Ashes to Ashes (50 page)

“As for little Heather,” continued Warren. “Dorothy didn’t know a thing about her and Eric. Heather was running Steve, and Eric was running Heather, just to hedge his bets. That’s one reason things got so complicated. Every now and then the different teams would start working at cross purposes.”

“Like Heather eatin’ the drugged food,” said Michael.

“His plan wasn’t nearly as tight as he imagined,” Rebecca said. “Is Heather all right?”

“She was sitting up and demanding to know what happened when I left the hospital a couple of hours ago. I imagine Sandra will tell her all about it.”

“I hope Sandra decides to make friends with her. If the kid had more self-esteem she wouldn’t have… . “Neither would I, Rebecca thought. “Was Eric giving her drugs to pass on to Steve?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so, although the boy’d been hooked for years. That fire was the best thing that could’ve happened to him, considering. Once he was off the dope he realized it was time to start controlling his own life. George Velasco said he was hysterical when he came in last night, shouting that they had to get out to Dun Iain right away before something terrible happened. But they had to put the snow chains on the ambulance first.” He stared out the window. “I can’t believe Eric’s dead. And like that.”

Michael clutched Rebecca’s hand. “Eric would’ve gone to prison, right enough, but no forever. We’d have been lookin’ ower our shoulders the rest o’ our lives, waitin’ for him to catch up wi’ us.”

Amen, thought Rebecca. She returned the pressure of Michael’s hand. Eric was at peace, boldness burned away, intelligence wasted, charm soured. He’d cheated himself the most.

Warren said, “Eric must’ve set the fire in the shed to catch Steve because the fire Steve set in the trashcan made us put a dead bolt on the door. Eric had to be careful, then, how he used the tunnel, or you’d have realized there was another entrance. Dorothy didn’t know about the tunnel, by the way— Eric must’ve wormed it out of James when James still trusted him.”

“But I didn’t tumble until it was too late to hurt him,” said Rebecca. “And Phil, I guess, is completely innocent.”

“Just not too bright,” Warren returned. “He let Steve go without supervision much too often. Never asked questions like he should have. Kind of like me, I guess.”

Rebecca made soothing noises. Michael smiled with dry sympathy. The front door slammed. Up the stairs echoed the voices of the children demanding food and Peter bellowing for coffee.

“It turns out,” said Warren, “that Heather’s the one who took the mazer, not Dorothy, and she handed it right over to Eric. I’ll get onto Sotheby’s tomorrow morning, see if I can get the names of those collectors.”

“Thank you,” Rebecca said.

“Steve suspected there was more to Heather’s wanting to harrass you than she was letting on, but he couldn’t admit to himself she was— er— with Eric. A lot of the things Steve did were without her instructions, trying to get back in her favor. Like setting the fire in the trashcan, and stealing the mausoleum key right out from under us. He also locked you in the storeroom, Michael, and tore up your tape. He says he’ll get you another one.”

“I’ll get me one when I get home,” replied Michael. “It’s hardly important the noo.”

“Scared the heck out of him, though, when all the lights in the house came on by themselves,” Warren added with a short laugh. “Served him right.”

Phil trudged down the staircase carrying his tools. He stopped in the doorway. “Is there anything else, Miss Reid? I need to get home.”

“Thank you,” called Rebecca. “And don’t worry about Steve. Mr Birkenhead knows that the Estate is to cover his medical bills.”

Phil shuffled his feet, tugged on the bill of his cap, and fled. What must it be like, Rebecca wondered, to have a mind that moved like a snail crawling laboriously up a single leaf, thinking that leaf the entire world? For a moment the prospect was almost tempting. Then she caught the acerbic gleam in Michael’s eye. No, she didn’t want to be a snail.

“Well,” said Warren, picking up his hat and standing, “I need to go fill out some more reports. This is going to generate more paperwork than the tornado of 1972.”

“Sorry,” said Rebecca. Reluctantly she laid down Michael’s hand.

“It’s not you who should be apologizing.” Warren smoothed his hair and fingered his moustache. “The inquest into Eric’s death won’t be for a few days. I know you’re leaving the country in a couple of weeks, Michael, but it won’t take long.”

A couple of weeks, Rebecca repeated silently. Michael frowned.

“The inquest will bring in a verdict of self-defense,” the sheriff assured them. “No one doubts it happened just as you said. I’ll keep you posted.”

