Red Lily (15 page)

“Circa 1890,” he said tightly. “I never thought twice about it.”

“Maybe she pushed you to buy it for me.” Hayley shoved to her feet. “If she—”

“No. I wanted to give you something. It’s as simple as that. If it makes you uncomfortable to have it, or weirds you out, we can keep it in the safe.”

Utter trust, she remembered. That was love. “No. It wasn’t an exchange, it was a gift.” She crossed to him, kissed him lightly on the lips. “So screw her.”

“That’s my girl.”

Lily batted her hand on his cheek until he turned his face to hers, then she bumped her mouth to his.

“Or one of them,” he added.

B
Y EVENING
,
SHE
was calm again. Calmer still when she settled down in the rocking chair with Lily. She prized these moments, when the room was quiet and she could rock her baby to sleep. Sing to her, and though her voice was no prize, Lily seemed to like it.

This was what Amelia craved, maybe what she craved most under the madness. Just these moments of unity and peace, a mother rocking her child to sleep with a lullaby.

She would try to remember that, Hayley promised herself, whenever she got too frightened or too angry. She
would try to remember what Amelia had lost, what had been stolen from her.

She tried “Hush, Little Baby,” because it pleased her she knew all the words. And Lily’s head was usually heavy on her shoulder by the time the song was finished.

She was nearly there when a movement at the doorway had her heart bumping her ribs. Then it stilled when Harper smiled in at her. In the same rusty, sing-song voice she was using for the lullabye, she warned him.

“She won’t go down if she sees you in here.”

He nodded, lingered another moment, then slipped away.

Humming, she rose to walk to the crib, tucking Lily in with her stuffed dog within cuddling reach. “When you’re three, Mama’ll get you a real puppy. Okay, when you’re two, but that’s my final offer. ’Night, baby.”

Leaving the night-light glowing, she left the baby sleeping. Harper turned from the terrace doors when she came in.

“That was a pretty picture, you and Lily rocking in the chair. Mama says she used to rock me and my brothers to sleep in that chair.”

“It’s why it feels so good. A lot of love’s sat in that rocker.”

“It’s cooler tonight, at least a little cooler. Maybe we could sit out for a while.”

“All right.” She picked up her bedside monitor, and went with him.

In front of the rail, there was a trio of huge copper pots, greening softly in the weather. She’d been charged with selecting and planting the flowers in them this year, and was always thrilled to see the thriving mix of color, shape, and texture.

“I don’t mind the heat, not this time of day anyway.” She leaned down to sniff a purple bloom. “The sun goes
down a little more, the lightning bugs’ll come out, and the cicadas’ll start singing.”

“Gave me a scare when Mama called earlier.”

“Guess so.”

“So here’s the thing.” He ran a hand absently along her arm. “You shouldn’t stay here after tonight. You can move on over to Logan’s tomorrow. Take some time off,” he continued as she turned to stare at him.

“Time off?”

“The nursery’s the same as Harper House, as far as this goes. Best you steer clear of both for a while. Mitch and I’ll see what we can do about tracing the bracelet, for what that’s worth.”

“Just pack up and move to Stella’s, quit work.”

“I didn’t say quit. Take some time off.”

There was such patience in his voice, the sort of patience that raised her hackles like fingernails on a blackboard.

“Some time.”

“Yeah. I talked to Mama about that, and to Stella about you staying with them for a while.”

“You did? You talked to them about it.”

He knew how a woman sounded when she was getting ready to tear a strip out of him. “No point getting your back up. This is the sensible thing to do.”

“So you figure the
sensible
thing is for you to make decisions for me, talk them over with other people, then present them to me on a platter?” Deliberately she took a step back, as if to illustrate she stood on her own feet. “You don’t tell me what to do, Harper, and I don’t leave this house unless Roz shows me the door.”

“No one’s kicking you out. What’s the damn big deal about staying with a friend for a while?”

It sounded so reasonable. It was infuriating. “Because
this is my home now. This is where I live, and the nursery is where I work.”

“And it’ll still be your home, still be where you live and where you work. For Christ’s sake, don’t be so pigheaded.”

The lash of temper delighted her. It meant she could lash right back. “Don’t you swear at me and call me names.”

“I’m not—” He bit off the rest of the words, rammed his hands in his pockets to stride up and down the terrace while he fought with his temper. “You said she was getting stronger. Why the hell would you stay here, risk what happens to you, when all you have to do is move a couple miles away? Temporarily.”

