Possessions

by Judith Michael

  POSSESSIONS

  about this in a few minutes.'' Her voice was shaky and she cleared her throat. "But I want you up here. I do not want you downstairs. Is that clear?" When they nodded, their eyes wide and blank, she went slowly downstairs. Doemer was still in the middle of the room.

  "Betrayed his kids, too." His face was dark. "Son of a bitch. Bad enough he let me down, but to do that to you and the kids ... by God he deserves whatever he gets! I treated him like a son but now he's going to pay—!"

  "Carl, don't go to the police. Please. Can't you wait? One more day, just until tomorrow. Craig must have been on his way home when something happened ... he's ill or hurt . . . you don't know! If he really did take that money he wouldn't run away; he'd make it up to you. We'd both make it up to you. Please, Carl. You've waited this long. Please."

  Doemer flung out his hands. "What the hell. One more day. Tomorrow's Monday; I'll call you at noon. I can't wait any longer than that." Katherine nodded. "Well, then." He sighed. "He really left you in the lurch. I wish there was something—" He waited but Katherine was silent. "Well, then—" Another moment and he was gone, passing beneath the porch light that was blazing for the third night in a row.

  A few more hours for Craig, Katherine thought. I don't even know if he needs them. Or what else he might need. Not knowing was a leaden weight inside her, so heavy it made her feel sick. She thought of the dinner they had msde and could not imagine eating it.

  But they all picked at it while Katherine told Jennifer and Todd, sketchily, what Doemer had said. "We only have his word for it," she finished, refusing to think about the envelope he'd offered her; it could have been anything. "We won't know the real story until Daddy gets back. All we can do is wait. We'll hear from the police, or Daddy will walk in the front door and explain everything."

  "Daddy wouldn't run away," Jennifer said.

  "Of course not." Katherine remembered the jokes she'd heard about wives who preferred to think that an overdue husband was injured rather than unfaithful. Which do I want, she wondered grimly. Craig in an accident or Craig mnning from a crime?

  It kept her awake for another night in their cold bed. Craig,

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  I want you home. She was crying. Please come home. I want you safe, and everything the way it used to be. But the next day, when Doemer called exactly at noon, she had nothing to tell him. And so he called the police.

  An hour later, a different pair of officers appeared at her door, older than the first two, with different questions and a keener scrutiny of Katherine and her house.

  "Nice," said one, pacing off the living room and admiring the view through the curved wall of windows. "My wife," said the other, "always wanted to live in West Vancouver. Too expensive for us; too expensive for most people." When Katherine did not respond, they sat down and asked questions, hanmiering at her husband's purchasing habits, travel, debts, gambling, women, gifts, driiicing, drugs . . . But Katherine had become cautious. She did not mention Craig's desk with its unpaid bills, scribbled numbers and overdrawn notices from the bank. Instead she told them, truthfully, that her husband had not changed in the ten years they'd been married; that he was generous to his family but careful with money; that he did not gamble, drank very little, dressed simply and did not use drugs.

  After an hour, the policemen exchanged glances. "We have to know about his private life, Mrs. Fraser," said one. "We've issued a warrant for his arrest, and of course we'll find him if he's alive, but it would be easier, especially for you and your children, if we had the names of his friends."

  "You mean women."

  'That's what it usually comes down to."

  "There are no women," she said without emotion. She seemed to have none left. Like an automaton, she repeated her denials, looking at her hands, feeling the room slide away as waves of sleep lapped at her.

  "Well, we'll be off," they said at last. "Unless there's something more you want to say." Katherine did not move. "You know where to reach us if you think of something." She nodded. "Well, then, we'll be talking to you. And Mrs. Fraser." At the altered voice, she looked up. "We'd appreciate it if you didn't leave town."

  In less than an hour the first reporter rang her doorbell. Katherine, as waiy now as a trapped animal, stood in the

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  dcwrway, keeping him on the front porch. "I have nothing to tell you," she said.

