In the Blink of an Eye (32 page)

Too late.

The dial tone buzzes in her ear.

D
RIVING SLOWLY BACK
through the gates of Lily Dale, Paine waves at the teenaged boy in the booth. He waves back with a grin.

Friendly kid. His name is Ben, and he always says hello to Dulcie when they pass. She shyly told him one of her favorite knock, knock jokes the day he introduced himself.

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Ben.

Ben who?

Ben out here knocking forever, open the door!

To his credit, Ben found that hilarious. Now he's Dulcie's local hero. And of course, Julia is her local heroine.

“Hey,” Ben calls to Paine through the open car window, “where's Dulcie?”

“She's home.”

“Tell her I've got a new knock, knock for her. It'll crack her up.”

“I will.” Smiling, Paine drives into the now-familiar maze of winding streets.

He waves at an elderly couple out with their poodle for an afternoon walk. The Coopers. They live a few houses down on Summer Street. Mrs. Cooper brought a handpicked bouquet and some homemade sugar cookies for Dulcie the second day they were here.

Funny how any place can start to feel like home,
Paine muses.
If you let it.

But he won't let Lily Dale feel like home. He doesn't want this. No matter what crazy thoughts might have flown into his head back there when he was talking to Stan, he doesn't want to stay here.

He slows the car to let two little girls on bicycles cross in front of him. He recognizes one of them from the playground. She invited Dulcie to teeter-totter with her.

Sweet kid, Paine thinks, rounding the comer onto Summer Street. Dulcie has never teeter-tottered before. She loved it.

And the little girl giggled at all of her knock, knock jokes, too.

Paine parks in the usual spot at the curb in front of the house. As he gets out of the car, he wonders idly whether Dulcie napped while he was gone. If not, he'll put her into bed extra early tonight. That'll give him a chance to finish going through the things in the attic and—

Halfway up the walk, Paine stops short.

“Daddy!”

Dulcie is calling him. He looks up to see her in the side yard, near the cellar doors. Julia is there, too. And that man she's been dating. Andy.

Paine frowns. What's he doing here? There's something about that guy that Paine doesn't like.

He strides across the grass toward the three of them. Something is wrong here. He can feel it. Can see it on Dulcie's face.

“What's going on?” he asks, giving his daughter a hug and looking at Julia. She, too, is obviously troubled.

She opens her mouth to speak, but Andy beats her to it. “Looks like you've had a prowler sneaking around here, Mr. Landry.”

Mr.
Landry? Paine's immediate reaction is that this guy is too young to be calling him Mr. Landry. There's a false aura of respect in the way he says it.

Damn, he rubs me the wrong way,
Paine thinks.

Then he realizes what it is that Andy's telling him, and a chill slips down his spine. A prowler?

“That's what your daughter claims, anyway,” Andy says. “But there aren't a lot of prowlers around here. It's pretty safe.”

What she
claims?
Paine doesn't like the guy's insinuation. He looks at Julia, but Andy is still talking.

“I happened to stop by to see Julia, and I found your daughter out on the front porch roof, yelling her head off. She had climbed out the window and she was—”

“On the roof?” Paine thunders. “What the hell? Dulcie, what were you—” He turns on Julia, his heart pounding. “How could you let this happen?”

“I was trapped in the cellar.” She is clearly shaken. “I was down there and somebody locked the—”

“You were down in the cellar and my daughter was climbing out
windows?”
Fury courses through Paine. He can barely see straight. “My God, she could have fallen. She—”

“Lucky for her, I came along,” Andy cuts in heroically. “I told her not to move, and I raced into the house—all the doors were open—so I went upstairs and climbed out the window and got her.”

Paine rakes a shaky hand through his hair, unable to digest the bizarre scenario. He turns to Dulcie. “Sweetheart, what were you doing on the roof? Why would you do a thing like that?”

“I was taking a nap,” Dulcie says in a small voice, taking a step closer to Julia, “and then I—”

“Were you sleepwalking?” he asks incredulously. Dulcie has never sleepwalked, but . . .

“No.” Her voice grows smaller still. She is almost cowering behind Julia as she says, “Somebody was sneaking around the house, and the lady told me to go out there.”

Paine's heart seems to land with a thud.

For a long moment, all of them are silent.

Then Paine turns to Julia. “Can you please go now?”

She opens her mouth. Closes it again. He sees a streak of dirt on her cheek.

