Ashes to Ashes

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  The steps plodded down the staircase just outside the door. For a moment she sat paralyzed, every follicle on her body distended, while the cat crouched bristling at her feet.

  “Darn it,” she whispered, “if that’s you, Michael… ” Darnley sped between her legs. She threw herself toward the door, knowing if she hesitated one instant longer she’d barricade herself in the prophet’s chamber instead.

  Watery sunshine illuminated the landing and the stairwell. Nothing was there, not even a shadow. But still the footsteps continued, one after another, ringing hollowly on the cold stone.

  Perception shattered and its shards sliced bloody grooves in Rebecca’s mind. She had had nightmares like this. She tried to move, but her muscles wouldn’t work. Her lungs burst and her face empurpled itself with a shout that wouldn’t come. But this wasn’t a nightmare. It was real.

  The steps stopped. “Rebecca?” said Michael’s slightly slurred voice from the Hall. “Is that you?”

  Galvanized, she spun across the landing and into the room. He was sitting at the table, his head lying on his crossed arms, one of a stack of books open before him. She collapsed in the nearest chair and stared at him, feeling as if her eyes extended from their sockets on stalks.

  He sat up. “I thought I was dreamin’ footsteps. I wisna, was I?”

  Wordlessly she shook her head.

  “You went to look? What did you see?”

  She shook her head again and forced out, “Nothing. I heard the steps but nothing was there.”

  “Ah, bugger it,” he exclaimed. “I you’d only had a video camera we could’ve sold tapes to the telly!”

  Something snapped in Rebecca’s chest. She inhaled raggedly, thought for one ghastly moment she was going to disgrace herself by crying, then burst into laughter that had more than a trace of hysteria in it.

  Michael’s crazed smile crumpled. He looked around, as though considering making a break for it, then stood and patted her clumsily on the shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  “Intellectually,” Rebecca gasped, “you can talk about ghosts and the supernatural all you want, but when it hits you emotionally— Christ!” She seized her wits, gulped, mopped at her eyes. “Yes, I’m all right.” This was ridiculous. She stood up so quickly her head cracked Michael’s solidly on the chin.

  He staggered back, face contorted with pain, hand cradling his jaw.

  “I’m sorry,” she moaned, rubbing the dent out of her skull.

  Michael said between his teeth, “Is it time tae go yet?”

  “It’s past four-thirty.”

  “Good. I’d like tae be outwith Dun Iain for a time.”

  “Even if it means going with me?”

  He removed his hand from his chin and tried moving it from side to side. It still worked. “I never was brave enough tae go chase the footsteps,” he told her. “Even in broad daylight.”

  “Darnley pushed me,” she said, ducking the question of whether he meant that as a compliment. “I’d better go get ready.”

  Rebecca fled upstairs. The front door opened and shut. Michael bounded past her room. From her window she saw Darnley frisking across the lawn. She envied the cat’s simple life; this roller coaster of temperament she’d been riding made her feel as if she were possessed by a demon chameleon.

  By the time she’d washed her hair and put on her makeup she was so limply drowsy she could barely keep from collapsing on the bed. She forced her eyes open far enough to examine her packet of birth-control pills. She really should keep taking them and forget her vague notions of giving her hormones a vacation. Which was a pretty cold-blooded calculation. But since those who equated romance with hot-blooded spontaneity ended up not with doctorates but with babies, she could live with it.

  So having an affair will proclaim your independence of Ray, she said to herself. Are you sure it won’t cut your nose off to spite your face? What if Eric turns out to be the average mass murderer?

  Eric couldn’t be a criminal. Any more than contradictory Michael, or laconic Phil, or garrulous Dorothy, or affable Warren. Michael was right. Whoever was responsible was someone they didn’t know, with motives they couldn’t fathom. With a frustrated snort she threw the packet back into the drawer and opened her jewelry case. Those hoops would go well with her tweeds. Or maybe those gold posts… .

  She stared dumbly for a moment, the gears of her mind failing to mesh. Two gold posts lay in one compartment, one in another. The odd one was larger and heavier. She picked it up and held it to the light.

