Embers (40 page)

"
My father
'
s house,
"
Meg explained, well aware that Gordon Camplin had paid for a chunk of it.
"
We
'
re running it as a bed-and-breakfast nowadays.
"

"
I see,
"
Camplin said politely.
"
Yes,
"
he said, addressing Tom
'
s question.
"
Word around town is that the Atwells family were given a gift of the thing. By a carpenter who once worked for us, apparently. I don
'
t remember the man at all, except that he saved my mother
'
s dog on the day of the fire. I suppose my mother gave him the dollhouse out of gratitude. More likely, she didn
'
t want the reminder of Eagle
'
s Nest around her anymore. I can
'
t remember. Frankly, I would
'
ve expected Tremblay to
'
ve sold the thing long ago. I can
'
t imagine what good it was to him.
"

It was a nice little speech, coherent and plausible and just a little too well prepared for Meg
'
s taste. She glanced at Tom, hoping to read his expression. But he was doing his cop thing: his face had that bland, impassive look, as if he were waiting for a bus that wasn
'
t due for half an hour.

"
My grandmother and Orel Tremblay became very close friends when they worked at Eagle
'
s Nest,
"
Meg said, hoping to provoke a reaction from Camplin.
"
Very close.
"

"
Perhaps that
'
s why he left the dollhouse to you, then,
"
Cam
plin
said with a distracted smile.

Clearly his interest in the dol
l
house was running a distant second to Meg herself. He seemed not to be able to take his eyes away from her face. He
'
d look away, almost with a frown, but then he
'
d look back.

"
I hope you
'
ll come by to see the dollhouse, Mr. Camplin. It
'
s in museum condition,
"
she added, appealing to his avarice.

"
Yes, I
'
ll have to do that,
"
he answered, staring.

To Meg his fascination seemed practically morbid. She began to feel the same sense of revulsion that she
'
d felt when she
'
d unpacked the little teakwood bed. She began to tremble; her heart took off on a wild run for oblivion.

Oh, God.
It wasn
'
t the most convenient time for one of her little premonitions. It was leaving her tongue-tied.

Camplin had begun to excuse himself when Tom said in an offhand way,
"
What I
'
d like to know is, were there always rumors about the dollhouse being haunted?
"

"
What?
"
asked Camplin sharply. Immediately he brought himself under control.
"
No, of course not. Absurd. What rumors?
"

Tom smiled blandly and said,
"
Oh, the usual thing. An unfortunate death
...
the spirit roams the house
...
except that in this case the house has burned to the ground so what
'
s a poor soul to do? The next best thing, of course: haunt the replica.
"

"
That
'
s preposterous,
"
Camplin said angrily.
"
There were
no
'
unfortunate deaths
'
in the Eagle
'
s Nest
—
not until Margaret Atwells
'
s. As for haunted replicas, I wouldn
'
t know. I haven
'
t seen the dollhouse since 1947.
"
His eyes glittered with outrage as he said,
"
If you
'
ll excuse me
..."
and walked away abruptly.

Meg stared with loathing at his retreating figure. The depth of her hatred amazed her; it was as if she were hating him with someone else
'
s emotion.

Still shaking from the experience, she turned to Tom and said,
"
Nice goin
'
, Lieutenant. Just when I had him hooked.
"

"
You were losing him,
"
Tom said flatly.
"
I wanted to shake him up.
"

"
Which you did,
"
Meg admitted.
"
He seemed to take the ghost rumor personally
—
as if you were accusing him of dumping raw sewage into the harbor or something. Do you think he
'
s afraid of ghosts?
"

"
I think he
'
s afraid of gossip.
"

"
Yes,
"
she said, all too aware of the risk she was running of being sued.
"
So what do we do now?
"
she asked, relieved that Tom was on the case at last.

But apparently he wasn
'
t. He said,
"
Now, you wait and you watch.
"

"
Wait? Watch? For what?
"

"
For him to do something stupid.
"

"
And how long will that take? You
'
ll be
leaving
soon
—
"

Exasperated, Tom said,
"
So I
'
ll be leaving soon. Who knows when soon is? I
'
m here
now,
dammit. Suppose we talk about
now
,"
he said, wrenching the subject back to him and her.