“Go,” he repeats, and turns to Andy. “You, too. Just go.”

“Daddy, please don't be mad at Julia,” Dulcie begs in a choked voice.

“Go!” he bellows, reaching for his daughter. He pulls her against him, stroking her tousled blond hair.

She struggles in his grasp, her arms outstretched toward Julia, who looks almost dazed as she walks away, head bent.

Andy catches up to her, putting one arm around her shoulders and quietly saying something in her ear.

“No!” Dulcie cries, trying to break away.

Paine holds her fast against him. “It's okay, Dulcie. It's going to be okay. We're going to get away from here just as soon as—”

“I don't want to get out of here,” Dulcie wails. “I want Julia. She takes care of me!”

“Yeah. She takes great care of you,” he says flatly, shaking his head. He trusted Julia. How could she let this happen?

His scrambled thoughts run over the scenario again.

Prowler?

“Julia understands about the lady!” Dulcie sobs.

Paine freezes. The lady. Again.

He crouches beside his daughter, his arms still around her, holding her close. “Tell me about the lady, Dulcie,” he says gently.

“I tried to tell you. You didn't listen, and you didn't believe me.”

She's right

She did try.

He didn't listen.

And he didn't believe her.

But maybe, he thinks with a shudder, looking up at the house, he should.

“Tell me again, Dulcie,” he says resolutely, stroking her hair. “This time, I promise I'll listen.”

Chapter Twelve

“
N
AN?”
S
TEPPING INTO
the darkened room, Rupert leans close to his wife. A shaft of light from the kitchen illuminates her profile on the bed. She's completely motionless. Silent Rupert's stomach turns over.

“Nan!” He grabs one of her hands, folded on top of the quilt “No, darling, please—”

He breaks off in sheer relief, realizing that her flesh is soft and warm. Bending closer still and putting his ear to her lips, he can hear the faint sound of air passing over the mucus in her lungs. He touches his mouth to hers. He rubbed lotion into them earlier, but her lips are again cracked and dry, a microscopic pink streak of blood escaping a split in the parched skin at the corner of her mouth.

“Oh, Nan,” he whispers, a wave of sorrow breaking over him, threatening to sweep him into utter despair.

No.

He has to remain strong for her, until the end.

And this isn't the end. Not yet,
he thinks stubbornly.

But it isn't the sheer force of Rupert's will alone that's keeping Nan here.

He walks to the bathroom, taking a clean, folded washcloth from a neatly organized drawer in the narrow linen closet. He runs water over it.

No, it isn't just that he isn't ready to let her go yet.
Her
will is keeping her here.

She
isn't ready to go.

Physically, maybe. Physically, her body is shutting down, giving out on her.

But something is holding her here.

He knows what it is. But what can he do? He can't—

“Damn!” Burning his hand on the tap water that's suddenly running too hot, Rupert drops the washcloth and runs cold water over his fingers.

Terrible plumbing. That's just one of the things that's wrong with this house.

Irrational anger rises within him. For once, he doesn't squash it back. He allows the fury to vent through a shouted curse and a fierce kick at the pipe below the pedestal sink.

It's safe to be angry at the house, he realizes, fists clenched, breath coming in ragged pants.

Safer than being angry at other things. Things he can't control, no matter how he tries.

Rupert looks into the mirror over the sink. The frustration and weariness that have invaded his body are mirrored in his gray eyes, in the deep creases and dark trenches that line them.

This should be the last night he and Nan are spending in this house. Now Lord only knows how long it will be before they can move back home to Summer Street.

Rupert picks up the washcloth again, wrings it out, runs warm water over it, and wrings it again. Then he takes the tube of cream from the vanity and carries it and the warm cloth carefully back to the bedroom.

He sits on the bed and looks at her.

Nan's eyelids are half open, but her pupils are glazed, unfocused. Alarm erupts within him again—until he realizes that she's asleep.

Rupert lets out a shaky breath, watching her.

This, too, is an odd physical symptom he's noticed increasingly these past few days—this strange way she has now of sleeping with slitted lids, a vacant stare. Even when her eyes are fully open and she's awake, Nan seems to be paying little attention to what's going on around her.

“I'm going to moisten your mouth for you, darling,” Rupert says softly. “I'd do anything for you. You know that, don't you, Nan? Anything . . .”

He tenderly dabs at his wife's parched hps with the warm cloth as tears trickle down his weathered cheeks.

