Gilt by Association (21 page)

“What's the matter? Can't you take a joke?”

Dmitri stood up, stretched, yawned with his tongue curled in an arc, and hopped down to the floor. Without as much as a backward glance he trotted out the door, his tail held high like that of a warthog.

“And you're as dumb as a dog!” I yelled after him. I threw my shampoo bottle at the door, knocking it closed.

I turned the hot water on with my toes. The bath was becoming tepid. It could no longer poach eggs.

“Well, where were we?” I said to myself. “Oh yes, we were busy lining up suspects. And while we're at it, we may as well throw Norma's name into the ring. She clearly hated Arnie, and his murder might have had nothing to do with the Barras family at all.

“Come to think of it, it could even have been Purvis or one of his two boys. Maybe they had some kind of a disagreement that got out of hand. It would be real dumb of Purvis, and not like him, to ship me a body in an item that he sold to me in a public auction, but maybe the Pernod clouded his judgment. As for his two sons, Jimbo and Skeet, hell I wouldn't put it past them to send ice cream by parcel post.

“Oops, I almost forgot! Why not the captain and his mate? Sure, they're newcomers to the scene, but that
doesn't mean they haven't been playing backstage behind the scenes. For all I know, they were at that damn auction. What I need now is a picture of them to show around. But hell, that shouldn't be too hard. All I have to do is pay them another visit, and ask them to pose in front of their silly boat house. I'm sure they'll be more than happy to oblige. The first thing tomorrow, if this blizzard—”

The lights went off.

“Shit,” I said. I think I said it several times. I probably said a few more words that were bad enough to make Mama blush.

It wasn't just the lights going out that were causing me to swear like a trucker. For one thing, I burned my toes on the hot water while trying to turn off the faucet in the dark. Then when I hopped up on one leg—to hold my burned foot out of the water—I slipped, thanks to my excessive use of bubble bath. Fortunately I was able to grab the towel bar in time to prevent me from going down all the way, but unfortunately, I somehow managed to dislodge my towel. So there I was, standing on one foot, stark naked, and in the dark.

Of course I have more than one towel, but the others I keep in a bathroom closet opposite the tub. As I was trying to get out of the tub, still on one foot, I knocked my ceramic mug into the tub. Thankfully the cocoa had long been finished, or I would have had even another reason to swear. At any rate, the heavy mug filled with water and settled to the bottom of the tub with a heavy thunk, just grazing my big toe.

Just as I opened my mouth to swear I heard Dmitri yowl, like he does when I accidentally step on his tail. A second later there was the sound of splintering wood.

I
knew there was someone in the house with me, but I didn't want to believe it. How much more vulnerable can one get than to be naked, in the dark, with a scalded foot? I may as well have hung a sign around my neck that read
Pacifist, Come and Get Me
. Except that I am anything but a pacifist. My very first serious boyfriend, Wayne, taught me that the meek shall inherit a backhand across the mouth. It was a lesson I had to be taught only once. That was back in the days when Lucite purses were all the rage. After Wayne hit me, he got to feel my pocketbook up side his head. It was a lesson he had to be taught only once.

I didn't have a Lucite purse handy. In fact, there wasn't anything throwable within reach except the bottle of Mystic Gardenia bubble bath and a half-empty bottle of Suave Shampoo Plus. I decided on the bubble bath. It was fuller. As I was hopping over to get it, I stubbed my toe on the ceramic beer stein.

“Eureka!” I whispered. As far as I was concerned it was the most important bathtub discovery in history.

Armed, I felt better. Which is not to say that my heart wasn't trying to force its way through my mouth, or that the knee on my uninjured appendage didn't threaten to buckle a thousand times. But I would go down fighting, and if I could somehow harness and use all the resentment
for Buford I'd stored up through the years, I had a fighting chance.

Even if the intruder had a gun, I still had a chance. That was the most important thing I learned from that self-defense class I took the previous winter. Only a small percentage of bullets hit their mark, and of those that do, only a small percentage
kill
. If someone ever tries to force you into a car at gunpoint, run like hell. You at least have a chance
if
you run. Otherwise they might shoot you in the car, with the gun pressed right up against your temple. Your chances of that bullet missing are much slimmer.

Unfortunately my bathroom has only one door. In effect it was a big car, but it was big enough that I could feint and dodge a little. I certainly was not going to stand there like a target with a bull's-eye pasted on my forehead.

Feeling around in the tub, I scooped up the mug and scrambled out of the tub, sloshing water everywhere. I hobbled directly to the door. Even though it was still dark in there, and my bathroom has no window, I could discern the door by a pencil-thin line of faint light that seemed to pulsate. Obviously the intruder was bobbing a flashlight around.

