The Ice Cradle (29 page)

“He’s up,” Henry said.

Declan probably
was
up, but still.

“Let’s wait a little while,” I whispered. “Come here.” I pulled him close and attempted to adjust the blankets around him.

“No!” He squirmed away. “You said we could and we didn’t. I have to talk to Daddy!”

I opened my eyes fully. “Why?” I asked.

“I had a dream.”

“What kind of dream?”

“A bad guy got him. At work.”

“Oh.” I sat up. Recently, Henry’s concept of what his dad did for a living had undergone an adjustment. For a long time, he seemed to imagine that the work of a Boston police detective
resembled that of Michael, the friendly cop in
Make Way for Ducklings
. Michael lined up police protection so Mrs. Mallard could lead her babies across Beacon Street to meet the ducklings’ father in the Public Garden. About a year ago, there appeared to be a brief transition in Henry’s imagination, chiefly having to do with police on horseback and police on motorcycles, but lately, he had somehow come to understand that guns and knives and “bad guys” in speeding cars are often in play.

We’d tried to tackle his fears head-on, joking about Daddy’s spending all day long at the computer or drinking coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, but at a certain point, this was insulting. Declan
did
have a dangerous job. Not as dangerous as undercover drug work, maybe, but he still spent a fair share of his time in rough neighborhoods, where routine encounters could turn dangerous, if not fatal, on a dime.

I had never gotten used to this, not really, so I could hardly expect Henry not to worry. Dec wouldn’t want him to be anxious, either, so I decided to give in to Henry’s plea. I threw back the covers, located my purse on the floor, and pulled out my cell phone. Luckily, I had a little power left. I dialed Declan’s number and handed the phone to Henry.

This was what Henry said.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Yup.”

“Nope.”

“No.”

Now he smiled and looked over at me.

“Yeah.”

“Today. We got the car done.”

“Greased Lightnin’.”

“Red, with, like, fire.”

“I think tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.”

Henry handed me the phone.

“Hey there,” I said. “Sorry to call so early. He had a bad dream.”

“I was up,” Dec said.

“And I think he misses you,” I added, aware as I said it that this would embarrass both Henry and Declan. Normally, Henry would be at Dec and Kelly’s right now. He’s almost never gone this long without seeing his dad.

“He’ll be home soon enough,” Dec said, a little gruffly, just to demonstrate that he wasn’t going to encourage this namby-pamby missing Daddy business.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Oh, fine, yeah. You?”

“Good. Quite the week.”

“Yeah?”

“There was a fire where we’re staying. Well, out in the barn, I mean.” I glanced over at Henry and covered the phone with my hand. “It was set,” I whispered.

Dec’s professional skepticism kicked right in. “How do you know
that?”

“Fire marshall,” I said, hoping that if I spoke elliptically, Henry wouldn’t tune in and start asking questions. I watched him as he got up, padded over to the bathroom, and closed the door behind him.

“No kidding,” Dec said, and I suddenly wanted to tell him the whole story, right then and there.

“I wish you were here,” I blurted out, now embarrassing myself.

Dec was silent. We always steer a very wide berth around the subject of our feelings for each other. What we’d had had been great, but in the end, he’d gone back to Kelly, and now, in addition to Henry, there were Delia and Nell in our odd little ensemble. This was never going to change, I told myself. Unless Kelly died, which was a horrible, terrible, unthinkable thought that I sometimes still had.

“Because we need a real detective,” I hastily added. “There’s something weird going on.”

I imagined Dec perking up.

“What?” he asked, anxious to establish that I wished he were here not because
I wished he were here
, but because a professional detective might be able to make sense of some suspicious goings-on.

While Henry dawdled in the bathroom, I told Dec all about Rawlings and the wind farm and the speeding Subaru, about the accelerants in the bottles’ matching the samples from the barn, and about the girl at the party who bought her clothes at the Salvation Army store in Back Bay.

“You get a name?” he asked.

“Elsa Corbett.”

“License plate on the car?”

“No, but I might be able to.”

“Do,” he said. “Call me and I’ll run both the name and the number.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“What do
you
think it’s all about?” he went on.

“I don’t know.”

“Got a gut feeling?”

Dec was big on gut feelings. Far from considering them to be insubstantial intuitions, he believed they were a form of
superior knowledge and far more likely to be proven correct than many a rational hypothesis.

“I think it’s all got to do with the wind farm,” I ventured. “Lots of people oppose it for all kinds of reasons. The controversy’s made for some pretty strange bedfellows.”

He didn’t say anything, so I asked, “What do
you
think?”

“You’re probably right,” he said.

We chatted for a few more moments. I promised to call him later with the license plate number of the Subaru, if I could get it, and then we hung up. Henry was running a bath for himself, and after peeking in and concluding that he had matters under control, I decided to crawl back under the covers. Not to sleep, but to think.

I thought about Dec. And Bert. I always did this, sooner or later, and there had never been a contest: Dec was always smarter, kinder, better looking, braver, nicer to waitresses and small animals, and in every significant way superior to the lunkhead or poseur with whom I had recently taken up. I used to do the side-by-side after the first real date, until my friend Nat convinced me that I had to give the poor helpless fellow a fighting chance. Now I try to wait. Three dates, four. But even before then, I start to imagine what it would be like to introduce Dec to my new flame, the fancy-schmancy lawyer or the post-post-post doc in cultural anthropology. I always imagine Dec’s expression betraying his reaction, which is somewhere along the spectrum between “You’ve got to be kidding me” and “Huh?”

