Fox River (25 page)

O
ur ship sailed a week through peaceful waters, but I am not a sailor. I was wretchedly ill for the whole voyage, never quite getting my sea legs. Ian, though annoyed, was relatively good-natured about it, particularly after he discovered several other horse enthusiasts on board.

On arrival in Southampton we traveled to London, rested one night, then started for Italy by train. I hadn’t realized how tired I still was or how much the wedding and now the trip had depleted me. By the time we left the station I was still speechless with fatigue, wishing only to sleep until we arrived.

Ian, who had shown some sympathy for my
mal de mer,
could not understand my exhaustion. He insisted that I keep him company, sitting in our compartment rather than taking to my bed again. He had married me, he said, for conversation, not for how lovely I looked asleep.

Guilt assailed me. Surely I had neglected him, perhaps worse than I’d been aware of. This was our wedding trip, and I suspected there would be few trips in our future.

I sat with him, struggling to keep my eyes open and my conversation witty. He drank whiskey throughout the day, nearly half a bottle, then in the evening ordered dinner to be brought to us. The courses went on and on, and by the meal’s end I wondered if he had forced me to eat them just to see how long I would obey him and stay awake.

But I was being silly. This was our wedding trip, and the food was remarkable.

We retired at last, and Ian took me in his arms. Because of my illness on the ship, this was the first time he had approached me since New York. I resisted as he stripped off my nightgown, but if he realized it, he gave no sign.

“Ian, I still don’t feel well,” I cautioned him.

“You’ll feel better when we’ve finished.”

He was determined, and I was chagrined that I had denied him my favors on our voyage. He was a newly married man, and I was the woman he had chosen after years of solitude. I hoped he would be quick and that I might go to sleep at last when he’d finished.

But if he knew what I hoped for, he gave no sign. He took his pleasure slowly, then, just as I was finally falling asleep, he took it again for good measure. When he fell asleep at last, I lay awake, tense and unhappy, wondering if I had any reason to be either.

He apologized the next morning, or at least attempted to. I, of course, interrupted to tell him it was my fault. I should not have been a seasick bride, and if his patience had run out, it was more than understandable.

I vowed to put his behavior behind me, and as our train crossed into Italy we snuggled together like the newlyweds we were.

It was nearly evening of a long, hot day by the time we reached Venice, and we disembarked at the station to find that my fairy tale had resumed. Never had I seen anything as exotic, as lovely, as Venice, even in July, when the summer heat steamed up from the canals, and tourists crowded and befouled the waterways. We traveled to our hotel in a private gondola, although the vaporetti were a less lavish way to make the journey. The hotel, a white marble palazzo, had been highly recommended to Ian. It was directly on the Grand Canal and within an easy walk of Piazza San Marco with its glorious basilica, clock tower and flocks of pigeons.

Our rooms were lovely, with views of the water from three windows temporarily shuttered against the sun, and graceful old furniture that had been crafted during the rise and fall of centuries of Venetian doges. I was enchanted, but Ian was not.

“The damn city smells like a sewer.”

“I’m afraid it is, more or less, darling. Particularly with these crowds and this heat.”

He faced me. His cheeks were ruddy and his forehead damp with sweat. I was sure I looked no better. “Are you complaining, Louisa?”

“Explaining.” I smiled. “But it was silly. Because you already knew that, didn’t you?”

He didn’t smile in return. “It will cool off when the sun sets.”

“And we can throw open our shutters and peer out at the Grand Canal. Surely this is the most romantic place in the world.”

As our trunks were delivered he went to take a cool bath, and I supervised the unpacking. He seemed happier when he returned, and I followed his lead, taking my time to wash off the grime of travel.

In the tub I was roused from a near stupor by the sound of angry voices in our sitting room.

I heard the door slam, then silence.

I was unsure what to do. Question him? Comfort him? But before I could decide, he stormed into the bath. “Did you cancel the food I ordered?”

I hadn’t realized he’d asked for a meal to be sent up to our room, and I told him so. But by then he was sitting on the edge of the tub and his eyes were blazing.

“He said the
sigñora
asked for the things he just brought.”

He was so angry that for a moment I felt afraid. “He must have the wrong parties, Ian. He’s mixed up the rooms. I didn’t even think to order anything. I thought you’d want to dine downstairs.”

