“Or scare them away,” Ned said dryly and wandered off.
“Coming through again.” The man in coveralls approached, unwinding his extension cord as he passed.
Cindy stepped over it and picked up her clipboard to continue checking her numbers against the tags on the remaining odds and ends from her shop.
The cord pulled tighter as the electrician reached the auctioneer’s platform and slipped up over the claw base of the wedding mirror. There were several frayed places along the cord’s length, exposing wires no inspector would have deemed safe. One of these places lay up against a curved index finger that supported the mirror’s weight.
“One … two … three …” droned a voice from the platform, reaching to speakers throughout the cavernous building, echoing over the conversations of excited antique nuts. “Testing … one …”
Cindy stuck her pencil behind her ear and turned at the humming sound behind her. The tangled bronze hands seemed to glow. She blinked and looked around into the glass.
Cindy Wilson blinked again and dropped her clipboard.
Brandy McCabe closed the oven door on the loaves of bread she was baking and staggered back to the sofa as the familiar feeling came over her.
Her granddaughter must finally have discovered the secret of the mirror. Oh, Shay, hurry!
Brandy leaned back, trying to relax, to give herself up to the fog rising in front of her eyes instead of fighting it as she had before. She strained to lean into the tugging motion inside Shay’s body rather than pull back.
But the fog was so thin. She could still see the kitchen through it, and Lottie stepping out of the bathroom.
“Shay? Oh, God, you’re not going to have a miscarriage on us or anything?” Lottie’s voice sounded far away.
Brandy began to fall and swirl. A forest path and pine trees, an overturned bucket tilted in front of her. But still she could see Lottie behind them. Lottie’s mouth moved now without sound.
… the smell of earth … the sound of wind rushing through layered pine needles above her … the sickness … the sweating …
Brandy fought to sink deeper but the tugging weakened. The forest path and the bucket slowly receded.
Lottie loomed above her, fully seen and heard.
Ned Wilson watched his wife anxiously as the ugly mirror was carried onto the platform. He’d never seen her so pale. “Well, okay, if you really want the damn thing. But you bid more than a hundred and I’ll take it out of your hide.”
When the mirror sat upright and in full view, the crowd hushed. The auctioneer did a double-take and checked the papers in front of him.
A woman in the audience giggled.
“I tell you, it’s magic,” Cindy whispered. “If you knew the things I saw –”
“The occult is for adolescents. Darling, what’s gotten into you?”
“But I saw scenes or … things and people. And clouds of smoke. Not myself. And I was standing right in front of it.”
“Bidding begins at fifty dollars,” the auctioneer said with a grin, and the crowd laughed.
But Cindy Wilson raised her hand.
14
Lottie threw the dishes into the sink and broke a plate. “Gramps, it was like a fit. Her eyes rolled back. Maybe she’s epileptic.”
“Don’t believe so.” Ansel held the newspaper at arm’s length, his head tilted back as if he were underscoring each line of print with the end of his nose.
“Will you get your brain together long enough to listen to me? She could be up there right now dying of a miscarriage or –”
“Just looked in on her. Sleeping, peaceful and healthy. She’ll be all right by tomorrow. Tough as nails when she needs to be.”
Lottie pressed the newspaper down on the table. “She’s pregnant and hasn’t even been to a doctor. If she did die what would you do?”
Ansel wrung a mashed pea from his beard. “When people die you bury ’em.”
“Where? Out in your graveyard? Put up a cross with ‘Stina Mark’? Gramps, they’re liable to call it murder and kidnapping. If she’s dead she can’t tell anybody she wanted to be here.”
“She can go anytime she wants.” Ansel lifted her arm from the paper, turned a page. “Will you look at this? Marek Weir.”
“Who’s he?”
“Says here he’s a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.” He pointed to three small photographs lined up at the head of several columns. “Local scientists search for the key to the destructive nature of storm clouds,” he read aloud.
