Chapter Six

 

 

The gray Volvo was a phantom shape in the dusk until Eric opened his door and a cheerful puddle of light spilled onto the gravel. “Hello!” he called. “Ready for dinner?”

“Am I ever,” Rebecca replied. A cold gust of wind almost knocked her over and she huddled into her coat. With a fumbling clatter she found the keyhole, locked the door, stowed the key in her purse. Eric helped her into the warm interior of the car. She closed the seat belt and settled back into the embrace of the upholstery, inhaling the delectable odor of leather.

“I took the liberty of picking up the mail,” said Eric as he slid behind the wheel and slammed his door. The light went out and for a moment Rebecca couldn’t see a thing. “The mailbox is down by the road,” his marvelous voice continued in the gloom. “All that was in it were some advertising circulars addressed to James Forbes.”

“Immortality,” said Rebecca, “is your name on a mailing list.” Her eyes adjusted, and she could see the castle looming with surreal frailty above her. A lamp cast a feeble glow over the door. The window of her room was a dim rectangle, barely illuminated by the light she’d left on. The rest of the windows were dark, absorbed by the enigmatic walls of the house. She let her head drop back onto the headrest and exhaled in a soundless shiver.

Eric turned the car and it purred down the driveway past the dark bulk of the mausoleum. “Tired? Is Campbell working you too hard?”

“Probably not hard enough.” She assumed a more ladylike position. “This place takes a bit of getting used to. I think I’m suffering from too much input, over excitation of the brain cells or something. I dozed off this afternoon and had a nightmare about the battle of Culloden.”

“It’s a creepy old place. If it were mine I’d exorcise it by putting in modern furniture and accessories. I’d hire a jazz ensemble to play on the minstrel’s gallery and invite lots of people to troop in and out.”

“The state is planning to make it a youth hostel or a scout camp. That should do for the troops, anyway.”

“Assuming the state gets it.”

“Didn’t James will the estate and the remaining furnishings to Ohio?” “He did, but only if no relatives are found by the first of January. His property taxes kept getting higher, and he kept getting angrier, until finally he came up with that scheme, hoping to keep the state from taking it all. Except your and Campbell’s and the servants’ salaries, of course—those are covered in any event.”

And your no doubt tidy fee, Rebecca added silently. “James didn’t know whether he had relatives?”

“John Forbes had an elder sister, Rachel, but she went her own way well before the turn of the century. James made up his mind about the will just a few days before he died, unfortunately. But I’m working on it. Odd to think that’s one of the last duties I’ll be doing for Dun Iain, finding someone to give it to.”

“Mmm, the unexpected inheritance, just like in a movie.”

“Life follows art,” Eric said. “Except in life there’s more paperwork.” The car stopped at the end of the driveway. In the field across the road a pair of eyes, caught by the headlights, glittered and vanished.

“Do you need me to get out and close the gates?” Rebecca asked.

Eric turned onto the road. “The gates haven’t been closed for years.”

So much for Rebecca’s image of Michael considerately opening them for her. “I thought James wanted to keep people out.”

“John did. By the time James took over no one was particularly interested in coming out here anyway. Except for teenagers looking for a place to party, and they climb in over the fence. They’re harmless enough; they stay away from the house. Dun Iain’s outside the city limits of Putnam, in the sheriff’s jurisdiction, and he keeps a close eye on the area.” The headlights swept a stretch of brick wall that was partially collapsed, overgrown with underbrush between whose limbs peeked bits of spray-painted graffiti. “I saw a car parked over there today. Probably friends of Steve’s come to keep him company while he doesn’t work.”

“Yes, I think I saw one of them.”

Eric nodded. “Subtlety is not Steve’s strong suit, I’m afraid.”

“The house is safe enough,” Rebecca continued. “Craigievar may have been an example of seventeenth century conspicuous consumption, but it was still built for defense. Scotland had a few wars yet to go.”

“Who? Oh, the castle in Scotland that John copied.”

Rebecca considered Eric’s profile, illuminated by the faint lights of the dashboard, and reminded herself that most people wouldn’t even be aware that Dun Iain was a copy, let alone what it was a copy of. So the man wasn’t an historian. Historians didn’t wear suits that expensive.

