The Way You Look Tonight (8 page)

I hardly know Joe, Evan doesn't trust him, and he's going to stay in my home tonight, Deborah thought. But Steve liked Joe. At this point, that was enough.

Moments later the front door slammed. Although Pete and Evan had left together, Deborah knew who'd done the slamming. Barbara looked up at Joe, annoyance deepening the lines around her mouth. ‘I wish you wouldn't do that.'

‘Do what? Try to look after the four of you while Evan and Steve are gone?'

‘You know what I mean.'

Joe leaned easily against the door frame. ‘You mean, why don't I let Evan call all the shots?' he drawled. ‘Well, Barbara, I don't want to rile you, but just because your boyfriend comes from a rich family and has a law degree and I don't doesn't mean he's in charge of every situation. I've noticed you giving him a few orders now and then yourself.' Barbara flushed and Joe softened his words with a self-deprecating grin. ‘Besides, I'm the ex-cop, the one who knows martial arts and carries a gun. I'm the tough guy here, so let me play my role without giving me grief, okay?'

Deborah suddenly knew why Evan distrusted him. There was something reckless, almost uncivilized in Joe's gray eyes in spite of his grin. She got the feeling that beneath his quiet exterior there was something dangerous, something you wouldn't want to cross, something almost looking for trouble. She quailed again at the thought of him spending the night in her home. What did she know about him? Very little except the fact that he was a good investigator. But Barbara was smiling back at him, her body relaxing. ‘Okay, Joe, you're right. I'm glad you're here.'

‘Me, too,' Brian said, standing behind Barbara and Joe. ‘Mommy, he set up the train. Come look.'

The last thing on Deborah's mind was the train, but she pulled herself up and went into the living room. The train chugged merrily through mounds of cotton, whizzing past miniature villages and a mirror made to look like a snow-surrounded lake. ‘Isn't it neat!' Brian exclaimed.

‘Neat,' Deborah repeated, her voice thick. This was the first year someone besides Steve had set up the train and it looked better than ever. The thought made her feel guilty, and she rushed over, switching it off. ‘Bedtime.'

Kim was already huddled into a corner of the couch, sleeping soundly, one of her shoes lying on the floor. Even Scarlett had given up. She lay collapsed on the floor beside the couch, although she managed to open her eyes and look at them briefly before stretching to what seemed twice her normal length and lapsing back into a doze. Brian was still on his feet, but barely. His hair stood on end and his eyelids sagged.

Joe started to scoop the limp Kim off the couch, then looked at Deborah. ‘Okay if I carry her up?'

Deborah tensed at the sight of this unfamiliar man touching her little girl, but he held Kimberly gently and the little girl slept on. ‘Yes, please,' she said. ‘I don't think I could manage her alone tonight.'

The children still slept together in the room across from her and Steve's. That situation would change this coming summer, when they remodeled the small room at the end of the hall above the kitchen for Brian. According to the former owners, the room had not been renovated since 1930. Mrs Dillman had told her in confidential tones over the fence one summer afternoon that the room was haunted. ‘A young man
killed
himself in there,' she'd said darkly. ‘Took arsenic because of some girl who'd left him. He was Catholic and couldn't have a proper Christian burial, so his spirit haunts the place. Sometimes you can still hear him moaning in pain from the poison.' Steve had actually laughed out loud at the story when Deborah told him later. ‘No wonder we got such a good deal. The damned place is haunted. When does the moaning and chain-rattling start?' Deborah had never confirmed whether the tale of suicide was true or merely another figment of Mrs Dillman's increasingly wild imagination. All she knew was that the room was little, dark, and uninsulated, obviously abandoned for years. They now used it as a storeroom, rarely entering it and keeping the door closed.

After she'd undressed a drowsy Kimberly and deposited her in the bottom bunk, she left Brian to get himself ready for bed. Scarlett always slept in the children's room, and she was passed out on her plaid doggie cushion when Deborah closed the bedroom door and went downstairs to Barbara and Joe.

‘Any word from Evan?' she asked.

The two sat quietly in front of the beautiful Christmas tree whose twinkling lights cast multi-colored reflections over their solemn faces.