“How temporarily? Have you figured that out, too? I’m supposed to just sit around at Stella’s, twiddling my thumbs until you decide I can come back?”

“Till it’s safe.”

“How do you know when it’ll be safe, if it’ll ever be safe. And if you’re so damn worried, why aren’t you packing up?”

“Because I . . .” He cleared his throat, turned to glare out at the gardens.

“That was a wise move. Choking back any comment that resembled because you’re a man. But I saw it on your face.” She gave him a hard shove. “Don’t think I didn’t see what almost came out of your mouth.”

“Don’t tell me what almost came out of my mouth, and don’t put words into it. I want you somewhere I don’t have to worry about you.”

“Nobody’s asking you to worry. I’ve been taking care of myself for a lot of years now. I’m not so stupid, or so
pig-
headed that I’m not concerned about what’s been going on. But I’m also smart enough to consider that maybe I’m the last push. Maybe I’m what’s going to finish this. Roz
talked
to her, Harper. Next time maybe there’ll be answers
that tell us just what happened, and what needs to be done to make it right.”

“Next time? Listen to yourself. I don’t want her touching you.”

“It’s not your decision, and I’m no quitter. Do you know me so little you’d think I’d just, yes, Harper, and trot along like a nice little puppy?”

“I’m not trying to run your life, goddamn it, Hayley. I’m just trying to protect you.”

Of course, he was. And he looked so aggrieved, so frustrated, she had to sympathize. A little. “You can’t. Not this way. And the only thing that you’re going to accomplish by making plans around me that don’t include talking to me first is piss me off.”

“There’s a news flash. Just give me a week then. Just do this for a week and let me try to—”

“Harper, they took her child away. They drove her mad. Maybe she was heading there anyway, but they sure as hell gave her the last push over the edge. I’ve been part of this for over a year now. I can’t walk away from it.”

She lifted her hand, stroked the bracelet she continued to wear. “She showed me this. Somehow. I’m wearing what was hers. You gave it to me. It means something. I have to find out what that is. And I, very much, need to stay here with you.” She softened enough to touch his cheek. “You had to know I’d stay. What did your mother say when you said you were going to tell me to go to Stella’s?”

He shrugged, walked back to the terrace rail.

“Figured that. And Stella, I imagine said the same.”

“Logan agreed with me.”

“I bet he did.” She moved to him now, wrapped her arms around him, rested her cheek on his back.

He had a good, strong back. Working man, prince of the
castle. What a fascinating combination of both he was. “I appreciate the thought, if not the method. That help any?”

“Not so much.”

“How about it’s nice that you care enough about me to try to boss me around?”

“It’s not bossing you around to—” He broke off with a curse and a sigh when he turned to see her grinning at him. “You’re not going to budge.”

“Not an inch. I think some of the Ashby blood, even as diluted as it is in me, must have stubborn corpuscles. And I want to be a part of finding the answers to all this, Harper. It’s important to me, maybe more important now that I’ve shared a kind of consciousness with her. Boy, that sounds pretty woo-woo, but I don’t know how else to say it.”

“How about she invades you?”

Her face sobered. “All right, that’s fair. You’re still mad, and that’s fair, too. I guess I don’t mind knowing you’re worried enough about me to be mad.”

“If you’re going to be reasonable about this, it’s just going to piss me off more.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbed. “I do care about you, Hayley, and I am worried.”

“I know. Just remember I care about me, too, and worry enough to be as careful as I can be.”

“I’m going to stay with you tonight. I’m not budging about that.”

“Good thing that’s just where I want you. You know . . .” She slid her hands up his chest, linked them around his neck. “If we start fooling around, she might do something. So I think we ought to test that.” She rose on her toes, played her lips over his. “Like an experiment.”

“In my line of work I live for experiments.”

“Come on inside.” She stepped back, caught both his hands in hers. “We’ll set up the lab.”

L
ATER
,
WHEN THEY
lay turned toward each other in the dark, she brushed at his hair. “She didn’t seem to be interested this time.”

“You can’t predict a ghost who should be haunting an asylum.”

“Guess not.” She snuggled closer. “You’re a kind of scientist, right?”

“Kind of.”

“When scientists are experimenting, they usually have to try more than once, maybe with some slight varieties, over a course of time. I’ve heard.”

