“Nothin’ for their own, I can tell you. But that Marek now –”
“I don’t wish to discuss him.”
“He don’t appear to be the kind to let go of his own. If that’s his baby you’re carryin’ you better set your mind to being Shay Garrett and Mrs. Marek whatever. That boy’s one problem’s going to keep comin’ back.”
Late the next day when Ansel drove his rattling truck off to town Brandy explored the unused portion of the house. A dining room, a parlor, three bedrooms upstairs. All furnished and covered with dust and cobwebs, rotting dust sheets and curtains. One bedroom had been more recently used. Lottie’s most likely. Books, shoes, a radio box and pictures on the walls. Large unframed photographs of naked men …
Brandy knew she shouldn’t look. But she did.
Her curiosity about this sinful world was outdistanced only by her desire to return to her own.
She fled outside to the sky and earth, to the mountain range she could trace from memory.
At the back fence, Olina, Oscar, Luvisa and Arvid – the smelly Swedish goat family – rushed up to greet her.
Brandy scratched Olina’s hard neck with Shay’s fingernails, and felt a dizziness she supposed to be caused by this body’s condition. A vision … a picture … the body of Brandy McCabe leaning on the door of a small cabin. Mr. Strock and a man Brandy’d never seen lifted the wedding mirror from a buck-board.
Heavy with weakness, Brandy collapsed to the weeds, Arvid and Luvisa peering at her between the boards of the fence.
Shay has the mirror with her in Nederland. She can make it work from her end of time now that I can’t be near it.
Of course, she’d be returning not to the Gingerbread House but to Nederland and Mr. Strock. Still, if she could believe Ansel St. John and she was destined to tame the ferocious Maddon twins, she must be capable of convincing Corbin Strock that she needed long visits to her family in Boulder. That would be better than being completely cut off as she was now.
Brandy wished she could meet the real Shay Garrett, but supposed they would pass through the sickness of time as before and never know each other.
Hurry, Granddaughter. Marek Weir is a devil and I haven’t the strength to resist him.
11
Jerry Garrett was surprised to find the door of the Gingerbread House locked. He fished out his key, let himself in, and headed for the liquor cabinet. Pouring a scotch, he took it to the kitchen.
The house had a tense, empty feeling.
Usually by this time Rachael had preparations for dinner under way and the room smelled of cooking. He checked the bulletin board beside the refrigerator for any messages and found only a grocery list.
What the hell, she’s got a right to come and go. It was just she was such a creature of habit. Her schedule rarely varied.
He sipped the drink on his way back to the entry hall and the buffet where she left the mail for him.
A faint humming broke into his thoughts. Jerry stared at the staircase over the rim of his glass.
He hadn’t been able to bring himself to mount those stairs since the night his daughter ran away.
There was something that alarmed him about that sound in an otherwise too-silent house. And it seemed to be coming from the second floor. Was Shay home? Was that the sound of her stereo warming up, or her electric razor or …
Jerry bounded up the stairs and down the hall, scotch dribbling over the edge of his glass and wetting his fingers. “Shay?”
The room was empty. But the noise hummed louder here. Perhaps a wire had shorted on her radio and somehow turned it on.
He crossed to the radio, placed a hand on it and found it cold. The humming came from behind him now and he could almost count the tiny hairs as they stood up on the back of his neck.
Jerry turned. The old mirror Rachael’d planned to give Shay as a wedding present glowed. In the glass was a picture of two men unloading from a horse-drawn wagon the same mirror with a blanket half-draped over it. A young woman in old-fashioned dress clutched the door of a rough cabin as if she were about to faint. And then another girl appeared, dressed like a gypsy. She reached over a fence to pet a goat and slumped suddenly to the ground. When she drew her hands away from her face he saw she was Shay.
Jerry sloshed scotch down his jacket as he drained his glass. He blinked and the picture was gone. The humming stopped.
He sat on the bed, sweating.