‘He called about ten minutes ago,' Barbara said. ‘The police want a recent picture of Steve. They also asked about a passport.'

‘A passport?'

‘They still can't discount the theory that Steve took off,' Joe said. ‘If he headed out of the country, he would need his passport.'

‘This is
incredible
! He didn't leave the country,' Deborah said hotly. ‘I can't believe they think he'd run off from his family.'

‘Men do it all the time,' Joe answered calmly. ‘Women, too, for that matter, although not as often.'

‘Well, Steve didn't. Besides, he didn't have a passport. He's never been out of the country.'

‘What about a picture?'

‘Steve wasn't fond of having his picture taken. I'll look through the album tomorrow morning, though, and see what I can find.' She suddenly felt tired enough to drop on the floor. But there were two guests to take care of. ‘I'm afraid there's only one guest room,' she said.

‘So who gets it?' Joe asked Barbara, humor edging his voice. ‘Do we flip a coin?'

Barbara gave him a playful slap on the hand. ‘You said no women's lib crap tonight, so
I
get it. You sleep on the couch.'

‘There are extra blankets and pillows upstairs,' Deborah said.

Barbara stood. ‘I know where everything is. I'll get Mr Macho here fixed up on the couch. You get into bed before you collapse.'

Deborah smiled meekly. ‘Thanks, Barb. I don't know what I'd do without you.'

‘You don't have to find out.'

Upstairs in her room, Deborah slipped tiredly out of her slacks and turtleneck sweater and into the first nightgown her hand fell upon in her drawer – a long, flowered flannel thing Steve had given her for her birthday. With her long braid, she thought she looked like someone from
Little House on the Prairie
when she wore it, but it was warm and soft and she was freezing. She was too worn out to remove her make-up, a sin the editors of beauty magazines would never forgive, but right now she wasn't concerned with clogged pores or the inevitable mascara rings beneath her eyes which would appear in the morning.

She wandered to the bedroom window, looking out on the back yard. The twins' swing-set, Scarlett's rarely used dog house, the small metal garden shed – everything looked bleached out in the small area of cold winter moonlight showing through a hole in the cloud cover. Hard to believe that just last summer the yard was alive with cherry-rose nasturtiums, yellow marigolds, vari-colored moss roses, and lilies of the valley which grew in the shade of an apple tree. On Sundays the children had laughed and played on the swing-set while she lay in the sun, sipping lemonade and reading a mystery novel, and Steve, with his amazing gift for gardening, tended the flowers.

Deborah finally climbed into bed and pulled the comforter up to her chin. Exhausted as she was, she was certain she couldn't sleep. She lay quietly for a while, begging deep sleep to obliterate this terrible evening, when at last she fell into a fitful doze.

She dreamed she sat in a rocking chair placed before a large window shrouded with dusty lace curtains. Evening was falling, the temperature dropping. She didn't rock – she held perfectly still, listening to an old house snap and groan around her, settling in the chill air of approaching night. Finally the images faded and she was aware only of sounds – scraping and creaking. The snapping and groaning of wood. She mumbled ‘no' a couple of times in half-conscious annoyance, wishing the sounds would go away so she could sleep.

Then she jerked awake. At first she held rigidly still, frightened but not knowing why until she heard a faint creak of boards again. She wasn't asleep this time. She was wide awake and the sound was coming from the room next to hers – the storage room over the kitchen.

Steve? she thought instantly. Was it possible that Steve had been in the storage room all along? Had he gone in there to find Christmas ornaments and gotten hurt somehow? Had he been lying in the room, unconscious, for hours? But that unlikely scenario didn't explain his missing car.

Mrs Dillman's story about the room being haunted flashed through her mind. ‘Don't be absurd,' she mumbled. Even in childhood she hadn't believed ghost stories, and in the six years of their occupancy of the house, she'd never noticed anything unusual about the room. But then she'd never heard boards creaking in there, either. Artie Lieber? No. The room was on the second floor and Joe was downstairs. No one could have gotten past him.

She thought of going to get Joe, but she didn't want to seem like a hysterical woman. Besides, she had the odd feeling that she didn't want to run downstairs and leave the children up here. Alone.

