"Her mother's problems go way back," Netta murmured in a gossipy aside. "They say it was a strain on everyone."
"I can imagine. But where's her fa—? Oh! No, no, no, sweetie, that's not a toy!" Liz said, chasing after Bradley, who, since he was younger than all the rest, could've used a full-time prison guard of his own.
"Now, there's a boy who needs a good strong father," Netta told Liz. "Too bad no one knows who or where he is. Here. Let me take the little bruiser off your hands for a while," she said, snatching the fireplace poker out of the boy's grip. She began shepherding him out of the room.
"No, Netta, you're busy with the caterer —"
Too late. In any case, a sharp scream sent Liz running to Caroline's latest victim, a chubby little tyke who was being pinched out of his turn at the beanbag toss.
It was exhausting. Liz had a slew of activities planned, from the beanbag toss to a pin-the-nose-on-Mickey game, because she dreaded having the children bored and roaming the room. That was her job: to keep the kids away from the antiques.
Some of the parents did put in a hand once in a while, but generally speaking Liz was on her own. As she chased around the room steering the kids away from one Ming vase or another, her thoughts, perhaps inevitably, harked back to her ancestors. Four generations of her people had served four generations of these people; the most recent was her father, who before his retirement had served as full-time gardener to a wealthy socialite on her thoroughly landscaped oceanside estate.
That background of domestic service was a big part of why Liz had wanted to have her own business. The sudden loss of her husband's support and the desire to be with her daughter were other reasons, certainly; but mostly, Liz wanted to break with tradition and be her own boss. It wasn't until the food was being served that she had a chance to take a good, hard look at herself.
Self-employed businesswoman, my foot, she decided. I'm a nanny, and an unpaid one at that.
As soon as the children showed signs of being finished with their food, but before they actually began throwing it, Liz went into the kitchen to light the candles on the Mickey Mouse cake. She was wheeling it out on a serving cart when Caroline suddenly appeared ahead of her, arms akimbo, like Jesse James in front of a train.
"I don't want them to have my cake," she said, her round cheeks flushed with anger. "I don't like them. Especially Heather. She made fun of my shoes. Because they don't have Velcro."
"Oh, she didn't mean that, Caroline," said Liz, nervously eyeing the flaming candles. Not now, for pity's sake. Have this tantrum some other time.
"Tell Heather to go home," said Caroline, stamping her foot.
Liz glanced down the empty hall. No help there. "Caroline, go back and join the others, please, or you'll have candle wax all over the frosting."
"What about my shoes?" she demanded. "They only have buckles."
"I'll see what I can do," said Liz in desperation. "Now hurry. Go."
"All right, but I don't want Heather to have the ears," Caroline said with one last glance at her cake. "She can only have Mickey's chin."
She stalked off, and Liz, convinced by now that her career path had taken a detour into hell, rolled Mickey Mouse, his candles blazing, into everyone's midst.
The cake was a big success. Caroline, who was an incredibly pretty child, was all blue eyes and dimples as she blew out the candles. Everyone cheered. Miss Caroline Stonebridge — whoever she was — was now officially five years old.
Netta, having somehow hypnotized little Bradley into taking a nap, was on hand to help serve the cake, which eased things considerably. After that, adults and children alike gathered around the birthday princess to watch as she opened her gifts.
Caroline displayed a side that Liz had not yet seen: an almost grown-up graciousness, coupled with pretty compliments and artful glances at the adults who'd paid for the extravagant presents. Later in her life it would no doubt be diamonds that prompted those looks of pleasure; but for now it was toys.
One gift particularly pleased the little girl: a spectacular Madame Alexander doll, done up in long blond locks and lacy nineteenth-century dress. Liz had seen the exact doll in one of her most upscale catalogs; it was worth hundreds of dollars.
Netta picked up the tag from the wrapping and read it aloud for her. "Oh, thank you," the child said, turning to Jack Eastman with eyes that danced with pleasure. "I really, really love it!"
Jack Eastman! Liz turned to him with an astonished look. For this, she'd worked for free? So that this spoiled brat could have a doll that Susy could only dream about?