“So what? We have a problem and it has nothing to do with scientists or storm clouds.”
“Does so. This is the baby’s father, Lottie.”
Ned Wilson loaded the mirror onto an already crowded van.
His wife was the business head in their family. She knew what to buy, whom to hire, what to pay for salaries and merchandise and how to haggle.
But Cindy did make mistakes. This mirror was one of them. The bidding had gone to a hundred. Ned felt sure the other bidder was a plant to force up the price.
He was the sensitive part of their family-business partnership. The one who could entice a wavering customer. And the only person he knew who could understand and cajole his sharp-witted wife.
He draped the mirror with a cover and tied the strings to hold it in place, then dusted off tingling hands. High blood pressure? He’d better get in for a checkup.
“It’s not really you that’s got me worried,” he said to the shrouded shape in front of him. “It’s her. It’s why she went bonkers over you and thought she saw things she couldn’t have.”
Ned had checked the mirror. There was no projection equipment concealed in it that could explain Cindy’s visions. She didn’t see visions. She didn’t see past money and success unless she was hit over the head.
“Ready to go?” Cindy stood at the van’s door, looking normal enough.
“Yeah. You drive this and I’ll drive the truck.”
“I just talked to Myrtle on the phone. Colorado got some snow last night. Do you think we can drive right on through to Denver?”
“Let’s stop over one night. I think you … we need to slow down a little.” He jumped to the earth and slid the van’s door shut.
“Why? Ned, we have a shop to run.” She pushed at strawberry-blond curls disheveled by the winds of a Texas plain.
“Because we haven’t horsed around in a motel for far too long.” He raised an eyebrow and tried to plead with his eyes. “And motels turn you on.” He gave her his winsome sigh.
“Will you never grow up?” But she smiled. Another woman would have giggled. “Well, all right. One night in a motel.” She slid into the driver’s seat. “But I expect champagne … at least.”
The truck and the van with Colorado license plates pulled out of the rutted field in convoy.
Jerry Garrett drove the Oldsmobile into the alley behind the Gingerbread House. He needed more shirts.
He got out of the car and paused to look at the house through entwined and leafless branches. He needed more than shirts. He needed to pull himself out of his resentment of the place. No one held him here any longer. He could find no one else to blame.
Jerry needed to come to grips with his losses, the loneliness that seemed a part of his body.
A few hours before, he’d had Thanksgiving dinner with his in-laws in Remy and Elinore’s apartment. Dan and Ruth had crossed the hall from theirs and the women combined their efforts to make the first home-cooked meal he’d eaten in months and to make the twins behave. Jerry basked in their sympathy, envied the tangible smugness of people whose marriages worked, ate to the point of discomfort.
And then Remy voiced everyone’s thoughts. “Hope Rachael isn’t eating alone today. We sent an invitation through Marek but she wouldn’t come.”
“It’s Shay I’m worried about. Poor kid,” Dan said.
“She’s dead.” Jerry felt better saying it aloud.
The women
rattled dishes to distract the conversation, made a pretense of clearing the table.
“I won’t believe that till she’s found.” Dan was always the one to start an argument. “And don’t you either, Jerry. Damn world. Everybody gives up hope at the first excuse. Remember starting out in California during the depression, Rem? We made it because we didn’t give up.”
Jerry excused himself after pie and coffee.
Rachael’s car wasn’t parked along the side street now. He wondered if she ever came back to the Gingerbread House for anything or if she was too far away.
Flakes of snow feathered on the air, landing finally to melt on warm earth.
Jerry lifted the latch and pushed at the gate. The wrought-iron fence tilted toward the house. “What the hell?”
The gate was wired shut. Jerry squatted to investigate it, leaning his shoulder against a spear-tipped post.
The entire section of fence between the gate and the corner fell over into the backyard.
Brandy leaned back against the sofa, feeling better since her nap but still weak from the sickness that was receding as had the thin view of another world, the tugging that’d almost claimed her.