  Steve had been wearing one like this when she’d met him beside the mausoleum. One like this had been caught in the bedspread last night, last week, whenever the room had been trashed. And today Steve had come back without Phil’s knowledge, wearing a different earring, and Heather had sneaked not to just anywhere in the house but to Rebecca’s room. Just as if she’d known where the room was. And what she was looking for.

  Michael’s voice filtered down the stairs. He was singing something depressing about homesickness, defeat, and death. “Thanks a lot,” Rebecca said to the ceiling.

  Steve and Heather had problems enough without her calling the law down on them. If it had just been her room, she might have let it go. Even though she wondered why they’d attacked only her room. Surely the smashing of priceless antiques would better have relieved whatever fit of resentment had come upon them than simply throwing around her ordinary things.

  But they’d taken the mazer. They had to have taken the mazer. She had to tell Lansdale— she had no choice. Knowing that Michael was wrong, that it was someone they knew, brought no satisfaction at all. And as for their motive… . Pathetic kid, Eric had said.

  Rebecca put the earring in a twist of tissue and tucked it into the bottom of her stocking bag. She looked back into the mirror to see Elspeth Forbes’s reflection gazing over her shoulder. The postcard was still tucked into the corner of her portrait, the rim of its shadow lying across her chin so that she seemed to be smiling knowingly at Rebecca.

  “Yeah,” said Rebecca. “I’ll call Warren tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to get away, have fun, clear out the old gray matter.”

  She left on the light beside her bed and the one in her bathroom as well, and was in the entry separating the new door keys from their ring when Michael came bounding down the stairs. His hair was meticulously combed and his faintly bruised jaw shaved. The off-white fisherman’s knit sweater he wore over a blue button-down shirt emphasized his rangy build, all sinew and synapses. Rebecca pounced. “What a gorgeous sweater!”

  “My mum made it for me,” he said, recoiling.

  “Let me see.” Warily he extended an arm. Rebecca traced the intricate pattern with her forefinger. “I learned how to knit when we lived in Denver, but then we moved to Houston and we didn’t wear sweaters any more. My mother does crewel embroidery, beautifully, but she moans all the time about how it’s not anything worthwhile. Keeps her sane, though.”

  His eyes crinkled with that peculiar cynical gleam. “Aye?”

  “Nothing. Just yammering.” Rebecca handed him one of the keys. “I’ll drive.”

  “No, no. I need practice drivin’ on the wrong side of the road.”

  “Do you have insurance?” she teased.

  He sniffed, pretending offense. “I’ve been drivin’ here for a week.”

  “All right then— it’s all yours.” She turned on the light in the kitchen, made sure there was food in Darnley’s dish, and helped Michael find the quilted coat he’d left in the sitting room.

  Darnley was chasing a moth on the lawn. Rebecca, at first alone and then with Michael’s help, tried to herd him inside— with predictable results. “He’ll freeze out here,” she said at last.

  “He has a nice little fur coat,” Michael told her, locking the front door. “He can bide in the doocot till we get back. Don’t worry about him.”

  “Hey, he deserves his fair share of my worrying time,” Rebecca protested. Michael laughed.

>   After a moment’s confusion as to which side the steering wheel was on, they sorted themselves into the Nova. Rebecca snugged the seat belt across her lap and winced as Michael slammed his left hand into the door, reaching for a nonexistent stick shift. “Real men dinna drive automatics,” he proclaimed, resignedly attending to the lever on the steering column.

  “Right,” said Rebecca. In the thin gleam of dusk the few lighted windows of Dun Iain shone innocently. The castle was like a child dressed in pristine pinafore and sailor hat, waiting until the parents’ backs are turned to go make mud pies. Already a few stars pricked the depths of the cobalt sky, and the damp grass and leaves sparkled frostily. The tang of woodsmoke hung on the wind. They were in for a hard freeze.

  Rebecca laid her head against the seat and snuggled into her coat, turning the collar up around her cheeks. The cloth smelled faintly of Eric. Bemused, she allowed herself a few moments of reverie as the car glided slowly through the darkness.