Jack Eastman was standing in back of the guests, across from Liz, his arms folded across his chest. "You're welcome," he said grimly. But he was watching his father as he said it, with a look that Liz couldn't begin to understand. Some kind of power play was going on; that seemed clear enough. But why and over what — those questions she couldn't answer.
There was one last gift: an envelope from Cornelius Eastman, the family patriarch. He was sitting in the leather armchair alongside the beautiful mother of one of the bored teenagers. He interrupted his chat with her to watch Caroline open his card and hand Netta the check inside without so much as a glance at it.
Netta's eyes opened wide. She flushed and said, "I'm sure Caroline is very grateful, sir."
Cornelius made some ofthand, dismissive remark and went back to his tête-a-tête, and Liz and Netta began cleaning up the wrappings.
Feeling herself like an indentured servant, Liz was reconsidering whether to bother with the puppet show. But the children were getting into Caroline's presents, upsetting her, and Liz was forced to distract them while Netta spirited the gifts upstairs.
As she sat the children — little too forcibly — down in their chairs, Liz wondered anew that East Gate housed neither wife nor mother. The mansion seemed oddly empty with no one but poor old Netta shuffling around in it. Liz shook her head. A bachelor and an apparently estranged husband: these guys were hell on women. Well, it wasn't her lookout. All she wanted to do was finish the godforsaken assignment and go home.
Her standard routine was to sit alongside the kids and wait with them a minute or two for the show to begin, then announce that she was going backstage to see what was holding it up. Today she did just that. Her heart, meanwhile, started to beat more excitedly, as it always did before a performance.
What the heck, she thought, fully in the spirit of the show as she slipped the puppets over her hands. It's not the kids' fault I can't drive a decent bargain.
She peeked through the hidden peephole and saw their faces all aglow with expectation. She was completely enchanted by this part: by the little squeezy things the children did with their hands, and the way they grinned and nudged one another with their shoulders as they waited and watched. They were so full of joy, so willing to be made happy. Their eyes were huge; they didn't want to miss a thing. It made no difference how rich or how poor, how blond or how brown they were; kids at a puppet show were all the same, and Liz loved them desperately, every one — even Caroline.
Showtime.
Up popped the girl-puppet, a wide-eyed charmer named Misha. "Oh dear oh dear oh dear!" Misha said in Liz's high-pitched voice. "If I can't find him, I don't know what I'll do!"
Out strolled the boy puppet, a mophead named Kris with a skateboard on his shoulder. "Can't find what, Misha?" he asked in a slightly less high-pitched voice.
"My pet turtle," explained the girl-puppet. "He's gone! I think he ran away!"
"If he could run, he wouldn't be a turtle," the boy-puppet said breezily. "What's his name?"
"Tommy," said the Misha-puppet. "Tommy Turtle."
Through her peephole Liz was surprised to see Jack Eastman stroll over and join several of the parents who were standing off to one side, where they had a view of the show and the children at the same time. She watched nervously to see how Eastman would react to her innocuous little script. He looked, she had to admit, bemused but rather bored.
> Okay, she thought. It's not Phantom of the Opera. But you're not exactly a Broadway producer, pal.
Kris the boy-puppet was busy peeking under the drapes and calling Tommy the turtle, when up popped another boy-puppet, a big hulky kid wearing a baseball cap. "Yuh?" he said in Liz's deeper voice. "What do you want?"
"I want Tommy."
"I'm Tommy."
"You're not a turtle!" said Kris, much to the delight of the laughing kids.
And meanwhile Liz was watching the oldest and pickiest member of her audience — and he was actually smiling. Smiling! His face, earlier so tight with repressed anger, had an expression a lot like the ones the kids were wearing. Liz couldn't take her eyes away from him; he was so much more attractive in this unguarded moment. She liked everything about him just then, from the way his dark hair tumbled over his forehead to the way he folded his arms across his chest, relaxed and at ease for once.
Then she saw him notice the children themselves, all of them gleeful and enchanted by the puppets' antics. It was as if he'd glanced out a window and discovered half a dozen rainbows on his property. His expression mellowed still more, into one of tender, surprised delight.