Her granddaughter must make the mirror work properly, and soon. Brandy couldn’t stand another disappointment.
Lottie stood in front of her, hands on her hips, her feet spread, her expression worthy of Mr. Shakespeare’s shrew. “Why can’t this Marek guy help you if it’s his baby? He gave you a diamond, didn’t he?”
“Of all people, I can’t go to him, Lottie.”
“Why not? You’re even still wearing the ring.”
“My hands have swollen so that I can’t remove it.”
“Didn’t used to be. Had it on when you came but you didn’t take it off then.” Mr. St. John hovered at Lottie’s elbow.
The ring isn’t mine to take off. Neither is the finger it’s on. “You can’t turn me out now, Lottie. I beg of you.”
“You’re too far along for an abortion. You’re …” She made a pretense of slapping the side of her head. “What am I going to do with you two? Do you know I’m supposed to be in Nederland? How can I leave with all this going on?”
“Your three men friends get tired of you?” Ansel asked.
“I have a new boyfriend and a place to live up there. But, Gramps, I can’t leave you in a mess like this.”
“Seems to me the mess started when you came. We was doing fine. Go on up to Nederland. I’ll take you in the truck if you want.”
“How am I going to have any fun up there worrying about you down here all the time? You’re worse than a kid. Can’t leave you alone for a second but what you don’t get into trouble.”
Lottie kicked one of Stina Mark’s kittens off a chair with her bare foot. She flopped down and laid her arms on the table in a pleading gesture. “You’re getting to be too much of a responsibility for someone my age.”
Ansel St. John assumed a wounded air and scooped up the adopted kitten which was fast on its way to becoming a cat. “That DOES IT!” He handed the kitten to Brandy and grabbed his coat from the back of the chair. “I’m going into town and buy some coffee. Lots of coffee. For Shay and me, and you can’t have a drop.”
His lips formed a pout over his ill-fitting teeth. “So there, Carlotta Ralston. Think you can run things around here,” he muttered and slid the glass door shut behind him.
Lottie screwed up her face for crying. “What am I going to do with the old bastard? I mean … I just got his diet straightened out.”
“Lottie, you can’t treat your grandfather like a child.” Brandy stroked the offended cat. “He surely knows more about life than you after all his years of living.” She couldn’t understand the relationship between these two. There was obviously love here but it made the grandfather childish, the granddaughter churlish and overbearing. “He must worry about you living with men to whom you’re not even married, smoking, the scandalous language you use. And you seem to have no respect for your grandfather.”
“Respect? He’s old. He’s crazy. One of these days he’s going to pull his last screwing fuck-up and I’m not going to be able to get him out of it. And I’ve got the feeling you’re it. People live too long anymore. That’s the problem.”
“They can hardly help how long they live. That’s in God’s hands.”
“God? Oh, great, we got a Jesus freak among us. Shay Garrett, I don’t know what he’s going to do next. You don’t know. Gramps is getting scarier by the year and if I were you I’d get out of this. He’s unpredictable.”
That was one argument Brandy couldn’t counter. “Lottie, who is Stina Mark? Not the cat and the goat but –”
“My grandmother. His wife. Mark was her maiden name.”
“Is she buried out by the fence in one of those graves?”
“I don’t know.” Lottie hugged herself and whispered. “And I don’t want to know.”
Shay’s baby kicked her bladder and Brandy winced. Granddaughter, please get back to handle things, and soon.
15
When Rachael called Marek that evening he told her of the burglary of the Gingerbread House. She packed and hurried her little car back to Boulder, seeing the thirty-mile stretch of turnpike through guilty tears.
She’d been selfish, abandoned the home that had sheltered and protected her and generations of her family. And someone had hurt it.
First her mother, then her daughter, then her husband. Gone.
And now the violation of the Gingerbread House … how much more could she take? What other shocks could there possibly be left for fate to throw at her?
