Necessary Evil (31 page)

I
continued. “Joe said he’s been poking around the archives, looking for the
Beaumont letter. Apparently,
Randall
has a habit of making a nuisance of
himself, poking his nose where it doesn’t belong, uncovering things better left
alone.”

I
saw the curve of his grin.

“Sounds
about right,” he said.

“Yes,
it does,” I snapped. “Joe didn’t want me to be inconvenienced.”

“Very
considerate of him. Naturally, you thanked him for his trouble.”

My
nails were digging into my palms. “Naturally,” I said coolly. “And I told him
that you weren’t a threat at all.”

 “Aren’t
I, Madeleine?”

His
voice was infused with something that set off all my warning alarms.

Run.

“No,”
I said shortly and I turned to go into the house.

“Tremonti helped you with that letter,
didn’t he?”

I stopped short, then turned.

“What?”

He hadn’t moved, except to shove his hands
into his pockets.

“The Beaumont letter. He helped you forge
it, didn’t he?”

I opened my mouth, but when no sound came
out, he turned and the light from the house lit his face clearly. He was
grinning, but it was an awful, cynical expression that cut me like a dagger.

I managed to gasp, “What are you talking
about?”

He looked at his feet. “You’re smart,
Madeleine. Quick, strong, beautiful - but all along, I knew you didn’t have the
technical knowledge to do that on your own, let alone convince a man like
Professor Maddox to authenticate it. You needed help. You needed connections.
Tremonti has both and he helped you. Then, when he learned that I was snooping
around, he came here to see if I had put two and two together yet. Isn’t that
right?”

The pounding in my ears was so loud I
could hardly hear my own whisper.

“How did you know that?”

“I saw the picture of the two of you in
the office,” he said. “It wasn’t hard to realize what that could imply. Tremonti
helped you with the Beaumont letter and now he’s panicking. He came here to see
if you’d destroyed it, right? That’s the usual procedure in these affairs.”

He almost spat the last words out, and my
pride returned with a rush. I took an angry step toward the insufferable man.

“He did ask me about the letter.” And when
he started to grin again, I snapped, “But that wasn’t the only reason why came
here tonight. He wanted to warn me. To warn me about
you
.”

“Me? I’m surprised he’d take the time.”

“He told me that you have this cute habit
of swiping material and stealing research that wasn’t yours.”

“That
I…
”

“Yes,
you
. Joe wanted me to throw
you off the farm tonight. Had I asked, he would have stayed here to do it
himself. Frankly, the only reason you’re still standing here is because I’ve
decided I’d rather put up with you than lose a chance at the treasure. Is that
the
truth
you were looking for, Professor?”

Dead
silence fell upon us. Gregory didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. He just
stood there in the dark, an outline against a royal blue sky, absorbing the
blow I so easily gave.

I
stood watching him, waiting – hoping - but the only reaction I got was when his
head dropped for a moment.

I
found the silence worse than the argument.

Randall
shifted and looked up at the road again.

“He
said that?” he asked. There was no jest, just the same flat, dull, lifeless
tone.

“He
said Gregory Randall was a thief,” I said simply.

He
straightened, his stance becoming rigid. Softly, he said, “Well, now. Isn’t that
just like Joe?” There was a long, shuddering sigh, then, “I suppose you
believed him. We do tend to believe the ones we’re in love with.”

I
staggered, but recovered quickly.

“Can you give me any reason I shouldn’t?”
I demanded.

I
waited for that denial, my stomach churning. Inwardly I was pleading with him,
Say something, Gregory.
Tell me Joe is mistaken. Please, tell me he was
wrong.

But he didn't say anything. He stood there
with his head down. Suddenly, I couldn’t bear to stand out in the warm darkness,
not with him so close.

I turned and went towards the house,
feeling his somber gaze on my back as I left. But he let me go. He didn’t say
anything to make me stay.

It wasn’t until I was in my room, with my
door safely shut and laying on top of my old comforter that I was able to
identify what exactly I was feeling: a keen sense of disappointment.

And loss.

My alarm clock jerked me out of a restless
sleep and into a gray, rainy day that perfectly suited my mood. I took two pills
for my headache and laced up my sneakers for my morning run. I went out the
front door to avoid the kitchen and forced myself to start jogging.

Of all my bad runs, this was the worst. I
slipped on slick earth, splashing in puddles, and ran into branches bent low
with water-logged leaves. What was worse than all of these was the awful,
sickly weight that seemed to pulled at my shoulders and upset my stomach. Try
as I might, no conjured memories of Joe Tremonti’s kiss could quite erase the
picture of the expression on Randall’s face last night nor the odd feeling of
loss. When I came upon Randall, sitting on his bike in his slicker, waiting at
our usual meeting place, the encounter was so startling as to nearly cause me
to slip again. I reminded myself that I had done nothing wrong, and jogged
passed him with as courteous a nod as I could manage.

