Fire Raiser (15 page)

“That thing with the M&M’s—” he said again.

“You’re really gonna be pissed off if I develop a chocolate allergy, aren’t you?”

“You lied to our children.” He grinned the grin that made her want to kick him or kiss him, and sometimes both. “You told them chocolate
fingers
were your favorite.”

She was spared having to react when someone knocked vehemently on the door, and nearly lost her balance on the stilettos as a familiar voice yelled her name.

Holly sighed. “He always was the most inconvenient child.”

When the door was unlocked and opened, they found Cam standing with one shoulder against the wall, arms folded, lips and brows eloquently quirked. Mrs. Paulet gave Holly and Evan a swift once-over, lingering a bit on Evan, murmured, “You missed a button, dear,” and sailed on by.

Holly glared at her cousin. “Shut up.”

“Did I say anything?”

“Shut up anyway.”

As they made their way back toward the ballroom, Cam fell in beside Evan. “Nice work,” he remarked. “Not that I have much personal experience in the matter, but I’d say that’s a woman who’s been well and truly—”

“Did I tell you to shut up?” Holly snarled.

“I do my best,” Evan said modestly.

“I’ve known her all my life,” Cam went on, “and I’ve never seen her look quite like that. Your best must be pretty impressive.”

“It’s all a matter of timing, priming—”

“—and a handful of M&M’s,” Holly interrupted.

“Correction,” Evan said. “A
mouthful
of M&M’s. How’d you track us down?”

Cam was still back at the correction. Holly winked at her husband as the younger man stared, blinked, and nearly choked on laughter.

“You found us how?” Holly prompted.

“I came in from outside and saw Mrs. Paulet kind of loitering outside the bathroom. I asked her if she’d seen either of you and she said—” The dimples made an appearance. “—she said that if you hadn’t remembered to lock the door, she would’ve seen much more of both of you than she ever thought she would.”

Holly pretended to worry. “How loud were we, anyway?”

“Not as loud as that time in Charleston, on our honeymoon,” Evan speculated. “Probably.”

“Oh. Good.” Glancing around him at Cam, she went on, “What were you doing outside? And don’t say smoking a cigar—they’re both still in your pocket.”

The curse of a peaches-and-cream complexion was that a blush set off every freckle. Cam looked as if somebody had just splattered his nose, cheekbones, and forehead with sepia ink.

Holly caught her breath. “Jamey? You were outside talking with Jamey? Finally! Come on, tell me everything—”

Evan tapped her shoulder. “Holly, lady love, light of my life, mother of my children—go find Jamey and torment
him
for a while.”

“I thought you wanted me to leave them alone?”

“That was before they went outside and didn’t smoke a cigar.”

“I don’t deserve this,” Cam whined. “What did I ever do to deserve this?”

She patted his cheek comfortingly. “Don’t worry, Peaches. Jamey will tell me all I want to know.”

“SHE JUST DOESN’T QUIT, does she?” Cam asked.

“I hope that was rhetorical.” Lachlan turned to Cam and went on. “I don’t know what the thing is with you and Jamey, but I’ll warn you right now that if she doesn’t hear things that satisfy her, you’re really gonna be in for it.”

“Oh, gee, quite a change from the rest of my life!”

“We’ll have to trade stories one of these days.”

“I think I got the basics of your plotline just looking at you two coming out of the bathroom.”

“The basics,” Evan agreed. “But y’know, I’ve been trying for years to figure it out, and I think I finally understand. The thing of it is—” He hesitated, not sure if Cam would believe him. “You’re gonna laugh, but—setting aside the fact that I love her and I’m also crazy about her—which isn’t the same thing, by the way—it kind of belongs to her. I mean, it sure as hell does things for her that it never did for anybody else—including me. Told you you’d laugh.”

“Sorry—really, I’m sorry, Evan, but—”

“Friend of mine at NYU,” he continued determinedly, “she’d been playing the violin since she was about six years old. She was good, too. She told me once that a violin’s a violin’s a violin—until you find the one that listens when you talk to it. It’ll do things for you that nobody else can get it to do—and it’ll get music out of you that you didn’t know was there.” Evan shrugged and smiled.

“I have to tell you, I am making no sense out of this at all.”

“Wait’ll you find the right violin.” More merciful than Holly, he changed the subject. “It’s about nine-thirty—you still want to wait until ten to get your suitcase?”

