A Face at the Window (9 page)

Sit down. Shut up. Stay out of it. "Yes. Yes, I understand," she answered obediently, keeping her voice low. Because feeling the way she did, suddenly—scared, angry, and frustrated in the extreme—if she raised it even a little bit she might scream the whole place down.

"I'll get the numbers for you," she said.

Back in the
bad old days, Jake Tiptree had been a hotshot Manhattan money-manager with a brain-surgeon husband, a son just entering puberty, and an Upper East Side penthouse looking out over Central Park in a building so exclusive that you practically needed an FBI background check just to deliver pizza there.

Unfortunately her husband had turned out to be even better at adultery than at surgery, which was how she reached the point one day of standing alone in her fancy kitchen with a broken wineglass in her right hand, frowning thoughtfully at the skin of her left wrist. But then the phone rang and it was a client needing to be talked off a financial ledge, and by the time she got done handling him she'd also crept back down off her own.

Months later, though, driving home alone from New Brunswick, Canada, after a stockholders’ meeting, she'd stopped overnight in Eastport, Maine. And although until then she'd had no interest in old houses, home repair, or (God forbid) power tools, she'd fallen in love.

With the house: enormous, antique, and to her unskilled eye
charmingly dilapidated. With the town, salt-scoured and severely lovely, set by the water's edge at the end of a curving causeway so low that she could almost reach out through the car window to dabble her hand in the ice-cold waves.

And with the idea of a life that did not include a husband whose brain was habitually occupied so far south of his cranium, it was a wonder he remembered how to operate on anyone else's.

Also, in Eastport Sam might just possibly not grow up to be a monster. No guarantees, but for one thing the apparent absence of exotic, lab-quality pharmaceuticals seemed like a good omen; even then, he'd had a worrisome taste for illegal substances.

So she'd moved from Times Square to fresh air in one dumb jump, as her by-then-ex-husband criticized the decision. But it had, as Sam told her much later when he'd been clean, sober, and halfway rational for seven whole weeks, made all the difference.

Since then she'd worked on the old house through moments of extreme happiness as well as through turmoil and disruption: her marriage to Wade, Sam's relapses and recoveries, her father's return to her life after so long, her ex-husband's death. Even the news that Ozzie Campbell was finally to be tried for her mother's murder went down easier with a paintbrush in her hand, and the breaks she took from working on her victim's impact statement had been oddly soothed by the creak of a prybar or slam of a hammer.

Thus, by two-thirty in the afternoon on the day Lee White-Valentine and her baby-sitter Helen Nevelson were taken, Jake was back at the sidewalk hole in front of her old house. Bob Arnold had called twice; once to get the number of the villa where Ellie White and George Valentine were to be staying, and again to ask if she wanted him to get hold of Wade, and ask him to come home.

"Don't bother him. He'll call when he can," she'd replied, thinking that if their situations were reversed, Bob would not be asking if Wade wanted his spouse summoned in off the disabled freighter currently stalled in the Bay of Fundy, where despite the bright day a line of thunderstorms was forecast for tonight.

Bob meant well, though, she reminded herself as she frowned at the bag of concrete mix. By his renewed invitation, too, to stay the night with him and Clarissa and the kids. He just didn't realize that now, even the touch of the warm late summer air on her skin made her want to howl.

The harmless chatter of his children, and Clarissa's gentle concern, would only be fresh torture, reminding her of Ellie and Lee; if she could, she'd have crawled down into a hole much deeper than the one in the sidewalk, pulled the cool, dark earth in over herself, and wept.

But she couldn't. She had to stay calm, keep her mind clear for when Campbell called again.

Which he would. Otherwise, what was the point to him having done so in the first place? She had to figure out what came next, too, Bob's order to sit tight and do nothing being sensible, but impossible to obey.

At the moment, though, all she knew how to do was work. So she forced herself to continue on with the sidewalk project while her cell phone kept ringing, each time making her throat close with anxiety and each time not being Campbell.

