When the Spirit Is Willing

by Margaret Chittenden

  The woman looked at her hand, then shook it gingerly, as if she wasn't sure women should do such a thing. Without giving her name, she began fumbling with her seat belt. When she released it, Laura stepped back from the door, expecting her to climb out, but instead, she wrenched the door shut and started the engine all at the same time. Hunching over the steering wheel, she stamped on the accelerator and took off down the street, almost sucking up a startled Laura in her wake.

  Hopping mad, Laura tore into the house, coming close to bowling Priscilla over at the front door. "Is there any reason a hit man can't be a woman?" Priscilla asked breathlessly as she followed Laura into the kitchen.

  Laura looked up from the phone book she'd grabbed, her whole body turning cold at the implication. "You've been watching too much television," she said at last.

  Forcing herself to concentrate, she hunted out Carter's home number, then punched it in and waited while the phone rang six times. "Carter's apartment didn't look all that big," she muttered. "It shouldn't take this long for Sly to answer."

  "You've been to Carter's apartment?" Priscilla asked, gazing at Laura's face with wide green eyes.

  "I haven't been in it," Laura snapped.

  Priscilla looked disappointed.

  "We just stopped by to see if Uncle Sly wanted to go for pizza with us," Jessica elaborated, wandering in from the backyard, where she had obviously been digging in the dirt.

  "Sly isn't home," Laura said, hanging up the phone and opening the phone book again.

  "You'd better call Carter at work and warn him that woman's on the rampage," Priscilla suggested.

  "I'm looking for the number," Laura said pointedly.

  Priscilla lowered her voice. "Maybe you should go down there and see him. Make up with him."

  "I'm not going to the museum," Laura said tightly. She didn't even want to call Carter. He was bound to think she was calling to find out why he hadn't called her. "Tough," she muttered as the line buzzed.

  "What does 'rampage' mean?" Jessica asked, then added, "make what up, Priscilla?"

  "Your mother's had a fight with Carter," Priscilla said. "He's angry with her."

  "Will you please shut up," Laura said through her teeth, glaring at Priscilla.

  "Laura?" Tiffany's voice asked, sounding bewildered.

  Laura hadn't heard her pick up the phone. "I'm sorry, Tiffany. I was talking to Pris—to someone else. I need to speak to Carter, please."

  "Carter's not here," Tiffany said. "He's gone to Boston. Didn't he tell you?"

  "Boston," Laura repeated stupidly.

  "He left yesterday morning," Tiffany said. "Hang on a sec. I'll get Mrs. Whittock for you."

  "I'm as surprised as you are," Mildred said when she got on the line. "Carter came in at his usual time yesterday morning, looked at the mail and decided to go to Boston. Something about a letter." She paused. "He looked a little peaked, like he hadn't slept?" Her voice rose at the end of the sentence, turning it into a question.

  "Do you know when he'll be back?" Laura asked.

  "He didn't say." Mildred's voice had a note of irritation in it. "He promised to help me uncrate those paintings, absolutely swore he would. The paintings that arrived the day you came to the museum? Would you believe I haven't got-ten anybody to help me get them out yet? And they're just too unwieldy for me to get at them myself. There's a whole framework of slats nailed in there. It's not like Carter to be so irresponsible. I don't know what's got into him lately." She paused, then chuckled fondly. "Well, maybe I do at that," she said, her voice softening. "Is there anything I can do for you, Laura?"

  Laura realized she hadn't taken in whatever Mildred had been saying to her. "I was really trying to track down Sly-Simon Kincaid," she managed to say when she realized Mildred was waiting for an answer to her question. "Did he go with Carter?"

  "Nope. He's supposed to be looking after Max."

  "Well, I didn't get an answer at the condo."

  "Shoot," Mildred said. "Carter's going to be fit to be tied if his uncle neglects that dog. I heard him on the phone making Sly promise he'd take good care of him. Maybe I'll just run over there after work and see what's what."

  "If you see Sly, would you ask him to call me?" Laura asked, although Sly's problem didn't seem nearly as important all of a sudden. "I really need to get in touch with him. Tell him it's urgent, okay?"