  Chapter Eleven

  Waving her hands, Rebecca directed Michael past the Burger King, past the sleazy pizza restaurant, and through a complicated intersection where he stopped briefly to debate his right and his left. Just beyond was the narrow tree-lined street where the Sorensons lived. “Very good,” said Rebecca as they stopped. “In the dark, too.”

  “It helps that the steerin’ wheel’s on the other side.”

  The porch light of the tall clapboard house shone with welcome. “Don’t expect anything fancy. Jan and Peter are on a strict budget.”

  “I’ve been cheese-parin’ for years,” Michael assured her. They emerged from the car, he opening his door, she opening hers.

  There was Jan herself. She said goodbye to a dim shape who retreated into the house next door and rushed forward to meet her guests. “Rebecca! Come on in. And you must be Dr. Campbell.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Sorenson,” he said, shaking her hand as politely as Rebecca even at her most punctilious could have wished. Peter stood silhouetted in the screen door, his burly form looking like the colossus of Rhodes with the two children clinging to his legs.

  The porch light caught the rich gleam of Michael’s hair and the brightness of his eyes, the long, expressive mouth, and the wiry body. Jan glanced at Rebecca, saying, “Ooh,” under her breath.

  “Not necessarily,” returned Rebecca.

  Peter and Michael introduced themselves. Brian inspected from his three-year-old’s vantage point Michael’s Reeboks and jeans. Mandy, the five-year-old, said, “Mommy, he isn’t either wearing a dress.”

  “Uh-oh.” Jan explained, “We looked up Scotland in the encyclopedia. I think they expected you to look like the picture of the Gordon Highlander.”

  Michael smiled at Mandy. “It’s called a kilt. When I played the pipes for a band, I wore one. And to my sister’s weddin’. But few people wear one every day the now. We save it for best, you see.”

  Mandy continued to stare. Brian decided the stranger was incoherent but harmless and set off on a search-and-destroy mission. Peter sat Michael down on the couch and handed him a can of Budweiser. Jan said, with a nod toward the house next door, “Sue says there was a drug bust at the Pizza Shed.”

  Rebecca’s ears pricked. “When?”

  “Last night. Everyone kept saying it couldn’t happen here.”

  “It’s everywhere,” Peter said gloomily. He took a swig from his beer.

  So Eric had been wrong; the local kids hadn’t been confining themselves to booze. Rebecca knew marijuana when she smelled it.

  Jan headed for the kitchen. Peter leaped forward to extract a pencil from Brian’s mouth. Michael peered dubiously into his can of beer. “Like it?” Rebecca asked.

  “I’ve had water wi’ more gumption to it,” he whispered. But when Peter sat down and began talking about his job, Michael not only managed a good pull at the can, he conveyed the impression that wiring prefab houses was the most interesting work he’d encountered in years. He was showing more consideration than Rebecca would have thought him capable of. But then, he wasn’t competing with the Sorensons.

  She followed Jan into the kitchen and found her pouring glasses of wine out of a jug. Rebecca chuckled. Eric would be appalled. He probably only drank from bottles cobwebbed by genuine French-speaking spiders.

  “He’s not as nice as he looks?” Jan asked.

  Eric? Oh, no, Michael. “He’s all right. Moments of schizophrenia, though. Now I know why Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written by a Scot.”

  “Oh?” Jan stirred a pot of stew redolent of onions and bay leaves. “Not like good old predictable Ray.”

  Rebecca slumped. “Good old Ray,” she said sadly.

  “So that’s the way it is. I thought I smelled a breakup on the horizon. Is that why he’s lurking around town?”

  Rebecca stared at Jan as if she’d suddenly spoken Swahili. “What?”

  Jan blinked. “Oh. Well, maybe that wasn’t him I saw outside the mall. Sure looked like him, though. Waiting for the green light to cross the street even though there wasn’t another car in sight.”

  “That sounds like Ray.”

  “Wearing an old flannel shirt and a knit cap.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Ray.”

  “Unless,” Jan suggested, “he disguised himself in order to follow you.”

  “That isn’t Ray at all,” Rebecca groaned. “Don’t scare me like that, Jan— I get enough melodramatics at Dun Iain.”

