Beloved (13 page)
Authors: Antoinette Stockenberg
But she said,
"
To eat. To pay the mortgage. To buy gas. To start up a new career. I don
'
t have a job,
"
she finally confessed. Somehow, suddenly, she needed to admit it.
"
But I thought you were a graphic designer,
"
Cissy interjected.
"
I am. An unemployed one. I did have some free-lance work, but that finished up the day before my aunt died. Needless to say, there
'
s nothing else at the moment.
"
She was very aware that McKenzie was following the conversation. She could tell by a kind of stillness in him; he reminded her of a cat, ready to pounce.
"
What exactly is a graphic designer?
"
he asked, looking over the rim of his coffee cup into indeterminate space.
He seemed not to want to ask her the question directly, so Jane addressed her answer to Buster, who was stretched out at her feet, snoozing.
"
I did the layouts for an ad agency in
Connecticut
. I worked mostly on two or three accounts—perfume, lipstick, vodka, mineral water, that kind of thing.
"
McKenzie put down his cup and leaned back in his bleached-oak chair, balancing it against the wall.
"
I see,
"
he said with a dry and appraising look at her.
"
All the essentials of life.
"
"
Well, no,
"
she admitted, flustered.
"
Obviously not. That
'
s why they have to advertise: to create the need.
"
He frowned. Naturally. She
could see the disapproval in his eyes. Impulsively she added,
"
I wish I could tell you I was working on something monumental when they let me go, Mr. McKenzie
—
"
"
For Pete
'
s sake, call him Mac,
"
Bing chimed in, watching the two of them
warily
.
"
I wish I could say I was creating a new vaccine, or a cure for cancer. But I wasn
'
t. I remember very well what I was doing when I got my pink slip: sketching a chair for an ad for an interior design firm. That
'
s all. A chair. I
'
m sorry I
'
m not Mother Teresa, Mr.
—
Mac
—
Kenzie,
"
she said, stumbling once more over his blasted name.
There was a surprised little silence, and then McKenzie surprised them even more by standing up and drawling,
"
I suppose there are more useless things. You could
'
ve been a goddamned lawyer.
"
He unhooked his jacket from the back of his chair and slapped Bing on the back.
"
Thanks for the chow, man,
"
he said, and he left.
"
Geez,
"
said Cissy.
"
What
'
s with
him?
"
Bing blew out a stream of air through puffed-up cheeks.
"
Well, let
'
s think about it. The guy
'
s wife has left the island and taken his kid. He
'
s probably up to his neck in debt and banks aren
'
t lending. And late winter isn
'
t exactly a boom season for nurseries, here or anywhere else.
"
"
Oh. So the problem wasn
'
t really the chair?
"
"
Not the chair, Ciss,
"
Bing said, with a soft laugh.
Things got a little quiet after that. Jane insisted on cleaning up the dishes, and Cissy played old-sock with Buster while Bing went out for more wood. It was all very relaxed, almost domestic, and Jane managed to salvage some of the mellowness she
'
d been feeling.
They
'
re really very nice,
she thought.
Cissy
'
s a ditz, but she
'
s a sweet ditz.
And as for Bing, he was about as different from McKenzie as a man could be: loose, easy, friendly, generous, kind.
It beat uptight, tense, aloof, stingy, and mean any old day.
Jane left B
in
g and his sister a little while later and waded through the blinding, drifting snow back to her cottage. She stood on the little hooked rug inside the back door, shaking the snow from her clothes and stomping her boots free of it. When she pulled her boots off, she had to steady herself against the door jamb.
That
'
s when she noticed that one of the antique spoons was missing from the wood rack that hung on the wall beside the door.
6
W
ho would want a spoon?
That was the first question that popped into her head, and it stayed there as she searched under the table, alongside the stove, and in the silverware drawer. It had been there yesterday morning; that, she knew. She remembered staring at the dozen different spoons in their rack as she ate her toast, and wondering about their value. She remembered that she
'
d decided it was mostly sentimental.
So who would steal a spoon?
The one that was missing was nothing special; it was pewter, as she recalled, with a sort of cut-work handle.
Kids?
Anything, she supposed, was possible; she
'
d left the door unlocked, after all. A sinking thought hit her.
Did it
just
happen
?
