Time After Time (18 page)

Too bad. This is how I do
business. He can like it or lump it,
she
thought as Susy babbled happily in the seat beside her.

But Liz hoped, more than
she ever thought possible, that somehow Jack would be willing to
like it.

She had every intention of
parking in front of the long, low building that housed the shipyard
office, but after they drove through the ten-foot-high chain-link
fence, they saw that the yardhands were in the process of launching
a big fishing boat. Susy, instantly forgetting all her promises,
begged to watch.

Since they were a little
early, Liz parked the minivan out of everyone's way and, holding
Susy's hand, sidled up to a small group of onlookers for a closer
view.

Out of the water, the boat
looked like a beached whale hanging in slings. Liz pointed out the
neatly painted name on the bow:
Miss
Betty.
She recognized the boat; it was a
local lobster boat, and it had been around for as long as she could
remember. Over the years it had been bumped from one dock to
another as Newport's boatyards and waterfront businesses were torn
down one by one and replaced by dense, often ugly condominium
projects.

The old docks — nce
chock-a-block with working boats and rich with the smell of fish
and salty shouts of men offloading their ice-packed cargo — now sat
filled with plastic yachts, unused for the most part except on
occasional weekends when their owners were able to break away from
Wall Street or their medical practices.

And meanwhile,
Miss Betty
and her kin
continued to play their ever more frustrating version of musical
chairs. Liz was neither sailor nor fisherman's wife; she considered
herself an impartial witness to the waterfront's development. But
she knew, just as everyone in the boatyard knew, that unless the
trend were reversed, the aging
Miss
Betty's
days in Newport were
numbered.

Liz leaned closer to her
daughter's ear and, over the noise of the Travelift, said, "We're
just in time. Isn't this exciting?"

"Look, Mommy!" said Susy,
pointing to the operator of the Travelift high above them. "It's
Mr. Eastman!"

Indeed it was. Apparently
he'd been inside the boat, checking things over. Now, high above
their heads, he took command of the Travelift controls and began
easing the giant-wheeled carrier forward, driving it onto two
steel-edged channels hardly wider than the wheels themselves. Below
the
Miss Betty
was the water, lapping softly at the bulkhead in the wake of
passing boats.

Jack was focused
completely on the task at hand; Liz was certain that he hadn't
noticed them. She preferred it that way. Like the time she had
studied him from her secret peephole inside the puppet theater, she
was able to just ... absorb him, somehow, drink in the sight of
him, without worrying whether her lipstick was right or her
repartee up to his standards.

He was in his element.
With his windswept hair and his square-cut chin, in working khakis
and a navy polo shirt, he was infinitely more attractive to her
than he'd looked in business clothes on the night of the burglary.
Oh, she'd heard vaguely about men and their love of Tonka toys,
but
this
man
on
this
Tonka toy
— well, they looked right together, that's all.

She felt something lurch
and then tighten inside her. Defense mechanisms, probably; without
them you could easily be made a fool of by a man like him. Seduced,
abandoned, and there you'd be: a fool.

Once was
enough.

The Travelift came to a
halt, and Jack yelled down to a man who was standing on the other
side and ahead of the launching area: "Mike! You all
set?"

Mike was apparently the
owner, a man of about sixty with grizzled hair, a deeply weathered
face, and arms even bigger than Jack's folded across his chest. He
nodded silently, as if words cost money.

Jack gave him an upward
lift of his chin in response and then, out of the blue, turned to
Liz and winked before easing the hydraulic lever forward and
lowering the boat slowly toward the water.

The blush that flooded her
cheeks was instantaneous. After their last encounter she'd expected
anything from burning looks to high-handed contempt — but not a
wink. What the heck was a wink? What did it signify?

"Mommy? Why did Mr.
Eastman wink at you?" asked Susy, who had eyes like radar scopes
and ears like satellite dishes.

"He was just being
friendly, honey. That's all." On balance, Liz decided, that's
exactly what he was being: friendly. Not amorous, not hostile, just
plain old friendly.

It was disappointing.
Despite her careful attempt to seem in control of her emotions, Liz
realized now that she'd been allowing herself to fantasize about
the man. Why else had she run upstairs at the last minute for her
cloisonné barrette? Did she really need a barrette to make her
presentation?

The
Miss Betty
eased into the water like
an old dowager into a hot bath. Yardhands unhooked the slings on
one side while the boat bobbed gently in place, her new
bottom-paint pristine and barnacle-free. The lobsterman, obviously
relieved that the unnatural situation was over for another year,
accepted a bow line from one of the men aboard and made it fast to
the dock.

Jack climbed down the side
rungs of the Travelift and exchanged a word or two with the owner,
who shook his hand and tucked a cigar into the pocket of his shirt.
Then Jack said something to one of his men, who scrambled
monkey-quick up the rungs of the Travelift and began backing it
away from the launch area.

It was an oddly touching
ritual, done with a minimum of fuss and emotion: no hand-wringing,
no screams, no cries of joy when it was over. Liz had been right in
the first place — the shipyard was very male, very foreign
terrain.

Except to Susy. "Wouldn't
it be fun," she whispered in Liz's ear when Liz bent down to hear
her wish, "if we could go for a ride on that boat?"

"Susy, it's a work boat,"
Liz explained. "It's not for rides."

She was giving her
daughter only half her attention. The other half was being devoted
to Jack Eastman, who was approaching them — then was stopped by a
young man in canvas overalls.

"David!" Jack said,
obviously surprised to see him. "Jeez, no one told you? The work's
been put off for now. Customer got cold feet when he saw the
estimate."

