Beloved (11 page)

"
He stole a car, dear, that
'
s all,
"
said her husband mildly.

"
He stole a
Porsche,
is what he stole. And sank it!
"

"
Some boys are wilder than others, especially when they
'
re stuck on an island while their friends go off, as Phillip did, to grander things.
"

"
And what about that other time, when he was called in for questioning?
"

"
Nothing ever came of it.
"

"
What Celeste saw in him, I will never know. That tells you something about summer romances. She was absolutely right to accept that position in
Boston
three years ago. Look at her now
—
a shoe-in for partner in a prestigious law firm. Where would she be if she
'
d stayed behind to water his trees for him? Penniless! That
'
s where. Mac McKenzie hasn
'
t got two nickels to rub together. There
'
s no money in nurseries. He should
'
ve sold that land years ago, at peak. He could be a wealthy man now.
"

"
There
is
the problem with access, dear,
"
Mr. Crate said, throwing the car into reverse and backing ever, ever so cautiously out of Phillip
'
s driveway.

"
Don
'
t be silly. Watch that tree. Do you think Bing wouldn
'
t be willing to sell him the rights to a permanent easement across his land? That
'
s what covenants are for. Or Sylvia Merchant
'
s property; he could drive over
that,
if he had to.
"

"
But as you say yourself, Mac has no money to buy the right
—
"

"
He would if he were
selling
the land; it
'
s all in the timing
—
oh, never mind. I just don
'
t like it when he shows up at these things. Nothing will ever change that.
"

Her voice became low and anxious.
"
You
'
ve seen him with that ax. It looks natural on him. I
'
m afraid of him. And Phillip knows that. Stay in your lane.
"

She
'
s as much as calling him an ax murderer,
Jane thought, amazed at the tenor of the conversation. She swung her head, looking back along the road. If they
'
d driven past McKenzie, she
'
d missed it. The thought that he
'
d be passing her house quietly on foot sent the hair on the back of her neck rising.

In a moment they were at her door. Mr. Crate slowed his
Lincoln
to a gradual stop
—
actually, Jane could have stepped out any time along the way and not even twisted an ankle
—
and she got out of the car. Dorothy, who
'
d been sitting next to her in silence, suddenly stuck her head out the window and said ominously,
"
Single women
can
take
nothing
for granted.
"

They left Jane, mouth agape, standing there with her keys and thinking,
What a timid little family they are.
It was catching; she was regretting not having turned on the porch light. The problem was with the two huge hollies that flanked the door: fifteen feet high, they blocked light from the inside, as well as any view of the outside.

Jane let herself in and instantly she felt the cold: the furnace must have blown another fuse.
Damn.
The electrician had warned her that the burner was old and inefficient and the sixty-amp service not up to the task. She
'
d laid in a supply of fuses, but an expensive upgrade looked inevitable.
Damn.

She rummaged through a kitchen drawer for a flashlight and, since some of the inside stairs to the basement were missing, went back outside in the whistling wind to enter through the heavy cellar bulkhead doors. The dirt-floor basement was less than six feet high and filled with moldering lumber and rusted, broken-down machinery. The basement light was on the same fuse as the furnace, so when the furnace went out, the basement went black. After the electrician explained all this the first time, Jane had hoped never to return. Fat chance.

She groped toward the fusebox, arcing the flashlight back and forth through the debris. She swung the beam where she thought the box should be and it lit, instead, on two bulging yellow eyes placed squarely over the most vicious fangs she
'
d ever seen. Jane screamed. It screamed. She dropped her flashlight and felt something scurry past her legs. She jumped back, instantly wrapping herself in a cobweb of repulsive size. The sense that spiders and dead flies were all over her hair was overwhelming. She cried out in revulsion and fled, slamming into hard metal and scraping her shin on the way out.

She ran straight into the bathroom, tore off her clothes, and jumped into the shower. There was, of course, no hot water. It hardly mattered. She shampooed, and scrubbed, and shampooed again. Clean and frozen, she checked out the damage to her shin, amazed at the depth of the gouge and the size of the goose egg on it. There wasn
'
t a doubt in her mind that the plow, or whatever it was she ran into, was rusty.
Oh, fine. Tetanus, too.

Clearly I
'
m not yet ready for prime-time country,
she thought wryly.
What was the worst it could have been—a weasel?
A possum?
As for the spider
web—I go running off hysterically like Little Miss Muffet, and now I
'
ll probably die of blood poisoning.

She put on a pair of heavy Levi
'
s and an old jacket and tried changing the fuse one more time, with a better flashlight. All went well and ten minutes later Jane was upstairs in bed, listening to the wind sending the door of the potting shed thwacking back and forth on its hinges. Jane counted the thwacks, like sheep, and in five minutes she was sound asleep without a thought in the world for weasels or ax murderers.

