"Perhaps it's because we have so many old houses," Dorothy volunteered nervously. "So many people have passed through them over the centuries."
"I suppose that's true," Jane answered, changing her tone. "You do get a sense of it when you walk around. Almost since the day I got here I've felt ... I don't know, a sense of déjà vu ... almost as if long ago someone had once ..."
She looked around, embarrassed. She had become the absolute focal point of the table; everyone was watching her intently. Her mind flashed back to a moment a couple of hours ago, when she was slipping on a pair of plain gold earrings. Her plan had been to get in and out of the evening without anyone taking much notice of her.
Her plan had obviously failed.
Chapter 5
You can't walk home."
"You'll freeze to death."
"We'll drive you."
The combined forces of Mrs. Crate and her daughter Dorothy were too much for Jane. Despite the fact that she'd enjoyed the walk over and was looking forward to a brisk return walk to clear her head after the dinner party, she agreed to let them drop her at her door. Phillip began sorting out guests and coats and scarves in his elegantly paneled entry hall. In the inevitable crush of people, Jane found herself tucked between Bing and McKenzie.
"Damn," murmured Bing, holding open her coat for her. "The Crates have no right to take you home. Look," he said in a low voice. "Will you be home tomorrow afternoon?"
Jane laughed and said, "Where else?" Then she saw that his blue eyes were dancing with interest. Or maybe it was just the wine. She couldn't tell; she was feeling a little pleasure-hazed herself. "Tomorrow, then," she murmured, smiling.
"Tomorrow's going to be foul. Plan on snow."
She'd been so intent about Bing that she'd forgotten about McKenzie, who was standing behind them.
"Oh?" Jane said. She was still annoyed with him for snubbing everyone all evening long.
McKenzie flipped up the collar of his heavy jacket and pulled down a floppy tweed hat over his brow; he had the look of a man battening down the hatches. "That's a nor'easter brewing out there," he said, as if it were her fault.
"Is that something I should care about?" Jane asked coolly.
McKenzie shrugged. "Only if you'll need to get your car out of your driveway."
"Mac's right!" Bing said. "Have you made arrangements to have your driveway plowed when it snows?"
"Well, no," Jane confessed. "I'm from condo country. What do I know about snow plows?"
"I'll take care of it," Bing reassured her. "And think about getting a phone, would you?" he added in a plaintive voice. "How the heck do I reach you from New York? Smoke signals?"
Wine or not, Bing seemed to be coming on strong. Wine or not, she seemed to be liking it. Everyone said good-bye to everyone else, except that Bing took her hand and held it longer than anyone else, and then they were out in the cold, being swept along to their cars by a raw, scudding wind. She was surprised to see McKenzie set off on foot.
"Mac! Want a lift?" Bing cried out.
McKenzie waved him away with a "Thanks, I'll pass," and was quickly swallowed up by darkness.
No one lived all that far from anyone else, but in March, on a dark road, the distances were just enough to be awkward. Jane was glad she'd accepted a lift from the Crates after all. The thought of ending up walking alongside a ditch with McKenzie was strangely unnerving.
As for Mr. Crate, he drove the way he spoke and the way he ate: slowly. While they sat waiting for the car to warm up, Mrs. Crate said to her husband, as if Jane were not present, "Why does Phillip persist in treating that man as if they were equals? They're nothing of the sort. Phillip's an Andover man. I'm not sure Mac even has a diploma, for God's sake. After all, he spent his high school years in reform school."
"He stole a car, dear, that's all," said her husband mildly.
"He stole a Porsche, is what he stole. And sank it!"
"Some boys are wilder than others, especially when they're stuck on an island while their friends go off, as Phillip did, to grander things."
"And what about that other time, when he was called in for questioning?"
"Nothing ever came of it."
"What Celeste saw in him, I will never know. That tells you something about summer romances. She was absolutely right to accept that position in Boston three years ago. Look at her now — a shoe-in for partner in a prestigious law firm. Where would she be if she'd stayed behind to water his trees for him? Penniless! That's where. Mac McKenzie hasn't got two nickels to rub together. There's no money in nurseries. He should've sold that land years ago, at peak. He could be a wealthy man now."
