“I need to talk to you, young lady,” Mother re- sponded in a low voice so packed with meaning that I began to wonder what I could have done that she’d heard of. I was almost as nervous as I’d been at six when she used that voice with me.
We sat back down at the picnic tables set with their bright tablecloths and napkins, and Marcia rolled around a cart with drinks and ice on it. She was glow- ing at all the compliments. Torrance was beaming, too, proud of his wife. I wondered, looking at Lynn and Arthur, why the Rideouts hadn’t had children. ~ 225 ~
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I wondered if Carey Osland and Macon would try to have another one if they married. Carey was probably forty-two, but women were having them later and later, it seemed. Macon must have been at least six to ten years older than Carey—of course, he had a son who was at least a young adult . . . the missing son. “While I was in the Bahamas,” John said quietly into my ear, “I tried to get a minute to see if the house of Sir Harry Oakes was still standing.” I had to think for a minute. The Oakes case . . . okay, I remembered.
“Alfred de Marigny, acquitted, right?”
“Yes,” said John happily. It was always nice to talk to someone who shared your hobby.
“Is this a historical site in the Bahamas?” Aubrey asked from my right.
“Well, in a way,” I told him. “The Oakes house was the site of a famous murder.” I swung back around to John. “The feathers were the strangest feature of that case, I thought.”
“Oh, I think there’s an easy explanation,” John said dismissively. “I think a fan blew the feathers from a pillow that had been broken open.” “After the fire?”
“Yes, had to have been,” John said, wagging his head from side to side. “The feathers looked white in ~ 226 ~
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the picture, and otherwise they would’ve been black- ened.”
“Feathers?” Aubrey inquired.
“See,” I explained patiently, “the body—Sir Harry Oakes—was found partially burned, on a bed, with feathers stuck all over it. The body, I mean, not the bed. Alfred de Marigny, his son-in-law, was charged. But he was acquitted, mostly because of the de- plorable investigation by the local police.” Aubrey looked a little—what? I couldn’t identify it. John and I went on happily hashing over the mur- der of Sir Harry, my mother to John’s left carrying on a sporadic conversation with the mousy McMans across from her.
I turned halfway back to Aubrey to make sure he was appreciating a point I was making about the bloody handprint on the screen in the bedroom and noticed he had dropped his ribs on his plate and was looking under the weather.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, concerned. “Would you mind not talking about this particu- lar topic while I eat my ribs, which looked so good until a few minutes ago?” Aubrey was trying to sound jocular, but I could tell he was seriously unhappy with me.
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result of making me exasperated with Aubrey, as well as myself. I took a few seconds to work myself into a truly penitent frame of mind.
“I’m sorry, Aubrey,” I said quietly. I stole a peek at John out of the corner of my eye. He was looking abashed, and my mother had her eyes closed and was silently shaking her head as if her children had tried her beyond her belief, and in public at that. But she quickly rallied and smoothly introduced that neutral and lively subject, the rivalry of the phone companies in the area.
I was so gloomy over my breach of taste that I didn’t even chip in my discovery that my phone com- pany could make my phone ring at two houses at the same time. Arthur said he was glad that he had been able to keep his old phone number. I wondered how Lynn felt about giving up her own, but she didn’t look as if she gave a damn one way or another. Right after Arthur finished eating and they had thanked Marcia and Torrance in a polite murmur for the party, the good food, and the fellowship, they quietly left to go home.
“That young lady looks uncomfortable,” Torrance commented in a lull in the telephone wars. Of course, that led to a discussion of Arthur and Lynn and their police careers, and since I was also a newcomer on the ~ 228 ~
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street the discussion moved logically to my career, which I was obliged to tell them—including my mother—had come to an end.