"
Yes
...
all right,
"
Meg said.

It was obvious that
he
didn
'
t want to talk about either the past or the future, and
she
didn
'
t want to talk about the present.
Cle
arly they had a problem.

Meg murmured something about the powder room and excused herself. The truth was, she wanted time to regroup.

Instead of a powder room, she found Dorothea Camplin. She was with two other silver-haired women on a balcony, where they were admiring a white clematis that had been trained up a trellis.

Completely on impulse, Meg joined them.
If the husband won'
t talk, maybe the ex-wife will
,
she decided.

She admired the vine, then asked Dorothea Camplin an innocent question about pruning. That led the conversation from one clematis to another until Meg was able to say, without being too obnoxious,
"
I
'
m Meg Hazard, by the way. Of course I know of you and your legendary garden, Mrs. Camplin. And I wonder
—
would you be interested in being interviewed for a gardening piece I
'
m writing for
Country Living?
"

Pay dirt. Mrs. Camplin preened and fluffed her feathers and did everything but offer money for the privilege of being interviewed for so prestigious a magazine. Meg wasn
'
t quite being candid
—
she had no connection with the magazine and in fact had never written anything for publication besides the Inn Between
'
s brochure
—
but that was tomorrow
'
s problem.

Eventually Meg excused herself and left the company. In the hall she found her sister, who grabbed her by her sleeve and said,
"
Where have you
been
?
Camplin
'
s getting
away
.
I just saw him ask for his car to be brought around.
"

"
What am
I
supposed to do?
"
Meg asked.
"
Carjack it?
"

"
Very funny. You talked with him for two minutes! That
'
s two hundred dollars a minute. Even lawyers don
'
t get that much,
"
Allie said in a hiss.

"
I talked with him long enough to know with certainty that he did it.
"

"
Oh, yeah
—
like he confessed, I suppose.
"

"
He didn
'
t have to. I could see it in the way he
...
he looked at me,
"
Meg said,
coloring
at the remembrance.

Allie cocked her head and looked at her sister thoughtfully.
"
Oh? You got that look?
"

"
I don
'
t know how you get through life,
"
Meg said softly. For the first time she felt real sympathy for her sister
'
s gift, or curse, or whatever it was, of seductiveness.

Meg looked back
—
Mrs. Camplin and her friends were returning from the balcony
—
and whispered to Allie,
"
Later.
"
She began heading back to the drawing room, wondering what she could possibly allow herself to say to Tom.

"
Meg!
"
came a voice, deep and male and urgent, from behind her. She knew who it was before he asked the next question:
"
Where
'
s A
l
lie?
"

Meg turned and beheld him: tall, dark, and handsome, the bad boy of
Bar Harbor
.

Bobby Beaufort.

W
hat
'
re you
doing
here, Bobby?
"
Meg asked, horrified. The man was a loose cannon; he
'
d wreck everything.

"
I
'
ve got to talk to Allie,
"
Bobby said, scowling.
"
Now.
"

"
She
'
s working, Bobby. This is a
bad
time to visit.
"
Meg spoke plainly because subtlety was lost on Bobby; he heard what he wanted to hear and did what he wanted to do. She remembered the day Allie sent him packing. The two were in high school. Allie had screamed
—
loud enough for everyone in
Bar Harbor
to hear
—
"
I
don't
love you! I will
never
love you! Go
away
!
"
and Bobby had replied,
"
What
'
re you trying to say?
"

The only reason he
'
d left the house at all was because Allie had thrown a plate at him and Comfort had come running into the room and promptly burst into tears, because her dishes weren
'
t open stock.

After that Bobby dropped out of high school and went west to make his fortune. If he made one, he must
'
ve spent it all, because six months ago he came back to
Bar Harbor
broke and angry and
—
people said
—
with a prison record.