Past Malice (10 page)

I sat back in disbelief, panic at what I’d just seen, what I’d just had to do, making me a statue. Well, not quite a statue; hyperventilation isn’t usually an issue for cold marble. But the reek of gasoline told me that it was all true. Someone had deliberately pierced the fuel tank on Aden Fiske’s boat.

I
HAD A CHOICE.
I
COULD STAY IN THE BOAT, HOPING
someone else would be by soon to pick me up—and that thought reminded me of my cell phone, which I’d carefully put in the car in case of emergencies. Damn it. And flares? Not even an option. And even if I’d had oars, the boat was a little too big for me to row all the way back. But I didn’t want to stay and wait. The smell of gasoline was making me gag now, and the thought that someone, possibly aware of Aden’s smoking habit, had sabotaged his boat, made my skin crawl. I felt very alone, terribly exposed, and downright scared.

I decided I wasn’t going to sit there, with the gasoline sliding around beneath me and someone out there who hated Aden enough to try and kill him, not when I was so close to the shore. I hated the idea of waiting until someone saw me: I’d climb up the cliff. I dropped the anchor, and waited until a fortuitous wave smacked the boat up against the smooth, seaweed-covered rocks at the base of the cliff, making an
ugly grinding noise. I found myself in the unpleasant situation of having to jump without a firm base to support me: As soon as I tried pushing off, I shoved the boat farther beneath me, which reduced how far up the rock I could land.

I managed a sort of awkward frog hop that splayed me across the rock for just an instant. I felt a pain in my abdomen where a section of the rock stuck out, and grabbed frantically at the seaweed that clung to the rock. I was just another piece of jetsam. Then I began to slide down into the water, becoming soaked to the chest and weighed down by my clothes. I kicked and pulled myself up at the same time and managed to scramble all the way onto the jutting boulder. Salt water stung my hands and lower chest where I had been scraped down the side of the rock, which was covered with barnacles. Sitting for a moment to catch my breath, I watched as the boat bobbed on the waves.

I was safe for the moment, but how the hell was I going to get up the face of the cliff? It didn’t seem like such a great idea, now that I’d passed the point of no return.

I didn’t dare risk trying to swim around, that was for sure. It was just too deep, too rocky, and too choppy. There weren’t enough of the lower, half-submerged rocks to consider leaping between them. It looked like the only way out was up.

As soon as I shifted my weight, I knew this was going to be trickier than I thought. Trying to stand up immediately reminded me of what I now faced: The rock was slippery, damp, and covered with slick seaweed bladders that gave off a noxious smell when they broke under me. I turned myself around so that now I faced the cliff itself, and after slipping and dunking my foot back into the water again, I managed to stand upright, leaning against the main wall of the cliff.

I shivered violently—the wind renewed the shock of the cold wet against my skin—and studied the wall of rock and seaweed for a possible route up. It wasn’t sheer, and I could
tell that it was possible to climb up—there were plenty of hand-and toeholds—but it took me a moment to decide that this really was what I had to do. I hadn’t been near this kind of rock climbing for nearly twenty years, and even then, that had only been the sort of thing one does as a kid in suburban woods. There had been nothing trained or skilled about that kind of scrabbling, and I was such a cautious kid that I never tackled anything that didn’t look pretty manageable. I also hadn’t just bailed out of a sabotaged boat in a dangerous part of the harbor with little choice in the matter.

I swallowed and could feel my heart pounding away. A sick feeling pervaded me as I realized that I would have to ditch my life preserver if I wanted to get the best holds possible; clinging was now high on my list of priorities. It was hard to part with the illusion of safety that the preserver afforded, but I fumbled with the clips and eventually managed to untie the bands with trembling fingers, removing the device and wedging it into a rock nearby, for whatever good that would do. I rubbed my freezing fingers until they felt a little warmer, took a deep breath, and found my first good handhold.

At first it was slow going, though not particularly hard, once I realized it was just a matter of concentration, patience, and planning. Most of my trouble was my own brain, which kept reminding me of the danger inherent in what I was doing, suggesting that I should stop it as soon as possible. Another problem was that the seaweed was slippery when it was wet and not particularly helpful in getting a grip when it was dry. And although it clung to the rock tenaciously, it wasn’t exactly built to hold the weight of an assistant professor, no matter how regularly she worked out, so I couldn’t use it like one of Indiana Jones’s conveniently placed jungle vines. It just took up space in the good cracks I wanted to use and shifted and moved on the rocks too. But
I made progress and was starting to get the hang, if you will, of how to test each step I was about to make. I was even starting to take pleasure in the challenge, a real satisfaction in being able to focus and channel my fear away, when I noticed a slight bulge that ran right around the length of the cliff. I vaguely recognized that it was just some kind of intrusion of one rock into the surrounding stratum, a vein that had been injected during the birth of this particular formation by volcanism or upheaval or something else grand and geological. It wasn’t the composition or the formation of the rock that made me pause: it was the physics of it all. I had to stop and think about this, and a little of the panic that had possessed me began to seep back into the pit of my stomach.