I thought if my mother’s face held its mildly inter- ested smile any longer, it would crack. Aubrey had finished his supper finally and joined in the conversation, but in a subdued way. I thought we were going to have to talk sometime soon about my interest in murder cases and the fact that he found them nauseating. I was trying not to think about how much fun it had been to talk to John about the fascinating Oakes case . . . and it had oc- curred while the duke and duchess of Windsor were governing the islands! I’d have to catch my new step- father alone sometime and we could really hash it over.
I was recalled to the here and now by my mother’s voice in my ear. “Come to the bathroom for a mo- ment!”
I excused myself and went in the house with her. I’d never been in the Rideouts’ before, and I could only gather an impression of spotless maintenance and bright colors before I was whisked into the hall bathroom. It seemed like a teenager sort of thing to do, going into the bathroom together, and just as I opened my mouth to ask my mother if she had a date ~ 229 ~
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to the prom, she turned to me after locking the door and said—
“What, young woman, is a skull doing in my blan- ket bag?”
For what felt like the tenth time in one day I was left with my mouth hanging open. Then I rallied. “What on earth were you doing getting a blanket out in this weather?”
“Getting a blanket for my husband while he was having chills with the flu,” she told me through clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare try to sidetrack me!” “I found it,” I said.
“Great. So you found a human skull, and you de- cided to put it in a blanket bag in your mother’s house while she was out of town. That makes perfect sense. A very rational procedure.”
I was going to have to level with her. But locked in Marcia Rideout’s bathroom was not the situation. “Mom, I swear that tomorrow I’ll come to your house and tell you all about it.”
“I’m sure any time would be okay with you because you have no job to go to,” my mother said very po- litely. “However, I have to earn my living, and I am going to work. I will expect you to be at my house ~ 230 ~
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tomorrow night at seven o’clock, when I had better hear a good explanation for what you have done. And while I’m saying drastic things, I might as well tell you something else, though since you have been an adult I have tried not to give you any advice on your affairs of the heart—or whatever. Do not sleep with my husband’s minister. It would be very embarrassing for John.”
“For John? It would be embarrassing for John?” Get a hold, I told myself. I took a deep breath, looked in the gleaming mirror, and pushed my glasses up on my nose. “Mother, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you have restrained yourself, all these years, from commenting on my social life, other than telling me you wished I had more of one.”
We looked at each other in the mirror with stormy eyes. Then I tried smiling at her. She tried smiling at me. The smiles were tiny, but they held. “All right,” she said finally, in a more moderate voice. “We’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“It’s a date,” I agreed.
When we came back to the sun deck, the party talk had swung around to the bones found at the end of the street. Carey was saying the police had been to ask her if there was anything she remembered that might help to identify the bones as her husband’s. “I ~ 231 ~
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told them,” she was saying, “that that rascal had run off and left me, not been killed. For weeks after he didn’t come back, I thought he might walk back through that door with those
diapers. You know,” she told Aubrey parenthetically, “he left to get diapers for the baby and never came back.” Aubrey nodded, per- haps to indicate understanding or perhaps because he’d already heard this bit of Lawrenceton folklore. “When the police found the car at the Amtrak sta- tion,” Carey continued, “I knew he’d just run off. He’s been dead to me ever since, but I definitely don’t believe those bones are his.” Macon put his arm around her. The mousy McMans were enthralled at this real-life drama. My mother stared at me in sud- den consternation. I pretended I didn’t see it. “So I told them he’d broken his leg once, the year before we got married, if that would tell them any- thing, and they thanked me and said they’d let me know. But after the first day he was gone, when I was so distraught; well, after the police told me they’d found his car, I didn’t worry about him anymore. I just felt mad.”
Carey had gotten upset, and was trying very hard not to let a tear roll down her cheeks. Marcia Rideout was staring at her, hoping her party was not going to be ruined by a guest weeping openly.
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Torrance said soothingly, “Now, Carey, it’s not Mike, it’s some old tramp. That’s sad, but it’s nothing for us to worry about.” He stood, holding his drink, his sturdy body and calm voice somehow immensely reassuring.
