Dark Secrets 2: No Time to Die; The Deep End of Fear (17 page)

"Patrick, darling, this is Kate Venerelli."

Patrick surveyed me, not like a curious seven-year-old, but like an adult who was deciding whether I would do. I surveyed him with the same measuring eyes, as if deciding whether
he
would do. He suddenly turned into a little boy, backing up and moving closer to his mother.

"Kate is going to be your tutor."

I swallowed my gasp. "I'm sorry?"

"I've made up my mind," Mrs. Westbrook told me. "You are educated, you are familiar with the arts, and you speak very well."

"But—but don't you think you should have references?" I asked.

"Do you have any?" No.

"It doesn't matter," Mrs. Westbrook said. "No one supplies
bad
references. Recommendations don't prove anything about a person."

"But I'm sure Mr. Westbrook would like to interview me too," I suggested. I considered explaining my ruse, but if she grew angry and sent me off, I'd have no excuse to return.

"Patrick's father has been ill. He will be returning Friday from Hopkins, where he has been receiving cancer treatments."

"Oh." I still winced when someone mentioned cancer. I glanced at Patrick, but his expression didn't change. Either he didn't understand, or he was already proficient at wearing a public face.

"When he arrives, Mr. Westbrook will have many other things to tend to," she went on.

I need some time to think about this," I said, hoping to keep the masquerade going for one more day and hand deliver the ring.

"Perhaps you would like to
get
to know Patrick a little better," she suggested. "Darling, be a good boy and show Kate your room and the rooms on the third floor. Would you do that for Mommy?"

Darling didn't answer right away. Perhaps he was thinking about refusing or, better still, driving a bargain with Mommy.

I wanted this chance to see the places in which I had once played. "I'm sure you have some smashing toys in your room," I said encouragingly.

Patrick looked at me with new interest. "I'm not supposed to smash them."

His mother laughed. "That's an expression, Patrick. She means wonderful toys, exciting toys."

I think he would have preferred that I meant smash able toys, but he nodded and started toward the door, calling to me over his shoulder, "Come on, Kate."

I followed him out of the office. The entrance hall, which was furnished to serve as a formal reception room, ended at a wide passageway that ran from one side of the house to the other—that is, to the left and right, continuing on to the wings of the house. The living room and dining room, the two large rooms at the "back" of the house, were behind the passageway—facing the water, I remembered. The main stairway rose to our right, running parallel to the passageway.

The house had other stairways, in both the main section and wings, back steps that wrapped around the corners of its many fireplaces. It was a perfect place to play hide-and-seek, with three floors and so many escape routes connecting them. But it had also made me uncomfortable. I never knew for sure where Brook was, because he could sneak up and down stairways without us seeing him. Ashley had loved to leap out from behind a door and make me scream, immediately after my mother, who earned extra money by babysitting her, would tell us we must play quietly.

Patrick and I climbed the wide stairway. Halfway down the second-floor hall I paused at a secretary filled with photos. I scanned them quickly, disappointed again to find none of Ashley. Amelia had said that Trent was divorced; perhaps Ashley's mother had taken all the pictures with her.

Patrick reached back for my hand, impatient with me. "It's this way." He led me to the room at the front comer of the main house, the last doorway on the left before the center hall narrowed to connect the southern wing.

I stepped inside the door of his room and moved no farther. The drapes and comforter were green check rather than Ashley's pink, but the furniture was the same—dark, heavy, too large for a child—each piece in the same place it had occupied twelve years ago. I looked at the bed and thought of Ashley swinging like a monkey on its tall posters. I gazed at the bureau and saw her standing on top of it, performing for me. The two big chairs, if covered with a quilt, were the covered wagon in which she and I had "traveled west." To me, her presence in the room was so strong, I could nearly hear her speak.

Why, given the absence of pictures, would the family have kept her furniture? Perhaps the deep connections with objects that a child experiences are lost on an adult. Certainly, the West brooks would have sold it, if they had found the furniture as haunting as I.

"You don't like it?" Patrick asked. He had been watching my face closely.

"Oh, no. It's a very nice room. In fact, it's positively smashing," I added, since he seemed to enjoy that word.

He grinned. "Want to see some of my stuff?"

"Of course."

Patrick opened the walk-in closet, which was filled to the brim with toys. My breath caught when I saw the shelf of plastic horses. They had given him her toys! Then I remembered that these had been Robyn's horses, toys that had belonged to Ashley's aunt. Perhaps the toys and furniture were kept because they were regarded as an inheritance.

