Cloaked in Malice (11 page)

Once they gain a certain level of acceptance, mass delusions can spread like wildfire. They’re contagious, as with clothes, fashions.

—FRANCIS WHEEN

“Go below, both of you, put on life jackets, sit on the starboard bunk, and hold on—to the boat, not each other. You need to be anchored.”

“Do you have a plan, Nick?” I asked. “What are you going to do? Be smart but don’t be a hero.”

“Don’t start singing. Just do as I say.”

I turned to do as I was told. “Get us the hell out of this,” I shouted before I followed Paisley belowdecks.

We sat real close, she and I, our backs against the headboard, such as it was, and we held separate bunk posts.

We heard Nick gun the engine, and were surprised and jolted when he hit reverse. We got tossed against each
other like scrambled eggs, to the point of making me laugh, and Paisley hiccup, a good distraction.

Nick unexpectedly whipped the boat around, a near three-sixty, so it surged forward and upward, while still getting tossed from side to side. I heard some wood split, but Nick managed to get us up and out of the trough.

The boat flew radically forward for a minute then he slowed us to a stop. When he came to check on us, we were still sitting on the floor.

He ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath, his skin tone on the gray-green side, like he wanted to be sick. “Doing that by myself is never scary. But with you on board, Mad, God help me.” He lifted me from the floor so high, I couldn’t stand on my own feet, and he kissed me.

“Sure,” Paisley said, “don’t mind me.”

“Sorry.” Nick set me down and backed away so I could help her up.

“Don’t be sorry. I want what you two have, but I’m not jealous. It’s just seeing a man who cares so much for his woman. I never quite knew that existed. You might have guessed that romance novels weren’t among my learning tools, and Mam and Pap, they were more like partners who tolerated each other.
Most
of the time. Thanks for showing me what I’d
like
to have in a re-lationship.”

Nick tipped his captain’s cap, his face more pink than green now.

I knew that I needed to break the tension. “How long before we get there? I’m hungry.”

Paisley’s dimple and Nick’s wink said they understood my intentions.

“You’re always hungry, Ladybug. It’ll be another thirty minutes. You wanna break out the breakfast sandwiches?”

“Good idea,” Paisley said. “I’ll go upstairs, or whatever that’s called on a boat, and set the table, sort of. “Take your time.”

After she left, I stepped back into Nick’s arms. “More please.” And Nick obliged.

By the time we went upstairs, Paisley had emptied our thermos of coffee into three covered hot cups, and set out our egg sandwiches and hash browns.

“How did you like Detective Werner when you went to talk with him?” Nick asked Paisley. “He’s perfect for you. A bachelor, and a great guy.”

“Well,” she said, lengthening the word. “I’d say yes in a blink, if he wasn’t so in love with Mad. No go, Nick, Werner’s hooked on
your
girl.”

“I knew that. I hoped you might be his cure.”

“Sorry,” she said, “hick or not, I want somebody who sees only
me
, not the girl beside me.”

I went shoulder to shoulder with her. “And that’s what we’ll find you. What’d you think of the paramedics who showed up the other day? Either of them do it for you?”

There came Paisley’s dimple again. “Get a clue, Mad. Half the town’s hooked on
you
.”

Nick groaned. “Okay. We get it. We’ll find fresh meat for you.” He got up, started the boat, and we continued toward the small island ahead of us, the waterspout behind us completely dissipated.

Discussing the qualities Paisley wanted in a man ate up the distance, and we were docking in no time.

“Geez,” she said, crossing the dock, “I can’t believe I never came across the dock when I was walking on the beach. I didn’t know about this route from the house. But we’ll find it. Follow me.”

We walked up a dirt road behind her until she stopped and we caught up to her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She pointed to a small shack, sort of leaning to one side, boards not quite tight, about as big as a studio apartment, a small one.

“What about it?” Nick asked.

I remembered the vision of the old man taking off my cloak in a small shack, where I could see snow between the slats. “Do you know this place?” I asked Paisley.

“I shouldn’t. I’ve never seen it before.” But as she said it, she pushed open the door with a hard squeal.

“Be careful, the floor might be rotten,” Nick warned.

Paisley went in anyway. I followed her and recognized the interior, the fireplace, the kitchen table and mismatched chairs. An old bureau, two small beds, headboards meeting in the corner. Oddly enough, still impeccably clean.

But most prominent, in fact, though not in my vision, I noted the high side-by-side windows, their bright paisley curtains, contrasting remarkably with splashes of soft blue sky. Paisley Skye.

If her name was, indeed, fake, this could be where she received it.

Paisley walked slowly across the floor, testing every squeaky floorboard, as if they were sounds she made on purpose, memories like old friends. She bent to a maple bureau with wide, nautically carved drawer pulls. She stooped to the bottom drawer, opened it, and took out a man’s blue flannel shirt.

