Ashes to Ashes

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  In the dim light the garnet, jet, and diamond of Elspeth’s pictured necklace seemed to sparkle, while the woman’s face was obviously only paint, sad, sensitive expression and all. But the woman in the photos had been a vivacious flirt.

  Shaking her head, Rebecca touched her throat with the Chanel No 5 Eric had given her and plugged in her earrings. She packed her toothbrush in her purse, took it out, packed it and took it out again. Any man as well organized as Eric had to have an extra toothbrush. It just seemed, well, so calculating to actually plan to spend the night. Rebecca put her contact lens case in her purse, popped out the day’s birth control pill and swallowed it, even though her throat was dry.

  She emerged from her room to encounter Michael strolling by, and waited for him to say something about her being “tarted up.” He said, with his appraising look, “That’s the frock you made, is it? Awful posh.”

  “Why, thank you,” she replied.

  They passed the study in time to see Phil bringing out the white-stained plaster bucket, and the entry in time to see Dorothy open the door and go out. “What culinary time bomb did Dottie bring today?” Rebecca asked, following Michael into the kitchen.

  He unrolled one end of a foil bundle. “Looks like a petrified haggis.”

  “Oh, no.” She could’ve cried. That gray brick had once been a lovely little rump roast. “Maybe I can shred it and serve it with a sauce.”

  “At least she didna bring those sausages filled wi’ yellow glue.”

  “The hot dogs stuffed with American cheese? Pretty bad, I agree. The meat loaf was okay, though, even with the catsup smeared on top.”

  “My mum makes the best shepherd’s pie you ever ate,” Michael said wistfully. He opened the box of shortbread. “And her black bun… ”

  “Oh, Becky!” warbled Dorothy from the entry. “Eric’s here.”

  Michael extracted a cookie without so much as rustling the paper wrapper. Rebecca went to the door. “In here!”

  Eric was wearing the charcoal three-piece suit that made his eyes look like onyx. All he needed was a pocket watch and chain with fobs dangling across his vest. He greeted Rebecca with a wink and shook hands with Michael. “How’s it going? Making any progress?”

  “Just about,” Michael replied, butter not melting in his mouth. “Do you know anything about an English book cover inset with rubies and diamonds, circa 1630? Or a decorated English agate perfume bottle, circa 1540? From Hopetoun House and Drumlanrig, respectively. The list doesn’t say if there was a book in the cover— I assume there was no Shakespeare folio.”

  Eric smiled. “I asked James about those same pieces. He de-accessioned them about ten years ago, I think, before my time. Showy things like that sold quickly when he needed cash.”

  “They’re still listed in the inventories.” Now Michael smiled. Rebecca watched, fascinated. They were just like dogs— a border collie and a Doberman, possibly— sniffing each other out.

  “I warned you that James didn’t always record a sale,” Eric said. “Somehow he thought if he didn’t mark an item sold, he’d still have it.”

  Michael said lightly, his smile becoming a lazy grin, “Convenient, then, that you know the inventories so well. I thought cheap lawyers didn’t bother with things like that.”

  “Oh,” said Eric, voice perfectly moderated between a laugh and a polite protest, “but I’m a very expensive lawyer.”

  “Touche,” said Michael, and ate his cookie with an emphatic crunch.

  Eric turned to Rebecca. “Shall we go?”

  “Let’s,” she said. Really— men were absurd.

  “Have a good time, children,” called Michael. “Don’t forget to write.”

  The toad. She’d been worried about leaving him with more than his fair share of the work and he was glad to get rid of her.

  Phil was waiting in the parking area, his Cincinnati Reds cap shading his hangdog face. “Mr. Adler, here’s an expense sheet. I hope it’s made out all right.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine, Phil. Let’s see— nails, plaster, glass panes, caulking.”

  Steve, Slash at his heels, slouched across the gravel. “I’ll put the leftover gas in the pickup.”

  “No you won’t,” said Phil. “That gas belongs to the estate. We’ll save it until we start the lawn mowers up again in the spring. But,” he added apologetically to Eric, “I will have to get a new gasoline can.”

