Someone in the House (13 page)

“I thought you said it wasn’t dangerous,” I said, trying to ignore the icy prickle that ran down my back.

“I never said that. I said it wasn’t hostile. That doesn’t mean it may not be dangerous. It is. Damned dangerous.”

II

We were the last ones to leave the restaurant. When the waitresses started standing around coughing suggestively in chorus, Roger took the hint. We had not by any means finished our argument; it continued to rage as we stood by our respective cars in the almost empty parking lot.

I wasn’t an active participant. I just made remarks now and then, taking one side or the other—remarks that both combatants ignored. They finally hammered out a compromise of sorts. Bea agreed to wait till next day before talking to Father Stephen. She also agreed to let Roger carry out an experiment that night.

It seemed to me that the compromise was pretty one-sided, with Bea doing all the giving in. When I mentioned this, Roger swept my comment aside with a gesture of lofty disdain.

“If I had my way, Steve wouldn’t be involved at all,” he said. “Never mind; hopefully, tonight I will get enough evidence to settle your silly little fears, my darling.”

Bea looked as if she were tempted to reply to his endearment with a shorter, pithier epithet, but curiosity overcame her resentment. “What precisely are you planning?” she asked.

“Wait and see.” Roger rubbed his hands together and chuckled. “Just play along with me when I turn up this evening. I’ll feed you the appropriate cues.”

On that unsatisfactory note we parted. It was a good thing I was driving. It gave Bea a chance to vent her feelings, which she did by stamping her feet and clenching her hands.

“Men!” she exclaimed.

“Annoying creatures,” I agreed.

The corners of Bea’s mouth twitched. She laughed ruefully. “I really like him, Anne.”

“I thought you did.”

“What do you think of him?”

“I like him too. I’m happy for you, Bea.”

“I don’t want to act prematurely,” Bea said, half to herself. “It would be a mistake to jump into anything too soon.”

“That makes sense.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Feel free.”

“If I’m out of line say so. But I’ve wondered, sometimes, why you and Kevin haven’t become closer—romantically, I mean. You seem so well suited. Is there someone else?”

“There was. To tell you the truth, I don’t know where I stand with Joe—or vice versa. He got a grant to work abroad this summer. Up to the time he left there was a tacit assumption, on my part, at least, that we would get back together again in the fall. The night before he left—”

Bea broke the silence. “Something happened?”

“Yes,” I said in a choked voice, remembering my sudden, senseless terror, my clinging and whining. Could that bizarre incident be connected with the thing that haunted Grayhaven? A premonition of danger—or the first sign of incipient mental or physical breakdown?

Seeing my look of consternation, Bea began to murmur apologies.

“It wasn’t anything you said,” I assured her. “I just remembered something that…I’ll have to think about it. So far as my relations with Kevin are concerned—” I broke off as a horrible suspicion occurred to me. “Bea! You aren’t by any chance thinking that I ought to throw myself at Kevin to get his mind off his imaginary lady?”

“You must have thought of it yourself,” Bea said coolly. “You wouldn’t have reached that conclusion so quickly if the idea had not passed through your mind.”

“I suppose it did. We keep coming back, don’t we, to the suspicion—the hope, even—that Kevin is suffering from some kind of sexual psychosis. It would be so much easier to accept than the alternatives. But Bea—even if that were the case, which I don’t really believe, I’ve got better sense than to suppose my questionable charms could cure anything as serious as that. Besides…”

“Well?”

My hands clenched on the wheel. “If Kevin made love to me…I’d never be sure it was really me he was holding.”

That was as far as I could go toward the truth. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Bea how I really felt about Kevin. She had not seen his dream girl dissolve into a squirming mass of flesh. What I said was bad enough. She flinched as if I had slapped her.

“I understand,” she said.

“I’m sorry if I—”

“Let’s stop apologizing to each other, shall we? I have a feeling we are going to be saying and doing a lot of things that may be misinterpreted. We must take one another’s goodwill and good intentions for granted.”

It was an excellent suggestion. I only hoped we could live up to it.

Kevin was not in the house when we arrived. It seemed a good time to carry out Roger’s idea that I change rooms—an idea with which I was in enthusiastic accord. I selected a room next to Bea’s. As I trotted back and forth with armloads of clothes and books, I decided this would be my last move in that house. If my clothes went traveling again, they would go in suitcases and to a considerable distance.

One might well ask why I didn’t pack up then and there. I had so many reasons that a psychiatrist would probably have told me that none was the real reason. For one thing, I had nowhere else to go. I had sublet my apartment. The family homestead was swarming with young siblings and their obnoxious friends—I didn’t even have a room of my own anymore; I had to share my kid sister’s. Also, I didn’t like the implication of copping out—of leaving Bea, whom I liked, and Kevin, who was a friend, in the lurch.

There was another reason—the true reason—but I hadn’t defined it, or recognized it, then.

It didn’t take long to transfer my things. Kevin still had not put in an appearance. I decided to go down to the pool and see if he was there. The idea of a swim was attractive, but I wasn’t sure I could stand our old horseplay without having a fit of hysterics.

Kevin was at the pool. I heard him before I saw him. I heard something else that made me go weak at the knees. It was a girl’s voice—light, high, laughing.

I stood petrified for a moment, breathing hard, and then the sounds sorted themselves out. There were several voices, not just two, raised in laughter and shrieks of general joie de vivre.

The pool area was surrounded by an eight-foot fence, as required by local ordinance. Kevin was always careful to lock the gate when we were not swimming. Now it stood open. I approached it warily, ready to retreat.