And Liz decided, right then and there, that either she was in menopause or she was in trouble.
She had to force herself to stay on top of her plot — to bring up the dopey-dog puppet on cue and to haul out the turtle-basket for her puppets to drag around. She'd done the skit a hundred times, but never with her heart in her throat the whole while.
As intensely preoccupied as she was, Liz still was able to notice two-year-old Bradley, apparently escaped from his nap, toddle into the room with Snowball in his arms. Because of the seating arrangements, no one else in the whole damned Great Room was able to see him plop down, puppy on his lap, against the back side of one of the sofas.
Liz groaned inwardly and thought about yanking the curtains shut in an impromptu intermission and removing at least the dog. But the toddler and puppy seemed content enough for the moment. She decided to let them be.
Warily, she hurried through her lines.
"Ow, ow, ow," cried Misha-puppet. "This rocky beach is hurting my feet!"
Kris-puppet reached down and brought up something for his audience to see. "I found him! Oops. Nope. It's a stone."
"Here he is!" said Misha-puppet. "Oh," she said, disappointed. "Another rock. Do you think he swam into the ocean?"
At this point Kris, who knew all about land versus aquatic turtles, was supposed to have given a little speech explaining the difference, and Misha was supposed to have decided that her turtle was smart enough to stay on land and close to home where it was safe, and all the puppets were supposed to have begun heading home because it was getting dark and where of course they would've found Tommy Turtle.
However.
Liz glanced over to where Bradley was sitting and noticed that Snowball had moved a couple of feet away, where he was now in a squatting position over the antique Heriz carpet.
"Oh, no!" screamed Misha, out of character. "Bad dog, Snowball!"
At the sound of the name Snowball, Bradley turned around, took in the situation in a glance, and scrambled to his fat bare feet. "Snowbaw poopie! Bad Snowbaw! Poopie poopie!"
Little Bradley made a waddling dash, right through the poopie, for the runaway puppy. Liz shook the puppets from her hands and shot her head up into the theater, surprising everyone except maybe Snowball, who clearly was used to being screamed at and chased from hither to yon. She watched, frozen with horror, as Bradley tramped dog poop from one priceless rug to the next in his pursuit of the puppy.
Jack Eastman, who had no idea what was going on, naturally seized on Snowball and hauled him out of the room. By the time he got back, it was very obvious, to him and to everyone else with nostrils, that the party was over.
"Good God!" he said with an expression of disgust. "What the hell—?"
Liz had already tackled Bradley to the floor and handed him over to Netta for hosing down, but that didn't make her feel any less guilty about the social disaster that had taken place on her watch.
"I'm so sorry," she said, mortified. "I saw Bradley bring in the dog ... but I had no idea the dog was sick ... oh, lord," she said, trying not to retch, as the guests began fleeing the house.
Jack Eastman was amazed. "You're telling me you saw what was going on?"
"Well," she said lamely, "sort of."
"For goodness' sake, it's nothing that can't be fixed," said Netta, rallying to Liz's defense.
But Cornelius Eastman wasn't so sure. "It's so runny ... I don't know. . . the Kirman looks bad."
"I'll clean it," Liz volunteered. "A little Woolite—"
"Woolite!" Jack said, unsure, apparently, whether to laugh or scream. "Woolite? And for this you expect full payment?"
It was so gratuitous. Did she really need this fresh humiliation? She lifted her chin. "I've learned to expect nothing from you, Mr. Eastman. Neither courtesy nor respect. Why should you confuse me with a payment of money due? If you'll excuse me, I'll get a bucket of water."
She turned and found herself face to face with Netta, who was clearly at the end of her patience with everyone.
"You'll do no such thing, child. You're working for peanuts as it is." She turned to the men and said, "I'm the one who didn't put Bradley in his crib; you can blame me. And what's the fuss, anyway? Those rugs have been in the family for a hundred and fifty years. You think no one's ever messed on them before? This isn't a museum. It's a home — or at least it would be, if everyone would start acting like a family," she said, sweeping them up in a look of withering contempt.