“Absolutely.”

“So.” She closed her eyes, all but purring at the stroke of his hand. “We’ll just have to try this again, at some opportunity. Don’t you think?”

“I do. And I think I hear opportunity knocking right now.”

She opened her eyes, laughed into his. “They don’t call that opportunity where I come from.”

D
AVID TURNED THE
map upside down, and ran a fingertip down a line of road. “We’re like detectives. Like Batman and Robin.”

“They weren’t detectives,” Harper corrected. “They were crime fighters.”

“Picky, picky. All right, like Nick and Nora Charles.”

“Just tell me where I turn, Nora.”

“Should be a right in about two miles.” David let the map lay on his lap and shifted to enjoy the scenery. “Now that we’re so hot on the trail of the mysterious jewels, just what are we going to do if and when we find out where the bracelet originally came from?”

“Knowledge is power.” Harper shrugged. “Something like that. And I’ve had enough of sitting around waiting for something to happen. The jeweler said it came from the Hopkins estate.”

“Cream cheese.”

“What? You’re hungry?”

“Cream cheese,” David repeated. “You spread it on smooth and thick. ‘My girlfriend really loved the bracelet. She’s got a birthday coming up soon, and since it was such a hit with her, I wondered if you had any matching pieces. Something from the same estate? That’s the Kent estate, isn’t it?’ Guy practically fell over himself to give you the information, even if he did try to sell you a couple of gaudy rings. Ethel Hopkins did not have flawless taste. You should’ve sprung for the earrings, though. Hayley would love them.”

“I just bought her a bracelet. Earrings are overkill at this point.”

“Your right’s coming up. Earrings are never overkill,” he added when Harper made the turn. “About a half mile down this road. Should be on the left.”

He pulled into a double drive beside a late-model Town Car, then sat tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as he studied the lay of the land.

The house was large and well-kept in an old, well-to-do neighborhood. It was a two-story English Tudor with a good selection of foundation plants, an old oak, and a nicely shaped dogwood in the front. The lawn was trimmed and lushly green, which meant lawn service or automatic sprinklers.

“Okay, what have we got here?” he queried. “Established, upper middle class.”

“Ethel’s only surviving daughter, Mae Hopkins Ives Fitzpatrick,” David read from the notes he’d taken from the courthouse records. “She’s seventy-six. Twice married, twice widowed. And you can thank me for digging that up so quickly due to my brilliant observation of Mitch’s methods.”

“Let’s see if we can charm our way in, then get her to tell us if she remembers when her mother came by the bracelet.”

They went to the door, rang the bell, and waited in the thick heat.

The woman who opened the door had a short, sleek cap of brown hair, and faded blue eyes behind the lenses of fashionable gold-framed glasses. She was tiny, maybe an inch over five feet, and workout trim in a pair of blue cotton pants and a crisp white camp shirt. There were pearls around her throat, whopping sapphires on the ring fingers of either hand, and delicate gold hoops in her ears.

“You don’t look like salesmen to me.” She spoke in a raspy voice and kept a hand on the handle of the screened door.

“No, ma’am.” Harper warmed up his smile. “I’m Harper Ashby, and this is my friend David Wentworth. We’d like to speak with Mae Fitzpatrick.”

“That’s what you’re doing.”

Genetic good luck or, more likely, a skilled plastic surgeon, Harper thought, had shaved a good ten years off her seventy-six. “I’m pleased to meet you, Miz Fitzpatrick. I realize this is an odd sort of intrusion, but I wonder if we might come in and have a word with you?”

The color of her eyes might have been faded, but the expression of them was sharp as a scalpel. “Do I look like the simpleminded sort of woman who lets strange men into her house?”

“No, ma’am.” But he had to wonder why a woman who claimed good sense would believe a screened door was any sort of barrier. “If you wouldn’t mind then, if I could just ask you a few questions regarding a—”

“Ashby, you said?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Any relation to Miriam Norwood Ashby?”

“Yes, ma’am. She was my paternal grandmother.”

“I knew her a little.”

“I can’t really claim the same.”

“Don’t expect so, as she’s been dead some time now. You’d be Rosalind Harper’s boy then.”

“Yes, ma’am, her oldest.”

“I’ve met her a time or two. First time being at her wedding to John Ashby. You have the look of her, don’t you?”

“I do. Yes, ma’am.”