  Assuming Phil and Steve had jobs here in the spring, Rebecca said to herself. She looked at Slash. He looked at her, nostrils flaring.

  Eric said, “Get a good one. You don’t want gasoline to be stored improperly.” He pulled out a pen, jotted “Gas can” on the list, put both paper and pen in his pocket and shook Phil’s dirty hand with his clean one. “Thank you. I’ll see that you’re reimbursed quickly.”

  Eric turned to Steve and Steve spun away, one corner of his mouth twitching in a barely suppressed sneer. Swells like Eric, he seemed to be thinking, didn’t have to know gasoline from Perrier. A shape moved in a fourth floor window. Rebecca shot a sharp, wary glance upward. It was Dorothy, her bulbous form outlined by the ceiling light. She stood, arms crossed before her, impersonating a waxwork figure.

  Michael’s voice echoed through the door, singing lustily, “There’s many a wean wi’ the red locks of the Campbells who’s ne’er seen the coast of Argyll.” If he grew a beard, Rebecca thought, it’d be red. Wasn’t the Campbell who was murdered in Kidnapped called “The Red Fox”?

  “Earth to Rebecca,” said Eric.

  She started. “Sorry. I haven’t been quite with it all day.”

  “Then it’s time for an evening out.” He opened the door of the Volvo and Rebecca climbed out of the chill wind.

  The limbs of the trees along the driveway were black brush strokes against an overcast sky that shimmered like sifted ashes, touched with mauve where the sun sank invisibly toward the horizon. “The days are creepin’ in, right enough,” she said.

  Eric started the car. “You’ve been working with Campbell too long. You’re starting to talk like him.”

  “Dialect is insidious,” admitted Rebecca. “Especially that one. I’ve been reading British all my life.”

  “And whatever is a nice girl like you doing in a field like that?” But he touched her cheek as he spoke— just kidding, no criticism implied.

  “My great-grandfather emigrated from Ayrshire a hundred years ago. My grandfather taught me the old songs his father had sung to him. ‘Loch Lomond’, for example.”

  “The one with the high roads and the low roads?”

  “Do you know the story behind that?”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to hear it,” Eric said with exaggerated patience. He guided the car out of the driveway.

  Rebecca batted affectionately at his shoulder. “There’re two Scottish soldiers— or drafted crofters, most likely— in prison in England. One’s going to be released, the other executed. Taking the low road means to go along the fairy route, underground, as a ghost. So he’ll be home, but he’ll be dead.” Like James, she added to herself. Like Elspeth. But maybe she had never considered Dun Iain home.

  “I’d always thought,” said Eric, “it was a happy little tune.”

  “Typical Scots, making lemonade out of lemons. Irrepressible.”

  “I’ve noticed,” he said dryly.

  Eric would never have believed the expression on Michael’s face when he played the pipes. His astringent manner had been peeled like a lemon, the raw pulp exposed. But she didn’t have to think of him tonight.

  “I’m rather partial to ‘Music from the Hearts of Space’ myself.” Eric reached to the dashboard and inserted a tape. Synthesized New Age harmonies emanated from the speakers, soothing and nondemanding.

  Rebecca relaxed into the upholstery. “So,” she continued, “when I was being carted around all over the countryside as a child, British history seemed exotic enough to be interesting but familiar enough to be safe. Make sense?”
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br />   “Perfectly. When I was a kid, I was partial to automobile engines— rationality, you see. When I wasn’t down at the beach. But you can’t make much of a career out of cars or surfboards.”

  No, Rebecca thought, those meticulously clean fingernails hadn’t touched engine grease in years. The motherless child had found his rationality.

  They turned onto the access road, gained the interstate, and accelerated smoothly toward Columbus. The music murmured, its subtle rhythms blending with that of the car wheels on the road. The lights of passing cars threw Eric’s face into sharp relief and then swept on, leaving him in twilight. Carefully controlled features, noted Rebecca, framed by an exact haircut. And yet, that afternoon on the roof of Dun Iain, she’d glimpsed the flame that burned within. His sophistication had probably been hard-won, layer after layer of shiny lacquer applied to both enhance and protect the fiery core. She admired him for that, even as she was amused by it. Well, Eric was in a profession that rewarded smooth edges.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” he said.

