Beloved (67 page)

Phillip shook his head thoughtfully.
"
I can
'
t blame him. The prospect would terrify me if I were in his boots. Okay. Then how about this? A written assurance that if I ever get control of Bing
'
s property
—
and I don
'
t have the least desire for it anymore
—
that Mac will have right of way over it. Would that ease us over this hurdle?
"

"
I
'
m sure it would help,
"
she said, forcing a smile. But she was dismayed. Now she
would
have to sell.

"
There you are, then. We
'
ll just put everything on hold until I
'
ve spoken with my attorney. Hold on to the agreement, Jane,
"
he said, standing up and giving her a friendly, beseeching smile.
"
These guys charge three hundred bucks an hour to run off new ones.
"

As they were moving toward the door, Phillip hesitated, then said,
"
One thing I think you should know. Technically, you can
'
t reject an offer if it
'
s for cash and unconditional. Not that my aunt and uncle would press where they weren
'
t wanted. But someone else might. And if Mac told you he didn
'
t like the color of the buyer
's eyes ...
well
... "

He shrugged, then added,
"
He just won
'
t forgive, will he? He just won
'
t forget.
"

"
No,
"
she said forlornly.
"
That
'
s not his way.
"

****

A little later Jane cleaned up and walked into town on her usual rounds. First she went to the post office, where she mailed a birthday card to her sister, and then she went a few steps farther to The Hub, the news store that served as the heartbeat of the town. She browsed through the latest magazine arrivals and bought her weekly copy of the
Inquirer
—
the Inky,
as it was affectionately known on the island. After that she bought a bouquet of bridal wreath and some loose-leafed lettuce from the local pro
duce truck parked on the cobblestones in front of The Hub.

Many of the year-round trades
people
now
knew Jane by name; she knew some of them well enough to ask about their children. And there was another, subtler way that told Jan
e she was beginning to belong: s
he was able to separate the year-rounders from the summer residents, the summer residents from the day-trippers who
'
d poured off the first boat of the day and were swarming over
Main Street
.

Jane lingered in front of The Hub in the perfect June sunshine, scanning the crowd idly, looking for familiar faces. She found one that she held dear: Uncle Easy was sitting on the slatted bench outside The Hub, flanked by his niece, his gnarled hands folded over a cane he kept wedged between his feet. Jane had visited him at his house a few days earlier; in the bright sun he looked older, paler, thinner. But he was still Uncle Easy: sharp as a tack and independent as a hog on ice.

"
What the hell have you done to my nephew?
"
he demanded to know when Jane sat down beside him.
"
He drove us downtown today; I ain
'
t seen him this foul since the darkest days of his divorce. I reason it
'
s woman trouble, and you
'
re the woman, and you
'
re the trouble.
"

Jane stammered something dumb, and Uncle Easy said,
"
What
'
s all this about you
'
ve got a buyer for Lilac Cottage?
'
Zat so?
"
She nodded and he leaned on his cane and whispered,
"
It
'
s Harrow, ain
'
t it?
"

Jane nodded again.

"
I knew it.
"
He shook his head.
"
Well, you can
'
t sell to him.
"

"
If he meets my terms, I have no choice.
"

"
Raise the price.
"

"
Then no one else will buy it either. You understand that your nephew is insisting I take the offer?
"

"
Sounds about right. Mac
'
s cut off his nose once or twice before in his life.
"

"
What should I do? What
can
I do? We had an awful fight over it.
"

"
Better to be quarreling than lonesome.
"

She laughed ruefully and kissed the old man
'
s sunken cheek.
"
I
'
ll keep you posted, Uncle Easy.
"

****

That evening Jane nestled the Belle Amour and the rugosa roses in a delicate halo of bridal wreath and placed the vase on the table in front of the Empire sofa in the fireplace room. Then she poured herself a very decent- sized brandy and took out the latest book in her soon-to- be-useless library of horticulture. It included a section on budding roses. She sat down with high hopes. How hard could it be?

She read the section through, sipping brandy and sniffing roses as she went. The scent of the roses together was heavenly
—
so to speak. But it didn
'
t seem particularly erotic. Maybe Mac was right; maybe they
'
d been destined for bed with or without help. Jane considered the possibility that she was more flaky than psychic, but put it aside. She hadn
'
t been wrong once about Judith and Ben. She knew it, and now Mac knew it.

But she wasn
'
t too sure about the merits of her grafting plan. She wasn
'
t too sure about anything right now. The brandy-induced fuzziness she was feeling was a poor substitute for the truly mystical experience she
'
d had with Mac the night before. It made her melancholy even to compare them.