Mirrors don’t do tricks. But the mind does.
He watched it out of the corner of his eye. It reflected a portion of the room and his knees like it was supposed to. As always the mirror reminded him of the cave where he and Rachael found it and the body of that miner. Then he realized the cabin he’d seen was familiar, much like the one he and his mother’d lived in that year in Nederland.
Jerry stood in front of the mirror and saw himself. He walked around behind it. Just an ugly old mirror.
He walked down the hall to the head of the stairs and looked at the wedding portrait. The girl clutching the cabin door had been Rachael’s mother as a young woman. A trick of the mind.
He decided the torture he was undergoing had arranged familiar images into a dream pattern that he thought he’d seen in the mirror’s glass. Gale Sampson probably had a fancy word for it.
Downstairs he started to pour another scotch and thought better of it. He found a wedge of leftover roast and made a sandwich, trying to forget the vision of Shay he thought he’d seen upstairs.
Rachael should have stayed home to take any messages if the police or the detective called.
Perhaps they had and Rachael’d rushed off to find Shay.
Jerry called the police department and learned that his wife had asked them to relay any news to Marek Weir. And no, there hadn’t been any.
He checked her closet. The suitcase she kept on the shelf above her clothes was gone. He called his brother-in-law but Remy Maddon hadn’t heard from Rachael in three days.
Jerry was swearing as he headed the Oldsmobile across town. When he reached Thirtieth Street he turned off at a row of apartment complexes and pulled in beside the Porsche.
In the hallway a bottle blond stepped out of the door next to Weir’s as Jerry knocked. He searched for a buzzer or doorbell.
“If you’re looking for Marek, I think he’s in the pool,” she said and giggled unnecessarily.
Probably with a bevy of admiring women, Jerry thought as he retraced his steps and circled the building to a courtyard.
But Marek Weir swam alone, the deck and chairs empty except for a towel and the splashover from the man’s swimming.
Marek beat the water like he was trying to kill it, kicking off from the ends, lapping the pool again and again. The piercing smell of chlorine surged into the air. Lowering sun flashed the flying spray to glitter.
Copper skin stretched over lean muscle. A tight red swimsuit. No wonder Shay had …
The black head emerged dripping. Marek hoisted himself out of the pool, his chest pumping.
“Your … daughter’s … not here, Garrett,” Marek said between heavy intakes of breath.
“I’m looking for my wife.”
“She’s not here either.” The odd light eyes were cold under brows frizzed by vigorous toweling.
“Rachael’s gone. I wondered if she’d told you where.” Jerry followed Marek across a patch of grass to the enclosed patio.
“Your wife doesn’t check in with me.” Marek stood aside for him to enter the sliding glass door.
“She left word with the police to call you if there was any news about Shay. Why?”
“They’ve got my home and office number. Maybe she thought they could reach me. You tend to be gone a lot. Fix yourself a drink. Scotch in the bar.” Marek trailed his towel into the bedroom and closed the door.
Lush carpet, moss-rock fireplace, expensive car, the best scotch … didn’t kids ever start out at the bottom anymore? He poured himself a double and found ice in the tiny kitchen. A good
smell came from the oven. Jerry remembered the half-eaten sandwich he’d left at home, heard the shower running. Stud probably eats little girls for breakfast.
Two paintings that had hung above the couch now leaned against the wall. In their place a hand-drawn map of Boulder and its environs was thumbtacked to the paneling, red lines, arrows and X’s all over it.
Marek emerged dressed, without the chlorine smell, and with wet hair plastered to his head. He mixed a drink while Jerry studied the map.
“The lines are where I’ve been. The big X’s where I’ve talked to people. The small ones where there was no one home.”
“You think you can find her when the police can’t? That she’s still in the area?” Jerry flopped down on the couch and faced the bastard. “Or even alive?”
“She’d better be.”
