by Brian Hodge
Iris tried not to laugh, tried not to frown, and Cyd shook her head slowly and kissed the old woman soundly.
“Iris, I know you think I’m nuts, but bear with me, all right?”
“So what else is new?” Iris said, and looked back to her ledgers. .
The taxi left her at the foot of the drive.
Sometime past midnight there had been a hard rain, and islands of mud and dead leaves dotted the blacktop, broken twigs in profusion and a long string of pebbles where the water ran off from the house to the Pike. The sky through the trees was a sharp winter blue, and in spite of the return to a near-freezing temperature, she left her coat open and her hands from her pockets. Her purse thumped against her hip as she walked. A cardinal on a limb overhead eyed her without moving. There’s nothing sinister here at all, she told herself as the house came into view; it’s just the way it always is, isn’t it, my girl?
A bird called, and she jumped, brushed a finger through her hair and ordered herself calm.
And when she was able to move again, she knew there was no panic. Not now. Not again. Now … there was anger in the wake of her fear; and a rage she knew would be useful as long as she kept it channeled safely about the walls of her reason. A rage born of a notion she had had in the cab: that Angus had been trying to protect her by not telling her a thing, that her father and brothers were doing the same, and Ed in his gentle way was playing the knight too hard to her lady. Protection. As if power to act were something she lacked behind her carefully wrought facade of individual strength. As if they all believed they could see through her, through a world-weary, wealth-weary, age-weary shell of gleaming lacquer to an interior composed of nothing but fluff of the stuff dandelions are made of that scatters in a high wind to cower in the shadows, take root and produce only more of the same.
At the foot of the oval she paused to stare at the house. On the day after Thanksgiving she had thought the place smaller by virtue of her growing older; now it was smaller still, huddling beneath the abrupt keels of white-and-grey clouds that sailed overhead before an unfelt wind. The sky was still blue, but it was beginning to haze, and she judged that before sunset the blue would be pale. She glanced to her right—all the cars but her own were gone from the garage. Again her family was gone, to somewhere she was sure was not the city, and she felt more than foolish for not noting it sooner—that more often than not she’d been in the house alone.
For a change she was pleased; it would give her more freedom.
To do what, she asked herself as she let herself in. From the moment she had left Ed Grange’s apartment she had been acting as if she thought she knew what she was doing, behaving as though she knew what she wanted. She unbuttoned her coat as she headed immediately upstairs. To do what? An admittance, then, that she had no idea. Except that if she searched, if she took the house one step at a time, if she stopped trying to find handles to hang on her confusion then she would more quickly find the key … any key at all … to any answer at all.
She began with her parents’ rooms, then, unashamed and uncaring. Through desk drawers and bureaus, under cushions, behind curtains. For a time she felt silly at looking over her shoulder when the house began creaking and the wind finally rose. But it was daylight, she told herself when she headed toward the back; in daylight there are shadows that are made by the sun.
Evan’s rooms. Empty. As Spartan and cold as the man who lived there. One picture on the bedroom wall facing the four-poster—a blurred photograph of her grandfather in uniform. Army. Major. She thought the term was: cashiered.
The more you know, the less you understand, she thought as she left for Rob’s suite and stood on the threshold. Here the decor was as masculine as she thought any room could get without dead-eyed trophies staring down from the walls. The colors were dark, earthen and solid, as was the furniture placed in such a way that a minimum of paces would take him from studying to sleeping, from sleeping to leaving. It was an old man’s room, and it began to make her nervous.
Daylight, she reminded herself sternly. There are no ghosts.
And there was nothing in any of the drawers she could open; no papers, no books, no deep secret diaries.
Foolish.
She felt a warmth around her throat as a blush began to form, and she almost walked out without checking the desk—a nineteenth-century pine roll-top tucked carefully into the far corner of the parlor. Foolish again, but this time because of her hesitation; as long as she had invaded the privacy of the others, why should Rob be any different, then? She almost laughed as she crossed the room, a low nervous sound that belied the deceptively warm sun that caught the colors of the carpeting and flashed them to the walls.
The drawers down the front yielded her nothing. Papers, nothing more, about the running of the bank, deals made and deals lost, an overwhelming amount of legalese that meant nothing to her. She closed them all softly, stepped back and pushed at the top. It was locked. She pushed again with the palms of both hands. Nothing in the house had been denied her until now, and she knew that her sudden impatience was unreasonable, and wrong. This was Rob’s property; Rob was her brother; and it was quite well possible that he had a life of his own she had no business knowing. But the top was locked, and her rage was seething, and if she left this alone she might be missing one of the answers.
He can scream at me later, she decided as she looked around the room, saw a pair of crossed Confederate swords on the far wall and fetched one before she could change her mind. He can scream all he wants, but damnit they’ve lied to me!
Carefully, she worked the tip of the ceremonial saber between the top and the base, next to the bolt. The steel was thick, bending only reluctantly as she pressed down on the hilt, slowly moving the blade until the leverage was secure. Then she leaned her entire weight on the weapon, grunting, suddenly afraid that the wood would be stronger.
It wasn’t.
