The Dark House (28 page)

“Anyone home?” Rollins called again. Finally, he heard footsteps slowly coming his way through the dining room and an elderly woman in blue appeared. There was a moment's pause as Rollins strained to recognize her, and, evidently, vice versa. “Edward?” she called out at last. “Gracious sakes alive. Is that you?”

“Alice?” Rollins replied.

It was indeed Alice Farnsworth, the house's longtime caretaker. Rollins remembered her from his own childhood, although she must have been well into her sixties now. She gave him a hug, then took a step back from him to declare that he hadn't changed a bit, while they both smiled at the obvious untruth of such a statement.

Alice's gaze turned to Marj and Heather, standing together a few steps back. Rollins quickly introduced his “two friends.” Then, seeing Heather's impatience, he added: “We're very eager to go to the beach.”

“Well, come on, then. Tide's just coming in.” Seeing they lacked towels, Alice went to get some from the linen cabinet upstairs. When she returned, she explained that his Arnold cousins were off sailing at the yacht club, and she filled him in on exactly which members of the
family had come. The older two, Whit and Geena, had each brought “special friends,” Alice said with raised eyebrows. “Your grandfather would never have stood it.” Unlike his grandmother, his grandfather, also long dead, had always been a strict constructionist where propriety was concerned. Rollins thought he should translate for Marj, explaining who was who, but her eyes seemed slightly glazed, and he let it go. Finally, Heather plucked loudly at the hem of her bathing suit, and Alice handed him the towels. She offered to find some trunks for him, but he didn't think he was up for a dip just now. Alice said nothing to Marj, but she told Alice, “I don't need anything either, thanks.” Alice looked mystified for a moment and sent them on their way.

 

“I don't think that woman liked me,” Marj told Rollins as they set off across the road and down a narrow earthen path through a field of wildflowers to the beach. The sun's warmth seemed to radiate off the hard-packed ground as they ambled along.

“She just doesn't know you,” Rollins reassured her.

“You didn't do too much to fix that, now did you?” she snapped, and then, leaving him to ponder that, she went on ahead with Heather.

Rollins caught up to them at the bluff, where they took in the view of the long beach, very wide now at low tide. Although the Arnolds owned the meadow, the beach itself was public, and there was a motley array of bathers with parasols, radios, Frisbees, and air mattresses scattered about. Marj led Heather down a weather-beaten staircase, and, with Heather beckoning, Rollins followed. He found a secluded spot to lay out a couple of the towels. But Heather ran on down to the water, with Marj trailing after. Holding his hand up against the sun, Rollins watched Heather hop up with a shout when a wave splashed over her feet, then run shrieking from what must have been a sand crab. He could see Marj hold up a tiny wriggling creature and make reassuring gestures. In moments, Heather came racing back to him to plop her teddy bear down on Rollins' towel and beg him to come down with her. “You have to!” she cried as she reached down and gave Rollins' hand a yank. “Please?”

“Oh, all right.” He reluctantly removed his shoes and rolled up the
pant legs of his new trousers, and followed her down. Neely had played here as a teenager, years ago. She was fleet-footed and a wonderful swimmer. But with Heather there, and Marj watching, he couldn't form a clear memory. Did she wear a bikini? Flip-flops? Did her nose burn? Any image of her kept dissolving to the sight of Marj in her running clothes bending down to Heather, now holding up a starfish. Distracted, Rollins nearly jumped when an icy wavelet splashed up toward him and lapped at his toes. He couldn't believe that the water had always been this cold.

Marj started laughing.

“What?” Rollins asked.

“You! You're such a geek.” Marj mimed him reacting to the frigid water.

“It's cold.”

“Oh, please.”

“Come
on
, everybody!” Heather grabbed Rollins' hand, then Marj's, and tugged them a few more steps into the water. It wasn't too bad, once his feet went numb, and Rollins enjoyed feeling the water swish past his ankles. But after a rogue wave drenched a few inches of his pants, he declared he'd had enough and retreated to higher ground.

