A Charmed Place (75 page)

Off they went. Liz made one last pass around the second floor, searching for some sign of an old covered-up entry to the attic. Nope, nothing: the entire ceiling was plastered smooth.

For the life of her, Liz could not understand why there was no access hatch. Granted, the attic was no more than a crawl space, but it could provide at least a little extra storage—something the cottage had in short supply.

The most logical place to cut the hole was over the landing in the hall between the two bedrooms. Liz wrapped a red bandanna around her hair, slipped a pair of goggles over her eyes, and did some preliminary drilling here and there to figure out where the gap between the joists was. Then she picked up the jigsaw and attacked the ceiling.

The sawing left a thick cloud of dust and a shocking mess of plaster, lath, and horsehair on the plastic-covered floor of the upstairs hall. But as the opening began to take shape, Liz could practically hear the attic sucking in deep breaths of fresh air.

She set up a stepladder under the new opening and popped her head into the space above. The smell of damp wood dashed her spirits; damp wood meant rotten wood. Fearing the worst, she aimed a flashlight into the recesses of the long- forgotten attic.

Not too bad,
she decided after a quick scan of the timbers. No rot, no bats, no bees. There was a little dampness along a rafter where she knew she had a leak, but that was all.
Good little house,
she found herself thinking affectionately. She was about to climb back down the ladder when the beam of her flashlight fell on something rectangular straddling two joists at the far end.

It was a small, canvas-covered, metal-strapped trunk, the kind people used to haul around on steamers when they plied the
Atlantic
. Sealed away, who knew for how long? Here, in the tiny attic of her tiny house. A buried treasure.

With an eager, thumping heart, Liz hoisted herself up through the opening and began crawling on her knees from joist to joist toward the trunk. It was slow going. Halfway there, an exposed nail ripped her jeans and tore her thigh. Liz let out a cry and pulled away, whacking her head on the roof's low ridgepole.
Damn!
Now she hurt in
two
places. Worse, she was beginning to feel claustrophic in the unlit space. She took a deep breath to calm herself and resumed her crawl.

When she reached the trunk, she was frustrated once more: it wouldn't open. Liz had the sense that the trunk wasn't really locked but was simply used to being closed. She banged on the metal catch with the palm of her hand once, twice, until it hurt too much to continue.

This is idiotic,
she realized eventually.
I'll haul it downstairs—somehow—and open it there.
She muscled the surprisingly heavy little trunk from one joist to the next and was rewarded with the sound of the lock snapping open on its own.

Despite her curiosity, Liz hesitated before opening the lid. The one thing she did
not
want was to have something fly up into her face when she did. A flashlight would help; but the flashlight was lying next to the sawed-out opening, throwing its beam only vaguely in her direction, and she hadn't the heart to go crawling back for it.

Ho-kay. In we go,
she decided. She flung the lid open with a sudden motion.

Nothing flew out. Liz could see, by the slits of sunlight from a vent at the opposite end of the attic, that the trunk contained papers and letters. Captain Kidd's treasure, it was not.

Obviously the contents weren't valuable enough for the owner to remember where he'd stored them before he'd had the attic sealed in. Disappointed, Liz was about to close the lid when she saw, tucked in the darkest corner of the trunk, another, smaller box.

She reached in and took it out. It was a lacquered box, seven inches wide and three inches high, about the size of a Victorian tea caddy. Even in the near-darkness she could see that it was lacquered a brilliant Chinese red and decorated with an elaborate floral design. Still hunched over, she fumbled awkwardly with the thing, trying to open it. But it was clearly designed for a key, and she had no key.

She shook it. It sounded empty. It felt empty. The chances were it
was
empty. But Liz had a fierce, sudden, irrational desire to believe it held treasure. She began an awkward, painful crawl back to her sawed-out opening, leaning on her forearm instead of her hand, which was holding the box.

She was on her last joist when the doorbell — a handcranked, ear-splitting contraption from long ago — jangled loudly, jolting her upright into the ridgepole again.

"Ow!"
she cried, reeling from the pain. She leaned down through the opening into the hall and yelled loudly, "C'mon up,
dammit!
It's open!"

Expecting Victoria and Susy, Liz was surprised when a male voice called politely, "Anybody home?"

If he was a serial killer, he wasn't a very bright one. "Up
here,
I said," she repeated, rubbing the goose-egg on her head. "Who is it?"

"Your neighbor to the east. Jack Eastman," he answered as he ascended the bare, varnished stairs.

The voice was rich and deep and had that touch of Ivy League affectation that Liz so disliked. Clearly he wasn't there as part of any Welcome Wagon. She wondered why he'd driven all the way around to her side of the barbed wire. It never occurred to her to climb down the ladder to greet him. Instead, she waited for him just the way she was. Upside-down. Like a bat.

She was still hanging there when Eastman reached the landing beneath her.

"I'm looking for Liz Coppersmith," he said, clearly refusing to believe he'd found her. "Of Parties Plus?"

"Yessir! May I help you?" asked Liz, snapping to attention at the magic word
parties. Nuts.
This was a business call, then.

"Let me just get down from here," she said hurriedly. "I'm sorry about the mess. I was poking around, and. . ."

Still gripping her red-lacquered box, she scrambled onto the top rung of the stepladder — the one all the signs said not to step on — and promptly sent it flying out from under her as she fell backward, more or less into her new neighbor's arms.

He staggered under the weight of her fall but recovered gracefully, which was more than Liz could say for herself. She felt like Lucy Ricardo after a bout with Ricky. It didn't help that her head was wrapped in a ratty bandanna, her jeans were torn, and her face was covered with plaster dust.

