The movement caused the front of her pajama top to gape, giving him a moon-silvered glimpse of soft, sweet curves. He ached to touch her, to feel flesh warmed by a beating heart. She looked so lovely and so vulnerable. And no match for Raven.
He could leave if he wanted. He wasn’t tied to this place. For the time he spent here, his will was his own. He knew that, though he didn’t know how. He’d fled Raven before, though he couldn’t remember where he’d gone or when. He could only remember that Raven had pursued him and that Raven had been angry. Very, very angry.
If he thought Raven would follow him without wreaking vengeance on Willie first, he’d run as far and as fast as he could from Stonebridge. But Raven’s temper was too capricious, too swift and too terrible to even think about doing that.
It was best if he stayed. Better yet if he found a way to warn Willie. He had no idea how, but he’d think of something. In the meantime, he’d protect her from Raven.
Somehow. Some way. God willing.
Chapter 7
Willie thought she was still dreaming when she woke up rubbing her nose, but she wasn’t a little girl crying on the beach because a starfish had stung her. She was sprawled on the couch in the living room, a calico tail twitching in her face, her neck scrunched beneath the purring weight on her head. The oldest wake-up-and-feed-me cat trick in the book.
“Get off, goofy,” she mumbled, giving Callie a poke.
The cat stretched onto Willie’s chest, giving her a faceful of bony little behind. Willie swept her onto the floor and struggled up on her elbows, blinking and spitting cat hair.
Bright morning sun flooded the porch and slanted through the windows in broad, dusty beams across the floor. Willie yawned, scratched her head and saw that her left foot was on the floor and her right was still propped on the doubled-up pillow.
She pushed herself all the way up, wincing in anticipation, but felt only a twinge of stiffness as she lifted her ankle off the pillow. It took most of her weight when she swung it to the floor and stood.
“Look, Ma, no hands,” she said, flinging her arms out.
Callie sat on the coffee table looking at her nonplussed, then jumped down and trotted ahead of Willie as she made her way into the kitchen. Getting there and into the bathroom wasn’t half bad. There was no pain, only weakness in her ankle, and the swelling was nearly gone. The bone was sore, and so was her fanny—Willie felt the bruises there—but on the whole she felt great. Raven was some kind of doctor.
The microwave said it was 7:32. Callie said feed me, meowing petulantly around Willie’s legs when she came out of the bathroom. Willie gave her half a can of tuna with fresh water, made coffee and headed for the stairs.
Here was the real test, of her nerves as well as her ankle. Willie took a deep breath, wrapped her hand around the banister and started upstairs. She made it without two-footing a single step or seeing anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. On purpose, she took a long time brushing her hair at the mirror, but no apparitions appeared in the glass.
Willie wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. Whatever she’d seen was gone now, but not forgotten. It was time to investigate. Beaches first. Dr. Jonathan Raven second, and third, if necessary, her sanity.
She hadn’t gone ballistic when the first certified letter from Raven’s attorney in Boston had arrived; she’d called Whit, then she’d gone straight to the county clerk’s office, where Nancy Crocker had told her about Horace Raven and his will.
“Near as I can figure,” she’d said, “Dr. Raven’s from the branch of the family who moved down Boston way when the whaling gave out. Might have been another doctor in the family, but I b’lieve it was quite a while ago.”
Willie hadn’t dug any further, but she was going to now. First in a bottom drawer for the ankle brace left over from her tennis-playing days in college. She put it on with white Reeboks to give her ankle maximum support. Then she put on khaki shorts and a tropical-print blouse. Next she went down on her hands and knees and looked under the bed and behind the furniture.
She searched the closet and the baseboards for wires, mirrors, cameras—anything Raven could have used to project a hologram. Then she searched the rest of the house, even the circuit box, though she was sure if Jim and the boys had found anything funny in the wiring they would have told her. She found nothing. Which was exactly what she’d expected.
On her way to the kitchen, Willie shut off the air conditioner and opened the French doors. Probably not bright economically, but living in New York had given her a bellyful of artificial environments. Willie liked fresh air, even muggy, you’ll-be-sorry-later fresh air.