  Jan stood over the salad bowl, paring knife poised. “What did I say?”

  Rebecca was so far gone she was being rude. “Sorry,” she told Jan, and between sips of wine told her of the mysterious happenings. “And the last person I thought to suspect was Ray.”

  “Ghosts, burglars— everything but secret passages in the library. I thought you were looking a little twitchy.” Jan tossed the salad so vigorously bits of lettuce plopped out onto the counter. She scooped them back into the bowl. “And I hear you had a hot date with Eric Adler last night.”

  “Dorothy broadcasting on the grapevine network?” Rebecca asked. “I figured he’d already worked his way through the female population of Putnam and needed fresh prey.”

  “I’ve only said hello to him up at Golden Age Village myself, but as far as I know, he keeps a pretty low profile. I guess a lawyer has to be discreet. Or is he?” Jan handed over the salad.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.” Rebecca carried the bowl into the dining room and placed it on the table. Peter was asking questions about Scotland. Michael’s brogue, unthickened by the beer, expounded on the tartan revival—”mostly laid on for the tourists”— and took a slap at absentee landlords.

  “I read somewhere about Scottish nationalists,” said Peter. “I thought they were like the Irish IRA, you know, bombs and guns.”

  “Most of our wounds are self-inflicted to begin with. Why make more?”

  A remarkably live-and-let-live statement from Mr. Thistle, thought Rebecca as she returned to the kitchen. But he had saved that clipping about the fire-bombing in the Highlands. It must be an issue that interested him.

  “Yes?” teased Jan. “You don’t know whether Eric is discreet?”

  The pit of Rebecca’s stomach tingled delectably at the memory of their mutual indiscretion on the roof of the house. “He’s human. He brought me a bottle of hideously expensive whiskey, but he didn’t bring any to Michael. Out of spite, I guess, although to look at him you’d think he didn’t know the meaning of the word. But he and Michael don’t get along too well.”

  “Michael must be the only one. James just loved Eric, I hear. At least until right before he died, when he went kind of soft in the head. And Dorothy treats Eric as if she’d thought of him herself.”

  Rebecca laughed. “She does seem rather at a loss for criticism.”

  “Maybe she’s got a crush on him. Don’t laugh— when she was young and wild she had boys all the way from Columbus on her string.”

  “Dorothy? Wild?”

 
; “Oh, yes. Back in the early fifties, Margie tells me, she was the town scandal. Boys and cigarettes, drinking and dancing. Funny, isn’t it, how she goes on at poor Steve Pruitt about his clothes and his beer when she’s puffing Virginia Slims and popping Valiums as if they were candy.”

  Rebecca drained her wineglass and rinsed it out in the sink. She hadn’t told Michael about the earring. Poor Steve, indeed. Poor Phil. The egg would hit his fan, too. Unless he knew all about it already.

  Jan installed the children at a card table and gave them bologna sandwiches. The adults she seated around the dining table. Rebecca tasted a forkful of stew appreciatively; Jan could do amazing things with ground beef. “I take it you’re finding some valuable things out at Dun Iain,” said Peter. “That old furniture is much better quality than you can get today.”

  “Except for desk chairs,” muttered Rebecca.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jan said. “I’m rather partial to early Sears Roebuck myself.” She waved her hand airily around her house.

  Michael and Rebecca laughed. Peter looked pained. “Actually,” said Rebecca, “we’re more interested in historical artifacts.”

  “Have you found your letter yet?” Jan asked.

  Michael glanced up curiously. The children, losing interest in his dextrous manipulation of knife and fork, ran into the living room. The sound track of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles blasted through the door. “Turn it down!” bellowed Peter.

  Rebecca explained about the Erskine letter and the rumored exchange of babies, Queen Mary’s for the Countess of Mar’s. “Of course Ray,” she added, “thinks it’s politically incorrect to question the antecedents of the royal family. He was really put out when the committee accepted my proposal.” She looked across the table at Michael, expecting indignation at the least.

  But he was wickedly amused. “I’ve seen footnotes about that letter. I never knew old John had made off with it. Wouldn’t it be grand to pin back a few English ears? I’ll help you. You could use some expert help.”