I lifted up a prancing dapple gray. Hello, Silver Knight, I said silently. That had been the toy's secret name, and I still found myself reluctant to say it aloud.

"Want to play?" Patrick asked.

I set down the horse. "Not now. We had better follow your mother's instructions and see the third floor."

"This stairway goes up to your room," he said, opening the door next to the fireplace.

"You mean if I take the job," I reminded him, afraid that he was starting to think I would.

"You don't like me?"

"Taking the job has nothing to do with whether I like you."

Patrick gazed at me silently, doubtfully.

"I mean it," I insisted.

His mouth tightened into a little seam. He led the way up to the room that had belonged to Ashley's tutor, Mr. Joseph. Directly above Patrick and Ashley's bedroom, it was on the corner of the house, with a dormer window facing the front and a smaller window facing the side. Icy air slipped in through their cracks. The two spindle-back chairs and iron bedstead were painted white. Without blankets, pillows, or any kind of fabric to soften the room, not even curtains, they made me think of bones picked clean.

"Do you like it?" Patrick asked, looking up at me with a hopefulness I wished I hadn't seen. "It's quite nice."

We exited into the third-floor hall. At the opposite end of the rectangular hall were the main stairs with rooms on either side of them. He showed me the schoolroom first.

"This is where I do my homework."

The piano had been rolled to a different corner in the room, and the computer and printer were new, but otherwise, the tables, chairs, and shelf-lined walls looked just as I remembered them. Perhaps it was simply the dreary lighting and the familiar smells of the house, smells I connected with Ashley, but I couldn't shake the feeling that she was at Mason's Choice, in the rooms Patrick was showing me.

He led me to the playroom. "Want to meet Patricia?"

"Who?"

"My hamster.'

I smiled. "It's a lovely name."

"I like Patrick better," he replied, "but she's a girl."

The large room was a kingdom of little-boy toys. Patricia's cage, an aquarium filled with wood shavings and covered by a weighted screen, sat in the comer.

"Hi, Pat," I greeted the silky brown hamster. Ashley had had hamsters and a zoo of other creatures. "Do you have a dog or cat?" I asked Patrick.

"No. I'm allergic to their fur. I'm not supposed to pick up Patricia, but I do. She gets lonely."

It's he who gets lonely, I thought, though surrounded by every toy a kid could want.

The walls were covered with sports posters, most of them showing ice hockey players. Patrick watched my
eyes,
reading every reaction. "You like hockey? We could go see the games. Wouldn't that be fun?"

"You have a team in Wisteria?"

"Of course." He pulled a high school sports program from beneath a pile of crayons. "This is Sam Koscinski," he said, pointing to a guy with a helmet, shoulder pads, and a manic look in his dark eyes. "He's the best. He…
smashes
people."

"Sounds like a nice chap. Patrick, do you have some friends? Do you invite them over from school?"

He shook his head. "Tim moved away."

"There's no one else?"

"Just Ashley."

"Ashley?" My voice sounded hollow. "Ashley who?"

"Just Ashley."

I regained my senses. "Is she a hamster too?"

Patrick shouted with laughter. "No. She's a person who plays with me. Would you play with me?" His voice pleaded. "You could visit and play. You don't have to be my tutor. Just come and play."

I sat down by a table overrun by plastic action figures. Patrick walked. toward me, then lightly, tentatively, rested a hand on my knee. "We could have lots of fun together. I wouldn't be
real
bad."

I could see the desperation in his eyes and knew the feeling, the loneliness of being the only child among preoccupied adults. Before my father was successful enough to have his own studio, we had traveled from household to household. I had spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the help, who were busy with their jobs, waiting for my father to finish his job—waiting for someone to notice me. For a moment I considered taking the Westbrook position.

Only a moment. After years of parenting my loving but inept father, I wasn't about to take on "another" little boy.

"It would be lots of fun, Patrick, But I've been thinking about doing some traveling."

"You can't. I want you here," he insisted. "Ashley likes you," he added, as if that would persuade me.

"How can she if she hasn't met me?"

"She has. She's watching you."

A tingle went up my spine. I glanced around. "I don't see anyone named Ashley."

"She
sees
you," he said with confidence.

I took a deep breath. "Why don't we go downstairs."

Had family members told him about her? I wondered as we descended the main stairs. The name was common enough; perhaps he simply liked it and chose it on his own for an imaginary playmate. Given his isolation on the estate, it would make sense for him to create a fantasy friend.

When we reached the landing between the first and second floors, Patrick pulled on my arm to keep me from going farther. Below us, women were arguing.