She had seen that profile on a Roman coin. Maybe his nose was a bit prominent, like an eagle’s beak. But then, “Adler” meant “eagle” in German; that nose was the sort of characteristic that could become a family name. Like her grandfather’s red hair, appropriate for a Scot named Reid.

Eric realized she was looking at him, caught her smile, cradled it a moment in one of his own, and returned it. Oh my, she thought, clearing her mental throat. He is good at the game of the sexes, isn’t he?

A few minutes later the car passed under the interstate and entered Putnam. There was the Burger King. Several doors down was a shabby pizza place lit with neon beer advertisements. Despite the cold, a dozen or so teenagers of indeterminate sex lounged amid the cars in the parking lot, pinpoint lights of cigarettes hovering like fireflies among them. Rebecca, gliding by in her cocoon of warmth and comfort, looked at them only casually. Then she looked again. That insectlike figure had to be Steve Pruitt, nursing a bottle of something that, she bet, wasn’t a soft drink.

Suddenly red and blue lights flashed simultaneously from a side street and from the main road. A siren wailed and then died on a piercingly flat note. Some of the dark figures in the parking lot jumped and scattered; others stood their ground with nonchalant attitudes.

Eric slowed and edged toward the curb, evading the approaching police car. “This place has a reputation for selling booze to under-age kids.”

“Wasn’t that Steve over there?” Rebecca asked.

“Probably. He’s only nineteen; he’s a disaster area.”

“What about. . .” Rebecca cut herself off. Maybe she’d smelled marijuana on the young man, maybe she hadn’t.

“Illegal drugs? Putnam kids still get their kicks from beer. So far.”

The lights of the police cars converged on the mass of shouting, gesticulating figures in the parking lot. Faces whirled by, at one moment painted harshly by the glare, at the next swallowed by the rim of darkness. Eric eased back into the traffic lane and accelerated.

“You’re not going to rush over there and start handing out business cards?” Rebecca inquired sweetly.

“Thanks,” replied Eric, with a quick sarcastic glance.

One dim form broke loose from the tangle of bodies. It sprinted across the sidewalk and into the street. “Watch out!” shouted someone, and another voice cried, “Hey you! Come back here!”

Rebecca gasped. Her foot made futile pushing motions at a nonexistent brake pedal. Eric spat a four-letter word that clashed with his suit and tie. His foot succeeded where hers had failed. The car skidded, fishtailed and stopped. The fleeing figure spun through the headlights, eyes and mouth gaping; a fist pounded the hood of the car and then vanished. The face was branded on Rebecca’s retina—eyes and mouth smeared with makeup, delicate features almost erased by the glare of light. A girl.

“You all right?” asked one of the policemen, running up to the car.

“Yeah,” snapped Eric, his voice, if not his body, showing evidence of whiplash. He turned to Rebecca. “Are you?”

Her hand was pressed over her mouth as if she were keeping her tonsils from leaping out in a scream. Surely the lines of the seat belt would be engraved on her body. She blinked and managed to say. “I’m fine, thank you. Only a dent in my composure.”

She’d had to start kidding him just then. If he’d had slower reflexes he’d have hit that—that child while he was looking at her. She didn’t know him well enough to be kidding him like that anyway.

“Better go on,” advised the officer. “Traffic’s backing up.”

With infinite care Eric straightened up the car and crept off down the road. “You’re sure you’re all right? I’m sorry, I. . .”

“Good Lord,” she said. “I distracted you. I’m the one who’s sorry.” She could see his frown in the barred light of the streetlamps, the black arch of his brows furrowed. The car accelerated beyond a turtle’s pace. “At least let me apologize for swearing like that.”

“You’re entitled,” Rebecca told him. “If I’d had a voice just then we would’ve had a duet.”

He shook his head and allowed his face to smooth. In silence they passed through the old downtown district, storefronts divided among boutiques, feed stores, and boarded-up windows, skirted a residential area, and emerged on another highway. The topmost of a tier of signs before a strip shopping center proclaimed in fancy script letters, “Gaetano’s”.