"There is the problem with access, dear," Mr. Crate said, throwing the car into reverse and backing ever, ever so cautiously out of Phillip's driveway.
"Don't be silly. Watch that tree. Do you think Bing wouldn't be willing to sell him the rights to a permanent easement across his land? That's what covenants are for. Or Sylvia Merchant's property; he could drive over that, if he had to."
"But as you say yourself, Mac has no money to buy the right —"
"He would if he were selling the land; it's all in the timing — oh, never mind. I just don't like it when he shows up at these things. Nothing will ever change that."
Her voice became low and anxious. "You've seen him with that ax. It looks natural on him. I'm afraid of him. And Phillip knows that. Stay in your lane."
She's as much as calling him an ax murderer, Jane thought, amazed at the tenor of the conversation. She swung her head, looking back along the road. If they'd driven past McKenzie, she'd missed it. The thought that he'd be passing her house quietly on foot sent the hair on the back of her neck rising.
In a moment they were at her door. Mr. Crate slowed his Lincoln to a gradual stop — actually, Jane could have stepped out any time along the way and not even twisted an ankle — and she got out of the car. Dorothy, who'd been sitting next to her in silence, suddenly stuck her head out the window and said ominously, "Single women can take nothing for granted."
They left Jane, mouth agape, standing there with her keys and thinking, What a timid little family they are. It was catching; she was regretting not having turned on the porch light. The problem was with the two huge hollies that flanked the door: fifteen feet high, they blocked light from the inside, as well as any view of the outside.
Jane let herself in and instantly she felt the cold: the furnace must have blown another fuse. Damn. The electrician had warned her that the burner was old and inefficient and the sixty-amp service not up to the task. She'd laid in a supply of fuses, but an expensive upgrade looked inevitable. Damn.
She rummaged through a kitchen drawer for a flashlight and, since some of the inside stairs to the basement were missing, went back outside in the whistling wind to enter through the heavy cellar bulkhead doors. The dirt-floor basement was less than six feet high and filled with moldering lumber and rusted, broken-down machinery. The basement light was on the same fuse as the furnace, so when the furnace went out, the basement went black. After the electrician explained all this the first time, Jane had hoped never to return. Fat chance.
She groped toward the fusebox, arcing the flashlight back and forth through the debris. She swung the beam where she thought the box should be and it lit, instead, on two bulging yellow eyes placed squarely over the most vicious fangs she'd ever seen. Jane screamed. It screamed. She dropped her flashlight and felt something scurry past her legs. She jumped back, instantly wrapping herself in a cobweb of repulsive size. The sense that spiders and dead flies were all over her hair was overwhelming. She cried out in revulsion and fled, slamming into hard metal and scraping her shin on the way out.
She ran straight into the bathroom, tore off her clothes, and jumped into the shower. There was, of course, no hot water. It hardly mattered. She shampooed, and scrubbed, and shampooed again. Clean and frozen, she checked out the damage to her shin, amazed at the depth of the gouge and the size
of the goose egg on it. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that the plow, or whatever it was she ran into, was rusty. Oh, fine. Tetanus, too.
Clearly I'm not yet ready for prime-time country, she thought wryly. What was the worst it could have been—a weasel? A possum? As for the spider web—I go running off hysterically like Little Miss Muffet, and now I'll probably die of blood poisoning.
She put on a pair of heavy Levi's and an old jacket and tried changing the fuse one more time, with a better flashlight. All went well and ten minutes later Jane was upstairs in bed, listening to the wind sending the door of the potting shed thwacking back and forth on its hinges. Jane counted the thwacks, like sheep, and in five minutes she was sound asleep without a thought in the world for weasels or ax murderers.
And yet somewhere in her subconscious she was dreaming about the storm that raged at the island so alone and exposed, thirty miles from its motherland. She was dreaming of Nantucket's children, huddled under warm blankets, and its wild creatures, sheltered in its nooks and crannies. She was dreaming of its women — fewer than in years gone by — who tossed in their beds as they waited for their men to come home from the sea. And she was dreaming of its fishermen, not daring to return through the island's infamous shoals, holding their vessels into the wind and praying for the storm to be over, while they no doubt swore never again to go to sea.