“Go schmooze some more. See you in the lobby in half an hour.”

Back in the ballroom, Lachlan caught the attention of Laura’s brother, who was circulating with a tray bearing an ice bucket, two bottles of Stolychnaya, and glasses. While pouring his own drink, Evan said, “In my day, people who hadn’t graduated high school weren’t allowed to distribute alcohol—even at a private party.”

“In my day,” Tim retorted, “we encourage it.”

“The collapse of civilization is imminent.”

“It will be if I don’t get a new cell phone. It was working fine this afternoon, then crapped out on me practically the minute I walked in the door tonight. I still can’t make a call, and I still can’t figure out why.”

“Didn’t you obey the sign that asked you to turn your phone off in six different languages?”

“Let’s see,” Tim said, pretending to consider. “Obeying their rules or talking to my girlfriend. Which am I gonna choose?” He glanced beyond Lachlan’s shoulder and said, “Der Führer is coming this way. Escape while you can.”

Knowing he had no such option, he took a big swallow of vodka and turned to greet his host. “Mr. Weiss.”

“Sheriff,” acknowledged Bernhardt Weiss with a nod. “Do you enjoy the evening?”

Evan nodded. “Very generous of you to open up Westmoreland like this. And I saw about a hundred umbrellas in the lobby for later, when it starts to rain. That’s thoughtful.”

“The small amenities of life are so important, do you not agree? Fresh flowers, silk wallpapers, six-hundred-thread-count sheets . . .” He smiled with perfect self-deprecation, showing off a quantity of large, sincere teeth. “You Southern Americans have exquisite manners, and appreciate such things. Oh, but I am forgetting—you are from New York City. Do you miss it?”

“Only the elevators.” When Weiss looked confused, Evan went on, “There are six elevators in this county, and not one building taller than five stories. For somebody who grew up in New York, that takes some getting used to.”

“Ah. I understand. I did not know, when I chose this county for my Inn, that I would be living in the same area as the famous Elizabeth McClure. Would she agree, do you think, to my hosting a luncheon here? A literary luncheon—which I don’t pretend would not publicize Westmoreland over half of Virginia,” he added wryly.

“Nothing my wife likes more than an audience.”

“Excellent. I shall ask her. And—another favor—would it be possible for her to autograph the books of hers that I own?”

“The only thing she likes better than an audience is an audience that wants her to sign something.”

“Thank you.” He looked out over the crowd, his voice quieter as he remarked, “You Americans—so contentious in your discussions. All these different factions, so many points of view. Especially as regards sex.”

“Generally speaking, we like it,” Evan replied laconically. Europeans, of course, found Americans perfectly absurd in their attitude toward sex. A president could be impeached for a blow job in the Oval Office but when every justification for a pre-emptive war was proved to be false, all that most Americans did was hope it would all go away somehow before too many more young men and women died. Maybe the 2006 election would change things; maybe not.

“Living here nearly two years,” Weiss was saying, “and studying your country most of my life, still I think I will never comprehend you Americans.”

“We’re a puzzle,” Lachlan conceded. Then, because he wanted to comprehend this man a little better, he asked, “Anything specific I can help with?”

“Something, perhaps. You are the only country that has ever used the atomic bomb. Never have I understood how Americans live with that knowledge.”

Don’t do it. He’s your host tonight, he’s a guest in your country, he brings a shitload of money into the county—

“And twice! Even after evidence of the first bomb, it was used a second time.”

Don’t go there. Not a good idea. Really not a good—

“Does it ever bother you? What your country did to the Japanese?”

Don’t do it? Don’t go there? Like hell.

“Well, considering that my granddad would’ve been in the invasion force if Japan hadn’t surrendered, no, I can’t say that it’s ever really bothered me. But I guess what you mean is that we Americans like to think of ourselves as a good people. You’re right, and what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki isn’t exactly consistent with our view of ourselves as civilized.” He paused, telling himself he really shouldn’t enjoy this as much as he knew he was going to. “It’s the same in Germany, though, right?”

“Excuse me, Sheriff Lachlan? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“The land of Beethoven, Goethe, and Mozart—my personal favorite. Germany has produced some of the greatest thinkers and artists in history. But you’re kind of in the same place we are, aren’t you? Germany killed ten million people in concentration camps. It must be difficult to reconcile that with a view of yourselves as civilized.”