As if triggered by her thought, it rang once more. "Ma, d'you want me to come home?" Sam asked when she'd told him what was happening. "I can be up there in a couple of hours. I could help with the…"

Search.
Half of Eastport was already out knocking on doors, stomping through bushes, and peering into sheds and boat-houses, while the other half made sandwiches and brewed
coffee. She'd have been, as well, but she needed to stay near the house phone, not just her cell, in case…

"No, Sam, thanks for asking." His new place in Portland was a tiny apartment near the water where he would share a small yard and a big dog with the woman who owned the house.

"I'm fine," she lied, hoping he wouldn't get bored and decide to find someplace livelier. He was in a sober phase, now. But that could change any minute.

"Why don't you just go on doing what you're doing? That way you'd be fresh if they ended up—"

Needing you.
But from the remainder of this thought her mind recoiled. Surely they'd be found soon. "And when your grandfather and Bella call later, I know they'll decide to…"

Come home.
For a moment she allowed herself to imagine the comfort it would bring, having Sam around. But—"I won't be alone for long. Gramps and Bella will want to get back right away when they hear. And it helps, knowing you'd come if I did ask."

"Okay," he said reluctantly, and when they'd hung up she turned back to the concrete mix bag. If the hole you were fixing was small, you were to clear it thoroughly, then wet its edges. But this one was a crater, big enough to swallow a dog or cat. Or a small child…
No. Don't think that.

She considered calling Sandy O’Neill again, but she'd tried several times already and gotten either a busy signal or the infernal voice mail. She'd tried Ellie and George's cell, too, but either it wasn't working or they'd turned it off.

Kneeling, Jake dug away more soil and stones. The concrete bag's instructions echoed Tom Godley's advice to make the hole a lot wider at the bottom than at the top…

Her phone rang again. "Hey."

"Wade…" At the sound of his voice, even distant and tinny
sounding as it was over the Comsat system the freighters used to communicate ship-to-shore, she felt her resolve buckle.

"… anything?" The connection was crackly

"No." Any hint of panic from her and he'd be here right away, never mind what kind of emergency anyone else was having; she straightened, gripping the phone. "Everyone's looking. Cops from all over the state are here. Bob's going to try to get hold of Ellie and George; I can't seem to. Wade, this is all…"

My fault.
But it wasn't, and anyway that was another thing that if she said it, he would come home despite the freighter out there wallowing helplessly.

"I miss you," she told him instead. "But I'm all right."

Much more of this and her pants would catch fire. She pictured him high up on the freighter's comm deck, the other men waiting for him to get back to work.

"… you…" The connection was breaking up.

"I love you, too." Static in reply; reluctantly she pressed Disconnect, as another wave of fright hit her hard.
Where are they?
But that way lay disaster; if something happened she had to be ready for it.

Which meant she should eat something, whether she wanted to or not. Inside, the afternoon light slanted through the kitchen's tall, bare windows, brightening the jar of red dahlias she'd picked and placed there only that morning. As she was putting a slice of cheese onto a slice of dry bread, the phone rang again; this time it was the cordless in the phone alcove, not her cell.

"Jake?
You
okay?" Another crackly connection.

"Yes,
I'm fine," she said as her heart rate slowed.

Not Campbell. "Who is this?" she began, annoyed. But then with a guilty start she realized. "Dad. Hey, sorry about that."

He'd planned to fix the sidewalk himself; doing it without
telling him made her feel suddenly like a naughty child. "You heard about Lee and Helen?"

"Yes." Around here, news traveled almost as fast between islands as on them. "Mail boat came, fellow runnin’ it had the story. Listen, I don't like your being there alone."

If anyone understood Ozzie Campbell, it was Jacob Tiptree. The two had been longtime friends until one blasted the other's life to bits. "I'm fine, Dad," she said.

For an instant it was as if he were right there with her, smelling of Old Spice, brick dust, and Tom's of Maine toothpaste while planning how to attack the hole in the concrete.

The ferry could have him and Bella home tonight but his next words dashed this hope. "Ferry's down. Repairs. To morrow, too."

Her heart sank. "Oh. That's too bad." She forced confidence into her voice. "But look, you and Bella don't have to rush home. There's nothing to do but wait."