The bulge wasn’t big and its curve wasn’t too steep, but it was just enough to make me realize that the rock was curving out over the water, whereas it had been curving in and upward to the top for the first part of my trek. This meant that, for a while, more of me would be hanging back over the water than leaning toward the rock and comparative safety. I knew it was just a matter of shinnying up as far as I could, reaching past that outcropping, and continuing on as I had been. It, logically, should only have been a minor setback, but it took everything I had left in me to face this new challenge. It was the idea of leaning back, even a little, over the water and danger when every bit of me had been devoted to leaning in, clinging like kelp, and working toward safety.

Every little antique mammalian cell of me that still preferred tree climbing to that silly, newfangled trick of walking on two feet knew that this was not a good idea. My toes were too short, even if they weren’t encased in my sopping sneakers, my fingers didn’t have the strength or the nice padding they should have for this kind of antic, and my nice, straight back just wasn’t flexible the right way anymore. I would have given almost anything for a prehensile tail at the
moment, even if it was just for balance. Somewhere down the road, about four million years ago, we had traded in all that lovely, built-in climbing gear for bipedalism and big brains, and it struck me now as a stupid, sorry mistake.

I was starting to get tired and trembling now out of fatigue rather than nerves alone. If I couldn’t use the physical attributes I wanted, I’d have to make do with the big brain, and I’d have to do so quickly.

I gauged the next set of handholds as best I could, and then, thinking as little as possible, I pushed myself up, until most of my torso was over the bulge. I reached up and grabbed my next left handhold, then pushed myself again, seized my right handhold and swung my left foot up to a secure spot, before I remembered that most of my mass was over the ocean. My goal—the top of the cliff—was almost within sight. I slipped back, a cry escaping my lips, as the blunt toe of my sneaker slipped off the shallow step. I scrabbled desperately, trying to find a toehold that would support me, my face pressed against the rough, warm rock. My foot caught, slipped, then caught hold of another, sturdier bit of ledge, and I shoved myself up, hearing the little pebbles and grit I dislodged rattle down the face I’d just come up, plopping into the water, unheard over the waves. Two more steps up, and I could see the slope formed a large step, large enough to pull myself onto and lean back.

I was nearly at the top of the cliff, the last flat edge before the drop down to the water, and I let myself rest here, now safe. I could feel the sun’s heat trapped in the rock, and I clung a little closer, trying to warm myself up. It was almost as if the rock beneath me was moving, because I was trembling from head to foot, not a bit of me still. I rolled over to my side and rested a moment, and when I sat up, I had to brush away the sand that had stuck to my sweaty face. I brushed off my hands and saw that I was cut and bleeding in
several places; my fingertips were raw and stung like hell. I knew when I stopped shaking from nerves and exertion, I was going to feel every ache and pull I’d inflicted on myself. I would have to wash out those cuts good, I thought, as I got up, so they wouldn’t get infected….

I almost laughed when I realized that for the first time I’d been able to plan ahead, not in terms of inches or handholds, but actual time, a future that was not concerned with tumbling into the ocean. And then I did let out a war whoop, all self-consciousness burned away by adrenaline and achievement. I clambered up the two low shelves to the very top of the cliff, luxuriating in the feel of the ground under my feet, and I stomped my foot just for the pleasure of feeling the rock’s solidity.

A line of large boulders marked the edge of the property, and a few feet behind them was a small chain link fence, probably put up by the land owners to keep people from tumbling off the cliff. You could almost tally the changing centuries, I thought giddily, by the way the edge of the cliff was marked off. Eighteenth century and earlier, you’re on your own; if you’re too stupid to see the edge of the cliff, well, that’s the last time you’ll make that mistake. In the nineteenth century, you get the polite notice of the large boulders, which don’t do anything to detract from the view. And in the civic-minded, cautious, and ever-so-litigious twentieth century, I thought as I reached the fence, you get protection built in for you. I turned and looked out at the horizon, jolly pleased to be able to have something else to look at besides granite three inches away from my face. It was time to get out of here.

