Something Most Deadly

by Ann Self

  Massachusetts required front tags, but the rusted, beat-up front bumper looked as if it had shed the thing ages ago. He remembered the rear tag was damaged, covered in mud and almost unreadable, and he now thought that might be deliberate. The car looked as if it had struggled out of a sinkhole. Brian tried to recall even a partial digit, but his mind failed him there; he hadn’t really focused on the mangled plate, his only interest in the car at the time had been to pass it.

  He kept running the sight of the woman through his mind like an instant replay: model-tall, outstanding figure—long, slender legs, a tiny waist and masses of eye-catching, straight black hair that cascaded down her back, shimmering in the sun. Hard to forget. How could he have met a woman like that and not remember? Very unlikely.

  He tried to pin down the exact moment of the afternoon that he first saw her, and now that he assigned importance to this, the images in the puzzle began to organize in his facile mind. The very first sight of the tall, dark-haired, mysterious woman was when he had walked past her on his way to the flower market. He had glanced at her as he approached, his attention drawn to the sun reflecting off her unusual hair and anxious to scrutinize the face that went with it; but she turned abruptly to look in a shop window.

  He found that an odd experience. He was not a vain man, but it was not lost on him that very few women walked past him without a least a glance. Now he thought he might know the reason—a tail would never make eye-contact. She had definitely been shadowing him for some time...but why? And why did she seem familiar? And why, for God’s sake—this incredible, undeniable feeling of dejavu?

  Overhead signs announced a fork in the Expressway:

  3 SOUTH BRAINTREE CAPE COD

  95 SOUTH DEDHAM PROVIDENCE

  Brian signaled and bore to the right taking 95 south. The Buick did the same, and then continued to drop back. “Thinks she’s being too obvious,” he laughed.

  Traffic thinned out a little after the fork. Half of greater Boston broke off onto route 3, escaping to Cape Cod for the weekend, the beautiful peninsula off Massachusetts that jutted and curved like an elbow far into the ocean. In summer, weekend traffic wheeling south to the Cape would be bumper to bumper.

  He tried to get a better look at the driver following him to convince himself it was the same girl. All he really could be sure of was that she did indeed have a lot of long dark hair; it was still waving wildly, totally giving her away. He laughed again, greatly amused. He decided she must be a rookie private detective—or newspaper reporter. Collateral damage from hanging around with someone from Hollywood. But that didn’t explain the dejavu. And he knew the way his mind worked, the promnesia had to be significant. He also knew, on the rare occasions he couldn’t get his brain to shake loose an answer, the harder he raked at it to cooperate the more elusive the thoughts became. It was better to just sit back and wait for the desired information to pop up.

  Brian signaled left and cut off to route 24, again reducing traffic slightly. He watched the Buick follow.

  He almost missed the exit for Brockton, he was so involved in watching his mysterious shadow. He flashed his right signal, and deftly threaded the big SUV between lanes to follow other exiting cars. His eyes flicked between his rear and side mirrors for the Buick. It was signaling and also making a hair-raising sweep across three lanes of racing traffic. Brian’s Mercedes followed a conga-line of vehicles as they came off the highway and soared around the uphill exit ramp almost too fast to hold the curve—the Mercedes handling it smoothly. The Buick reacted as if it were tied to his car. He winced at the daring lane-jumping and the wild motion created in the frame of her vehicle as it careened up the off-ramp, and hoped she could keep a grip on the traveling physics lesson.

  “Brockton! I was right! Good God, don’t signal too soon or anything!” Jane glanced over her shoulder and yanked her dinosaur car across three lanes to hit the exit ramp at breakneck speed, jacking up other cars and causing the Buick to fish-tail on its own chassis. She tried to dampen the resulting bucking and swaying that threatened to make her seasick, gripping and fighting the wheel all the way up the ramp. This exit fed onto a high traffic over-pass near the Westgate Shopping Mall, near a big-box Lowe’s.