I remember being glad that the glasses and
hood obscured his face.

The noise of the rain aided in my
determination to stay silent and not a word was said until we came to the back
porch. While Randall parked his bike, I bolted up the stairs and was through
the kitchen door when he called my name. I pretended not to hear it.

I raced up to my room to shower and
change. I didn’t want to eat, but habit took me down the back kitchen stairs
anyway. I caught myself just before I entered the room, but not before I heard
Aunt Susanna say, “…always had a crush on him. I just assumed that it was a
teenage thing – not lasting. I’m sorry I was wrong.”

A rush of heat flushed my face. As I crept
silently back up the stairs, I heard Gregory say, “She deserves better,” with a
ferocity that seemed foreign to him.

It made me stop and listen.

Aunt Susanna spoke in a tone too soft for
me to hear, then Randall said, “She’s a fool. A silly little fool. She can do
so much better than him.”

“I know,” Aunt Susanna said. “I know.”

That made my fists clench tight and the
blood pound angrily through my forehead. It was only with an effort that I tore
myself away from the rest of the conversation. I couldn’t listen to anymore of
it.

In my mind, I argued with them the entire
way to work. How dare they judge me! Aunt Susanna I could excuse somewhat – she
didn’t know the risk Joe ran for me in forging that letter. Its discovery could
have cost him his career. But Randall? There was no excuse I could think of for
his dismissive judgement except for jealousy, professional and otherwise.

How dare he?
I fumed.
How
dare
he butt into my personal life!

I decided I was glad that he saw the kiss.
With difficulty, I dismissed the picture of his hollow face silhouetted in the
porch light last night.

I was glad to get to work. Trusty was
feeling better and Leah told me she would be ready to go home tomorrow. Despite
distraction of the work, and Che Che’s cheerful presence, the phrases,
We do
tend to believe the ones we’re in love with
and
She’s a little fool
,
chased each other around in my mind, like a manic dog chases its own tail.

We do tend to believe the ones we’re in
love with.

That one bothered me the most. It was said
like a condemnation rather than a simple statement of fact. It was unjust and
wrong, yet I could not or would not put my finger on just why this was so.

The morning stretched on forever, the
lunch break was much too long, and it seemed the afternoon would never end. I
was distracted and irritable, oblivious to the ringing phone, absent-minded
when dealing with clients, and careless while typing emails and invoices. It
was so noticeable that even Che Che commented on it.

“Good heavens, Maddie!” she asked in the
mid-afternoon, when the waiting room was empty. “What happened to you? Did you
have a fight with your boyfriend last night?”

I answered “Yes,” then realized that she
was talking about Joe Tremonti.

“No,” I hastily amended. “Just some
personal issues, that’s all.”

She nodded, unsatisfied, but was too good
a friend to ask further questions. And it was a good thing, too, because it was
about then that I realized that I never told Gregory about my discovery about
the Dew-Drops clue.

I spent the rest of the afternoon
agonizing over how to tell him. I didn’t want to talk to him, wanted less to
see him, unless it was to rip him apart for talking about me and Joe behind my
back to my already overly protective aunt. At the same time, I wanted nothing
more than to do just that, to get him so excited about the clue that he would
forget about last night and we could go back to where we were: easy, teasing,
free – and distant.

It never was about friendship,
I reminded myself.
It was always about business.

As long as I viewed him as a business
associate, I could keep my temper in check. I could do that. I had, after all,
had years of practice dealing with difficult people – one more shouldn’t make a
difference.

The sooner this is over, the sooner I’ll
have the farm to myself again.

For some reason, this was not nearly as
reassuring as I had expected.

The long day finally ended and I set off
for home, gritting my teeth and mentally preparing myself for the battle ahead.

The house was quiet when I got back. Aunt
Susanna, Lindsay, and Jacob were in the barn with the students and I only
remembered when I saw Aunt Susanna’s note, that this was Friday, the last night
of the riding camp. She and Lindsay had decided to throw a little party at the
end of it for the students and the moms and nannies who came to pick them up.
Naturally, as head of the stables, I would be required to attend, a duty that
was a mixed bag: While I appreciated the excuse to stay away from Gregory tonight,
it also meant that I wouldn’t be able to work on the code with him.

I changed out of my work clothes into soft
jeans and a short-sleeved flannel shirt over a tank top with my riding boots.
The students expected me to dress the rustic part. Then I gathered my courage
and went to knock on the office door. When I got no answer, I opened it.

Randall wasn’t in. The room was in its
usual chaotic state of work-in-progress, with my desk the island of almost
sterile calm. It was quiet, too, the melancholy atmosphere disturbed only by
the presence of a vase of bright flowers left on my desk, Aunt Susanna’s touch
no doubt. As I stood in the doorway, hesitating to enter and wondering what had
become of the tiny book that I had in my hand only yesterday - I caught the scent
of his cologne, hanging in the air as though marking his territory. I suddenly
felt a breathless sense of loss.