  He waved his pencil as if conducting with a baton. "Mrs. Fraser, did you and your husband quarrel? Did you have— um—intimate problems? Did your husband buy jewelry? Give gifts to friends? Did he travel often? Where did he stay when he traveled? Hotels, or—urn—with a friend?"

  Katherine clung to the dooijamb, shaking her head. "It's none of your business," she said and slammed the door in his face.

  But on Tuesday morning, her husband's picture with his faint, sad smile looked up at her from the front page of the Vancouver News. "Craig Fraser," she read, "a partner in Vancouver Construction, a firm that has built some of Vancouver's major office buildings and residences, is wanted by the police for questioning in connection with a seventy-five-thousand-dollar embezzlement from his company. He has beeji missing since last Tuesday, when, acceding to his wife in a statement to the police, he said he was going to Toronto. Mrs. Fraser refuses to speak to reporters. Police in Canadian provinces and the border cities of the United States are searching for him; an arrest, they say, is expected shortly."

  The stark words and Craig's picture—a public figure, a wanted man—were like a strong wind slamming shut a door Katherine had tried to keep open. For the first time she let the thought form and settle within her. He is not coming home.

  Chapter 3

  R

  OSS Hayward put down his newspaper and looked out the window as the plane descended over Vancouver. Bordered on two sides by water, the city's skyscrapers seemed to float in the early morning sun with a haze of mountains on the horizon. It reminded Ross of the city he had just left; someone from San Francisco could feel at home here. The thought made him glance again at the newspaper in his lap. He had read and reread the story of embezzlement and flight, but it was the photograph that he had been studying for two days: the bearded man with his faint, sad smile. "Possibly," he murmured. "But probably not; too incredible to beUeve ..."

  In the terminal, he found a telephone directory and looked up Craig Eraser's address. He did not call ahead; he had to surprise the wife and watch her face; otherwise, he'd have had no reason to make the trip.

  "You must go there," Victoria had said the day before. *Telephoning won't do." She had burst into his conference room just ahead of his protesting secretary, stopping the staff assistant to the mayor of San Francisco in the middle of a

  POSSESSIONS

  sentence. "Ross, I must talk to you. Now." Her hair was windblown and the silk scarf at her neck askew—the first time in his thirty-five years that Ross had seen his grandmother even faintly disheveled or permitting herself to show emotion in public.

  He pushed back his chair at the head of the conference table. "I think you all know my grandmother," he said, aware that Victoria was on first-name terms with many of these men and women, dining and sitting on boards of directors with them, and entertaining them in her home. She greeted them brusquely and Ross took her arm. "If you'll excuse me a moment—you can criticize my plans without the static of my biased opinion."

  The city director of planning waved a hand. "We haven't discussed rents—"

  "The figures are on page forty. If you'll go over them, I won't be long." Ross ushered Victoria through a door into his office, leaving behind San Francisco's top government officials, who'd been studying and debating his architectural plans for months. And it would be months more before they approved every detail so that work on the three-hundred-million-dollar project, called BayBridge Plaza, could begin. He wanted to be with them, defending his ideas, speeding the process along, but his grandmother demanded his attention. He sat beside he
r on the couch. 'Tell me what's happened."

  "Look at this." Her trembling hand held out a copy of the Vancouver News. 'Tobias saw it at one of those international newsstands. Craig's picture—"

  Her voice broke on Craig's name. Ross looked at the frontpage picture, read the story and looked again, remembering Craig. Slowly he shook his head. This was a stranger, with a high forehead, full face and deep lines on either side of his nose, disappearing into a heavy beard. Not Craig, who had been thin and boyish, hair falling over his forehead, shadowed hollows in his cheeks. Still, there was something about the smile, and the clinging sadness of the eyes . . .

  "Of course there's the beard," said Victoria. "And he's much older. But the eyes! And that smile! Ross? Isn't it Craig?"

  Ross shook his head, anxious to get back to his meeting. "I doubt it. There is a resemblance, but only a suggestion of one; it's interesting, but—"

  "Interesting! What is the matter with youT* She sat straight,

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  her eyes blazing at him. "Do you think I don't know my own grandson? And even if, perhaps, I had some doubt, I thought I could count on your curiosity and stubbonmess—but all you do is wave aside this interesting resemblance. What in heaven's name is wrong with you?" She saw him glance at the door to the conference room. "Well—you want to get back. Why don't you simply agree to do what I ask? Then I'll leave you alone."