Weiss did something then that Lachlan had read about in novels but never seen a real human being do: he actually looked down his nose. How he managed it when Lachlan was at least an inch taller made it even more impressive.

Lachlan hid a smile. “Anyway, I guess a lively exchange of opinions is to be expected when so many Americans get together, right?” He put a startled expression on his face and went on, “Oh—excuse me, I think my wife’s cousin just got trapped by Judge Rausche, and that’s not a fate I’d wish on anybody.”

As he walked away, he told himself he really was the worst kind of chauvinist.
I can criticize anything about my country anytime I like, it says so in the Bill of Rights—but don’t you fucking dare
wasn’t the most enlightened attitude. Still—Weiss’s words had irritated the crap out of him. He’d read somewhere once that the stench of burning human flesh was unmistakable. The Germans had known.

As it happened, he did see Judge Rausche, and gave him a wide berth on his way back out to the lobby. Cam showed up a minute or two later, and they went to the front desk for his room key.

“Did Holly find Jamey?” Lachlan asked as they started for the stairs.

“I haven’t heard any howls of anguish or screams of outrage, so I’m guessing not.” He slanted a sideways look at Evan. “We just talked. Outside. Just now.”

“Hey, I’m not your parents or your priest. What you do or don’t do—”

“—is going to obsess Holly until I either give in or leave town.”

Lachlan waited until the next landing to say, “Whatever’s going on with you and Jamey—any chance of working it out?”

“I don’t know. But I can feel my hairline worrying itself back another inch on my forehead,” he said with a rueful smile.

“I’ve been meaning to ask. Is that what Kirby can look forward to?”

“Holly’s mom and mine were sisters, and quite often the gene comes through the mother, so—” Cam shrugged and eyed Lachlan’s morass of dark hair. “The kid’s gonna hate you when he gets to be about thirty-five.”

“Well, by that time I’ll be seventy-five and it’s no fair beating up on an old man, even if he is your father and has a full head of hair that he didn’t pass on to you.” Evan grinned. “He’s gonna hate me anyway for giving him the nose.”

They reached the landing, turned, and started up the next half-flight.

“Anything else you want to ask?” Cam invited, as if he already knew the answer.

“Such as?”

Digging a brass key out of his pocket, he unlocked Room 314. “My real name.”

Evan hid a grin. “I don’t have to. I’ll just go look it up in that big family map tucked in the newel post at Woodhush along with the deeds to the house and land.”

“The genealogy chart will tell you my name, but not the reason for it.” Cam swung the door open and they entered. “Our mothers were named in fits of Anglophilia before the Second World War—Elizabeth and Margaret. That’s where Holly’s ‘Elizabeth’ comes from.”

“I figured that much,” Evan said, following him through the sitting room to the bedroom.

Cam hefted his suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it. “It could’ve been worse for me, I suppose. At least they didn’t try a masculine version of ‘Margaret’—I don’t even know if there is one. Is there?” He frowned. “Doesn’t it mean ‘pearl’ in Hebrew or something? Yeah, that definitely would’ve been worse. But not by much.”

Evan practically heard the light bulb pop inside his own head. “You gotta be kidding. I thought it was ‘Cameron’ or ‘Campbell’ or something—”

“If only.” Cam busied himself with shaving gear from the bathroom.

“But I thought it was just the girls who got the botanical names.”

“If only,” Cam repeated. “Because Aunt Marget had used her sister’s name for her child, my mother was bound and determined to do likewise. My dad kept asking what the hell she was gonna do if they had a boy, and she’d just glare at him.” With a soft sigh, he finished, “They put it in Latin. Sort of.”

“Please tell me they didn’t do that to a helpless little kid.” He couldn’t help it; his lips started twitching and he pressed them tight together so he wouldn’t laugh.

Cam saw, of course. “Y’know, Ev, I do like you,” he said slowly. “I was prepared to like whoever Holly married, but I really
like
you. But so help me, if you say aloud any combination of syllables that even remotely resembles what my parents afflicted me with, I’m going to have to hurt you. I realize you’ve got three inches and about thirty pounds on me, but I’m pretty good at what I do by way of the family legacy, if you know what I mean, and I can beyond all doubt promise consequences.”