“I am a patient man, a good enough man, I think, and I ask very little. But I will not have you or anyone else making changes without consulting me. Do you understand?”

I was growing angry now. I had already explained myself, but I was afraid to argue with him. I was undressed, and he was fully clothed, and I wasn’t yet accustomed to being naked in front of him. “I’ll always consult you,” I promised, in clipped tones. “There’s simply been a mistake.”

He leaned toward me. “Honesty is very important to me. Do you understand that?”

“Ian, who are you going to believe? An employee of the hotel or your wife?”

I don’t know what he might have said or done next. But there was a knock at our door, and Ian got up to answer it. I fled the tub, toweling myself dry and slipping into a silk wrapper.

He was sitting at the small table overlooking the Grand Canal when I entered the room. The shutters had been opened, and the sky was blazing with all the colors of sunset. It was still sweltering, but at least a breeze trailed through the windows now.

He looked up at my appearance. “Our food has arrived.”

“I see it has.”

“Come and enjoy it.”

“I hope he told you there had been a mistake.”

Ian frowned. “I said come and eat.”

I joined him across the narrow table, but I didn’t pick up my fork.

“He said he’d made a mistake,” Ian said at last. He clearly wasn’t pleased he had to admit it.

My anger disappeared. “It’s been a long dusty day.” I leaned across the table and put my hand over his. “But the night will be cooler and just as long.”

“There are some things that drive me to distraction,” he said, in a gruff voice.

“We’re all that way.”

“I won’t have anyone going behind my back and making changes.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that.”

“And I won’t allow anyone to lie to me.”

“Ian, you’ve married the right woman. I have no reason to lie to you.”

And I didn’t.

At least not at that moment.

M
aisy hummed her way through breakfast and cleanup. Jake was gone already, but Julia hadn’t yet come down. Karen was dropping Callie off at school on her way to do the grocery shopping. Maisy scraped plates and stacked them in the sink to soak, then she scrubbed counters, moving from “Baby, I Need Your Loving” to “Unchained Melody” without so much as a breath.

“Somebody sounds happy this morning.”

Maisy turned to find her daughter in the doorway. “It’s a beautiful day. Did you sleep well?”

Julia was silent.

“I guess not,” Maisy said. Julia looked as if she hadn’t closed her eyes.

“I had a lot running through my mind. Your story for one. It bothered me. I lay awake trying to figure out why. Then I realized.”

Maisy waited.

“You’re trying to tell me something, aren’t you?”

Maisy rinsed and squeezed her sponge before she answered. “I’m reading you my first novel. I guess I’m trying to tell you I want to be a writer.”

“You
are
a writer. A good enough writer to keep me awake last night.”

“I suppose that’s good news for me.”

“Maisy, I know what you’re doing.”

“Do you?”

“This isn’t a simple romance, is it? You’ve patterned Ian after somebody.”

Maisy attacked the smudges on the refrigerator door. “They say that every character a novelist invents is based on people she’s known, even if she doesn’t realize it.”

“Darn it, stop evading the truth. You’ve patterned him on Bard.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I don’t have to go into this. You know the similarities are there.” Julia moved to the table, finding the edge and feeling her way to a seat. “Louisa marries a man who can give her an easy life. She convinces herself she’s in love with him, then she begins to see another side of his personality. He’s demanding, controlling and given to fits if things don’t please him.”

“That’s my story so far. But you’re the only one who would know if it’s your story, too.”

“You’ve never liked Bard. You still don’t like Bard. You never will like Bard.”

Maisy put down her sponge. “You don’t like Bard yourself these days. Don’t put your feelings on me, kiddo. I have enough of my own to worry about.”

Julia looked in her direction. Maisy was still disconcerted whenever her daughter’s stare was off target. Julia lowered her gaze. “You know, I think I’ve apologized more in the last week than I ever have before. What’s wrong with me?”

“More than usual.”

Julia gave an unladylike snort.

Maisy filled the coffeepot with fresh water, then went for the Folgers. “I know things aren’t going well with Bard. That’s obvious.”

“I was so young when I married him. Like your Louisa.”

“Louisa wasn’t pregnant, and she hadn’t just seen the man she loved sentenced to life in prison.”

“When I married Bard I made a commitment I had every intention of keeping.”

“’Had,’ Julia?”