He returned to his towels on the soft sand with Heather's teddy beside him. The nearby boom boxes were annoying, and it was irritating to have a wet dog shake itself dry right next to him, which soon happened. Yet, as he stretched out his legs, and drew his hands up under his head, and felt the sun beat down on him, he recalled the long games of Frisbee, the kite-flying and sandcastle-making from his own childhood vacations here, invariably delicious breaks from the lonesome monotony of home, and he realized just how pleasant it could be to pass a summer day at the beach. He could see why his grandparents had bought the house, and why the family had kept it all these years. He might try to come back here himself one summer. With Marj, perhaps, now that they seemed to be out of jobs. Maybe he'd even figure out a way to bring Heather along.

Down by the water's edge, Heather and Marj flitted about like a couple of butterflies—Marj in her pink and red, Heather in her shiny
blue suit. Both of them flapped their arms girlishly as they chased after the retreating water, then, with nearly identical squeals, scurried back ahead of the onrushing waves. They seemed to be enjoying each other, Rollins was glad to see. He glanced up once or twice. But the sun's warmth was soothing, and the sea sounds were oddly restful, once you ignored the shouts of all the other sunbathers. Rollins rolled up his sleeves, and pulled his pant legs up a little more, and lay back again to let the warm summer air lull him. The sky was a deep blue, with wispy clouds sailing across it. He mused sleepily about the three of them. Were they a kind of family? He felt himself smile at the thought.

He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the sun was much higher in the sky, and the left side of his face felt raw and hot with sunburn. He raised himself up a little and saw that he, the teddy, and the towel he'd been lying on were surrounded by a narrow trench that was half-filled with water. And Heather was squatting beside him, laboring with a clamshell, busy diverting the rising tide from his little circle of sand. “You better not move, mister, or you'll get wet.”

Rollins tried to focus on his watch. Could it really be almost twelve? Had two whole hours passed? “Why didn't you wake me?” He worried about Tina coming back and finding Heather gone.

“The lady said she'd worn you out last night.” Heather continued to deepen the moat around him. Still, the tide sent occasional waves up over the moat's interior restraining walls, soaking the backs of Rollins' heels.

How could he have been so careless? He recalled, now, that he'd just been contemplating his own paternal status when he drifted off—and then he'd jettisoned his paternal responsibilities. He squeezed his eyes tight to push the sleep from his mind, then climbed to his feet and looked about. “Where is she, anyway?” A knot of worry tightened in his gut.

Heather stood beside him and shrugged. “I don't know.”

An upwelling of irritation. “What do you mean, you don't know?”

“I don't.”

“She didn't tell you where she was going?”

“I was kinda busy.” She squatted back down to return to her work.

Shielding his eyes from the bright sky, Rollins scanned the beach more carefully, but there was no sign of Marj. He made a megaphone of his hands and shouted for her—“Marj!
Marj
!” Heather put her fingers into her ears and a number of the bathers around him turned toward him. Rollins' bowels felt as if they were twisted.

He led Heather farther down the beach, searching for Marj and calling. They went well past the last clump of bathers, two or three hundred yards distant. But he saw no sign of her. He called for Marj again, and waited for a return shout. But he heard only the sound of the sea pounding on the beach, and the cries of seagulls. He shouted again, louder. His yell sounded desperate, even to him. Teddy in hand, Heather shouted, too, at a higher pitch.

Fear gnawed at him, and Rollins turned to the little girl. “You remember that friend of your mother's, Jerry Sloane?”

Heather scowled. “He's mean. He called me ‘kid.'”

“You didn't see him on the beach, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Did you see anyone else you recognized?”

She nodded. “Yup.”

Frightened, Rollins grabbed her with both hands. “Who was it?”

“You!” Heather gave him a big smile. “Fooled ya!”

Rollins glanced at his watch. It was twelve-thirty now. “Damn.” He led Heather back the other way, searching and calling. The little girl chugged alongside, kicking up little puffs of sand as she went. Rollins' feet were raw from the sand, and his lungs heaved.

“Uh-oh!” Heather pointed to the moat as they passed it by. Rollins had left his shoes and socks inside it, but the tide had risen up over its banks to lap at the soles of the shoes.

Rollins hurried past without a word.

