1 Death Pays the Rose Rent (2 page)

“Evicted!” he screeched. “I know you’re out of work, but you must have some money saved. And there’s your wonderful new book—surely you got an advance for that?”

“All gone.”

“You can’t mean all gone.”

I nodded. “It wasn’t that large to begin with,” I muttered.

“That is totally irresponsible, Tori. You are beyond human help.” He tossed two envelopes at me. “Here’s a couple that look personal. Is the one with the foreign stamps from your parents?”

“My father. He’s the ambassador to a small African country, which changes its name as often as it changes governments.” I pushed the letter to one side. Maybe I’d read it later.

I opened the other, postmarked weeks earlier. It came from a fellow journalism-school graduate asking if I knew of any jobs in New York City. If I did, I’d apply for them myself, I thought as I circular-filed his letter.

Murray departed to “get in character” for a soap audition to be held later in the day. Poor Murray, how many more rejections would it take before he went back to Ohio to work in his family’s popcorn factory?

I watched Noel stalk a cockroach across the floor. She was making funny little hunting noises that sounded like chirps. “Oh, give me a home, where the cockroaches roam,” I hummed. The place was a dump, and I was scared to death of losing it.

The phone rang, probably a Mend calling to tell me they’d seen me on TV and did I know the camera added ten pounds.

But it was a good telephone call, from Alice-Ann MacKinstrie, my best friend since our freshman year at college. We had a lot of catching up to do, since neither of us was very good about letter writing. It ended with my accepting an invitation to visit Alice-Ann and her husband, Richard, during the last week of July when Richard was to be honored at something called the town’s annual Rose Rent Festival. I told her I’d let her know when I could get away. I hated to admit, even to my best friend, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, keeping me in New York.

After I hung up, I wondered if I really should go. I thought about Richard. He probably didn’t like me any better than I liked him. But, Alice-Ann did say he was out most of the time with his real-estate business. It would be wonderful to get out of the city. I could take my typewriter and get started on that second book. Maybe Alice-Ann would even insist I stay with her until it was finished. And my poor cats had never smelled fresh air, never chased butterflies in the sunlight, nor eaten grass until they threw up. I owed them a trip to the country. I called the bus company and learned a bus left for Lickin Creek, Pennsylvania, every morning, arriving there at four in the afternoon.

I fingered my father’s letter for a few minutes and finally opened it. Predictably, he thanked me for sending the money to the warehouse where my mother existed (who could call it living?). “You know my salary can’t keep up with the constant price increases at The Willows—but it’s such an excellent facility that I don’t want to move her unless it be-

comes an absolute necessity. I’m so lucky and proud to have such a loving daughter.”

I crumpled up the letter and threw it in the grocery sack with the rest of the junk mail. Every extra cent I’d ever made had gone to The Willows, including the advance I’d received for my novel. Although, at the time I sent it, I had no idea I was going to be jobless a few weeks later.

My little grimy apartment faded away, and I was once again thirteen years old, living in a small town in northern Thailand. I could smell the heavy perfume of the ginger blossoms in the garden and hear the singsong chatter of the servants inside the sprawling two-story house. It was the amah’s day off, and I had begrudgingly agreed to keep an eye on my brother, Billy. Six years old.

I lay on a chaise longue under a mango tree, indulging in my favorite pastime, reading, when I heard a high-pitched scream. Adults yelling. Confusion.

Billy had wandered down to the klong that ran below our house to watch the fishermen cast their nets. There, a black-and-white-banded krait had bitten him on the ankle. It took two days for him to die. After that, my father withdrew into his work and the arms of a young cultural attache, and my mother disappeared into a martini-induced fog, from which she never returned. I was left to suffer my grief alone, and always there was the accusation, never stated, that it had been my fault.

I understood the great loss they had suffered, but damn it, they had another child, me, and they had turned against me when I needed them most. It was something I couldn’t forgive either of them for. I sent money for Mother’s care out of guilt, not out of love.

Back in the present again, I dug around in my kitchen utensil drawer until I found a stamp and a battered Amtrak postcard. I addressed it to Alice-Ann telling her I’d be arriving next Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday

CHAPTER 2 

On Tuesday morning, I emptied my meager bank account, left my key and Alice-Ann’s address with Murray, and headed for the bus station with two cat-carriers, a grocery bag containing a litter box and Tasty Tabby Treats, my electric typewriter, and an almost-new suitcase from the Goodwill store next door. Most of the clothes in the suitcase had come from the same “boutique.” Thank goodness vintage clothing was in vogue. I was wearing comfortable jeans and one of my favorite Oz T-shirts—the one that said
RUN
,
TOTO
,
RUN
. Alice-Ann would get a kick out of it. In college, she’d liked to tease me about my “land of Oz” fixation.

The phone company had made good on its threat. I suspected the electricity would be off before I returned home. At least I didn’t have to worry about the apartment for a while. My landlord had agreed to wait for the rent. He knew that I knew that evicting a tenant was an expensive procedure.