I was so used to swimming alone with Kevin that at first glance the water seemed full of bodies. There were only four of them, really—Kevin and three females. Another girl was stretched out on a bright beach towel sunning herself. She had untied the straps of her bikini top to avoid nasty white streaks. Her face was hidden in her arm, but I recognized her hips: Dr. Garst’s niece.

My knees went weak again, this time with relief. I felt silly. I ought to have anticipated this. As I believe I have mentioned, little Miss Leila had thrown out some very broad hints. Tired of waiting for an invitation that never came, she had simply invited herself, and had brought along some friends.

I sat down at one of the tables scattered along the pool edge. I sat there for several minutes before Kevin saw me. He seemed to be having a jolly time. What man wouldn’t with three almost naked females climbing all over him? One in particular caught my eye—and, I thought, had caught Kevin’s. She had long blond hair that streamed out artistically in the water or wrapped itself around her face, effectively obscuring that part of her a good deal of the time. The rest of her was under water. I got an impression of a slim, tanned body wearing the skimpiest of black bikinis.

When Kevin spotted me he let out a whoop of welcome and swam toward me. His harem followed like ducklings after mama. He pulled himself out of the water and sat down, shaking his wet head.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Have a nice lunch?”

“Yes.”

“Some people dropped in.”

“So I see.”

The girls stood in studiedly casual attitudes. The blonde wrung out her hair. Garst’s niece sat up. Her bikini top fell off. She grabbed at it, but not very fast.

“You know Leila,” Kevin said. “This is Debbie.” He indicated the blonde. “Mary Sue, and—er—”

“Er” told me her name. I never saw her again, so there is no reason why that name should encumber these pages, even if I could remember it, which I can’t.

“Do you live around here?” I asked, making polite conversation and addressing all three impartially.

“We’re staying with Leila,” said Mary Sue, or maybe “er.”

“My sorority sisters,” said Leila.

“How nice,” I said.

“We’re having a wonderful time,” said Mary Sue. “This is beautiful country.”

Poor little things; they kept chattering brightly, casting frequent glances at Kevin to see if he was impressed. The only one who didn’t talk was Debbie. She had acknowledged the introduction with a smile and then spread herself out on a chaise longue, one slim arm over her eyes. Her face was pretty, in a conventional sort of way—the clean-cut American girl who appears in commercials selling makeup and cameras. She was smarter than the others, I thought, withdrawing instead of hovering. But maybe she knew she had already won the first round. Kevin’s eyes kept wandering in her direction.

After I had been polite to the girls I took my swim and then my departure. They stayed for another couple of hours. At least it was that long before Kevin came in. I was in the kitchen peeling potatoes.

“There you are. Just wanted to tell you I won’t be here for dinner.”

“Oh. Got a date?”

Kevin had never looked more relaxed or more normal. His face wore the cocky grin assumed by the male of the species when he thinks he has made a conquest. “Clever deduction,” he said.

“Debbie?”

Kevin’s smirk assumed disgusting proportions. I suppose he thought I was jealous. “Rejected and crushed by my first choice, I am on the rebound.” He gave me a look of burning passion, clutched his brow, and staggered. It was a devastating imitation of the performance given by the Drama major who had played Hamlet in our spring production.

“She does look like Ophelia,” I said maliciously. “All that droopy hair.”

“Meow, meow,” said Kevin.

He left and I went back to my potatoes, then stopped peeling because I had more than enough already if he wasn’t eating with us. It had happened again—a violent swing back to normalcy after all my uneasy surmises and fears. Or was it possible that Kevin knew he had given himself away and was throwing out a smoke screen? If he was, he was giving a better performance than our Hamlet. Admittedly, that is not saying a great deal.

Bea came bustling in, apologizing for being late to start dinner. I told her Kevin wouldn’t be with us and told her why. Her first reaction was typical aunt.

“Who is the girl?”

“All I know is her name and what she looks like, and that she is a sorority sister of Dr. Garst’s niece.”

“Humph,” said Bea.

“You said it,” I agreed.

Kevin was upstairs for a long time. He looked very neat and trim when he popped in to say good night to Bea. He even smelled of one of those ridiculous men’s colognes that are supposed to perform like the best aphrodisiacs. Bea admired him and straightened his collar and tweaked at his sleeve. After he had left, with a swagger in his walk and a whistle on his lips, Bea and I decided it was too hot to cook. She made a salad while I fed the animals. A little thing like temperature didn’t interfere with their appetites. I lined up the food bowls in a row and stepped back to escape the rush. The kitten elbowed its way in next to the Irish setter, and for a few minutes there was no sound except vulgar gulping. Studying the line of furry rumps, I was struck with an idea.

“Aren’t animals supposed to be sensitive to supernatural presences?”

“So I’ve heard,” said Bea, slicing tomatoes.

“This crowd doesn’t seem to have been affected.”

“That’s true,” Bea said thoughtfully. “Mention that to Roger, Anne. It’s definitely an argument against his ridiculous theory.”

I thought it didn’t do much for her theory either, but I didn’t say so. Roger certainly would.

A row of buzzers on the wall next to the fireplace was a survival from the days when every house had a full staff of servants. None was ever used except the one that was hooked up to the front door. There was a doorbell; I just hadn’t seen it the day of my arrival, since it was unobtrusively buried in the wood. The sound of the bell was so shrill and penetrating it always made me jump. This time Bea jumped too. It gave me a hint of the strain hidden beneath her appearance of calm.