And yet somewhere in her subconscious she was dreaming about the storm that raged at the island so alone and exposed, thirty miles from its motherland. She was dreaming of
Nantucket
'
s children, huddled under warm blankets, and its wild creatures, sheltered in its nooks and crannies. She was dreaming of its women
—
fewer than in years gone by
—
who tossed in their beds as they waited for their men to come home from the sea. And she was dreaming of its fishermen, not daring to return through the island
'
s infamous shoals, holding their vessels into the wind and praying for the storm to be over, while they no doubt swore never again to go to sea.

When the explosive, sickening crash came, Jane was ripped from the deepest of sleeps and sent careening from her bed. She charged for the door only half-conscious, and then stopped herself. Her heart was pounding, her senses alert; her breathing was fast and shallow. Her body was ready to do battle.

But against what? And
with
what? Jane had come to sleepy, deserted little
Nantucket
expecting to be completely safe. She had no gun, no Mace, no phone, and
— after dinner with the Crates
—
no confidence.

Calm down,
she told herself.
Think about what you
'
re doing.
Tiptoeing back to a lamp, she turned it on, then took up a crowbar she
'
d left propped in a corner of the bedroom.

Will I use this if I have to?
she wondered, gripping the cold metal bar as she moved from one room to the next, switching on lights.
Crash it through someone
'
s skull? Could I do that?
It was a horrible thought, a sickening thought. The answer to it was no. She laid the crowbar quietly on the floor of the hall. Why hadn
'
t she just gone with the hair spray? At least there was an outside chance she
'
d have the guts to spray it in someone
'
s eyes.

She felt sickeningly vulnerable. What did
she
know about
Nantucket
? Nothing. Obviously the island had its share of burglars and maniacs. Obviously. She tried very hard not to recall anything Mrs. Crate and her daughter had said. But she remembered every blessed word.

She made her way through the upstairs floor, room by room, then crept down the steps. There was no one in the parlor
...
no one in the kitchen
...
no one in the bathroom. There was only one room left. By now the house was lit up like a Christmas tree. Jane peeked into the fireplace room, the last room, and was shocked to see that a huge oak bookcase had been hurled flat on the floor, and all its books scattered like November leaves on a lawn.

Still, it was obvious that there was no one in the room; Jane even made the effort to look up the chimney. The doors were still locked, the windows closed.
This is bizarre,
she thought, walking around the fallen bookcase.

She leaned against the sill of the nearest window, trying to figure it out. The wind was forcing itself through the cracks in the window frame, cutting through her with its cold. It was howling in earnest now; through her nightgown she could feel the house shake.

That
'
s it!
she thought, jumping up. She flattened her hands against the wall where the bookcase had stood: it was vibrating perceptibly. And the pine floor underneath it was uneven and buckled, the way wide-board floors can be. The
house
had knocked down the bookcase.

Relieved, Jane stepped over the mess
—
it would just have to wait until morning
—
and retraced her steps, turning off each of the lights behind her. She thought about her mother, living in
California
. Gwendolyn Drew had been visiting a friend in
Santa Cru
z
during the big
earthquake; the house had slid off its foundation and the two women had gone sliding with it. When it was over, Jane
'
s mother had poured both of them double scotches and managed to joke about it. Jane was in awe of that in her mother
—
that tough-minded fearlessness.

I just hope I inherited my fair share of it,
she thought wearily, switching off the bedside light.

****

The next sound she heard was that of heavy metal scraping asphalt. It was new, loud, and unexpected; she threw on her red chamois robe and made her way groggily to one of the front windows. It was gray out, barely dawn, she guessed. And it was snowing; there must have been half a
foot on the ground already, with more coming down in heavy, wet flakes. The snow didn
'
t surprise her, but the sight of Mac McKenzie sitting on a John Deere tractor fitted out with a plow and clearing her driveway
—
that surprised her.

Splaat!
A fat snowball hit the window in front of her face and slid down the pane. It was Cissy, dressed in jeans and a parka with a fur-rimmed hood, jumping up and down and waving.

"
Get dressed! Get dressed and come on out!
"

Jane slid the window up and said,
"
Are you nuts? It must be six in the morning!
"

"
No, it
'
s not
—
it
'
s nine o
'
clock!
"

Splaat!
Another snowball, this time from the side
—
and this time, right through the open window and down the middle of her nightgown. Jane cried out from the cold shock of it and turned to see Bing with a wickedly boyish grin on his face.
"
You heard my kid sister! Come on out
— or are you too chicken?
"

"
Chicken! We
'
ll see who
's chicken, you ...
you cluck!
"
Jane yelled. She slammed the window down and marched back to the bedroom with a determined glint in her eye. She dressed quickly for battle in heavy pants, a turtleneck, a tasseled cap, and a down jacket. Then she slipped into the backyard, packed a dozen snowballs into a galvanized bucket, and sneaked back around to the front.