I hadn’t really been on a date with Bert, but we’d had several meals together, I trusted him implicitly with Henry, and I’d seen plenty of evidence that he was a real guy’s guy—my type. It had to have been hell losing his wife, so he wasn’t a
stranger to grief and tragedy, yet he didn’t trot it out the minute you met him, or even a week after you met him. He was funny and self-deprecating and not at all the victim. He liked his sister. He wasn’t weirded out by my traffic with ghosts; in fact, he didn’t even ask for explanations. He was close to Mark and Lauren. He brought people fish. He showed Mavis’s dog who was in charge, with a steak and not a harpoon. And he was gorgeous.
And
he didn’t seem to know it.

I cautiously conjured up an image of Dec. I nervously imagined Bert. Then what happened was a first for me.

Dec turned to Bert, extended his hand, and said, “Grab a beer?”

The ferry carrying Mark and the ghost detectives was due to arrive in an hour. I had deposited Henry—well rested, excited, and full of peach-pecan pancakes—at the school at five minutes of ten. The final dress rehearsal was scheduled to run until one o’clock, after which there was going to be a pizza party in the cafeteria. After a little fine-tuning based on the morning’s run-through, the curtain would go up on
Grease
at four o’clock.

I hurried back to the Grand View and dashed up the stairs. I wanted to be sure that neither Vivi nor Baden was on the premises, and I had to look at the novel that had first saddled the inn with the reputation of being haunted. I’d been trying to get to it all week, but every time I picked it up, I got interrupted.

According to Lauren, Wicklow had written about a ghost who looked like Abraham Lincoln, and another with her hands pressed to her ears. I hadn’t come across them in the week since
I’d arrived, but I wanted to read what the author had actually said, in case I was missing a detail that could prove to be important. Thankfully, no one was around; Lauren had left me a note explaining that she had a couple of errands to run and then would pick up Mark and the ghost detectives when the boat came in at 11:10. They’d be back here by eleven thirty at the latest. I didn’t have a minute to lose.

I flopped down on the bed and examined the book. The cover illustration could have been done by Edward Gorey. It showed a night sky filled with ominous storm clouds above the roofline and upper story of a building, presumably the Grand View. The windows glowed with a sickly yellow light. At one, the silhouette of a man wearing a black top hat and a formal jacket faced into the room. From out of the other window hung the tortured form of the female phantom, her hands stuck firmly to her ears. Spindly, leafless trees hugged the building, and the typeface of the title looked like antique comic book print. I opened the novel and inhaled that old-book scent that I love, equal parts dust and mildew.

I skimmed it as fast as I could. I couldn’t comprehend the plot, flying along at this speed, but I did find descriptions of the ghosts, and Lauren had been right. They had allegedly appeared at the foot of the bed that used to occupy the room where I had first met Baden, the room with the evergreen wallpaper. I got up and crossed the hall. I opened the door to that room. It was deserted.

I decided to see if Baden was in the barn, where we had agreed he would wait for me. As I came down the steps to the first floor and headed down the hall and into the kitchen, I encountered not Baden, but Vivi. She was sitting in the rocking chair by the woodstove, apparently in a perfectly fine
mood. Nearby, Frances was asleep on her massive cat bed, round and peaceful and purring quietly. I was surprised to find myself feeling very warmly toward the ample feline, seeing how calm Vivi was in her presence. I’ve never been much of a cat person, but then again, I’ve never had a cat. I wasn’t much of a kid person until I had Henry.

“Hi!” I said to Vivi.

“Hi. Where is he?”

“Henry? He’s at school. They’re getting ready to do their play.”

“What’s that?” she asked, indicating the book.

I smiled. “A story about ghosts.”

“Me?” she asked.

I paused. Was she asking if it was about her or if she was a ghost?

“Well,” I said. “A writer came to stay here one time and he wrote a book about two ghosts he said were here.”

“Who?”

“A tall man in a top hat.”

“Mr. Nivens,” Vivi announced matter-of-factly.

“Who?”

“Mr.
Nivens,”
she said, showing a flash of her customary impatience. “He used to be here. But now he isn’t.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Any others?”

“A woman in her nightgown. She had her hands like this.” I demonstrated, bringing my palms up to my ears.

“Amy,” Vivi explained. “They froze like that.”

“What did?”

“Her
hands
. They froze like that. In the boat.”

I thought back to the horrific accounts I had read of the
hands, feet, ears, and noses of the doomed
Larchmont
passengers freezing in the lifeboats. The woman had obviously died with her hands covering her ears, perhaps frozen in place by the sleet and ice.

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know,” Vivi said.

“Have you seen her around?”

“No!” she said freshly, obviously tiring of my questions.

I pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. The wall clock read 10:45. This might be my only chance to enlist Vivi’s help, and I didn’t have a minute to waste.

“Vivi, I’m going to ask you something.”

“What?”
She was sounding now like her usual volatile self.

“Can I talk to you like a grown-up?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, can I ask you to listen very carefully to what I have to say?”

In response, she got the chair rocking hard, awakening Frances, who looked up, sleepy and baffled. Vivi didn’t look at me, but I could tell she was listening.

“Can I? Can I talk to you like a friend?”

At the word
friend
, the rocking ceased briefly.
“Yes,”
she said, peering up at me and then back down at her lap. She got the chair moving again.

“You’re a very smart girl. Henry really likes you, and so do I.”

“No you don’t.” She looked up with a hurt expression.

“I do. I really do. But you know what? Sometimes people who are very much alike kind of get on each other’s nerves. They are so similar that they—” I rubbed my hands together. “I think you and I are a lot alike.”

“You do?”

I nodded. “We’re both …” I paused. “Bossy. We think fast. We have a lot of energy.”

“Crazy,” she added.

“Definitely crazy,” I conceded, and I saw her smile.

The minute hand clicked toward eleven. I had to get on with this.