A
S
J
ULIA DRIVES
through the gates of Lily Dale, she notices that the moon is exceptionally bright tonight, the sky brilliant with stars.

If it had been like this last night, Lorraine would never have been hit by that car.

Or would she?

Of course not. It was definitely an accident. Laura told her that it turns out Bruce isn't even around—he's visiting a friend in Detroit and has been there for a week.

So it was an accident. But that doesn't change anything. Lorraine lies in a hospital bed, recovering from surgery, barely recognizable.

Julia tries to shut out an image of Lorraine's swollen bruised face. She couldn't speak because of the tubes in her throat, but when Julia gently squeezed her hand, Lorraine gazed intently at her and blinked several times as if to say
I know you're pulling for me.

After spending the last four or five hours at the hospital with Lorraine's family, and being allowed that brief encounter with her friend, all Julia wants to do is go home and climb into bed, shutting out every horrible thing that's happened in the last twenty-four hours.

The winding streets of Lily Dale are almost deserted at this hour. Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, Julia sees that it's nearly nine-thirty. Driving past the turnoff to Summer Street, she is promptly attacked by the memory of what happened this afternoon.

Until now, she's almost managed to keep thoughts of Paine and Dulcie at bay. Now those thoughts rush in to assault her, filling her with guilt, and regret, and fear.

Julia doesn't blame Paine for being furious with her. He was right. Dulcie could have been badly hurt. But if Julia had any idea that she wouldn't stay in her bed . . . or that she would pull a stunt like that . . .

The lady told me to climb out the window.

Dulcie said it repeatedly as Julia grilled her for some explanation. She kept talking about someone sneaking up the stairs to get her, saying she was trying to get away and that the lady was helping her to escape.

Later, as they left, Andy made an infuriating comment, insinuating that Dulcie had made up the story about the prowler and an imaginary “lady” to explain why she disobeyed Julia.

“Dulcie isn't that kind of child!” Julia said fervently. “She doesn't misbehave that way.”

“Calm down, Julia. I didn't mean anything by it. It's just that all kids are capable of bratty behavior once in a while, and of lying to cover it up.”

“Well, Dulcie isn't lying about the lady,” Julia retorted. “I've seen her, too.”

His eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

Julia found herself spilling the whole story to Andy—about the presence she and Dulcie have encountered in the house, and the possible connection to Kristin.

Though Andy still expressed doubt that there was also a human prowler, as Dulcie claimed, he was willing to believe that she was telling the truth about being lured out of bed by the apparition. “It sounds to me as though there's some kind of malevolent energy in that house, Julia. The sooner Paine Landry gets his daughter out of there, the better. And you should stay away, too.”

Ha.

Stay away? No problem. Judging by the way Paine looked at her when he told her to go, he'll probably run her off the property if she so much as sets foot on the grass.

Dulcie was crying for her as she left. That broke Julia's heart. But what could she do? Paine ordered her to leave, and he certainly won't welcome her back before they head to California.

I won't be able to say good-bye.

Julia tries to convince herself that maybe it will be better this way. Better for Dulcie. It isn't healthy for her to be so attached to someone she's never going to see again. A clean, immediate break would be best.

Still, Julia is planning on going to tomorrow morning's memorial service for Iris. And unless Paine has changed his mind, she intends to scatter Iris's ashes over the lake at dusk. She wants to do it, to honor the woman who, in her last years, was more of a mother figure to Julia than Deborah Garrity has been.

Julia sighs, turning onto her own quiet street as her thoughts wander back to this afternoon yet again.

She isn't inclined to agree with Andy—or Rupert Biddle—that the energy lurking in that house is dangerous. If Dulcie's perception was accurate, the spirit lured her out of her bed to help, not harm, her.

If only you didn't go down to the cellar and leave Dulcie alone in the house. What on earth were you thinking, Julia?

I was thinking that Dulcie was safe, sound asleep, and she promised not to leave her bed if she woke up. And I checked on her every fifteen minutes. This is Lily Dale, for Pete's sake. Nobody even locks their doors here.

But maybe they should.

As much as she's tried to consider Andy's pragmatic viewpoint and talk herself out of it, Julia is almost certain Dulcie was right about somebody prowling around the house. She herself thought she heard footsteps overhead, and she's not convinced they were Dulcie's. More frighteningly, she's inclined to believe that if there was a prowler, whoever it was knowingly locked her in the cellar. Those doors didn't close accidentally—no matter what Andy thinks.