Ordinarily, I would have regarded a fence, any fence, as inviolable, but now, it was a minor inconvenience, a slight, meaningless barrier between me and my car, me and getting home to a warm shower and dry clothes. I pushed myself up
with both hands, and fell back suddenly, my arms trembling from fear and exertion. A minor setback, it was to be expected, I told myself blithely. I tried again and succeeded this time, hauling up one leg easily and swinging myself over. I landed lightly on the ground, again feeling the elation that comes with having saved your own life.

I took two steps before I realized I was in back of the Bellamys’ house, and then slowed down. When I saw that one of their cars was in the driveway, I sped up and began to run to the far side of the yard to my left so that I could hop the fence back onto the public road. I made it about two-thirds of the way across the lawn when an unholy noise erupted from the direction of the house, a racket like stampeding cattle and baying wolves. It was accompanied by the ominous metallic slither of chains.

I’d forgotten all about the Bellamys’ dogs.

Two enormous animals came bounding toward me, huge shadows in black and gray, covering the area of the yard with terrifying speed. Their barking grew louder and more frenzied as they tore toward me. I froze for an instant, stunned by the sight and not knowing whether I could make it the rest of the way to the fence before they reached me or whether my movement would only goad the dogs to a greater fury. Then sheer panic took over and I fled, the fence my only goal, running as fast as I ever had in my life.

I
TRIED TO HAUL MYSELF UP THE FENCE, BUT MY ARMS
were too tired, and the fence was taller on the street side of the yard than by the cliff. It was just another foot, but it was enough to thwart me. Clumsy and weak from exertion, I flung myself at the fence, but my arms just wouldn’t respond. I couldn’t make them work, and my sneakers were just too wide in the toe to fit into the small links of the fence. I tried again, fear an excellent spur, and succeeded in hanging on this time. I managed to get a toe wedged into place when I felt a savage pull on the leg of my jeans, and with a cry I came down off the fence.

“Down, Monet! Down, Matisse! Get down, now, both of you!”

I landed in a heap, blurs of black and a glint of sharp white teeth too close to my face. The things that overwhelmed me were purely the physical, the damp heat and smell of the dogs’ breath, the heavy tread of clawed feet on
my legs as I put my hands up in front of my face. I know I screamed but couldn’t hear myself over the barking—

“I said down! Now, damn it!” The shrill voice came again.

And suddenly, the dogs were off me. When I felt fresh air again, I dared to put my hands down and scrabbled away until my back was up against the fence. I tried to stand, failed, then finally shoved myself up, shaking so hard I could barely manage to stand up straight. I leaned against the fence for support and tried to catch my breath.

Claire Bellamy was kneeling; she held both dogs by their collars and was letting them lick her face. “Good babies! What good dogs! You’re so good! Yes, you are!”

That shocked me more than a bucketful of cold water would have done, which, come to think of it, I’d already experienced once today. “Good dogs? My God, lady, they just tried to kill me!”

Claire looked over at me, her smile vanished. “You were on their territory! They were only doing what dogs are supposed to do! What the hell are you doing in my yard?”

“I didn’t mean to…I came up the cliff….”

“What were you doing out there? This is not a public way, you know!” Then her face changed, flushed even darker red. “You sent the police over here yesterday!”

I couldn’t even remember yesterday. “What? I didn’t—”

“Yes you did! They came over to ask about the noise I heard yesterday morning, and that was after I spoke to you about it! You sent them over here!”

“They were asking me about—”

Not interested in my explanation, Claire suddenly noticed I was shivering. “Why are you so wet?”

“I told you, I came up the cliff. I was in a boat, the fuel tank…had a hole in it, so I had to ditch it, and I ended up on the—”

Her mouth, usually agape, was now positively round with disbelief. “What in God’s name were you doing in the boat?”

I raised my hand to point to the Chandler House behind me, across the street. One of the dogs whuffed.

“Be quiet, Matisse. Well?”

“I was trying to see the Chandler House from the water, to…” What had I been thinking? “To see it the way people would have seen it back when….” I licked my lips trying to get hold of myself. “Back when people traveled more by water, around here. I borrowed Aden Fiske’s motorboat—”

The blood drained from Claire’s face. “Aden Fiske’s motorboat?”

I nodded. “There was all this fuel in the bottom, and I jumped onto one of the rocks and climbed up the cliff. I promise you, if I could have landed anywhere else, I would have.”

“You borrowed Aden’s—and it was leaking gas? You climbed up the cliff—you might have been killed!”

I nodded, thinking about how many times that made today. “Yeah.”