“Here we are.” Eric pulled into a parking place and stopped. Rebecca, used to letting herself in and out of a car, hesitated a moment and was rewarded by Eric’s handing her out with the self-mocking gallantry of a Regency beau. She returned the pressure of his hand before releasing it.

The interior of the restaurant was all subdued lighting, tasteful pastels, and the occasional impressionist print. The maitre d’ recognized Eric and bowed them into a banquette. This is living, Rebecca said to herself. She opened the menu and tried not to gulp at the prices. It might be a shopping center on the outside, but inside it was strictly uptown.

“May I?” Eric asked. Rebecca murmured something polite, too embarrassed to admit she didn’t know what half the things on the menu were. Tuesday nights with Ray and his everlasting olive pizzas were beginning to look pretty thin indeed.

Eric turned to the hovering waiter. Gnocchi con pomodoro e rosmarino, focaccia, salad, veal alla pizzaiola, something hideously expensive from the wine list. Rebecca’s composure crumpled even further. She and Ray would treat themselves to glasses of what Dover’s Pizza Paradise optimistically called wine, but a whole bottle? And she was sure her palate wouldn’t appreciate anything so exclusive. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” she whispered.

“Now why would I want to do that?” Eric replied with a smile. Oh Grandmother, she thought, what lovely teeth you have.

He sat close enough to her she could sense his presence, far enough away to preserve her personal space. She could just sense the spicy aroma of his after-shave, probably only available at upscale department stores.

His hands smoothed the intricate folds of the napkin on the table. For someone exuding wealth and sophistication his hands were those of a laborer, blunt, sturdy, oddly prosaic. But on one finger he wore a thick gold ring, set with a diamond suitably discreet but still twice as large as her chip of an engagement stone, and monogrammed “EFA”. “F?” she asked.

He looked up, startled. “What?”

“The ‘F’ on your ring. What’s your middle name?”

“Oh. Frederick. Nicely Germanic. Fits with the Eric and the Adler.”

“It’s nice to meet someone who isn’t of Scottish ancestry.”

“It takes all kinds.”

The wine came, was approved, and poured into her glass in a sparkling crimson stream. Eric waited, glass poised. She lifted hers and clinked it against his. “To Dun Iain,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied. “By all means.”

By the time the antipasto arrived they were well into polite cross-examination. Rebecca had three older brothers, Eric was an only child raised by his grandmother. Rebecca’s undergraduate and master’s degrees were from the University of Missouri, Eric had attended law school at the University of California at Los Angeles, his hometown. Like her, he’d worked his way through college, his grandmother’s Social Security checks barely covering their rent. Now she understood why he’d never had his teeth fixed—as a child too poor to afford braces, as an adult too vain to wear them.

Rebecca envied his state as an only child, and envied even more his current financial security. But then, unlike her, he’d chosen a profession that offered financial security. She toyed for a moment with daydreams of fiscal hedonism, clothes, cars, and wine lists.

Judging by the current events that appeared in the background of his biography, Eric was about thirty-five. Rebecca wondered if there was a divorce in his past, and whether his frank admiration for the feminine had contributed to it. She contented herself with the innocuous, “And what brought you from California to Ohio?”

“I was offered a position with the Birkenhead, Birkenhead and Dean, in Columbus, just about the time my grandmother died. There was no reason to stay in L.A., and I’d never been in this part of the country.”

“You were handed the Dun Iain account, I suppose, as the older members of the firm were getting too dignified to drive up here.”

“Spot on,” said Eric, “as your Scottish friend would say.”

“He’s not necessarily my friend. He came with the job.”

“Want to file a complaint with OSHA, the occupational hazard people?”

Rebecca laughed. The waiter whisked away empty dishes and deposited full ones. To Rebecca’s slightly glazed eyes each plate was haloed with oil and cheese. She wondered if Italian food could be considered a sacrament.

“Did you tell Michael about wanting to put a jazz ensemble on the piper’s gallery?” she asked. “I’ll bet he threw a rampant lion of Scotland gold and crimson fit.”