  She knew it would be difficult to stay with Brian, unless she could make another brilliant deduction about his destination or luck just plain fell in her lap again. A red light trapped her, one that Brian just barely zipped through, and Jane wasn’t surprised when he quickly disappeared; gobbled up in the maze of Friday afternoon traffic. The Buick sighed at the stoplight, grateful for a rest, still twitching and vibrating and on the verge of blowing a gasket. The fuel tank was sloshing, and she could feel heat from the engine wafting back into her face, along with a faint chemical smell.

  Jane sighed along with her car, pulling strands of hair from her mouth and off her face. Brian would probably be visiting one of his relatives, but which one? There were so many of them. Brian was the only Canaday not making his home in Brockton—at least not since the last time she’d checked the phone book. As far as she knew, Brian Canaday lived on the moon.

  Historic old Brockton—the city where Thomas Edison built the first three-wire power station to illuminate downtown, and the city that was home to champions like Rocky Marciano—had been suffering through more than its share of economic downturns, and was making its third or fourth attempt at a comeback. The downtown area was blighted and struggling, but a new regime of politicians was fighting to save the wonderful old “City of Champions.”

  Maybe, she thought, Brian had eschewed Brockton for a snobbier zip code.

  The light changed, and she had to move forward with other vehicles, but her quarry had vanished and she had no one to follow. Driving without a predetermined destination left her floundering in traffic.

  “Come on, let’s make a decision here...” She thought about visiting her friend Madeline, since her townhouse was in the vicinity, but then realized she wouldn’t be home from work yet. Jane suddenly turned off on a side street—the Buick responding in installments now—and made a few more quick turns, until she finally landed on Brendan Street near the golf course; an area filigreed with mismatched pinks of flowering dogwood, crabapple, azaleas, magnolia, rhododendrons, and the bubblegum pink of Japanese Cherries. After nearly a decade of absence, she was back cruising snobby, upscale Brendan Street again, one of the last enclave of mansions that hadn’t been turned into law offices or funeral homes.

  Her heart raced as she rolled by the brick Georgian mansion she knew belonged to Susan Canaday Haygarth, Brian’s sister. The property was completely enclosed with a decorative picket fence, and on the expansive lawn behind the fence she could see several white Standard Poodles racing from one end of the yard to the other. The home’s semi-circular drive was clogged with fancy cars: three Mercedes, a Cadillac, two Lexus, and a Lamborghini—all sprinkled like gaudy jewels on the velvet blacktop. But no sign of a black SUV.

  Her heart lurched in her chest as her eyes ripped up to the rearview mirror, but it was not filled with a big black SUV sneaking up on her. The road behind her was empty. Clean and green. Large trees painted the macadam with dark shadows and sparks of late afternoon sunlight, and the air smelled of fresh cut grass, peat moss and blossoms. A mockingbird’s song pierced the air and somewhere a distant dog barked, while she coasted along the empty road in her rattletrap Buick. She hoped no ‘watchdog’ homeowner would call the police on her, thinking she was casing ritzy mansions.

  Her attention fell on a blazing white, porticoed building coming up on her left, the Gone-With-The-Wind childhood home of the Canaday siblings. It was buried in a necklace of boxwood and yew, and sat there belligerently poised on its emerald carpet as if wondering how many years it would take before she was lured back just to look at it. An antique touring car was parked on the satin-smooth drive in front of a four-car garage. Once again she was gazing haplessly at the home’s immaculate facade, like the lovesick teenager of old.

&nb
sp; You can look, but you can’t come in.

  “I have to get out of here...” Jane turned her face away abruptly and stomped on the accelerator. Too late. An explosion of memory bogeymen invaded her brain: a poor girl with an awful haircut, wearing tattered clothes, passing by the castle in her aunt’s old Honda, hoping for a sighting of the prince.

  She shook the miasma from her head and raced back to the highway.

  Brian sat in his Mercedes at a Mobil station next to the outside pumps and just watched passing traffic, leaning his chin in one hand and drumming the steering wheel with the other. His eyes jumped back and forth, catching car after car, but he couldn’t find the junkyard Buick nor calculate where it went. Not something his satellite navigation system on the dashboard cluster was likely to assist him with.