Andy.

He seemed far more interested in recapping his heroic rescue of Dulcie from the roof and Julia from the cellar than he was in discussing the rest of it. He kept saying that it was a good thing he'd decided to drop in on her and say hello. Maybe he was just trying to distract her by avoiding the what-ifs. He probably just wanted to ease Julia's fears, reassure her, get her mind off what might have happened if he hadn't come along.

But now, as she pulls up in front of her house, safely home at last, Julia can think of nothing else.

Is Kristin's spirit trying to protect her daughter? If so, from whom?

Though reluctant to face a familiar, and far more troubling, likelihood, Julia can't keep the thought from seeping into her consciousness.

What if Kristin's death really wasn't accidental?

What if whoever killed her is after Dulcie?

Turning off the ignition, Julia is so caught up in her troubling thoughts that it takes a few moments for her to recognize the red car parked at the curb, in front of hers.

Startled, she glances up at the house.

There, on the front steps, sits Paine Landry, a sleeping Dulcie in his lap.

S
TANDING AT THE
ship's rail, Pilar stares down into the shimmering path of moonlight on black water. It's chilly out here on deck, but she can't bring herself to retreat to her cabin. Nor is she in the mood to return to the lounge, where her family is learning to line dance beneath dizzying strobe lights and a spinning silver disco ball.

Out here, beneath the canopy of starry sky, there is nothing but hushed, soothing salt air.

But the majestic serenity has yet to seep into Pilar.

Raul has been with her all night, so strong and unsettling a presence that she barely touched the succulent seafood feast in the dining room. She excused herself, telling her concerned daughter that she was feeling a little seasick.

The truth is, she's becoming increasingly uneasy about the Biddles' situation, and about her strange encounter with their daughter.

She senses that Raul wants her to do something—to act, somehow, on what she knows.

But what do I know? Nothing.

Obviously, there's been a rift in that family. Katherine Jergins has her reasons for considering her parents dead.

And okay, she's entitled to assume that Pilar—a total stranger showing up on the woman's doorstep, claiming to have urgent news for her—is some kind of scam artist.

But I gave her my card. Seeing the Lily Dale address should have convinced her,
Pilar thinks, not for the first time. Instead, the business card seemed to antagonize Katherine further.

Why? None of it makes sense.

Help me, Raul,
Pilar begs silently,
absently watching a strolling couple stop nearby to embrace in the moonlight. I can feel that you don't want me to stay out of this, as you warned me to do last week. Now you want me to become even more involved. You want me to do something.

But what?

And . . .

Why?

Is Raul urging her to somehow play intermediary and heal the relationship between Katherine and her parents? Is Pilar supposed to try to ease Nan's transition from this world, and Rupert's loneliness and grief, by reconciling them with their daughter?

That was her original plan.

Yet now she senses that there's more to it.

For some reason, Pilar is growing increasingly uneasy. Unless she's mistaken, Raul is trying to communicate some kind of threat—one that's somehow connected to Lily Dale, and the Biddles.

Maybe I should call and warn them that they're possibly in danger,
Pilar thinks,
walking slowly back to her cabin. Maybe that's what Raul wants me to do.

If so, it'll have to wait until tomorrow. It's too late to call now. Most likely, Rupert and Nan are both sleeping peacefully at this hour . . . if everything is still all right over there.

Acknowledging Nan's rapidly deteriorating condition, Pilar reminds herself that time is running out.

“
I
T LOOKS LIKE
nobody's home, or they're up in bed,” Miranda tells Kent softly, standing beside him at the curb in front of the house at Ten Summer Street. Not a single light spills from the windows.

“Brilliant deduction,” Kent says dryly. “Listen, if this ghost busting stuff doesn't pan out, you might want to think about detective work.”

She ignores his quip, gazing across the shadowy yard at the moonlit lilac branches where her recorder picked up the ghostly strains of music.

Earlier, after dinner, when she played the tape for Kent, he was excited. He feels, as Miranda does, that there is no natural explanation for the sounds.

He also enthusiastically agreed to come back over here tonight with her to investigate further.

What he doesn't know is that Miranda lied to him about having gotten earlier permission from the owners. She couldn't help feeling guilty when he willingly accepted what she said, not even bothering to ask her for the signed release form.