"It's Mrs. Hopewell," he said. "She's mean. She hates me.

"Oh, I'm sure she doesn't hate you, Patrick," I replied, then cringed at how I had sounded like a typical, patronizing adult.

"Robyn hates me too," he added. "Wel go a different way."

But I had just heard what Mrs. Hopewell was saying, and I wasn't going anywhere. I pulled him back and put my finger to my lips.

"You can't trust her," the housekeeper said. "You would be very foolish to hire that young woman."

"Hoppy is right," said another woman. "I'm sorry, Emily, but I simply won't allow it."

"Really. What makes you think you have a say in this, Robyn?"

"Adrian won't allow it," Mrs. Hopewell asserted. "He sent her family packing twelve years ago."

Sent my family packing? If Adrian had dismissed us, why did we sneak away in the middle of the night? Something wasn't right.

"Her mother was a strange woman, a very angry woman," Mrs. Hopewell went on. "She was supposed to be watching Ashley the day she fel through the ice."

Robyn quickly cut her off. "We don't need to go into that, Hoppy. The point is, Emily, this girl will bring back bad memories and upset Daddy and Trent. I can't allow it."

"Well, you talk to
Daddy
when he gets home," Emily replied, "and I will talk to my husband, and we will see if he chooses to listen to his daughter, his housekeeper, or his wife concerning the welfare of his son." The strength of Emily's words were betrayed by the high pitch of her voice. I guessed that she was intimidated by Mrs. Hopewell and Robyn.

But I wasn't.

"Who are they talking about?" Patrick whispered to me as I took his hand and started down the main stairs.

"Your new tutor."

Chapter 3

I can't remember the last time I did something so impulsively. Curiosity about why my family had left and sheer defiance made up my mind. I had no idea how long I would stay, or rather, how long they would keep me. It worried me that I would be one more person in Patrick's life who didn't stay around, but I didn't know what I could do about that.

The scene at the bottom of the stairway had been brief and tense, Mrs. Hopewell responding to my introduction with one sentence: I know who you are."

Mrs. Caulfield—Robyn—had informed me that the
final
decision on my hiring would be made by Mr. Westbrook.

Amelia had been bursting with curiosity when the door of the library reopened. The ladies had closed it in order to have their argument, but she had heard bits and pieces. I told her several times that the two older women had confused me with someone else, which, not surprisingly, she didn't believe.

That evening I stole away from Amelia's questions, taking a walk through town.

The fog, which had rendered the afternoon so dismal, now made the night seem brighter, the mist holding the apricot light of streetlamps and shimmering on the brick sidewalks. Though it was only seven o'clock, most of the shops were closed. Lights shone in the rooms above them and through the fanlights and windows of the old homes that fronted the eighteenth-century street. Somewhere ahead of me, at the end of High Street, was the river, but fog blotted out everything more than a block away. Peering in a shop window, pressing my face close to the glass, was like looking in a crystal ball, the objects inside magically clear.

I stared at a painting of a cat. I knew the artist at once, recognizing his attentiveness to the cat's ears, the expression in the animal's tail, and the tone of the background, carefully chosen to bring out the colors in the cat's coat. It was an early work by my father. I took a step back to read the shop's sign: OUVIA'S ANTIQUES.That's what you get for dying, Dad, I thought; your paintings are antiques now.

A man was working inside the shop, staring down at his clipboard, a pen hanging out of one side of his mouth like a cigarette—ex-smoker, I thought, recognizing my father's habit. I pushed open the front door, unloosing a flurry of bel s.

"Shop's closed," the man said, pointing to a sign.

"I was hoping I might look at the painting of the cat.

"It's not for sale. Nothing here is for sale. I'm just taking inventory."

"It's a Venerelli, isn't it?"

He removed the pen from his mouth, perhaps surprised that a teenager would know something like that. "Unsigned," he replied.

"Even so, it is," I told the man, walking over to the painting to study it more closely.

He put down his clipboard and joined me in front of the painting. "How do you know that? It would be worth a lot more if I could be certain."

"He was my father. I'd recognize his work anywhere."

Now the man tipped forward on his toes to look at my face. "Katie!" he exclaimed softly.

I took a step back.

I never expected to see you in Wisteria, but still, I should have recognized you. You look exactly like your mother."

"Not
exactly."

"You don't remember me, do you?" the man continued. "You were only a little girl the last time I saw you."

I waited to see if his face surfaced in my memory as Mrs. Hopewell's had. "No, I'm sorry, I don't."