  “Stupid to race the light,” he chastised himself. It was a habit that was hard to break. Now he had lost her, or she had lost him—which was it? And no way to identify her, unless he wanted to have someone scour DMV computers and track down hundreds of old Buick owners in Massachusetts. He opened his door and stepped out for a better view; but what he was looking for was not there to see. She was either too clever to let him get on her tail or she just plain lost sight of him. Or, he decided, recklessly surfing across three lanes of heavy traffic with no readable plates on her vehicle might have netted some law-enforcement attention.

  He had to admit to himself he was intrigued; for the first time in many years he was definitely intrigued. “Who is she?” Something was churning around in the murky depths of his subliminal mind, trying to surface; tapping at the door of his conscious mind.

  I have never, in my whole life seen a woman with hair like that. Have I?

  He willed himself to be patient—the information would come.

  Later, he would be even more intrigued—or stunned when he saw the junk Buick on his sister’s surveillance camera passing her home at the exact time he was sitting in the gas station. Several residents had also seen the car, and had the police check out all the private security videos on the street; but because the plate was damaged, rusted and splattered with mud, and the car screened by heavy landscaping and too many flowering trees, they were unable to pick up any numbers, or identify the driver, even with video enhancement. As far as the police knew, no vehicle of that description had been involved in break-ins. Yet.

  Jane re-entered the highway, fleeing the tormenting memories of her old life, and running for cover. Back to the town of Southbrook and Springhill Estate. Home and safety. She could do very well without this link to her past, having just been reminded of how painful it could be. Jane vowed never again to spy on or follow Brian Canaday—even in the unlikely event that their paths would cross once more. She took a deep, cleansing breath. “Chapter closed, end of story. I won’t do that to myself again, and unravel all the progress I’ve made.”

  Settling into a sedate speed in the safe middle lane, back in the company of moderate traffic, she let herself be soothed by gently rolling, spring scenery of Massachusetts, as route 24 continued south, safely inland from the maniacs racing along the coast on route 3 to the Cape. The road-side was heavily wooded with dark green pines and newly-leaved hardwoods that were smoky watercolor puffs of rust and mint-green. Lush meadows popped up here and there, and she passed many low-lying swamp areas stuffed full of Cat-o-nine-tails. She was glad of this closure; from now on she would go out of her way to avoid contact with any Canaday—in total contrast to her silly escapades of the past. Her face burned with embarrassment, recalling the wild chase. But since no one knew of her reckless antics, it was a non-event and she would pretend this lapse in judgment never happened.

  Big waste of time reaching for pie-in-the-sky.

  Jane glanced at her new shoes again. Her job on the huge estate kept her relatively isolated. Her students were mostly women and children, and the only male near her own age of twenty-eight was Owen Flint—the other instructor-trainer. He was fabulously good looking in his own opinion, and Jane could barely stand the sight of him.

  Obnoxious, fatuous, self-centered ego-maniac…

  Owen was in dogged pursuit of her, thinking he would wear her down eventually, and went through bouts of temperament each time she fended off his advances. Flint was one of the few downsides of the job—he and Lucinda.

  I must, she thought, find a way to enlarge my social circle so I can cure my obsessions with the past and get away from Owen, before I suddenly wake up and find myself an old maid—or Mrs. Owen Flint. She cringed and nearly gagged at the thought. How she would accomplish widening her social circle and still focus on a career that kept her tethered to a world of cut-throat, ambitious people probably needed more time to solve than a drive home.

  A white van and pickup truck flew by Jane in the passing lane and she smiled at the timely reminder of where she was in life at this moment. The vehicles were emblazoned with black and gold letters:

  WHITBECK DEVELOPMENT CORP.

  GENERAL CONTRACTORS

  RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL

  Elliot Whitbeck, her employer and owner of Springhill and the white trucks, was an ambitious developer with projects all over New England. He took the projects from start to finish; buying land, developing it and finding tenants and buyers for the properties. Everything under his control and under his roof. Even his chain of pharmacies were housed in Whitbeck-owned buildings. Jane watched the white trucks disappear over the crest of a hill. Elliot’s fleet of construction equipment, dump trucks, bulldozers, ramp trucks, etcetera, could be seen rolling down various highways at most any time of day. When there was serious dirt to be moved, the Whitbeck name and machinery seemingly popped out of the earth.

