Time After Time (28 page)

Liz had to try hard not to
run after her and tackle her to the ground. With a fervent wish
that was half-prayer, half-curse, she let Victoria go and said to
Jack, "I was just on my way over to you—"

"I noticed," he admitted
in a rueful voice that puzzled her. "For the simple reason that I
haven't been able to take my eyes off you."

Smile politely and say
thank you,
Liz told herself. But instead
she said flippantly, "After the last fiasco, who can blame you?
You're probably worried I'm going to let a bunch of coyotes loose
on your lawn."

Clearly he wasn't in the
mood for humor. The smile settled into something more serious.
Grim, almost. "Liz, the other night we left things
hanging—"

So to speak.
"Oh? Gee, I thought the evening wound down in the
usual way. We did the dishes—"

"Before that
part."

"You mean, when I told you
about—" She cleared her throat. "Christopher Eastman?"

"Of course not," he said,
brushing aside her offhand reference to being insane. "I meant,
outside. When we kissed. When you—"

Attacked his zipper; he
was going to remind her that she had actually begun to unzip the
fly of his trousers. Mortified, she said quickly, "That was the rum
punch... an alcoholic indiscretion—"

"The hell it was," he said
with a blazing look. "Look, you can't deny what happened between
us. Whatever it was — and I'm damned if I know, right now — you
can't deny it.''

"Yes, I can," she said,
amazed at his timing. "Watch me."

There was just enough
fantasy around them for Liz to wonder whether she was being wooed
by Prince Charming himself. But that would surely be the biggest
fantasy of all. In real life princes like him didn't pay court to
beggars like her. Not unless they were on top of a haystack,
anyway.

"We have to talk," he
said, taking her by her arm. "I didn't think it would come to this,
but it has."

No. She'd gone around and
around the attraction in her mind and — no. "Ah, look," she said,
brutally diverting him. "There's your father," she said, waving to
Cornelius.
"He
seems like he's having a good time."

Jack scowled and let go of
her arm — as if a gold chain he'd picked up from the sidewalk had
turned out to be only gold-plated — and said, "Sure he's having a
good time. He reckons he'll never have to do this
again."

"I'm sorry?" she said,
puzzled.

"You must know that he'd
like to sell the yard."

"I heard something to that
effect," she said cautiously, remembering the shouting match in the
Great Room on the day she met Jack.

"He's old, he's tired, he
wants out."

"Can he do that?" Liz
asked naïvely. After all, Jack acted as if he pretty much owned the
yard. "You don't have some say in that?"

"I have a forty-nine
percent say."

"And he has fifty-one,"
she said, seeing at once what the problem was.

"No; he also has a
forty-nine percent say."

"That leaves two
percent—?"

"To my mother," said Jack
with a thin smile.

"Ah."

Since Liz didn't know
Jack's mother, she had no idea how she'd vote. Would she want to
thwart her husband? Go for the big bucks and bail out of the
marriage? Jack wasn't saying. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe
she
didn't
know.

"I can see why things
might be tense," Liz allowed.

"Tense?" Jack said
sardonically. "Tense is when you're caught in traffic on your way
to the airport. This is life and death!"

"Life and death seems
strong," Liz said, put on the defensive by his vehemence. "People
do sell businesses. People do sell properties." She got a little
breezy. "What's the big deal?"

Without dropping his gaze
from his father, Jack said in a menacing voice, "The big deal is,
he's willing to sell the yard to an unsavory group who want to tear
it down and ultimately stick a casino in its place. That's the big
deal. Goddammit. That's the big deal."

"Oh." Not good. She'd
managed to bring his temper up to flash point. Fearing an
explosion, Liz went on to say the most conciliatory thing she could
think of: "Lots of people are for casinos — not just the mob. If
that's who you meant."

Which, when she thought
about it later, was a remarkably stupid thing to say. Jack didn't
care who was for or who was against casinos. All he cared about was
the shipyard and the employees who worked there. In an age of
takeovers, mergers, and downsizing, Jack Eastman was one of a dying
breed: a traditional, stubborn, utterly loyal business
owner.

Liz winced under his
scathing look and said placatingly, "But I suppose it
could
be the
mob."

"Mob? What mob? What're
you talking about?"

She was saved by the
arrival of Cornelius, who'd been making his way toward them with a
relaxed and mellow smile on his face.

"You did a damned good job
here, Liz," he said for the third time, winning her over to his
side in one sentence. "I hope we can count on you next year for the
event."

"Thank you, Mr. Eastman. I
tried really hard—"

"You hypocrite," said Jack
in a voice of seething candor. "Who're you kidding? You just took a
long call from them. Couldn't you put them off at least for the
duration of the picnic?"

"Business is business,
Jack," said his father amiably.

"This business stinks to
high heaven!"

"You're being emotional,
son. I always said you got that from your mother."

"I certainly didn't get it
from you!" Jack said hotly. "This is the most cold-blooded
sellout—"

"Jack, Jack — things
change; learn to roll with it."

Liz should've been gone at
the sound of the first shot Jack fired across his father's bow, but
somehow she'd become trapped in the circle of their maneuvering. It
was Cornelius's fault: he kept glancing at her with that half-smile
of his, as if to say, "See the abuse I get?"

Now he said to Jack, with
a benign and sorrowful shake of his head, "My job ... is to look
after my daughter's interests as well as your own."

It was an outrageously
bold remark, shocking to make at any time but particularly in front
of her. Liz sucked in her breath, expecting fisticuffs at best, a
duel at worst, while at the same time feeling ridiculously
flattered that she should be allowed to hear their exchange of
insults.