That was when it hit Liz. Caroline Stonebridge is the old man's love-child, she realized belatedly, remembering how he'd beamed every time Caroline came into view. And that meant she was Jack's half-sister. And Jack doesn't like it one damned bit.
And she couldn't care less.
"Go home, dear," said Netta. She jerked her head in the direction of the two men behind her and murmured, "Save yourself while you can."
Suddenly Liz was completely exhausted. The climax, after a week of feverish anticipation, was so completely crushing that she thought she'd never coordinate an event again. And yet the very next day she had to do a Mexican birthday for a mob of seventh-graders at a Taco Bell. Was life everlasting, then?
She tried to put on a good face. "Good-bye," she said briskly to the men. "Thank you, Netta. I'll come back for my things tomorrow."
She brushed past them all and was promptly accosted in the hall by a reproachful Caroline. "You gave everybody cake from the ear," the child said, apparently oblivious to what was going on. "I wanted the ear."
Liz stared at the child in amazement, then led her to the cake, which sat on the tea cart, still in the hall. "You want an ear?" she said. "Fine."
She took up a knife and lopped off the intact ear with a stroke that would've made Van Gogh cringe, then slapped the eight-inch circle on a plate. "Here. Have an ear."
Then she turned and marched toward the heavy paired doors at the end of the softly lit hall. She was approaching the massive grandfather clock that graced the near entry when her head began to fill with the sound — the angelic, heavenly sound — of the chime-note that she'd heard at the locksmith's.
It's the grandfather clock, tolling the hour, she thought, catching her breath.
And then, whether it was the thick fog, or the lateness of the hour, or the state of her exhaustion — she saw a shadowy, vapory, and yet oddly clear figure of a dark-haired man, well- built, wearing buttoned trousers and a loose flowing shirt with ominously dark spatters on it. The apparition was leaning, with arms folded, against the grandfather clock.
Watching her.
Stifling a cry, Liz stopped dead in her tracks. Before she could make up her mind what to do, the hallucination passed, although the sound — the single transcendental chime-note — did not. Liz took a deep breath and hurried past the clock. The chime-sound followed
her as she fled through the fog to her van, parked off to one side of the mansion's graveled drive. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably as she struggled to fit the key in the ignition.
I have to get away from here, she thought distractedly. Away from him ... it ... them. Oh, God. I have to get away.
Chapter 5
Victoria was in stitches.
"This gives whole new meaning to the term party pooper, she said, grinning, as she and Liz dunked doughnuts in Liz's kitchen the next morning.
So far Liz had told Victoria only about the party — nothing more. "I don't see what's so funny," she snapped. "My long-awaited debut turned out to be my unexpected swan song."
"You should've let me stay on and help," said Victoria.
"How could I? I wasn't getting enough to pay either one of us. Not to mention, the son of a gun is stiffing me."
"Oh, he'll pay what he owes, surely," said Victoria, still smiling. "Although you should know, of everyone, that you're supposed to collect the balance before the event."
Liz eyed the ransacked box of Dunkin' Donuts. "You didn't want this last chocolate one, did you?" she asked, lifting it out. "I'm feeling very insecure right now."
Their kaffeeklatsch was strictly hit and run. Liz had some photocopying to do and dozens of jokes and riddles to assemble for the Taco Bell birthday gig. After that she had to pick up Susy from kindergarten because she'd promised her that Mommy, not Gramma, would go with her to the dentist for her cleaning. And after that, she had to retrieve her party gear from East Gate.
But for now, Liz was bursting, after a night of tossing and turning, to finish her tale of fear and woe.
"You brought the pin?" she asked unnecessarily. It was in plain view, on Victoria's frilly white blouse. "Can I have it? I want to try something."
Victoria gave her friend a puzzled look but said nothing as she unfastened the pin and laid it in the palm of Liz's hand. Liz frowned, studying the bauble intently, listening all the while for strange heavenly sounds. She felt and heard nothing. It wasn't surprising; she had as much psychic ability as a potato.
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