“Not exactly. He is pretty touchy, though. Can’t say as I blame him. He knows I’m supposed to be checking up on him.” Eric’s jaw tightened; in his body language, Rebecca told herself, that signaled suppression of stress. “I also made the mistake of telling him you were coming. And he didn’t like that at all. Sorry.”

“I hate to think what kind of reception I’d have gotten if he hadn’t been expecting me.”

Eric twirled a strand of linguini around his fork and contemplated it a moment. “Actually, though, there’s more than that. . .”

“Yes?” Rebecca urged.

“Campbell’s fully aware that he’s a scholar and I’m not. I think he’s been—well, not to put too fine a point on it, overestimating the worth of some of those old things. And putting some things down as valuable that aren’t at all. I can’t help but wonder if he’s doctoring the books, in other words, trying to get a little extra for himself after the dust of the insurance and shipping costs settles. I hate to accuse him of. . .” He stared glumly at the tangled strand of pasta, as if it were a noose dangling at Michael’s neck.

“Skimming the cream?” Rebecca suggested.

“I beg your pardon?”

Rebecca discovered that her wineglass was empty. She regarded it sadly. “Just something he said. Embezzlement is the word, isn’t it? I must admit he doesn’t seem the sort.” The red drop remaining at the bottom of the glass shone like crystal, but she saw nothing in it. Michael had a distinct secretive streak, yes. But if he had criminal secrets, surely he’d be a lot more poker-faced, less charming and less obnoxious both.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Eric went on. “If I had more technical knowledge I’d probably find my suspicions are all wrong. I’m sure he’s quite honest, and simply resents your and my breathing down his neck.”

“I’ll be keeping an eye on him. He’s already tried to get a few things by me. Jokingly, you understand; I figured he was testing my knowledge just to flatter his ego. But you never can tell.”

“Thank you,” said Eric. “I really appreciate your help.” He patted her hand where it rested on the table. She could feel the print of his fingers glowing on her skin even after he picked up his fork again.

Was that the deal, then? A fancy dinner for her services as—well, as a spy? But that wasn’t all he wanted. Every feminine antenna she had was quiveringly alert, responding to the nuances in his voice, his face, his body.

Rebecca was mellowing fast. The rest of the restaurant seemed as hazy as a scene photographed through a gauzed lens; the conversations of the other diners and the clink of cutlery reached her ears in slow, indistinct eddies. Only the banquette was completely tangible. The candlelit plates and glasses and Eric’s face with the intensity of stained-glass windows lit from behind. Rebecca grimaced at her descent into unashamed sensuality and cut another morsel of veal. She was eating olives, she realized, and enjoying them.

“So you’ve been handling Dun Iain’s legal matters for several years,” she said. “Does that take up a lot of your time?”

“Not really. I’m the one-man Putnam branch of the firm, so I have to be here at least once a week anyway. There’s usually something to attend to over at Golden Age Village, for example—wills, trusts, various financial and legal matters to sort out.”

“Dorothy was saying that James resisted going into the Village.”

“He certainly did. Dun Iain was his home and that was where he was going to stay. A shame he had to fall down those stairs, but, well, he had had a long life. Not like his mother when she died.” This time it wasn’t Eric’s jaw that tightened but his mouth, its deep curve thinning into a narrow line.

“That must have been a real tragedy for James, losing his mother like that. . .” Rebecca bit her tongue. She didn’t know how Eric had lost his own mother. Or his father, for that matter. No wonder the thought of Elspeth’s death distressed him.

But his voice was smooth as always. “I’m not saying James wasn’t a little crazy. He was. And yet in many ways he was perfectly sane. He loved his books, and his writing, and all those artifacts were his babies. Even though he felt guilty over them.”

“Guilty?”

“He said they shouldn’t have been brought here. He said they wanted to go home.” Eric gazed off over the restaurant as if seeing the old man pottering among the portraits, the letters, and the cut-glass bottles.

“Not that he wanted to send them home, but that they wanted to go?”

He turned to her with an apologetic smile. “I said he was a little crazy. But he’s getting his wish now. They’re going back.”

“I suppose, then, that James resisted selling off the more historically interesting objects?”