  She laughed. “Have you ever considered politics?”

  “No. Much too demanding.”

  “Have to keep your nose too clean?”

  “My nose is clean, thank you. I take my lumps on the stock market like everyone else, and there’s not a single messy divorce clouding my record.”

  “Divorce doesn’t matter these days like it did back in Mary Stuart’s,” said Rebecca. “Or in Elspeth’s.”

  “Divorce wasn’t even an option for her.”

  “Or John. Although I daresay she was the injured party, not him.”

  “You’d better believe it,” Eric murmured, so quietly Rebecca wasn’t sure she’d heard him.

  “So Warren says he didn’t take the mausoleum key,” she said.

  “If he did take it, he can have it. In some ways Warren’s too soft to be a law officer, but he’d protect John, James, Elspeth and the baby.”

  Rebecca regarded Eric’s profile thoughtfully. James must have told him about the baby. Or Louise. It was no secret. “He wouldn’t have had to lie about the key, though. That bothers me.”

  “People sometimes lie for perfectly innocent reasons.”

  “If they’re innocent they can be honest,” Rebecca persisted. “Did you know Warren was the only witness on that will?”

  Eric looked over at her. Passing headlights reflected in his eyes, making them glint like the gold ring on his hand. “Yes. James told me on the phone. Last time I talked to him before he died. Poor old guy. As far as he was concerned, state or relative, it’d still be some stranger who took over Dun Iain. Can you blame him for wanting to stay longer?”

  He meant living, not as a ghost. But no, she couldn’t blame him. “What do you mean by Warren being too soft? Do you think he’s covering up for Dorothy? She’s been lurking around like Bela Lugosi.”

  “Dorothy?” Eric’s features flickered with sardonic humor. “The uncertainty about her job is eating her. Not surprising. Phil, too, although with him it’s harder to tell. But we have no proof that either of them has done anything dishonest.”

  Central Ohio slipped by on either side of the highway, clumps of trees, farmhouses, and stores all fading into the evening obscurity. The occasional lighted window or neon sign seemed like a hole cut in a gray backdrop. Rebecca sighed. Her suspicions sounded so melodramatic. And she wasn’t even talking about the ghosts. “It’s like trying to follow a railroad timetable in an Agatha Christie thriller. Who signed what will when? Where were Steve and Heather when? Who had what key when? You’ve solved the problem of the front door, but now the mausoleum key is lost. Return to ‘Go’, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

  “Steve,” Eric snorted, “could use a stint in the Army.”

  “And Heather?”

  “Get her away from Steve, she’ll be fine. She just needs to do a little growing up.”

  Don’t we all, Rebecca thought. “You didn’t answer my question. Do you think Warren is covering something up?”

  “Inquisitive tonight, aren’t we?” he teased. “What’s to cover up? Surely you don’t think Warren, Dorothy, and Phil are planning a heist? If you ask me, it’s Campbell… ”

  “I didn’t ask that,” she said, and then bit her tongue. Michael, too, was an outsider. But if dishonesty meant guilt… . No, he could be annoying enough when she was with him. Now she wasn’t.

  Eric glanced narrowly at her but said nothing.

  “What’s to cover up?” she repeated. “That’s what’s so irritating. Nothing I can put my finger on.” Of course there was Phil’s comment about “that lawyer fella”. Someone else had said that James had soured on Eric there at the end. Warren? Jan? She wriggled uncomfortably. She was starting to sound like Dorothy, an obnoxious voice in a loop. But she asked anyway, “Why would James blame you for the taxes?”

  “What?” Eric asked incredulously. “Who said that?”

  “Phil, I think.”

  “Oh. Probably some comment James made about my filling out his tax returns for him. Bet you didn’t know I do accounting, too, did you?”

  “And leap over tall buildings in a single bound?”

  He laughed, crooked teeth flashing unashamedly.

  Rebecca was beginning to appreciate just what it would be like opposing Eric in court. If he was being deliberately evasive, that would mean there was something to evade. Maybe he was simply confident that matters were under control. Or else… . If anything infuriated her it was a man’s condescending “don’t worry your little head about it”.