The top gave with a loud tearing shriek, clattered back into its slot as Cyd stumbled away, the saber falling to the floor.
“Lord,” she said, moved back to the desk and stared at the pigeon holes and tiny drawers set into the back. Her fingers trembled; she ordered them to stop. Was careful to replace each letter, each card right where she found it, working so slowly that not even the light film of dust was disturbed. And despite her anxiousness to find some sort of clue—not knowing what it would be, but knowing she would recognize it when it appeared—she was relieved when she was almost done and had found precisely nothing.
Until the last drawer yielded a small sheet of pale yellow paper, folded in thirds. She shrugged and picked it up, was about to open it when she heard in the distance, outside the house, a faint grumbling sound.
A car.
She was sure of it.
Quickly, then, she jammed the paper into her pocket and closed the desk’s top. Hurried into the hallway rubbing her arms nervously, stopping at the stairwell when she touched the rend at the shoulder. She grimaced. It was a reminder of something else she had planned to do, something a part of her had hoped she had forgotten. With a soft noise of disgust, she retreated to her own rooms and changed her coat, slipping to the camel’s-hair warmth as she headed down the stairs. Stopped at the foot and listened. Heard nothing but the dreamlike whispering of the deep cellar furnace.
“Nerves,” she muttered as she turned round toward the back.
The kitchen was empty, no signs at all that her people had been eating. In the sink lay the crumpled towel she had used to sponge Ed’s wound, and she reached out to touch it, drew her hand back and rubbed it against her stomach. That, too, she was hoping she would not find. In not finding, she would have been convinced that the night in the library had only been a dream, a nightmare, a result of a forgotten drink at the Inn. And if that had been true then she would not have to go outside to the trash can at the corner of the house, lift the lid and take from it the bundle Ed had made from towels and the bird.
“You don’t live right, o
ld girl,” she said with a half-smile.
Her throat scraped when she swallowed. She hesitated, then turned on the faucet and took down a glass from the shelf overhead. Filled it with cold water, sipped, gulped, scolded herself soundly for the beginnings of a cramp that roiled in her stomach. She shook her head slowly and reached for a brown paper bag, held it close to her side as she left by the back door.
The trash can was one of several aligned neatly along the outside of the veranda wall. She reached over and yanked off its dented top, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The towel was banded in golds and reds, and she almost turned away from it, almost ran for her car. But its shape was innocuous, and she told herself firmly there was nothing inside that was harmful or deadly, nothing but the body of an impossible crow.
Gingerly, she scooped the bundle into the sack, rolled down the top and was about to turn the corner for the garage when she heard a car door slam.
“Damn,” she said. Waited. Suddenly turned on her heel and went back into the house, down the long hall to the front where she stood at the front door. Fussing with her coat, her hair, she tucked the package under her arm and put a hand out to the knob.
The Greybeast.
As she heard footsteps moving slowly across the walk, she turned and stared helplessly at the living room, the sitting room, the stairs that would lead her to someplace to hide.
The Greybeast.
Before she realized what she had done, she had taken several steps back into the wide foyer and was casting lots for the direction she should take.
Then, “My God, Cyd, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
The sound of her voice, and the scorn it carried, calmed her instantly. Resolve returned, and with it a sense of bravado that she knew was baseless except for her rage. If she opened the door now and found the Greybeast in the drive … but if she stood there like a frightened schoolgirl and it was only a neighbor … or Iris from the store … or Ed back from his checking … or monsters or vampires or werewolves or beasties—she laughed and flung the door open and stepped into the sun.
Chapter 12
The automobile parked in the drive was a relic, it was the only word she could think of that was appropriate, and properly insulting. Its color had once been a midnight green, but sun and, winter had faded the shade to a patchy pale grey; stains of rust edged the wheel wells, crept up the passenger doors, stitched across the low, slightly humped roof. There had been an ornament on the hood at some time in its past, and too many years ago it had been removed, the gap in the metal unfilled and spreading. The chrome bumpers were dull, pitted, and as she moved slowly down the steps shaking her head in disbelief she could see that the rear one was wired to the chassis. She looked around the front lawn and saw no one, shaded her eyes against the glare of the intermittent sun and peered into the front seat where nothing lay but a cheap plaid cushion by the steering wheel, and a thick manila folder whose papers were dangerously close to spilling onto the floorboard.
Curiosity made her circle the car, searching for a nameplate, trying to remember if the bulbous hood and almost pointed grille was a mark of a 40s Pontiac or an early 50s Buick. Evan would know, she thought; his infatuation with such vehicles far older than himself was legendary among the Yarrows, though he had never been convinced that he should part with money for one.
The wind took the corner of the house in a sudden gust that trailed leaves behind it and shoved her lightly against the trunk. It was then that she remembered the bundle tucked at her side, and the nervousness returned. She called out, twice, began walking slowly toward the garage when a figure stepped out from the side of the house, waved and hurried toward her.
His overcoat was tan, and two sizes too big; his hat was outdated Alpine sport with a trace of a plastic feather still stuck in the headband. He took off one glove and extended his hand; Cyd took it without thinking, her smile automatic.