The bus was almost empty, and it only cost me ten dollars to bribe the driver into letting me bring the cats on. They amused themselves by waving at each other through their ventilation holes, while I stared out the window at the wastelands of New Jersey, not really seeing anything, and thought about my life.

I’d always wanted to be a writer. Journalism studies taught me my craft, and nine years of reporting sharpened my skills, but my real life began each evening when I sat down at my portable typewriter to produce my novel—my child—perhaps the only one I’d ever have. I really had thought it would be a bestseller; there would be paperback sales, foreign sales, books on tape, movie rights. What happened? My editor assured me it was good, and it wasn’t unusual for first books to sell poorly. At least he had the faith in me to sign me to a two-book contract. But it would be a long time before I could support myself by my books, and having a job was essential. I’d worn out some shoe leather job-hunting, but hard times had come to a lot of other journalists, and there were few, if any, jobs available.

Here I was, just turned thirty, living in a dingy flat in New York—no money, no job, no future. I’d even managed to drive my fiance, Steve, out of my life. I could replay our conversations in my head.

“Why not get married now, Tori?”

“I need to finish my book first, Steve .”

“We’ll get married, then you can finish it—quit your job if you want.”

“Can’tyou understand, Steve, you’re a successful attorney, and I want to come to this marriage as an equal—to do that I have to reach my goal.”

“I don’t like being alone six nights a week, Tori.”

“Last chance—-pick a date, Tori.”

“Not much longer, Steve.”

“Tori, I’ve met someone else.”

Well, I wished him and his twenty-two-year-old bride a happy future. No regrets. Except there was this damn tick-tocking in my ears—my biological clock reminding me that it would soon be “now or never” time. Murray was right—I had to get my life under control.

I noticed that the bus was out of the urban sprawl that extended between New York and Philadelphia and was now rolling through the lovely, green Pennsylvania countryside. Small, neat farms lined the highway, and every now and then I would catch sight of an Amish farmer, using horses to pull his hay baler.

As we drew near the center of the state, traffic grew even lighter, and I was thrilled to see several black horse-drawn buggies on the road. The fluorescent orange triangles in back optimistically warned the twentieth century to slow down and approach them with caution.

We crossed several mountain ranges. Now we were getting close to the Borough of Lickin Creek where Alice-Ann lived. On my right was a small park, where Alice-Ann and Richard had taken me for a picnic when I had come for their wedding seven years before. That was the day I decided Richard was a one-dimensional, egotistical bore, not worthy of Al
ice-Ann’s hand or any other part of her. There was
just no accounting for some people’s tastes. A little farther on, a large sign advertised the opening of a play at the Whispering Pines Summer Theatre—”See Stars Under the Stars.” It featured Briana Evans, a beautiful young actress who was in a popular TV series. I couldn’t help wondering what she was doing in summer stock, but I hoped I’d get a chance to see her.

The highway narrowed to three lanes, the center one for turns, and began its descent into the small valley where Lickin Creek was located. I remembered the approach into the little town as being quite pretty, and it was a terrible disappointment to find it had become junked up with used-car lots, gas stations, strip shopping malls, and a small housing development featuring split-level Taras on quarter-acre lots.

“Sorry, kids,” I mumbled to the cats. “It was all country the last time I was here.”

After passing a mile or so of fast-food restaurants, we turned off the three-lane highway onto a two-lane road, and suddenly everything seemed to revert in time to a pre-World War II America. Heck, call it pre-Civil War America. The bus slowed down and began to vibrate. The reason, I noticed, was that the street was paved with red bricks.

I enjoyed seeing once more the huge, gracious homes that lined the street and were surrounded by carefully tended gardens and ancient shade trees. Their large front porches all had well-worn outdoor furniture on them, and I could easily imagine residents sitting there on summer evenings enjoying lemonade and calling greetings to strolling friends and neighbors.

What I could see down the side streets indicated

that Lickin Creek had more than its share of large Victorian homes. My reporter’s instinct told me that there would be ghost stories ripe for the picking in this town.

Just ahead was the square, which was in the heart of the business district. Traffic was diverted here by a fountain in the middle of the street. A bronze mermaid in the center poured water into the large basin from a Grecian-style urn. Sparkling jets of water sprayed into the air and fell back to lightly mist the pots of red geraniums that circled the base. It was hokey, but sincere—Lickin Creek, Pennsylvania—where the last bit of excitement was the Civil War.

Nothing seemed to have changed since my last visit.

We circled the fountain to make a left turn and stopped at the light. The corner buildings were a courthouse, bank, drugstore, and the public library. The whole town always reminded me of the set for an old movie. The buildings were constructed of brick, two and three stories high, with false decorative fronts sometimes making them look taller than they actually were. Wooden window frames were decorated with the gingerbread carving of the Victorian era. Everything had been recently painted in different soft, pastel colors. It would make a great scene for a postcard.

