woman’s words were dour.
Laurel tilted her head in inquiry.
“Seems somebody is making sure it doesn’t. I had two people stop me in the grocery store yesterday evening, wanting to know if I’d seen a copy of some letter that’s going around.”
Laurel was silent for a long moment. Finally she asked, “What kind of letter?”
“I’d call it poison-pen, though I don’t know what the sher
iff would make of it. The thing names the names and tells the nitty-gritty, or pretends to. And it doesn’t stop there.”
“What do you mean?” Laurel’s headache was a steady throb now, pulsing with the hard beat of her heart.
“The letter claims Gregory has AIDS. That he’s here to die.”
Laurel breathed a soft imprecation. Ugly, so ugly. How could anybody do such a thing? They had to be insane. There was no other explanation. Was there? “I don’t suppose there’s any way to keep it from Alec?”
“Doubt it. Anyway, he should know what he’s up against, don’t you think?”
“I suppose. But it’s just so—” She stopped, at a loss for words to express her depression and disgust.
“Embarrassing?” Maisie supplied. “Sure it is. There wouldn’t be any point, otherwise.”
“I meant that the talk is bad enough, but putting it all in writing, then making Gregory a part of it, is adding insult to injury. Gregory is so sick. How will this make him feel? And then there’s Sticks being poisoned.” Laurel ran the fingers of her right hand through her hair, clutching at the silky strands. “What’s going on, Maisie? I just don’t understand.”
The older woman shook her head. “Neither do I, not really.” She paused. “Who do you think would write a letter like that?”
The question, Laurel knew, was rhetorical. As she met the expectant blue gaze of the woman across the table, she was sure they both had the same person in mind. Slowly, she said, “She certainly thinks there’s something going on between me and Alec.”
Maisie nodded. “Yes, and she didn’t much like you standing up to her.”
“I have to admit she always did like stirring things up using the mail. According to Howard, she was big on complaints to the newspaper, recall petitions for crooked politicians, write-in campaigns against all sorts of evildoings.”
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