Beloved (68 page)

He smiled, appreciating her sense of irony, and tapped the sales agreement with a gloved hand.
"
It
'
s your fault, you know. You seemed so unsure. You forced my hand; I began to have no idea whether you
'
d ever make up your mind.
"

"
I
'
m a Libra. What did you expect?
"

"
Anyway,
"
he said,
"
I think the campaign has gone on long enough. I
'
ll give you credit: You don
'
t scare easily. Houses around here get dumped routinely over a squeaky door at night. I never expected you to last this long. Or to cost me this much.
"

"
There is no aunt or uncle, of course,
"
she said, taking a step back when he seemed to approach her.
"
How do you keep getting in here, incidentally?
"

"
Key,
"
he said simply.
"
Sylvia Merchant gave me one many years ago. May I say how grateful I am that you never had the back lock changed?
"

She thought of Mac: of how he had insisted; how she
'
d resisted.
"
I did put locks on the windows,
"
she said, as if that made her look less stupid. The fact was, it made her look
more
stupid.

Phillip had been jangling something in his pockets. When he brought out a silver lighter, Jane knew that it was time
—
as Mrs. Adamont liked to say
—
to fish or cut bait.
"
Phillip. Don
'
t do this. You
'
re not in that deep yet. Cissy
'
s death was an accident.
"

He gave her a sharp look.
"
That
'
s right. It was.
"

"
But there
'
s nothing accidental about arson, Phillip. Why would you do it, anyway
—
burn
down the thing you want?
"

He laughed out loud.
"
Because I
don
'
t
want it, you idiot. I want the land unde
rn
eath it. Have you ever looked at a land map? If I control your parcel and Bing
'
s
—
and I will; Bing is shattered and ready to sell
—
then Mac will fall like a ripe apple into my lap. It
'
ll be a superb property to develop: conservation land on two sides; unlimited ocean views; private, yet convenient. The mind reels at the possibilities.
"

It was a form of madness: developer
'
s syndrome. Jane was shocked at the grandiose intensity of it. A hundred different things could thwart Phillip
'
s plan; but all he saw was the end product. How he got there was irrelevant.

"
Mac will never let you get away with this,
"
she said, backing away another step.
"
Everyone knows you
'
re bitter enemies. Everyone knows you
'
re after him.
"
She was thinking about the smoke alarm, above her head on the left, with its lid and battery hanging down uselessly. She was wondering if he had a gun.

"
Who
'
s bitter?
"
he said with a shrug.
"
I had Mac to dinner; he chose not to reciprocate. It
'
s Mac who
'
s bitter. An emotional man, McKenzie. A hopeless romantic.
"
He put the lighter back in his pocket.
"
Now. Where shall we arrange you?
"

And yes, he did bring out a gun: small, silver, fitting. Jane stared at it incredulously, unwilling to believe it had
come to this.
"
Are you
crazy?
If you shoot me, no one
'
ll believe the fire was an accident.
"

"Then don't make me shoot you
,
"
he said coolly.

Jane had no choice but to run for it. She made a break for the kitchen and the back door, stumbling in the dark, but he was right there behind her. She grabbed the doorknob with both hands and tried in her panic to pull it out of the door instead of turning it. It was all the time Phillip needed. He caught her in his arms in a violent grip that hurt her ribs and knocked the wind out of her. It was pointless to scream; she focused instead on fighting back. She freed one arm and grabbed his hair and raked her nails across his neck at the same time that she kicked him viciously in the knee. He let out an oath and pinned her flailing arm under his left arm as he switched the gun from his left hand to his right.

The blow to the back of her head made her see stars. Jane
'
s last thought, as she crumpled in a heap to the floor, was that Judith Brightman wasn
'
t pulling her share of the load.

K
erosene tingled.

That was the sense she got as she lay half-conscious with her cheek lying on a carpet soaked in it. But the tingling passed, and her skin began to hurt, a burning sensation, or maybe that was from the flames roaring at the other end of the room; or the smoke, the black, billowing smoke.

She tried to lift her head; she really did not like the smell of kerosene, so unpleasant
.
And that reminded her, what about the roses? But it was too late, clearly too late
....

She managed to drag herself off the wet, stinking carpet just before she heard a
"
poof,
"
like the sound that briquets soaked in fire starter make when a match is pu
t to them. A friendly sound ... a summer sound ..
. a barbecue sound. She crawled a few steps farther, gasping for ai
r, and then collapsed in the hall. There was no air in the hal
l, either. How odd, she thought. The world was running out of everything
—
oil, water, trees. And now air.