“I went to the store,” Kraylin said, “and your woman there—”
“Mrs. Lennon.”
“—said she didn’t know where you’d gone. I took a chance on coming here, hoping I’d catch up with you.” He peered at her closely. “Are you all right, Miss Yarrow?”
She took her hand back, unnerved by the cold of the flesh touching hers, trying to tell herself it was only the air and recalling vividly an identical impression she’d had in the house the first time they’d met. “I’m fine,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, the store and all I suppose. I wouldn’t think a new owner like you would want to be away from it for more than a minute.”
Feeling inordinately foolish, and foolishly brave, she indicated the sack with a nod and a smile. “Things to do, Dr. Kraylin, things to do.” Then she looked toward the house. “Is there anything I can help you with? I didn’t hear you knock.”
He slipped his glove back on and sidled past her to lean against the car. “I thought I heard something around back. It wasn’t you, of course, because you’re here, aren’t you?”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” she said, and stood solidly in front of him, feeling for all the world like a fifty-year-old matron protecting a brood of young girls in her charge. But though she noted the reaction with a hidden inner voice, she did not relax; there was something about the doctor that went deeper than his manner, was more than her adverse reaction to the beard-sans-mustache she thought made him look ridiculous. It was the attitude he carried about him on his shoulders, an attitude of such complete confidence in his control of events even outside his own living that she bridled. Retreated somewhat Olympian to her breeding of wealth. It made her sound like a snob, and for now she did not care.
“Well,” he said, squinting at the house, at the grounds. “I’ve never seen the place during the day. It’s really quite beautiful.”
“It’s been better,” she said coldly. “When Wallace McLeod was here.”
“Wallace?” Kraylin was surprised.
“You knew him?”
“Of course I did! My heavens, Miss Yarrow, he used to come out to the clinic now and then to tend to my gardens. Marvelous man, marvelous man.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, it wasn’t for very long, I admit. He never said where he had worked before, so I couldn’t have known he was with you people. But he was a genius with flowers and hedges, things like that. A shame he had to leave … what do they call it? Service? It’s a shame he had to leave you.”
She only nodded. Sandy, she was sure, had never mentioned his grandfather finding another job. And how had the old man connected himself with the Clinic, of all places, when there were…she stopped the thought instantly, the answer more than obvious. Her mother, of course. Myrtle had felt guilty about having to let the old McLeod go and had probably prevailed upon the doctor to hire him part-time.
“A worse shame, of course,” Kraylin said quietly, “that he had to pass on so young.”
“He wasn’t all that young,” she said. “But you’re right, he was young for his age, and he shouldn’t have died.” She turned away as soon as the last word reached home, wondering why she had made the statement come out in accusation. Kraylin, however, did not seem to notice; instead, he pushed off the car and began walking slowly toward the driver’s side door. Cyd stopped him with a cough, gestured toward the house. “You haven’t told me why you were looking for me, Doctor.”
He ducked his head in embarrassment, swept off his hat and patted absently at his hair. “You know, one of these days I’ll lose my head if I forget to screw it on in the morning.” He laughed, a near-giggle, and replaced the hat. “It was such a beautiful day today that I asked your folks to come out to my place for a little … oh, what shall we call it … a little holiday, so to speak. I also wanted to have another look at your father, so I decided to combine some business with pleasure. Your mother suggested I try to find you and extend the invitation to you as well. Not,” he added hastily and just a little tardily, “that I wouldn’t
have done so anyway, but I’d thought that with the store you’d be too busy, if you see what I mean. That is … well …” He sniffed and began wiping a hand on the car roof briskly, a needless dusting to mark his error.
“Well, thanks,” she said, suddenly feeling sorry for him, he seemed so pathetic in his attempt to climb out of the unintentional hole he’d dug for himself. But when he brightened, she shook her head. “But as you said before, Doctor, I’m afraid I’m just too busy with the store.”
“A shame,” he said.
She thought he actually meant it, and was angry at herself for thinking it could be otherwise.
“However,” he continued as he opened the door and slid in, “you may be sure that you’re welcome to my place any time you want. I’d be glad to show you around; if you’re interested in that kind of thing, that is.”
“Well, it can’t be too dull,” she said when he’d rolled down the window. “If you can get Evan and Rob out there to look at a mess of medical things, you must be doing something right.”
“I suspect, Miss Yarrow, it’s my game room they’re interested in, not my facilities.”
The tone was reproof, and her sympathy vanished. She stepped back when he switched on the ignition, then impulse made her lay a hand on his arm. “Dr. Kraylin, if it isn’t too presumptuous of me—why are you driving around in this …”
“Heap?” he finished for her, a bare smile above his beard. When she nodded reluctantly, the smile became a grin. “Not all doctors are millionaires, Miss Yarrow. All the money I’ve made for the last ten years or so has been dumped back into developing my clinics.”
“More than one?”
“Oh yes. I have a small one in Hartford’s North End, another down in New York, and I’m working on creating still another up in Maine. A small place called Bridgton. I suspect you’ve never heard of it.”