“There’s not much of a market for that kind of thing. He sold some decorative items to support the place, yes. ‘De-accessioning’, I guess you’d call it. But they didn’t lose their entire fortune in the Crash of ‘29.”

“De-accessioning,” Rebecca chuckled. “That’s good museum-speak. You’re learning fast.” Eric grinned and bowed over his wineglass. “I assume,” she continued, “that the readily salable pieces are in the bank.”

“Some bonds, a certificate of deposit or two. That’s about all. James sold his mother’s jewels, if that’s what you’re wondering. You’ll notice the erasures in the inventories.”

“Rats,” she said. “I was hoping to find Elspeth’s diamond choker, the one in the Sargent portrait.”

“Already gone. A shame; you’d look lovely in it.”

“I’ll ignore that,” Rebecca chided him, without really meaning it. “How do you suppose the rumor of treasure got started?”

Eric threw his head back and laughed. “Good Lord, Dorothy didn’t waste any time filling you in on the local gossip, did she? Treasure?” He leaned conspiratorially toward Rebecca and lowered his voice. “I think part of it is the normal human love for a mystery—the recluse in his castle—and part of it was fostered by James himself. He would carry things around and hide them and then forget where. I found his father’s signet rings in an old coffee can one time. Rescued them just before Dorothy threw them out.”

“The ones in the prophet’s chamber?”

“You’ve already seen them? Yes, those. I had my own ring modeled on them. Not that I had any intention of flattering him, you understand.”

“I should hope not,” sighed Rebecca. Again her glass was empty. There was a wonderful taste of garlic, basil, and red wine in her mouth. Eric was still leaning close to her. The candlelight made his eyes look like polished smoky quartz—cairngorm, in Scotland. . . All right, she ordered herself. “Poor John, and Elspeth, and James,” she said. “They just never found how to buy happiness, did they?”

To her surprise Eric straightened. “Money can buy happiness,” he said quietly. “What it can’t buy is justice.”

For a long minute she looked at the somber line of his profile. A lawyer with a conscience. Maybe he’d rather be in criminal law but doesn’t have the stomach for it, and feels guilty. . . Her head was swimming. So James had thought the artifacts wanted to go back. Did he, too, imagine Rizzio’s murder and the terrible battle at Culloden?

The waiter was hovering. Eric was smiling and nodding as if he’d never made a serious statement in his life. “I’m stuffed,” Rebecca protested laughingly. “I can’t eat another bite. You’ll have to roll me out of here. Except I’ll be so huge you won’t be able to lift me.”

“You’re barely even a handful as it is,” Eric replied in mock reproof, and ordered chocolate mousse and espresso.

Odd, Rebecca thought, how everyone seemed to suddenly think she was too thin. And she thought, a handful, huh? What part of her anatomy was he considering handling? She giggled helplessly, and Eric regarded her with indulgence that was far from platonic.

The dessert and coffee were as delicious as the rest of the meal, and the jolt of caffeine helped to keep Rebecca from falling comatose in her plate. All too soon the day of reckoning came; the waiter appeared with the bill. Eric produced a pen and began to refigure it.

She seized the opportunity to pull out her compact and renew her lipstick. Circumscribed in the mirror’s tiny circle, her face glowed and her eyes shone in the candle light. Tendrils of hair softened the often too-crisp lines of her features. If Ray could only see her now. . . It was because Ray couldn’t see her now that she was so splendidly flushed and tipsy. Yes, the engagement was over, all but the shouting. Not that there’d be any shouting, not with Ray. Rebecca made a face at herself and returned her compact to her purse, where it clinked against the huge door key.

Eric summoned the waiter and consulted over the new, improved version of the bill. The waiter bowed and scraped. The ceremony moved to its conclusion, the ritual presentation of the American Express card.

When all was completed to his satisfaction, Eric tucked the receipt into his wallet and turned to Rebecca with an engagingly self-deprecating smile. “Sorry to take so long. But it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it?” He captured her hand from her lap and this time really did hold it briefly to his lips. Amazing how the man could get away with gestures that would be ludicrous in another. The kiss tingled all the way to her toes.