  Ross laughed and gendy adjusted the scarf at his grandmother's throat. "All right; what is it you're asking me to do?"

  "Go up there. Find out the truth for me."

  *To Vancouver? My dear, you can't ask me to drop everything to search out a stranger just because he seems to resemble someone you haven't seen for fifteen years."

  "Will you stop being so cautious! I don't think this is a stranger and I'm asking you to find out for me. For heaven's sake, who else can I ask?"

  *Tobias," Ross suggested. "Claude— "

  "For some favors. Not this one. Ross, / must know."

  Ross was rereading the story. "He's disappeared, it says. I wouldn't be able to see him."

  "His wife. His children. Photographs. Good heavens, boy, are you going to make me beg?"

  "No." Ross smiled and took her hand. Of all the family, he feh closest to Victoria. He would not make her beg. "But I can't get away this week—" His private telephone rang and he made a gesture of apology as he answered it.

  His brother's voice charged at him. "Someone just called to tell me Craig's picture is in yesterday's Vancouver News."

  Ross tensed. "It's hardly that certain."

  "You've seen it?"

  "Yes. There's a curious resemblance. Nothing more."

  "I'm going up there to find out. Read me the story so I'll have all the information."

  "Derek, wait a minute. I've already made arrangements to go and there's no need for both of us to be there. I'll call you when I get back."

  "You're going to Vancouver? To check out a long shot on Craig?"

  "I'm going to Vancouver—"

  "What the hell for? It's nothing to you if he—"

  "—and I'U call you when I get back." 27

  POSSESSIONS.

  Victoria smiled serenely as he hung up the telephone. She straightened her scarf and ran a small brush through her white curls. "Thank you. How clever of you to keep Derek out of it. What a dreadful mess he might have made."

  Ross bent down to kiss her cheek. "I would have gone anyway. For you."

  "I never doubted it, my dear. When will you go?"

  "Tomorrow."

  From his taxi, driving through the city streets and across Lions Gate Bridge to the suburb of West Vancouver, Ross noted the buildings that had gone up since his last visit, six years earlier. He had just opened his own frnn in San Francisco and had been meeting with Vancouver city planners about the restoration of decaying neighborhoods. At the end of the day, he'd gone back alone to the European boutiques of Robson-strasse to shop for Melanie and the children. Might Craig have been here then—even, perhaps, passing him on the street? For God's sake, he thought; of course he hadn't. Craig had been dead for fifteen years, and this trip was a waste of time.

  The houses of West Vancouver were built into wooded hills. Set back from the road, they offered passersby glimpses of natural wood and stone, wide windows, and terraced yards. As Ross opened his window to let in the scents of June, the taxi came to a stop beside a boxwood hedge. Beyond it, at the crest of a gentle slope, was a house smaller than its neighbors but skillfully designed to look larger by taking advantage of the contour of the land. Two children, a boy and a girl, ran down the walk and stopped a short distance away, watching gravely while Ross paid the driver. Turning, he got a good look at die boy and drew a sharp breath. Everything else faded; only the boy was clear: his compact body, his thin face tilted in curious examination, and the impatient gesture with which he pushed blond hair away from bright brown eyes.

  "I guess you're not a detective," the boy said. "They all have cars. And you're not a policeman. So what are you?"

  He was about eight, Ross thought, and it might be nothing more than coincidence.

  "What are you?" the boy repeated.

  "Not a detective," Ross said to the boy. "Have detectives been here?"

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  "Not yet—^I don't think—but my dad was supposed to be home last Friday and lots of people are looking for—"

  "We don't answer questions from strangers," the girl broke in.

  "But you ask them," Ross said, smiling at her. She was about nine, his son's age, and she promised to be a beauty, with heavy dark hair and high cheekbones in a delicate face. Her mouth was more determined than her brother's and her enormous hazel eyes were bold. For the first time, Ross wondered about their mother.