With Heather scrambling after him, Rollins continued on down the beach, past one spit of sand reaching down to the water, then another. Finally, Heather pointed. “Look!” Then she scurried ahead. When Rollins caught up, Heather was holding Marj's pink top in her hands.

Rollins took it from her without a word. The material was so loose and light in his hands.

“Hey, look, over there!” Heather pointed to Marj's red shorts that were just a few feet above the reach of the water. Rollins looked out to sea, and he saw a figure out in the surf, barely outlined against the fierce glint of the water under the high sun. Rollins saw an arm flash, then he heard a shout. “Hey, what time is it?”

“Marj?”

A glistening woman, obviously female, pushed through the water toward him, rising as she came. She was in her underwear, but, soaked through, they did little to cover her.

Rollins put his hand over Heather's eyes.

“Hey, I'm decent.” It
was
Marj. “Jeez.”

Rollins nearly threw himself on her, even though she was soaking, he was so glad to see her. But Marj stepped away from him, and flicked her head back to shake the water from her hair. “You bring one of those towels?”

Rollins had left them inside the moat; they were probably sopping by now, or gone. Heather handed the top to Marj, who awkwardly pulled it over her wet, sticky skin. She had to hop a little on the sand to get into her shorts. “God, the body-surfing's incredible here! With all the wind, the waves were
perfect
.”

“We were worried about you, you know,” Rollins said.

“We were calling and calling,” Heather added.

“I'm sorry.” She said it lightly, as if their fears couldn't have been a big deal. “I had to go way off since I didn't have my suit.”

“You might have borrowed one.”

“It would have been a hundred years old.”

“We thought maybe some guy got you,” Heather said.

“Out here? Nah. No way.” Marj plucked her shirt loose from where it stuck to her skin.

Despite her assurances, Rollins and Heather each held a hand of Marj's as they made their way back up the beach to retrieve Rollins' things.

 

The Arnolds had returned from the morning races and had settled themselves around the big table for lunch when Rollins, Marj, and
Heather returned to the house. He needed to call Schecter, but the cousins, a little boisterous after what must have been a good showing out on the water, gave out a big shout when they saw Rollins come in. Uncle Lloyd demanded that he come over and introduce his “family,” as he put it. Rollins explained that he and Marj weren't married, actually, nor was Heather his daughter. “Marj works with me at Johnson,” Rollins explained, remembering Marj's annoyance that he hadn't been so forthcoming before, “and Heather's a neighbor.”

“Got the day off today, have you?” Lloyd asked.

“Something like that.” He glanced at Marj.

“Oh, playing hooky?”

From the loudness of their inquiries, Rollins figured they had been making good use of the sweating Heinekens that were grouped on a silver tray in the middle of the table.

“I didn't think you'd run off and gotten married on us,” said Wick, a robust-looking thirty-something whom Rollins last remembered as a pimply adolescent.

“Not like your father,” Lloyd added. “Where's he hiding out these days? It's been years since I've laid eyes on him. What's going on there, you have any idea?”

“Actually, I have kind of lost touch with him myself.” He thought of his father in Schecter's photographs. The whole table quieted, and a few heads shook sorrowfully.

Marie, in her soft French accent, followed by asking about Cornelia, as if there were a natural link between one disappearance and another.

“Neely?” Rollins asked, to make sure he understood correctly.

Marie nodded in that brisk French way, and the room went still once more, except for Heather, who was swinging Marj's hand. Rollins tried to close out the conversation by saying that he didn't know anything more than he'd written in the
Beacon
story, which he assumed they'd all seen. But the family only asked more questions. Even the “special friends”—a stunning redhead who seemed to belong to Whit, and a handsome blond fellow who sat beside Geena—chimed in. They all wanted to know: Where could Neely be? Was she really dead? Per
haps Rollins' status as an expert on the case freed them to raise a topic that would otherwise have been off-limits. Nevertheless, it distressed him to hear the vast house—a place where Neely still seemed so alive—ring with such questions. The very sounds seemed to be driving her away again, out into oblivion. Rollins was able to silence them only by declaring that he was about to call a detective who might, in fact, have news for him about the case.