Warren’s descending footsteps were crossed by approaching ones. Jan ushered in a pale, willowy figure. “Heather!” Rebecca exclaimed. “You’re supposed to be in the hospital!”

“I checked myself out. I’m okay. I had to talk to you. Sandra drove me out here. She’s really been halfway decent about all this, especially since I’m not… ” She rolled her eyes at Michael. He looked back, brows arched. “… pregnant,” she concluded defiantly. “I was just upset because everything seemed to be falling apart, Steve hurt and Dorothy acting wierd, and Eric— well, he was getting to where he kind of scared me.”

“Sit down,” Rebecca told her. Heather sat, her hands folded on the table in front of her. Michael muttered something and went upstairs, Jan mumbled something and went downstairs, where Sandra’s brassy voice was trying to coerce Peter into helping light the living Christmas tree at the mall.

Heather’s complexion was pristine. Even her stark black hair lay softly around her face instead of standing up in spikes. Her features clung desperately to an expression of stubborn pride.

“Why?” Rebecca asked.

“I loved him,” Heather returned. “He said he loved me. He made me feel good.”

“Three pretty good reasons, depending on your point of view. What about the drugs?”

“Those were for Steve. They made him feel better. I mean, I smoked a joint or two with Eric, just to— to make things different, you know? He really didn’t like it. Said it slowed him down.”

Rebecca laid her chin on her fist. Her fist was trembling. “I’ve heard my students say it has that effect.”

“It started last summer, before you ever got here.” Heather’s expression cracked slightly, revealing bewilderment. “He was good, so much better than Steve. Men are just supposed to know what to do, aren’t they?”

“No. Why should they?” Rebecca’s whole arm was shaking. She stood and started pacing, her hands clenched behind her back, her knee twingeing.

“He didn’t want anything kinky, nothing like that.”

Just that he was thirty-five years old, and you’re sixteen. There was some kind of psycho-anthropological wrinkle to that, the wealthy mature male and the nubile female, but Rebecca wasn’t about to explore it now. She turned at the window and paced back.

Heather’s bewilderment shattered into sorrow. A tear ran down her cheek and hung on her jaw. She didn’t seem to have the energy to brush it away. “Sometimes he’d only want to hold me. He was awfully lonely. And then you came. He told me to mess something up in the house, he didn’t say what. I picked on your room because I was jealous. I mean, you’re so much more sophisticated than I am, I thought he liked you better.”

“But that’s just what he didn’t like about me.”

Heather shrugged. “He asked me to call that place in Missouri, pretending to be you. That was really clever of him.”

“He was using me,” said Rebecca. “Much more so than he ever used you. He cared for you, Heather.”

“It would never have worked,” the girl replied. More tears rolled down her face and she laid her head on her arms. “He told me he had to take you away for a cruise, but then he’d come back, and you wouldn’t be here any more, he’d be all mine. He said for me to finish school, not drop out like Steve. He wanted me to go to college, he said I could be a paralegal. But he didn’t really need me, he didn’t need anybody. I think I knew that all along.”

The lonely little girl, and the lonely man. Rebecca stopped behind Heather’s chair and laid her hands on her shoulders. She felt as if she could crush the girl’s fragile bones. “If you want to believe it would’ve worked, go ahead. You may have been the only person he ever did need.”

Heather shook her head against her arms. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” Rebecca replied. “Get some counseling, Heather. Talking about it’ll help. And stick with Steve. If anyone needs you, he does.” Gently she heaved the child to her feet and dried her tears with a tissue from her pocket.

Jan appeared, murmuring about cups of cocoa, and led Heather away. The girl paused in the doorway, glanced up the stairs, then called conspiratorially to Rebecca, “He really is cute, you know, even if he talks funny. Good luck.”

Rebecca blew her nose. Surely she had milked her tear ducts dry the last few days. For the rest of her life she’d never cry again. Or be angry again, or be frightened again… . She collapsed in the closest chair, giggling insanely. Of all the epithets she’d applied to Michael, “cute” wasn’t one of them. And she didn’t think he talked funny at all.

The castle dozed in the crisp sunlight. The voices in the kitchen were only a subliminal murmur. Steps padded across the floor and hands touched her shoulders. Long, strong, flexible fingers rubbed the back of her neck.

Rebecca leaned her head against his sweatshirt. “Michael, this would be a great time for you to trot out the Erskine Letter.”