She hardly dared look at
Jack, who had as ugly, as combative an expression as she'd ever
seen on a man. He seemed to be waiting for her to leave before he
began swinging.

Suddenly tired of their
turf war, she decided to oblige him. "I think I'd better see how
the
other
children here are doing. Please excuse me."

"No, stay," Jack said with
a sudden harsh laugh. "The two of you can chat about the bright
future of the gaming industry in Rhode Island."

He turned on his heel and
walked away, leaving Liz feeling like a co-conspirator at a
racketeering trial. Dismayed that Jack seemed to think she wanted
to see a casino replace his shipyard, she said to his father, "He
counts me among the enemy."

"Anyone who disagrees with
Jack is the enemy," Cornelius said. "He won't read the writing on
the wall: the shipyard's doomed. The land it's on is too valuable.
We could sell the damned thing and make more in interest in a year
doing nothing than we make in profit running the shipyard. Far
more."

He turned a cool,
unruffled look on Liz. "The sooner my son accepts the idea that
we're sitting on a gold mine," he added dryly, "the
better."

"It seems to be going down
like cod-liver oil," Liz said uneasily.

She excused herself. With
a reassuring wave at Susy, she went straight to the long buffet
tables that were set up on the north side of the house, under a
tent and out of the sun, to tell the caterer to fire up the
propane. To the satisfying sound of steaks being slapped on the
grills, Liz made a last-minute circuit of the heavily laden tables,
festive with centerpieces of summer-fresh fruit and big glass vases
of daisies.

Immediately, her spirits
improved. Jack and his father could agree to disagree all they
wanted; it wouldn't change the fact that the company picnic — her
first bona-fide Bellevue Avenue
event
—
was
a smashing
success. Even Snowball was cooperating, romping with the kids in a
far corner, away from the food.

Was
there enough food? Liz suffered the standard bout of
last-minute panic, then reassured herself that they could probably
feed most of Newport if they chose. Bread piled high ... twenty
pounds of melted butter ... bowl after bowl of salads.

She lifted lid after lid,
reassuring herself with mounds of colorful rotini and artfully
assembled pastas. But when she came to the Meissen bowl with its
matching lid, she did a double-take. The serving bowl was part of
East Gate's exquisite formal service and certainly didn't belong
out here. Annoyed that someone would jeopardize her success — even
a tiny chip
to the bowl would be a
disaster — Liz lifted the lid of the china bowl and found:
ants.

Millions and millions of
ants.

Beating back an instant
wave of nausea, Liz slammed the lid hard enough to break it in two.
Some of the ants had already gotten out; she brushed them violently
from the tablecloth, then set about tracking down the dozen fastest
ones, crushing them mercilessly with her thumb.

Ants! God in heaven, whose
idea of a sick joke was this? Liz picked up the serving bowl,
nailing the lid to it with the palms of her hands, and marched it
over to a remote corner of the grounds. To the three people who
were bold enough to ask her what she was doing, her answers were
brief: nothing, never mind, and what's it to you?

Behind the carriage house
she dumped out the ants — swarming over a few wet pieces of
half-melted hard candy that had been placed in the bowl as bait —
at the base of a birch tree. Then she went back to the tool shed
for a sprinkling can, rinsed out the bowl, and examined it for the
dreaded crack she was sure would be there. But the precious Meissen
was intact, even if Liz's nerves were not. Still shaky from the
disgusting shock of her discovery, she found a small, tucked-away
bench and sat down on it, trying to make sense of the wretched
deed.

Why the ants, besides the
obvious reason that no picnic was complete without them? It was
such a simple question, and yet — because Liz had no answer to it —
a profoundly unsettling one. Who was the butt of this prank, and
who was behind it?

Since it was Jack's
affair, the short answer seemed to be that someone wanted to spoil
the picnic to get at him. Was it an isolated act, a nasty little
statement by an employee who would've rather had a
raise?

A less satisfying answer
was that it was related, somehow, to the other, seemingly
unconnected events that had been plaguing the shipyard recently —
the toxic spill; the vandalized boat.

But the picnic was
her
affair, too. Was it
possible that someone was trying to make her look bad? After the
birthday party fiasco, it wouldn't take much. A few thousand ants
drowning in vats of melted butter, and her name would end up a
laughingstock on Bellevue Avenue. She'd be grist for the anecdote
mill whenever the subject of events-planners came up — and in
Newport society, that was sure to be often.

But who around here could
possibly care whether she succeeded in the carriage trade or not?
It wasn't as though she was even a remote threat to the
competition. And in any case, the thought of party-planning
saboteurs sneaking around with bowls of ants was
ludicrous.

The graduate student.
Grant Dade.
The image of his angry, bitter
face when Liz denied him access to the letters hovered in front of
her, sending chills through her. Dade was a maniac, and whether or
not he had scratched his hands hiking in the White Mountains was
irrelevant: no one would ever convince her that he wasn't the one
who'd stolen the packet of letters from her cottage and then
escaped over the barbed-wire fence. He hated her, and he was
certainly capable of a stunt like this. But could he have done it
unnoticed?

And was he capable of
worse?

A sharp crack behind Liz
sent her bolting up from the little wooden bench. She spied a mop
of blond curls behind an enormous, rotting tree trunk: Caroline
Stonebridge was hiding there, and Liz wanted to know
why.

"Are you looking for me,
Caroline?" she asked in a sharp voice. "Or are you just playing
hide-and-seek with yourself?"

The sarcasm was unkind;
but Liz was jumpy and angry and suddenly suspicious of this
selfish, manipulative child.
She
wouldn't have realized how valuable Meissen was;
she'd see it as just another serving bowl in a cupboard filled with
them.