I pushed the lock button in the door handle. It was silent, but I would have welcomed the click from a dead bolt. I should have taken a clue from watching
Psycho
. It had been on TV just the month before. If I got out of this jam alive I was either going to have a dead bolt installed on every door of the house, or buy eight Doberman pinschers.

I considered my options. I could stand naked by the door, holding my mug aloft, prepared to crash it down on the head of whoever decided to burst through the door. I could hide in the closet along with the towels. I could climb back in the tub and pretend that I had slipped and drowned.

I chose the first option, but decided to get dressed first.
Unfortunately I had left my bathrobe hanging on a hook on the back of my bedroom door. I had no clean clothes in the bathroom at all, but I had
lots
of dirty clothes. An entire hamper full. The past week had been far too stressful and event-filled for me to even consider doing laundry.

While I was sifting through my options, my uninvited visitor was busily and noisily vandalizing my bedroom. There was the distinct sound of more glass breaking, and the sickening—at least to an antique dealer—sound of splintering wood. I could also hear a few grunts and some heavy breathing. The latter were sounds occasionally heard in my bedroom, but not while I was out of the room.

I dressed. I started by putting on the first thing I touched—that day's bra. Then my panties. When the third item I pulled out of the basket inexplicably turned out to be panties as well, I put them on anyway. Might as well make certain vulnerable spots hard to get to, just in case my nocturnal visitor turned out to be a rapist. My funeral outfit I'd hung, but yesterday's jeans and sweatshirt were next, followed by a pair of warm cotton socks. I automatically put on both socks. As I was putting on the second sock, I realized to my surprise that my scalded foot no longer hurt.

Since there was nothing else to do, except listen to the vandalism over the pounding of my heart, I continued to dress. Why not? Perhaps several layers of clothing would help soften the impact, or even deflect a bullet that came my way. They would certainly help keep me warm if I had to make a dash for the outside without a chance to grab my coat.

I was clumsily trying to button my third top, when I became suddenly and acutely aware that some of the heavy breathing was just on the other side of the door, mere inches away. I froze, my fingers still on a button. I couldn't see the doorknob turn, but I could hear it turn, and then catch against the lock. The heavy breathing mo
mentarily stopped. Then I heard the knob turn again, this time with more pressure applied to it. I also heard what sounded like a shoulder hit the door.

“Yes, I'm in here you goddamn creep!” I screamed, “and I have a double-barreled shotgun aimed right at your guts.”

It just came out. I hadn't planned to say it. Trust me, I wouldn't have planned to say something so inane. I mean, who would believe that your average woman keeps a loaded shotgun in her
bathroom?
A handgun, perhaps, but a shotgun?

The intruder believed me, that's who. There were a few seconds of what I took for stunned silence, and then it sounded like a herd of buffalo went racing from the room. A few seconds more and I heard the distant sound of a door slam, probably my kitchen door.

I slumped to the floor, my back against the wall. The shakes started slowly, like a passing chill, but before I knew it I was vibrating faster than the paint mixer at Home Depot. My teeth were chattering so hard I was in danger of knocking loose my caps.

“Breathe deeply,” they always say in the movies, but they are just acting. What do they know about breathing deeply when your upper and lower jaws are slamming into each other with the force of pistons, and your stomach has been tied into a knot and pulled halfway up your throat?

It must have taken me five minutes to get enough self-control to stand again. But that was only the beginning. What should I do next? What if the intruder I'd so obviously frightened had recovered from his or her fear first, and had silently returned to the scene of the crime? Or what if there were two intruders, and one had noisily fled as part of a ruse? What if the partner in crime was just on the other side of the door, waiting for me with a far deadlier weapon than a ceramic beer stein?

It's quite possible I would have stood there, holding that beer mug in my hand, for the better part of the night, had not dear sweet Dmitri come to my rescue. No, he did not dial 911—although if a pet could be trained to do so, Dmitri would be a likely candidate. What my hairball hero did was to demand his supper in a loud and plaintive voice. I knew then that my unwanted visitor had skedaddled for sure. Food for Dmitri is a very private thing. I opened the door.

I keep a flashlight on my night table, but before I got even to my bed I began stepping on wooden splinters. Thank God I was wearing three pairs of socks.

“Oh shit,” I said. I knew immediately that the wood had come from the Louis XV desk I had taken home for safekeeping.

My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark now and there was enough light coming through the bedroom window, reflecting off the snow, for me to discern a portion of that exquisite frame lying on the floor in front of me. I swore vengeance on whoever did such a horrible thing and to his or her descendants for the seventh generation.

I decided not to risk stepping on any more of the glass to get to my bedroom phone, even though it was on the other side of my bed. With Dmitri still complaining loudly, I forged ahead through the living room and into the kitchen to use the wall phone there. Please give me no credit for bravery on that account. As long as Dmitri kept wrapping himself around my legs, I was in far more danger of tripping over Dmitri than anything else—that, and slipping on the kitchen linoleum. I could feel puddles of water through my layers of socks. Apparently the intruder had forgotten to wipe his feet.

