The Unquiet

by J. D. Robb; Mary Blayney

  He smiled a hello and then shook his head.

  “Is this how Dr. Seuss wrote his children’s books?”

  “It would explain a lot if he did . . . couldn’t it, shouldn’t it, wouldn’t it?”

  He laughed and approached her, carrying another bottle of pinot noir and a large brown paper bag.

  “You shopped?”

  “No.” He looked in the bag, then back at her. Hands down, his eyes were his best asset. Ivy sighed, staring. “Wanda and I raided the fridge. I didn’t know if you’d eaten or if you were drinking your dinner tonight.” He raised his brows in mock disapproval and gave her an eloquent look that made her giggle, and then he grinned. “Actually, I had the munchies so I brought enough for the both of us.”

  “You”—she pointed a finger in his general direction—“are an excellent neighbor.” Her gaze caught on the wine bottle. “You need a glass.”

  She wasn’t so blasted she couldn’t get up. It was the furniture . . . so plush and comfy she thought she was going to have to turn around and back herself off the couch bottom first.

  “Stay put.” Craig chuckled. “I know where they are,” he said, already walking away—with the bag of food! You couldn’t just offer a dog a bone and then wander off with it. His excellent neighbor status was in serious jeopardy.

  “So who’s Wanda?” she hollered through the big house.

  “My housekeeper,” he yelled back. She could hear him opening and closing cupboards in the kitchen.

  “Your housekeeper . . . and you being over here with me means you’re not married, right?”

  “Right. Divorced.”

  “Me, too.” Then she muttered, “In case you were wondering.”

  “Wanda is the sister of your friend, Gus.”

  Her friend? “He fixed the gazebo up for me.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “He left me a chair and a table and everything.”

  “He’s a good man, our Gus.”

  Minutes too late it occurred to her that Gus worked for him. “So, so are you,” she said in a normal voice that wouldn’t carry to the kitchen.

  Unfortunately, he was standing in the doorway again. “What?”

  Jeez. “I said, ‘So are you.’ ”

  “So am I what?”

  “A good man.” She watched him cross the room, his arms and hands filled with a bowl of fruit salad—grapes, strawberries, pineapple chunks, slices of banana, wedges of peaches and pears—a plastic container of bread, another of cheese, a box of Pop-Tarts, a Coke, a large bottle of Gatorade, a glass of water, a bottle of Tylenol, and a rocks-glass-capped decanter. “Ah, but not a wine man.”

  He shrugged. “It has its moments, but if I drink, I prefer Scotch.”

  “Munchies, huh? I was thinking pretzels and gummy bears. This looks more like a feast.”

  He set everything down on her end of the coffee table, then crossed his legs and lowered himself fluidly to the rug in front of her. He pointed to the Coke and the salad. “Fructose to help us metabolize the alcohol. Bread and cheese to help absorb it.” Patting the box of Pop-Tarts, he grinned and said, “Both. Every frat house in the world buys them in bulk.” He opened the bottle of analgesic and dumped out four tablets, then gave two to her with the glass of water. “ And for tomorrow’s hangover, we have these for the headache”—he took the half glass of water from her when she’d finished and downed his, draining out every drop, then reached for the sports drink to fill it again—“and this to make us feel semi-human again.”

  “Wow. Should I be concerned with your obvious expertise in overimbibing, or is this just common knowledge that I’ve missed out on?”

  “I’ve known a few . . . overimbibers in my time. You don’t forget the tricks.” Though his voice was still light and jovial, there was something in the tone that cautioned her.

  Clearly, he had a sensitivity to alcohol abuse, and being in her present state of hammeredness was definitely a downer. She brightened her expression. “Wanna play Parcheesi? I found a board in—”

  “No.” He laughed. “I’d rather ply you with more wine so you’ll tell me all your secrets.”

  “Good luck with that one.” She sipped on the sports drink—a sweet-tart taste that made her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth . . . not that it stopped her from talking. “I don’t have any.”