When she stood up, her knees were hardly steadier than her linguini. The rush of cold air and the chilly seat of the car cleared her head somewhat. Eric checked the gauges on the dashboard with the careful scrutiny of an astronaut preparing for launch.

When they returned down franchise row, the neon lights of the pizza place shone innocuously over a few parked cars, but no living figures were in sight. Rebecca asked Eric to stop at the convenience store on the next block; she wasn’t going to spend one more day in that house without coffee. Eric not only stopped, he bought a can for her and assured her there was a coffeemaker in the pantry. “I brought it out there myself,” he told her. “James preferred tea for his elevenses, but I don’t think anything beats a good cup of coffee.”

“Amen,” agreed Rebecca, and crinkled the bag happily in her lap between similarly happy if speculative glances at Eric.

He was, she thought, orchestrating an old-fashioned seduction. Slowly, one day at a time, none of this “Hi, pleased to meet you, your place or mine” business. An affair might be just the ticket. No more commitments, not now. There was nothing wrong with simple mutual pleasure.

Not that she was an expert on seduction. Ray was the only man she’d ever slept with. And he’d been the professor next door, a trusted friend, well before he ever became her lover. Once that placid quasi-domestic Friday night arrangement had been established, engagement had been the logical next step.

Every now and then Ray would hint about how repressed she’d been before he came along. She supposed she had to allow him that brief glint of machismo. So it had taken her a while to discover the opposite sex. Once her caution would have been commended, not condemned.

In the darkness she bit her lip and then smiled ruefully, wondering what had happened to that caution; she was considering this stranger as a potential lover. Her singed fingertips must be extraordinarily sensitive.

All too soon the car turned into the driveway. There was Dun Iain, lit up like a Christmas tree. You can tell he’s not paying for the electricity, Rebecca said to herself. He’s left every light in the place blazing. The windows were squares of brilliance against the black invisibility of walls, ground, and cloudy sky. They looked even more like eyes than they had in the daylight. Considering all that she had seen from them, they were eyes.

Pellets of rain struck the windshield in a brisk fusillade as Eric stopped the car and turned off the engine. He peered rather quizzically up at the house, then released both his and her seat belts and gently but firmly pulled her across the seat into his embrace.

Not that she had any idea of resisting. The kiss sent static hissing down her nerve fibers. She wondered abstractedly if she’d frizzle up like a cartoon character caught in the throes of G-rated passion. But this was not G-rated. She melted against him.

The can of coffee fell off her lap and cracked against his ankle. “Ow!” he exclaimed. “You could’ve just said no.”

“I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean. . .” They both scrabbled after the can, cracked their foreheads together, and subsided laughing against the seat.

Eric escorted her to the door, took the key, and unlocked it. “If I were you, I’d get a locksmith out here to put in a new lock.”

“This contraption lends it character, though, don’t you think?”

He smiled and said, “I’ll be appearing on your doorstep again soon. I’d like to look over James’s papers one more time for news of Rachel Forbes’s descendants. If you don’t mind sharing the space.”

“Of course I don’t mind.”

“And we’ll have to do another dinner, or maybe a concert, soon.”

“Yes. Definitely.” They kissed again, quickly but not superficially, and Eric ushered her inside. But not before her damp lips turned abruptly cold in the chill of the night.

Just as the lights of the car flashed on, the rain came down in sheets. Rebecca slammed the door, locked it behind her, and stood with her back against the wood waiting for her red corpuscles to stop pirouetting like bubbles in champagne. Slowly her idiotic grin ebbed to an introspective smile.

Eric was certainly a class act. How long had it taken him to smooth the sharp edges of his background—ten, fifteen years? But his manner wasn’t a seamless whole. His occasional somber abstraction suggested depths beneath the surface gloss. He held something back, kept something in reserve.

Rebecca asked the marble features of Queen Mary, “Were any of your husbands like that? Francis, the gallant? Darnley, the dandy? Or Bothwell, the warrior? As if he were waiting, like a cat at a mouse hole?”

The serene face of the queen, all passion spent, did not reply.

 

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