  "Surely," Mildred said cheerfully.

  Laura set down the telephone and leaned her forehead against the kitchen wall for a minute.

  "Mom?" Jessica asked uncertainly.

  "Would you like me to help you get washed up, Jessica?" Priscilla suggested. "We could watch television after."

  Making an effort, Laura straightened. "I'm fine, honey. Honestly." She managed a smile. "Priscilla's right. You do need a good cleanup."

  "O-kay," Jessica said with obvious reluctance.

  Watching her leave, her hand in Priscilla's, Laura felt grateful to her resident ghost. Every once in a while Priscilla did seem to be a mind reader. She had obviously recognized that Laura was not up to answering any more questions. She was in a state of shock. It was hardly surprising. The facts were there: immediately after making love to her, Carter had taken off on the first available plane. She'd be pretty stupid not to see the writing on the wall.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  "Uncle Carter's on the phone," Jessica announced cheerfully. "He wants to talk to you. And he's not mad at you. I asked him and he said he wasn't."

  Standing on a stepladder, stretching to trim a piece of wallpaper level with the ceiling, Laura groaned. Why had she ever taught Jessica to answer the telephone? For a minute, she seriously considered having Jessica tell Carter she was too busy to come to the phone, but that would be game playing and she wasn't that type. There was no reason that Carter should not have gone to Boston when he wanted to. She had no business feeling resentful, she scolded herself as she descended the stepladder. It was her own stupid fault that she'd fallen in love with a man who was more concerned about her house than he was about her—a man who didn't even care enough about her to let her know he was leaving town.

  "Hello," she said into the receiver. It wasn't easy to make two syllables sound noncommittal, but she managed it.

  "Is Sly there?" Carter asked urgently.

  "I'm fine thank you, Carter. How are you?"

  There was a brief silence. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap your head off. I'm worried about the old guy."

  "I've done some worrying about him myself," Laura said. Suddenly conscious that Jessica was standing behind her in the den doorway, she added carefully, "I saw that vintage automobile earlier today. Right outside. Has it shown up there?"

  "I haven't seen it." The worried note in his voice was even more pronounced. "I just got in from the airport and found the place deserted. No Sly. Max is missing, too. At seven o'clock on a Saturday evening—with Sly supposedly suffering from agoraphobia. Where could he have gone? He didn't leave a message or even switch on the answering machine. I hoped he'd taken a taxi and gone to visit Jessica." He paused. "Did he say anything to you when he called yesterday? Anything that would indicate he had plans for this evening?"

  Laura held the receiver away from her ear for a moment, frowning at it, then she brought it back. "What makes you think Sly called me yesterday?"

  "He didn't?"

  "I was here all day, Carter. Nobody called." She'd put a little emphasis on the "nobody."

  "I tried to," he said. "When I got to the museum there was a letter from a colleague of mine in Boston. He recently acquired a letter that contained references to Port Dudley. It was supposedly sent by Elisha Ferry, Washington's first governor, to President Benjamin Harrison, shortly after Washington became a state. The man wanted to know if I was interested in it. Naturally I was very excited. He wanted a quick answer, so I decided to go right away. I called my travel agent and discovered the next plane would leave in three hours from SeaTac. Which is about the length of time
it takes to get from here to there. I called you immediately, but your line was busy."

  "That's not…" Laura closed her eyes momentarily. "The wallpaper. I was ordering wallpaper. It took a while."

  "The point is that I telephoned Sly and asked him to call you and tell you where I had gone and why. He said he would."

  "But he didn't. Could he have gone missing yesterday?"

  "I don't know what to think. You're sure it was the Merc you saw? Did you get the license number?"

  "No, but it was definitely the right car. I spoke to—" She broke off. Jessica had moved around her and was looking up at her face. She always had been sensitive to atmosphere.

  "Was it a black car?" Jessica asked.

  So much for ambiguity.

  Laura shook her head. "I'm glad you had a good trip," she said heartily into the telephone. "Maybe I should come over so you can tell me all about it."

  "Jess is listening?" he asked.