“Look at your hands, they’re a mess! You’re serious about all this!”

I shrugged. Claire seemed to be having a hard time stringing the story all together. It was starting to seem unreal to me too, so I couldn’t blame her much.

“Come up to the house, I’ll help you get them cleaned up.”

Then she let go of the collars. The two dogs, which I now recognized as standard poodles, stood up and stared at me. I tried to remember everything Bucky had ever told me about dogs, tried to remember whether wagging tails were good and whether teeth meant welcome or danger. I curled my
fingers into fists, as much to steady myself as to remove the invitation of easy targets. But I realized that Claire was right: The dogs were playing. One of them stretched his front paws out in front of him, then bounded away a few steps, looking at me expectantly. I had the distinct impression that he was smiling, if such a thing was possible.

“No, Monet, this lady’s—Emma’s?—not going to play with you. You boys go lie down. Go lie down.”

To my surprise and shattering relief, the two dogs trotted obediently back toward the house. And now that both the animals and my imagination were under control, it seemed to me that the poodles shrank down to, well, normal large dog size; my tattered nerves had turned rambunctious pets into slavering monsters. It had been a real fright though, and it took me a minute to realize that I should start moving myself.

“Come on. I’ll get some hydrogen peroxide for those cuts. They look nasty.”

I looked down at my hands and saw that my scrapes had been torn wider when I was pulled off the fence. The air stung, and I picked another small, sharp piece of barnacle out of my pinky.

“The dogs didn’t actually bite you, did they?” Claire asked as we walked down the yard. “I had them just as they got to you, I didn’t see them snap at you at all…after…you fell.”

I noticed that she didn’t say how I fell, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t the one who pulled me off the fence. She wasn’t particularly big, but to keep control over two athletic animals, I realized, she must have some considerable strength. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Good,” she said with nervous relief. “I didn’t think so, but I wouldn’t keep animals like that. I couldn’t. I have two small children and I do a good deal of entertaining, so there
are people here all the time. I couldn’t have dogs that would actually hurt anyone. I mean, you were in their territory, but M and M wouldn’t actually attack anyone. They’re very obedient.”

I repeated mechanically, “Yes, I understand I was in their territory, by accident. No, I don’t think they bit me,” just so she would stop going on about it. I just wanted to get out of there and go home.

My bland statements seemed to reassure Claire, who was now positively chatty as we reached the back steps to the house. “Why don’t you just—”

She paused outside the door and I knew that she was worried that I would drip. I decided that I didn’t need to see the inside of the Bellamy house all that badly. “No, I’ll get your floors muddy.”

“No, no, come in. You can wait in the kitchen. I’ll get you the first aid kit. Lie down, babies. Go to bed.”

Monet and Matisse immediately went under the porch, to sturdy wicker dog beds with well-worn cushions. “Their outdoor beds are getting nasty, almost ready for the dump,” she said, as she pulled open the sliding glass door.

“Just replace the pillows, they’ll be fine.”

She wrinkled her brows. “Well, they can have new indoor beds and the old ones will come out here. We don’t want those stinky things hanging around.”

Oh, good, I thought. Conspicuous consumption for the pets. But then I saw that that was small potatoes compared with the orgy of consumer display that was the interior of the Bellamy kitchen. Considering the state my own was in, it shouldn’t have surprised me that anything else would have looked better, but this was straight out of a showroom. It was all straight lines, stainless steel, stone, and hardwoods, all blended into a professional-grade performance area for
the knowledgeable home cook and her equally educated audience. A restaurant kitchen forced into Colonial Revival décor.

“Wow,” I said. “Those cabinets are gorgeous.”

Claire raised her eyebrows skeptically and looked around, considering. “Yes, well, cherry is fun, but I’d be happier with oak. It’d go better with the tile. This was all here before us, but I do like the clean look.”

Clean was the operative word here, apparently. For a house with two large dogs and two small kids, I couldn’t see a thing out of place. No dishes in the sink, no crumbs from breakfast, no boxes of cereal lying around. No footprints on the floor, no fingerprints on the stainless sink and faucet. No dog hair.

No dog hair? How could that be? She did mention that the dogs slept inside.

I didn’t have long to ponder that new mystery as I had another one to consider while Claire went to the bathroom: Why was she being so solicitous of me?

When she’d come over to complain about the noise that my crew and I were supposedly making so early in the morning, her attitude had been one of wounded long-suffering. Now, once the specters of trespass and dog bites had been put to rest, for the moment, she was being positively chummy, trading home design tips, inviting me in to drip in her kitchen.