  She thought about Elliot’s next big project; the one so big he was actually taking on partners to spread the risk. After a few miles, it materialized on the horizon, near the Southbrook exit. As Jane negotiated the high, curving off-ramp, she took a moment to observe the view it gave her of the Southbrook Mall construction. Whitbeck Development’s heavy equipment lumbered around rearranging mammoth chunks of earth, their maws carving out a huge gap in the landscape just behind and below an old vacant farmhouse. The lowering sun was hazy in the dust as giant trucks left with their booty of earth. The master plan, she knew from overhearing conversations, was to include some light industrial buildings, and an area for moderate-income housing.

  “Boy, Elliot must be cracking the whip to keep people working this late on a Friday,” Jane noted, again gritting her teeth to hold the wobbly Buick in a tight turn. She slowed as she passed a newly erected sign on a vacant country road (soon to be a congested four-laner with an extra highway off-ramp) proclaiming the projects intentions and investors:

  FUTURE HOME OF

  THE SOUTHBROOK MALL

  Below that, Jane casually scanned names of partners and the bank listed in smaller letters. Suddenly, she slammed on the brakes and pulled off onto the shoulder, then reversed back up to the sign, craning her neck to look up at it. When the dust cleared to reveal lettering clearly, she thought that somewhere during this day she had stepped into the Twilight Zone:

  A PROJECT OF WHITBECK DEVELOPERS

  IN PARTNERSHIP WITH AYER CO.

  AND CANADAY INTERNATIONAL

  FINANCED BY SOUTHBROOK BANK

  OUT-SPACE STILL AVAILABLE

  She slumped back in her seat, rubbing her face in disbelief. “What a nightmare! Canaday International! Elliot is working with the Canadays!” There went her closure, down the drain. Jane sat up, ripped the car into drive and shot out onto the road. She sped down winding, roller-coaster country roads, while mint-green meadows zoomed by like a movie reel. The scenery no longer made a dent in her consciousness; her mind was a kaleidoscope of the afternoon’s adventure, dissolving and reforming. A large horse-transport truck with New York plates did catch her eye for a moment as it flew past—and she wondered if it had delivered the new Trakehner from Germany.

  Rising up like magic and running along the
road to her right was a pointed iron fence, suitable for BuckinghamPalace. The presence of the fancy ironwork running along the country road announced that, from that point on, any bucolic scenery on that side belonged to the Whitbeck’s two-thousand acre Springhill Estate. Usually just the sight of it drew her in to mental ruminations of coming shows or students and horses in training, as it raced beside her and escorted her right up to the dramatic entry gate; but Jane could not force her mind from its endless circle of troubling thoughts.

  She made an attempt to snap out of it as she turned onto the drive leading through a stone archway attached to Springhill’s impressive gatelodge. The sandstone and granite portal was decorated with enormous black carriage lamps on either side of the drive. The lodge itself was also assembled with a collection of the same rocks, and sported a castle-like turret next to the driveway tunnel. The terra cotta tiled roof had hooded eyebrow windows, making the roof look like it was peering down watchfully. The interior had been gutted—sparing the finely carved woodwork—and beautifully renovated, and this gatelodge was now the new home of Dressage coach Lars Wallenberg.

  A hammered-iron double gate stood open as usual, allowing traffic to flow unimpeded through the wide arch of the stone portal. Long fronds of willow trees next to the building dusted over yellow daffodils and confetti mounds of phlox. Fixed to the stone building next to the archway was a brass plaque that read:

  SPRINGHILL STABLES

  EXCELLENT YEAR ROUND FACILITIES FOR

  BOARDING AND TRAINING HORSE AND RIDER

  EMPHASIS ON DRESSAGE

  TRAINING TO GRAND PRIX LEVEL

  At the bottom of the sign was the corporate seal of the American Trakehner Association, with its distinctive double-antler icon, indicating the estate was engaged in breeding and training of what most considered to be the Rolls Royce of warm-blooded European sport horses.