Brushing the feeling aside, I went to my
desk, unlocked it, and pulled out the little
Dew-Drops
book. Holding the
tiny thing in my hands gingerly, I flipped through the pages, wondering how on
earth we were going to find the key word in the midst of all of these pages.

Maybe there’s another clue in the letter…

I went over to Gregory’s desk and looked at
the pile of pages, hesitating. Some of the piles had to do with his book, some
of the others about the Chase farm, but it wasn’t immediately apparent which of
the many would contain a copy of the Chase letter. I began to gingerly poke
through the piles, trying not to disturb them too much.

Greg’s leather bound journal was under
some discarded graphs. I was surprised to see it there – he normally kept it
close at hand, jotting notes, careful to close it before anyone got a look at
it. I tugged it out and placed it on top of the pile, then ran my hand along
the edge, wondering what was inside. Dry notes about the McInnis affair?
Snatches of his next book? Daily observations about life on the farm, maybe.

“Lose something?”

Gregory’s voice came from behind me,
making me gasp as I turned. He was standing in the doorway, watching me with a
carefully blank expression on his face. The walking stick in his hand told me
he’d gone for one of his rambling walks around the property. The exercise had
brightened his face and the wind had played with his thick locks until some of
them drifted across his forehead boyishly - and I suddenly found myself
wondering why I’d never before noticed that he was so handsome.

I checked myself:
Silly little fool,
Maddie, silly little fool.

“You’re back,” I said at last.

“I am,” he said.

His eyes were as veiled as I ever saw
them, and he didn’t hold my gaze for more than a moment. As he strode into the
room to where I was standing, I took a step back, but he didn’t approach me;
rather, he went around the desk, and took the journal from me.

“Boring stuff,” he said, and dropped in
into the drawer while I stared.

He leaned his walking stick against the
bookcase, where he normally left it, then stood studying it for a few seconds
with his hands shoved into his pockets while I tried to find something to say.
Then, I remembered the
book and held it up just as he turned to me.

“Madeleine,” he said quickly, “about last
night…”

But I shook my head firmly, waving the
book and fighting back a surge of resentment. I couldn’t allow him to speak. If
we started talking about last night, any hope we had of returning to the way
things were would be hopelessly lost.

The mystery had to be solved. That was the
primary concern. Not my feelings, not his. In the end, neither would really
matter anyway. The only way forward was to pretend as though nothing had
happened last night.

“I didn’t come here because of that,” I
said abruptly. “I found the key.”

“The key?”

His arrogant mask was back. He couldn’t
have sounded less interested.

I ignored it, pushing aside my discomfort
as I nodded and held out the tiny volume.

“The key,” I said, “to the letter.”

As he stared, I bent back over his desk
and rummaged until I found one of the copies of the Alexander Chase letter. I
found the line and pointed to it triumphantly, holding up the copy of the
little book as I read it out loud: “I also wish to thank you for your kind
words of blessing – they are dew-drops to my soul…”

I’d scarcely finished when Gregory was at
my side, his shoulder brushing mine as he bent down to examine the line through
his glasses. Something like an electric jolt went through me at the touch, but
I ignored it and handed him the book. His fingers brushed mine in the exchange.

He open it carefully to the title page and
stared at it a long moment. He was so still that I began to doubt. When he
shook his head, my heart sank.

“He
is
referring to that book,
isn’t he?” I asked weakly.

“It looks like it…” he said, frowning in
concentration. “But where is it? Usually they would identify the page number
and line or would have prearranged the number, but I don’t see an indication in
the letter…”

Gregory looked at the letter again, froze,
then grabbed a pen and made some wild strokes on the page. Looking at his handiwork,
he smiled - a genuine, disbelieving smile that encompassed both triumph and
childish excitement.

“
There it is!”
he whispered
hoarsely. “Right under our noses the whole time. Look, Madeleine,
look
.”

He shoved the page at me. He’d underlined two
words:
…I think on the
August
words in my beloved Psalmery,
especially no.
29
.

He was whipped through the devotional,
flipping pages until he found the devotional reading for August 29
^th
.
He read it out loud:

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge.
Prov. 1:7.”

His eyes met mine, shining brightly,
furiously excited.

“We’ve got it, Madeleine,” he whispered.
“At last, we’ve got it.”

For a brief moment, we were united and
fearless.
As I stared into the depths of his dark eyes, it occurred to me
then - as it hadn’t before - that once this mystery was solved, there was no
reason for Greg to stay. He would return to his university and the next
project, and I would go back to teaching lessons and balancing the budgets. The
house and land would be free from trespassers, and mine alone once more.

Alone…

I swallowed hard and turned my face away.

“Then what are we wasting time for?” I
asked. “Let’s decode this thing.”