She slid her eyes toward David. “This isn’t your brother.”

“A family friend, Miz Fitzpatrick,” David said with a full-wattage smile. “I live at Harper House, and work for Rosalind. Perhaps you’d feel more at ease if you contacted Miz Harper before you speak to us. We’d be happy to give you a number where you can reach her, and wait out here while you do.”

Instead she opened the screen. “I don’t believe Miriam Ashby’s grandson is going to knock me unconscious and rob me. Y’all come in.”

“Thank you.”

The house was as neat and well-tended as its mistress, with polished oak floors and muted green walls. She let them into a generous living room that was furnished in a contemporary, almost minimalistic style.

“I suppose you boys could use a cold drink.”

“We don’t want to put you to any trouble, Miz Fitzpatrick,” Harper told her.

“Sweet tea’s simple enough. Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Classy,” David commented when she left the room. “A bit pared down, but classy.”

“The place, or her?”

“Both.” He took a seat on the sofa. “Ashby-Harper is a very slick entree. Charm wouldn’t have worked on her.”

“Interesting she knew my grandmother—she’s some younger—and that she was invited to my mother’s wedding. All these little intersections. I wonder if one of her ancestors knew Reginald or Beatrice.”

“Coincidence is only coincidence if you don’t have an open mind.”

“Living with a ghost tends to leave it gaping.” Harper got to his feet as Mae came back with a tray of glasses. “Let me get that for you. We very much appreciate your time, Miz Fitzpatrick.” He set the tray on the coffee table. “I’ll try not to take up too much of it.”

“Your grandmother was a kindhearted woman. While I didn’t know her intimately, your grandfather and my first husband had a small business venture together many years ago. A real estate venture,” she added, “that was satisfactorily profitable for all involved. Now, why has her grandson come knocking on my door?”

“It has to do with a bracelet from your mother’s estate.”

She angled her head with polite interest. “My mother’s estate.”

“Yes, ma’am. It happens that I bought this bracelet from the jeweler who acquired it from the estate.”

“And is there something wrong with the bracelet?”

“No. No, ma’am. I’m hoping you might remember some of the history of it, as I’m very interested in its origins. I’m told it was made sometime around 1890. It’s made up of ruby hearts framed in diamonds.”

“Yes, I know the piece. I sold it and several others recently as they weren’t to my taste and saw no reason to have them sitting in a safety deposit box as they had been since my mother’s death some years ago.” She sipped her tea as she watched him. “You’re curious about its history?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”

“But not forthcoming with your reasons.”

“Oddly enough, I have reason to believe it—or one very like it—was in my family. When I discovered that, I found it interesting and thought satisfying my curiosity would be worth a little time in trying to trace it back.”

“Is that so? Now, that I find interesting. The bracelet was given by my grandfather to my grandmother in 1893, as an anniversary gift. It’s possible that there was more than one made, in that same design, at the time.”

“Yes, possibly.”

“There is, however, a story behind it, if you’d like to hear it.”

“I really would.”

She held out the plate of cookies she’d brought out with the tea, waited until each of the men had taken one. Then she settled back with a hint of a smile on her face. “My grandparents did not have a happy marriage, my grandfather being somewhat of a scoundrel. He enjoyed gambling and shady deals and the company of loose women—according to my grandmother, who lived to the ripe age of ninety-eight, so I knew her quite well.”

Rising, she walked to an étagère and took down a photo framed in slim silver.

“My grandparents,” she said, passing the photo to Harper. “A formal portrait taken in 1891. You can see, scoundrel or not, he was quite handsome.”

“Both are.” And, Harper noted, the style of dress, hair, even the photographic tone was similar to the copies of photographs Mitch had pinned to his workboard.

“She’s a beauty.” David glanced up. “You favor her.”

“So I’ve been told. Physically, and in temperament.” Obviously pleased, she took the photo, replaced it. “My grandmother claimed two of the happiest days of her life
were her wedding day, when she was too young and foolish to know what she was getting into, and the day she became a widow—some twelve years later, and could enjoy life without the burden of a man who couldn’t be trusted.”

She sat again, picked up her tea. “A handsome man, as you saw for yourselves. A charming man, by all accounts, and one who had considerable success with the gambling and the shady deals. But my grandmother was a moral sort of woman. One who managed to bend those morals, just enough to enjoy the results of her husband’s successes, even as she decried them.”