Barely conscious, she heard the shattering of glass and assumed it was from the fire, and then heard violent coughing and hacking, and assumed it was Phillip.
He
'
s come back to finish the job,
she thought, angry with him for waiting until she
'
d fixed up Lilac Cottage before he burned it down.

But the voice that cried her name through the smoke wasn
'
t Phillip
'
s, and the arms that lifted her weren
'
t his, either. And the gasping coughing in her ea
r
—
it was the sweetest sound she
'
d ever heard, the sound of church bells on a Sunday morning. The air when they got outside was even dearer, pure and clean and cool. She sucked a great, long draft of it, then exploded in painful spasms of coughing. Mac laid her down on a carpet of cool grass and immediately ran off and she thought,
How typical.

She heard more shattered glass, and then the ear-splitting din of Bing
'
s alarm system, the one that Cissy was always setting off accidentally. But then she remembered that Cissy was dead, and Phillip was alive and skulking.

And Lilac Cottage was burning down. She watched with stunned disbelief as smoke billowed out from the back of the house, her charming, magical, thoroughly accursed house. She fell back on the grass and closed her eyes. She couldn
'
t watch.

A minute later Mac had her in his arms again.
"
Jane! My God. Jane!
"
he said, pulling her up by her shoulders.

She opened her eyes.
"
It
's all right ..
. I
'm okay.
I
'
m okay. Oh, Mac
—
you were right; it was Ph
illip all along. If I could ..
. I
'd kill him ..
. if I could,
"
she said with limp fury.

He kissed
the top of her head
briefly and let her go, taking off on foot in the direction of Phillip
'
s house. Jane tried to call him back, but his name came out a croak. The fire trucks arrived soon after that and the rescue team gave her oxygen while the firefighters took on the daunting task of saving an old wood house from total destruction. Jane sat in the rescue truck, sipping oxygen as if it were
N
ouveau Beaujolais, and watched, and waited.

And when it was over, she was left with half the house she had.

****

"
If everything looks all right to you, Miss Drew, then just sign here.
"

It was hard to hold the pen; in her struggle with Phillip, Jane had wrenched her hand badly. It added to the grim satisfaction she took in signing the statement that would put the man behind bars. Between the criminal suits and the civil suits
—
her insurance company would hound him to the lowest circle of hell, she was told
—
Phillip Harrow would not be a bother to Mac, to her, or to anyone else for a long, long while.

She handed the sergeant his pen and said,
"
I don
'
t understand how he thought he
'
d get the house if I was dead.
"

The officer shrugged.
"
He had evidence of your intent to sell. And a house often goes for less in an estate settlement. A burned-out one, even cheaper.
"
He shrugged again, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. After all, Phillip was an islander. Jane was not.

"
Well, I really am g
rateful to Mr. McKenzie for ..
. for bringing him in.
"
She half expected to hear that assault charges had been filed against Mac.

The sergeant nodded his agreement and said,
"
Mac
'
s the guy when you want to get the job done.
"
Wherever Mac was, at least he wasn
'
t in the slammer.

So that was that. Jane had called her parents and told them the appalling news. Despite her reassurances, they cleared their calendars and said they
'
d be on the island the following night; she booked them a room along with hers at the Jared Coffin House.

Jane spent the rest of the day at the cottage, receiving condolences and picking over the wreckage, deciding which furniture was salvageable
—
nothing from the fireplace room
—
and packing what was left of her clothes for transport back to her condo in Connecticut. Everything smelled like smoke except for a load of laundry that was still in the basement washing machine; Jane took the time to hang the load on the line to dry.

Mrs. Adamont came by, properly scandalized.
"
It all looks so normal from the road, right down to your laundry flapping in the breeze,
"
she said, shaken by what she saw inside.
"
This is not right. This is not what
Nantucket
is about,
"
she said angrily.

Jane shrugged philosophically; the shock of it was wearing off, leaving a dull emptiness inside.
"
Every place has its dark side and demons. Even
Nantucket
.
"

Mrs. Adamont insisted that Jane come to stay with her, but Jane begged off. Billy was coming over for a preliminary assessment of the damage, and Jane once again was without a phone. And people were continuing to stop by to express their sorrow; she appreciated that, and wanted to be there for them.

And she was waiting for Mac. It seemed inconceivable to her that after all they
'
d been through, he wouldn
'
t be by. No heart except a criminal heart was forged of such steel. But Billy came, and Billy went, and twilight fell, and still no Mac. She knew where he was; Billy had told her he was landscaping some new construction near the Quaker Burial Ground. But Mac couldn
'
t very well plant in the dark. On the other hand, Jane couldn
'
t see in the dark either, not without electricity. So she left.