When the explosive, sickening crash came, Jane was ripped from the deepest of sleeps and sent careening from her bed. She charged for the door only half-conscious, and then stopped herself. Her heart was pounding, her senses alert; her breathing was fast and shallow. Her body was ready to do battle.
But against what? And with what? Jane had come to sleepy, deserted little Nantucket expecting to be completely safe. She had no gun, no Mace, no phone, and — after dinner with the Crates — no confidence.
Calm down, she told herself. Think about what you're doing. Tiptoeing back to a lamp, she turned it on, then took up a crowbar she'd left propped in a corner of the bedroom.
Will I use this if I have to? she wondered, gripping the cold metal bar as she moved from one room to the next, switching on lights. Crash it through someone's skull? Could I do that? It was a horrible thought, a sickening thought. The answer to it was no. She laid the crowbar quietly on the floor of the hall. Why hadn't she just gone with the hair spray? At least there was an outside chance she'd have the guts to spray it in someone's eyes.
She felt sickeningly vulnerable. What did she know about Nantucket? Nothing. Obviously the island had its share of burglars and maniacs. Obviously. She tried very hard not to recall anything Mrs. Crate and her daughter had said. But she remembered every blessed word.
She made her way through the upstairs floor, room by room, then crept down the steps. There was no one in the parlor ... no one in the kitchen ... no one in the bathroom. There was only one room left. By now the house was lit up like a Christmas tree. Jane peeked into the fireplace room, the last room, and was shocked to see that a huge oak bookcase had been hurled flat on the floor, and all its books scattered like November leaves on a lawn.
Still, it was obvious that there was no one in the room; Jane even made the effort to look up the chimney. The doors were still locked, the windows closed. This is bizarre, she thought, walking around the fallen bookcase.
She leaned against the sill of the nearest window, trying to figure it out. The wind was forcing itself through the cracks in the window frame, cutting through her with its cold. It was howling in earnest now; through her nightgown she could feel the house shake.
That's it! she thought, jumping up. She flattened her hands against the wall where the bookcase had stood: it was vibrating perceptibly. And the pine floor underneath it was uneven and buckled, the way wide-board floors can be. The house had knocked down the bookcase.
Relieved, Jane stepped over the mess — it would just have to wait until morning — and retraced her steps, turning off each of the lights behind her. She thought about her mother, living in California. Gwendolyn Drew had been visiting a friend in Santa Cruz during the big earthquake; the house had slid off its foundation and the two women had gone sliding with it. When it was over, Jane's mother had poured both of them double scotches and managed to joke about it. Jane was in awe of that in her mother — that tough-minded fearlessness.
I just hope I inherited my fair share of it, she thought wearily, switching off the bedside light.
****
The next sound she heard was that of heavy metal scraping asphalt. It was new, loud, and unexpected; she threw on her red chamois robe and made her way groggily to one of the front windows. It was gray out, barely dawn, she guessed. And it was snowing; there must have been half a foot on the ground already, with more coming down in heavy, wet flakes. The snow didn't surprise her, but the sight of Mac McKenzie sitting on a John Deere tractor fitted out with a plow and clearing her driveway — that surprised her.
Splaat! A fat snowball hit the window in front of her face and slid down the pane. It was Cissy, dressed in jeans and a parka with a fur-rimmed hood, jumping up and down and waving.
"Get dressed! Get dressed and come on out!"
Jane slid the window up and said, "Are you nuts? It must be six in the morning!"
"No, it's not — it's nine o'clock!"
Splaat! Another snowball, this time from the side — and this time, right through the open window and down the middle of her nightgown. Jane cried out from the cold shock of it and turned to see Bing with a wickedly boyish grin on his face. "You heard my kid sister! Come on out — or are you too chicken?"
"Chicken! We'll see who's chicken, you ... you cluck!" Jane yelled. She slammed the window down and marched back to the bedroom with a determined glint in her eye. She dressed quickly for battle in heavy pants, a turtleneck, a tasseled cap, and a down jacket. Then she slipped into the backyard, packed a dozen snowballs into a galvanized bucket, and sneaked back around to the front.
