“So, what brings you to Riverview?” He looked over at Rory and added offensively, “Or should I ask?”
“She’s a nature photographer,” Rory answered shortly, sparing her the invention of some lie. “She’s come to do some work for the fall catalog.”
“Oh.” Claude appeared to lose interest, and Isaac—who had never had any beyond Chloe’s breasts, which he watched as though she had in fact tucked some bills into her bra—was also willing to let a heavy silence fall.
Unable to stand the strained quietude and Isaac’s fixed stare, Chloe rose to her feet and walked to the sideboard to fetch another slice of chocolate torte, which she didn’t really want but would help her choke back the brandy and give her a moment’s respite from the smoke. “I am so looking forward to this project,” she said cheerily, pausing an instant to study the skull tattooed at the base of Isaac’s thick neck. It smiled every time he looked up and creased his neckline. “Sure, I’ve done lots of catalogs before, but never irises. I had no idea that there were so many kinds! Bearded iris, Japanese iris . . .” Chloe paused, her mind going blank as Isaac turned to face her.
“The entire family of iridaceae,” Rory supplied helpfully, the faintest trace of amusement warming his face. “That includes crocuses and gladiolas.”
“I have irises in my cameras, did you know that?” she asked Rory with a vacuous smile. MacGregor raised his napkin and coughed suddenly. She went on, “It’s called an iris diaphragm. It’s the metal plates that form the aperture of the lens.”
“Iris was also the goddess of the rainbow,” MacGregor added, finally willing to be helpful conversationally.
Chloe again glanced at the less than dynamic duo of Claude and Isaac to see how they were reacting. Claude’s delicate brows had drawn together in a suspicious frown, as though he was guessing that he was being mocked, and even Isaac was showing signs of rousing from his trancelike fixation with her chest, as she remained determinedly turned from his gaze.
“And, of course, there is the pigmented portion of the eye,” Chloe finished, turning up her smile another notch. “A very interesting word, iris. So close to Irish, which is also a popular hyphenated word.”
“Irish coffee,” MacGregor suggested.
“Irish stew, Irish setter, Irish wolfhound, Irish terrier . . . ,” she continued, ticking a list off on her fingers as she continued to smile blandly. Her cheeks were beginning to ache, and she was feeling rather like she was in a sketch parodying Sesame Street. She had never attended a stranger dinner party, and prayed that she never would again. If she had just a bit more courage, she would walk out.
“Irish moss, Irish potatoes, Irish roses,” Rory added, still being helpful with the botanicals.
“Don’t forget the Irish Republican Army and the Irish Free State,” MacGregor chimed in gleefully, enjoying the game.
“There’s Irish Bull, Irishmen,” she went on. “Getting up your Irish, the luck of the Irish—”
“Irish eyes! Now there’s a tune!” MacGregor broke into lusty, off-key song. “ ‘When Irish eyes are smilin’, it is like a morn in spring—’ ”
Claude winced, Isaac glowered and Chloe promptly joined in singing, also deliberately offkey, and after a one beat pause so did Rory, though he managed to competently carry the tune.
“‘When Irish hearts are happy, all the world seems bright and gay . . .’ ”
Claude and Isaac were looking at each other in disbelief and growing annoyance. The bulls were just bright enough to know when they were being baited. The thought made Chloe grin. Maybe they’d take the hint and go away.
“‘When Irish eyes are smilin’, they will steal your heart away!’ ”
Chloe was still smiling when she looked over and found Isaac had risen from his chair and was looking directly into her face. Instantly her humor died away, and her attention narrowed its focus to the man in front of her. She felt her hand tighten around her fork, gripping it like a weapon.
Danger.
Suddenly she was sweating. Those flat gray eyes with bloodshot whites were as still as a photograph. They were terrifying, soulless, utterly inhuman. If eyes truly were the windows to the soul, then Isaac Runyon had nothing in him except the cold winds of a frozen hell. These were a dead man’s eyes.
