“He won’t like it if he thinks I’ve been arranging things behind his back. He’s funny that way—thinks he can interfere all he wants, but it makes him hot under the collar if anybody meddles in his business.”
“Most of us are like that, I imagine,” she answered.
Gregory hesitated, as if he meant to force a more definite answer from her, then his lips firmed. With a curt, “Good night,” he took himself down the steps and out to the bike on the drive. A moment later, it peeled away, wobbling on its rear tire before it sped off into the night.
Laurel stood staring after it for some time, her gaze on the spot where the bright red pattern of its rear lights had disappeared into the darkness. Finally, she turned and went back into the house.
It was hours later that she sat straight up in bed. Her breath was caught in her throat. Her pulse hammered wildly in her veins. For an instant, her heartbeat was so loud in her ears that she couldn’t hear. Then it came again—the noise that had cut through her dreams.
It sounded like breaking glass only duller. A rattling clatter followed on it like something falling, shattering into more pieces as it struck the ground. Torn from deep, almost-drugged sleep, Laurel couldn’t force her brain to make sense of what she was hearing.
Then she knew. Her sculpted garden pieces. Someone was smashing them.
She flung back the covers and slid from the bed. Shaking as if from a chill, she moved to the bedroom window. She twitched the curtain aside a fraction and looked out.
Nothing.
The moon had set, the backyard was dark and still. Not a flicker of movement could be seen.
The noise had stopped, also, as abruptly as it had begun. Perhaps whoever was out there had heard her footsteps in the house or seen her at the window. What were they doing now?
Swinging around, she moved out of the bedroom and down the hall to the front door with its small-paned sidelights. It seemed brighter in the front garden, perhaps because the trees did not press so close. Still, she could see no sign of any intruder.
The view from the dining room was no better, nor that through the small panes of the back French doors. She put her hand on the handle of the French doors. Then she stopped, removed it again.
There was nothing she could do now to save her pieces; of that she was fairly certain. There was no reason, then, to go running out into the dark, and every reason to stay inside where she was comparatively safe. Still, the thought of somebody sneaking into her yard and destroying her property made her feel hot all over. All her work, all her pride of accomplishment, crushed in a few seconds. It went against the grain to stand by and do nothing when what she wanted was to tear out after them and demand to know what gave them the right. She wanted to strike back, fairly itched to knock somebody into next Sunday.
What kept her from it was common sense. Whoever was out there had a weapon of some kind in their hands. More than that, there was a good chance the same person had killed Sticks. The taste for spying, vandalism and poisoning they had shown so far didn’t make them a good bet for perfect sanity. They could be waiting for her to open the door.
She wasn’t going to stand by and do nothing, though. She was tired of being gossiped about and warned and terrorized.
First, she would call Dan Tanning and file a report with the sheriff’s office. That would be a start. Then she could fight fire with fire by asking Maisie to call people and talk about the things that were going on and about who might be behind them. Yes, and better than that, she could get in her car and drive into town to Zelda’s shop….
Get in her car. Leave Ivywild and drive into town. Just like that. Where had the idea come from?
Could she do that when just days ago the thought had seemed so impossible? Were her reasons strong enough to sustain her through such an ordeal? Was it possible when her heart was thumping so hard it shook her nightgown and the very idea made her feel sick and weak?
But what other choice was there? She couldn’t just abandon herself to whatever this crazy person had in store. She couldn’t hide away forever while someone crept closer and closer….
No. She wouldn’t think like that. She wouldn’t.
She could call Alec. If she picked up the phone, he would be here in a few short minutes. He would take care of everything while she sat back and watched and applauded.
Yes, but she didn’t want that; didn’t want to involve him any more than he was already, or to feel that she owed him anything else. It was time, finally, that she fought her own battles.
As she hovered there, she heard the sound of a car engine starting, then moving off into the night. Her tormentor was gone. He had struck fast, and left. Again.
She was almost certain he was no longer a threat, but she couldn’t be positive short of venturing out. She had to do it, was driven by her need to see how much damage had been done. It took nearly an hour of watching and listening before she gained the courage.
The damage was total. Her Bocca della Verità lay in far-flung pieces, as if smashed by a sledgehammer, and the Bacchus fountain was a ruin. The water mirrors had been overturned and cracked, the flowerpots from the top of the old cistern dumped into the lily pool. The destruction was wanton and messy, as if whoever had caused it had enjoyed it.
She should call the police, she really should. But on second thought, the damage wasn’t that great in terms of money, and the thought of the explanations she would have to give Dan Tanning and his deputies paralyzed her with indecision and embarrassment.
She couldn’t face it. Still, something had to be done. Somehow, she had to find out who was behind this campaign of terror and stop them.
Suppose, just suppose, it was Alec himself? He had denied being the prowler the night they’d made love, but what if it was a lie? What if it had been a ruse to make her more dependent on him? As for destroying the plaques and other garden pieces she had made, he was the one person who knew exactly where they were and what they meant to her. And he had been mad enough when he left to smash things bigger and more valuable by far. She didn’t like thinking he might have taken such a petty revenge. Yet how did she know what he was capable of doing?