The back door stood open, and while she was talking a squad car zoomed by, driven by a uniform cop but carrying men in suits.

"How's Bella?" she asked. Keeping her voice even; she hadn't known how much she had been counting on their return until the prospect was snatched away.

"She's fine." He chuckled drily. "Gave the poor fellow at the ferry dock the wet-hen treatment when she found out the boat wasn't going, but that didn't do any good."

Jake imagined Bella Diamond dressing down the unfortunate ticket agent. With her big, bad teeth, her grape-green bulging eyes, and her bony face twisted into the variety of outraged scowl only she could really produce properly, no doubt she'd gone right up one side of that poor ferry guy and down the other.

Still, when there was no ferry, there was no ferry. For an emergency, a helicopter could be summoned, but…

" ‘Copter's in St. John with a sick kid," Jacob Tiptree said as if reading her thought. "And for light air traffic it's a tad breezy. Gale flags're up."

Those storms coming tonight, she remembered. And the remote, windswept isle of Grand Manan where her dad and Bella had gone was no kiddy ride by propeller-driven plane, even in the best of weather. Not that he'd have been able to get Bella onto any such damn-fool gizmo, as she'd have called it.

"Anyway, she's got our room in the motel spic and span, and if I don't go grab her she'll be starting on the lobby area."

"I can see it," she said, managing a weak chuckle. But then the horror of what had happened came over her again. "Dad…"

"I'll take her on a tour," he said, not seeming to notice.

But he had. It was a sort of good-news, bad-news feature of their relationship that even after many years of no communication between them at all, he could still read her so clearly.

"Did you know," he went on in the deep, gravelly voice she used to hear in her dreams all the while he'd been on the run, "that New Brunswick was set up by Canada as a refuge for British Loyalists from America, after the Revolution?"

Tears prickled her eyes. "No," she said lightly through the tightness in her throat. "I didn't know that."

His ancestors, and hers, had taken great glee in picking off the hated redcoats with flintlock muskets, the equivalent of 12-gauge shotguns, from their hiding places in the Kentucky hills.

Another squad car went by, this one with its lights flashing although no siren was on. "Dad, I've got to go. Somebody might be trying to…"

Call. But she didn't want to discuss that with him. He was
fully capable of commandeering a fishing boat to get back here if he had to, and even the suggestion that his old nemesis Campbell was behind this—

"All right," he said. And then, "You remind me of your mom, d'you know that?" A rush of feeling washed over her; despite the long separation they'd had, his approval was important to her.

Or perhaps because of it, as if they were making up for lost time. "Not just because you look just like her, either," he said.

The spitting image, actually, although her mother had been barely out of her teens when she died. Same dark hair, lean face, and alert expression…sometimes it seemed Jake had inherited all her physical features from her mother, and none from her dad.

"She had your nerve," he finished almost tenderly, and Jake could almost see him reminiscently touching the ruby earring in his ear. He'd asked Bella if she wanted him to take it out, to which the housekeeper had replied
Of course not, you fool,
and meant it.

His voice regained its usual dry forcefulness. "Before I go, though, Jacobia, I wanted to remind you, that broken sidewalk's no amateur project. Don't let your eyes get bigger'n your toolbox."

Caught.
He knew her, all right. And when he called her by her full name, the jig was definitely up. "Uh-huh. I'm aware of that, don't worry. How's your foot?" she changed the subject.

His fall on the fractured concrete had been so spectacular, it seemed the only one not still horrified over it was the victim himself. "The cast feels like it's made of lead," he groused.

In the background she heard gulls crying, and a foghorn's two-note hoot. "Soon as I get home," he went on, "I'm going to get a hacksaw, stick my leg out in front of me, and—"

He'd do it, too; yet another reason it was as well he stayed
away. "Look, you just take care of yourself and Bella, okay? I'm fine, I talked to Wade, and Bob and Clarissa have invited me to stay with them. I might, or Sam might come up tonight, so…"

So she wouldn't be alone. It was only a small lie, she told herself, maybe not even entirely one since whatever he said, you never knew when Sam would show up for a meal and a night in what he still thought of as his own bed.