  He narrowed suspicious eyes at her. “You’re not secretly afraid of your left hand or the number seventeen?”

  “My left hand does make me nervous but, no, I’m not afraid of it . . . or seventeen.”

  “You don’t snoop in other people’s medicine cabinets or steal decorator soaps at parties?”

  She laughed and reached for the fruit. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” But . . . “I did once skip school and lie to my mother. In high school, I left after lunch, took a bus downtown to a Stephen King book signing. The line was ridiculous, but it was so worth standing there all afternoon just to see him, in person, and get my book signed.” She sighed dramatically. “He said, ‘Hi. How ya doing?’ And I said, ‘Great.’ He smiled at me.” Another sigh. “Then, of course, I was late getting home from school. My poor mother was worried sick and I told her I’d been kept in detention for forgetting my gym shorts.”

  “Did anyone at school catch you for skipping?”

  “I wasn’t the sort of kid people missed if I didn’t show up. I got off scot-free.”

  He considered her for a long moment. “That’s it? That’s not the worst thing you’ve ever done, is it?”

  “Oh—oh no. The worst thing was in college. I dated two boys at the same time.”

  He chewed on a strawberry. “For how long?”

  “Six hours, maybe?” He looked confused. “See, I’d been dating Tommy Payne for a few months. He even came to visit over the semester break to meet my mom and brother. We were deeply in lust, could barely breathe without each other. Two weeks later, Jack Bonner walked into my creative writing class. He was cute and funny and a really, really good writer. I was in awe. I would have given anything for half his talent. When he finally asked me out, I was still dating Tommy . . . but I said yes anyway. By the end of our date I was head over heels in love with Jack and broke up with Tommy the next day.”

  “You broke his heart.”

  She grinned. “Well, there was this hot blond math nerd he’d had his eye on for a while . . . he was relieved and we parted friends.”

  “And you married Jack Bonner.”

  “I did. The same summer we graduated from college . . . for almost five years.”

  “Mind if I ask what happened?”

  “No. I . . . well, two writers can easily starve to death if one or both of them don’t get a day job, for one thing. For another: There are as many methods of writing as there are writers. Jack is the kind who thinks of himself as a pure artist, who needs to feel inspired in order to write, who labors over each word like he’s carving it in stone. And that’s okay, it works for him. But then there’s someone like me who thinks writing is as much plain old-fashioned hard work as it is talent and luck. One’s no better than the other, but put one of each in the same house and it can get complicated.”

  “And did one or both of you get a day job?”

  “We both did originally. He was . . . arty, not unrealistic. But he needed to write when he needed to write—there’s no controlling the Muses, you know—and they don’t always coincide with a work schedule.”

  “So you kept your day job and he stayed home to write.” She nodded, put the fruit back on the table, and took a piece of bread from the container. “You became resentful.”

  “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t but”—she took another chunk of bread and a slice of cheese—“I wasn’t the only one.”

  “You fell in love with a coworker and he resented it.”

  “No,” she scoffed. “Too simple.”

  “ A coworker fell in love with you and he resented it.”

  She shook her head. “Too cliché.”

>   He looked askance.

  “I published first—also cliché, I suppose, if you consider that one of us had to be first eventually.” She leaned over to pinch more bread and cheese. “In the beginning it was okay. It was a dumb kid’s book, after all . . . and probably a fluke, but wasn’t it great that I’d found an outlet for my little sketches at the same time? The money would come in handy and until I got serious about my writing and produced something worthwhile, it might be kind of fun.”

  He grimaced. “Ouch.”

  She laughed, though that last barb still made her angry. “He was a good sport about Patty Ann Pettigrew Learns to Swim, too. It was Patty Ann Pettigrew’s Tree House and the contract for three more Patty Ann stories that finally got to him.” She turned a vapid smile his way. “I was stifling his creative spirit with my nonsense—he had to leave.”