While she drank her first cup of coffee, she fried link sausages in a cast-iron skillet and wondered about the man in the knee boots and breeches. If she hadn’t imagined him, if he wasn’t her pirate or a hologram, then what was he? And what was the silvery shimmer she’d seen beside her bed?
Willie frowned, mixed pancakes and poured the first batch. She was just wondering if maybe she should have her eyes checked when Frank came through the French doors.
“How come you’re not flat on your back where I left you?”
‘“Cause my ankle feels great.” Willie turned away from the counter. “So great I’m making you breakfast.”
“Lemme see.”
Willie kicked off her shoe, peeled off her sock and the brace and stuck out her foot. Frank cupped her heel in his hand and turned her foot gently from side to side. She felt only a twinge, and gave Frank a see-I-told-you-so smile as he glanced up at her with a raised eyebrow.
“You s’pose Raven’s a witch doctor?” he asked.
He was kidding, but Willie wondered, even though she laughed as she put the brace and her sock and shoe back on. She was not hysterical; she’d never been hysterical. She’d seen something in the mirror. She just couldn’t explain it. Not yet.
While Willie flipped the pancakes onto a plate with the sausages and covered it with a towel, Frank warmed the syrup, and then followed her onto the terrace with plates and silverware. An already-hot wind snapped the yellow umbrella he opened to protect the pancakes from the gulls.
They came every morning from the beach to horn in on the grackles and blue jays that pecked out their breakfast on the back lawn beneath Granma’s fruit frees. While Frank and Willie ate, Callie stalked the birds, her ears flat and her tail twitching. The birds ignored her.
“The feathers are gonna fly here in a minute,” Frank predicted in a low voice.
“Not a chance. The gulls will run her off.”
“Y’know, Will, Callie looks a lot like ol’ Patches. Now, there was a gull killer. Sic ‘em, Callie.” Frank leaned forward in his chair, elbows bent on his knees. “They shit on my car every time I wash it.”
“That’s what birds do, Frank. Don’t encourage her.” Willie stacked the sticky plates and picked up her coffee. “If she gets one, I’ll just have to take it away from her.”
“It’s instinct, Will. Let her hunt.”
“I’ll let her hunt. I just won’t let her strew bones and feathers all over the house.”
“Killjoy.”
Callie dug in her back claws and launched her attack on a fat gull grooming its wing feathers, just as a huge black crow came swooping in for a landing. The jays, gulls and grackles took off in a flurry. So did Callie, streaking back to the terrace to hide under Willie’s chair.
“Some gull killer you are,” Frank said, leaning over the arm of his chair to frown at the cat.
Callie blinked up at him and meowed, her ears flat and her tail bristling. The crow gave a raucous caw and flapped up into the peach tree. The flock came back, brazen gulls and grackles first, then the blue jays.
“That’s the biggest crow I’ve ever seen,” Willie said, watching the huge black bird fold its wings on one of the lower branches and cock its head at her.
“It’s not a crow. It’s a raven.”
“How can you tell?”
; “Ifs bigger, blacker and bold as hell.”
“Sounds like another Raven I know,” Willie quipped.
“Biting the hand that heals you, Will.”
“Not without just cause.”
Frank helped her carry the dishes inside and rinse them. Through the window above the sink, Willie could see the raven still perched in the peach tree watching the other birds. She told Frank about Dr. Raven’s offer to stop by and check her ankle and asked him what he thought of it.
“Why do you do this?” Frank asked. “Why do you ask me this kind of stuff?”
“Because you’re my friend.” Willie squeezed out the dish sponge and shut off the water. “I value your opinion.”
“How come you never pay any attention to it?”
“‘Cause you’re always wrong.”
“Then I repeat my original question. Why do you ask me?”
“If it’s such a big deal, Frank, never mind.” Her voice sharper than she intended, Willie turned quickly away to wipe up grease spatters, but not quickly enough.
“Did something happen you’re not telling me?”
“No,” she lied. “I just wondered what you thought.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you what I think. I think Raven’s very interested in you.”