It might also have been Gregory, since he hadn’t exactly been pleased with her, either. Or it could have been Mother Bancroft. Come to think of it, Zelda hadn’t been happy when Laurel had seen her last. Was everybody in Hillsboro out to get her?
Of course, there was nothing that said whoever had been out there tonight felt the least enmity toward her. It could be a case of cold and calculated revenge, which was infinitely worse. And maybe she should stop thinking about it before she frightened herself out of her wits.
Impossible.
As she lay awake, staring into the dark and feeling the great emptiness of the big bedroom around her, Laurel’s mind spun in endless circles. Again and again, she went over the different people who might have something against her. Over and over, she thought of Alec and the way he had looked that afternoon and the things he had said.
Even when she drifted off to sleep, she heard the sound of breaking terra-cotta in her dreams. She was forced by some unseen presence to walk, step by slow and bloody step, over the shattered pieces. And at the end of the walk was her car with the door standing open, waiting for her. Only once she was inside, she had no control and knew it would take her where she didn’t want to go. Knew, too, that she was never going to be able to find her way back to Ivywild.
14
Laurel’s hands began to shake while she was putting on her makeup. She tried not to think about what she was planning to do this morning, but it didn’t help. By the time she had walked from the house to the garage, her knees were wobbly and she felt light-headed. It was all she could do to open the door and slide into the driver’s seat. Then she couldn’t make herself turn the key.
Agoraphobia. That was the name for her problem. Not long ago, she would have denied that she had it. She would also have sworn she had no interest in leaving her house and th
at was the only reason she stayed. Alec had proved otherwise. Now she had to admit her fear of leaving Ivywild.
She would beat it this morning, she was certain, since she suspected her case was fairly mild. She had given herself plenty of time. It was less than fifteen minutes to Zelda’s beauty shop, and she had at least an hour. All she had to do was turn the key and back the car out of the garage. She had done that before with Alec beside her. Surely she could do it again.
It took a good forty minutes and two trips back inside the house—one to check that she had turned off the oven, one to be sure she had unplugged the iron. Excuses, she knew, but she was unable to prevent herself from acting on them. It was anger that forced her back out of the house and into the car each time. That, and her dread of what might happen if she didn’t do something to prevent it.
Finally she had the engine running and the Buick at the end of the drive, facing the road. Her hands and knees still trembled, but she had grown so used to it that she could ignore it. Terror that she had forgotten the driving rules and regulations beat in her mind, but she forced that down, as well. She wiped the damp palms of her hands on her skirt, took a death grip on the steering wheel, then eased her foot from the brake and stepped on the accelerator.
So far, so good. She was out on the road. As the minutes and miles passed, her hands grew steadier. Fear and dread gave way to satisfaction, then quickly became a cautious euphoria.
She had done it! She was driving, keeping the car between the ditches, getting used to the feel of being responsible for the vehicle again. Thank goodness she had a little time before she had to get out on the main highway. Thank God she had already gone this way with Alec on his bike, while he had been in control.
He had helped her more than she’d realized. Did he know? Had he recognized her problem all along? He must have; but, to his credit, he had not made her feel less competent, less of a person, because of it.
He was an unusual man. She was only beginning to recognize how unusual.
When she parked in front of the beauty shop at last, Laurel put her head on the steering wheel and closed her eyes. She felt drained, as if she had run a marathon. However, the ordeal wasn’t over yet. Not only did she have to drive back home, but she had to get through the next hour with Zelda.
Her sister-in-law greeted her with a raucous yell from where she stood twisting an older woman’s thin white hair onto permanent-wave rollers. “Laurel, honey, come in here! Have a seat, throw the magazines off that chair right there. This is just like old times, you coming in for a trim!”
There was nothing fancy about Zelda’s shop. Set up in a small house trailer, its vinyl flooring and shampoo and comb-out equipment had seen better days. Bottles and spray cans lined the burgundy cabinets beneath the mirrors, while a broom stood guard over a pile of hair in assorted shades near the back door. Still, the place had an air of prosperity, with its array of new products and posters—possibly because it was just cluttered enough to make the women of Hillsboro feel at home.
Laurel spoke to the woman in rollers, whom she recognized as a retired schoolteacher—long retired, actually. Miss Dacey must be eighty-five or ninety if she was a day, Laurel knew, since the elderly woman had taught her mother.
“Haven’t see you in a while, my dear,” the elderly woman said.
Laurel, clearing the seat Zelda had indicated and sinking onto it, murmured something about getting out more.
“About time, too,” Zelda said in her forthright way. “I was just telling Miss Dacey that it’s not healthy, you staying cooped up out there at Ivywild. I blame myself for it in a way, I really do. I should have visited more, maybe talked you into going shopping or to a movie. But don’t you worry, it’s going to be different from now on.”
“It’s nice of you to be concerned, but I’m sure you have other things to worry about,” Laurel said with careful politeness.
“Yes, well, I do,” Zelda said candidly, as she reached for a roller from the tray beside her. “Family and all that. Plus I have to work, of course, which you don’t and never have.”