He held her by her shoulders longer than he needed to.
"You're
Parties Plus?" A half-smile — too condescending by half — relieved the sternly handsome lines of his face. "Really?"

A shiver — indignation? resentment? — rippled through Liz. "Yes. Really," she said coolly, reacting as she always did to condescension. She knew she should be used to it;
Newport
had more snobs per cobblestone than any other town in
New England
. On the plus side, they formed a solid base of customers for businesses like hers.

Smile,
she told herself over the annoying hammering of her heart.
You need the business.

"I tried the number in the Yellow Pages," Eastman said, "and I got a not-in-service message." His tone suggested consumer fraud.

"Oh, that," said Liz. "I was in the process of moving my
Middletown
office to
Touro Street
here in town, but a sprinkler went nuts in the new place, so I won't be able to move in for a month. In the meantime I'm operating out of my house. The business phone goes in tomorrow. All of my clients know my home phone, of course," she added, implying that she had lots and lots of them.

It was obvious to her that he wasn't impressed. Why should he be, when they were standing in a pile of construction rubble?

Liz suggested that they continue their discussion downstairs. On the way down she tried to convince herself that she was in fact wearing a smart linen suit and that he was buck naked—anything to level the playing field.

The living room, with its charming brick fireplace, was only twelve feet square. Earlier in the day Liz had been regarding the room as cozy; suddenly it merely seemed small. And that was Jack Eastman's fault. Right-side up, he looked truly formidable: six-two, broad shoulders, arms that convinced her he worked out regularly. His thick brown hair was sun-bleached and surprisingly untidy for the impeccably casual clothes he wore. He was deeply tanned.

Another rich and idle yachtsman, without a doubt.

She thought of her father, still saving up for an aluminum skiff and an outboard motor, and had to repress one of her frequent surges of resentment for the moneyed class.
Why him and not Dad?
was her thoroughly blue-collar thought.

"Have a seat," she said, reminding herself one more time that there was money to be made from that moneyed class.

Eastman opted for the damask wing chair that went so well with her country-cottage chintz, but — she couldn't believe it — he didn't fit. The wings crowded his shoulders.

"Maybe you'd be more comfortable on the sofa," she suggested.

"It doesn't matter," he said impatiently, glancing at his watch. "I understand from Netta that you do birthday parties. We have a five-year-old, ah, guest who's staying with us. Can you arrange a party on the premises for a week from tomorrow?"

Ta-dah! Exactly
according to plan. Liz grinned broadly—and tasted plaster dust. She'd forgotten all about looking like Lucy Ricardo; it was obvious that she was going to have to go all out to overcome this disaster of a first impression. "I'd be
delighted
to do it," she said enthusiastically.

"I know it's short notice; are you sure you'll be able to fit us in?" he said, irony flashing in his sea-blue eyes.

Clearly he thought she had no other business at all. It stung.

"Well, that depends," Liz said, slipping mentally into that smart linen suit. "Some themes are more elaborate than others. But we should still be able to do something nice in that amount of time. I was thinking that the little girl — it
is
for that adorable little blonde girl, isn't it? — I was thinking that, like most kids, she's probably into dinosaurs."

It was the first thing that popped into Liz's head, but she quickly warmed to the idea. "Oh, I don't mean some big purple Barney hulking around and passing out party hats, but something more fun. Your grounds are
so
extensive ....  maybe we could do something with big cutout dinosaurs placed all over ... a kind of
Jurassic
Park
. We could create an entire prehistoric —"

"Hold it." Eastman stood up. Frowning, he said, "Nothing prehistoric. Nothing historic. I had in mind some balloons and streamers, that sort of thing. And a cake — even though Caroline's already had one. Some little nonsense presents. And I guess food of some sort. They eat at these things, don't they? Plan on — Netta tells me — about half a dozen kids and an average number of their parents. If you need anything else, talk to Netta." He glanced at his watch again. "Now. What's this going to run me?"

"Oh." Utterly deflated, Liz could think of nothing else to say, so she said it again: "Oh."

This wasn't exactly the commission she had in mind. Jack Eastman was not only a surly host, he was a cheap one. She sighed and thought that he must be from old money.
Newport
had plenty of that.

Still, it was a start. She did some quick calculations and came up with a rock-bottom estimate.

He frowned and cut it in half.

"Oh, I don't think so," Liz said, breathless at his insulting counteroffer.

Eastman shrugged. "I'm sorry to have taken up your time," he said, and he headed for the door.

It was all happening so fast. Her entrée to
Bellevue Avenue
— boom! Gone! Just like that.

"Wait!" she cried.

He turned around. Liz swallowed hard and said, "Okay. Since you're a neighbor. But I don't mind admitting —"

"Oh, don't do it as a favor to me, Miss Coppersmith," he said quickly. "Do it because you want the business."

She did. Damn him. She did. "I'll do it," she said with a tight, offended smile.

"Fine I'll leave you to it, then. G'day."

He let himself out. Liz marched up to the door, threw the bolt, and muttered, "G'day yourself, you cheapskate."

The whole interview was too embarrassing to dwell on; Liz pushed it from her mind and went back to retrieve the red-lacquered box from the floor of her bedroom, where it had landed after flying out of her hand when she fell from the ladder. She carried it over to the west-facing windows for a closer look. How odd that her visitor hadn't been the slightest bit curious about it. Or perhaps he was, but was too well-mannered to show it.

It was a beautiful box, lacquered to a slippery, brilliant finish and covered with an all-over pattern of intricately painted flowers and twining vines, all in deeper, richer colors than the Chinese red background. Its hinges were hidden, and its lock, the size of a fingertip, was recessed into the wood. An exquisitely made thing, and probably valuable.  She would not be able to open it without damaging it unless she had a key.