“Of course he is. I’ve got Beaches and he wants it.”
“I think he wants more than Beaches, Will.”
“Oh, Frank, c’mon.” Willie rolled her eyes at him over her shoulder. “Think with something other than your gonads.”
“See? It happens every time. I tell you what I think and you tell me I’m crazy.”
“I’m sorry I asked.”
“Do you want me to drop by tonight?”
“No. I can handle Raven.”
“If you change your mind, call me. See you later.”
Prank left. Willie tossed the sponge into the sink, went to the French doors and watched him go, his stiff-legged stride screaming bent male ego. She’d never known Frank to be so touchy. Maybe the heat was getting to him. Maybe she should have kept the air conditioner on. Or her mouth shut.
She knew the perfect way to make it up to him. Coq au vin and lemon meringue pie for Sunday dinner. She needed lemons, mushrooms and burgundy, as well as cat food, litter and a cat box with a lid for Callie. Standing at the counter by the window, she made a list. At the top of it she wrote “Find out about the guy in the riding boots and breeches.”
The big question was how. Willie considered it, clicking the pencil she’d found in the junk drawer against her teeth. The raven cawed in the peach tree. She glanced up and saw its gleaming blue-black head cocked at the window. One shiny onyx eye blinked at her, and then it flew away.
“Go shit on Frank’s car,” she muttered, and glanced down at her list.
Why had she written how with two question marks? She knew how—the Stonebridge Historical Society Museum. If she couldn’t find the guy in the boots and breeches there, she wouldn’t find him anywhere. Except in her mirror, maybe. Willie tucked the list in her purse, turned on the air conditioner and locked the house behind her.
The digital time and temperature board outside East Cape Savings and Loan said it was eighty-two degrees and 10:12 a.m. as Willie crossed the street and climbed the steps of the Stonebridge Historical Society Museum. It was housed in one of the oldest shingled saltboxes on the Cape. The curator, Lucy Pulver, dressed in a colonial gown with an apron and a lace-trimmed cap, smiled when Willie asked what she had on the Raven family and where she’d find it.
“Front parlor,” she said, nodding at the low, square doorway to the left of the entry hall.
The slanted floor creaked as Willie stepped into the room. A wooden settle sat in front of the fireplace. Cane-backed chairs and spindly tables holding oil-wick lamps and candlesticks were scattered across a faded rag-braided rug.
Over the mantel hung a framed portrait of Horace Raven. A gold plaque beneath it said he was a patron of the Stonebridge Arts Council. He’d died of pneumonia in 1947 while touring castles in England. It didn’t say that on the plaque; Nancy Crocker had told her. He had Raven’s dark eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, a grim expression and a receding hairline. Give his great-nephew thirty years, Willie thought, and he’d be a dead ringer for old Uncle Horace.
There were other photographs inside a display case built along the wall opposite the windows. Willie turned on the shaded fluorescent tube above the glass top, leaned her elbow on the wooden edge and bent forward to study them.
Most of the photos were grainy and faded with age. Still, she had no trouble recognizing the dark eyes she’d first seen by the glow of the luminarias on the terrace. He stood smiling in a sepia-tinged photograph on the steps of a house, his right elbow bent on the banister, his left arm slung around the shoulders of a man a good head shorter than he was, with bristly muttonchops. There were two brief lines typed on a slip of white paper pinned beneath the picture.
Jonathan Raven and Theodore Gorham, the first two Harvard graduates from Stonebridge. Photo taken June 1877. Both men murdered in Egypt, at Thebes in the Valley of the Kings, August 1878.
“Oh, my God,” Willie murmured, a slow chill crawling up her back.
His hair was shorter, he wore a tweed suit and brocade waistcoat, a high collar and elaborately tied cravat, but it was him. The man she’d seen in her mirror. He not only looked enough like Dr. Jonathan Raven to be his twin, he had the same name.
Only he’d been killed—no, murdered—117 years ago.
Chapter 8
Willie stood, stunned and staring at the photograph until her purse slid off her shoulder and hit the floor with a thunk. Startled, she swooped it up by its strap, her heart pounding, and glanced at the doorway. Lucy Pulver stood there, her head cocked curiously to one side.