  “So you don’t want me to worry about anything?” she asked. “The whereabouts of the mazer, or the key, or whether someone— Jan’s kids, anyone— is planning a heist, or whether I’m going to find Steve’s and Heather’s fingerprints all over my room when I get back tonight?”

  “I think you shouldn’t worry about anything, but if you want to, that’s up to you. Besides… ” He tickled her ribs with that admonitory forefinger. “What if you don’t get back tonight?”

  The look he gave her would have ignited tinder. With a nervous laugh she sank back against the seat, glad the darkness concealed her pink face.

  She’d never believed men like him really existed; compared to him every other man she’d met was an irredeemable clod. Yes, he had to keep throwing that stardust in her eyes. That was part of the bargain.

  The traffic grew heavier. They were swept along in the stream, past residential areas and businesses, below glaring yellow streetlights that made Rebecca’s pink dress look as sepia as the old photographs of Elspeth. Soon they eddied into the Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium parking lot and stopped. When she got out, Rebecca’s hair whipped in a gust of chill wind off the river.

  She leaned appreciatively into Eric’s protective arm, and together they hurried into the building.

  Chapter Seventeen

  How blissful to spend a couple of hours not worrying, not thinking, just feeling the glorious music of Handel, Beethoven, and Vaughan Williams. Rebecca had hardly even noticed Eric holding her hand. It was almost painful to stand up and register the auditorium and the departing crowd.

  In the lobby they encountered Benjamin Birkenhead, Eric’s boss, and his wife. Rebecca made a quick mental inventory of her appearance. She was presentable. Eric said, “Let me introduce Rebecca Reid. She’s been cataloging the artifacts out at Dun Iain.”

  “Ah,” boomed Birkenhead. “The lady historian. Isn’t she a pretty little thing, though? How do you find them, Eric?”

  He did have a pocket watch and dangling fobs. And the massive belly to display them. Next to him, his wife resembled a bird searching for insects on a hippo. She looked from Eric to Rebecca and back as if Rebecca were applying for a position at the firm.

  “Nice to meet you,” Rebecca said tightly. So there were real historians and then there were lady historians. And her job description included being an attractive artifact herself. She wished she had a run in her stockings or lipstick on
her teeth.

  Safely in the parking lot, Eric whispered, “Never mind old Ben. He’s— well— unreconstructed.”

  “How can you tell?” Rebecca returned.

  He laughed, unlocked her door, bowed her into the car. She lay back against the seat, feeling almost drunk with music. But the accompanying melancholy wasn’t exactly pleasant; it was the same yearning she felt when seeing a distant airplane, or when hearing the music of the Highland pipes. Yes, sex could assuage that longing, temporarily. Ray, in his own correct manner, had proved that. Eric could probably prove it, too. But the yearning, it seemed, was chronic.

  Eric’s condo was several floors up a high rise. A wall of glass in the living room revealed a breathtaking view of downtown Columbus, the lights of the city reflecting in a gauzy glow off the lowering sky. He relieved her not only of her coat but of her shoes, and she gave him the will and the letter before stowing her purse beneath the coatrack.

  “The Bright Corporation,” he said, inspecting the letter first. “They’ve already contacted Ben. Very tidy offer they’ve made for Dun Iain. I’ll advise the Dennisons— assuming I find them— to accept it. Only corporations and governments can afford to keep estates any more.”

  “Just as long as they keep it, not tear it down.”

  “That’ll depend, won’t it?” He unfolded the will. “Yes, this is a version of the others. See, these bequests to his ‘family’ were in every one. And he always meant for the historical artifacts to go back to Scotland.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Rebecca said. Living among the haunted objects would get to anyone. It had certainly gotten to two people living there.

  For all Eric’s continental airs, she thought, Michael was the European. And while he could be polite, he was not smooth. He bristled like a porcupine. He’d been pleased she was leaving tonight. What was he doing while she stood wiggling her toes in Eric’s carpet— playing the pipes, his shoes planted solidly on chill stone? Or cuddling the mail carrier? That was only fair. Lonely people needed someone to hold. How do porcupines make love? Very carefully. Rebecca smiled and the image of Michael shattered.