“Listen, I hired a detective. I drove around looking too. She’s my kid –”
“And she’s carrying mine.” Marek raised his infernal martini. “I’m going to find her. And you better stand back when I do. No abortions, no Dr. Sampsons, no mental hospitals.”
“If she were still on your map the police or someone would’ve found her. I even offered a reward –”
“And stalked off to your cabin, let your wife wait around for the phone to ring.”
Jerry jumped to his feet. “You stay out of –”
“Don’t push your luck.” Marek set down his drink, rose slowly. “I stood still for you once. You had the advantage of surprise.”
Jerry felt foolish, staring across the room at his daughter’s fiancé like an old dog preparing to defend his territory. He kneaded the skin around his eyes. “Rachael might leave me, but not the house. Not when Shay … I’m afraid something’s happened to her. She’s never done anything like this before.”
“People change.” Marek left to answer the ring of his telephone in the bedroom.
“The police?” Jerry asked when he returned. “About Shay?”
“Rachael. Checking in to see if I’d heard anything.”
“Did you tell her I was here? Where is she?”
“Could be anywhere. She dialed direct. Would you like some dinner? I made enough for two nights. We bachelors –”
“Dammit, Weir, what did she say?”
“Said for you to remember the bills are due the first of the month, the house cleaners come on Thursday mornings and if her agent calls –”
“What does she think I am, her secretary?” Jerry drained his glass and headed for the door.
“What do you think she is?”
Pausing in the doorway, Jerry stared down the hall. “She didn’t even want to talk to me?”
“She especially didn’t want to talk to you.”
Brandy McCabe stood once again by the Stina Mark graveyard and thought of Ansel St. John. She’d asked him about these graves more than once but he ignored her questions.
As fall had deepened, the mountain foothills browned, the weeds around the collection of junk vehicles began to dry. And Shay’s pregnancy became more evident.
At times Brandy felt almost at home with her host. After dinner when he read his paper she’d mend his clothes. Brandy’d often sat in the parlor of an evening sewing with her mother while her father and Elton played checkers or read.
In Ansel’s parlor she’d found a sewing basket with all she needed to repair the poor man’s shirts and trousers. In the basket was a thimble engraved with the name “Stina Mark.”
Anyone who accepted her fantastic story as easily as did Ansel had to be wrong in the head. Was she really safe here?
When Brandy told him she knew she’d be going back to her own time soon because of the vision of her granddaughter with the mirror in Nederland, he’d dropped his paper to stare at her. “Them times are interesting to talk about but nobody that lived ’em should ever want to go back.”
Brandy bent to pull some burrs from the hem of her skirt. At least two of those graves were large enough to contain human bodies.
No. She wouldn’t think of that.
She’d asked the old man if he knew of a midwife or doctor they could trust. Just in case she was still here when Shay’s baby was born.
“Don’t need none. Delivered Arvid and Luvisa when Olina got in trouble. Calves and a few lambs in my day. Even a stuck kitten now and then. Figure I can whelp a human kid.”
Brandy was the oldest of the McCabe children. Elton was born a year after and Joshua the year after that. Sophie had three miscarriages that Brandy knew of. The last one left her ill for several years.
Brandy’s best friend in preparatory school, Violet, had married at seventeen, died in childbirth at eighteen.
At Violet’s funeral the minister had honored the dead girl. “She gave her life in God’s noblest cause.”
The same minister had once preached that man was born in pain because Eve sinned against the lord by eating forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden. And all women were cursed with this painful obligation from then on. Poor thing. She was probably inflicted with curiosity like me.
Brandy had seen a mare foal once …
12
Moonlight caught a spark of gray-white in the depths of the lilac bush by the back step of the Gingerbread House. Branches snapped, and dried seed pods from last spring’s blossoms showered to the earth.
On the two-story building next door the motel sign blinked its orange letters backward. Drapes were pulled on all the lighted windows.
A dog yapped somewhere down the alley and a shadow moved from the protection of the garage, vaulted the wrought-iron fence and landed with a rustle of fallen leaves.