Lights blazed in every window when she drew up beside the house, reminding Rachael of the night she’d returned to find the house lit, her father on the living-room floor, her mother bending over him, trying to breathe life into his stilled chest and pushing on it …
This was the first time it had occurred to Rachael that Brandy Maddon had been attempting a not-too-accurate form of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage, a technique Rachael’d been unaware of until recent years.
Stepping over the low concrete wall and a portion of a wrought-iron fence that’d traveled the prairies on a wagon train, she looked up at the house with a mental apology.
When she stepped into the kitchen she saw her daughter’s pink ruffled bedspread draped over the kitchen stool. The room looked dirty but she could see nothing missing.
She pushed open the door to the hall. Her husband and a man she didn’t know stood talking where Thora K.’s buffet should have been. Jerry held a green book in one hand, gesturing with it.
Rachael had the sensation of rising out of her body, hovering above them and herself. She looked down, surprised to see she was clutching Shay’s bedspread. The beginning prickles of a hot flash swarmed over her and she glided back to the floor as Jerry turned.
Relief, sympathy, but only guarded involvement on his face. “Here she is now. Rachael, this is Detective Grant from the police depart – you don’t look so good. Want to sit down?”
“No. I’m fine.” Her voice sounded as far away as his and her arms wouldn’t let go of the bedspread. A jumbled pile of tablecloths and odds and ends from the buffet lay on the floor.
“We’ve dusted for prints, investigated the house and grounds, Mrs. Garrett,” the detective said. “I’ve talked to your husband and brothers.”
Rachael moved away from Jerry’s supporting arm and trailed the bedspread into the living room. The lights seemed to flicker and dim in the periphery of her vision but stopped when she looked at them squarely.
“I stayed on to have you confirm the list of stolen items.” He waved a piece of paper. “A very professional job. They loaded a truck at the back door. Probably at night. No witnesses.”
“Yes,” Rachael’s voice said. The loveseat, chairs, tables, the Tiffany lamp shade, the chandelier. Gone.
“It seems to have been only the valuable antiques. Not the usual easy-to-turn-over items –
TV, stereo, silver, jewelry, that type of thing.”
“Yes.” The cabinet Great-Grandmother McCabe had brought from France. Gone. Rachael’s blue-glass collection lay on the rug.
“Someone who knew antiques and what was in the house. Do you know of anyone who might –”
“No.” Rachael wandered into the dining room. Her feet seemed to float above the floor. Nothing left here but the contents of the drawers of the buffets, the lesser articles from the china cabinets.
The set of Haviland china that Aunt Harriet Euler had given Sophie McCabe as a wedding gift. Gone.
In the bedroom, clothes and bedclothes, jewelry and personal items littered the floor. The bed, wardrobe, dressers and chairs. Gone.
The men followed her in. Jerry handed her the green book. “Remember Bran’s diary? Found it in the hall. It must have been in the buffet.”
“Where were you when this happened?”
“In Nederland. I… hadn’t been living here while you were gone.”
“The place to move this stuff is antique sales and auctions,” Detective Grant said. “We’ll get tracers out tomorrow if you’ll complete the descriptions and check the list.”
“Nederland. Yes.” Rachael clutched her mother’s diary to her breast with the hand that wasn’t holding her daughter’s bedspread.
Lottie left for Nederland, promising to return before the baby was born and threatening to call Marek Weir, the Gingerbread House, and the police if Shay was still in residence by then.
Ansel St. John refused to be concerned by the threat. “Won’t be back for a long time. Means well, does Lottie, but she’ll get interested in affairs up there and put off coming down. Makes her own fun. Lottie may get VD but she won’t get ulcers worrying over me.”
He grinned and rubbed his hands together. “What say we have us a cup of coffee?”
“But, Mr. St. John, what will we do if –”
“Now, don’t worry.” He spooned coffee into the pot. “Besides, I told her the baby was coming in March. By the looks of you, we’ll be lucky to get through Christmas.”