In front of the courthouse was a small, grassy area with old-fashioned park benches set under large shade trees. A couple of lawyer types in seersucker suits, briefcases beside them, were engaged in an animated conversation on one of the benches. On the bench beside them sat a whiskey-befuddled bum, dressed in brown rags, his face turned to the sun like a flower. His eyes were closed and he had a contented smile on his face.

A young woman in a bright sundress walked by, said something with a smile to the bum, and turned into the old-fashioned drugstore. I thought nostalgically of Sarge, snoozing on my stoop. Bet he’d like it here.

The bus passed through the two blocks that made up the business and shopping district of the village, made another left turn and stopped before a small, red-brick building, which, although newly built, blended in perfectly with the eighteenth-and nine-teenth-century town houses on the street. Directly across the street was an old-fashioned high school, complete with a row of Corinthian columns along the front and a Latin inscription over the massive front doors. I was beginning to feel as if I were in some strange sort of time warp.

Fred, Noel, and I barely had time to claim our luggage before the bus was gone in a puff of blue smoke. There was no sign of Alice-Ann, so I went inside the station to see about calling her.

A young woman with rosy cheeks, washed-out blond hair, and pink-rimmed, colorless eyes smiled cheerfully. “Hi. I’m Janet,” she said. “You’uns must be that writer friend of Alice-Ann’s. She called about twenty minutes ago. Starter trouble. If she’s not here when I close, I’ll give you’uns a ride out. I live near her on Tapeworm Ridge.”

The picture that flashed through my mind of what

Tapeworm Ridge might look like was too horrible to contemplate. I wanted to ask her how the name had originated, then decided I’d probably be better off not knowing. Poor cats. They might never get outside.

She laughed pleasantly when I suggested I might call a cab.

“Only got one taxi here, Uriah’s Heap, and Uriah’s usually booked up pretty solid taking old people to the doctor and stuff like that. Besides, here comes Alice-Ann now.”

I recognized the clanking sound of her old VW immediately and was out the door before she had the engine turned off.

“Tori! I’m so excited. I can’t believe you really came!” she gushed as she extracted herself from the little car. When we hugged, she had to bend down to cover the ten-inch difference in our heights. Some of our classmates who thought they were being funny used to call us Mutt and Jeff.

For a moment I was transported back across a decade to our days in college. We had been assigned to be roommates and had become best friends at our very first meeting, an instant bonding despite the extreme difference in our appearances. She was as tall and blond as I was short and dark. Her athletic body had come to her from Viking ancestors, who had been out discovering the world while my shorter, stockier Celtic forebears were building stone fairy circles in ancient Briton. But we had the same taste in books, movies, and cheap red wine, and in fact just about everything except men. Which was probably the major reason we stayed best Mends and roommates until graduation.

She still had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, and her yellowish brown eyes, which matched her hair exactly, were just as big and shiny as I remembered.

A little boy, about six years old, with streaked blond hair and huge yellow-brown eyes like Alice-Ann’s had climbed out of the car and was shyly peering at me from behind her skirt.

“Hi, Aunt Tori,” he said, shaking my hand politely.

“Hi, Mark. How are you, honey?”

But he wasn’t paying any attention to me at all. “Neat,” he exclaimed loudly. “You’ve got cats in those cages!”

Alice-Ann tilted her head and stared at me. In an exasperated tone of voice, she said, “You didn’t bring your cats? What am I thinking of? Of course you brought your cats. I see them. Oh, dear. Richard doesn’t believe in allowing animals in the house—he won’t let Mark have a pet, not even a guinea pig. Well, nothing we can do about them now. We’ll just have to keep them in the laundry room. He can’t object too much. After all, it’s only for a week.”

“I’m sorry,” I said contritely.

“It’s okay. How could you have known?”

Actually, now I did remember Richard once saying he hated animals, but like most people owned by cats, I was sure he’d be charmed by mine as soon as he met them. I ignored the reference to my staying only for “a week.” Figured I had plenty of time to bring up the subject of a longer stay.

Janet helped us load the Volkswagen and waved good-bye to us before we drove on the narrow, oneway street to the highway.

“What country is Janet from?” I asked. “I couldn’t understand half of what she was saying.”

“She’s born and raised in Pennsylvania, Tori. Half the people around here speak with a Pennsylvania Dutch accent, which is really a German accent. But their native tongue is English. You’ll get used to it.”

I doubted it.

On the phone, Alice-Ann had raved about the beautiful stone home they’d inherited from Richard’s father. I stared gloomily at the suburban nightmare on either side of the road, and I imagined “the ancestral home” to be a small stone hut, much like a woodcutter’s cottage from Grimms’ fairy tales, stuck between a supermarket and a gas station.

Alice-Ann pulled into the center lane of the three-lane highway, where we were in imminent danger of being flattened by a tractor-trailer headed directly at us. Miraculously, both vehicles turned left at exactly the same time and disaster was avoided.

She stopped the car and watched me for a few seconds while I took deep, measured breaths to stop my hyperventilation.

“You scared me when you screamed,” she said accusingly.