Everyone seemed to relax a little. But then Marcia said, “But where’s the skull? On this evening’s televi- sion news they said there wasn’t a skull.” Her hand was shaking as she put the lid on a casserole. “Why wasn’t the head there?”
It was a tense moment. I couldn’t help clenching my drink tighter and looking down at the deck. My mother’s eyes were on me; I could feel her glare. “It sounds macabre,” Aubrey said gently, “but per- haps a dog or some other animal carried off the skull. There’s no reason it couldn’t have been with the rest of the body for some time.”
“That’s true,” Macon said after a moment’s con- sideration.
The tension eased again. After a little more talk, my mother and John rose to leave. No one is immune to my mother’s graciousness; Marcia and Torrance were beaming by the time she made her progress out the front door, John right behind her basking in the glow. The McMans soon said they had to pay off their babysitter and take her home, since it was a ~ 233 ~
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school night. Carey Osland, too, said she had to re- lieve her sitter. “Though my daughter is beginning to think she can stay by herself,” she told us proudly. “But for now she definitely needs someone there, even when I’m just two houses away.”
“She’s an independent girl,” Macon said with a smile. He seemed quite taken with Carey’s daughter. “I’d only been around boys before, and girls are so different to raise. I hope I can do a better job helping Carey than I did raising my son.”
Since the Rideouts were childless, and so was I, and so was Aubrey, we had no response that would have made sense.
I thanked Marcia for the party, and complimented her and Torrance on the decorations and food. “Well, I did barbecue the ribs,” Torrance admitted, running his hand over his already bristly chin, “but all the rest of the fixing is Marcia’s work.” I told Marcia she should be a caterer, and she flushed with pleasure. She looked just like a depart- ment store mannequin with a little pink painted on the cheeks for realism, so pretty and so perfect. “Every hair is in place,” I told Aubrey wonderingly as we walked over to his car parked in my driveway. “She wouldn’t ever let her hair do this,” and I sunk my hands into my own flyaway mop.
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“That’s what I want to do,” Aubrey said promptly, and, stopping and facing me, he ran his hands through my hair. “It’s beautiful,” he said in an unministerly voice.
Woo-woo. The kiss that followed was long and thorough enough to remind me of exactly how long it had been since I had biblically known anyone. I could tell Aubrey felt the same.
We mutually disengaged. “I shouldn’t have done that,” Aubrey said. “It makes me . . .” “Me, too,” I agreed, and he laughed, and the mood was broken. I was very glad I hadn’t worn the orange-and-white dress. Then his hands would have been on my bare back . . . I started to chatter to dis- tract myself. We leaned against his car, talking about the party, my new stepfather’s flu, my quitting my job, his retreat for priests he’d be attending that Fri- day and Saturday at a nearby state park. “Shall I follow you home?” he asked, as he slid into his car.
“I might spend the night here,” I said. I bent in and gave him a light kiss on the lips and a smile, and then he left.
I walked to the kitchen door and went in. The moon through the open kitchen curtains gave me plenty of light, so I went to the bedroom in darkness. ~ 235 ~
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The contrast of quiet and dark with the talk, talk, talk I’d done that day made me sleepier than a pill would have. I switched on the bathroom light briefly to brush my teeth and shuck my clothes. Then I pulled the rose pink nightgown over my head, switched off the bathroom light, and made my way to the bed in darkness. To the quiet hum of the air-conditioning and the occasional tiny mew from the kittens in the closet, I fell fast asleep.
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Chapter Twelve
A
Iwoke up. I knew where I was instantly—in Jane’s house. I swung my legs over the side of the bed au- tomatically, preparing to trek to the bathroom. But I realized in a slow, middle-of-the-night way that I didn’t need to go.
The cats were quiet.
So why was I awake?