Bing was throwing a fluorescent pink Frisbee across the snow for Buster to fetch and had his back to Jane; he never knew what hit him. Bam! Bam! Bam! Three in a row, all in the back. Her shoulder hurt like crazy from the effort, but it was worth it: the last one knocked the ski cap he wore right off his head. Bing swung around, laughing and stunned by her ferocity.
"Hey! Where'd you learn to shoot like that, pardner?"
Jane gave him an arrogant look, then blew smoke from the barrel of an imaginary six-shooter. "Don't start nothin' you don't mean to finish, pal," she said, feeling like a flirt.
Cissy was getting the bottom of a snowman going. Buster, wanting desperately to be a part of things, came up and put his huge paws on the rolling ball, just as his mistress was doing. Cissy laughed and stood up and tried to push him away. The dog stood up on his hind legs and pushed her back — such fun! — and Cissy fell on her behind in the snow.
It was fun, the way fooling around in fresh and falling snow is always fun. But it was impossible, at least for Jane, to ignore the fact that their fellow dinner guest was twenty feet away, working hard at plowing her driveway clear. She sidled up discreetly to Bing and said, "Why is he doing that? Just being neighborly?"
"Hell, no; I'm paying him," Bing answered cheerfully as he shaped a snowball in his gloved hands. "The regular service wouldn't be around to your place for hours."
Shocked, Jane said, "You're paying —"
"Don't think twice about it, fair one," he said gallantly. "It's no different than picking up the cab fare into Manhattan on a dinner date."
"But we're not on a dinner date —"
"Which is why I was coming over. Will you have dinner with me tonight?" he asked. His eyes were sparkling with interest, and this time there was no wine to blame.
"Tonight?"
The revving of a tractor engine behind them sent Jane jumping: McKenzie seemed to want to plow the exact spot they were standing on. He was wearing a duckbilled plaid hat with fold-down flaps, but even that wasn't enough to prevent him from havi
ng to squint in the driving snow. He looked fiercer than ever. His lips, normally set in a firm line, shaped themselves silently around one word: move.
He was being deliberately annoying; surely there were other parts to plow. That damn chip on his shoulder, she thought. She'd been wrong about him being a hired hand at the nursery, but she hadn't been wrong about the chip. Anyway, right now he was a hired hand. And in this case, she didn't like it. It offended her that he'd accepted money for plowing her drive. If their positions were reversed, she would've done it for nothing, just to be neighborly.
"I would love to go to dinner tonight, Bing," she said, stepping nimbly aside just as the plow was about to take out an ankle. "What time?"
They made arrangements and then Bing took the huge snowball he'd been shaping and, grinning, calmly dumped it on her head. "Now we're even."
Jane was still sputtering from it when she felt an avalanche of snow being plowed into the back of her legs, filling her boots. She whipped around, furious. McKenzie shrugged and said "Sorry," and backed the tractor away for another pass.
Bing, laughing, swatted as much of the snow off Jane as he could, then said, "You look like a Quaker Oats commercial. C'mon, let's go in and I'll make us breakfast."
Jane agreed, mostly to prove that she wasn't a bad sport. She waited as Bing helped Cissy roll the bottom of her snowman into a monstrous ball, and then they all headed for Bing's house. McKenzie was just finishing plowing her drive. Bing paused alongside his tractor.
"Thanks again, Mac," he said, slapping the side of the tractor as if it were a farm horse. "And hey — how about some bacon and eggs?"
The snow had dribbled into Jane's socks by now. If there was one thing she hated, it was snow in her socks.
McKenzie gave her a cool, infuriating look and said, "Breakfast sounds good."
Jane's instinct was to turn on her heel and leave, but again: she wouldn't give anyone the satisfaction. So they all piled into Bing's enormous designer kitchen, which came straight out of House and Garden, and stripped off their snowy jackets and hats. Bing hauled out a carton of eggs and a slab of bacon and got to work, while McKenzie went to the fireplace at the far end of the room and coaxed the dying embers into a comfortably roaring flame.
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