“I guess I don’t want to face the truth, but here it is. I’m not getting any closer to going back to Millcreek, Maisy. If my sight came back with the first sip of coffee, I still wouldn’t pack and head straight home.”

“Then this really is a separation? Not a convenience?”

“I wish I could see your face right now. Are you smiling?”

“Gloating, you mean? No. Your marriage is breaking up. How could that make me happy?”

Julia lowered her voice. “Just saying it makes
me
happy. A part of me feels devastated, but a part of me feels like I’ve opened a window and fresh air is sweeping into my life.”

Maisy didn’t know what to say.

Julia stretched her hands out in front of her. “I don’t know how this will end. But I don’t see how I can go home to a man who is only happy when I do exactly what he wants.” She paused. “A man you’re portraying in your book.”

“Julia, you can read anything you want into my story. That’s your prerogative. But it’s a story.”

“Nothing more,” Julia said. “So you say.”

Maisy flipped on the coffeemaker. “I made scrambled eggs for everyone else. What would you like?”

Christian hadn’t thought through the difficulties of cornering Maisy alone to ask about the puppy. A foolproof plan to avoid Julia, which had seemed simple enough on the surface, was turning out to be difficult. In the long run it was going to be easier and more effective to simply ask Julia if her daughter could adopt Clover.

He and Julia were going to be thrown together through the years. That was inevitable. It was better to inoculate himself now with small doses.

The hounds were taking a well-deserved rest from a long morning walk when he finally went to saddle Ranger for a ride. He was waylaid, though, by a call from Pinky Stewart.

“I don’t know much yet,” Pinky told him quietly and without preliminary, as if he were afraid of being overheard. “But Davey Myers Construction out of Warrenton seems to be the outfit that was doing most of the building around Ridge’s Race and Middleburg back in the early nineties.”

Christian thanked him, and Pinky hung up.

“Did you tell me you had to pick up some supplies over at Horse Country in Warrenton?” Christian asked Samantha, who was grooming one of Claymore Park’s famous broodmares.

She flashed him a smile, and despite the freckles and the boyishly cut hair he saw a glimpse of the glamour girl he remembered. “Somebody does. You volunteering?”

“They’ll have the order ready?”

“All ready. Should be a load of…” She counted on her fingers silently. “Eight boxes. Nine, tops.”

“I’ll be a while.”

“Want me to ride that horse of yours? Looks like he was expecting a little exercise.”

“No, I’ll do it as soon as I get back.”

“See ya.”

He thought about questions to ask as he whizzed past other estates dedicated to the good life of horsemanship, fresh air and enough surplus cash to pay off the national debt. He picked up the order first, then followed the directions he’d gotten at Horse Country to the headquarters of Davey Myers Construction. The office was in a small, dilapidated warehouse with a fleet of aging trucks in the driveway. Once past a bored receptionist, he waited in an office cluttered with papers and rusting file cabinets. Once Myers might have been successful, but despite the building boom of the past few years, the company didn’t seem to be prospering now.

“What can I do for you?” A man of about seventy strolled into the office. He had a bulldog face and a body that reminded Christian of a clown’s, oversize feet in shiny white shoes, pants stretched over a hula hoop-size belly.

“You’re Davey Myers?”

“Used to be. Now I’m just an old man trying to keep up in a young man’s world.” He said it cheerfully.

“I understand you were the top contractor in the area back in the early nineties.”

“Yeah. Then I had a stroke and my foreman ran off with half my crew
and
my third wife—what a looker she was, and only forty-five.”

Christian whistled softly.

Myers looked pleased. “To add insult to injury, the government decided to take a close look at my bookkeeping.” He motioned Christian to a seat.

Christian removed a stack of papers and set them carefully on the floor. He lowered himself to the chair and watched Davey Myers do the same. “But you’re still in business.”

“If you call this business. Licenses and insurance here, taxes there. I got the federal government, the state of Virginia, the city of Warrenton.” He waved his hands in the air. “Don’t get me started.”

“I’m hoping you can help me a little, Davey.”

“I know who you are. I still see good enough to read the papers.”

“Then you’ve probably guessed what I’m doing here.”

“Let’s see if I’m right.”

Christian told him about his search for all the facts behind Fidelity’s murder. “I was told you might have been the one who hired Zandoff,” he concluded. “That’s why I’m here.”

“And you think I might tell you something I didn’t tell the cops?”

“No. I just hoped you’d tell me whatever you told them.”