There was a dial tone.

“Thank you, Lord,” I whispered.

I dialed 911 and gave them the particulars. They prom
ised to send someone out immediately, but cautioned that it could take as long as twenty minutes, due to the current road conditions. Without giving it a second thought, I dialed Greg.

“Hello?” he said after only the second ring.

“Greg—”

“Abby! Is anything wrong?” Our quarrel was clearly a thing of the past.

I took my first really deep breath since the bathtub. “Yes, there's a lot wrong, actually. I was—”

“I'll be right over,” he said, and hung up.

Greg lives at least twenty minutes away—on a good day—so I wasn't going to just stand there and twiddle my thumbs until somebody showed up. Fortunately I keep a second flashlight in the kitchen. Keeping Dmitri with me as a test—like a caged canary in a coal mine—I went into the laundry room and inspected the circuit breakers.

To my horror, but not to my surprise, a quick sweep of the flashlight confirmed what I had suspected. The snowstorm was not responsible for my “power failure.” Someone had tripped all the switches.

 

Greg was true to his word. It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes, sixteen at the most, when he pulled up. By then I was sitting in the living room, just inside the front door, holding two flashlights and a nine iron. Every light in the house was on, and I was wearing shoes. I was ready for fight or flight, whatever circumstances demanded.

Greg hugged me without hesitation the second I opened the door. “Abby.”

“Thanks for coming,” I mumbled, my lips squashed against his chest. “I bet Santa is pissed at you. You must have borrowed his sleigh.”

“It's stopped snowing, Abby, and I would have been
here sooner if it hadn't been for that damn salt truck that just wouldn't pull over.”

“Anyway, thanks.”

I pulled him aside. I had to start my story three times, because he kept insisting it wasn't the beginning, and then even once I was allowed to continue, I was interrupted more than the mother of a three-year-old. Perhaps I should have written it all down while I was waiting and just handed it to him.

“Why didn't you lock the bathroom door?” he demanded.

“Do you, when you take a bath?” I asked, trying to remain calm.

“We're not talking about me,” he said with typical male obstinacy. “And why the hell didn't you have a bathrobe in the room with you?”

“You don't even sleep in pajamas,” I snapped.

We were getting nowhere fast. He sighed. I sighed.

“I appreciate your coming,” I said, “and your concern, but I'm afraid this isn't going to work.”

He stared at me with those incredibly blue eyes. “Look, it's hard for me to be professional about this. It's—”

“Then maybe you should just sit with me here, and we'll wait until the professionals arrive,” I said coolly.

To my surprise a smiled tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Abby, I was about to say that it's hard for me to be professional with you when I care so much.”

“I beg your pardon?” I had heard him very well indeed.

It took a little special effort for him to repeat it, a fact for which I gave him full credit.

“Thanks,” I said. I hoped it sounded nonchalant.

He shook his head. “No, I don't think you get it. I
really
care about you, Abby. I love you.”

I could hardly believe my ears. My close encounter had truly moved him. The Croats and the Serbs were welcome
to settle their differences in my bedroom, if that's what it took to get a declaration like that from Greg. The Arabs and Israelis too. Heck, might as well throw in the Irish.

“I love you, too,” I was quick to say. None of that ditto stuff on such a momentous occasion.

“I want us to get married, Abby.”

I refrained from jiggling a pinky tip in my ears to check for wax deposits. Clearly I had major buildup. He couldn't possibly have said what I thought I heard.

“Excuse me?”

He smiled, his eyes and his mouth. “You heard me. I said I wanted us to get married.”

“Is that a proposal?”

He shook his head, causing my heart to do a belly flop into my stomach. While my ticker was floundering about in my gastric juices he got down on one knee and took both my hands in his.

“Will you marry me, Abigail Louise Timberlake, nee Wiggins?”

“No,” I said quietly.

His eyes spoke louder than his lips ever could.

“Greg, I love you. I mean that. But I don't love you enough to marry you—at least not right now.”

I averted my eyes while he got off the floor. “I guess I made a damn fool of myself then.”

I lightly touched his arm. I could feel his muscles stiffen.

“No,” I said. “You didn't make a fool of yourself. You endeared yourself to me forever.”

He stood up, towering over me. “Hell, I don't want to be endeared. I want to marry you, Abigail. What have I done wrong now?”

I stood up, equalizing our height difference by a fraction. “It's not anything you did, although”—I couldn't help but say—“your flirting with anyone who pees sitting
down doesn't help. But it's not really that. It's
me
. I'm not over Buford yet. I'm not ready to commit to marriage.”

He raked his fingers through that thick head of black hair. “Will you ever be?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. When I am, you'll be the first to know.”