Nothing had ever frightened her more, and she found herself wishing that she had paid more attention to Granny Claire’s lectures about warding off evil.
“That was grand!” MacGregor said happily as he jumped to his feet and headed for the door. His cigar was left to smolder on his dessert plate. “Let’s go to the music room. Chloe, I will sing you ‘Danny Boy’ in Gaelic. I promise, you’ll have tears in your eyes by the time I’m done.”
“I can’t wait,” she whispered, backing away from the table and Isaac. It took real effort, but Chloe pulled herself away from the horrible visual communion with Claude’s companion. Once the spell was broken, she practically raced after her host, clinging to her fork though torte and brandy were gladly left behind in the smoky dining room.
She slowed to a walk once she reached the hall and put a hand on the door frame to steady herself. She listened intently and was relieved to hear only one set of footsteps following her down the corridor to the music room. There was a murmur of voices from the dining room, and then two other sets of footsteps headed for the front door. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out the group division.
Her relief at the separation was immense and physical. Slowly her heart calmed and the perspiration on her skin began to dry. She wondered sickly if Claude had any idea of the spiritual evil of his friend. Isaac Runyon looked like a man, but every instinct within her said that she had just looked into the mind of a conscienceless demon, a killer. Shivering, Chloe hurried after MacGregor.
Rory shut the door to the music room a moment later, and he looked over at Chloe and his father. MacGregor was bent double with not quite silent laughter. Rory was holding a struggling Roger in his arms and smiling reluctantly.
Chloe could only gape at them. Apparently they hadn’t sensed the evil rage inside of Isaac. Hadn’t realized that danger was stalking them.
“Claude and Isaac have decided to go into town for the evening,” Rory told them, turning on a lamp. “They don’t want to hear you sing ‘Danny Boy’ in Gaelic.” His words provoked a fresh burst of laughter from his father.
“If only I had known! I could have gotten rid of Claude hours ago.”
“You are impossible,” Rory told him. “That ghastly caterwauling was a masterpiece of musical horror. Neither one of you came anywhere near the tune.”
They don’t know, Chloe thought, looking from one Patrick to the other. They really hadn’t perceived that they sat at the same table with a devil and broken bread with him.
“I should have thought of driving them away with music before,” MacGregor said gleefully. “Claude always did hate my singing. He used to cry when he was a baby whenever I sang him a lullaby. Why, I bet the two of them pack up and leave in the morning.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Rory said. “Claude never shows up without a purpose, and he hasn’t gotten around to asking for anything yet.”
“I know what he wants and I’ll give him some money if it’ll get rid of him,” MacGregor promised, his good mood restored by the thought of Claude’s ouster. “Chloe can’t do her job with those two spying around.”
“No, she can’t,” Rory agreed slowly. “In fact, I think that she had better come to Botanics with me in the morning, just to add some cover to the story that she’s here to work on the catalog.” He looked at her and added with a slight smile, “You may just as well make yourself useful there as here.”
“You’re just trying to pick a fight,” she answered mechanically, relieved that she wouldn’t be laboring alone in the cemetery while Isaac Runyon was still around. That would have been asking a lot of her nerves. “But it won’t work. I actually am curious to see your gardens. You don’t know it, but I am a longt
ime customer of yours. And I would love to photograph the gardens too.”
“Too bad that I’m not working on the gardens tomorrow.”
“You aren’t?” she asked, not really caring.
Rory stared at her, finally sensing her distraction and beginning to question its source.
“No. I’m antiquing pots.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure that’s interesting too.”
“That sounds downright fascinating,” MacGregor stuck in, as he seated himself at the harpsichord. His white fingers played a little trill. Either the instrument needed tuning, or MacGregor’s finger placement was slightly off. “In fact, I think I’ll join you. It’s been a while since I came down to see your operation. You could probably benefit from a little experienced business advice before you get on with the expansion.”
Rory didn’t look overjoyed at his father’s plans, but MacGregor was busy playing the opening chords to “Danny Boy” and didn’t see his son’s lack of filial gratitude.