"Joseph Oakley." He held out his hand. "I was Ashley's tutor."

"Mr. Joseph! I
do
remember you." Though I didn't recall him looking anything like he did now. Ashley's tutor, a college student, had been skinny, with a little knob of a chin. The person in front of me had the shape of a plump, middle-aged man, and sported a full beard flecked with gray. But he was younger than he appeared; the skin on his face was smooth, almost lineless.

"My condolences about your father," he said.

I nodded.

"I know how it is," he went on. "Mother died several months ago."

"I'm sorry.

"That's why I'm back in town, settling her affairs. This was her shop."

I glanced around at the odd collection of things—a beautiful oil lamp, a tacky ceramic of a fisherman, an elegant silver brush set, a purple teapot shaped like an elephant's head—his trunk was the spout. Next to my father's simple painting was a very large canvas: Several robust women with 1920 hairstyles bathed at a pink spring while odd-looking winged creatures darted about.

"Her taste was certainly… wide-ranging," I said.

"Her records are even more erratic than her taste," he replied with a grimace. "Of course, Mother was no spring chicken when she had me, and I think she was losing it mentally these last few years. I'm going to be forced to declare bankruptcy."

"Oh, no."

"But I want to hear about you and your mother, Katie. Is she here with you? How long will you be in Wisteria?"

"Well, actually—"

A loud jingle of the bel s on the door interrupted us. "Shop's closed," Joseph called out, then turned back to me. "You were saying—"

"It can't be closed." A guy about my age had rushed into the store. "I got here as soon as I could." He looked at me as if I might plead his case for him.

"I've got to get a birthday present."

"Shop's closed," Joseph repeated.

"But I know what I want. It's right over there." He strode toward a glass case. "The bracelet with the blue stones."

"The lapis lazuli?" Joseph asked quietly. "It's three hundred dollars."

I think Joseph assumed the high price would immediately get rid of the shopper, but he miscalculated.

The guy cocked his head, as if he hadn't heard right, then bent over the case to get a closer look. "You've got to be kidding. It's not even sapphires."

"And this isn't Wal-Mart."

The guy straightened up. "Okay, okay," he said, rubbing his hands, then glancing at his watch.

I got the feeling he had a very short deadline.

"Let's see." He ran one hand through curly black hair. He was athletically built, a few inches taller than I, and very good-looking—if he would just stand still for a second. The room didn't seem big enough to contain his energy. I wanted to send him outside for a run.

"There must be something else here." He moved down the long jewelry case, playing it like a piano.

Joseph sighed. "Please don't put your fingerprints all over the glass."

"There, that plain silver one. You put tags on your cheaper stuff. Fifty dollars, I can swing it. Wait a minute, I like that one too. Forty-five."

He spun around, turning to Joseph, then me. I was glad there wasn't a shelf of glassware anywhere near him. "You're a woman—sort of," he said.

I frowned at him.

"I mean, a girl. A female. Could you help me out? I hate choosing this kind of stuff."

He had great eyes, eyes like the shiny black stones I collected from my favorite beach on the Channel. That's the only explanation I can offer for helping this last-minute lover in his gift selection.

"Which bracelet do you like best?" he asked. "That silver one, or the gold one with the green paint."

"Green
enamel,"
Joseph corrected him.

I leaned over the case, studying them. "The green and gold."

"But all of her earrings are silver," the guy protested.

"Then why did you ask me?" I replied, exasperated.

He lifted his hands, then dropped them heavily on the glass. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joseph wince. The guy had strong hands, square hands, totally un artistic hands. Was it crazy to be attracted to a guy's hands?

I like the enamel one too," he admitted. "But since she likes silver, I was hoping you'd choose that and make it an easy choice."

"Both bracelets are pretty. It's just that I like to wear green."

His fingers stopped drumming the case, his hands finally becoming still. I looked up and found him gazing at my hair. He met my eyes, then perused my face—just stared at me, making no effort to pretend he wasn't.

"I see," he said. "Because of your eyes. Your eyes are grass green."

Grass
green?

"What I mean is pale, bright green—"

Joseph shook his head.

"See-through green, like—like the plastic of a Sprite bottle."

He seemed pleased with the accuracy of that last description. I hoped he wasn't going to compose his own gift card.

"I'll take the silver bracelet," the guy said, turning to Joseph, pull ing out his money. "I'm kind of in a hurry."

Joseph must have realized that a sale was the quickest way to get rid of this guy. Moving behind the counter, he took the customer's money. The guy pocketed the bracelet, leaving without a box or bag.