Jane closed the gardening book, and her eyes, and laid her head on the back of the sofa.
"Dammit ..
.
dammit ...
dammit,
"
she whispered through a rolling tear or two, and fell asleep.

An hour later she woke up with a ferocious crick in her neck.
"Ah ..
. geez,
"
she said, wincing and rubbing the
area to bring back the circulation.
"
Talk about your days of wine and roses.
"

She dragged herself to bed, thoroughly disgusted by her self-pitying mood. Everything that anyone had ever said about being in love was true, except that the highs were higher, and the lows were the pits. She collapsed on her bed, fully clothed.

The pits.

She slept hard, drugged by the brandy, unbothered by dreams, until she woke with a start. Someone was in the house. Her eyes were wide open now. It was a moonless night; the house should have been black. But a pale glimmer, the merest hint of light, seemed to be mounting the stairs from below.

It couldn
'
t be Judith Brightman. With Judith, Jane had sensed only the purest form of passion. What she was feeling now was twisted passion, passion gnawing on its own entrails. If there
was
a force down there, it was undoubtedly an evil one. She got out of bed in her stockinged feet, circling around a squeaky board, determined to meet and defeat the evil once and for all. She felt a crazy kind of confidence, convinced
that Judith would protect her: s
omeone had to bud the rose, after all.

Jane skipped the third tread, the sixth, and the eighth; they all squeaked. At the bottom landing she stopped to listen. It was coming from the fireplace room, a wet and sloshy sound, a vaguely sickening sound. For one ludicrous moment Jane was afraid it might be Sylvia Merchant, come back to haunt her for selling Lilac Cottage. But the smell of kerosene dispelled that fear.

She peered around the corner into the fireplace room. A night-light had been plugged in, casting a dim, innocent illumination over the scene.
Clever,
she thought.
A flashlight might arouse suspicion.
Not that there was anyone around to be aroused.

"
You bastard,
"
she said calmly.

Phillip
'
s back had been toward her while he held the old kerosene heater at an optimal angle and poured a steady stream of its contents onto Aunt Sylvia
'
s poor, abused Oriental rug. When he heard Jane
'
s voice, he jerked his head around, as if he
'
d been caught with his hand in the till. In a way, he had.

She flipped on the switch next to the door; the lamp on the gaming table came on, still dim but bright enough to show the repressed fury in Phillip
'
s face.
"
Wouldn
'
t you know it,
"
he said with a grim smile.
"
You
'
re a night person. That really
is
awkward.
"

"
It was you all along,
"
she said, hardly believing that she could have been so blind.
"
The missing spoon, the fallen bookcase, the muddy laundry. It was you, skulking around, picking on dumb innocen
t women. What awful form, Phil
lip. Really,
"
she said in her mother
'
s best voice.

"
I disagree. I thought it was all nicely understated. Would you have preferred chicken blood smeared over the wicker?
"

She watched in a trance of alertness as he stood the kerosene heater carefully back up and moved a bag of rags soaked with linseed oil closer to the carpet. It was her bag from the basement. He
'
d brought up her gallon container of turpentine, too, and a can of paint thinner. It didn
'
t take a rocket scientist to figure out the scenario he had planned. Cause of fire: spontaneous combustion. Cause of death: fire.

What a fool she was. She smiled bitterly and said,
"
You must have been ecstatic when a real ghost showed up to help you out.
"

"Ah, yes ..
. Judith. Cissy told me about her. It was almost
too
perfect. I only wish,
"
he said with a sigh,
"
that I could have been there to see you two trying to videotape your overwrought imaginations. Priceless.
"

He stepped away from the soaked section of carpet and wiped his loafers carefully on a dry area. An image of him wiping mud from his shoes in Mac
'
s kitchen on a dry night came rushing back to her.
"
You pulled the bolt from the railing on the footbridge. You did it just before you showed up at Uncle Easy
'
s party.
"

"
Now
that
was bad form,
"
he admitted, a gleam of malice in his eyes.
"
In retrospect I ought to have phoned instead. I admit, my feelings were hurt at not being invited.
"

"
You have no feelings, Phillip. Everyone I
'
ve met has either told me that or hinted at it, but I was
just
too blind to see.
"

"Yes ..
. you
'
re easily dazzled, aren
'
t you? Well, don
'
t be too hard on yourself, Jane. Most people are suckers for smooth talk and good manners.
"

She saw two inches of envelope sticking out from his blazer pocket and said,
"
I see you
'
ve decided to let me twist your arm into buying Lilac Cottage.
"