“Ivywild keeps me busy, and my pottery,” Laurel said, retaining her smile even in the face of her sister-in-law’s derogatory tone. Then, seizing on the glimmer of an opening for what she had come to say, she went on. “I’ll certainly be busy in the pottery shed this week. Can you believe somebody came to the house last night and smashed the Green Man plaques I spent so much time making?”
“You don’t mean it,” Zelda replied, pausing with a curl half-wound. “Of all the nerve!”
“They tried to break the columns Alec and I had cast, too, but the stoneware was too strong. I hope they dislocated their shoulder whacking at them.”
“Ouch,” Zelda said with a lifted brow and a one-sided grin. “Bloodthirsty, aren’t you?”
“I’d like to take a pistol and put a hole through them! And I may, next time anybody shows up in the middle of the night who has no business being there.”
Howard’s sister tilted her head. “That include you-know-who?”
“If you mean Alec Stanton, he has nothing to do with it,” she answered, the words tart.
“Uh-oh,” Zelda said, rolling the last bit of hair on her customer’s head, then reaching for the bottle of solution that sat ready. “Sounds like he must have lost his rabbit’s foot where you’re concerned.”
“You could say that,” Laurel murmured, looking away from the other woman. Not only was it true, but it seemed just as well that the information should become common knowledge.
The sharp smell of chemical solution filled the warm, moist air. A short silence fell while Zelda busied herself a few minutes making sure every curl on the older woman’s head was well soaked.
Miss Dacey peeked at Laurel from where she sat with her neck bent forward. In querulous tones, she said, “You wouldn’t be talking about Callie Stanton’s grandson, would you?”
Zelda rolled her eyes, but Laurel summoned a smile. “You know him?”
“I know Callie, have for years, but can’t say I’m acquainted with young Alec. I’ve seen him around, though, and he seems a nice young man.”
“Why, Miss Dacey, don’t tell me you like all that long hair?” Zelda said in teasing tones.
“And just why not?” the older woman demanded with raised eyebrows. “I’ve nothing to say against it, long as it’s clean. Lord knows, young people always have to be different. Reminds me of the time when women started cutting their hair. You’d have thought they were Jezebels, every one, to hear people talk. They weren’t, of course, any more than this young man is the heathen people are claiming. Besides, he looks like half the men on my television to me.”
“Very true, Miss Dacey,” Laurel said, smiling. “You’re a woman after my own heart.”
The white-haired woman colored with pleasure. “Pshaw. Just common sense.”
“A lot of people can’t see it, though,” Zelda added with a shake of her head as she finished with the solution, then helped Miss Dacey from the chair and piloted her toward a hair dryer. “Just yesterday I heard somebody saying he ought to be run out of town.”
“A mean, cruel thing, that,” the older woman remarked as she shuffled across the room. “When I was a child, there was a stranger they dipped in hot tar, rolled in feathers, and rode out of town on a fence rail. They said he almost died.”
“That was ages ago,” Laurel said. “Surely they wouldn’t do such a thing now.”
“Hard to say what people will do when they get stirred up.” The white-haired woman sat back and was quiet as Zelda flipped on the dryer, drowning out all other sound.
Laurel looked at Zelda in weary disbelief. “Where is it coming from, all this hatred and spite? I don’t understand.”
“Who knows how things get started?” Zelda said, lifting a plump shoulder. “But I guess if your Alec isn’t hanging around anymore, that means you’ll have to give up on doing anything else to Ivywild.”
“Oh, he’s still worki
ng,” Laurel replied absently.
“I thought you said he was out of the picture.”
“I only meant that there’s nothing between us, not really.” Her smile was wan. “How anybody could think there might be when I’m so much older, I can’t imagine.”
“I did wonder about that myself,” Zelda commented frankly, then burst out laughing at the look on Laurel’s face. “Just kidding, just kidding. Now, come sit in this chair and tell me what you want done to your hair.”
Laurel did as instructed—not that it mattered. Zelda shampooed her hair, trimmed the ends, and blow-dried it, but instead of brushing it into the simple style Laurel preferred, her sister-in-law reached for mousse and a teasing comb. When Laurel left she had one of Zelda’s “big hair” specials that gave her the overblown appearance of a cheap call girl. The need for a stiff hairbrush and a few minutes in front of a mirror to repair the damage was so strong that she was halfway home before she realized driving wasn’t bothering her at all.
Alec stood in the pottery shed, staring at the latest plaque Laurel had made. His throat ached as he touched the straining female face that was almost concealed by flowers, trapped and smothering among them. The urge to crush the fired clay was nearly overpowering, as if that would free the figure caught inside.
It was Laurel, of course. He hadn’t known she felt her imprisonment so much—he’d thought she preferred it. Wrong. She was fighting it as well as she could, but the weapons she had were not particularly strong.
He would help her if she would let him. Why wouldn’t she? Was it just that she didn’t quite trust him? Or was he, in some way he didn’t quite understand, a part of what was holding her captive?
She was gone when he’d arrived this morning. A note had been left for Maisie saying where she was, but none for him. He had immediately started worrying about her having an accident, or maybe getting somewhere and freezing up, being unable to drive herself home. That was before he had seen the pieces of broken terra-cotta littering the ground.
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