"I don't see how I can put
in a new transom for less," the young man said with no
apologies.

"You can't. It's a big
job. I know that. Well, I'll keep working on the guy. In the
meantime, if something else comes up, Cynthia'll let you
know."

"Sure."

Jack shrugged and added,
"You know, David, skilled carpentry like yours — well, it doesn't
come cheap. Nor should it. But my customers aren't willing to pay
nowadays. I've never seen anything like it."

"I know. They all want
fiberglass."

The young carpenter went
on his way, and Jack came up to Liz and her daughter with a
wink-friendly smile on his lips.

Why do I think of his eyes
as sea-blue?
Liz suddenly wondered.
I've never seen an ocean that blue. Not in New
England, anyway.

"I'm sorry to hold you
up," he said graciously. "We had a little last-minute welding
repair to do on
Miss Betty's
rudder. And Mike's an old fussbutton — won't let
anyone but the boss launch him."

"A lot of bosses wouldn't
be bothered," Liz said, matching his gracious tone. She was
thinking,
How are your hands? Are you all
right? There was so much blood.

He saw her glance at the
unbandaged red scratches. "I'm fine," he said briefly. "Well, hello
there," he said with a friendly smile at Susy.

Liz introduced them, and
Susy said with great solemnity, "I liked to see you put the boat
into the water. You didn't even make it splash."

"Well, thank you, ma'am,"
drawled Jack with an utterly irresistible smile. "That's a very
nice compliment. How old are you, Susy?" he added,
curious.

"Five."

He stared at her with
grave suspicion. "Are you sure? You seem much older than that to
me. I'd guess you were closer to six, at
least."

"Almost," Susy admitted
modestly. It was obvious that she didn't like to brag about
it.

Liz, caught up in a new
round of sensations, smiled at them both. Here was a side of Jack
she hadn't seen before. She wondered whether little Caroline had
ever been as lucky as Susy, or whether Jack turned the charm of his
attention on and off like a spigot.

"I'm sorry for the —
complication," she told Jack, inclining her head toward Susy. "If
your office has a waiting room ...." She knew it did; she'd seen it
earlier.

"Wel-l-l ... sure," he
said.

His hesitation said it
all; he did not approve of working mommies. No doubt
his
wife — should he
ever condescend to take one — would stay at home where she
belonged, keeping an eye on the servants.

Jack said, "We'll drop
your daughter off, and then I'll show you the shed we'll use in
case it rains." His voice was less personal now; apparently the
time for pleasantry had expired.

She nodded and let him
lead them through the middle door of a row of doors in a long, low
building that also housed a ship's brokerage and a rigging store.
The office — really an assembly of half-walled cubicles — was
modern and nondescript and, at the moment, empty except for a
busy-looking secretary sitting at the front desk before a
computer.

"Cynthia," Jack said to
her, "Mrs. Coppersmith and I are going to go over the picnic plans.
Would you mind keeping an eye on Susy, here, while we
do?"

Cynthia, a vivacious young
woman with an attractive figure, shot Susy a brief but friendly
smile and said, "Okay. Would you like a pencil and paper,
honey?"

Susy reached over her
shoulder for her backpack and said politely, "No, thank you. I
brought my own."

At the sound of their
voices, Cornelius Eastman, who'd apparently been in the cubicle
behind Cynthia's desk, came out to greet them all.

Jack said tersely, "I
didn't know you were here, Dad."

"Just making a few calls,"
he said, returning his son's cool look. He noticed Susy and said
jovially, "Hey there, sailor! Goin' out on the water
today?"

Susy's eyes sparked with
sudden hope at the stranger's words. The child, who'd insisted on
dressing for sailing in red sneakers, dungarees, and a bright
yellow windbreaker — just in case — smiled at Cornelius Eastman in
shy confusion.

Jack, of course, was a
familiar sight to Susy. She'd seen him in the distance while she
ate breakfast, which was when Jack sometimes spent time outside
training Snowball to fetch, sit, and lie down. Cornelius, however,
was a new face. Susy looked up at her mother for permission to
trust him.

Liz made the
introductions. "This is Mr. Eastman's father, honey. He lives at
East Gate, too."

Cornelius smiled and said,
"Only during the summer. In the winter we live in Florida." With a
smile for Liz, he added, "Much to Jack's relief."

Jack said impatiently,
"We'd better get cracking," and began walking away, expecting Liz
to fall behind in his wake.

Liz blew Susy a kiss and
mouthed the words, "Be good," and hurried to catch up to Jack, who
was holding the door for her.

Outside, he took such
long, quick strides that she was forced into a near-jog to keep up
with him.

"Any word about the stolen
letters?" he asked her in that same impersonal tone.

"Not much," she answered,
put off by his whole manner. "I found out from the detectives that
Grant Dade is off hiking the White Mountains this weekend. He'd
better come back before his hands heal," she said with sudden
fierceness.

"You're just not gonna
give up on that guy, are you?" Jack said, glancing at her with
amazement.

"Not unless you have a
better suspect."

"Hell, my father's a
better suspect!" There was a bitterness in Jack's tone that he
reserved exclusively for Cornelius Eastman.

"Meaning
what,"
Liz demanded to
know. She'd pretty much had it with Jack's snide references to the
man.

Jack decided to answer
her. "Meaning — I say this strictly for example — I ran into him
behind the house after you called there. I asked him what he was
doing outside at that hour. He gave me an evasive answer, something
like, 'Getting my head clear.'

Wide-eyed, she stopped,
turned, and confronted him. "You suspect your own
father?
What kind of
man
are
you?"