His sigh ruffled her hair. “That would come a treat, right enough. But I’m afraid it’s gone. Elspeth or John must’ve destroyed it.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter so much any more. There’s plenty of other work yet to do.”

“Aye. We’re no in the clear yet, are we?”

Rebecca closed her eyes and nestled against his chest. His fingers caressed her face, stroking smooth the lines of worry and sorrow and fear.

The snow looked like Rebecca felt. Road and sidewalks were edged with piles of slush, kept from slumping into nothingness only by splotched crusts of ice. Even the snow covering the fields around the cemetary was fragile gray. But the sky was a blue as deep and clear as Michael’s eyes.

Rebecca edged a bit closer to him. He glanced down at her with a thinning of his lips he no doubt meant as a smile. Their clasped hands tightened between the folds of their coats.

A mist of exhaled breath hung in the crisp air over the open grave. The minister, a young and nervous assistant pastor of Dorothy’s church, droned doggedly through the burial service. Rebecca wondered if anyone were listening any more closely than she was. The words were supposed to be comforting. Maybe in different circumstances they would have been.

Peter stood, reassuringly stolid, on her other side. Jan clasped his arm, eyes not quite focussed. Beyond the Sorensons stood Chuck Garst, looking as if a cattle prod had been applied to his spine. As well he might, burying a brother he’d never known he had. His mother was propped between him and Warren Lansdale, the sheriff respectfully bare-headed despite the cold. Dorothy’s head was swathed in a drab brown scarf, her face was that of a battered mannequin. She’d wanted Eric buried in the Forbes mausoleum, but in that, too, she’d been disappointed.

A pallid Heather stood stiffly with Steve, whose glazed eyes peered like a cornered rabbit’s through his ski mask. Sandra Hines stood next to the young couple, her lipstick turned down in a scowl. Phil Pruitt, his cap in his gnarled hands, watched with his mouth hanging open, as if he were offended by something but wasn’t sure just what. Benjamin Birkenhead huddled in his wool overcoat on the opposite side of the grave from the reporters clustered in the cemetary gate. When he wasn’t glancing at his watch he was staring in baffled resentment at Rebecca, as though it was all her fault.

The minister closed his book and threw a clod of earth onto the coffin. The meager crowd silently dispersed. Chuck and Warren steered Dorothy past the cameras and microphones into the back of the sheriff’s squad car; her next stop was the state psychiatric hospital.

Michael and Rebecca thanked the minister. He uttered a few conventional words and sidled away. Cemetary workers scuffed forward to fill the grave. In an hour nothing would be left but a pile of dirt and an index card in a metal holder: “Adler, Eric Forbes; 1953-1988”. From her pocket Rebecca pulled a spray of lavender wrapped with Louise’s clay beads. “Mrs O’Donnell wanted you to have these,” she murmured, laid the flowers and the beads down, and turned away.

Peter pushed a path through the reporters. Already their numbers had diminished; the few days from Sunday to Wednesday had produced more immediate stories. Jan opened the door of Michael’s Nova and shoved Rebecca inside. “See you Sunday for Christmas tree and turkey,” she said. “And any time before, if you want to come.”

Michael maneuvered the car from the muddy parking area onto the road. Rebecca leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, her thoughts emitting the little pops and sighs of subsiding embers.

The mazer, swathed in plastic bubble wrap, had returned via Federal Express on Tuesday. The Connecticut collector testified he’d bought it from a dark-haired, dark-eyed man with crowded teeth who’d said he represented Dun Iain Estate. When he’d told me he was searching courthouses in Nebraska, Rebecca thought. Not only had Eric’s debts forced him to sell the mazer prematurely, it even turned out he’d been the one who’d contacted Bright, touting the Estate’s virtues as a corporate retreat. He’d once said, “God, I’ll be glad when this is all over.” And now it was.

Rebecca opened her eyes to see Dun Iain waiting beyond its alley of maples, rising disdainfully above the dreary lumps of ice at its feet, its windows winking in the sun. The stone and harl of its face seemed lighter, shedding its burden of worry like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Michael opened the car door for her and together they walked inside. By the time they’d taken their cups of tea into the storeroom they were able to smile at Darnley sniffing, stalking, and pouncing on their bedraggled shoelaces. “I’m glad Jan’s going to adopt him,” said Rebecca.