Then I heard movement somewhere else in the house, and saw a beam of light flash through the hall. Someone was in the house with me. I bit the insides of my mouth together to keep from screaming. Jane’s clock radio on the bedside table had a glow- ing face that illuminated the outline of the bedside phone. With fingers that were almost useless, I lifted the receiver, taking such care, such care . . . no noise. ~ 237 ~
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Thank God it was a push-button. From instinct I di- aled the number I knew so well, the number that would bring help even faster than 911.
“Hello?” said a voice in my ear, groggy with sleep. “Arthur,” I breathed. “Wake up.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Roe. I’m across the street in Jane’s house. There is someone in the house.”
“I’ll be there in a minute. Stay quiet. Hide.” I hung up the phone so gently, so delicately, trying to control my hands, oh Lord, let me not make a sound.
I knew what had given me away: it was my down- ward glance when the skull was mentioned, at the party. Someone had been watching for just such a re- action.
I slid my glasses on while I was thinking. I had two options on hiding: under the bed or in the closet with the cats. The intruder was in the guest bedroom, just a short hall length away. I could see the flashlight beam bobbing here and there; searching, searching again, for the damn skull! The best place to hide would be the big dirty-clothes closet in the bathroom; I was small enough to double up in there, since it was almost square to match the linen closet on top of it. If I hid in the bedroom closet, the intruder might hear ~ 238 ~
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the cat noises and investigate. But I couldn’t risk slip- ping into the bathroom now, with the light flashing in the hallway unpredictably.
In response to my thoughts, it seemed, the light bobbed out of the guest bedroom, into the little hall, through the big archway into the living room. When it was well within the living room, I slid off the bed onto my feet with the tiniest of thumps . . . . . . and landed right on Madeleine’s tail. The cat yowled, I screamed, a startled exclamation came from the living room. I heard thumping footsteps and, when a blob was in the doorway, pausing, maybe fumbling for a light switch, I leaped. I hit someone right in the chest, wrapped my right arm around a beefy neck, and with my left hand grabbed a handful of short hair and pulled as hard as I could. Something from a s
elf-defense course I’d taken popped into my mind and I began shrieking at the top of my lungs. Something hit me a terrible blow on the back, but I tightened my grip on the short hair and my strangle- hold on the neck. “Stop,” wheezed a heavy voice, “stop, stop!” And blows began raining on my back and legs. I was being shaken loose by all the stagger- ing and my own weight, and I had to stop screaming to catch my breath. But I sucked it in and had opened my mouth to shriek again when the lights came on. ~ 239 ~
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My attacker whirled to face the person who’d turned on the light, and in that whirl I was slung off onto the floor, landing not quite on my feet and stag- gering into the bedpost to collect a few more bruises.
Lynn Liggett Smith stood leaning against the wall in the hall, breathing heavily, the gun in her hand pointing at Torrance Rideout, who had only a flash- light dangling from his hand. If the flashlight had been a knife, I’d have been bleeding from a dozen wounds; as it was, I felt like Lee’s Army had marched over me. I held on to the bedpost and panted. Where was Arthur?
Torrance took in Lynn’s weak stance and huge belly and turned back to me.
“You have to tell me,” he said desperately, as if she wasn’t even there, “you have to tell me where the skull is.”
“Put your hands against the wall,” Lynn said steadily but weakly. “I’m a police officer and I will shoot.”
“You’re nine months pregnant and about to fall down,” Torrance said over his shoulder. He turned to me again. “Where is the skull?” His broad, open face was crossed with seams I’d never noticed before, and there was blood trickling down from his scalp onto ~ 240 ~
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his white shirt. I seemed to have removed a square inch of hair.
Lynn fired into the ceiling.
“Put your hands against the wall, you bastard,” she said coldly.
And he did.
He hadn’t realized that if Lynn really shot at him she stood an excellent chance of hitting me. Before he got the idea, I moved to the other side of the bed. But then I couldn’t see Lynn. This bedroom was too tight. I didn’t like Torrance being between me and the door. “Roe,” Lynn said from the hall, slowly. “Pat him down and see if he’s got a gun. Or knife.” She sounded like she was in pain.
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