What had happened to bring this about?

As I stuck my head into the living room to see what that was like, it came to me that perhaps she was just scared into humanity, driven by fear that someone was trying to break into her house or cut across her yard or something. Hmm, lots of antiques crammed onto surfaces and a forty-two-inch flat-screen plasma display television over the mantelpiece, the kind that always stopped Brian cold in the mall. Where
once it was the fire that was the center and focus of family life, now there was a television over the cold dark grate. Lots of money there, I reckoned.

But it wasn’t real money; the furniture itself was generic modern Colonial Revival. In fact, I realized that the television was the only truly expensive thing in the room; the antiques weren’t valuable, although they were arranged to give that impression. The longer I looked, the more I saw that there was a lot of taste but not a lot of cash in that room, besides the television.

And people who are confrontational to begin with don’t usually back off because they are in the middle of a conflict. Claire shouldn’t have been subdued by the violence of our meeting; she was in the right, she was safe with her dogs, and I posed no obvious threat. She should have been in her element. No, it must be something else.

Something else that scared her.

I tried to think back over our conversation to pinpoint where the shift had occurred. I returned to the kitchen and inspected the view from the window over the sink. I touched the neatly folded dishtowel next to the sink: it was still damp. Perhaps this is where Claire had been when she first saw me in her yard. She would have seen…I let my eyes unfocus, trying to imagine what Claire would have seen. As she dried dishes or washed the counters, glancing out the window at her expensive view, Claire would have been startled to see a figure coming up over the cliff, beyond the fence that delineated her domain. She would have watched as I tried, twice, to hop the fence, seen me hesitate as I got my bearings. Perhaps that’s when she put down her towel, folding it automatically, and came outside. She would have seen me begin to beat it for the far side of the yard, toward the safety of the public road and then she might have realized that the dogs had also detected me and begun their race.
She begins to run, I hit the fence, the dogs corner me, she arrives in time to keep them from playing too roughly. Fine, at this point, she’s still defensive, she’s confrontational, she’s still Claire as I’ve gotten to know her.

I gripped the sink, trying to remember how the conversation went. She demands to know what I’m doing there. I tell her I came over the cliff, she gets angry about the police coming over here—why was that? And we didn’t keep talking about that, despite how angry that made her. She asked why I was shivering, I said I’d been stranded in a boat that was full of fuel and climbed out….

No. I told her I’d borrowed Aden Fiske’s boat. That’s when things changed. She’d gone positively pale when I mentioned Aden’s name. Aden, who she thought was my boss. I wonder whether—

“Here we are!”

I jumped, then sighed deeply. Claire had appeared suddenly from the hallway, her footsteps muffled by the wall-to-wall carpeting. My already overextended nerves were not up to any more surprises.

“I had to find another bottle of hydrogen peroxide. It’s like the kids drink it or something, we go through so much of it so quickly. Maybe you’d better….” She proffered the bottle and some cotton balls to me.

I poured a little of the liquid onto the cotton, gritted my teeth, and dabbed it onto my other hand. My eyes welled up and I blinked tears away, taking a deep breath. “Man, that stings,” I said, watching the foam subside. I did the other hand, and it was no more fun than the first. At least the scrapes were clean for now.

Claire put the first aid box onto the counter, opened it, and handed me some bandages. I tried to pull the paper wrapper apart at the edges, but my fingers were shaking too
hard to get it on the first try. I noticed how dry my mouth was. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water?”

She hesitated, then got a bottle from the fridge and poured me a glass. I could tell she wasn’t keen on the idea of me prolonging my visit.

“Thanks.” I took a sip, then surprised myself by drinking half of it at once. “That’s good. I appreciate the Band-Aids. I suppose I’ve got to go tell Aden what’s happened.” I watched her. “I’m not looking forward to that.”

“Why not?” She refilled my glass, her face quite blank.

“Well, I borrowed his boat this morning, and now I’ve got to tell him I had to jump ship, leaving his boat full of gasoline out there. And a life preserver. Odds are, he won’t let me borrow anything again.” I smiled weakly.

“I’m sure that—” She looked about nervously, and I wondered what she was so sure of.

“I was kidding,” I said. “It’s just that no one likes to pass on bad news.”

“But I’m sure…he’ll…I mean, it was an accident, after all. You couldn’t have known the boat was going to…was…that you’d have trouble. He can’t blame you for that.”

“I’m sure he won’t—”

“It wasn’t your fault. In fact, it might be his fault! He shouldn’t have been letting you use the boat if there was something wrong with it.”