True to his promise, MacGregor sang the ballad in Gaelic. It was more an enthusiastic performance than a precise one, and his audience was largely unappreciative of his efforts. Half of the spectators lounged in a wingback chair and feigned sleep. The other half stood beside the piano and smiled politely as she turned pages in the music book, but Chloe’s disturbed mind was about twenty-seven miles away, at her grandmother’s cabin.
For some reason she was thinking of Isaac as the nightmare monster she had dreamed about the night before coming to Riverview. But obviously they weren’t connected. They couldn’t be. The monster was just something her mind had coughed up—a stress hairball. But when intuition opened its mouth, she knew to listen. Maybe she had overreacted a little back there in the dining room, but her psyche was insisting that this guy was bad news. She would take steps to make sure that she avoided Isaac in the future. She did not want to get any closer to the beast at the back of his eyes. She didn’t believe in psychic premonitions—not really. And she would probably benefit from some of the modern pharmaceuticals that helped people with paranoid delusions. But there was such a thing as feminine intuition, wasn’t there? And why subject herself to his obnoxious company when she didn’t have to?
Chloe tuned back in to hear MacGregor singing about the Bluesman, Robert Johnson, selling his soul at the crossroads. She shivered. The tune was a bit too apropos, given what she’d been thinking.
While I thought I was learning to live,
I have been learning how to die.
—Leonardo da Vinci 98
Chapter Four
Rory waited until a civilized hour to leave for Botanics headquarters. Chloe suspected that this was due to an intimate acquaintance with MacGregor’s lollygagging tendencies rather than to spare her an early rising or an inability on his own part to face the day until the sun was well up in the sky. Chloe hadn’t consulted the family Bible but she suspected that Rory’s full name was Rory Stubborn Fortitude Patrick. He could do dawn risings with a hangover and one arm tied behind his back.
She didn’t complain about the delay. Her sleep the night before had been uneasy, filled with dreams of being hunted by demons where she was trying to save two people, knowing all along that she would have to let one of them fall behind or they would all perish. Perhaps her thoughts had turned to sulfurous flames because of the temperature: the day’s heat had lingered into the night. Whatever the cause, she was glad for the chance to eat a decent breakfast and pour a little caffeine jump-start into her sluggish system. Though not usually a large breakfast consumer, she nevertheless ate and drank with the steadfast devotion of one who was aware that her host was likely to get interested in something and decide that lunch was an unnecessary luxury.
The only danger to lingering at the table was a possible encounter with Claude and Isaac over the English muffins. But apparently neither of the men was a child of the morning, either, particularly when they had tied several on the night before, a likelihood which was safely gleaned from past behavior if not actually seen in this instance, or so she gathered from MacGregor’s acerbic stray comments. To Chloe, this seemed to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black—or sometimes worse things, if she understood MacGregor’s mumblings—but as she was growing fond of her employer, and he did pay the bills, she refrained from saying anything about his own bloodshot eyes and lack of appetite.
Patrick’s Botanics was only a ten-minute ride from the main house. It was an impressive operation whose hothouses spanned five acres. It was large, modern and efficient, yet it managed to retain the same air of sumptuous comfort that pervaded the rest of Riverview. Perhaps it was the strains of Puccini’s La Boheme throbbing on the gentle breezes produced by silent fans inside the immense hothouses—constructed, of course, in the overwrought Victorian manner that made their architecture more ornate than a wedding cake—that gave this impression of pampered wealth.
“Ah! Those Italians!” MacGregor beamed approvingly, beginning to look more chipper. “They have the best marbles, the best footwear and the best operas.”
Chloe shook her head as she looked around, but it wasn’t in disagreement. The outsides of the buildings might have been frivolous, but the interiors were not. There were massive tracks of grow-lights, clinically clean, stainless steel tables, and high-tech office chairs. Medical labs would envy this setup. Financial security was an amazing thing. There wasn’t a shoestring anything in sight. These had to be the most pampered plants and employees on the planet, and she wished that Roland Lachaise could be there to see it. This was a level of work comfort to which she would like to become accustomed.