  "I can leave Jessica with Mrs. Wilmer," she said, then gave an exasperated laugh as Jessica pursed up her rosebud mouth. "Or maybe I'll try for Tiffany." Jessica grinned and ran off, presumably to tell Priscilla. "I'll be there soon," Laura concluded.

  It was half an hour before she could get away. They'd already had dinner, but Tiffany hadn't finished hers and it was a while before she arrived. Jessica was thrilled to see she'd brought her lap-top. She was so busy demanding "Alphabet Dance" and "Match Patch," she didn't ask Laura any more questions.

  Carter looked grim when he answered the door to Laura's knock. After kissing her briefly, he led the way into his living room and gestured at a rather nondescript leather sofa. She sat down, vaguely noticing that it wasn't very comfortable. The whole room looked utilitarian, she thought. Though it was certainly impressively clean and tidy.

  There was constraint between them. Carter stood looking down at her for a long moment, his face brooding and tense. Then he raked a hand through his dark hair and massaged the back of his neck. He seemed not to know whether he should sit beside her. It was the first time she'd ever seen him look awkward. She guessed it was up to her to plunge in.

  "I didn't want to tell you in front of Jessica," she said. "I've been worried about Sly for hours."

  He finally sat down beside her, though he didn't really settle. Feeling awkward herself, she told him in detail of her confrontation with the woman in the black Mercury. "I've called your condo every hour or so since, hoping Sly would be home, but there never was an answer."

  "A woman," Carter said. "I might have known there'd be a woman mixed up in this somewhere." His face wasn't quite as creased with worry as it had been before.

  "She seemed pretty tough," Laura said.

  He smiled faintly. He looked tired, she noticed belatedly. His lean face was quite drawn. Airports would do that to you nowadays, of course—just getting in and out of them would wear anybody out. "What's that old saying?" he murmured. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

  He wasn't scoring any points with her right now, Laura acknowledged. As yet he had no more idea than she had as to why the woman was looking for Sly. But still, he'd jumped to the conclusion Sly had turned her down. If she had been scorned—what about Sly's responsibility?

  "You said you called here the minute the Merc took off?" he asked after a short silence.

  She nodded.

  "And there was no answer. Which means Sly had already left." He shook his head and stood up. "I guess I'd better go looking for him."

  "Where will you look?"

  "At this time of the day, taverns. It seems possible Sly might be up to his old tricks."

  "If he took a taxi, we might be able to find out where he went from here. There can't be that many cab companies in town."

  "Great idea! There are only two."

  His eyes lit up with approval, warming his whole face. Laura suppressed the immediate lurching response of her body as he turned away and picked up the telephone.

  He struck gold with the first call. A. cab had been called to this address and had taken a party with a large dog to the local veterinary clinic.

  "The vet?" Laura echoed as Carter hung up.

  "At one o'clock." He was already heading for the door.

  "Won't the clinic be closed?" she asked, standing up.

  He turned around and nodded. "Doc Allenby will be puttering around the place somewhere." He hesitated. "Aren't you coming?"

  She took a few steps toward him, feeling uncertain. "Do you want me to?"

  "Of course. You'll recognize the Merc driver if we run into her anywhere."

  "Oh."

  He caught hold of her hands and held them as he looked gravely down at her face. The tension in the room went up a notch or two. "You must have been upset when I disappeared, apparently without telling you."

  She nodded. "I felt…hurt. Especially after—well, when you dropped me off the other night, you weren't too happy."

  "I was in shock, Laura." He shook his head. "Obviously, we need to talk. There's something I have to explain to you." He frowned. "If I can explain it."

  She felt cold all the way down to her toes. "Please come with me, Laura," he urged. "I need your company. If anything's happened to Sly or Max, I'll—"

  "Of course I'll come," she said at once.

  For a second, he gripped her hands more tightly, then he swung away and opened the door, ushering her outside.

  They found the veterinarian in the yard behind the clinic, where runs had been fenced off for resident animals. A large gray poodle with a huge cardboard collar like a satellite dish was jumping up and down and yapping at a tricolored shelty, who sat in dignified silence in the next run, his middle swathed in bandages.