"You were saying," Joseph prompted me, as the bel s on the door jingled and fel silent.

"I'll be here for a while. I took a temporary job."

"Wonderful. Where?"

"Mason's Choice."

He looked at me surprised.

"Do you remember Mrs. Hopewell?" I asked.

"Despite my best efforts to forget her."

"She's still there."

Joseph sat down heavily on a shop stool. "Why did you go back, Katie?"

The tone of his voice made me uneasy. "Why not?"

He thought before he spoke. "Your family didn't leave under the best of circumstances. What does your mother think of this?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen her for twelve years."

His brown eyes grew wider for a moment.

"Victoria left us when we got to England."

He stroked his beard with long fingers—the only part of him that had remained thin. He had been a musician, I remembered. Poor man, studying music, having to listen to Ashley and me banging on the schoolroom piano.

"I had no idea, no idea at all. Do you know why your mother left?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"What did your father tell you about the Westbrooks?"

"He wouldn't talk about them. All I know is what I remember from when I was five. For instance, Mrs. Caulfield, Ashley's aunt, couldn't stand Ashley and got along better with horses than people."

"still does. I heard Robyn just came back from the Florida horse-show circuit."

"Mr. Trent," I said, using the name for him that I had used as a child, "was very serious."

"Yes. He runs the business for Adrian."

"What
is
their business?"

"Furniture and art. They began with a handful of local auction houses, like Crossroads, the one here on the Eastern Shore. In the last two decades they've been doing a lot of importing. Have you seen Adrian? I heard he's getting cancer treatments and they haven't been successful."

"They haven't?" I wondered what the Westbrooks had told Patrick. "He's coming home Friday."

Joseph pressed his hands together and rested his mouth against his fingertips, thinking. "Which means the vultures will be gathering. You'll have to deal with all of them, Katie." He reached for a store receipt and scribbled down a number. "This is the phone at my mother's house. The number printed on the top is the store's. I'll be in Wisteria for the next few weeks. Call me if you need anything."

"I'll be all right," I said, smiling. "You know, I've spent a lot of time in other people's households. I've seen it all."

"I'm sure, but why don't you check in with me now and then."

"I don't check in with anyone," I said, then added quickly, "What I mean is that I'm used to being on my own. When Dad was alive,
he
checked in with me."

Joseph shook his head. "The Westbrooks are not nice people, Katie. You can't trust them."

"Don't worry," I replied. I haven't trusted anyone in a very long time."

The next afternoon the Westbrooks' groundskeeper, who introduced himself as Roger Hale, picked me up from the Strawberry, then drove to Patrick's private school, which was at the far end of High Street, backing up to Wist Creek.

No street in Wisteria was far from a piece of shoreline. The town, a parcel of land jutting into the mouth of the Sycamore River, was surrounded on three sides by water, the river and two wide creeks named Oyster and Wist. The next point of land outside of town and moving in the direction of the Chesapeake Bay was the Scarborough Estate, and the point after that was Mason's Choice, where the river flowed into the bay.

"Do you think you can find your way?" Roger asked me, when he had driven from the school to the estate. He parked in a multi-car garage that was to one side of the house. From now on it would be my job to transport Patrick to and from in a staff car.

"Yes, thanks." It wasn't the route I was concerned about, but trying to drive on the right side of the road, which was opposite from the way I had learned in England. It's just a matter of concentration, I told myself, and decided not to bring up the matter.

"I'll leave a map in the car," Roger said, as he pulled my bags from the back of it, "and one on your bureau when I take your luggage to your room. You get on to the house now—Mrs. Westbrook is always anxious to see Patrick."

Patrick had chattered cheerfully in the car, but as he and I approached the house, he grew quiet. He turned his head suddenly, looking at the tall windows to the left of the main entrance. Someone gazed out from the library, but the weather had cleared and the bright reflections on the glass made it difficult to see who.

"I always go in through the kitchen," Patrick said.

"Sorry, but your mother told me to bring you in the front."

He hung back.

"Come on, Patrick. She wants to see you straightaway."

He stood rooted in the grass. If we hadn't just met, I would have worried that he had learned that ugly, defiant look from me.

"All right," I said. "I'll go in. When you're ready to join me, knock on the door. But I'll answer only the front entrance."

"Our. doors aren't locked in the daytime," he informed me.

I continued walking. You re mean.

"But I was being so much nicer than usual," I replied.

He stared at me and I winked. "Come on, the sooner you see your mother, the sooner we can go outside and play."