“You caught a bad break, kid. I know how it feels.”

“Sounds like you do.”

“So here’s what I told them. I don’t remember this Karl Zandoff creep. He’s a nobody, nohow, as far as I’m concerned. And I never paid nobody under the table. I don’t care what kind of crap they came up with, they went through my records. I had a bad accountant, a real bozo, you know? He couldn’t add two and two without a calculator.”

Christian imagined Myers was telling the truth about one thing, at least. This probably
was
what he’d told the cops.

“If I went out on one of your jobs today,” Christian said, “how many immigrants would I find working for you?”

“Hell, they’re the only people you can hire anymore. Everybody else wants to work with computers, wants to be a millionaire without getting dirt under their fingernails.”

“And if I asked, every single one of your men would have a legitimate green card, right? Every paper would be in order.”

Myers grinned. “I’m not so good at catching men in a lie anymore, you know? They tell me they have a green card, they show me something green…” He shrugged.

“Maybe you remember Zandoff, but you’re afraid the cops will find out your accountant screwed up Zandoff’s records, or maybe you’re afraid that foreman of yours did something he wasn’t supposed to and you’ll be left holding the bag.”

Myers leaned forward, knocking another stack of papers to the floor. “You know what? I’d tell you if I did. Just between us. But I’ve stared at photographs ever since the police told me I might have hired this guy. I mean, what a creepy thought, you know? Here’s Zandoff, up on one of my roofs, checking out the pretty girls walking by.” He made a face. “I had nightmares.”

“Nightmares but no memories?”

“I’ve hired hundreds of men in my day. If he was one of them, I just don’t remember.” He tapped his head. “Stroke took a lot with it.”

Christian wished him well and stood to leave. At the door, Myers told him the names of a couple of other construction companies to try. “I thought for a while…” Myers scratched his nearly bald head. “I did a lot of work over that way. Got promised a lot more, too, not far from where the girl was murdered. So I asked what men I got left that used to be with me back then. Nobody remembered the guy. Nobody. Nohow.”

“I don’t remember a lot of new construction going up. Some barns, a house or two. Is that the kind of stuff you did?”

“Nah, we did one of those prissy, upscale developments. Fancy schmancy houses. Take a hundred acres and put ten houses on it. City people think they’re living in the wilds of Alaska. Expect to see grizzly bears. I made money on that project.”

“Near Ridge’s Race?”

“Just west.”

Christian thought he knew the development in question. At the time he hadn’t thought anything of it, but an old estate had been subdivided, and the locals hadn’t been happy. “There was talk of a lawsuit to stop it, wasn’t there?”

Myers waved his hand. “Nothing to it. We had our permits. We got the land fair and square. Course afterward, the town of Ridge’s Race—if you can call that pissing little dot on the map a town—passed every ordinance they could to stop us. Didn’t even matter by then. The land we wanted wasn’t for sale.”

“What land, do you remember?”

Myers looked as if he was trying, but he shook his head. “Can’t. Sorry.”

“I don’t suppose you’d have records?”

Davey Myers just grinned.

Evening seemed to fall earlier every day, and it was twilight when Christian finally rode to Ashbourne. He’d thought about stopping on his way home from Warrenton, but by the time he had spoken—unsuccessfully—to two other builders Myers had suggested, the afternoon had slipped by. He’d had supplies to unload and a hound who had just come home from the vet. It was after dinner before he could saddle Night Ranger.

He stepped down from the saddle several hundred yards from the stone house and led Ranger the rest of the way. He and the horse were already doing better. His legs were stronger, and Ranger seemed to be enjoying life. He shoved Christian now with his nose, as if to propel him along.

Christian laughed and moved a little faster.

He tied Ranger a distance from the house, near an old stone watering trough that Maisy had planted with chrysanthemums. He heard laughter from inside, a sound that would probably always remind him of years spent without it. Light spilled from the windows. He smelled wood smoke. Jake always liked a fire, even when the weather didn’t warrant one.

He didn’t have to knock. Callie, with a child’s finely tuned ears, had heard him approach. Or so she told him as she barreled out the door right into him.

“I heard you coming. Where’s your horse?”

He squatted to speak to her eye to eye. “If I tell you, will you promise to stay a safe distance away from him? He’s a good horse, no mistaking it. But I don’t know if he’s used to children.”