She slid out of bed and flew to her door, not bothering with slippers and robe the way people always did in movies, no matter how dire the circumstances. She opened her door and ran across the hall to the children's room. Peeking in, she saw that both were sleeping peacefully, although Brian was curled on the plaid dog cushion with Scarlett, a blanket thrown over both of them. He really is frightened about his daddy, she thought with a pang, seeing his little arms wrapped around the dog who sat alert, her ears perked. So she had heard something, too.

Deborah motioned to the dog who deftly extricated herself from Brian's grasp and trotted to her. ‘Be really quiet,' she murmured. ‘We have to check on something without scaring anyone.'

Scarlett looked at her with uncanny intelligence, as if she understood every word. Deborah closed the children's door and she and the dog went down the hall to the guest room. She opened the door a crack and was relieved to see Barbara lying on her back, mouth slightly open, breathing regularly. All present and accounted for, Deborah thought, before she heard another sound, this one obviously a footstep, coming from the storage room. Scarlett stiffened, the hair along her spine rising.

Someone was in there.

Still reluctant to leave the others upstairs by themselves, Deborah went to the railing and called to Joe, but there was no reply. Damn. He was probably sleeping as deeply as Barbara. If she yelled loudly enough to wake him, she would wake everyone else and make the situation worse. All she needed was two little kids milling around in the hall, frightened out of their wits. Besides, maybe it was nothing. Maybe Scarlett was simply picking up on her own tension.

Reluctantly, Deborah stepped into her room, picked up a heavy trophy Steve had won in a college debate tournament and now used as a doorstop, and walked down the hall. She pressed her ear to the storage-room door. Nothing. Of course not. It was just the house settling, making noises she'd never noticed before but which tonight, in her high-strung state, sounded odd, frightening. She should just go to bed and ignore them. Instead, she twisted the knob and slowly opened the door.

Immediately she was aware of a light – the beam from a flashlight – before she caught a blur of movement and the glint of something that looked dangerously like a gun pointed directly at her. Scarlett burst into a volley of barks and charged into the room. A tiny scream escaped Deborah before a male voice said, ‘Jesus, you two scared the hell out of me! Scarlett, let go of my pants.'

Joe. Deborah's heart gave one giant thud, and she realized that for a moment it had stopped. She finally knew what people meant when they said their heart skipped a beat. She felt tears of physical shock and fear pressing behind her eyes. ‘What are you doing in here?' she croaked, clutching the trophy.

Thankfully, Scarlett had immediately stopped barking. As if suddenly aware he was still holding the gun on her, Joe lowered the automatic he favored, holding it slightly behind his right leg where she couldn't see it. ‘I couldn't sleep so I went into the kitchen to get something to drink when I thought I heard noises up here.'

Deborah flipped on the light – a naked, dusty bulb hanging from the ceiling – then cast her eyes around the small room piled with boxes and luggage. ‘I heard noise, too, but it must have been you because Barbara and the kids are asleep.'

‘
Were
asleep,' Barbara said behind her. ‘What's going on?'

‘It's the ghost of that boy who couldn't get a Christian burial because he did a sin!' Kim wailed.

So Mrs Dillman had told them her story of the boy who committed suicide. Damn. ‘There's
no
ghost,' Deborah said, assuming a false calm.

‘How do you know?'

‘It's too cold for ghosts,' Joe said. ‘Your mother just thought she heard something.'

‘
What
?' Kim asked fearfully.

‘Nothing bad – just a loose shutter.' The lame explanation was the first thing that came into Deborah's mind, but it might work on a couple of five-year-olds. ‘I'm sorry I woke everyone up.'

‘I'll get them back to bed,' Barbara murmured, with a look at Deborah that said, ‘Afterward, I want to know what
really
happened.' For now she smiled brightly. ‘Come on, kids. Fun's over.'

‘I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm still not goin' back to bed without Scarlett,' Brian announced.

When children and dog had been shuffled back down the hall by Barbara, Deborah turned to Joe. ‘It must have been you I heard in here when I was in bed. What are you looking for?'