“Davenport?” A voice from the lilac bush.
Chris Davenport sprinted the length of the yard as a gray-haired man stepped from the bush and knelt by the back door.
“Is he still in Nederland?”
“All settled for the night. Where’s the truck?” Chris asked.
“It’ll be along as soon as the next patrol has checked those business buildings across the street.” Keys jingled as the man tried first one and then the other on an enormous key ring. “Ahhh, this is it.”
He pulled Chris into the stale darkness.
“You’re sure you don’t know when the lady of the house plans to return?”
“I told you, we didn’t even know she was planning to leave. Sarah and I kept showing up on Thursdays to clean and the door was always locked. Then some friends of ours kept seeing Garrett up in Nederland so –”
“Yes, well, fill me in on the layout.”
“This is the kitchen. Nothing much here.” Chris turned a flashlight on the floor and led the way to the dining room, where the man decided on the chandelier and most of the furniture.
In the hallway he exclaimed over the buffet and had Chris shine light into each drawer as he opened it. From the bottom one he lifted out folded tablecloths. A package wrapped in brown paper lay beneath. The man slit the wrapping with a pocketknife and held a green leather-bound book to Chris’s light. “Diary” was lettered in gold on its front.
“No.” The diary dropped onto the pile of tablecloths. “We’ll empty all the drawers and take the buffet.”
Chris led him into the living room, shielding the light with a cupped hand, hoping it wouldn’t show to anyone in the street. “How do you think you’re going to get all this stuff into the truck without being seen?”
“Remarkably easy once you get the hang of it. Ummm … a signed Tiffany. This is a transient neighborhood with a goodly portion of businesses closed for the night. Ideal, really. Worst problems we have anymore are dogs and joggers. And the health nuts ought to be in bed by now. This cabinet is French. We’ll dump the blue-glass collection and take the cabinet.”
They went through the rest of the house, the man making his choices quickly. He deemed everything in Shay Garrett’s room worthless but paused at the ugly mirror with hands.
“Definitely oriental. Oriental is out now but … give me more light here. Garish t
hing isn’t it? The bronzework suggests India, the design is more China? Or someplace in between perhaps or … Tibet? No …”
“Who’d want it?” Chris was sweating. His heavy glasses kept sliding down his greasy nose. He felt the tingle of imminent danger and it was not altogether unpleasant.
“No one maybe. Mrs. Garrett ever mention where she got it?”
“I never asked.”
“Give me the flashlight.” The man inspected the back of the mirror. “I wonder … there’s a tiny etching in the bronze here. Could well be a temple sign of some sort.” He laughed. “That or the western equivalent of a curse … or both. A flake resembling enamel here. The fingers at the top of the frame might possibly have held a jewel at one time.”
“I wouldn’t cross the street to look at it, let alone buy it.”
The man laughed again. “Chris, where is your sense of mystery and romance? And you a poet. Some collector of weird objets d’art might take a shine to this. We’ll have it.”
They hurried down to the back door, where a low whistle brought two more men hurtling over the fence.
With little noise and a minimum of light the four of them set to work stacking chosen articles in the kitchen.
Chris and the gray-haired man had just deposited a rocking chair next to the growing collection when the other two carried in the odd mirror with only its claw-hand base showing beneath Shay Garrett’s frothy bedspread.
“The spread is worthless and we have cover pads in the truck.”
“The mirror felt funny when we lifted it so we covered it. Seemed like it was tingly or electrified somehow.”
“Gentlemen, that object was made long before the age of electricity.”
“How do we get all this stuff across the yard and over the fence?” Chris asked.
“We don’t. We bring the truck to the door.”
“But the fence –”
“Was conveniently altered this afternoon. Now hurry. We can move a few things closer to the door. We no longer need an aisle through all this.”
Chris heard an engine outside and when they’d filled the aisle the door opened to the dim interior of a truck. He was sure now they’d be discovered.