  "Got in a debate with a German shepherd," the tall, extremely pretty doctor said, indicating the shelty. "Shepherd took a chunk out of his hide. Pick on someone you can handle, I told him." She grinned at Carter, twitching her blond eyebrows flirtatiously. "How's Max doing?"

  "That's what I came here to find out," Carter said, looking worried again. "I understand my uncle brought him in earlier."

  The doctor nodded. "Around one-fifteen." She shook her head, smiling. "He's quite a character."

  She could be referring to either Sly or Max, Laura supposed.

  "Poor old Max cut his foot on some glass when Sly let him out for his midday run," the doctor added. "Didn't Sly tell you?"

  "I've been out of town," Carter explained. "I just came home to an empty apartment. No uncle, no dog. You're saying you didn't keep Max here?"

  Dr. Allenby shook her head. "Didn't need to. Just a little cut, left front paw. Cleaned it out good. Bandaged it. I didn't even have to suture it—just told Max to leave the bandage alone."

  She grinned. "You've got a good dog there, Carter. Not like yappy here." She gestured at the poodle, who was going through contortions in an apparent effort to remove her unwieldy collar. "Without the collar she'd pull all her stitches out with her teeth."

  "Did my uncle say where he was going when he left here?" Carter asked.

  The doctor shook her head.

  "Did he call a cab?" Laura asked.

  "You must be Mrs. Daniel," the vet said suddenly. "Heard you'd bought The Willows."

  She'd also apparently heard the name in connection with Carter's, Laura thought as the doctor glanced smilingly at him.

  After a moment, she apparently remembered Laura's question and frowned, obviously thinking back. "When I brought Max back to the waiting room Sly was reading the ads and stuff on my wall. He told me to send you the bill, Carter, then he put a leash on Max and took off. Turned left toward downtown. Shouldn't think he'd go far, walking. He was quite concerned about Max's foot."

  Back in the car, Carter sighed. "I guess we go back to my original idea—checking the taverns."

  There were a considerable number of taverns in Port Dudley. Most of them were doing a fairly brisk trade, though none was crowded. Not one bartender remembered seeing anyone of Sly's description rece
ntly, though one man remembered him from a previous visit and told a couple of stories that he obviously thought were hilarious. Carter winced when the bartender started in, but then he laughed, too. How could he not? Laura thought. Just as Carter had told her, Sly was apparently more of a scamp than anyone out to do deliberate harm.

  When they'd exhausted all the taverns, Laura suggested a cafe, mainly so they could get a cup of coffee. Carter had begun to look more and more frazzled as the evening wore on and they weren't having any luck finding Sly. "I'm sorry I accused you of not caring about Sly," she said after the waitress brought their coffee. "It's obvious you care a great deal."

  He smiled ruefully. "I'm not sure I knew that myself until tonight," he admitted. "Sly can be distinctly irritating, but he's a lovable old guy all the same." He sighed. "I can't think where else to look," he said, frowning into his mug as if it had an answer for him. "It's possible he went over to Port Townsend, of course. Maybe I should call the other taxi company and see if anyone picked him up."

  Laura nodded, then glanced at him as a thought struck her. "Was it genuine? The letter," she added as Carter looked at her blankly. "The letter you went to see in Boston."

  His smile was a happy one this time. "It certainly was. It's a terrific letter. It clears up a couple of obscure points that have bothered historians. Cost me an enormous amount, however. I'll need to scrounge around for a few more parties. My friends are going to— Good God!"

  Laura looked at him questioningly. He was staring at a colorful poster displayed on the back wall of the cafe. Straining her eyes in the dim light, Laura picked out the word "Casino," but she couldn't make out the date.

  "Noon till midnight," Carter read aloud. "Volunteers needed.' The casino's sponsored by the local Elks Lodge."

  "Gambling is legal in this state?" Laura queried.

  "Only when it's for charity, and only up to ten thousand dollars' profit in any calendar year," he said, getting to his feet. He smiled down at her, looking more like his usual carefree self than he had all evening. "Doc Allenby said Sly was reading something in her waiting room. If I were a gambling man I'd bet he was reading that poster. The word 'casino' would suck Sly in like a magnet pulling iron filings. Let's check it out."