It was soon obvious that Rory had been in earnest when he said that he was antiquing pots that morning. There were pallets of them stacked chest high, just waiting for attention. After he, his father and Chloe had all donned white lab coats, gloves and paper shoe covers, he explained the process that his visibly nervous assistant was using to achieve an aged look. It was a simple but slimy one. Plain yogurt mixed with a thin gelatin was painted onto the outside of an earthenware pot, and then a hank of moss—in this case it was gray-green asprella—was shaken over it, planting thousands of nearly invisible moss spores into the goo. The pots were then placed in a cool, damp, and shady location while nature took its course.
Rory took pity on his fidgeting assistant, and removed MacGregor from the young man’s orbit as soon as the explanation was complete. MacGregor did have a tendency to loom and make disquieting remarks regardless of who was at hand. Perhaps he forgot that the people who worked there were actual thinking beings and not just biological furniture to be arranged to his convenience.
Rory took them next to a backroom overhung with layers of shade cloth and showed them pots that were two days along, and others that were a week old. The pots that were only forty-eight hours into the process simply looked blotchy and diseased, but the week old spores embedded in the yogurt had transformed into a satisfactorily mossy covering. There were several species of moss whose names she didn’t catch that were kept on hand for those who had pH problems in their yard caused by certain trees. According to Rory, there was a mossed pot for every location.
“And they’ll stay like this as long as they are kept wet, out of direct sun, and away from hostile plants of the quercus family. Most of these species can’t survive near any of the beeches. Of course, a drop in the pH and many mosses come down with chlorosis and die,” Rory said absently, as he consulted a chart hanging at eye level on a nearby support post. “But even that can add an aged flavor to the right garden style.”
Chloe, at last recognizing a name, was about to ask if that prohibition of quercus included the local species of oak trees, but MacGregor finally had something to say and wasn’t waiting for her to voice her questions about the effect of oak leaves on moss.
“Well, I’ll be!” The man smiled, hefting a pot. It was the first time she’d seen Rory’s malicious grin on his father’s face. It made her uneasy. “What a wheeze. Do folks real
ly buy these pots thinkin’ they’re antiques?”
Rory frowned and looked up from his notes.
“Of course not. It states clearly in the catalogue that mossed pots ‘give the appearance of age,’ but that—”
“Nobody reads the fine print,” MacGregor said, waving a dismissing hand. “People don’t read at all. Congratulations, boy! I didn’t think you had it in you. This explains why your little company is doing so well.”
Rory’s brow lowered at this insult, and Chloe hurriedly stepped into the conversational breach before return shots were fired. She tactfully redirected the discussion back to mosses; she didn’t want the afternoon spoiled with verbal warfare between the lions, and Rory was beginning to look thunderous.
After a thoughtful look from the younger of the titans, who apparently sized her up and decided that her interference was well-intentioned and therefore pardonable, the trio moved on with their tour of the hothouse. The unpleasantness was soon forgotten. Rory was in his element there among the flora, and could speak at length without fear of contradiction by his father.
He cheerfully introduced them to a new species of moss just imported from Borneo, Chaelomitrium weberi, with which he was experimenting in the hopes of finding some commercial application—after it had been quarantined long enough to be certain that it was harboring no imported Borneo bugs which would be harmful to the environment. Great caution had to be used so that no alien species were released into nature.
“Looks like green spider’s web,” MacGregor said.
Rory nodded fondly. “Only a lot more aggressive, given the proper conditions. They can grow like wildfire. Put them in our growing medium and you can have what looks like a month’s accumulation of moss in only two days.”
MacGregor, quickly losing interest, grunted and moved along.
Rory didn’t notice his father’s inattentiveness. Waxing rhapsodic on his favorite subject, he finally showed them his collection of prized Spanish mosses. Chloe peered obediently at the gray strands. But seeing that MacGregor’s eyes were beginning to glaze over again, she moved the tour along.
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