She ran to her purse, which she liked to leave on top of an antique pot cupboard in a corner of the kitchen, and checked its contents. Nothing was missing. So it wasn
't a break-in; just ..
. a prank?
But who?
She swung open the back door and stuck her head out into the slanting, stinging snow, hoping to catch sight of footprints. But her own deep prints had almost drifted over; the nor
'
easter had destroyed any evidence.
If there
was
any evidence
.
It was eerie, it was creepy, and she didn
'
t like it at all, the thought that someone had come and gone through her kitchen. For the first time since she
'
d arrived, she decided to lock the door even though it was daytime. She slipped the button down on the lock, then headed for her bedroom to change into workclothes. On the way there, she tripped over the scattered books.
Nuts.
This was a distraction she didn
'
t need. She tried to lift the heavy wood bookcase from off the floor. It didn
'
t budge. She stood up, arching her strained back, and her glance fell on the sketch of the bonneted woman that hung on the wall opposite.
The b
o
nnet. Of course!
It was the Quaker woman in the sketch who
'
d been the star of Jane
'
s dream. She should
'
ve known the bonnet, the dark coal-scuttle bonnet. Ugly and defeminizing, it was nothing more than a constraint designed to keep its wearer from flirting or taking an unseemly interest in her neighbor
'
s business.
Like blinders on a horse,
Jane thought, feeling a surge of sympathy for the unhappy subject of her aunt
'
s sketch.
What a miserable thing to be forced to wear.
She backtracked to the kitchen, intending to shanghai Bing into helping her lift the bookcase, and found him on the other side of her door, dressed for travel and gripping an attaché case. He looked distracted.
"
What
'
s wrong?
"
she asked.
"
Nothing much,
"
he said, stepping inside.
"
Just a routine crisis at the museum.
"
"
You mean someone wants to donate the painting but keep the frame
—
that sort of thing?
"
"
I
wish,
"
Bing said with a wry look.
"
No; someone wants to donate the Homer but keep the Hopper. We want the Homer
and
the Hopper.
"
"
Aren
'
t you being selfish?
"
she said lightly.
"
He promised.
"
"
I can see why the
Melowe
Museum
has such a rounded collection.
"
"
We
'
ve scheduled an exhibition of Depression Era art. We
need
the Hopper.
"
His eyes burned with a pure blue flame, the fire of a man with a mission. If he had the painting, the exhibition would be complete. Anything else was less than perfect, and that was unacceptable.
"
I
'
ve got to go back to
New York
,
"
he said with grim determination.
"
No chance of taking a plane in this snow; I
'
m making a run for the noon ferry. So much for my Monday holiday. Can we reschedule dinner for another time?
"
"
Oh, sure,
"
she said with a polite smile.
"
I feel like a rat, finking out on our first date.
"
"
No, really, don
'
t think about it,
"
she said with a nagging sense of
déjà vu.
"
If I had a nickel for every time my dad stood me up on business, I could start my own foundation.
"
She listened to the self-pity in her voice and groaned.
"
Will you listen to me? I
'
m laying on guilt with a trowel,
"
she admitted.
"
I
'
ll tell you what
—
help me lift a bookcase and we
'
ll call it even.
"
"
Your wish, m
'
lady, is my command.
"
Bing set his attaché on the kitchen floor and followed Jane out to the fireplace room.
"
Good lord, Jane,
"
he said, surveying the mess,
"
you must
'
ve had some pretty heavy reading on those shelves.
"
"
Very funny, smart aleck,
"
she said, thinking uneasily of the book on the tarot that she
'
d put on an upper shelf.
"The darn thing just ..
. fell over, in the middle of the night.
"
"
Really. C
'
mon; take that end. Ready?
"
They wrestled the bookcase back in place.
"
There
'
s a reason it fell over, of course,
"
she said, pointing out the buckled floor. She hesitated, then added,
"
But I
'
m not so sure about the spoon.
"
"
A spoon fell over in the middle of the night?
"
"
A spoon is missing from my aunt
'
s display rack.
"
She added dryly,
"
Maybe it ran away with the dish.
"
Bing
'
s eyes were dancing with amusement.
"
Hey, diddle diddle. So what
'
re you thinking? Ghosts?
"
She
'
d been leaving
that
thought unformed, at least until he said it.
"
Please forget I mentioned it,
"
she said, coloring.