  "It's our house," the girl said firmly. "We're supposed to ask questions. I'll bet you ask plenty when strangers come to your house."

  He smiled again, liking her spirit, wanting her to like him. "You're right, I do. Especially when they don't introduce themselves. My name is Ross Hayward. I'm an architect, I live in San Francisco and I've come to see your mother, to talk to her about your father. I'd like to help," he added, though he had not intended to say any such thing. "If there's anything I can do."

  They studied him, shading their eyes against the noon sunlight. The giri made the decision. "I'm Jennifer Fraser. This is my brother, Todd. Mother is in the house and I think it's all right if you come in. You can follow us."

  *Thank you." Ross followed them up the curving walk, thinking, Jennifer. Her name is Jennifer. As they reached the front door he slowed. The children had left it open and for a fleeting moment it seemed to be an entrance to a mysterious cave.

  "Don't worry," Jennifer said impatiently. "I said it was all right for you to come in. I'll get Mother." She ran off as Todd led Ross through an arch into the living room.

  After the shadowed entrance hall, the brightness was striking. A curved wall of windows looked south and west, across the deep blue of the bay to the city of Vancouver and, beyond it, Vancouver Island. Though the house was only about two hundred feet above the water, the expansive view gave an illusion of greater height and also made the living room seem twice as large as it really was. Ross, the architect, the builder, scanned the room, running his hand along the window frames.

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  "Well done," he murmured, admiring the vision of another architect and builder.

  "I beg your pardon?" a voice said behind him, and he turned as Jennifer came in with her mother.

  "I was admiring the windows," he said. "They're very fine."

  "My husband designed them." She stopped, keeping the length of the room between them. "I trust Jennifer's instincts, but I'd rather not have visitors right now, so if you'll just tell me why you've come—"

  He walked to her and held out his hand. "Ross Hayward," he said, watching for her reaction as she briefly put her hand in his, but diere was nothing; either she did not recogn
ize the name or she was so exhausted she could not respond. He could see her exhaustion: an aching weariness etched in her face, her body swaying slightly as she took her hand from his and rested it against the dooijamb, her neck muscles tense with the effort of holding up her head. But the architect and artist in him saw, beneath her pale exhaustion, the delicate structure of her face— high cheekbones, a broad, clear forehead, long-lashed eyes with a faint upward turn at the comers, a generous mouth. Her dark hair was pulled carelessly back, but a few tendrils escaped the rubber band that held it and clung to her cheeks. In better times, Ross thought, she could be a lovely woman, and he found himself wanting to help her, to ease the strain in her face, to see her smile.

  Instead, she frowned, meeting his searching look with her own puzzled one. Twice she began to say something, then caught herself. Finally, she said, "I asked why you've come. If you won't tell me, you'll have to leave."

  "Mrs. Fraser," he said. "Does my name mean anything to you?"

  "Your name?"

  "Hayward."

  She shook her head. "Why should itT'

  "Your husband never mentioned it?" Again she shook her head and Ross, watching her closely, said, "He never . . . used it?"

  "Of course not; why would he? He has his own name."

  Ross nodded. He looked at Jennifer and Todd, standing silently behind their mother. "I think—" he began gently.

  POSSESSIONS

  *That's not fair!" Jennifer cried, knowing what was coming. "We let you in! You can't tell us to leave!"

  Katherine felt a chill of warning. "Maybe we should go along with this," she said slowly to Jennifer. "I don't know what it's about, but—why don't you and Todd wait in the front yard? I'll call you as soon as Mr. Hay ward finishes all his secrets."

  "Mother, it's not fair!"

  "I know. I want you to do it anyway."

  Jennifer shrugged glumly. She took Todd's hand. Xome on. Nobody wants us."

  Ross and Katherine watched them leave. "I like them," he said. "I have two of my own, about their age—"

  "Do you," she responded distantly, and Ross fell silent, feeling the awkwardness of his intrusion. Why should she be interested in anything about him, except why he had come?