She carefully unfolded it to reveal a small art brass trinket box. When she opened that, she sighed, pulled something out, regarded it, and turned to me. Then she dangled it by a chain, a half heart. An expensive love token. The opposite half of the heart inside the muff. This one with the name “Rose” engraved on it.

I opened my hand and caught it, like our moves had been choreographed.

Still without speaking, still clutching the flannel shirt, Paisley stepped out the back door and went straight to a lumpy, homemade gravestone. “Bepah.” She read the name engraved by a finger in wet cement out loud. She raised the shirt to her face, inhaled, clutched it to her heart, turned, and walked into my arms, the shirt between us.

Her sobs about broke me. I knew that the shirt and the
grave belonged to the man with the missing finger, the man who probably did protect her with his last breath. Certainly not a man she’d blocked entirely, which happened to be my last coherent thought as Madeira Cutler.

Wearing a blue flannel shirt, I spun through decades on a fast-moving run through a forest, wood snapping and living night sounds clicking in my ears. Leaves and tree limbs slapped me in the face. Earth scents beckoned, dirt, broken foliage, the slime and call of tree frogs. I ran through a mass of lightning bugs and caught one in my throat.

I had stopped to gag it out when I heard the barking dogs, loud, hungry, and hot on my heels.

From a tree limb above me, something landed on my back, rolled me over, hovered with a growl of satisfaction, and held a knife to my neck. A caveman, all hair, no hygiene, with a gold tooth that glinted in the moonlight.

What was this? Depp without makeup?

He wrenched my wrist, raised my arm, my throbbing hand between his smile and my fear—mine, Madeira Cutler’s fear, because I knew, even if Bepah didn’t, what would happen next.

And it began. Caveman brought his knife blade to rest at the base of the ring finger on my right hand.

One of us screamed.

Fourteen

What the “Utility Suit” of England, the “Victory Suit” of America, and “Everyman’s Clothing” of Germany had in common was their economic use of fabric and simplicity of design.

—GERDA BUXBAUM

I came out of my trance screaming louder than I thought I could, my right ring finger still throbbing, Nick holding me tight while he soothed me uselessly, and finally kissed me to stop my screams.

I presumed that when I started kissing him back, he knew his ploy had worked. Still, he took his time letting me go. “Are you all right?” he finally whispered, his lips an inch from mine.

I raised my right hand, surprised there was no blood—I’d never seen it tremble like that—and saw my healthy ring finger encircled by my mother’s wedding ring. “I’m all right. Where’s Paisley? More important, where’s that shirt?”

“She’s got it inside.”

We found her curled in the chair I’d seen her Bepah hold her in, wearing his shirt, her own on the floor by the chair.

“It belonged to your Bepah,” I said. “Was he your grandfather?”

Paisley wiped her eyes with his shirttails and nodded. “Can we leave this place for now, but can we come back later? I need a break, but I’m not done here.”

“You’ve got it,” Nick said, helping her up. “Are you all right?”

She smoothed the shirt’s worn sleeve. “I am now.”

“Ready to talk?” I asked.

“No, thanks. But I will be. First I need to sort some things in my mind.”

Nick left the door open as he went out to the dirt road and used a pair of binoculars to look around the island. He even climbed a tree to get a better look, then he jumped down to land in front of us. “Can you find the farm from here?” he asked. “I presume you’ve seen the shack before, but not in years maybe.”

“You’re right. I had no idea it was here when I lived on the farm, which isn’t to say that I didn’t know about it before the farm.”

Ah, progress. I hoped.

Less than a mile later, we saw the farm for the first time. “That’s it,” Paisley said. “That’s where I grew up.”

Part fortress, part compound, part prison, the place did
indeed have all the trappings of a farm with an old house at the center of the acreage. With two floors, an attic, and what looked to be a central chimney, it sat on a bit of a hill with a small turret at its peak.

Structured neither of wood nor brick, the house was covered with those rippled shingles made of a pressed wood substitute from the Depression. It brought to mind the study of clothes rationing and the way make-do-outfits changed fashion history, influencing how we all dress today.

Still, the house itself was odd. It was built like wood might not have been available, though the place was surrounded by trees. I supposed they might have been saplings back then and I guessed they needed a forest to keep the place hidden.

Nick stepped toward the fence and Paisley screamed.

“There’s a keypad here,” he said, taking a tiny kit from his pocket. With it, he connected some kind of stylus to the keypad, and hit a few buttons on both. We heard a zap, a click, and a set of double doors opened wide. He turned to us. “Not only are we in, Paisley, but the fence is no longer electrified.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said.

“She doesn’t believe you,” I said. She had plenty of good reasons not to. But Nick didn’t know all of that yet.

He grabbed at the fence and shook it, while her newest scream became a whimper.

“I had no idea how hard this would be for you, Paisley,” I said. “My apologies.”

She almost laughed but her mirth was interrupted by a hiccup. “This isn’t half as scary as leaving, waiting for the boogeyman to jump out of the trees and drag me back.”