She set down her tea, sat back, obviously relishing her role. “She told the story, often, of discovering—during one of my grandfather’s drunken confessions that the anniversary gift—the ruby hearts—had come from a somewhat less than reputable source. He had acquired it in a payoff of a gambling debt from a man who bought jewelry and so forth on the cheap from those unfortunate or desperate enough to have to sell their possessions quickly. Often, more likely, from those who had stolen those possessions and used him as a fence.”

She smiled broadly now, no doubt relishing the thought. “It had belonged to a wealthy man’s mistress, and was stolen from her by one of the servants after she had been cut off by him. The story, as my grandmother claimed it was told to her, was that the woman had gone raving mad, and had subsequently vanished.”

She reached for her tea, sipped. “I always wondered if that story was true.”

H
ARPER WENT TO
his mother first, and knelt down beside her in the gardens at home. Absently, he began to help her weed.

“I heard you took some time off today,” she began.

“I had something I wanted to do. Why aren’t you wearing a hat?”

“I forgot it. I was only going to come out for a minute, then I got started.”

He pulled off the ballcap he wore, tugged it down over her head. “Do you remember how so many times after school, if I was working out here when you came home, you’d sit down beside me, help me weed or plant and tell me your troubles, or your triumphs of the day?”

“I remember you were always here to listen. To me, to Austin and Mason. Sometimes to all three of us at once. How’d you do that?”

“A mother’s got an ear for the voices of her children. Like a conductor for each separate instrument in his orchestra, even in the middle of a symphony. What are your troubles, baby boy?”

“You were right about Hayley.”

“I make being right a policy. What was I right about exactly?”

“That she wouldn’t move over to Logan’s because I asked her to.”

Under the bill, Roz’s eyebrows arched. “Asked her?”

“Asked her, told her.” He shrugged. “What’s the difference when you’ve got the person’s welfare in mind?”

She let out a husky laugh, patted her dirty hands on his cheeks. “Such a man.”

“A minute ago I was your baby boy.”

“My baby boy is such a man. I don’t see that as a flaw. An amusement sometimes—such as now—a puzzlement now and then, and on rare occasions a damned irritation. Are you fighting? It didn’t seem to me you were at odds when you came down to breakfast together this morning.”

“No, we’re all right. If you don’t like me sleeping with her in the house, I get that.”

“So you’ll respect the sanctity of our home and sleep with her elsewhere?”

“Yeah.”

“I slept with men I wasn’t married to in Harper House. It’s not a cathedral, it’s a home. Yours as much as mine. If you’re having sex with Hayley, you might as well have it comfortably. And safely,” she added with a direct look.

Even after all these years, it made his shoulders hunch. “I buy my own condoms these days.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“And that isn’t what I wanted to get into. I traced the bracelet back to Amelia.”

Those eyes widened as she sat back on her heels. “You did? That was fast work.”

“Fast work, coincidence, lucky break. I’m not sure where it falls. It came from the estate of an Esther Hopkins. She’s been dead a few years now, apparently, and her daughter decided to go ahead and sell some of the things she didn’t like, or care to keep. Mae Fitzpatrick. She said she knew you.”

“Mae Fitzpatrick.” Roz closed her eyes and tried to flip through the vast mental files of acquaintances. “I’m sorry, it doesn’t seem familiar.”

“She was married before. Wait a minute . . . Ives?”

“Mae Ives doesn’t ring bells either.”

“Well, she said she’d only met you a couple of times. Once was when you married Daddy. She was at your wedding.”

“Is that a fact? Well, that’s interesting, but not all that surprising. I think between my mama and John’s we had everybody in Shelby County and most of Tennessee at the wedding.”

“She knew Grandma Ashby.”

He sat on the garden path with her and told her of the conversation he’d had with Mae Fitzpatrick.

“Amazing, isn’t it,” she mused. “All those little angles and curls, and how they fit together.”

“I know. Mama, she had it figured. Too well-bred to say it right out, but she put it together, about Reginald Harper being the wealthy protector who’d cast his mistress off. She’s likely to talk about it.”

“And you think that bothers me? Honey, the fact that my great-grandfather had mistresses, that he kept women, tossed them aside, and lived a life generally rife with infidelity isn’t a reflection on me, or you. His behavior isn’t our responsibility, which is something I sincerely wish Amelia would realize.”