“You okay, Willie? You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine. Just surprised,” Willie admitted. “I didn’t expect to find another Jonathan Raven here. Especially one who looks enough like Dr. Raven to be Dr. Raven.”
“You did?” Lucy cocked a dubious eyebrow. “Where?”
“Right here.” Willie tapped her finger on the case.
Lucy took her glasses out of her apron pocket, put them on and peered at the photograph. “Oh, this one,” she said with a shrug. “There’s a resemblance, I suppose.”
“Clean your glasses, Lucy, and look again.”
“I’ve seen this picture a hundred times, Willie. Every day when I polish the case. You’re seeing things.”
I know that, Willie wanted to shout. Instead she asked, “Isn’t it kind of gruesome to tell people he was murdered?”
“Heck, no. The tourists love it. The stocks and the dunking chair on the common are our biggest attractions.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“Of course I do. That’s why I’m curator.” Lucy winked and tucked her glasses back in her apron. “Real sad story. Johnny Raven and Teddy Gorham were born and raised in Stonebridge. Went to Harvard together, then off to Egypt with the Boston Museum when they started finding all the mummies and such. Teddy was a curator, too. Now, this Dr. Raven—”
“Whoa.” Willie flung up one hand. “Which Dr. Raven?”
Lucy tapped the glass. “This Dr. Raven.”
Willie blinked, another dull crawling through her. “He was a doctor, too?”
“Runs in the family. So does the name Jonathan. This one—” Lucy tapped the glass again “—was medical officer for the expedition. He was killed by grave robbers, Teddy by Nile pirates. They saw Raven’s coffin on the boat crossing the river, figured it was a pharaoh’s mummy and attacked. That’s when Johnny’s mother, Rachel, lost her mind, when she found out the boat was sunk and she wasn’t gonna get her boy’s body back to bury. He was killed in August. She died in January. Froze herself to death out there at Beaches, rocking on the porch in a no’theaster with nothing but a shawl on, muttering ‘He isn’t dead, he isn’t dead,’ over and over till she couldn’t mutter no
more. Got so bad the other boy run off. Just before Christmas, as I recall.”
“Other boy?” Willie blinked again. “What other boy?”
“Her youngest. Named Samuel. Terrible winter that year. Early frost killed most of the crops. Fodder was so scarce the deer came right into town. Brought the wolves right behind ‘em. We had wolves around here, then. Some say we still got bobcats. Anyway, Stonebridge lost near a dozen folk that winter, ‘tween the cold and the wolves and—”
“Some other time, Lucy. Thanks for your help.”
Willie flung her purse over her shoulder and raced out of the museum. Her hands didn’t stop shaking until she’d clamped them around the Jeep’s steering wheel, closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against it. The hard vinyl circle was hot, almost sizzling, but it helped chase the chill that had swept through her as she’d listened to Lucy.
Granma Boyle had died at Beaches, too, peacefully in her sleep. She hadn’t rocked herself to death in a gale, hadn’t driven her only surviving child away with her madness.
The story Lucy had told her wasn’t sad. It was weird and creepy. Straight out of Edgar Allan Poe, Willie thought as she raised her head and saw the raven perched on a low branch of the elm tree growing in front of the Jeep. The bird was watching her as Lucy had, its head tilted to one side.
There were ravens everywhere. Willie knew that now, realized she’d been mistaking them for crows until Frank had pointed out the differences. If you’ve seen one raven, Willie told herself, you’ve seen ‘em all—with the possible exception of Dr. Jonathan Raven and his lookalike ancestor. Yet she couldn’t quell the certainty she felt, or the shiver it gave her to know that the raven peering at her from the elm was the same one she’d seen in the peach tree.
The odds against it were astronomical, but so were the odds that Beaches was haunted. Yet it had to be. It was the only logical explanation for what she’d seen in her mirror— which had to be the ghost of the first Dr. Raven, dressed in riding boots and breeches. If you could call such things logical.
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