  She very much liked the perceptive and sympathetic expression on Craig’s face. Her words were blithe, her tone sarcastic, but he could tell it was a tender subject for her even three years later.

  “I’m blathering . . . and you’re not drinking. How am I supposed to extract secrets from you if you don’t drink something?”

  “Believe me,” he said, reaching for the Coke and filling the rocks glass from atop the decanter of Scotch. “I haven’t got one secret less risqué than both of yours put together.”

  She hooted out a laugh and then frowned as she replayed his words—several times. “That means . . . all yours are worse?”

  He grinned. “You’re not as drunk as I thought.”

  “No. Unfortunately.” And to his quizzical look, she said, “Normally, I’d be sound asleep after this much wine.”

  “You’re not sleeping well? You should have told me to stay home.”

  “The wine wasn’t working and I wanted the company more.” Abruptly she put her feet on the floor and pivoted her backside into the opposite corner of the couch. “Come on, get comfy and tell me all your juicy secrets.”

  He complied. “Where would you like me to start? Ask me a question.”

  “Okay. I’ll start out easy: What do you do?”

  “I run a mining company.”

  “Mumford Mining.”

  “That’s the one. Formed by my great-grandfather, a British immigrant, a miner who came over and cut granite in the mines in Vermont before he and his nine partners formed the Lackey River Mining Company in 1872. Ten years later, he bought out five of them and the families of two more who’d died in the meantime and changed the name to Mumford Mining Company. Five years after that, he bought out the last two and became sole owner of—”

  “Man. All that work and time just to have it flooded when they built the dam. Did the government buy him out so he could start over somewhere else, or did they do that public domain deal?”

  He had bright, astute eyes anyway, but when they lit with humor, they could bowl a girl over.

  “Well, according to my granddad, Charles Mumford wasn’t a man to be messed with, and it was just luck that the Lackey River site was nearly tapped and ready for reclamation when Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1934, otherwise they might have had a little war on their hands. As it was, when the Army Corps of Engineers came around in the early ’40s, old Charley saw the need for the dam and was willing to forfeit a few more months on the mine—a year tops—for first pick on the waterfront property once the lake had formed. Hence our home on the crest of the cliffs.”

  “Very shrewd.”

  He nodded. “He was ninety-two by then and still the sharpest tool in the shed, they say. And that’s just a small example of his business acumen. The Lackey River site was his first mine but not his only. Working only one mine is like . . . putting all your eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.” He paused. “You know, in reality I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of anyone collecting eggs in more than one basket, have you?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone collect eggs, period. Two baskets make a lot of sense considering the way eggs break, but I can’t imagine anyone using two baskets if one would do the job.”

  Even though they’d been talking face-to-face all the while and even though they both had the direct manner of looking into someone’s eyes when they spoke, in that moment their gazes bumped, locked, derailed, and simultaneously they realized they were no longer thinking about eggs . . . or mines, or careers, or exes or food or . . . breathing.

  Craig inhaled first. He glanced at his watch. “I should probably get going.”

  “What? But what about old Charley? And all his eggs? Your secrets . . .”

  He laughed and tipped his head to one side, appreciating her reluctance to end the evening. “Why don’t you come out to dinner with me Friday night; let me tell you then. All of it. I’ll bare my soul. And wake you gently when I’m finished, I promise.” He chuckled because she did. “Please. The marina has a four-star restaurant, but it’s only open on weekends this early in the season. It’ll be a real treat for me not to have to eat alone.”

  “Me, too. I’d love to go.”

  His exodus was rather hurried with his quick clarification that the containers were disposable and the unopened Scotch belonged to Jerry Rossini—from his hidden stash. He grinned and ordered her to stay put; he’d lock her in when he let himself out. Then he was gone. And she started counting the minutes till Friday.

  FOUR

  Apparently the anticipation of having a dinner date with a handsome man wasn’t enough to occupy her mind—more specifically her subconscious mind, which continued to have an active life of its own.

  She decided not to go to the gazebo the next day. She wanted to, badly, and was annoyed and disappointed that she couldn’t overcome her trepidation about the place but, well, one glance at the Patty Ann Pettigrew Meets a Ghost sketches rolled up in the corner and goose bumps ran amok. She was totally creeped out.

  Still a little sluggish from the wine the night before, it took three large mugs of coffee to get her back on her feet and into a nice, safe mode of denial. She would exert more control on her mind to keep from losing it altogether. She locked the disturbing sketches in the trunk of her car, and armed with a new, uncontaminated pad, she settled on the patio in the comfort of the midmorning sun and started another storyboard.

  And there she sat, paper as blank as her brain, until her rear end and right leg fell asleep from inactivity. Exasperated, she stomped feeling back into her foot, gathered her art supplies, and headed for the cliffs.

  A few warm-up sketches—of anything—to get her creative juices flowing was her intent. The lake and the mountains were the biggest and most obvious subjects, but for the detail girl inside her, most any little thing did her best. Bugs, blooms . . . or even banana peels if the angles caught her fancy.

  Turning her back, literally and deliberately, on the Tennet property and the gazebo thereon, she walked south. When she came to the woods along the property line, she saw the trees were sparse enough near the cliffs for someone to have set an ornate wrought-iron bench among them to create a secluded retreat from which to watch the lake and its constantly changing view—and she smiled. She’d only met the Rossinis once, years ago, and didn’t know them well. But anyone who took the time to enjoy the beauty around them had her heartfelt approval.

  Too soon, however, the trees and rocks and underbrush crowded out all signs of the narrow path she’d been following. And for good reason, she quickly discovered. The rocks were an overgrown barricade against a three-foot fissure in the cliff face—a high, wire fence on the other side of it impeded any travelers going north.

  She carefully retraced her steps off the rocks and returned to the bench a few yards away. Gus’s warning was no lie. The cliffs were clearly treacherous to hikers, and the residents had gone to some lengths to discourage them.

  She sank down on to the bench, downcast. There was no denying the lovely aspects of the lake and the mountains from this vantage, but she’d been hoping for something a little more . . . specific, more in
tricate. She glanced back at the barrier, at the burgeoning plants and vines coming back to life after a long winter’s nap. Standing, she backed away from the bench, taking it into her perspective, capturing it in her mind’s eye. The ironwork, the rocks, the foliage, the cliff, the sky, the trees—plenty there to throw her pencil into for a while....

  She drew.

  The woman’s husband called her his Ginger Cookie and bent low over her right shoulder to kiss her lips as she sat watching a young fair-haired boy—three or four years old—playing with metal trucks and cars at her feet. Her long curls were a light reddish brown; she had porcelain skin and bright, happy eyes the color of a summer sky.

  Ivy recognized the wedding canopy . . . but just barely. In a mostly black-and-white dream, the white it was painted was nearly blinding; it seemed to sparkle as it reflected the sun and gave the illusion of being a special, magical place. Certainly the people inside thought so—they were colored with life, vibrant and real, as she approached them, unseen, from the cliff top. An indistinct house loomed in the near distance and she realized the gazebo was in its original position, where it belonged, instead of in the tree-lined alcove below.

  Thick wisteria stems were supported independently on either side of both entrances—fragrant violet clusters of flowers hung in profusion.

  The boy looked up, saw her, and smiled.

  I’ve been waiting for you, he said, with a mature voice, without moving his lips—neither of which bothered her as much as knowing who he was: Patty Ann’s ghost, Oliver.

  “This is another nightmare, right?” A rhetorical question.

  I’m Oliver.

  “I know.”

  He was speaking to her but not at her, and his parents were unaware of her presence. The three of them continued to love and laugh and play as if she weren’t there, as if nothing existed outside the gazebo.

  You have to help me.

  “Do what?”

  You have to free me.

  “From what?” Already she didn’t like the direction this discourse was heading.